“I’ve notified the Forestry Service,” the chief confirmed. “They’re sending a team. They’ll also call in air support.”
The taut reply knotted Suze’s stomach. It stayed bunched as her husband pulled on the turnout gear he’d picked up at the station on their mad race out of town—bunker pants, jacket, boots, gloves and helmet with its protective visor.
Just rigging out in the scorching July night drenched him in sweat. As he strapped on his single-harness chest-radio pack, Suze had to bite back the suggestion that he should direct the effort, not put himself on the front line. Gabe might be the town’s mayor, but he was also a volunteer firefighter. She knew there was no way in hell he’d keep a safe distance from those vicious flames while his fellow volunteers were battling them.
The fire chief didn’t argue, either. He’d trained these men and women. Put them through hell before he certified them. And he needed every damned one on the line.
“I’ve sent the A team to work the Osborne house,” he advised Gabe tersely. “I have two other teams clearing a firebreak between it and the Forrester place. Might save it, if the wind doesn’t pick up.”
Gabe was assigned to A team. Her heart in her throat, Suze watched him hurry down the road to join the group aiming a fat inch-and-a-half stream of water at the flames engulfing the Osbornes’ home.
“What can I do?” she asked the chief.
His narrowed, smoke-reddened eyes cut from the fire to her. She’d known him for most of her life. More to the point, he knew her.
“Every damned TV and radio station in central Oklahoma wants an update and Hal Jorgenson, our Public Affairs officer is down with colitis. Our deputy PA’s on her way. Until she gets here...”
He jerked his head toward his command vehicle. The driver’s door hung open. Suze could hear the shrill squawks and tinny requests for status from where she stood.
“You know what to tell ’em, Captain. And what not to tell ’em. Take care of it.”
* * *
Suze took care of it until the deputy PA screeched up in a mud-spattered pickup.
“Thanks for covering for me,” she panted. “You start a log?”
“Right here.”
The farmer’s wife skimmed the log and let out a low whistle. “Can you stay? Looks like I might need some help.”
“You got it.”
The two women acted as the central point of contact for news crews and concerned officials for the next two hours. They shared information on the teams that had raced to the scene from the mutual aid townships, relayed updates provided by the chief to include the arrival of the Hot Shot team and an incident commander specially trained to combat wildfires, and coordinated with Will Rogers World Airport tower to keep the air space clear for the tanker that flew in to drop fire retardant.
Suze was guzzling down bottled water when a Mustang City crew radioed a terse report.
“The heat got to our bulldozer operator. We’re retreating to our fallback position to cool him down.”
The water bottle crunched and crinkled in her fist. The Mustang crew had been plowing up cedars to keep the fire from jumping the creek toward the west boundary of the development. The flames had to be getting perilously close to their position. If the cedars ignited, the fire could whip along the entire creek, maybe even snake though town.
While the deputy PA briefed the chief, the urgency of the situation ripped at Suze. One dozer could clear more brush and vegetation in ten minutes than a full crew hacking and axing for several hours. She wasn’t a trained firefighter but she could operate a variety of heavy equipment, including some earth movers.
Years of training and experience warred in her mind with the possible risks to her baby. She’d already exposed her unborn child to one potentially toxic situation during cleanup of the fuel spill. Did she dare risk exposing it to another?
The escalating situation forced her choice. One life had already been lost. Other folks stood to lose all they owned. She couldn’t stand by and just watch.
“I can drive a dozer,” she told the chief. “I might be able to help.”
He didn’t waste time arguing. “Go!”
Spinning, she headed for Ole Blue. Three miles and a racketing drive over unpaved roads later, she screeched to a halt at the Mustang crew’s fallback position.
Sweat drenched and smoke stained, they’d propped their woozy dozer operator against a rear tire of the flatbed trailer that had transported his machinery. They’d removed his protective gear and had hosed him down and were now waiting for his body temp to lower enough for him to take in some liquid.
