Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  “…if it’s not my technique that’s at issue, it must be because I’m seeing something they don’t. Next level up.”

  “Got it in one, Harrow.”

  Thinking it. Saying it out loud. And having someone like Mark agree were three wholly different things.

  She had always liked being best—it was a big part of what drove her ahead. Being best often meant being seen as “other” by those she flew with—yet another reason she didn’t make friends easily. Robin had learned not to care. When other National Guard pilots had tried to drag her down to their level so that they didn’t look bad, she’d only flown harder.

  But now, to fly with these people who she could only admire, and then be told she still didn’t fit in. Well, she did, but not as one of the heli-pilots, instead as their leader. She didn’t know what to do with that at all.

  “Nice to see that something can take your breath away,” Mark offered with far too insightful perception.

  Robin felt a small pinch in her head, like she was missing something. She’d long since learned to trust that little voice. She bent down to gather her breakfast dishes to buy herself a moment to hear it more clearly.

  Henderson waited. There was clearly something more, and he was wondering if she’d find—ah!

  “What’s the other reason?” she asked. “The other reason that you don’t fly with me.”

  He turned his back and started to walk away from her.

  “What is it, Mark?” She’d be damned if she was going to go chasing after him, then started to anyway.

  “Because,” he called back over his shoulder, “Em said that she’d kick my ass if I messed with your technique.”

  Robin stumbled to a halt as Mark continued on his way.

  The ground kept changing beneath her feet and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  Emily Beale, the Queen Bitch herself, a Night Stalker, saw something in how she flew that she wouldn’t even let her husband, another Night Stalker, mess with. They’d conspired to drop her into the command seat of four of the finest helicopter pilots she’d ever flown with and now told her she was exceptional in such company. Which didn’t make any sense at all because she knew better even if they didn’t. She was good, but every person on her team was better.

  And Mickey. There was another piece of shifting ground. She and Mickey weren’t just having a summer’s fling of fun and hot sex. The bastard had made love to her.

  Worse!

  She’d let him.

  Not only that, but she’d enjoyed it enough to be mooning over the memory of it.

  That shift ranked as seismic level in her world. No one made love to Robin Harrow.

  She looked down at the trampled grass at her feet, crisscrossed with the paths of five days of firefighting.

  “You weren’t thinking of going anywhere, were you?”

  The grass wisely didn’t reply, or she’d know that she’d totally lost it.

  “Well, don’t!” She needed something in her world to remain stable.

  The grass merely rippled in a soft breeze that brought fresh wood smoke to her nostrils.

  Right, time to get moving. After dropping off her dirty dishes, she swung wide on her return to Firehawk One, shifted from the path beaten in the grass to pass by the flattened spot where she and Mickey had slept together. It wasn’t a big area, big enough for two people only if they’d been curled tightly in each other’s arms.

  Just keep walking.

  She really didn’t need this.

  * * *

  Mickey was working on the techniques that Mark had been teaching him yesterday. A lighter touch on the cyclic allowed for a faster reaction in hard downdrafts. Mark had intentionally flown them into some bad areas to prove his point. And he had. Mickey might have swallowed his tongue somewhere along the way, but he’d learned.

  Mickey had also tried to ask about his kid, his wife, his…

  Mark had gently sideslipped every inquiry.

  Finally, as they were flying back to the camp last night after a long, hard day, Mark had spoken softly over the headset-to-headset intercom and answered Mickey’s real question.

  “I can’t give you advice one way or another on Robin, Mickey. First, I’ve got my own biases, right or not. But second, my experiences don’t mean crap. These are your experiences.” And with that he’d shut up, which left Mickey not quite believing he’d asked Mark the question in the first place.

  Today, Mickey and Jeannie arrived at alternating bends in the small river they were dipping from. Beneath his helo, the river twisted north; beneath hers, it turned south. The mid-morning sunlight glared off the water, despite his sunglasses. They were moving into heavier trees—hovering at the river, he couldn’t see anything but larch and spruce trees separated by a thread of river—which were only going to encourage the fire if it reached here.

