Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  And then rain began to fall in a smooth sheet not a dozen feet ahead of her rotors. Just far enough ahead to not risk flaming out her engines, just close enough to cool a narrow pathway through the flames. Mickey was dumping a smooth cascade of water that suppressed the fire right up the middle of the road. And, as with everything else he did, he was doing it perfectly.

  Robin nudged the collective forward, keeping her wheels just clear of the gravel surface. She didn’t want to snag so much as a twig.

  Mickey’s dump of his water load paved the way to the burning building and then put it out. He slowed there, dousing it heavily until it wasn’t merely out, it wasn’t even smoking anymore. The surrounding flames would relight it soon, but he had cut them a window of opportunity.

  Carla’s hands clamped onto her shoulder from behind and shook her hard enough for Robin to make the Firehawk wobble a little.

  “Oh my God, you guys just totally rock. We owe you a serious amount of beer.”

  At forty feet away, as close as her rotors would let her get, Robin paused—the two Delta and their passengers poured out of the side doors.

  Robin saw scorched helmets and rifles scattered along the ground in front of the destroyed gate. She only hoped the guards had gotten out ahead of the flames.

  She again caught the flash of a fancy watch on one of the man’s wrists.

  “Take the controls,” Robin shouted to Lola and yanked open the pilot’s door. “Carla!” she shouted over the roar of the rotors and the hungry fire burning to either side.

  “Yo!” The woman trotted over as if they were just doing drill duty on a quiet Arizona airfield.

  “That guy’s watch. Is it uniquely identifiable?”

  Carla raced ahead a couple of dozen steps, stopped the man, and spoke with him for a moment. She came back and slapped the heavy watch into Robin’s hand. “Personally inscribed from the Supreme Leader himself in thanks for service as the head of the North Korean rocket program.”

  Holy shit! No wonder MHA and Delta were here!

  Carla shot her a huge grin. “Do something fun with it. We have a tunnel to run through!”

  “A tunnel! Of course.” Lola laughed over the headset. “High level defectors smuggled by Delta operators out a tunnel that the North Koreans dug themselves. It’s perfect.”

  Carla raced away and slapped her fellow Delta operator on the butt in a way that looked far more than comradely. Together they herded their crowd of defectors toward the building and the tunnel’s entrance.

  “Not just women in Delta,” Robin noted.

  “Awesome women who marry very hot men,” Lola concurred. “Damn, but I love this life.”

  Robin hovered a moment longer until Kyle popped back up from the tunnel’s entrance and waved a hand in their direction that they were in good. Then he ducked out of sight and was gone.

  Robin closed her door, lifted back into the smoke, and raced south until she was once again flying under Mickey’s watchful eye.

  Awesome women who marry very hot men.

  The hottest man she’d ever been with was Mickey Hamilton. And not only in bed. With almost no clues, he had found the perfect solution to her dilemma.

  And, just as he did with every single action he’d ever taken, he delivered it straight from his heart.

  Chapter 22

  Together they raced south. When they were finally over the DMZ, Mickey started to breathe again, though not for long.

  Once clear of the smoke, he could see that the afternoon sky had gone black with massive storm clouds. The wind was kicking at thirty to forty knots, which was a third of his Twin 212’s limits. It took them almost ten extra minutes to reach the field at Yangyang.

  They hit the concrete just as Mark raced up in the white SUV. They filled him in quickly.

  Mark nodded. “I’ll get the rest of our people pulled out. Tell them we’ve done all we could before the storm.”

  Robin held up her wrist. She was wearing a men’s heavy silver watch that Mickey had never seen before.

  “Not yet. We’re going back in,” Robin said.

  Mickey’s heart just about stopped. “You are not going back in using that aircraft. Not until Denise has a chance to go over every inch of it and makes sure you didn’t melt any critical systems.”

  They all turned to look at Firehawk One. The black paint was gray with ash, as were the yellow-orange-red flames. All along the underside, there were large blisters where the finish had been overheated by the passage through the fire.

  Robin had the decency to pale a little as she inspected her aircraft. She finally patted it on the nose cone over the forward radar dish. “I’m so sorry, baby, but you done good. Real good.”

  “Well”—Lola and Tim came up with packs slung over their shoulders—“I’m guessing that we’re about to receive orders to go meet up with a couple of Delta operators as soon as they’re done pretending that they’re gophers.”

  Mark smiled and handed over a thin slip of paper. Mickey could see a set of coordinates scrawled on it. He saw enough to know that it was south of the DMZ, and he figured it must have been where the tunnel let out.

  The North Korean official emerged from where he’d kept watch at the terminal building’s windows. He looked at Firehawk One, looked inside through the still-open cargo bay doors where there was nothing to show that it had been crowded with defectors less than thirty minutes ago.

  “As this aircraft is no longer serviceable,” Mark informed the official, “we’re going to be changing up pilots. I will be sending Ms. Harrow and Mr. Hamilton back to fight the fire in the Twin 212 and standing down the Maloneys.”

  “This is acceptable.” The official made a note and glanced uncertainly upward as the first large drops of rain spattered out of the sky, leaving dark circles on the dry concrete.

