The winds slammed in while they were refueling at Cornelius, both the chopper and themselves with sandwiches and soda someone had scared up. The tone of the reports on the radio altered abruptly. They’d scrambled back aloft, half-eaten meals tossed aside and scattered in the rotor wash.
The winds were here.
***
The squall line hit out of the southwest. It had everything a squall always did—roaring winds, chaotic direction changes, violent microbursts, and wind shears forcing all aircraft out of the zone until it had passed.
It had everything except what they needed most. It didn’t have any moisture.
The front had passed south as predicted, but farther south than anticipated. It then curled north up the Willamette Valley. They’d hoped it would gather moisture from the summer ocean, moisture that it could dump on the fire as rain or even fog. Instead, it left its rain in the Rogue River watershed. Then the dynamic low had sent strong winds to gather the achingly dry air of the prairie and high deserts of eastern Oregon, only to swing them over the Tillamook. The relative humidity plummeted, and a dry fire was now struck by a parched wind.
The squall swept upon them like a blowtorch.
Carly closed her eyes so as not to watch for a moment, just one moment while they hovered clear of yet another snarl of wind-driven fire vortices. They’d spent the last two hours doing nothing but helping get crews to safety. The Firehawk spent a half-dozen retardant runs just to open a path for a hotshot crew to a clearing that then let Beale descend and fly them to safety.
The locals were practically drag-racing their fire engines down narrow logging roads to escape. One rolled his command vehicle when a section of the old fire road slid into a creek right in the middle of a curve. At least it hadn’t been an engine. One of the 212s did medevac this time, the injured firemen climbing right into the Bambi Bucket dangling a hundred feet below the chopper to be dumped unceremoniously at an ER ambulance apron while the chopper hovered above.
It was a mess and Carly just need a moment’s break.
A hundred and twenty thousand acres were already lost. Two hundred square miles of timber burned despite the amassed air and man power. Even if her eastern line held, the minimum loss would be another fifty thousand acres. And there was no question that this wind was about to test her “connect the dots” plan to its limit.
“Carly?” Steve’s voice was soft, so soft she almost didn’t hear it over the intercom.
“Yeah?” Her voice sounded beaten, even to herself.
“I think you need to see this.”
She forced her eyes open and looked down at Steve’s tablet now mounted beside her laptop.
“The fire just jumped Highway 6 to the north.”
Chapter 51
They held the east. It had taken everything they had, but the line had held. Loggers and housing contractors had refused to leave, even when the exhausted fire crews came to take over. They had ridden their dozers right against the foot of the flames. Two machines had been lost when the crews abandoned the bulldozers before the fire overran them. Over a hundred thousand gallons of retardant and water had been dumped all along the line, beating the fire out of the crown and forcing it to the ground where the engine crews could hit it and hit it hard.
The night was going to be brutal, but they had the Burn contained on three sides.
Steve had the added satisfaction of knowing he’d saved a whole section. He’d spotted a freak gap in the wind with the drone. Carly and Beale had put together some extremely quick work with the Firehawk, a hotshot crew, and the local engine company that had been hiking out. Between them, they’d saved twenty thousand acres that Carly had already written off.
At least saved it for now.
He knew the fire’s caprice was not to be underestimated, but for now, a million and a half trees had been saved.
When they landed back at Cornelius, no one had the energy to move. Long after the rotors on the Firehawk had spun to a stop back at the Skyport, Steve simply slouched in his seat.
One last check showed that the fire had slowed after jumping Highway 6. With the squall gone, the winds had died. It was still a couple miles from the terrorist camp, would probably pass to the west of it. And still no sign of change at the camp, though they had to be aware of the fire if only from the ash that was painting the land gray as far as the Canadian border.
He dragged himself to his feet and stepped down. His back ached even more than his leg, and he was too damn tired to stretch either one out.
Through the window of the left-side cockpit door, he could see Carly still slumped in her seat, her eyes closed.
Steve opened the door, freed her harness, and managed to lift her out and set her feet on the ground. She simply wrapped her arms around his neck and slumped against him, her head on his shoulder. He leaned back against the side of the chopper, kissed her on top of the head, and held her close.
“You did good, Carly. No one could have done better. Not even Will Spyrison who was IC on the Station Fire.”
He could feel tears running into his shirt.
“It’s just exhaustion, honey. It’s okay.”
She nodded against his shirt but made no other motion. He kissed away her tears as they continued to seep from her closed eyes and relished her warmth spread against him. Of course, his body responded.
“What is it with men?” Carly asked quietly, but didn’t move away.
“Warm body, doesn’t matter who,” he teased her.
“Who or what.” A little humor. That was a good sign.
“If it’s warm and cuddly, our bodies react.”
“So that’s all I am, warm and cuddly?” She snuggled more tightly against his chest as if just trying to prove her point.
“You.” He rubbed his cheek across the top of her head. “You are Steve Mercer’s personal dictionary definition of warm and cuddly.”