  Jeannie was up and out of the water several seconds faster than he was, which left Mickey wondering what Mark had taught her. He still recognized her flight pattern as distinct from everyone else’s, but somehow it had become even more strongly hers after flying with Mark for a day.

  They arrived back at the fire as Vern and Robin returned from their eight hours off. They soared down the line and punched at the side of the fire that was advancing too fast toward a firebreak. After five days, Akbar’s team was slowing down, and they weren’t ready for the fire to reach them yet. Not under the rising strength of this morning’s winds.

  Mickey waved by rocking his helo side to side and Robin replied in kind as she headed off to refill her belly tank.

  Mickey lined up to hit the same spot with Jeannie close behind him.

  These were his own experiences? Thanks for all the help, Mark. He didn’t know how to trust them. Last night he’d sat down on the grass to watch the roiling tower of smoke that had reached up to the jet stream and was now flat-topped as it was ripped away to the east.

  And he’d woken up with a woman in his arms.

  As if it was the most natural thing, Robin was simply there. Mickey wasn’t a leave-in-the-night sort of guy, but he wasn’t ready for how much he wanted to wake up this way every day for the rest of his life either.

  He wanted to call Dad and tell him that his son had found “The One”—like Dad always claimed Mom was. Mom was the more sensible one, talked about how long Dad had hung around before she’d even date him. Careful, taking her time. Mickey had always thought he’d grown up more like her in that way. Apparently he’d grown up just like his dad.

  Well, if Dad was right, then he too could be persistent.

  Maybe it would be an easier road than Mom had made Dad travel. After all, it was Robin who had chosen to crawl under the blanket with him last night, so carefully that she hadn’t even wakened him.

  Damn it!

  Though he really shouldn’t complain. Neither had he awakened her this morning for a little preflight sex. Yesterday her fair skin had looked almost sallow with exhaustion. This morning it had looked like the smoothest tissue paper, as if he could almost see her heart and her soul beating beneath its surface.

  Crap!

  He was getting all poetic. What he should be doing was paying attention to the fire, but once again he was overly aware of Robin as he and Jeannie headed once more for the double bend in the river and Robin and Vern returned from there.

  “Helos,” Mark called from his place once again aloft in the Beech King Air, “hold back from the line after your next drop and refill.”

  Mickey glanced over at Jeannie as they hovered and reloaded. Too far to exchange expressions but close enough to agree that something was about to change.

  They flew hard to refill and return to the line as fast as possible. Just as he arrived to hover beside Robin and Vern, a half mile back from the drop zone, a Shorts Sherpa C-23 jump plane buzzed by at three thousand feet
overhead. Paracargo supplies delivery.

  The smokies must have called for more gear and the hold-back order to the helicopters was so that a couple pallets of gear didn’t parachute right into their rotor blades.

  But instead of big pallets, a dozen small, dark figures tumbled out and began popping standard rectangular RAM parachutes. In moments, they were swooping down into the firebreak, riding the hard winds to space themselves down the long line.

  Mickey cheered, which echoed in his otherwise-empty helicopter, making it a rather strange sound. He didn’t care. This fire was being a total bitch and the heart of it was still at a full roar. With only a few miles remaining to the banks of the Yukon River, it wasn’t all that hard to imagine sparks flying across the five hundred feet and igniting the desperately dry town.

  One or two sparks wasn’t a problem. But time and again in this firefight, they had been reminded that the Yukon timber was so dry that embers didn’t float in ones and twos or even hundreds. When the wind caught them right, the fire cast a thousand sparkling bits ahead all at once. You couldn’t dump water on buildings the way you could on the forest, at least not if you expected them to remain standing. If this reached Dawson City, the battle was going to turn into a whole new level of ugly.

