Wildfire at Dawn

by M. L. Buchman

  Laura waved her thanks to Bess and headed for the corral to saddle up the horses. Men were such…

  No. No, she wouldn’t clump them together merely because she was sick of, well, most of them.

  Mister Ed, her big tan gelding, trotted up to the fence line to greet her. They’d been riding together for five years now and the gelding was always anxious when they missed a day. A chunk of carrot and a nose rub reassured him that everything was okay.

  She remembered Akbar the Great looking horse-stiff as he crawled in from a fire. There’s another thing Grayson wouldn’t be doing anytime soon, jumping fire. By the look of his hands, he lifted nothing heavier than a martini glass. Akbar’s hands she could picture easily: calloused, strong, and looking as if they could hold up the world.

  He’d also been funny and included her mom in the conversation. And he hadn’t talked about the New Tillamook Burn other than admitting he was MHA’s lead smokie, and only after her mom had asked. He hadn’t used his main pick-up card on her. Of course, his buddy had already played “we be smokejumpers” for him. Even if they were in the game together, there wasn’t any artifice or hidden agenda about it. They were clear as could be about the question they were asking long before they asked it.

  Casual sex was not something she did. But it was hard not to be impressed by Akbar being the lead smokejumper. It was a world where first seat meant something. It was also a world she understood. People like Grayson who made their livings in offices and boardrooms never made sense to her. She liked some, even dated a few, but she’d never understood what drove them. Akbar she understood without even thinking about it: smokejumper, proud of it, and enjoying the obvious benefits.

  Like everyone else in all of Oregon, and twice over because she made her living out of doors, she’d read every update on the three weeks that the Burn had raged. From her perch on Mount Hood, she’d been able to see the smoke plume day in and day out; could smell it most days. At night, the hills burned so brightly she’d been able to see them a hundred miles away.

  He’d been in that; right on the front lines.

  “But the thing I really noticed about him,” she told Mister Ed. “Despite being obviously famished for good food after the brutal firefight, he kept forgetting to eat as we talked. As if talking to me was more important than anything as mundane as mere hunger. Of course you wouldn’t know about that.”

  Mister Ed who had followed her over to the tack shed and was nosing her pockets looking for another treat.

  “He was charming about it.”

  Mister Ed nickered.

  “I know. It’s been a long time since anyone did that to me.”

  Whether by intent, or hoping to discover another carrot, the gelding head-butted the back pocket where she’d stuffed her phone.

  She glared at the horse.

  Mister Ed gave back one of his “I’m so innocent” looks.

  “Okay, fine. But don’t tell the others.” The half dozen other horses were still snoozing down by the water trough. She dug out another chunk of carrot and laughed as Mister Ed’s soft muzzle tickled her open palm.

  Then she dug out her phone and sent a text.

  # # #

  “One minute out,” the pilot announced. Akbar and Tim moved to the back of the DC-3 to pull open the rear jump door. He’d woken everyone five minutes earlier and they’d all started selecting which gear the plane’s paracargo boss should shove out behind them.

  Akbar’s phone buzzed.

  He dug it out of his pocket. Didn’t have time for it, but it might be some last minute instruction from Mark. Wouldn’t he be on the radio?

  He didn’t recognize the number.

  Tim popped the rear door and swung it inward. The wind’s roar grew tenfold. They were high over steeply rolling green forest.

  Akbar hit View and glanced at the message. How about a run in the morning? –Space Girl.

  Shit! He didn’t even have time to be pleased, never mind answer. He stuffed it back in his pocket and hurried down the aisle. Space Girl? No, she was too much of a woman for that. Space Woman sounded like she was an evil creature from outer space in a 1950s movie. He’d think of something…when he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about fire. He knelt beside Tim and looked out the open door.

  The fire might have been fifty acres when it was called in, but it was thinking hard about how to reach a hundred. The tinder dry forest was catching fire brutally fast. Flames were crawling up the trees; continuous flame height was around fifty feet. Not enough heat for a running crown fire yet, fire jumping along the treetops, but that wasn’t far in the future either.

