Wildfire on the Skagit (Firehawks Book 9)

by M. L. Buchman

  She pulled her big knife out of its thigh sheath, a well-worn, Vietnam-era K-bar. She sliced open a pair of MREs with the ease of long practice and slipped it back into the sheath.

  “There’s a Don’t Mess With Me message if ever I saw one,” Evan pulled out a much newer but equally worn K-bar Becker and did the same to a couple of MREs of his own.

  “Grandpop’s,” she explained tapping her sheath.

  “Mine,” he resheathed his blade.

  She could see it in him. It wasn’t posturing or bragging; it was just part of who he was. She’d barely glanced at his resume because she didn’t trust such things, preferred her own judgments about people. But she recalled some stretch of U.S. Army time before he’d gone to smokejumping.

  One of his meals was the Mexican Style Chicken Stew. He pulled out another packet of that hot chocolate and sprinkled it into the pouch.

  “What the hell, Rook?”

  “Mole sauce,” he finished sprinkling. He picked out the dehydrated marshmallows and, popping them into his mouth, began sucking on them like candy.

  “Got some extra?” She’d drawn a Chili with Beans which was okay, but she liked the idea of Mexican.

  He handed her the half empty packet which she dumped in.

  They each set their foil packets on a rock around the campfire and sat back to wait for the meals to heat from totally disgusting—the way they were normally eaten on a fire—to warmly awful.

  The others were doing the same. Ox had four fat frankfurters that he was cooking on an alder branch.

  “Hey,” Nick the Greek called out. “Where the hell you get those?”

  “Stuffed ‘em into my PG bag hard frozen before we jumped. They’re thawed now.”

  “Two days, dude. In your Personal Gear? More like ripe!”

  “Just the way I like ‘em.”

  “Got any ants this time?” Nick called to Lee, looking for the next target.

  “Not a one,” Ant-man said proudly. “Might have slipped a small snake into your bag though.”

  Krista let the banter run back and forth across the fire without joining in. Normally she’d be right in there, egging on whoever was at a disadvantage at the moment. But she felt surprisingly mellow and simply let it flow by. Soon Akbar joined in about his super-squad versus Krista’s lame-ass crowd; he’d beat her to the ridgeline by twenty minutes in a two-day battle. Ox rose to the challenge on that one and Krista still floated along.

  “The joys of the season’s first fire,” she said softly to Evan.

  He nodded, picked up one of his MREs and stabbed a plastic spork down into the pouch before leaning back against a rock and taking a mouthful. “First one always feels good. Mid-summer will be harsh and by fall it’ll totally suck.”

  “’Bout right,” she agreed.

  “Can’t wait.”

  Krista inspected him more carefully as he watched the fire. Every multi-season smokie jumped fire for a different reason, but if it really drove them, you could see the mark of it on their faces. Evan definitely had the mark, and not just of a multi-year jumper; every single person in MHA’s crew had that. For Evan Greene it was something special, something deep drove him to the fire. Krista had seen that same look in the mirror her whole life.

  Most guys, even most of the ones at MHA were gonna be gone after five or ten years in. Enough pain, enough broken relationships, a blown knee that surgery could no longer put back together, a broken back or worse—they’d be gone.

  Akbar wouldn’t. Two-Tall Tim had been a lifer—still was, just up in Alaska. Ox and Ant-man maybe. Nick the Greek would last this season, but probably not next.

  Krista had found her dream career and would jump until they carried her out on a flaming backboard. And she suspected that Evan would also.

  “Why did you cross over?”

  “Well,” Evan made his voice high and squeaky. “I was never happy as a woman and—”

  A laugh burst out of her. She almost snorted her mouthful of chili and beans—which really was a bit more palatable with the powdered hot chocolate though the barely rehydrated marshmallows that she hadn’t picked out were a little strange. Evan might be many things, but he was about as male as she’d ever seen—transgender hung out nowhere near this boy-o.

