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to draw closer to the house, and I see flame inside the living-room win-
dow, lots of flame. Much of the glass in the window is broken out.
It is Tronstad s work, of course Tronstad, who s often bragged about
the Molotov cocktails he made and tossed as a youth, mostly by the river
in the woods near Redlands, California, but at least once into the mayor s
convertible and, weeks later, the mayor s replacement convertible. He d
been an incorrigible teenager, hauled into juvenile court half a dozen
times.
Oleson holds the nozzle firmly and rinses the area around the front
door, then begins moving to his right, toward the window. He is wasting
water, bouncing it off the siding, and I want to tell him to stop, but before
I speak he aims through the living-room window and blasts away, knock-
ing out window glass as he goes. The water stream knocks the blinds
down, and Oleson swirls the water in circles, shooting into the living
room, which by now is pretty much an inferno. The flames don t dampen
one little bit. A hundred fifty gallons a minute, and it s as if we re not even
there.
I ve never seen a hose line so ineffectual. I smell raw gasoline and
know immediately Tronstad has saturated the living room with his fa-
vorite Shell product. In addition, the living room has pine-wood paneling
instead of the standard fire-resistant wallboard most modern houses con-
tain, which gives it a colossal fire load even before the gasoline. I know
also from my visit in August that the stairs to the bedrooms are directly
behind the living room, and that Oleson is pushing the flames up the
stairs and into the sleeping area on the second floor.
A large piece of the window that had been hanging on the top of the
frame drops like a guillotine blade and narrowly misses cutting Oleson
off at the wrists.
The fire s in the front, I say. We re pushing it up the stairs toward
the bedrooms. Let s take the line around back and push it out here.
262 E A R L E ME R S ON
Good idea.
He closes the bale on the nozzle, drops the hose line, and begins cov-
ering, as do I. I don t want to cover here, but I don t want to be out of sync
with him, either. It will take thirty seconds to get our face pieces secure,
get the air flowing, pull the Nomex hoods over our heads, and refasten
our helmets.
I finish masking up before Oleson, pick up the nozzle, and begin tug-
ging the end of the hose around the side of the house. With two hundred
feet of line, we should have more than enough. Because of the intensity of
the fire, this is the best way to keep the flames away from people inside.
Twenty feet behind me, Oleson drags hose and helps me get it around
the corner of the house. From the outside, it is a simple structure, rectan-
gular with a steep roof and one gable on the front and another gable in
the back a box, really, painted white with blue trim. I drag the hose
around the house to the right, and as I peer down the side, I catch a
glimpse of a figure in fire gear walking away from me into the backyard.
No other units are on scene yet. From the way he moves, I know it s
Tronstad.
When I get the hose line around the corner into the backyard, Tron-
stad is fifteen feet from the house, a greasy look of exuberance on his face.
He wears full turnouts and one of our standard MSA bottle-and-backpack
combos. He is ready for fire.
I am hoping to see three pajama-clad people in the backyard, but
there s nobody but him and me.
He grins, then cocks his arm back and throws something at the
house. I don t realize what it is until I see it in midair, whirring as it hur-
tles through the early-morning twilight. A Molotov cocktail disappears
through a ground-floor window.
He turns back to me and grins again, as if there is something hugely
amusing about firebombing a house with people inside. With Tronstad,
everything is a joke.
You stupid shit! I say. I know those people in there!
Oh, are there people inside? Gee whiz.
Have you gone insane?
T HE S MOK E R O OM 263
Come on, man. Let s get in there and get them bonds before they
burn up. You better get your shit out while there s still time.
What are you talking about? I ask, yanking more hose into the
backyard.
The bonds, man. They re gonna burn.
The machinations of his plot become instantly clear.
You followed us back from Beach Drive.
You bet your ass I did.
You never had the bonds at all.
I will. Just as soon as you get them.
His earlier claim to have retrieved the bonds had been contrived in
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