The Scorching

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “What is?”

  “Pete Kennedy.”

  Cantwell nodded. “Yeah, it is. I’d like to have him.”

  “There’s only one thing, he’s forty-two years old,” Sarah said. “Getting up there for a smoke jumper.”

  “He can handle a gun, and he’s not afraid of terrorists, so I want him,” Cantwell said. He smiled, “Besides, forty-two is not too old.”

  “I never said it was,” Sarah said. “Depending on what you want to do, no age is too old.”

  Cantwell looked at Sarah, enjoying how she looked in the leaf-dappled sunlight. Aside from her obvious beauty, he’d found much to admire in her. She was intelligent, her courage was not in doubt, and she looked problems in the face and then did something about them.

  Sarah Milano, Cantwell decided, would be an easy woman to fall in love with.

  “I’m hungry,” the woman said. “Are you thinking about breakfast?”

  Cantwell blinked, surfacing from his reverie. “Breakfast? Oh, yeah, sounds good.”

  He rose and followed Sarah into the cabin. Before he made his way to the shower, he said, “The Glacier Peak guy’s name again?”

  “Peter Kennedy,” Sarah said. “I think you can call him Pete.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Squad leader Pete Kennedy couldn’t believe he was thinking it . . . but he was ready for fire season to be over. In years past, it would have ended weeks before now, but each year it seemed to extend just a little bit longer. He couldn’t wait to get back to his hometown of Leavenworth, Washington, with its Bavarian facades. He knew it was all as phony as hell, but damned if it wasn’t charming when the snows fell.

  He’d built a house above the town, near Rocky Icicle Creek, and spent most of the winter skiing.

  At forty-two, he was the oldest smoke jumper in his crew by far, his chosen career interrupted by three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The kids around him on the airport tarmac were tired but still gung-ho, too proud to admit their exhaustion.

  “This is going to be a tricky one, not sure what we’ll find,” Kennedy said, as he finished briefing his crew on their detail. “But I do know that it won’t be easy.”

  The fire smoldered on Glacier Peak, a small volcano that stood lone sentinel on a high ridge. The mountain looked more imposing than it really was because of its sheer, ice-covered upper slopes. It was about halfway between the smoke jumpers’ base camp at Winthrop, Washington, and the town of Leavenworth. There weren’t any significant structures nearby, but extensive alpine forests and an extreme dryness made the National Wildfire Service higher-ups nervous. There was no easy way to access the burn.

  “Sorry about getting this one so late,” Kennedy said. “I know some of you are due back in school soon.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s overtime!” a pert, brunette girl named Maryann shouted, and the others laughed.

  But the laughs were half-hearted. It had been one hell of a season, with very few breaks, and the crew had been moved all over the place. Most of them had already earned more than ever before, and all of them would have given up some of that overtime for some extra help. But despite the ever-increasing size and frequency of the fires, there were fewer firefighters now than five years ago. Normally there’d be four or five crews at the base, but right now it was just Kennedy’s people and a few stragglers.

  It was clear to all of them that the management didn’t know what they were doing, sending them out on little brushfires while serious wildfires burned in the mountains. The National Wildfire Service was penny-pinching, ignoring inaccessible fires and concentrating on fires near housing developments. So this high-mountain operation was a refreshing change, more in line with what Kennedy and his crew were trained for.

  But times had changed. He remembered years back when they’d often sat around the base for most of the summer, paperback Westerns and war novels littering the Quonset hut’s broken-down chairs and sofas. Bored firefighters needled one another until there were the inevitable fights, and then the drinking sessions thereafter where the battered combatants got sloppily sentimental about what best buddies they were.

  But those days were long gone as the number of forest fires grew. In his career, he had seen two different crews wiped out by blowouts. He’d been a rookie when the South Canyon tragedy happened, and he hadn’t known any of the fourteen young firefighters killed, but just a few years back at Granite Mountain, he’d known half of the nineteen smoke jumpers who died. Then came the Indian Wells disaster, when Mike Norris, a man he knew and liked, had made himself a hero. But Mike had since quit the service over a disagreement about replacing manned lookout towers with cameras. His going was a big loss.

