Falls Like Lightning

by Shawn Grady

  Falls Like Lightning

  Copyright © 2011

  Shawn Grady

  Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc.

  Cover photography by: Masterfile, ©Westend61; GettyImages, ©Artyom Korotayev

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  E-book edition created 2011

  ISBN 978-1-4412-3226-7

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  Praise for Tomorrow We Die:

  “Grady’s novel should appeal to fans of fast-paced thrillers with a medical theme. The author, a firefighter and paramedic, captures the novel’s milieu perfectly. . . . [T]he plotting is solid, and the book features a strong hero, an appropriately evil villain, and a satisfying resolution.”

  Booklist

  “Grady’s latest is a definite page-turner. The action begins in the first paragraph and doesn’t let up for readers until the very end.”

  Romantic Times, 4 stars

  “Grady’s background as a firefighter and paramedic make for realistic emergency scenes filled with gritty realism and believable dialogue. His characters jump off the page with distinct personalities.”

  FaithfulReader.com

  “Author Shawn Grady is a Reno fireman/paramedic himself writing from the inside out. He writes with accurate authenticity and minute detail. . . . No doubt readers will close this title with a greater appreciation for all the paramedics and emergency responders who work so hard to save lives.”

  TitleTrakk.com

  Praise for Through the Fire:

  “This debut novel certainly shows that Grady has promise as an author of faith-based action adventures.”

  Booklist

  “Wow. Shawn Grady certainly knows how to craft a story.”

  Las Vegas Review-Journal

  “The writing is tight. The suspense is well done. . . . The experience the author has in Reno, NV as a fireman and a paramedic shows.”

  Santa Monica Daily Press

  “A suspense-thriller replete with leads and violent encounters . . . Throughout, the novel is a page-turner.”

  Reno News & Review

  “Shawn Grady’s debut novel, Through the Fire, introduces readers to a novelist whose work will be worth continuing to read in the future. . . . As a firefighter and a paramedic, Grady’s experience brings to life many intense scenes of suspense.”

  Christian Library Journal

  For my wife

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Endorsements

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  Luke 12:34 KJV

  CHAPTER

  01

  Heaven banished Lucifer in one air-rending fissure.

  Silas Kent drew little difference—again at the doorway, one foot from the slipstream, four thousand over a crowning inferno. He closed his eyes and inhaled the oily scents of burnt pine and juniper whipping through the crew compartment. The engine roar blended into background. Convective heat buzzed at his cheeks, waving off the firestorm below. The mountain plateau lay like an altar, burnt offerings shadowed beneath its smoky pall.

  The pilot tapped a dash gauge in the cockpit. The yoke vibrated and he returned his hand to it. Warren emerged from the fore bulkhead and rubbed the gray stubble at his jawline. His eyes found Silas and he gave the nod.

  Once more unto the breach. Cast toward the earth and the blackened soil.

  Warren slid on his sunglasses and took a knee by the jump door. He pointed to a clearing. Silas noted the spot, flipped down the caged face mask on his helmet, and gave the thumbs-up. No words needed save for the count-off that followed.

  Three.

  Hands on the doorframe.

  Two.

  Foot on the threshold.

  One.

  ———

  Silas barreled through the open air.

  His chute deployed with a fabric slide and billowed jerk. Breath escaped his chest. He adjusted his joints and settled in the harness.

  Alone with the wind. The great expansive ecstasy.

  He angled toward the drop zone, the only suitable spot within hiking distance of the radio tower where an injured technician lay. A billowing column grew from the forest nearby. He mapped the fire in his mind, taking mental pictures of its size and perimeter, making out the shape of the radio repeater perched atop a wooded knoll. The closest rescue-equipped helicopter faced an hour and a half response time. Chances were that by the time it arrived the lack of visibility from the smoke would hamper efforts.

  At its current rate of spread, the fire threatened to crest the ridge before Silas’s team could get there.

  Silas sighted the meadow clearing Warren had aimed him toward. Earth approached fast. He brought his boots together, hit the ground, and rolled. In one motion he made his knees and gathered in his chute arm over arm.

  He breathed in the smell of earth and evergreen and burning sage.

  Fifty feet from him, chute flapping, Peña landed and rolled. Silas shook down his jumpsuit, shouldered his fireline pack, and strode to the clearing edge.

  Their window was slim. If winds picked up late that afternoon, and they always did, the opportunity for rescue would narrow even further.

  ———

  “Rock.”