  Moments later, a fixed-wing Air Tractor AT-802F—Single Engine Air Tanker (SEAT)—dumped a long line of eight hundred gallons on the fire. Close behind it flew a Bell LongRanger helicopter with a bucket on a long line. Another hundred-plus gallons hit the fire. It was easy to see the Bell was flown by a contract pilot, but the extra help looked so good to his eyes that Mickey wanted to go up and kiss the helo pilot right on the nose no matter what he looked like.

  Mickey recognized the paint job on the SEAT; the Alaska Fire Service had finally freed up some resources. The helo was a civilian job but bucket certified. Two more folks in the air. It was time to get to work.

  “Jeannie, you’re with me,” Robin called over the air. “Alaska Fire Service helicopter, Vern, and Mickey, let’s see if you boys can keep up with the girls.”

  “Hey,” a female voice called out, “Macy Tyler here in the Bell LongRanger. Do I have to play with the boys?”

  “Not for a second. You’re with us.” With that, Robin called to Mark—up in his plane once more—for where to drop. Then she and Jeannie dove on the spot, unloaded a thousand-gallon rainstorm each, and the three women turned back toward the river. The small stream they’d been using was far enough behind the fire line now that the Yukon River was the closest resource. And just across the river lay the Town of the City of Dawson.

  Across the river, the locals had set up lawn chairs and a couple of homemade banners atop the dike to watch the helicopters cycle back and forth for water.

  Mickey flipped over a private frequency to Mark up in the Incident Command plane. “What the hell, boss?”

  “Take it up with your lady.” Mark’s voice clearly ended the conversation there.

  Not a chance in hell of that happening, especially not while she was on an open frequency with two other women flying with her.

  If Macy Tyler was here, that meant that Akbar’s former number-two smokejumper was with the team that had just jumped in. Two-Tall Tim had returned to Larch Creek, Alaska, for a vacation and ended up marrying his high school girlfriend. He took over as number-one smokejumper with the Alaska Fire Service out of Fairbanks to stay near her. Akbar had been quite put out about it until he’d flown up with Mickey and some of the others to be best man at the wedding.

  Well, that was sure going to apply the pressure on Akbar and the other smokies, because they’d be forced to show Tim up, as if MHA’s smokies hadn’t just been five straight days and nights on this fire.

  Mickey turned to take a long look at Vern, who was still hovering there beside him. And there was not a chance that Vern was going to beat him to the fire either.

  Mickey continued to stare across between their helos until he saw Vern shrug. Mickey took advantage of what would be a one- to two-second delay to return to flight and dove toward the drop zone, leaving Vern to trail behind.

  The race was on and there was no chance in hell Vern was going to outfly his Twin 212.

  Chapter 7

  The party two days later in downtown Dawson City was epic and Robin was totally ready for it.

  The fire did reach the west riverbank, but it had lost all heart by the time it touched the river. Not a single ember crossed the Yukon.

  A Canadian ground crew had shown up along with a tiny drone carrying an infrared camera to find hot spots. MHA hadn’t left them many. But the Black was five miles at its widest and over forty miles long, and that was a lot of terrain to inspect.

  “It’s official, sports fans.” Mark dropped down at the table next to Mickey and across from Robin. “One hundred and three thousand acres. So, pony up. For who is this their first hundred thousander?”

  Hers was the only hand to go up at the two picnic tables butted end to end along the crowded sidewalk. The whole flight crew was packed together. They’d annexed Macy from the Bell LongRanger, who had brought her husband along, Two-Tall Tim. Tim Harada, a towering Eurasian man but powerfully built like a smokie, had dragged along Akbar, who didn’t even reach his shoulder. They must have made an odd pair when they fought fires together.

  Robin checked again. No other raised hands. The entire MHA crew had all flown to big fires, except her. She would not feel out of place, she ordered herself. She would not!

  “Traditional punishment is you’re buying first round, champ!” Mark announced happily.