She turned her face up to his, and the kiss was everything their prior ones hadn’t been. It wasn’t hunger or need or sex that coursed through Steve’s veins. All he could think was how proud he felt to fly with this woman. She’d achieved magic, Flame Witch indeed. She’d broken the back of the New Tillamook Burn. No one else he’d ever fought fire with could have done better.
That she’d turned to him when exhausted to the point of tears, that she kissed him with a tenderness born not of fire but of safety, that’s what made him feel so damn strong. If he could protect this woman, if he could be her safe place, he could protect the world. He’d never felt so powerful. Not first out of the plane nor first on the line, none of it. Nothing came close to holding her in his arms.
As she responded, slow and languid, the fire in him didn’t flash to life. It burned slowly and deeply.
Steve knew for certain that Henderson had been wrong.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t risk letting her go, it was that he had to stay with her for all time. He could no longer imagine a life that didn’t have Carly Thomas in his arms. His life simply wouldn’t make sense without her.
Just last night, he’d been wondering if marriage to Carly might be on his to-do list someday. A mere twenty-four hours later, he understood. Without her, there was no point in having a list. Without her, all of his struggles to get back to the fire, all those endless hours learning to fly the drones, the thousand or more hours of physical therapy… Without her in his life, it would all be meaningless.
She slid out of the kiss, returning her head to his shoulder and resting there.
He searched the sunset sky for some way to express what he was feeling. To capture it with something as lame as words.
“Go ahead.” Her voice was a whisper against his neck. “Go ahead and say it.”
“I love you, Carly.”
A soft sigh escaped her. He could feel it through his hands upon her back, through her chest against his, as the slightest brush of heat from her breath on his skin.
She didn’t answer, but she was willing to hear it.
Chapter 52
This time, the six of them were all crammed in the back of the Firehawk, behind the cargo doors closed to keep out the increasing crew numbers at the Cornelius Skyport. Carly knelt beside Steve where he sat in his control seat. Henderson, Beale, and Jeannie all crowded close, watching the monitors. Kee Stevenson was again in the background, sitting on her pack.
TJ and Chutes had shifted operations over from Hillsboro. Betsy had dragged in a kitchen on a trailer and served them a fiery chili that almost managed to keep them conscious. Smokie and hotshot crews had started rotating out to sleep like the dead for six or eight hours before plunging back in, their first break in days.
Carly had helped Steve get the new gray-box bird aloft, and even now its feed ran on his monitors in the cargo bay.
The south and west were holding strong. The east was good, not strong, but her “connect the dots” plan was holding so far. And Steve was right. Without her doing that, the towns to the west would be gone and the Cornelius Skyport would be burning right now. All she had to do was look west, and she could see the bright light of the fire enraged for being held at bay on the face of the foothills above the town of Forest Grove. But the crews held the line.
Carly did her best not to look at the screens when Steve’s drone showed the north.
The only one who didn’t look exhausted was Kee. She’d slept through the day while they fought the fire.
Carly could begrudge her that, except she’d had three hours more sleep than Steve last night. It would feel selfish to hold Kee’s rest against her and expect Steve not to do the same of her.
“Carly?”
“Huh?” She had to blink several times before she realized that Henderson was talking to her and that she didn’t remember a single word. “Huh?” she managed to repeat.
“Steve,” Henderson said, eliciting an equally incoherent noise from him, which made Carly feel a little better.
“Bring up the north view.”
Steve made a few adjustments, and both screens went blank, then painfully white. A color-test pattern flashed at them. He cursed quietly, scrubbed at his face, then tried again and the image came on screen.
“Here’s a live feed of the fire. This is Highway 6.” Steve traced a line buried deep in the flames. The fire had slowed now that the squall had passed, burning almost lazily as it devoured its way into a new stretch of forest. They’d had no time or resources to lay in any preparation beyond the highway. The forest here was untouched. And for the next several hours, the crews they needed were passed out around the camp, unable to keep their bodies moving any longer.
“These lines are the flanking ground teams.” Carly traced the images on Steve’s monitor. “Here’s the blackout zone around the terrorist camp. A one-mile radius so that no one walks into it by accident, but you can see we’re going to remain well clear of the circle so no firemen will be getting near any mines.”
Steve practically snarled at the monitor, “Isn’t there anything that we can do about them?”
***
Steve glared at the circle on his screen. Two miles across, three square miles of booby traps, old Russian ordnance, and a bunch of terrorist crazies.
“The Constitution says they have a right to be there.” Kee’s voice sounded uncaring. He could almost see her shrug in the darkness.
It pissed him off. But before he could voice it, she continued.
“Besides, if we send in cops or even an armed unit, then we’re going to end up shooting a whole bunch of people and they’re going to be shooting back. They’re dug in pretty hard. I don’t mind going in for a peek, but I wouldn’t want to take them on without some serious hardware and a couple of platoons of trained troops.”
That set him back on his heels a bit.
“They scare me to death.” Carly rested her elbow on his leg and propped her head up on her fist. “Every time I think of them squatting out there, I’m afraid of the woods. I don’t like being afraid to enter the trees.”