  A soccer-ball-sized stone tumbled down the hillside. Silas tucked his helmet and watched it bounce past him. Warren led the way, having made the jump with them this time instead of remaining with the plane as the team’s spotter usually did. The spotter generally coordinated logistics and mad
e sure the jumpers and their tools and supplies all got to where they needed to be, at the right time. Once he tapped their legs and sent them out the door, he kept in constant communication and coordinated their pickup. A spotter wasn’t like a foreman on a hotshot crew. He didn’t play the role of drill sergeant or lieutenant. He was a jumper, like them, and held the respect that years and experience provided.

  Smoke swept up the hill around them, weaving between bushes and trees, funneling from the draw below. Their crew had been hoofing it since they hit the ground, racing the head of the fire toward the repeater and the downed technician. Victim rescue was a bit outside their normal job description. But if not them, then who? Silas drove the handle of his Pulaski axe into the dirt and continued the steep trek. Shaped similarly to a pick-head axe, the Pulaski sported a flat grubbing end opposite the axe blade to use as a hoe.

  The eighteen Watch Out Situations drilled into him by the U.S. Forest Service echoed in his head.

  Cannot see main fire, not in contact with anyone who can.

  His eyes stung and watered from the smoke.

  Terrain and fuels make escape to safety zones difficult.

  He thought of the lectures he’d sat through about Storm King Mountain and the fourteen firefighters who lost their lives and how the instructor listed off the Watch Outs that were in violation leading up to the tragedy. Silas was in no mood to become a statistic. He pushed his quadriceps harder, digging his boots into the hillside to make a staircase for the guys behind him.

  Static chirped from the King radio brick strapped to the pouch across his chest. Warren’s voice carried. “Radio Tech Three, this is Redding Jumper Crew, how do you copy?”

  Still no reply.

  Per the last report before the crew had gone airborne, the radio tech had broken his leg in several places after a fall and possibly struck his head in the process. His last radio transmissions came across broken and confused. He was outside of cell service, didn’t have a satellite phone, and without further radio communication there was no way to know if he was still conscious.

  Silas gripped the trunk of a young pine. Shale slid under his boots.

  “Chocolate pudding.”

  The phrase bumped its way down the line. In summers past, after long dry-throated hours working in the heat and dirt, the phrase Watch your footing had made the easy audible jump. Out of the eight men on their northern California–based smokejumper crew, Silas hiked second from the front—behind Spotter Warren Adams. Shouldering a chainsaw in the back, JD bore the brunt of the tumbling objects.

  Warren secured a grip on the edge of a granite outcropping and pulled himself up. Silas scaled the same ledge. Along the mountainside the stone jutted straight up, stretching out in a broad bulwark. Their safest route would be to hike along the side slope, winding up the mountain until they could round above the granite cliff. Slow going at best.

  Warren cocked his head, listening.

  Silas peered into the smoky draw below. “What is it?”

  He put a hand up. “Something’s . . . This isn’t . . .”

  The smoke swirled. A strong wind rushed up the canyon. Silas braced his footing.

  Warren gripped the rock face. “Fire’s making a run.”

  “It’ll bump that tower before we can get there.”

  Warren glanced from the gully to Silas, lips pressed tight. “All right. What’s our LCES?”

  Silas tied a bandana around his neck. “Lookouts—you’re the eyes. Communications—line-of-sight radio com with HTs.”

  Warren set his goggles in place. “Good. Escape routes and Safety zones?”

  “Down the opposite side of the hill, away from the fire.”

  “Won’t help if we can’t reach the top before it.”

  “Sidestepping along this hill isn’t going to be fast enough.”

  Twisting clouds of smoke and dust veiled the rest of the crew below.

  “No other way.”

  “We won’t make it.”

  Silas turned to the sheer rock face. He ran his gloves over the granite and swallowed. This wasn’t springtime top-roping with buddies. There was a definite difference between recreational rock climbing and stupid defiance of the forces of physics.

  But that tech lay in the fire’s path and time was running short.

  His fingers found a hold. Two more broad crevices emerged overhead.

  He could do it.

  He unlaced his boots.

  Warren knelt at the rock edge, cupping his hands to converse with Peña and Tran standing in the smoke below. “All right.” He stood. “Here’s what we’re—What’re you doing?”

  Silas tied bootlaces around a shoulder strap of his fireline pack. “I think I can make it up.”

  Warren slashed his hand through the air. “Absolutely not. Put your White’s back on.”

  “It’ll take a fraction of the time.” He shook off his pack and strapped his Pulaski to it. “I was first out of the plane, right? That makes me jumper in charge.”

  “And I’m your spotter. Leave it.”

