by Cassie Cole
“…engine two!”
“What do you mean, we lost engine two?” the spotter demanded.
“I don’t know why!”
Trace patted him on the back. “Fire! In the wall!”
The spotter whirled. He was relatively calm despite the emergency as he removed his glove and tapped the metal panel with his palm. “Shit. It’s hot.” He spun to shout at the pilot. “The fuel manifold is burning!”
“Fuck,” the pilot cursed. “You guys need to bail!”
“We need to what?” Foxy demanded.
The pilot’s voice changed in tone as he spoke into the radio. “Redding Ground Station, this is C23 Sherpa Bravo. We’ve lost one engine and have visible internal damage to the fuel routing system…”
The spotter waved. “You guys need to bail out here!”
“Negative, Redding Ground Station,” the pilot said into his radio. “I’m losing altitude too quickly to return to the runway. Trinity Center O86 might be close enough…”
I glanced out the hatch. “We’re too close to the fire!”
A light in the cockpit began flashing red, accompanied by a louder alarm siren. The pilot looked over his shoulder at us and shouted, “I’m losing altitude fast! If you wait until you’re over better terrain, you’ll be too low!”
All of us knew what that meant. Jumping too low wouldn’t give our parachutes enough time to deploy and slow us down. Nobody wanted to smash into the ground while plummeting fifty feet per second.
“Sounds like our choice is made for us,” Trace said authoritatively. “Let’s go!”
There was another popping sound like the first in the panel to my left. Like electricity short-circuiting. The smoke that was seeping out of the corners of the panel turned from grey to black.
“Oh fuck,” the spotter cursed. Genuine fear now spread on his face. He pulled a spare parachute out of a storage compartment and began pulling his arms through the straps. “We need to bail out now!”
“Affirmative, Redding,” the pilot said. “Trinity Lake might be the flattest runway I get. All crew besides me are evacuating now…”
“You heard him. Go!” the spotter shouted.
And just like that, he jumped out of the airplane.
“Shit,” Derek growled behind me. “Nice of him to wait for us.”
Trace held onto the handle next to the jump hatch and waved me forward. “We’ll meet up on the ground.” He grabbed my hand in his and squeezed. The intensity in his eyes shocked me. “I’ll find you down there, Haley.”
“I know,” I said, and I surprised myself by believing it.
Then I jumped out of the plane.
It was like any other jump. For a few terrifying seconds, I plummeted through the sky. The wind rushing past my ears was deafening and painful. The entire western stretch of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest spread out around me, with the smoldering flames and black smoke covering half of my view to the right. I waited for the yank of my parachute catching the air…
But it never came.
Shit, shit, shit, I realized. My chute hadn’t deployed. I needed to deploy my reserve. That line was on my left, next to my normal line I needed to tug…
The normal line.
In the blink of an eye, I realized exactly what had happened. The spotter hadn’t connected our guide lines to the hook that would automatically deploy it when we jumped. Mine was still connected, and needed to be deployed manually.
I found the strap with a plastic red grip on it, and I yanked it like my life depended on it.
The burden on my back shifted, then jerked me in the air. The straps of my chute harness dug into my thighs, but it was the sweetest pain in the world.
I drifted down through the smoke deck, which briefly obscured my view, and then when I was through it I was treated with a clearer view of the valley as a whole. We were dropping into a narrow valley between two burning sections of the wildfire. Thank God. We had a relatively clear stretch of land to move through to the north-west, which was where my comrades would be landing.
Then I landed through the trees. I was able to tuck my legs and turn my fall into a roll as my parachute was shredded by the upper limbs. I came to a stop against a thick pine tree in a little rocky clearing.
“I’m getting good at that,” I muttered while glancing up at the trees I’d just crashed through.
I rapidly stripped my jumpsuit and put on my hard hat. “Hinch check. Just came down after an emergency bail-out.”
There was no response. It must have been on the wrong frequency. But as I twisted the dial back and forth, I saw that I was already on the right one. It should have been buzzing with chatter from the plane emergency, but it was silent.
“Hinch check. Hinch check. Anyone out there?”
Still nothing.
Then I remembered what I’d been doing on the plane before the emergency. I reached into my pocket and fished out my cell phone, right where I’d shoved it last. I removed my glove and swiped the screen…
No signal.
“Damnit, no,” I said, waving it in the air in the hopes of snagging some stray signal. “Damnit, please, no! Someone! Hello?”
Alone in the forest, I cried out for help.
40
Foxy
“I’m getting sick of this shit—oh fuck oh fuck!” I said as I came down in the trees.
One of the higher branches slammed into my crotch and knocked the wind out of me. I tumbled and fell while reaching all around me for something to slow my plummet, grasping at pine boughs and branches…
I hit the ground like a sack of cornmeal.
It took several long moments of lying on the ground before I could muster the strength to get up. Nothing seemed broken, although the ache in my crotch was enough to make me want to lay back down and weep.
“Don’t be a little bitch,” I told myself as I stripped out of my jumpsuit.
Then I found out the radio wasn’t working. Just perfect.
