And then there was Danielle. He’d recognize her in a crowded room in pitch dark without NVGs; she was imprinted that deeply on his nervous system. As integrated as any helo had ever been. More so.
“Par three,” Dozer said walking up to him. No, Dozer was walking up to Danielle. “But first, I need you to sign The Whistler.” He held out the Frisbee with the hole shot through it and a marker pen.
Danielle reached out so tentatively to take it that he almost wondered if she’d refuse. Then she took a deep breath and signed it with a flourish.
She handed it off to Pete and he did the same.
When he went to return it to Dozer, he held up his hands palm out.
“Nope, we’re playing teams. And I think you two should play with that disc.”
Danielle’s hesitation finally made sense.
When Pete had arrived to test the rookies, at least a lifetime ago, Danielle had stood to the side, outside the circle of the crew. Now she was no longer a loner, with no relations in the world except a long-gone father. She now had a place in the world as clearly etched as any family.
Pete shook Dozer’s hand in thanks. “You did it just right,” he told the man. The big Alaskan actually bounced on the balls of his feet for a moment before looking up and grinning, the only part of his face that showed beneath the goggles.
“You guys go first,” Dozer’s voice was rough and he backed away quickly.
Pete handed the disc to Danielle, “Honor of the first toss, Spiderwoman.”
That radiant smile was a gut punch even in a hundred shades of bright green.
The heat of their hands had left clear imprints on the disc that showed up easily in the NVGs. She cocked her arm and heaved the disc into the night.
Talk about a great way to spike the endgame ball. He missed Nicolai and the guys, but he wouldn’t trade this team for the world.
A faint whistle sounded down the soccer field as his and Danielle’s handprints spun around together.
# # #
At the thirteenth green, Danielle watched as Pete overshot the goal and the Frisbee flew out into the water hazard of the lake that defined the next three holes, it’s little whistle sounding like a laugh right up to the moment of the splash.
Then he tried to make her go in and get it.
Danielle managed a quick twist and a well-planted shove that kept her dry and sent him stumbling waist deep into the water after the stray disc.
Laughter rang out from the other teams who were coming along behind them. Moments later Big John had to wade in after his own bad toss. Big John had immense strength, but Connie had all of the finesse.
Danielle and Pete both cleared the fourteenth without any problems, but it was her turn for the key toss on the fifteenth. It was either four throws to get around the end of the lake or one clean toss across the corner of it; a miss would definitely mean she was going swimming.
“What’s it gonna be, Spiderwoman?”
“Stuff it, Napier,” but she couldn’t keep the joy out of her voice. The game had become a merry mayhem of calls up and down the line. Shouts of laughter. Sophia protesting after each toss that landed in the woods or a bush, saying that if this was a soccer ball she could beat them all to a pulp. Julian shoving Rafe into the lake because the man had stood too close to the shore; leaving both Julian and their shared disc dry.
“Need a better name for you than Spiderwoman,” Pete whispered.
She’d been getting used to the name.
“Supergirl isn’t enough. Sue Storm. Nope. How about Ripley?”
“From Aliens? Get a clue Napier. You’re being cliché now.”
“Am I?”
Danielle eyed the long toss once again. She could do it. The night was calm, only the slightest breath of air from the west. If she took off the goggles she knew the stars would be a warm carpet across the clear night sky rather than the cool one she saw now.
“Okay, how’s this for not cliché,” Pete’s voice had changed. “Danielle?”
Something in his tone made her turn to look at him. His mouth, the only part of him that showed below the NVGs didn’t have even the playful edge of a smile that she’d come to expect.
A slip of nerves echoed up her spine.
“What?”
“I love you.”
That was it.
A bald, flat statement.
“You…” she couldn’t even breathe.
“I thought a lot about what you said as we dove on the Hangzhou tidal bore. I never thought I could deserve a woman like you. But if you say you love me, I’d be pretty damn dumb to turn you away, wouldn’t I?”
She nodded, but her head felt like it belonged to a bobble doll. She tried shaking it, but that felt equally strange.
“You…” she took another deep breath, “…love me? Just like that?”
“No, not just like that. I think it was from the moment you gave me sass about being one of the three Fates after I tried calling you the Hound of Hell. It seems you were right after all. You’ve snagged my thread, but good.”
She searched for something to say, for some way to react. She looked down at her hands which ached with the tightness of her grip. She was holding The Whistler hard. Two patterns of bright green radiated outward from her hands where the plastic had been warmed by her grip. A small dark spot, where the bullet had punched through and left its mark. But whatever the past had done to it, the disc still flew true.
“Okay,” Pete continued. “That didn’t get quite the reaction I expected.”
She looked back up at him still at a loss for what to say, but he turned away from her.
“Hey!” he shouted toward the others. “Members of the 5E. Gather around.”
There was chattering and questions as everyone trotted over from their various positions among the closest few holes. When they were all gathered and asking what was up, he turned back to face her. A dozen green aliens with human mouths and mechanical eyes turned to face her.
“Now, let’s try this,” Pete peeled one of her hands off The Whistler and held it in both of his.