  Kennedy’s crew, based in northern Washington, had spent most of this season fighting fires in Colorado. Meanwhile, though there hadn’t been any major fires in their home territory, the Western drought continued apace. When they’d returned home from the last trip, Kennedy had been shocked by how primed the forests were for a disaster and how few resources were left to fight them.

  The NWS was spread thin, years of budget cuts just when they needed firefighters the most. But when the majority of members of Congress express disbelief in climate change, warnings of continuing droughts fell on deaf ears. To the average legislator, all that was needed was a good rainstorm. Never mind those rainstorms also brought lightning.

  It also didn’t help that most congresspeople came from districts where wildfire was a minor concern. What happened in the West stayed in the West, and western senators could scream for help all they wanted, but until and unless there was a disaster—when it was too late, in other words—the money wasn’t forthcoming.

  It wasn’t going to be his problem after this season, unless he was crazy enough to stick around and fight the bureaucratic battles. He hadn’t told anyone, not even his girlfriend, but he’d been offered a position at a private firefighting company that paid so much he couldn’t refuse. It would be a huge step down in prestige, and a huge step up in safety and security.

  He looked around at his crew. Maryann Reid and Scott Vern flirted at the front of the plane. They’d be the last duo out. Not a care in the world. Next in line was Dick Mathews, the second-oldest crewmember and probably the next leader. He didn’t talk much, but always made the right decision. Long and lanky, which was unusual for a firefighter, most of whom were shorter and muscular.

  Jon Carty was next, and he too defied the usual body type, being a big guy, six foot, two inches and over two hundred pounds. His partner was petite Rhonda Evans, short-cropped brunette hair and upturned nose and cute as could be. They were having a secret affair, which everyone in the crew pretended they didn’t know about.

  Pranda Khan was next, dark haired and sharp featured. Everyone loved her British accent and tried to get her to talk just to listen to her. Her partner was a Mohawk, Jason Coldstream, who was quiet and soft-spoken with eyes as black as obsidian.

  And finally, in the middle of the pack was the Ivy League college kid, Jake Johnson, and the good old boy from Alabama, Jerry Burton, who for some reason got along great, despite having completely different backgrounds.

  Pete had decided that ten crew members were enough to start with. It didn’t look like a big fire, though it was on tough terrain. If he needed help, he’d call it in.

  The crew zipped into padded Kevlar jumpsuits with their high collars and baggy pants. With the parachute harnesses attached, they had to waddle to the aircraft. Below the reserve parachute in front were their personal bags, with food and extra clothing and gear. Topping it off were helmets with their metal faceplates that made them look like somewhat bizarre football players.

  After takeoff, inside the plane was hot, humid, and noisy, and the crew sat close to each other yet isolated, each with his or her own thoughts and secret anxieties.

  The copilot came out of the cockpit and said to Kennedy, “You see anyplace you want us to try?”

  Kennedy had surveyed the terrain below, and it was cl
ear that they’d have to jump very close to the fire, almost on top of it, which made him uncomfortable. But the crosswinds were low, and it seemed safe enough.

  He pointed. “How about the hanging meadow there? It’s well below the snow line.”

  The copilot nodded, spoke into his microphone, then made his way to the open rear of the place, where he hooked a line from his flight suit to a secure strut.

  “On final!” the copilot shouted.

  Kennedy stood. It was too noisy back there to speak. The spotter just tapped him on the shoulder rather than shout. Before he could think, Kennedy jumped, curled into a ball, and counted the four seconds before he felt the parachute unspool. He opened his eyes and shouted, “Hoya!” so that Dick Matthews would know where he was and heard a “Hoya!” in return to his left. He looked up and watched the others safely exit the aircraft.

  The ground came up fast. The high meadow clearing, which had looked flat from above, covered with yellow grasses and patches of snow, was littered with sharp rocks, but Kennedy managed to glide his way to an open space.