I looked to the sky. I hadn’t seen where Haley had come down. In normal circumstances it would have been easy to look at a map, compare that to our flight route in, and estimate the line of drops. She had jumped right before me, so she would be farther backwards in that line. But in the chaos of the emergency jump, and remembering to manually deploy my own parachute, I hadn’t noticed any of that.
Some smokejumper I was.
Alright Foxy. Think for a second.
We were somewhere near the burning edge on the western side. I glanced at the sky again, and watched which way the smoke was drifting. All else being equal, I needed to move in the opposite direction. Haley would be doing the same thing.
If she landed safely.
A pang of despair stabbed me in the gut. Haley might be out there, injured and crying for help. She might need me. There was no way for me to know where she was, though. If I moved toward the burning edge of the wildfire, I might be putting myself in more danger for no reason.
“I hope you’re this way, Haley,” I said as I moved in the other direction.
The Valley was sloped downward and covered with pine needles, which constantly slipped underneath my feet, so I had to go slower than I would have liked. I counted for thirty seconds, blew my emergency whistle, then counted again. With the wind whipping violently above the treetops, it sounded like my voice was carried away. Still, I counted another thirty seconds and shouted again.
After ten minutes of sliding down the valley, I got a response. Another whistle sounded shrilly, echoing off the ridges high above.
I blew mine again in response.
Whistling back and forth, we were able to hone-in on each other. To my disappointment, it was Trace instead of Haley. Based on the look on his face, he had been hoping to find Haley too. Trace’s leg was torn and bleeding, but otherwise he looked fine.
“Is your radio working?” he asked while clasping me on the arm.
“It’s busted.”
Trace grimaced. “Mine too. Have you seen Haley?”
I shook my head. “Any idea where she came down?”
Trace pulled out his map and unfolded it on the ground. “I think she came down this way, to the south-west. Away from the fire. I’m positive Derek came down in that area. Typically, the best thing to do while disconnected from our spotters would be to remain in position and wait for assistance.”
“But…” I said.
Trace nodded solemnly. “But we have little visibility on our surroundings, no spotting assistance, and a wildfire bearing down on us to the north-east.” He tapped his map. “We need to continue moving away from the fire, to the south-west. Following the valley as best as we can until it turns to the north-west.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, since it was what I was already doing. “Hope we find Haley along the way.”
Trace folded the map. “Me too.”
We continued on through the valley, taking turns shouting every minute or two. I was surprisingly fatigued, and my PG bag felt heavier than normal on my shoulders. I unzipped it, drank some water, and took stock of what I had.
“We don’t have a ton of supplies,” I said. “I’ve got a canteen of water and a single protein bar.”
“I’m about the same,” Trace said grimly. “Dropping without a gear crate is not ideal.”
I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, dropping out of a plane that’s in the process of crashing isn’t my idea of a good time.”
Trace grunted.
We walked for half an hour without finding anyone. My concern grew deeper with every step.
“What if Haley was behind us?” I said. “Toward the wildfire. What if she’s wounded.”
Trace looked over his shoulder as if that would give him an answer, then continued walking. “If she was, then…”
Then it’s too late, my mind finished for him. The fire would have overrun her by now.
“We will find her,” Trace said darkly. “She’s in this direction. I don’t know what I’m going to do if she’s not.”
I eyed my teammate as we walked. “You sound like you have strong feelings about her.”
“I do.”
“You’ve only been with her for, what, two days?”
Trace stepped over a fallen pine trunk. “I know. We’ve been… together for two days, and I’ve only known her for a few weeks. But…” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like Haley has a spell over me. She’s all I can think about. During the day, and at night. When I’m with her, and when I’m not. I cannot help how I feel. I’ve never experienced something like this. You probably think I’m crazy.”
I laughed. “Dude, I know exactly how you feel. I had a crush on her back at McCall, and never worked up the courage to make a move until the last day. Knowing we were probably never going to see each other again… It made me heartsick. Like someone whose long-term girlfriend dumped him. I hid it and made sure she never saw, but I was a wreck. At least, until I learned we were both coming to Redding.”
“Does she have that effect on everyone? What about Derek?”
I thought about the way Derek gazed at Haley when she wasn’t looking. He got a starry-eyed look, like he was in the presence of his celebrity crush. It always made him smile. If Derek wasn’t already in love with her, I could tell he was falling in love with her.
Just like I was.
“I don’t know about Derek, but I assume she has the same effect on him,” I said.
“Do you think Haley—”
Before Trace could finish the thought, we heard someone’s voice drift across the valley. A masculine voice shouting.
“That’s Derek!” Trace said.
We picked up the pace as we hurried down the rest of the valley. Eventually we saw the white cloth of a parachute strewn through the trees, and two shapes huddled underneath instead of one.
Please be okay, I thought as we raced toward them. Please, Haley, be okay.
But it wasn’t her. Derek was crouched next to Edwards, our spotter, whose face was twisted with pain. One of his knees was bent and the other remained flat. His jumpsuit was stripped to the waist.
“Edwards came down hard on his leg,” Derek explained to us. “Nothing broken that I can tell. Looks like his ACL.”
“Can he walk?” Trace asked.
“Not sure yet.” Derek’s face brightened. “Have either of you seen Haley?”