“I’m Suzanne Hall,” she told the team leader. “Captain Suzanne Hall. I command an Air Force Prime BEEF crew and have hands-on experience operating a bulldozer.”
The firefighter looked her up and down. What he saw obviously didn’t reassure him but before he could question her qualifications the man beside him widened his red-rimmed eyes.
“Hey! Aren’t you the captain from Cedar Creek who got the Bronze Star?”
“That’s me.”
“I read about her in the paper, Mike. If she says she can operate a dozer, I believe her.”
She understood the team leader’s skepticism even as she yanked on the dozer operator’s gear. Firefighting bulldozer drivers were a rare breed. She’d read one report indicating that of the more than fourteen hundred firefighters in Orange County, California, only two were bulldozer operators. The Mustang fire department was damned lucky to have a volunteer operator. Even luckier that he happened to own a construction company and could haul in crawlers and backhoes in a crisis like this.
Although officers in charge of Prime BEEF teams weren’t expected to get down in the trenches, Suze had decided early in her career to acquire at least a basic familiarity with her team members’ unique skill sets. Consequently, she’d learned the intricacies of emergency airfield lighting systems, had wrestled with mobile arresting barriers, and had a working knowledge of HVAC and sanitary systems.
She’d also learned to operate various items of heavy equipment. The dump trucks were a breeze. The graders and backhoes took a little practice. Surprisingly, the dozers with their hydrostatic transmissions and GPS machine controls were also relatively easy to operate. Still, her team had held their collective breath when she’d dropped the blade and attacked a heavily damaged runway during a deployment at a remote base in Iraq—then whooped when she plowed up an entire section of cratered concrete in the first pass.
She felt that same grim determination now. She was fierce. Focused. Straining to hear every word gasped out by the heat-stricken dozer operator.
“Come at the bank...from an angle. Watch for washouts and cuts. Don’t let ’er tip...into the creek.”
“Got it.”
“Make sure...you have an escape plan. If the...fire burns over you, unfurl the curtains and...plow through to the black.”
The thick, reflective curtains would cover the dozer’s window and provide a protective cocoon if the flames surrounded it. But even with the shield down and the built-in air-conditioning blasting, she knew temperatures inside the cab could still reach upwards of a hundred and seventy degrees. The black, she guessed, was the charred land behind the fire line.
As she started for the dozer parked down at the creek, the team leader was still dubious. “You sure you know what you’re doing, Captain?”
“Guess we’ll both find out quick enough.”
As she approached the crawler, the fire-fed heat sucked the air from her lungs. Panting, she swung into the cab and slammed the door. She kept one foot braced against the floor and the other on the deceleration pedal as she hit the starter. The hundred-and-fifty horsepower engine rumbled under her and the air gushing through the AC vents went from hot and acrid to cool and acrid. Keeping her hands on the throttle, she squinted at the tree-lined bank ahead.
Smoke, dust and darkness threatened to obscure her visibility. The fire retardant dropped by the tankers
had splattered the cab’s windows with red splotches. Jaw locked, she raised the blade, dropped it again and dug it into the red Oklahoma dirt at a shallow angle. With grim determination, she throttled forward.
The twisted, stunted cedars lining the bank went down like dominoes. Their trunks crunched under the blade. Branches whipped at the crawler’s sides. Perched eight feet above the fallen trees, Swish rolled along at a blinding five miles an hour while doing her damnedest to keep the tractor from tipping into the creek. Her insides squeezed when the left tread slipped and seemed to lose traction. The cab swayed, but she got it righted and kept plowing.
* * *
It was after midnight before the more than two hundred firefighters who’d responded finally tamed the beast. It had consumed over a thousand acres, most of them the open fields that stretched from Cedar Creek toward the FAA center a dozen miles to the east. The Osbornes’ home was a total loss. Dave Forrester’s newly constructed mansion had sustained some smoke and water damage and would need extensive repair.