“She’s right.” Jeannie spoke for the first time. “Serious creepitude.”
Beale and Henderson remained quiet.
Steve could see they were thinking and not liking the answers they were coming up with. He tried to picture it. A fleet of helicopters raining judgment and death down on people who hadn’t technically done anything wrong yet. Worse, they’d be mounting the attack in the heart of a tinder dry forest. They could start a whole second burn. And if someone like Beale or Henderson or Kee was shot down, would the price be worth it?
“Shit.” Steve faced Henderson. “You guys really face these decisions every day, don’t you?”
“Not every day, and usually they’re much easier. Good guy, bad guy is more often clear. They shot down the drone, but that’s just a machine. Do we take lives for such an action? Sounds like someone already has been punished for that task. That might scare up a murder charge, if you could prove anything.”
Carly had laid her head on his thigh. Steve brushed the hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. She was too tired to have to face this. The fire should be enough.
The fire.
“What?” Henderson must have seen the change in his face.
The answer was in the fire.
“What would happen if they weren’t in their camp?”
Henderson shrugged. “We’d sweep them up pretty easy. Question or deport them. Bet the CIA would be glad to take them off our hands. We could also see if we can’t hang the murder charge on at least the ringleader so we can lock him up forever and a lifetime. What are you thinking?”
“Carly?” Steve brushed a hand along her cheek.
“Hmm…”
“Carly!”
“Yeah, what?”
“Can we stop the fire before it passes the terrorist camp?”
She blinked herself back from the edge of sleep. Raising her head, she checked his eyes for a long moment, then turned to the monitor.
“Run the last six hours in time lapse.”
Steve set it up and they could see the fire jump Highway 6 and roar off into the northern part of the Tillamook forest. The head slowing but growing a bit wider as it burned northward.
“No, there’s no way we can stop it that fast. Even if the winds remain favorable, the fire will run a couple miles past the camp along this ridge to the west or the one beyond it.”
Steve kissed her on top of the head, then smiled at the others before he asked the question he already knew the answer to. The answer was, not much.
The question was, “How much harder is it to turn a forest fire than to stop it?”
Chapter 53
“Jeannie.” Henderson had been handing out orders like candy.
Steve had been sidelined the moment that Carly had answered his question. “Just a matter of fighting one side to a standstill before tackling the other side, especially if the winds continue from the south. Probably what we’d have to do anyway. I was just going to suggest running against the other side first to steer it away.”
“Yeah, boss?” Jeannie looked pretty bright-eyed for a woman who’d just flown fourteen straight hours against fire.
“Your bird is rigged for nighttime flight?”
“Sure. But not for night fire. And I’m at my limit for the day, little over actually.”
“Fine. Log Kee as the pilot. She’s just been sitting on her ass all day anyway.”
“Hey,” the woman protested in mock anger, but Henderson rolled right over her.
“Kee. Jeannie’s going to run you up to Fort Lewis. Tacoma’s only about an hour’s flight north of here. Make sure this girl gets bedded down somewhere. Then see if you can scare up some folks at the Fifth Battalion. Need a Hawk, preferably a DAP, and a 47. Also bring back two more for your ground team. This is on the QT, real quiet. Try to keep it to folks we know well.”
“Nonlethal?”
That brought Steve up short, but thankfully it wasn’t up to him to answer.
“Riot gear. Tear gas, rubber bullets, sonics if you can scare them up. But don’t come unprepared.”
Kee slapped her sidearm. “You won’t find this girl bringing a stick to a knife fight.”
“I, uh…” Jeannie raised her hand, which slowed Henderson down enough to aim a smile at her.
“I don’t have clearance to fly into Fort Lewis. They’ll shoot my ass. It would be far less cute with the extra hole in it.”
Henderson’s smile indicated that he had some thoughts on that. He grinned at his wife, who clearly sent him a warning look to keep his damn mouth shut.
Steve would bet there was a good story there. He was getting to know Henderson well enough that he might find a way to get the rest of that tale some other time.
Henderson cleared his throat and turned back to face Jeannie.
“Kee can deal with the tower from the air, and they wouldn’t ‘shoot your cute ass’ until you were on the ground.”
Then Jeannie got a wicked smile. “Can I take the Firehawk?”
“You aren’t checked out in it.” Henderson’s statement brooked no challenge.
“No time like the present.” Jeannie had more guts than he would have.
“Forget it.”
Jeannie pouted for a moment, until she caught Beale’s bland expression. Then she straightened up. After Jeannie looked away, he saw the shift in Beale. He’d bet good money that Beale would be training her at the first opportunity.
“And what’s the Fifth? Who are they?”
“The Fifth Battalion,” Henderson ground out, nearing the edge of his patience, which Jeannie blithely ignored. “Belongs to the 160th SOAR, the Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Airborne. It’s our old unit.”
“Hey,” Kee protested.
“She’s still there. Doesn’t think what we’re doing is interesting enough.”
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