“I think she came down in this direction,” Trace replied. “Or farther west.”
Derek pursed his lips. “Thought so too. The plane was turning hard when we jumped, so we came down in a horseshoe shape rather than a straight line. Help me get Edwards out of the jumpsuit?”
Trace and I lifted Edwards under each armpit so Derek could pull his jumpsuit the rest of the way off. Then we rolled his pants up above the knee so Derek could examine his knee closer, gently pulling it one way, then the other.
“Definitely your ACL,” he said. “How’s the pain?”
Edwards was a middle-aged guy with a jaw like an Army grunt, and a reddish mustache that matched his bushy eyebrows. “Pain’s not bad anymore. It’s more like discomfort, if that makes sense.”
We got him on his feet. He was able to stand by himself, but as soon as he tried to take a step his knee buckled under him and he fell to the ground in a cry of pain.
“He should be able to move with help. But it won’t be fast,” Derek said.
Trace gazed to the east. “We need to keep moving. Without radio contact, we have no idea how rapidly the fire is approaching.”
“…hello?” came a hint of a voice, drifting across the valley.
I jumped to my feet and cupped my hands over my mouth. “HALEY!”
“…Foxy!” drifted the reply. It was definitely coming from the north.
I dropped my PG bag and sprinted in that direction. I put everything else out of my mind as I followed the voice, pumping my legs as the ground tilted up and the pine needles slipped under my feet. Twice I fell, but I didn’t care.
When Haley appeared up ahead, I almost wept.
I wrapped her in my arms and held her as tight as I could. “Haley. Thank goodness. We were afraid…”
“So was I,” she said into my shoulder. “I thought I’d never see you again. Any of you.”
We savored our embrace for a few seconds longer, then I led her back down the valley toward our group. “Everyone’s down here,” I said, “although our radios are busted too.”
“At least we’re together now,” she said, holding my hand as we walked. “Being lost and alone is not a fun experience.”
Derek ran toward her and hugged her tightly, and then Trace embraced her against his wide chest and caressed her hair. They rocked back and forth, holding one-another.
“Edwards has a busted knee, but he can still move around,” I said.
Haley flinched out of Trace’s arms. “Edwards?”
“The spotter,” Derek said. “He bailed out before us.”
Haley took a step toward the man, then stopped. “It was you. This is your fault!”
“Haley…” I gently put a hand on her arm. “Edwards bailed out when we did. Throwing blame around won’t help anything right now.”
She shook her head and turned to me. “No, Foxy. Edwards was the one who sabotaged the plane and made us crash.”
41
Haley
My three lovers gawked at me like I had suddenly started speaking Greek.
“Uh, did you hit your head on the way down?” Foxy asked.
I was focused on Edwards. I could see the guilt in his eyes. And fear. Fear that I would unmask him.
“I went to retrieve my phone in the Sherpa the other night. Wallace and Edwards were inside, and he was tinkering inside an electronics panel. I didn’t think anything of it because I was focused on Wallace, but it’s the same panel that started smoking and sparking right before we had to bail out.”
“I…” Edwards stammered. “Hinch, I was just working on… Wallace had me checking the…
the…”
“You can’t come up with a plausible excuse because you did it. You sabotaged the plane!”
Edwards looked around for a way to get away from me, but he was lame and stuck on the ground.
Trace stepped up next to me and frowned. “I’ve known Jason Edwards for three years. He would never intentionally sabotage one of the smokejumping Sherpas. Perhaps a mistake was made, if what you say is true.”
“It was no mistake,” I said coldly.
“Let’s be reasonable here,” Foxy said, holding his palms up. “It’s one thing to believe Wallace is out for revenge against Derek, but to accuse one of our fellow Redding smokejumpers…”
Derek strode right to Edwards, crouched down, and leaned his leg on Edwards’ knee. The man cried out in pain.
“Tell us what you know,” he demanded.
“Derek!” Trace shouted.
I jumped in Trace’s way. “It’s him! He did this!”
“Haley…”
“Do you not believe me?”
Behind me, Edwards wailed in agony.
“I believe you saw what you did,” Trace said. “But that does not mean it was sabotage!”
With embarrassing ease, Trace moved me out of the way and approached the injured man. But before he could pull Derek off him, Edwards started shouting.
“Okay! Enough! I’ll tell you everything!”
All of us froze.
Edwards’ face was red with pain, and he took a few seconds to gather his breath. “Wallace promised me a promotion! He said he would let me transfer back to McCall and help run the smokejumping school! I didn’t know anyone would get hurt!”
Trace’s shock transformed to rage. He grabbed a handful of Edwards’ shirt and said, “You piece of shit! You crashed the Sherpa?”
“No!” Edwards wailed. His bushy red eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “It was just supposed to be a trick! Wallace gave me a device to install on the fuel manifold line. It was remote-triggered by an app on my phone. It would temporarily cut the fuel line and cause some smoke. That’s it. But it malfunctioned somehow. There was another explosion, a real one.”
I remembered the events on the plane. Edwards had been calm and professional at first, but as soon as the second explosion happened he panicked and grabbed his own parachute.