  He turned, gathered up the canopy, and got ready to help anyone who landed badly. They all managed to get down safely, which was a relief because Kennedy wasn’t sure about the availability of a backup helicopter.

  The crew stowed their gear, shed the bulky jumpsuits, and grabbed their tools.

  The flames had already burned through some grassy areas bordered by volcanic rocks and Kennedy relaxed. It was a blackened place they could retreat to if anything went wrong. A thick stand of pines growing below them had not caught fire yet. For now the flames were restricted to some scrub about halfway down the slope. If they could cut a firebreak between the scrub and the trees, the fire would probably burn out.

  “Damn,” Maryann said. “This looks easy. I was hoping for one last big payday.”

  “We cut a line downslope of the fire,” Kennedy said. “Let it burn upward to the rocks.”

  The slope was mostly scree, and since the fire didn’t seem to be moving fast, they made their way down and around it carefully.

  The first tendrils of flames licked at the base of a small scrub fir, and Dick Matthews cut into the grass, throwing dirt on it. The rest of the job was done very quickly. Ten people could clear a large area fast.

  “Well, hell,” Jason Coldstream said. “This fire would’ve burned out all by itself.”

  Kennedy wasn’t so sure. The line of trees grew thicker the farther they went down the slope. Beyond was a dense forest that extended all the way to the town of Leavenworth and beyond. A change of wind direction, a little bad luck, and this could have turned into something really ugly. An out-of-control blaze would have spread fast and threatened lives and property.

  Kennedy sighed and clicked the radio to call for pickup. At the same moment out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash.

  “What was that?” Dick Matthews said, his voice sounding oddly hollow in the sudden silence.

  “Lightning!” Kennedy yelled. “Damn, it’s lightning.”

  Without anyone noticing, a thunderhead had crept up over the mountain behind them. Upslope, a flash of dry lightning struck a wedge-shaped outcropping, and a second later a deafening bang shattered the quiet as though the mountain had been struck with a gigantic sledgehammer.

  The hairs stood up on Kennedy’s arms, and he sensed they were in a spot the lightning had chosen to strike next.

  “Everybody, get down from here!” he shouted.

  He scrambled down the slope, he and Matthews herding the others in front of them like a mother hen.

  The crew reached the tree line, which all the safety protocols told them they were supposed to avoid in a lightning storm, but that warning was ignored as lightning struck the slope where they had stood only moments before.

  Tense moments passed as the storm passed overhead, and in its wake the sky was blue, without a cloud.

  For Pete Kennedy the good news was that they’d escaped the storm unscathed. But the bad news was that an errant lightning strike hit the tallest and deadest tree in the forest, and it burst into flame. Within moments, other pines caught and burned and formed a dancing, scarlet wall.

  Kennedy sighed. “Looks like you got your overtime, guys.”

  He pulled out a roll of red tape to mark where he wanted the fire line.

  “I want to see nothing along that line but dirt,” he said.

  * * *

  The crew managed to catch the fire quickly enough to keep it from spreading. The finishing touches were made to the fire line, and they all began to breathe a little easier.

  By then the day was shading into night and they found a narrow flat ledge on the slope and stretched out where they could. It was going to be a cold night.

  At daybreak, Pete Kennedy rose, worked the crick out of his back, and then started the crew in the direction of their previously agreed rendezvous point, a little-used logging road to the south of the peak.

  Walking through some sparse hardwoods, Kennedy pulled out his radio and called the North Cascades base for transport home.

  “You’re going to have to walk at least part of the way,” the assistant base manager Ginger Terry said, her deep voice sounding masculine over the radio. “We’ve had a strange upsurge of fires in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Walk out?” Kennedy said. “All the way back to base camp? How many miles is that?”

  “No, just stay to the logging road and we’ll send a truck for you when one becomes available.”

  “You’re that busy?” Kennedy said.

  “Yeah, Pete, something’s going on. Wait, we’re getting a report.” Then after a long pause, “Pete, look to the northwest. Do you see anything?”

