Smolde: Military Reverse Harem Romance

by Cassie Cole

  “That’s where the confusion came from,” he admitted wryly. “It’s obvious in retrospect. Three units were spread out, and two different choppers evacuating us back to Al-Tanf. Private First Class Wallace was moved from the second unit to the third at the last minute. My headcount looked right when we got on the choppers, but he was still running down an alley to catch up with us. We left him there. We didn’t even realize it until we were ten clicks outside the city.”

  I squeezed his hand. “Oh, Derek…”

  “He kept radio silence like he was ordered, even though he wasn’t at the evac point. We didn’t even know anything was wrong until he activated his emergency transponder. By the time our chopper went back, there was no sign of him. Just his pack left in an alley.” He let out a breath through his teeth. “I was his Sergeant, so it was my responsibility to make sure the headcount was right. He got left behind because of me.”

  “That’s why you left the Rangers,” I said softly. “You always avoided how you got from there to here…”

  “There was a formal inquiry. They ruled that it was an operational malfunction, not a personal one. A blind spot in the way unit swaps are done. They told me it could have happened to anyone, and they changed the documentation to create a new process to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. But that didn’t matter to me, or to my fellow soldiers. Yeah, anyone could have made the same mistake, but I was the one who made it here. I’m the reason that kid was left behind. I couldn’t live with the guilt, so I got myself discharged.”

  There was nothing to say, so I wrapped my arms around him and just held him. He squeezed me tight and breathed into my hair. I hoped I was giving him some amount of comfort.

  “I’m glad you felt like you could share this with me,” I said gently, “but I’m not sure if I see how this relates to our current predicament. Do you think it’s karma biting you in the ass?”

  Derek shook his head. For as vulnerable as he’d been just moments before, now his gaze was hard and resolved. “You don’t recognize the name of the kid? Private First Class Henry Wallace?”

  I started to say that no, I didn’t, but then stopped. “Wallace? As in…”

  “Uh huh. Commander Wallace from McCall.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Henry Wallace was his son,” Derek admitted. “I left the Rangers because I was too ashamed to look at my fellow soldiers in the eye, and thought the smokejumpers would be a place I could start anew. But then I found out who Commander Wallace was. I thought he didn’t know, because he’d never said anything to me or singled me out in any way. Until we graduated and they sent us straight to Redding Base. Right into the most dangerous assignment. And since we arrived here, we’ve been sent on increasingly aggressive missions.”

  I blinked in disbelief. “It can’t be. They wouldn’t…”

  “Commander Callaway told you that Wallace pressured him to send us on the most dangerous missions,” Derek pointed out. “Claiming that he didn’t want our skills to be wasted, but in reality Wallace has been trying to get even with me. To get revenge for his son.”

  “Why not just flunk you out of smokejumping school?” I said. “He could have punished you individually that way.”

  “That would have been too obvious,” Derek replied. It sounded like he’d given this a lot of thought. “Flunking the man responsible for his son’s death would draw uncomfortable attention on the whole thing. But passing me with flying colors? That’s less conspicuous. Then he could work behind the scenes to have me pushed to the edge.” He looked up at me with regret in his eyes. “Honestly, I don’t even care about myself at this point. I don’t even blame Wallace for wanting to get even with me. But I regret dragging you and Foxy into this. You two should be on an easy assignment in Winthrop or Missoula, but instead you got lumped in with me and sent here.”

  I caressed Derek’s smooth cheek and smiled sadly at him. “Oh Derek. I can’t imagine how you’ve felt holding this in all along, bearing the burden.”

  He managed to smile. “Now you know why I was in such a bitchy mood when we first got here!”

  I hugged him again and rubbed his back. “I wish you had told me sooner. Heck, we should tell someone else.”