Gabe hadn’t seen his wife since they’d parted some five hours ago, but he’d heard via the chief that she’d joined forces with a crew from Mustang. He’d connected with her once by phone to make sure she was okay. He could tell her adrenaline was still pumping as she described the firebreak they’d established. But when she called him to let him know the Mustang crew had shut down operations, he could hear the weariness in her voice.
But that was Suze. The woman gave 200 percent to every task, every challenge. It was what made her so good at her job. And what put her squarely in line to shoot up the ranks.
Guilt nagged at him for forcing her to choose between him and her career three years ago. He could only swear a silent oath that they would do better this time around.
“Where are you now?” he asked her.
“On my way back to the command center.”
“We’ve got things under control here. Go home. Take a cool shower. Crash. I’ll get a ride home from the chief.”
“Have you heard how Mrs. Osborne and the boys are doing?”
“The youngest, Danny, is in bad shape. He’s been evacuated to the burn center at Integris Hospital in OKC. Donna and the oldest weren’t burned as badly, but they’re both pretty traumatized.”
“I feel so, so sorry for them.”
“Yeah, me, too. Go home,” he repeated, scrubbing the heel of his hand across his chin. “Get some sleep. I’ll try not to let Doofus wake you when I roll in.”
Suze didn’t argue. She was hot, sweat-grimed and totally whipped. She managed a smile for Doofus’s ecstatic greeting and hung loose on the back patio while he made his usual mad dash around the yard, watering everything that caught his fancy.
His duty done, he bounded up the stairs ahead of her and leaped onto the bed. She didn’t have the energy or the inclination to order him off. Leaving him in gleeful possession, she peeled off her clothes and left a trail all the way to the shower.
The pelting water revived her enough to shampoo her hair. That helped get most of the grime out from under her nails. Still, toweling the thick mane dry just about sucked out her the last of her energy. Head bent, towel still working, she padded back to the bedroom.
Suddenly, she stopped dead. Her discarded jeans lay in a heap, her panties next to them. The dark blotch staining the panties started her heart hammering in her chest.
“Oh, God!” Her fists tightened on the towel ends. Her legs went rubbery. “OhGod, ohGod, ohGod.”
Doofus jerked up his head. His ears pricked forward, and he gave a low whine when Suze dropped to one knee. He was beside her, nosing her arm, when she snatched up the panties. She shoved him away and sat back on her heels.
The stain was dry. Rust colored. She stared at it for what felt like ten lifetimes, then shoved to her feet and rushed downstairs. With Doofus clicking at her heels, she cut straight for the laptop on Gabe’s desk. He’d shared the password so it took her only a few seconds to power up, log on, and Google pregnancy, spotting. She read at least a dozen articles before her heart stopped hammering.
“Okay,” she told the anxious hound who’d plopped his head onto her thigh. “Okay. It’s not uncommon in the first few weeks. As long as the blood isn’t bright red and I didn’t experience any cramps, we don’t need to worry.”
She hadn’t cramped. Had she?
Her pulse skittered. With the bulldozer’s engine rumbling under her and the blade chewing up cypress after cypress and her adrenaline pumping a gallon a minute, would she have felt a cramp if she’d had one?
She considered calling her mother. Or Gabe’s mother. As late as it was, she ruled them out and called his oldest sister, instead. Kathy had more than six years as a neonatal intensive care nurse under her belt. Suze hated to wake her on one of her rare nights off but knew she could trust her judgment.
Her voice clogged with sleep, Kathy demanded an update on the fire first, then echoed the articles her sister-in-law had pulled up. “Yeah, it’s not unusual. I spotted with two of my kids. I wouldn’t worry about it, unless it continues or you start cramping.”
Reassured, Suze thanked her and disconnected. For her own peace of mind, though, she walked the floor for another twenty minutes. Doofus watched every turn and foray she made to the bathroom to check for additional spotting. When none appeared, she fell into bed, too relieved and exhausted to stay awake for Gabe’s return.
