Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  He got out fast.

  Jeannie’s laughter followed him across the field, then she turned back and mentioned how she was wanting a Mini Cooper someday and, no, Cal didn’t get to have an opinion as he didn’t actually own a car.

  “I do. I left it at Redding jumper base before a photo shoot a couple years back. Or maybe it was Redmond.”

  “Maybe it was Rio Bravo,” Vern suggested.

  “Or Roosevelt out in Colorado,” Denise quipped as she joined the group and grabbed a hot dog—which meant all of the helos were ready or she wouldn’t have stopped.

  Denise glanced her way and nodded a confirmation to that.

  There was a comfortableness to all this that Robin was starting to get a feel for. She took another bite of her burger and appreciated being out of the helicopter. The sun wasn’t that much closer to the horizon, but it was hazed reddish by the fire to the west.

  She checked her watch.

  Eight p.m. Four hours to sunset. Only four more after that to sunrise.

  It had been an amazingly long day. Five a.m. had rung in the day fifteen hundred miles to the south of here with a blaring alarm. Despite the cabin air filters, everyone’s eyes were red with smoke and exhaustion.

  “Who here is nighttime-drop certified?”

  Her question silenced the chatter.

  Jeannie raised a hand.

  One.

  Emily must have been the second one. The National Guard didn’t fly nighttime fires, at least hers never had.

  You couldn’t send one pilot in alone—helicopters flew in pairs for safety. Not everyone did that, but the military did, and Emily had told her that MHA did the same. If the answer had been otherwise, it would have made her hesitate before signing. Robin liked flying, had always enjoyed the rare wildfire call. But if her helo went down at a fire line, she wanted someone really close by to fish her ass out if she survived the landing.

  Mark was eyeing her closely, but it was Mickey she was watching. Mark would be testing her. Mickey would let her know if she got off track far sooner.

  “We need fresh crews at sunrise. And we each need eight hours of downtime for safety. Jeannie and Vern, you’re down for the next eight unless there’s an emergency.” The two of them practically sagged with relief.

  “Jeannie, when you’re back aloft tomorrow, I want you to start working with Vern to get him night-drop certified. Emily can sign off on him next time we’re in Oregon.”

  “I can do that too.” Mark’s deep voice was absolutely neutral. Carefully neutral, as if it hurt him to speak.

  “You fly rotorcraft?”

  His nod was steady. The others were now equally careful not to look at her.

  “How can you certify him?” Robin couldn’t read what was going on around her.

  “I can.” Mark’s flat statement sliced through the air like a Firehawk drop.

  Robin wondered if she should push because it was up to her to understand or to back the hell off and trust the boss. Robin made a habit of trusting herself first, her copilot second, and no one the fuck else.

  There were a hundred little signals swirling around her in calculated looks and shifts of body language. Whatever lay behind this was not going to be pretty or fast. And that was the deciding factor; she didn’t have time for whatever shit was going down among these people.

  “Fine! Mark, you’re down for the night as well. Tomorrow you oversee Vern’s cross-training. With such a small team and Steve’s drone, I want you in the seat beside Vern until he’s got it.”

  She didn’t wait for his response but turned to Steve.

  “Steve, you make sure that Mark has whatever feeds he needs from you or Carly in Vern’s helicopter to also do his ICA tasks.”

  Another nod.

  “That leaves you and me, Gold Wing Boy. You ready to go another round with the fire? Back here by midnight, then we’re down for eight hours. That leaves the smokies on their own for just the four hours of nighttime.”

  “Bring it on, Camry Girl.”

  “That’s Ninja Girl to you, Hamilton.”

  “Yes, sir.” He saluted, looked abashedly at Mark for a moment, then grabbed another burger and headed for his helo.

  She faced Mark Henderson. His mirrored aviator shades revealed nothing of his thoughts, but it felt as if he carried his own personal shadow hanging over him.

  “You got some explaining to do, mister,” she announced right in front of the others. “But I don’t have time to be your therapist right now.” She turned for her helo.

  She finished the quick circle of a fast Preflight Check and found Mark standing close by her pilot’s side door as if teleported into place; he moved very quietly for such a big man. The others had already headed for their tents.

  He didn’t say anything, didn’t move to open the pilot-side door that he casually lay back against with his arms crossed over that big damn chest of his.

  “What?”

  Still no response.

  “I don’t have time for this, Mark. Take it up with Emily.”

  That elicited the smallest quirk to his lips.

  It was clear he wasn’t moving until he was damn well ready. And unlike Mickey, who was only one inch taller than she was, Mark was closer to six—not much chance of her getting him to move by force either.

  “Someday you’ll have to rethink threatening me with my wife.”

  “Why? Seems like as a good a strategy as anything else I’ve got. Is it working?”

  “Not in the way you think.”

  “Figures.” Robin sighed. He also didn’t go on to explain what it was doing.

  “However, I think she might have been right about you and I need to revise my initial assessment.”

  “Which was?”

  “That you’re a pain in the ass.”

  Robin managed not to laugh. If the man didn’t see that she and Emily had that in common, it was his problem. It also made her feel closer to Emily, even though she was far away.