  “Yes,” Mark told him. “We’re going to do everything we can for your great country, but the storm will drive us out soon. We have done all we can.”

  “Understood.” The official made to hurry away but then turned back. “We have uncertain times.” His eyes shifted left then right. “I do not know if our country’s leader will thank any American for help, but I have seen. I will say thank you.” Then he hurried off without any offer to shake hands or otherwise acknowledge them.

  “Well, if that don’t beat all.” Tim chuckled. Then he wrapped Mickey in a brutal hug and lifted him off the ground even though Tim was several inches shorter. “Wasted in civilian life, I’m telling you. Totally wasted.”

  At a loss for words, Mickey let his good-bye be a solid handclasp. Tim hugged Robin barely more gently while making oh-la-la eyebrow motions at Mickey over her shoulder, slapped Mark hard enough on the back to stagger any lesser man, and moved off to the SUV.

  Lola’s hug with Robin was soft and sincere. “You kicked ass, sister.” As she hugged Mickey good-bye, Lola whispered, “Don’t you let her out of your sight or I will kick your ass.” Then she turned to Mark. “An honor as always, Mark.”

  “Likewise, Lola.”

  “Oh my gawd!” Lola placed the back of her hand against her brow. “He used my first name. I think I’m a-goin’ to have me a spell.”

  “Get out of here,” Mark growled happily.

  Lola shot him a grin and went.

  “So”—Mark turned back to them and pointed to the watch still on Robin’s wrist—“what’s the plan?”

  * * *

  Refueled, they lifted into the teeth of the rising storm and turned once more for North Korea, Robin aboard the Twin 212 as his copilot.

  “This had better be the last time.” It had given Mickey the creeps every time they’d crossed the border, but with Robin this close it was ten times worse. He’d flown beside her across the DMZ in separate helicopters, but this was their first time flying together and his awareness of her was huge.


  Wow! There is a totally lousy adjective. But it was huge. In two weeks she’d come to fill so much more than his bedroom fantasies. Her bravery, her dedication, her performance under pressure…the whole package just…

  “I love you, Robin.”

  “You aren’t supposed to be saying such shit,” she replied over the onboard intercom, but her voice was a caress not a slap.

  “Can’t help it, lady. You’re just that amazing.”

  “Tell me that after we pull this off.”

  “Okay,” Mickey agreed easily.

  “That was far too amiable a response.” He could feel Robin looking over at him.

  “After what you just did, Robin of the Hood—stealing people from the North Koreans through the heart of a wildfire—I’m supposed to doubt that you can do absolutely anything you set your mind to?”

  “Well, no. A girl wants to keep her man totally dazzled. I think that’s a good policy and I have no plans to change it.”

  “Dazzled,” Mickey agreed. “That’s the word I was looking for. You dazzle me, Robin.”

  “That’s a lot easier to swallow than you saying you love me.”

  Should he point out what she’d just said? What the hell, why not? “You just said the L word.”

  “But I didn’t use it.” She stumbled out her reply a little too fast.

  “Okay, just checking.”

  She grumbled to herself as they crossed the DMZ. Even twenty miles from Yangyang, the winds had dropped back under twenty knots and the rain hadn’t arrived yet. Despite the filters and closed doors, the air no longer smelled of rain but once more of wood smoke and char.

  Their North Korean escort picked them up on the far side of the DMZ.

  “The other helicopter was too damaged to return,” Mickey reported to the escort. “We also have a change of pilots that was reported to your official on the ground.”

  “Understood,” the North Korean helicopter pilot replied.

  “Also, we anticipate being able to fly only one more hour before the storm forces us down.”

  “Understood.”

  Mickey and Robin shared a laugh at the sound of relief in the pilot’s voice. He didn’t want to be aloft when the storm hit any more than they did.

  They rejoined Jeannie and Vern and began working the fire. Mickey flew his 212 and Robin acted as the Incident Commander—Air. She had learned so much that he only found it necessary to give advice on occasion.

  She led them back to the northeast section, but per the plan they’d worked out on the ground, they only made a partial show of fighting the head of the fire itself.

  Instead they began steadily slicing into the body of the fire. Direct attack, a very rare tactic that took them straight into the heart of the fire. Vern and Jeannie followed after only token protests. They understood that whatever they’d come for had happened, so if the new tactics made no sense, they knew better than to complain.

  “Separating the head from the main body” is what they would have given as an explanation if the North Koreans had asked. No one did. Not once during the long days of the firefight had they questioned MHA’s tactics. Their escorts were military, not wildland firefighters.

  They had warned the North Koreans of the coming storm-driven flare-up that would occur before the rains arrived. It was out of their hands now as to whether or not the remaining ground crews were pulled back; they’d done all they could.

  * * *

  Robin braced herself. They were getting close to the area that Carly had pinpointed when she asked.

  Her stray comment over dinner about a lost ground crew had stuck in Robin’s mind as she’d hovered over the devastation at the tunnel’s entrance and stared out at the scattered guards’ helmets.