* * *
Gabe and the chief swung by the station to clean and stash their protective gear before heading home. Half the company had already stood down but a team would remain on-site to watch for flare-ups. They would also secure the scene for reps from the Oklahoma State Fire Marshall’s office, which was charged with investigating any fire involving loss of life and/or property damage above a certain level.
Gabe had the chief drop him off at the end of the drive, hoping he could walk up to the house and slip inside before Doofus went nuts. The plan almost worked. He got through the front door and was halfway up the stairs before the hound launched into full alert mode.
The sudden, startled barking rattled the windows. His claws scrabbled on the wood floor. And when he appeared at the top of the stairs, the acrid stink of smoke clinging to the shadowy figure coming up apparently confused the heck out of him.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Reassured by the sound of his human’s voice, Doofus went from confused to ecstatic. He danced beside Gabe as he went into the bedroom and dropped a kiss on Suze’s cheek.
“Whattimeizzit?”
“Coming up on 3:00 a.m. Go back to sleep. I’ll join you shortly.”
“Shortly” stretched out for a good twenty minutes. His back against the shower tiles, he lifted his face and tried to let the lukewarm stream wash away some of the horror of the night.
But try as he might, he couldn’t shut down the chaotic sounds and sights that kalidescoped through his mind. The flames leaping into the night sky. The charred bodies. The utter weariness in Suze’s voice when he’d talked to her.
Christ! The woman was incredible. She’d jumped aboard a bulldozer and plunged into a raging fire. Yet now, with the adrenaline drained out of him, a nasty little niggle of doubt picked at the edges of his weariness.
Flattening a palm against the tile, Gabe let the water pound his head and shoulder. He’d told Suze he would support her. That he would jettison the job and the home that he loved to move to Phoenix. That once the baby was born, they would work out their future together, one day at a time.
And as long as she wore an Air Force uniform, the odds were the future would include more toxic spills. More aircraft accidents and explosions and raging fires. More deployments to dangerous forward locations.
Could he handle saying goodbye to her again? Stand by while she packed her go-kit, kissed him and the baby, and left?
He’d convinced her he could. Convinced himself he could. But now, with the horror of the night still smoldering in his mind, Gabe couldn’t help wonder
if he was deluding himself.
His mind as tired as his body, he pried his shoulder blades from the wall, shampooed, soaped down, dried off and slid between the sheets. Suze mumbled something that sounded distinctly grumpy and bucked her butt against his hip. Gabe rolled onto his side and spooned her body with his.
The feel of her, the scent of her, his provided an instant counter to his doubts. He settled her closer and repeated what he suspected might become his personal mantra. The months and years ahead wouldn’t be easy. For him, or for her. But this time they’d make it, dammit. They would!
He fell asleep with that fierce vow echoing in his mind and his wife in his arms.
* * *
His side of the bed was empty when Suze woke the next morning. She shuffled to the bathroom, still groggy. The sight of the panties she’d rinsed out last night draped over the side of the tub brought her fear crashing back. She didn’t draw a whole breath until she made sure she hadn’t spotted again during the night.
Relieved, she followed the scent of coffee to the kitchen. A note propped on the counter informed her that Gabe had an early morning meeting with the state fire inspectors. It also reminded her of the ten o’clock meeting with Colonel Amistad. Gabe would have to cancel but encouraged her to make the meeting.
She stood at the counter, undecided. The breakfast table was covered with empty packing boxes and wrapping paper. So was the dining table. Since Alicia was sure she could rent the house furnished, they’d decided to leave the big stuff and basic necessities like dishes and pots and pans. But they still needed to pack the personal items that Gabe wanted to put in storage.
Suze’s gaze swept the empty boxes. What the hell. Both she and Gabe had packed up and moved often enough before. Still plenty of time left.
Since she’d run through the limited wardrobe she’d brought with her, she called the sister-in-law nearest to her size.
“Penny, I need to borrow something suitable for a meeting with Colonel Amistad.”
“Who?”
“He was Grand Marshal of the parade.”
“If you say so. Come on over. Mi closet es su closet.”
The Captain's Baby Bargain Page 13