  Robin waved a hand at the Old West–style tavern down the block. “Diamond Tooth Gerties is footing our bill in thanks for saving the town.”

  “Crap, you get off so easy.”

  “Besides, I think that as the sole person here to never have fought a hundred-thousand-acre fire, I should get to chose the punishment.”

  Mark eyed her carefully. “And what might that be?”

  Robin checked to make sure all of the pilots were listening. Jeannie and Cal. Vern and Denise. Mickey still trying to figure out how he’d ended up across the table from her rather than next to her. He’d looked so sad—she’d done it because watching him fly with Vern had made her wish all the more that he’d been flying with her, which meant she was becoming attached. So not gonna happen! Harrow women didn’t become attached. But when he’d started playing footsie under the table, she took pity on him and joined in. Even that little bit of connection felt ridiculously good.

  “My punishment, Mr. Mark Henderson, is being forced to watch you take the cancan dancing class up on the stage at Diamond Gerties.” Its cancan dancers were one of the many tourist draws in town.

  Mark’s “No way, sister!” was drowned out by the cheers of the others at the table.

  They were echoed by some cheers farther down the street.

  It was July 1, Canada Day, and the entire town of thirteen hundred had turned out beneath the first blue sky in over a week.

  The parade was starting. A very short but highly enthusiastic small-town parade. The MHA firefighters had been given a prime viewing spot as thanks from the town, so all they had to do was turn around and face the street.

  Somehow in the shuffling, Mickey slid onto the bench seat beside her and slipped an arm possessively around Robin’s waist. It felt far too good for her to complain, so she focused on the parade.

  Tucson always had fireworks and a big deal parade on July Fourth: classic cars, multiple high school marching bands, whole troops of ever-so-pretty Air Force personnel from Davis–Monthan Air Force Base marching in their perfect dress whites beneath the blazing Arizona summer sun. People lined a dozen deep down the sidewalks to watch. Food vendors plied their trade at every corner, serving up the best gorditas and chalupas imaginable.

  There were probably more people in the Tucson July Fourth Parade than wer
e in the entire town of Dawson City. But Robin was surprised at how much she’d enjoyed the much smaller and more parochial affair. These people were into it.

  The Canadian formation day parade consisted of a line of the town’s two ambulances and four fire trucks. The couple dozen members of the high school marching band followed close behind, whacking out “Louie Louie” with a respectable enough tone. A cluster of Native Peoples danced down the street in traditional garb to beaten drums, which fit oddly well into the marching band’s rhythms not far ahead of them.

  A pair of old fire engines went by, old like 1930s. They had been restored to immaculate shape. And rather than firefighters, perched atop them were Gerties’ cancan girls—long, curling hair; feathered tiaras; and outrageous gowns that clung tightly from the waist up and exploded into layers of brightly colored ruffles below, mostly red.

  Robin imagined the look in Mickey’s eyes if she was to wear one of those and then decided there were some things better left to the imagination.

  A roll of laughter followed a float up the street. It looked like a small fishing boat until it pulled even with them. Atop what was meant to be a smokestack—but looked suspiciously like a chunk of old stovepipe—with a metal-bladed household fan had been mounted flat in the top of the pipe. The four blades stuck out like a Firehawk’s rotors and milled lazily in the breeze. The people on the float—dressed in makeshift flight suits of bright yellow rain slicks smeared with mud like char—were tossing out packets of cinnamon Red Hots to the crowd.

  Next came a beautiful draft horse pulling a restored covered wagon. And again someone had rigged a fan sideways on top. This one was a wood-bladed ceiling fan.

  Some kids pulled a wagon that had clearly started out to be a bush plane with fake floats and a pair of cardboard wings. Now a little boy of three or four sat in the wagon, holding aloft a broom handle, which sported four sagging cardboard flaps. One had kinked completely, making the fake rotor blade flap annoyingly against the little boy’s face, but he stoically kept his hands around the broom handle to keep the rotor upright.