  Because it was a given that the North Koreans wouldn’t tolerate it if the MHA helicopters strayed off the reservation again, they’d just spent the last thirty minutes trying to slice a path to that location in what at least appeared to be a constructive, planned fashion. It was an area they hadn’t flown near during any part of the firefight, but Steve’s far-seeing drone had spotted it early on in the battle.

  What would they find?

  Nothing, a part of her hoped. Maybe Carly’s interpretation of the distant image was wrong and the ground crews had gotten away.

  But a part of her knew they really needed to find the burned-over firefighters.

  The North Koreans would know that the head of their rocket program had come to this area along with his family. Maybe he’d used an excuse of being born here…no, he’d probably taken his family to see Diamond Mountain at the heart of Kumgang National Tourist Region.

  Then the opportunity of a devastating wildfire had reared its ugly head and the U.S. Special Operations had seen it as an opportunity and sent in Delta.

  He and his family had disappeared into the ranks of the peasants sent to fight the fires and had, courtesy of MHA, vanished without a trace. It was time to make sure there was a trace.

  “There.” Mickey pointed.

  She couldn’t see it at first.

  Robin had once seen an entire herd of sheep that had taken refuge in a low swale before dying from a fire’s heat. Other than being covered with a thick layer of gray ash, they had looked like they were sleeping.

  That wasn’t the case here. There were also no foil fire shelters.

  Blackened lumps and exposed bits of skeleton. Twenty people huddled together in desperation when the fire took them.

  “They must have been completely surrounded,” Mickey said softly. “No one ran.”

  Robin looked down in silence as Mickey hovered over them and Vern and Jeannie beat at the flames to either side that were on the verge of running over the area once more.

  “Let me do this, honey. Please.”

  Robin wanted to let him, let Mickey deal with it so that she wouldn’t be stuck with this image in her head. But even more she didn’t want to have it in his memory either.

  “No.” She began unbuckling. “This is your aircraft. I could fly it, but I’m not trained on it if something goes wrong. I’ll go.”

  “Make it fast, try not to look.”

  As Robin climbed out between the seats toward the rear of the hovering aircraft, she paused and kissed Mickey hard. She kissed him for what a good man he was and for how he made her feel.

  But most of all, she kissed him for how they felt together.

  Then she stumbled into the back, slid open the cargo bay’s side door, and snapped the winch cable onto the front of her safety harness.

  “Do it!” she shouted and stepped out into space.

  They didn’t dare land again, not with the North Koreans hovering just outside the walls of tearing smoke and flame. So she rode the winch cable down to the charred forest floor. Winds buffeted and spun her until she was nauseous. The heat was a physical slap far worse than at the tunnel’s entrance.

  Still plenty of fuel here for the wind-driven reburn.

  Gods, she really was thinking like a firefighter now.

  Her feet hit the ground and she did her best not to think. She ran over to the gathered corpses. Found a man and woman holding hands—though they were barely identifiable as such—and snapped the watch over his charred wrist. She didn’t look at their faces but simply turned and ran back to stand below the helicopter.

  Mickey reversed the winch.

  And only as Mickey lifted her back into the sky did Robin really look at the devastation around her. The Black was charred and gray, all color had been leached from this part of the world. All beauty was gone. They hovered in a narrow hole made of smoke and flame that would overrun the area the moment they were gone and char the silver watch to match its deceased owner. The poor ground crew member would probably have a state funeral, one of North Korea’s greatest scientists died fighting a wildfire to save th
e Diamond Mountain, the visual and spiritual treasure of Kumgang.

  Once she was back aboard, they continued fighting along the same line of fire. Not that it mattered anymore, but it would look as if they had only paused and continued on.

  For thirty more minutes, they kept up the pretense before finally calling an end to operations and turning south.

  During that entire time, Robin did not look up once from where she leaned across the console and kept her face buried against Mickey’s shoulder.

  Chapter 23

  It took them over a month to make it back to Hood River, Oregon. Once the storm had cleared Yangyang Airfield, which Robin deeply hoped to never see again, they flew back across the Sea of Japan. Rather than going to Nagoya, because the Dreamlifter always traveled fully loaded on the return flight to the U.S., they turned south for Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.

  From there, a C-5 Galaxy Air Force transport had delivered them to Joint Base Fort–Lewis McChord in Washington State. At McChord, Denise scrounged up the last of the parts she needed before she’d declared Firehawk One fit to fight fire once more.

  Instead of heading two hundred miles south, they first had to fly north and over the Cascade Mountains to rejoin the rest of the MHA crew. The Leavenworth fire had been beaten, but a new fire was slashing its way west out of Ellensburg and up into the North Cascades.

  After that, the entire crew had fought a fierce battle in the Bitterroots of Montana and finally a nasty little burn outside of Reno, Nevada.

  Robin collapsed into bed with Mickey when she could. Sometimes a tent, sometimes a crappy hotel, sometimes nothing more than a sleeping bag beneath the stars. It didn’t matter, it was enough.

  Somehow that flight through the fires of the Kumgang National Tourist Region had burned away the past between them. For a month, they had flown and lived only for the present. Fly to fire and sleep.

  Mickey held her when the nightmares hit, which thankfully tapered off quickly, and made love to her when they could stay awake long enough.