“Danielle Delacroix, our lady who guards the crossroads. I’ve done many dumb things, but let’s see if I can do a really smart one instead. I’m going to risk doing this too soon, because I sure as hell don’t want to be doing this too late.”
Then he knelt down on one knee and the whispered conversations hushed.
“When you crossed my path, you gave me dreams to pursue. Now marry me and change my life. I swear on bended knee before these good people that I will do everything I can to deserve such a gift.”
“And we’ll kick his ass if he doesn’t,” Dozer spoke up and others laughed but murmured agreement.
Danielle considered all of the possible responses and exclamations and doubts.
She didn’t need them. She didn’t need to think or to hesitate either. How many dreams-come-true knelt before her? So many she couldn’t count them any more than the stars overhead.
But she couldn’t just let him have her consent so easily, no matter how eager she was to give it.
“Well,” she looked up at the rest of the 5E gathered close. At Sophia’s clasped hands and shining smile. At how Connie and Big John were holding hands and leaning together with the shared memory of their moment. Now Danielle understood Connie’s brief handclasp under the table, and just what was possible if you looked far enough outside the box to finally be able to see into its core.
“I’m going to say yes, but…” she let it trail. Everyone, including Pete, held their breath.
Then she looked down at his upturned face, or at least what she could see of it around the NVGs.
“But, it’s my turn and I don’t want to hold up the game.”
She turned from the man she’d be sharing the rest of her life with and heaved The Whistl
er out into the dark. It shot over the lake toward the fifteenth pin with a little cry of joy that was the tiniest echo of the one in her heart.
About the Author
M. L. Buchman has over 30 novels in print. His military romantic suspense books have been nominated for the RT Reviewer’s Choice of the Year award, and been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year” and Booklist “Top 10 of the Year.” In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.
In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world. He is now making his living as a full-time writer on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing by subscribing to his newsletter at www.mlbuchman.com.
Wildfire at Larch Creek
a Firehawks / Larch Creek Novel
(excerpt)
Two-Tall Tim Harada leaned over Akbar the Great’s shoulder to look out the rear door of the DC-3 airplane.
“Ugly,” he shouted over the roar of the engine and wind.
Akbar nodded rather than trying to speak.
Since ugly was their day job, it didn’t bother Tim much, but this was worse than usual. It would be their fourth smokejump in nine days on the same fire. The Cottonwood Peak Fire was being a total pain in the butt, even worse than usual for a wildfire. Every time they blocked it in one direction, the swirling winds would turnabout and drive the fire toward a new point on the compass. Typical for the Siskiyou Mountains of northern California, but still a pain.
Akbar tossed out a pair of crepe paper streamers and they watched together. The foot-wide streamers caught wind and curled, loop-the-looped through vortices, and reversed direction at least three times. Pretty much the worst conditions possible for a parachute jump.
“It’s what we live for!”
Akbar nodded and Tim didn’t have to see his best friend’s face to know about the fierce wildness of his white grin on his Indian-dark face. Or the matching one against his own part-Vietnamese coloring. Many women told him that his mixed Viet, French-Canadian, and Oklahoman blood made him intriguingly exotic—a fact that had never hurt his prospects in the bar.
The two of them were the first-stick smokejumpers for Mount Hood Aviation, the best freelance firefighters of them all. This was—however moronic—precisely what they lived for. He’d followed Akbar the Great’s lead for five years and the two of them had climbed right to the top.
“Race you,” Akbar shouted then got on the radio and called directions about the best line of attack to “DC”—who earned his nickname from his initials matching the DC-3 jump plane he piloted.
Tim moved to give the deployment plan to the other five sticks still waiting on their seats; no need to double check it with Akbar, the best approach was obvious. Heck, this was the top crew. The other smokies barely needed the briefing; they’d all been watching through their windows as the streamers cavorted in the chaotic winds.
Then, while DC turned to pass back over the jump zone, he and Akbar checked each others’ gear. Hard hat with heavy mesh face shield, Nomex fire suit tight at the throat, cinched at the waist, and tucked in the boots. Parachute and reserve properly buckled, with the static line clipped to the wire above the DC-3’s jump door. Pulaski fire axe, fire shelter, personal gear bag, chain saw on a long rope tether, gas can…the list went on, and through long practice took them under ten seconds to verify.
Five years they’d been jumping together, the last two as lead stick. Tim’s body ached, his head swam with fatigue, and he was already hungry though they’d just eaten a full meal at base camp and a couple energy bars on the short flight back to the fire. All the symptoms were typical for a long fire.
DC called them on close approach. Once more Akbar leaned out the door, staying low enough for Tim to lean out over him. Not too tough as Akbar was a total shrimp and Tim had earned the “Two-Tall” nickname for being two Akbars tall. He wasn’t called Akbar the Great for his height, but rather for his powerful build and unstoppable energy on the fire line.
“Let’s get it done and…” Tim shouted in Akbar’s ear as they approached the jump point.
“…come home to Mama!” and Akbar was gone.
Tim actually hesitated before launching himself after Akbar and ended up a hundred yards behind him.