  As soon as the choppers arrived, they’d be kept busy knocking the fire back out of the treetops down to the forest floor where Akbar and his team could fight it.

  He grabbed the headset by the door that would connect him to the pilot.

  “Talk to me, DC.” The pilot’s initials were the same as the DC-3 aircraft he flew, so no one used his real name. Akbar wasn’t even sure he knew the man’s real name though they’d flown together for several years.

  “Wind’s out of the west at ten to fifteen. NOAA says they’re not expecting any major change for the next forty-eight hours. Not seeing a good spot to set you down.”

  Tim pointed at a couple of possibilities. Damn. Both of them would be tight. Real squeakers. The question was would it be better than a treejump, purposely snagging themselves in the canopy and then lowering to the ground by rope.

  The fire was climbing gullies, creating separate flanking heads, so they didn’t dare go down into those inviting gaps between the fires—in case the gap was suddenly engulfed. But if they ignored the fire for the moment, and the winds did hold steady as predicted, maybe they could get to the northwest-running ridge in time. A firebreak along the backside, might mean they could stop this fire cold.

  “DC take us down over the ridge at two o’clock low.” Tim handed him a couple rolls of drift streamer. He tossed the rolls of crepe paper out the plane’s door, spaced along the ridgeline as the plane passed several hundred feet above the treetops. Every smokie twisted in their seats to watch the streamers flutter and catch in the air currents stirred up by the fire.

  The brightly colored foot-wide strips kicked and swirled in the air currents like a Chinese dragon on hallucinogens, but there was no windsuck toward the approaching fire…yet.

  “Not too bad,” Tim said. The ridgeline was far enough ahead of the fire that there weren’t a lot of nasty downdrafts developing yet, just the normal mountain madness of winds over ridges.

  “There, that’s our anchor point.” Akbar pointed and Tim nodded his agreement. “DC, set us up for three drops over that bluff you overflew.”

  He turned to brief the crew, “Three drops. Drop one stick first time,” that would be he and Tim as jump buddies, taking the risk and then preparing the area. “Then drop two, then three. The landing is small and pretty cluttered with alder saplings in the ten- to fifteen-foot range. Winds standard for a ridgeline, in other words a normal level of messy, out of the west at fifteen, probably twenty-five miles an hour close to the ground. So, Tim and I will punch a hole. Everyone else get in and clear the drop site to make space for the next team to hit it.” Then he thought about Henderson and his teambuilding.

  “No idea where the second jumper load is gonna drop in. The nearest decent zone is a mile down the hill. Anyone want to take a bet that’s where those slugs come in? At least I know my first-load team can hit it close and clean.”

  There was a cheer as they began pulling on their helmets and started double-checking each other’s gear. It didn’t matter that the roster rotated constantly and half of this team could be on the second plane for the next jump. For this moment, they were the best.

  Akbar strapped on his own helmet, tugged on gloves and then turned to trade buddy checks with Two-Tall. Once that was done, they both selected smaller chainsaws and clipped them to their cargo lines.

  “Race you down,”
Tim yanked extra hard on Akbar’s harness to make sure it was well seated.

  “Loser buys first round at the Doghouse,” Akbar shook Tim’s light frame with an easy jerk back and forth on his chainsaw’s tie-off rope.

  “Only if I jump first,” Tim completed their ritual with a buddy-check-complete thumb’s up.

  They shared a laugh just as they did before each jump. Akbar was lead smokie. That meant he was first out of the plane and first on the ground.

  When DC lit the warning light he braced in the doorway, Tim huddled right behind him. At the green, Akbar jumped and relished the freefall for several seconds. He didn’t do a somersault, because he had a chainsaw dangling at his hip. Then he popped the chute and was jerked from a hundred-plus miles an hour to under twenty.

  Once he was stable under his chute and checked that Tim was as well, he let the saw hang down on the thirty-foot line. The saws would hit the ground behind his own landing point. The tank of gas in each would be plenty for what they needed until the cargo master could dump more supplies.