  “I’ve tried,” Derek complained. “I went straight to Commander Callaway with my suspicions, but he doesn’t believe me. He told me to put my head down and worry about the mission at hand, and let him worry about tactical decisions. I’ve considered quitting the smokejumpers altogether, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, staring off at nothing. “I’m too stubborn, I guess. I worked hard to get here, and don’t want someone like Wallace to destroy all of my hard work. And I think part of me wanted to bear the burden as a penance for the mistake I made in Syria. I thought that maybe if I survived whatever Wallace threw at me, it would make things even.”

  He shook off the thought as if gathering his courage.

  “But I can see things more clearly now. I’m not the only one in danger. It’s you, and Foxy, and Trace, and the other smokejumpers who are risking their lives. I need to quit in order to protect all of you.”

  I laughed roughly. “Screw that.”

  Derek blinked in surprise.

  “You said it yourself: you worked your ass off to get here,” I said. “We can’t let Wallace ruin your life because of a personal vendetta. The smokejumpers need men like you.”

  His blue eyes softened. “I think I needed to hear that.”

  I patted his leg. “Then we’ll find a way to fix things. Either we’ll convince Callaway or the other people high up in the Forest Service, or we’ll gather the evidence we need to prove what’s happening.”

  “How will we do that?”

  I kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t know. Let me think about it and get back to you. But in the mean time, relax and try to focus on what we’re doing. You can’t spend all your time stressing about that which you can’t control.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “I just hope we can fix things before we’re put in real danger.”

  I went back to my room and got in bed, thinking about how to go about solving Derek’s problem.

  But later that night, we learned just how right Derek was.

  26

  Haley

  I woke to the klaxon sound of every alarm in Redding Base going off at once.

  “Get up, get up, get up,” shouted Trace in the hallway. He pounded on the bunk rooms while jogging down the hall. “We’ve got to move! Smokejumpers, let’s go!”

  Unlike a standard fire station, emergency calls were rare for smokejumpers. But I had still trained for this, and my muscle memory took over in spite of my sleep-deprived brain. I stumbled to the dresser and pulled on my fire suit, then my steel-toed work boots. Finally I grabbed my PG bag from the closet and threw open the door. When I stepped outside, I almost ran into Foxy who was jogging out of the barracks.

  “Woah there,” he said. “Cars entering the interstate have to yield.”

  “Sorry. What’s going on?”

  “It appears there’s a fire,” Derek said as he popped out of his room. “You guys know anything about fighting those?”

  “I know a thing or two,” I said.

  “Just spray water on it, right?” Foxy added with a grin.

  We were chuckling and making jokes, but it was all one big defense mechanism to cover up the fear of what was happening. An emergency jump. At one thirty in the morning.

  Callaway was standing in the doorway to the briefing room, waving his arm like a third base coach sending the runner home. “No time for info now. You’ll get briefed on the ground!”

  “Yes sir.”

  We followed the stream of bodies into the gear warehouse. Trace was there shouting orders and directing people. “Bring equipment for a standard forty-eight hour drop! Don’t forget rations and water!”

  “How can I help?” I asked.

  His mood seemed to brighten when he saw me. He
glanced at his clipboard and said, “Our team still needs fire shelters and hand pumps.”

  “On it.”

  I jogged across the warehouse to the shelves containing the equipment. Other jumpers were already there unpacking boxes and gathering what they needed for their individual teams. I grabbed two hand pumps for our team and then stood next to the box holding the emergency fire protection.

  “Whatcha need?” Brinkley asked. His head was buried in the box, so all I could see was his legs.

  “Four fire shelters.”

  I heard him counting under his breath, and then he tossed out a stack of fire shelters. In their deployed state they would look like cylindrical aluminum camping tents, but right now they appeared similar to metal bricks of cocaine.

  “Two minutes to take off!” Callaway boomed across the warehouse.

  “Thanks,” I told Brinkley, and carried the gear back to the deployment crates. Trace ticked boxes on his clipboard as I stuffed them into the crate on top of the chainsaws and Pulaskis and McLeods, and then they sealed the lid and began dragging it away.