  “Why did you?” he asked her.

  “Born this way, Soldier-boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Master Sergeant.”

  “It’s not gonna stick, Rook. Give it up and try again.”

  # # #

  “Hey, Great One,” Evan shouted across the conversation to Akbar.

  “What you want, Rook?” he called back.

  Evan groaned.

  Krista smirked at him and he ignored the fact that he felt some strange urge to kiss it off her face.

  “Master Sergeant Krista claims not to have a tag. What’s up with that?” Maybe he could get the group to pick up the theme.

  “None of ‘em stick,” was all the help Akbar gave him.

  “We tried, lord knows,” Ox complained.

  “They just slide off the woman,” Nick the Greek replied. “They run away like the flames do when she faces down a fire. She don’t even have to fight it when she’s on a roll. Just glare and gone.”

  “Keep it up, though,” Akbar offered cheerfully. “She might stick you with ‘Rook’ permanent-like which would be funny as hell.”

  “I’m so afraid,” Evan did a woman-in-a-horror-movie voice.

  Krista laughed beside him, which was the whole point. She had a damn fine laugh; it just wrapped around you and invited you in. Which only made him want to find more ways to bring it out.

  Conversation turned, as it always did around post-jump campfires, to stories of bad burns. Later in the season it would turn into bad jumps that left a smokie injured or worse. Then burnovers. Though Evan had never been in one, he’d heard the stories and they sounded like true hell. After that it would get personal and Evan would once again have to fight against his inner demons. But tonight it was about triumphant firefights.

  Krista kept her peace more than she joined in which didn’t surprise Evan. She was like a mama hen watching over her chicks. “Mama Krista.” It wasn’t bad, but she was more than that too. He’d find it.

  When questions of keeping watch on the fire arose, Evan volunteered for first shift. Lee the Ant-man raised a hand for who Evan should wake in two hours. Already, half the camp was asleep sitting up, but Evan was wide awake yet; as if sitting close beside Krista had electrified his system.

  He went to the far side of the saddle and found an uncomfortable rock to sit on that offered him an excellent view over the firescape below but wouldn’t let him sleep once the exhaustion slammed in. Smoke still climbed lazily upward in enough volume to shroud all but the brightest stars. Yet the smoke was thin enough that fire was no longer the only smell on the air. Small night breezes mixed in the scent of the conifer forest sleeping the night away to either side of the Black.

  Below him, out in the Black, ranged dozens of small sporadic fires and minor flare-ups. The Hotshot crew had sacked out down by the stream, ready to hike back out as soon as the local cleanup team came in tomorrow to make sure the Black was truly dead.

  There was a sudden flare-up, almost bright enough to read by for a moment. Deep in the Black, it soon settled due to a lack of fuel. From what Evan could see, this fire wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I always love this moment.”

  Evan spun around. He hadn’t heard Krista’s approach. His Special Forces senses had failed him; but they never failed him, even five years out of the service. Maybe she was military to move so stealthily. But he’d been so sure she wasn’t.

  Little more than a shadow, she settled onto the rock beside him.

  “It is good,” he spoke to cover his sudden unease. “When the battle has been won and the fo
rest can lay down to sleep.”

  “Until the next fire.”

  “Until the next battle,” he agreed. But there was a part of him that hated this too. An old part that ran far deeper—one thick with anger that rose up dark inside him and he was unable to avoid. He loved the adrenaline, the challenge, and the triumph. But he hated the aftermath even more than he hated the war.

  He did his best to focus on Krista and the day’s victory.

  Focus on the positive, he reminded himself for all the good it ever did him.

  They sat in an easy silence; easy despite another battle now raging inside him. The soft crackle of the distant flare-up the only sound in the night air. Even the night breeze had gone silent here with no leaves to whisper through.

  From long practice he could normally shove the darkness, the anger aside. For some reason tonight it wasn’t working. He hated the war in the Afghan Dustbowl where he’d spent five out of his six years in the service. So why had he signed up for the wildfire war at home? To avoid thinking about the past. He feared that internal darkness more than the enemy’s bullet. Say something, Ev. Anything.