  The terrain in that direction was a series of wooded foothills below a steep rock bluff. Kennedy saw a column of white smoke, and at a distance it probably looked smaller than it actually was.

  “Yeah, I see smoke,” Kennedy said. “We’re maybe three miles from there.”

  “It could be nothing, but check it out, Pete,” Ginger said. “I’m sorry to do this to you.”

  “It’s all part of the job,” Kennedy said. “We’re on our way.”

  “Report back, and good luck,” Ginger said.

  * * *

  They started off with the reassuring accompaniment of Pranda Khan’s bells. She had sewn a line of small bells down the sides of her backpack and on her hat.

  When the woman had joined the crew, the bells had annoyed Pete Kennedy, but he couldn’t argue with their purpose. A grizzly in the mountains of Montana had attacked Pranda’s previous team, and one man had been severely mauled. Afterward the crew had broken up, with several members quitting altogether.

  “Now I want bears to know I’m coming,” Pranda said.

  Old Ephraim could be a problem in the woods, and Kennedy carried a Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum as grizzly medicine . . . but that day he was destined to meet an enemy much more dangerous than a bear.

  CHAPTER 18

  The crew traversed a particularly steep part of the slope when the bells suddenly fell silent. Kennedy turned to ask why Pranda had stopped . . . but she wasn’t there.

  Then Rhonda Evans shouted in alarm, pointing downslope.

  Pranda tumbled head over heels down a talus slope to Rhonda’s left, brush sending her first one way then the other. She landed on a flat area of gravel and slid to a stop, sending up a cloud of gray dust.

  She lay there unmoving.

  Kennedy stepped off the trail and made his way down the incline to Pranda’s side. He knelt and felt her neck. Good, there was a pulse, but it was racing and uneven.

  Dick Matthews and Maryann Reid reached them a few moments later.

  “How is she?” the girl said.

  Kennedy shook head. “I don’t know. She’s alive. But I’m afraid to move her.” His crew had gathered around and stared down at him, their faces ashen.

  “She must have slipped,” Maryann said. “Why did she step o
nto the steep part of the slope?”

  “I don’t know why,” Kennedy said. “Dick, call for the helicopter. Don’t take no or maybe for an answer!”

  “What about the fire?” Matthews asked.

  “Screw the fire,” Kennedy said. “No one living up here anyway.”

  CRACK! A sound never made by nature split the air.

  “What the hell!” Pete Kennedy said.

  Just under the armpit, his shirt was glistening with blood. He lifted the shirt and saw a straight line across his chest as though drawn by a scarlet marker pen.

  “Pete, that’s a bullet wound,” Matthews said. “My God, Pranda may have been shot.”

  Fearing the worst, Kennedy gently turned the woman over. Blood welled from the middle of her stomach, and there was no doubt . . . it was a bullet wound.

  Kennedy heard a distant, pulsating thrum, and sudden hope replaced the sense of dread that had overtaken him. He scanned the sky, expecting to see the helicopter in the distance.

  But the dark shape didn’t get bigger, and he realized the thing in the sky was close, very close.

  Kennedy’s eyes almost popped out of his head. It was a large, four-motored drone.

  The drone flew overhead and dropped a dark object that fell onto the wooded hillside a thousand feet below them. A flash of scarlet fire and a pine exploded into flames, igniting the others around it.

  Kennedy heard big Jon Carty gasp and saw the man suddenly stiffen, followed an instant later by the sound of the gunshot. The big man toppled off the trail and rolled down the slope.

  Once the others realized what was happening, they threw themselves to the ground.

  The hum of the drone returned. It buzzed over Kennedy and Maryann, then darted uphill and hovered over the crew.

  “No!” Kennedy yelled.

  A cylinder dropped from the drone, and for a moment time seemed to freeze. Then Rhonda Evans jumped to her feet and ran a few steps up the slope. But the blast caught her and lifted her like a ragdoll eight feet in the air before dropping her shattered body on the lava rocks.