  Once we’d helped each other into our jumpsuits, we jogged toward the plane, whose engines were already rumbling in the night. Trace and I grabbed seats across from Foxy and Derek, to ensure the four of us jumped in succession.

  Within minutes, we were airborne and flying north. Trace and I were shoved together on the bench, with his tree trunk thighs pressing against my own and his shoulders brushing mine. He held one hand up to his ear, listening on the radio to something the rest of us couldn’t hear.

  “What’s the plan, boss?” I shouted over the engine noise.

  “Tell you when we’re on the ground,” he replied.

  “Is… is it bad?”

  He frowned, glanced at me, and then nodded.

  Shit.

  Derek leaned across the aisle and tapped me on the knee. “Good thing we all got some sleep tonight, huh?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Indeed.”

  Something vibrated in my pocket. “Shit, my phone,” I muttered. We weren’t supposed to bring our phones with us on jumps, but I’d left mine in my pocket underneath my jumpsuit by accident.

  I reached under the seat and felt around. There was fabric webbing in the space beneath the bench to keep equipment in place. I found a pocket in the webbing and shoved my phone inside. It would be waiting for me when we got back. As long as I don’t forget, I thought.

  Everything related to the jump occurred normally. The light changed to red, and we all stood up and clipped our parachutes into the guide line. The light turned green, and we began jumping. One after the other into the dark abyss.

  When I was next in line, I saw that the spotter was Ramirez. He locked eyes with me, then leaned forward and said, “We’re going to make sure your jump is safe, Hinch! Don’t worry!”

  “Wouldn’t think of worrying!” I replied, though of course all I could think about was what he’d told me last night about not being able to find any equipment malfunction.

  There was no moon tonight to guide me to the ground, but the fires to the east cast a pale orange glow across the valley. Flames licked into the air like angry waves crashing against a shore. The fire intensity had to be at least a ten, judging by the look of it. Maybe even close to the maximum intensity rating of thirteen.

  A shiver ran up my spine as I drifted to the ground.

  My landing zone was an open field on the edge of the forest. I touched down easily, tucking my legs and rolling forward to cancel most of my vertical momentum. “Feels nice to not come down in a tree,” I muttered as I folded up my parachute. Then I switched on my radio and said, “Hinch check. Waiting on movement information.”

  “Hinch… Good. I’ve got you right where you’re supposed to be,” the spotter crackled in my ear. There was a pause as he consulted the map with our transponders. “The gear landed a hundred yards to the south. Should be a straight shot across the field for you.”

  I stripped out of my jumpsuit, folded it up with my parachute, and then carried the bundle in my arms while moving toward the rendezvous point. Derek and Foxy checked in soon after me and were given their own instructions.

  The clearing I had to cross was a picturesque mountain meadow, the kind where you’d expect to see blond Austrian children singing. Much easier than hiking through uneven terrain after landing in the middle of a forest. Trace was hunched over the gear crate when I arrived. I dumped my bundles on the ground and said, “‘Sup, hot stuff. Come here often?”

  His helmet lantern was turned on, so when he turned to look up at me the bright LEDs momentarily blinded me. I staggered and he was on his feet in a flash, bracing my arms and holding me steady.

  “Sorry!” he said with a deep, rumbling laugh. “Didn’t mean to flashbang you.”

  His grip was strong and comforting. “Just watch where you point that thing.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  I barked a laugh. “Trace, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you make a joke while out on a jump.”

  “Must be the adrenaline and lack of sleep,” he said while returning to the crate. “Help me with this stuff?”

  We unloaded all the gear and arranged it on the ground. Derek and Foxy reached us by the time Trace was unfolding the map.

  “Nice of you two to join the party after we’d done all the unloading,” I teased.

  Foxy gave one of his easy grins. “Hell, that’s the easy part. The hard work’s about to start.”

  “He’s right,” Trace said. We all hunched over the map and watched him use an orange marker to draw a line across our section of the valley. “We’ve got this entire area to cover, starting at this meadow as an anchor point. They’re estimating the fire intensity is a level eight, so the handline needs to be ten feet wide.”