Come home to Mama? Akbar had always finished the line, Go get the girls. Ever since the wedding, Akbar had gotten all weird in the head. Just because he was married and happy was no excuse to—
The static line yanked his chute. He dropped below the tail of the DC-3—always felt as if he had to duck, but doorways on the ground did the same thing to him—and the chute caught air and jerked him hard in the groin.
The smoke washed across the sky. High, thin cirrus clouds promised an incoming weather change, but wasn’t going to help them much today. The sun was still pounding the wilderness below with a scorching, desiccating heat that turned trees into firebrands at a single spark.
The Cottonwood Peak Fire was chewing across some hellacious terrain. Hillsides so steep that some places you needed mountaineering gear to go chase the flames. Hundred-and-fifty foot Doug firs popping off like fireworks. Ninety-six thousand acres, seventy percent contained and a fire as angry as could be that they were beating it down.
Tim yanked on the parachute’s control lines as the winds caught him and tried to fling him back upward into the sky. On a jump like this you spent as much time making sure that the chute didn’t tangle with itself in the chaotic winds as you did trying to land somewhere reasonable.
Akbar had called it right though. They had to hit high on this ridge and hold it. If not, that uncontained thirty percent of the wildfire was going to light up a whole new valley to the east and the residents of Hornbrook, California were going to have a really bad day.
His chute spun him around to face west toward the heart of the blaze. Whoever had rated this as seventy percent contained clearly needed his head examined. Whole hillsides were still alight with flame. It was only because the MHA smokies had cut so many firebreaks over the last eight days, combined with the constant pounding of the big Firehawk helicopters dumping retardant loads every which way, that the whole mountain range wasn’t on fire.
Tim spotted Akbar. Below and to the north. Damn but that guy could fly a chute. Tim dove hard after him.
Come home to Mama! Yeesh! But the dog had also found the perfect lady. Laura Jenson: wilderness guide, expert horsewoman—who was still trying to get Tim up on one of her beasts—and who was really good for Akbar. But it was as if Tim no longer recognized his best friend.
They used to crawl out of a fire, sack out in the bunks for sixteen-straight, then go hit the bars. What do I do for a living? I parachute out of airplanes to fight wildfires by hand. It wowed the women every time, gained them pick of the crop.
Now when Akbar hit the ground, Laura would be waiting in her truck and they’d disappear to her little cabin in the woods. What was up with that anyway?
Tim looked down and cursed. He should have been paying more attention. Akbar was headed right into the center of the only decent clearing, and Tim was on the verge of overflying the ridge and landing in the next county.
He yanked hard on the right control of his chute, swung in a wide arc, and prayed that the wind gods would be favorable just this once. They were, by inches. Instead of smacking face first into the drooping top of a hemlock that he hadn’t seen coming, he swirled around it, receiving only a breath-stealing slap to the ribs, and dropped in close beside Akbar.
“Akbar the Great rules!”
His friend demanded a high five for making a cleaner landing than Tim’s before he began stuffing away his chute.
In two minut
es, the chutes were in their stuff bags and they’d shifted over to firefighting mode. The next two sticks dropped into the space they’d just vacated. Krista nailed her landing more cleanly than Tim or Akbar had. Jackson ate an aspen, but it was only a little one, so he was on the ground just fine, but he had to cut down the tree to recover his chute. Didn’t matter; they had to clear the whole ridge anyway—except everyone now had an excuse to tease him.
# # #
Forty hours later Tim had spent thirty hours non-stop on the line and ten crashed face first into his bunk. Those first thirty had been a grueling battle of clearing the ridgeline and scraping the earth down to mineral soils. The heat had been obscene as the fire climbed the face of the ridge, rising until it had towered over them in a wall of raging orange and thick, smoke-swirl black a couple dozen stories high.
The glossy black-and-racing-flame painted dots of the MHA Firehawks had looked insignificant as they dove, dropping eight tons of bright-red retardant alongside the fire or a thousand gallons of water directly on the flames as called for. The smaller MD500s were on near-continuous call-up to douse hotspots where sparks had jumped the line. Emily, Jeannie, and Vern, their three night-drop certified pilots, had flown right through the night to help them kill it. Mickey and the others picking it back up at daybreak.
Twice they’d been within minutes of having to run and once they were within seconds of deploying their fire shelters, but they’d managed to beat it back each time. There was a reason that smokejumpers were called on a Type I wildfire incident. They delivered. And the Mount Hood Aviation smokies had a reputation of being the best in the business; they’d delivered on that as well.
Tim had hammered face down into his bunk, too damn exhausted to shower first. Which meant his sheets were now char-smeared and he’d have to do a load of laundry. He jumped down out of the top bunk, shifting sideways to not land on Akbar if he swung out of the lower bunk at the same moment…except he wasn’t there. His sheets were neat and clean, the blanket tucked in. Tim’s were the only set of boots on the tiny bit of floor the two of them usually jostled for. Akbar now stayed overnight in the bunkhouse only if Laura was out on a wilderness tour ride with her horses.
Target of the Heart Page 17