  Again Mr. Silent.

  “So you’re saying I’m no longer a pain in the ass? I’ll have to work on that.” She could hear Mickey down the line start winding up his engines, but she couldn’t get to her controls. Mark’s substantial frame continued to bar her from the cockpit.

  “No. I’m saying that she may have been right despite that.” Then his tone shifted, deeper, more serious. “You did well back there, both what you just did and out on the line. This evening keep Mickey near you at the front of the fire. Pay attention to his drops. Your altitude is climbing as you unload and your rollouts at the end of the run are inconsistent. Up, then turn. This fire isn’t hot enough to create the big downdrafts off the leading edge, but you don’t want to be heeled over forty-five degrees when one hits.”

  Then he pulled open the door for her.

  She climbed in.

  And when she turned to ask what the hell was up with him anyway, he closed the door in her face and walked away.

  Chapter 5

  “What is that man’s problem?” Robin’s voice practically cracked Mickey’s eardrums over the headset the minute they were aloft. Robin ticked off had been pretty formidable. Robin seriously pissed sounded fierce. He was glad he was flying safely a hundred yards ahead to her starboard side.

  “He likes running roughshod over recruits. See how they take it. You do know that he could be listening?” It was the open command frequency and Mark had a portable radio that was never far away from him on the ground.

  “Like I care. He can go f—” She cut herself off.

  It was good that she bit that off. The FCC was terribly fussy about profanity on open frequencies, even if they weren’t likely to have inspectors in northern Canada.

  “Seriously though, what’s his issue?”

  Mickey decided that it was…interesting that s
he was asking him on an open frequency when Carly was seated right behind her in the Firehawk. They’d left Steve on the ground to get Mark set up for tomorrow morning in Firehawk Three. As a fire behavior analyst, Carly was also now their incident commander for the night. She could be preoccupied with communicating with Akbar about ground conditions, or more likely pretending to be: “I’m busy being FBAN and ICA. Please bother someone else, lady.”

  “Well…” Mickey dove down on the forest strip that Carly had identified for them to start on while she worked the drone to determine what had changed while they’d been on the ground. “I think it’s his old Night Stalkers training. It comes out every now and then.”

  There was no response from Robin. Mickey flew in silence for the five miles and two minutes to their watering station. He and Robin hovered low over the small lake and scared the shit out of any fish stupid enough to live there in the Yukon wilderness, where they probably got frozen solid every winter.

  They were most of the way back before she whispered to him, a funny thing to do over a radio. “Night Stalkers?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Like the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Night Stalkers?”

  “I’m not that big on details of the military, but that sounds right. Mark doesn’t talk about it much.” Mickey lined up for the next run on the fire.

  Akbar had started a backburn, a fire set up against the burn’s side of a cleared firebreak in the forest. The smokies had made a track a hundred feet wide by cutting down everything and hauling it to the side away from the fire—trees, saplings, brush, all of it. They’d even scraped and hauled away most of the soil’s organics, removing anything from the firebreak that could ignite. Backbreaking hand work, which made Mickey deeply appreciate his flying job every time he saw them doing it.

  Then, by setting the forest alight on the burn’s side of the firebreak, it would chew up fuel as it moved back toward the fire, making the break even wider and more secure.

  Of course, fire didn’t always behave the way it was supposed to, so they were chasing the backburn with lots of water this time. Every time it managed to burn another hundred feet back toward the main blaze, the helicopters would dump water to snuff the part of the backburn closest to the firebreak.

  They made four more runs before Robin spoke again.

  “I never met one before.”

  “Really? Why not? Don’t all you helicopter folk hang out together?”

  “Sikorsky has built about four thousand Black Hawks over the years. That’s eight thousand pilots, not counting backup and changeover crews. So at least double that. And that’s only one helicopter type. Then there’s Little Birds, Chinooks, Apaches, Cobras, and that doesn’t even get into things like the Marines’ Sea Stallions and Ospreys or the military versions of your Twin 212. And we’re spread all over the face of this little thing called The Earth! So, no, we aren’t all buddy-buddy.”

  Carly cut in. “I’m seeing a heat signature in the burnover area of the backfire.” She read out a set of coordinates.

  “I’m on it.” Mickey peeled off. It was one of those instances when he’d come to really appreciate the drone. It saw heat, even if there wasn’t any flame erupting yet. He aimed for the coordinates and punched it with a load of water.

  “Bull’s-eye,” Carly announced.

  Mickey used it as an excuse to fall behind, let Firehawk One and Robin take the lead. He liked flying behind her. She had a sure hand. She had technique to learn, but she flew well. Neither a textbook-perfect line like Emily nor a slight dance like Jeannie. She moved across the sky with powerful strokes, like when his big sister had discovered how to hold a crayon in her fist and make those clear, strong lines that he’d never really matched.

  “And actually, you haven’t met just one Night Stalker.”

  “I haven’t?” Robin sounded totally confused as they both settled over the lake to reload their tanks.

  “No.” Mickey could practically hear Robin’s brain shorting out and wished they were close enough for him to see it happen. “You’ve met two Night Stalkers. Both he and Emily were in before they came over to MHA. He always says that Emily was the best pilot they ever had. Both were majors I think. That’s a pretty high-up rank, isn’t it?”