  “I crossed over from the Zulies because the winters were hard,” he answered her earlier question, with a little too much truth. “I missed the fire,” and the distraction of it. “MHA promised year-round action.” And he did like the action.

  “Might be hotshotting as a ground crew in Australia or jumping a fire in Argentina,” Krista warned him from the dark. “But it does make the time flow by.”

  And just like that, it was as if she had understood why he’d entered firefighting in the first place, even though there was no way she could. He’d done his time in the Special Forces, lost good friends, good men to rag-head Taliban—and he’d be damned if he could figure out if the world was any better for all the blood they’d shed.

  He’d gotten out when he no longer trusted himself to stay “on the reservation.” There was a part of him that wanted to step out and just destroy the whole country, along with its innocents, in order to eradicate the fanatical infestation. He knew that was a bad headspace for a soldier with heavy weapons and command of a dozen-man Operational Detachment-Alpha team—a single Special Forces ODA could do some serious damage. When they tried to bump him to command of a full company of six ODA teams, he knew it was time for another career.

  Now, as Krista had said, he was just letting time flow by. There had to be more than that. But he’d started to suspect there wasn’t. And those long, dry winter months had not sat well with helping the time pass. The weight had grown on him. Now even these quiet moments between fires were becoming a burden.

  He could feel her body heat close beside him despite the warmth of the night. Could feel a need in him for…

  “Yes,” she whispered from close beside him.

  “Huh? What?”

  “I been watching you, Rook.”

  He’d been watching her, too. And not just how she fought fire. He liked the way she commanded and the way she moved.

  “You may love this moment, but you hate it too. Hate the waiting just like I do.”

  “I didn’t say a goddamn word,” he turned to face her, unnerved at how close that shot was to the mark. He hated the war but, someone help him, he loved the fight.

  “Didn’t need to,” Krista’s light eyes and hair caught the warm glow from the fire far below.

  “You look…” like he needed his head examined. She moved like Special Forces, had the silence of one too. Not just Master Sergeant, but also a multi-tour field grunt. How the hell did a civilian get like that? She looked like one of those Norse goddesses, the ones who wielded true power.

  It’s like she was custom made for him.

  Well, he was about to get his ass kicked back to the Zulies, but that didn’t stop what he did next.

  He snagged a hand around her neck and kissed her, hard. He clenched his gut for the punch he deserved. But instead she returned his kiss with a heat that matched his own. Her tongue fought his as her own hand fisted in his short hair.

  He was suddenly as eager and clumsy as a sixteen-year old boy from Boise getting his first kiss at the Turner Gulch boat ramp on Lucky Peak Lake. Some switch had been thrown and he was taking all the heat that Krista could give. Unaware of his own actions until they were complete, he grabbed one of her magnificent breasts, firm, lush, far more than a handful. Rather than pulling back, she leaned into his hold on her.

  Evan shifted to nuzzle her neck—and instantly regretted it. Like all smokies after a fire, she had a band around her neck of sweat-dried ash and soot that had been ground into her skin by her shirt collar until it was a gray-black ring that tasted of salt and charcoal.

  She laughed. It was a big hearty laugh for all that she kept it soft. He felt it move through her chest beneath his palm.

  “Sorry,” he hated himself for saying it. He pulled back and removed his hand from her breast. “I shouldn’t have.”

  “Not in the Army anymore, Rookie.”

  “But you’re still my comman—my boss.”

  “No, Akbar is. I’m just his jump partner. You want to go kissing him though, you’d better ask Laura first. She’s pretty possessive about her man.”

  “I’ll do that,” he did his best to keep his tone dry. It still wasn’t right the way he’d grabbed at her, driven at her. God, he wanted to throw her on the ground this instant and just bury himself in her until all of his black anger and pain was spent.