  The ride down was a little wild. Once, he was sure he was going to eat an eighty-foot Doug fir that was guarding the bluff, twice he was convinced he’d be downslope into the forest before he hit.

  But his saw landed on the soft grass and he nailed his spot right between a pair of alders, their thin branches whipping against his helmet’s mesh faceplate. He was quick enough to tug the chute closed without it collapsing over the top of some tree. Two-Tall was right beside him.

  They jammed their chutes into pack-out bags and fired up their saws. By the time Chas and Ox were coming in, they’d punched a fifty-foot clearing in the center of the alder grove. The other eight dropped in clean and soon the team was ready to get down to some serious work.

  Akbar stole a second to peek at his phone. Nope. They were deep in the Siskiyou National Forest. No cell reception on the ground here. No reply to beautiful brunette space lady, at least not until this was done.

  He jammed the phone away and did his best not to think about how to apologize for what was sure to be several days of silence.

  Right now they had a fire to fight.

  # # #

  Grayson Clyde Masterson was being a royal pain in her butt. For one thing, he actually was a skilled rider. It allowed him to constantly maneuver his mount to be closest to hers. For another, he’d appointed himself the assistant ride leader and had pretty much everyone convinced that he and Laura were a charming couple.

  At what point do you tell a paying tourist to back off and go to hell? Mom and Grandma had taught her that point came after they paid you. So she slapped on a smile and did her best to stay beside the two newlyweds who were trying hard not to have their first fight during this ride; she was moderately experienced, but he was definitely in the veteran-of-a-single-beach-outing category.

  At least the trails on Mount Hood didn’t lend themselves to cantering or galloping over grassy fields. The trails here crossed small streams, wandered through forests so silent that sunlight almost made a sound of its own—the horses’ heavy hooves dropped almost silent upon the duff of moss and decaying needles.

  Laura brought them to a standstill at the edge of a clearing she knew well. Grayson tried to ride forward anyway, but thankfully Exeter knew to pay more attention to Laura than to her rider. The others gathered close beside her. The new groom unintentionally driving his mount between her and Grayson. She snagged Mickey Brown Eye’s bridle to stop his forward progress close beside her and the boy let out a huge sigh of relief.

  Boy. He was maybe three years younger than she was, yet he was young and eager and happy…and newly married. She was getting tired of not receiving a text from a guy she’d met once in a bar. She was getting tired of shoving aside her feelings… But now was not the time and she shoved them aside once again.

  When Grayson went to speak, she shushed him. She pointed to the clearing and settled in to wait. Behind the thin screen of trees, the seven horses sniffed forward, scenting the grass ahead, but she kept them in check.

  With a huffed sigh, Exeter and Mickey looked balefully at each other. She wanted to laugh. These two were always making sly comments on her rider assignments for them.

  Mister Ed’s ears perked forward.

  “Watch this,” Laura whispered, to make sure everyone was paying attention.

  Moments later a Roosevelt elk popped its massive head into the far side of the clearing and looked right at them. The sun caught its long brown muzzle and large floppy ears. For a moment, it almost looked as if its head had been mounted at the forest’s edge. Then it broke the tableau by stepping into the clearing to nuzzle the grass, revealing its half-ton of bulk.

  Several of the tourists had their cameras out, but she signaled for them to wait.

  A long half-minute later, a smaller version of the elk trotted into the clearing, its spindly legs looking far too slender to keep the elk-colt upright. It trotted around its mother.

  “Make sure your flashes are off so that you don’t spook them,” she whispered to the tourists clustered around her and they began snapping photos. She backed up Mister Ed quietly until she could get a decent group shot with her own camera. She kept the elk family lined up in the gap she’d created with her own departure.

  “Hey everyone,” she called softly. They all turned to look at her, including the mother elk out in the clearing. She snapped the photo.

  It was a great shot—the calf had been in mid-prance—definitely her best photo of the season. She’d make sure everyone got one. But she’d have to crop Grayson out before she gave it to Bess for the display board. His knowing leer gave her the creeps. Maybe she’d crop him out of everyone’s photos.