  Robin was silent for so long that Mickey keyed the mic to see if she was still there.

  * * *

  Robin was still there, but her brain wasn’t.

  She flew down, dumped water where Carly told her, and turned back for the lake.

  Majors. She’d heard rumors of women flying for the Night Stalkers, the most elite helicopter unit on the planet, but she’d figured those for rumors gone bad—which the military abounded with. Apparently not. Emily had been a major of the 160th SOAR. No wonder she was so damned good!

  And Henderson? Had she just scoffed in a Night Stalkers’ face about whether or not he could fly rotorcraft? She was pretty sure that she had; she wanted to curl up in her seat and die. If this was all true, then there wasn’t much that Henderson couldn’t do with a Firehawk. And Emily was their best? She had even less idea what to think about that.

  Her name was Robin and her merry band of wildfire pilots included SOAR professionals.

  For the next two hours, Robin did little more than fly.

  Big flare-up past the southwest edge of the firebreak, she dumped a couple thousand gallons on it.

  Fire broke through the line and made a stab for the smokejumpers, she and Mickey pounded it back.

  They fought and harassed the fire back and forth across the smoky landscape until, shortly before sunset, they had the fire well trapped. A five-mile-wide front had just been chopped down to three. Those three miles were racing ahead, still holding Dawson City tight in its sights, but it was progress.

  After a lot of consulting between Carly and Akbar, they decided to move most of the smokejumpers and the bulk of their gear well ahead of the fire before quitting for the night.

  They switched over to helitack—rather than dropping water, they were shifting and moving manpower. They took turns setting down into a cleared helispot where anything over three feet tall had been leveled into a confused heap of slash to make room for helicopter operations.

  The moment the cargo bay doors rolled opened, there was a flush of smoky char stench that flooded into the helo. She twisted around in her seat to watch as a half-dozen soot-blackened men piled aboard. The smallest guy of them all came up beside her pilot’s door, and she swung it open to talk to him while the others loaded their gear into a sling.

  His face was dark beneath the soot, but his grin was bright. “Just wanted to say thanks. You guys are kicking ass. We’ll get this beat in another three or four days at this rate. I’ll start cycling out my crew tomorrow night. Eight hours R&R at base camp. Warn Betsy so she can be ready for us.”

  Robin could only nod. Until then, if they slept at all, it would have been by “coyoting”—collapsing in place and sleeping in their full gear for an hour or two rolled up in a tarp. They were paid a small hardship bonus for doing that, but it still didn’t sound like fun.

  She flew them to the spot chosen for the next stage of the battle. Everything was still quiet and green here, still fresh—unaware of the burning hell coming in its direction. Unaware of the chain saw–wielding firefighters she was delivering into the forest’s midst.

  There weren’t any openings among the thick trees, so she hovered low until the sling load of gear rested on the forest floor and released the cargo hook. Once the line had slithered out of sight, Akbar and his crew rappelled down ropes hung in the after cabin.

  Mickey dropped his load, and then they both turned back for camp.

  Robin was flying in a very elite group. Their equipment said well funded, but their people said far more. For the first time, Robin was surprised that she was actually here.

 
She had to consider how she’d speak to Mark and Emily next time they met. Respect and “yes, sirs” weren’t exactly her style.

  A total fangirl moment—unable to speak in the presence of living, breathing Night Stalkers—was a real possibility. These were the guys that every helicopter pilot wished they could be but none of them were.

  They might have been thrown out on their golden oak-leaf insignia, but she doubted it. These two breathed the service. Then why were they no longer in it?

  Emily’s first child.

  They’d traded in the Night Stalkers to have a kid. But they were young enough to have waited…unless they got surprised. Another piece of their story filled in. And only Emily had to be grounded, yet another unfairness in the whole gender structure.

  But Mark had left as well. She didn’t know any man who would leave the service just to protect his family and to make sure that he would be there for them long term. Yet Mark Henderson had.

  Where the hell did they breed men with that level of honor and integrity? And where did she have to go to order one of her own?

  She laughed—as if she’d ever want such a thing. She was a Harrow woman and they’d long since proven that they didn’t need anyone.

  As they flew over Dawson City, Robin decided that the right way to treat Mark was exactly as she had been so far. He expected a pain in the ass, she’d be glad to give him that. She half suspected that he’d be disappointed if she delivered anything else.

  How she’d treat Emily the next time she saw her, Robin couldn’t guess.

  A female Night Stalker?

  Shit, man!

  * * *

  Mickey finished his shutdown by himself. The camp was quiet, despite the recent roar of their descending helicopters. Whatever motorcycle-madness event had been going on across the field was over and done. Or at least shuffled back into town.

  Denise was probably struggling to wake up and check their machines right away. But she didn’t appear from the line of tents—a neat line of nylon pop-ups with the individual colors lost in the slow Arctic twilight. If Vern was smart, he was keeping an arm tight around his wife’s waist, keeping her close beside him. Vern had always struck Mickey as a smart man.