  “Warren, you know we should already be there. Come on, I’ve free climbed walls much worse than this.”

  Yeah, right. Silas watched to see if he’d buy it.

  Warren gazed at the rock wall and made a face like he’d stubbed his toe. He exhaled. “All right. But if you get in a tight spot, don’t push it. Just climb back down. I’ll leave Tran and Peña here to make sure you get to the top. Once you’re up, they’ll hightail it along the hillside and meet you there.” He turned and coughed. “I’ll take the rest of the crew to cut hotline below. Try and buy you some time.” He snugged his gloves tight. “I don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell you this. So far you haven’t let me down. Don’t go and—”

  “I know. Don’t go and get myself killed.”

  Warren drew a breath and shook his head. “I should’ve stayed on the plane.” He leaned over the edge and brought his gloves around his mouth. “Tran, Peña, bump up. Rest of Redding crew, I’ll tie in with you to cut line below.”

  Warren disappeared into the twisting smoke. They set off to cut, chop, and scrape away anything flammable in a line between the fire and Silas. Grubbing down to bare mineral soil, their goal would be a firebreak at least a couple feet wide and as long across the hillside as they could get it.

  Fighting fire without water. That was their M.O.

  Silas shouldered his pack, pulled his gloves off, and clicked them onto a carabiner.

  Peña climbed onto the outcropping. “All right, boss. What you need?”

  Silas reached for a soap dish handhold in the rock. Keeping those guys to baby-sit him made no sense. They’d be wasting time watching him when they could be hiking up the hill. It would take them a lot longer to reach the top, anyway.

  “I got this, fellas. Start in on the path, and we’ll meet near the repeater.”

  Tran made his feet beside them. “You sure that’s what Warren wanted?”

  Silas ignored him. “Keep your HTs on local. If it gets too hot, bump out and cut yourselves a safety zone.”

  Tran stared up the wall. “What about you?”

  “I’ll beat the fire up there. When I do, I’ll grab the tech and contact you by radio to tie in on the flip side.”

  Peña wiped a glove under his nose. “All right, then. Let’s go, Tran.”

  Tran stepped backward, spinning his Pulaski handle in hand. “Don’t do anything stupid, Silas.”

  Too late for that.

  He found his first toehold and began the ascent.

  CHAPTER

  02

  The smoke thickened.

  Visibility reduced to a body length. A sudden, searing pain burned the back of Silas’s neck. He swiped at it, knocking a firebrand into the air.

  Halfway up the wall the rock face tightened like a bedsheet. The holds shallowed out, forcing him horizontal.

  He gritted his teeth. Nothing but a churning gray mass below. He let one hand free and dangled it
at his side, shaking loose the joint ache and forearm pump. Erratic winds pressed against him, then shifted and swished in the space between his body and the rock. The smoke curtain beside him drew back, revealing a long vertical fist-width crack.

  He worked his way over, gripped one edge of the crevice, and pushed off the far side of it with his other hand, directing his force from the center of it outward. He lodged his feet sideways and opposite of each other, the roughness pressing hard against his insteps. He curled his toes along the rock contours. It was a difficult maneuver without any gear—on the ground he hadn’t given much consideration to the weight of his pack, boots, and Pulaski. His arms shook, pain piercing his knuckles. He reached higher up into the crack and formed a fist. The skin on his hand pushed tight against the sides. An anatomical cam. It held his weight enough for him to let loose his other hand and shake it.

  Keep moving, Silas. Keep moving.

  He pushed on through the punishing next ten feet. Tasking and too slow. Tran and Peña were sure to beat him. What an idiotic choice. What had he been thinking?

  His radio chirped. “Kent, Adams.”

  He gritted his teeth and depressed the transmit button. “Go ahead.”

  “The fire is about to hit our line. How’s progress?”

  He lowered his head. His nose ran. He rubbed it on his shoulder and reached up again into the crevice. Deep into it his fingers felt wood.

  A root.

  He worked his hand around a root that looked to curl down from the cliff top. He yanked hard and it held firm with his grip.

  He could do this.

  Silas clicked his radio. “More than halfway there.”

  “Copy that. Don’t dally. It’s bumping hard now.”

  Silas worked his way up with one hesitant hand on the root at first, and then as it thickened he quickened his progress by pulling arm over arm, pushing off the granite face with his feet.

  The haze overhead turned a dirty brown, charred wood chips flipping through the air. The root network curved, and soon the grass and earth became broad enough to stand on. He hoisted himself up and crawled to his hands and knees away from the edge. Spot fires from the wind flickered in the grass. The air hung heavy with heat.