  He’d tried that before, a long time ago. It hadn’t turned out well. A two-month relationship hadn’t made it to the first day of month three. He’d never figured out how to apologize for that one and then she’d been gone—with a real clear, Don’t you call me. Ever!

  “Just steer clear, Krista. I’m fine on a fire, it’s just on the ground that I’m a mess.”

  She didn’t respond for a long time and he couldn’t turn to look at her. Couldn’t face her because he didn’t want to see the disgust on her face.

  “Been a smokejumper ten years, Rookie. I live for messy.”

  Then she stood up, and did the craziest thing. She leaned down and gave him the softest kiss he’d ever had.

  # # #

  “Let me know when you’re ready to wrestle some more,” Krista whispered into his ear then started the hike back up over the rise to camp.

  What the hell was that, girl?

  She never, ever kissed or slept with anyone on her team. It just made for an ungodly snarl. She’d watched other women try it, smokie or hotshot crew, and it always screwed up everything. Sometimes so bad that they bailed on the career ‘cause it so messed with their heads.

  But when Evan had unleashed that kiss on her, her brain had switched off and she’d finally figured out why she’d sent him on down the line that first day—the fourth reason. He didn’t move or act like anyone she’d ever met in a decade of jumping fire. There was a barely contained power in him like a big blaze on the edge of blowup—that moment when forest fire became wildfire.

  Besides, she’d never been kissed like that before in her life and she’d had some good ones over the years. He hadn’t held back like she was some tender female, he’d gone at her like he wanted her any way he could get her.

  She stood a long time in the shadows of the camp and stared down at the sleeping smokies by the light of the failing campfire.

  Krista wished desperately that she didn’t want him to try again.

  Chapter 4

  The next three fires, which hit back to back, Evan threw himself into the firefight. He’d seen what the MHA teams could do and he did everything in his power to make sure he fully integrated in—driving himself until he was nearly shattered with exhaustion.

  He’d also made sure that he ended up on Akbar’s teams whenever there was a split.

  By the time they hit Day Five on the Deerness Fire in nort
hern California, he’d been running at full tilt for over two weeks without a break; they all had. The Deerness finally laid down around midnight. Everyone had dropped where they stood and slept.

  Now it was just coming up dawn. Clear of smoke, the pines of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest were a soft wonderland. The Black ranged across three ridges, but already deer and squirrel were nosing around the edges. A Steller’s jay cocked its black crested crown at him to see if he had any food, then flitted off with a high-pitched skreeka! of disgust when he didn’t make some offering.

  “Tell me,” Akbar waved him over to help ready the gear for pickup.

  “Tell you what?” Evan knew exactly what, but he really didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Tell me why you’re trying to kill yourself on the fire or I’ll yank your rookie ass off the line. I can’t have you endangering the team.”

  That shocked Evan upright. Not just off the team. Not just away from Krista.

  But a danger to the team?

  God, no!

  That went against all his training both as a soldier and a firefighter.

  “Fuck!” he dropped down to sit on a boulder at the edge of the stream where they’d been rolling up hoses—getting ready for the helicopter to airlift them back to the local airfield. Not again!

  Akbar sat down beside him. He was a little man, a head shorter than Evan, but there was no question who ruled on a fire. There were jokes that he was a direct descendant of Agni, the Hindu god of fire. And knowing Akbar, he’d been the one to start the rumors because what did a bunch of Oregon smokies know from Hindu gods.

  “You started clean,” Akbar told him. “Damn good on the fire up by Mt. Rainier. Something happened there. You got even better, but you also got crazier. Now I know from crazy, jumped fire with TJ who wouldn’t quit until a tree almost took him out after forty years as a smokie…and still he wanted back in. But you got some other-level shit going on.”

  Evan stared down at his blackened hands; soot ingrained in every pore and knuckle line despite wearing gloves. He felt sick to his stomach and cold with a sudden sweat that he’d be the one to put the team at risk.