  Next he’d be knocking on her cabin door. Thankfully her address wasn’t listed anywhere.

  Well, if he ever did show up, she’d show him a few other things Mom had made sure she’d learned. A wilderness guide had to learn a lot more survival skills than just how to ride a horse.

  # # #

  DC dropped two loads of palletized gear before heading over to the Illinois Valley airport. That way he’d be close to hand if they needed anything else dropped in. One pallet landed in the rapidly expanding clearing. The other pallet overshot and hit in the woods, but the chute was in the clearing when it collapsed so they were able to retrieve and pack it without any damage. Then they started unloading and getting organized.

  Krista led the second team into the same clearing. Baker snagged himself in a tall larch and had to use a let-down line to get himself out of it. So that gave the first-flight team bragging rights over the second. It didn’t last long because Maribel, the second plane’s cargo master, nailed both of her pallets of gear into the clearing. Good trick with how damn small the area was.

  Once everyone was geared up, he rolled out a map and traced a wavering line in red marker. He checked his watch and wrote “7:45a.m.” at one end of the line. It was going to be a long day. Based on his one look at the fire, it was accurate enough. Then he put a red “X” on the bluff’s location.

  “This is our anchor point. We’ll have Henderson and his air crew narrow the fire as much as they can. I figure we have about fourteen hours, unless things go wrong—”

  “And they never go wrong,” Tim commented.

  “Never,” Krista agreed. “Not when Akbar the Great is in charge. Mama Nature wouldn’t dare.”

  He ignored them both and finished his sentence, “—to beat the fire. Krista. Your team starts right here by making this anchor point clean, open it up to a full helispot big enough for the Firehawk in case we need it. Then send your team southeast along the ridge and make a fire trail. I’ll be making a line northwest.” He drew the two lines along the very top of the ridge’s topographic line.

  “Deep or long?”

  Akbar considered the map for a moment, looked at the shape of the terrain. Right at that moment, Henderson flew by low overhead and waggled the wings of his twin-Beech command plane in greeting. I
f he was here, the choppers wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Make the cleared fire trail deep. The choppers will hopefully make it so that we don’t have to go too far along the ridgeline to trap this one. It’s only a baby, but we are not letting it get away from us. We all clear on that?” He shouted the last as a challenge to the team.

  Twenty-three smokies shouted back, “Clear!”

  “What do MHA smokies do for a living?”

  “We eat fire!”

  “Let’s do it!” And with a slap of his hands they were off. The first chainsaw was fired off before he even had the map folded and tucked away.

  The first of the thin alders to expand the clearing fell before he’d picked up his radio. By the time he’d explained the plan to Henderson, the bluff had been leveled and was in the process of being cleared.

  Akbar picked up his own saw. He’d burn through the first tank of gas, leaving the swamping to Tim. Swamping was tough work, dragging all the cut-off branches as far from the approaching fire as possible, but they’d be trading off on the next tank of gas.

  He dropped the first tree—the eight-inch diameter, sixty-foot tall larch that had snagged Baker—making sure it fell with the chute on top.

  Baker moved in to unsnag the chute he’d left in the upper branches.

  Then Akbar began lopping off branches and Tim moved right in behind him with the rhythm of long practice to shift the detritus to the downslope side.

  Chapter 3

  Laura had avoided the worst of Grayson’s attention by descending to stratagem. She recruited everyone to unsaddle, groom, and feed their mounts. Part of the “country” experience. When they proceeded, as a group, to the Lodge for drinks, she had casually breezed through the “Employees Only” entrance to the kitchen and out the far side to her car.

  Once safely off the grounds, she checked her phone. Still no response. Well, what had she expected? Nothing much. So why was she disappointed?

  Had she thought that just maybe Akbar had been serious? He had taken the initiative to charm her mother along with herself. It was stupid of her to feel put out. He and his tall friend had made it clear what they wanted right from the start. Akbar, if that even was his real name, had done it with an unexpected grace and style, but it had still been the same old game.