  “Just an eight?” Derek said. “Looked a lot bigger than that.”

  “Up on the ridge where it’s burning logging slash, sure,” Trace said grimly. “But by the time it reaches the handline it’ll be a seven or eight.”

  Foxy traced his fingernail along the orange line. “That’s an awfully long section for just the four of us, boss.”

  “We have an existing fire road to work off. It’ll go much faster than if we were working from scratch.”

  “Even still, that length of handline will take two days to finish.”

  Trace nodded in agreement. “At least two. Callaway has authorized reinforcement supply drops if we need it after forty-eight hours. Which we probably will.”

  “Is it just the four of us?” I asked. When Trace nodded, I added, “Why four-man teams?”

  “Because the other teams are spread out through the valley working on their own sections. This is what we have to work with.” Trace looked at me, then Derek, then Foxy. “Any questions? No? Then let’s get started.”

  I wanted to complain about our anchor point. True anchor points had zero fuel, like a rocky outcropping, or a river or lake. This meadow, although mostly clear of trees, still had short grass and topsoil that might burn if the wildfire reached it.

  No use complaining about something I can’t control.

  The beginning of our handline was a hundred feet to the east, at the edge of the meadow. Although the fire road was clear of large trees, it was overrun with smaller plants and wild grass on the forest floor. Trace and I took chainsaw duty to start, cutting away the small saplings that were trying to grow. The fire road also was more narrow than we had hoped—it was about eight feet wide, when our handline needed to be extended to ten. This meant we had to cut away the occasional pine tree that was encroaching into the fire road.

  I shared glances with the others as we worked. None of us voiced our complaints out loud, but we were all thinking the same thing: this fire road hasn’t been maintained in years. It was easier than digging a fresh handline from scratch, but not by much.

  We rotated tasks every hour. I switched to brush clearing, then to McLeod duty after that. The radio in my
ear was full of chatter from the other team leads scattered across the valley. I couldn’t be sure, but their jobs didn’t seem to be as difficult as ours. And their anchor points were a lot more solid than ours.

  After four hours of work, Trace called for a ten minute breather. I guzzled Gatorade and chewed on a protein bar. It tasted and felt like dense cardboard, but it was fuel for my body, not food for enjoyment. I needed it to keep going. Like a marathoner at mile four, I had a lot of race left to run.

  “This reminds me of our last jump at McCall,” Derek said while we rested.

  “Oh?” Trace asked.

  “It kind of does,” I agreed. “That was a night jump too, with a cool wind blowing out of the north.”

  “The stakes are higher,” Foxy said solemnly. “That was fake. This is real.”

  I tossed a rock at him. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Just making sure you treat this with the severity it deserves, rather than half-assing it.”

  I made an offended noise. “Are you implying I half-assed our final training jump at McCall?”

  Foxy shrugged slowly while fighting a smile. “Who knows. Maybe you finished at the top of our class because you flashed Wallace your boobs.”

  We all chuckled, although Derek’s laugh felt forced. The last thing he wanted to think about right now was Wallace’s mission to get us killed.

  “In case you couldn’t tell, I’m only joking,” Foxy told Trace. “Haley definitely didn’t need to seduce the trainers to pass jump school.”

  “I’m well aware of that,” Trace said simply while chewing on his own protein bar. His eyes locked onto mine in the near-darkness. “Haley weighs half as much as most of the men at Redding Base, but does twice as much work. She’s easily one of the finest smokejumpers I’ve ever worked with. One day we’ll all be reporting to her.”

  There was no teasing in his voice. No light-hearted banter. He was dead serious, a fact that was punctuated by his intense gaze. I trust you, his eyes told me. I trust you with my life.

  I felt myself choking up. “Hell, I’ll flash my boobs at anyone if it means running a smokejumper base,” I said. “Hopefully I won’t have to, though. By the time I’m thinking about promotions, they’ll probably be wrinkled and saggy.”