Jeannie waved for Connie to go ahead. It would also be an interesting lesson to see exactly what a Night Stalkers master mechanic did, even with something as simple as a preflight. It wasn’t until they had both climbed up to inspect the starboard side engine that Connie made any comment.
“I worked on this airframe.”
“You did?” She had known it was a rebuild of an Army chopper.
“It was a transport bird, got shot up lifting a load out of Kandahar for the 101st. Came down in a little village called Gereshk about twenty kilometers to the west. They flew me out from Kandahar to fix it, didn’t have a lot of spare parts with me. See that clamp?” She pointed down inside the system into the nest of control lines running to the engine. One of them was a different size than the others.
“Yeah…” Was it the sort of thing she should have noticed? No, that was ridiculous.
“That’s a Bell helicopter clamp on a Sikorsky aircraft. Did the job when I needed it to.”
“When was this repair?”
“May 14, 2008, at about ten thirty-five local time.”
“How did you remember that?”
Connie turned to her and tried to change the subject. “You keep a really clean aircraft. Good job.”
Jeannie appreciated the comment, but wasn’t so easily knocked off her question.
“Sorry.” Connie sighed, then spoke reluctantly. “I try not to do that in front of people.”
“No, it doesn’t bother me. I just want to know how or I’m going to feel less competent than I already do.” They climbed back down and continued the inspection of wheels, brake hydraulics, nose cone, and on around to where they started.
“Eidetic memory. Freaks out most people.” Then she smiled for the first time. Connie went from quiet girl next door to a total knockout. She’d better not shine that smile at Cal or he’d be a goner. “My husband likes it, though. Keeps telling me how good I am. He’s the best mechanic in the Night Stalkers. Says I’m better than he is, but he’s just besotted.”
They finished the preflight and Jeannie wondered if that was what was going on. Was Cal “besotted” with her? Surprising, but it fit. And Connie didn’t seem to mind that her husband kept complimenting her.
Connie insisted on climbing in back. “I don’t like being up front on a mission. Not of any kind. Last time I did that, we were in it deep and Emily was bleeding out. I’m not a pilot.” She actually loosened up enough to shudder at the memory. “I’ll be a backender any day.”
No wonder Emily saluted her the way she did. This was a woman who had saved Emily’s life, who got it done when it counted no matter how much out of her comfort zone.
“Glad to have you along.”
Connie glanced briefly toward the coast, thinking hard before answering.
“Let’s hope you still think that when this is all over.”
***
Cal moved to the front seat. All he could think about were the three ignition points. There had to be some clue out there as to what was going on. As a hotshot, he’d often ended up being sent to the ignition point of a fire when no fire investigator was available.
“Hey, Cal,” they’d say, “you’re good at seeing shit. Go check it out.”
Well, more than half the time he could send back photos to the local marshal, who often could declare probable cause right away. It helped accelerate tracking down the culprits quite a bit. He’d go and see if there was an obvious lightning strike—about ten percent of wildfires. More than half were unintentional human cause: runaway campfires, logging operations, discarded cigarette butts, that sort of thing. The rest were arson. Most estimates placed arson at around a third of all wildfires. This first one here in East Timor obviously was. He dreaded what he’d find at the next three. Arson always gave him the chills.
With Connie on the intercom, he felt awkward discussing any of the topics rattling around in his mind. But Connie’s single comment had stuck there and stuck hard: “You can’t imagine what they’re like together. It’s something else.”
Maybe he couldn’t. But he could imagine what he and Jeannie were like together. Not just the sex either, though the level of sheer spectacularity was new for him. Also, he could imagine what she looked like when she was happy and when sad. He couldn’t get enough of seeing her awake or asleep. When she curled against him, seeking him even in her sleep, Jeannie made him feel more male and more capable than any woman ever had before.
The images in his head were overwhelming. He’d often see a picture forming in his mind’s eye before it came together through the lens. That was how he found so many of his photographs. He’d see the image taking shape, and he’d shift his camera to be at the best angle when it showed up.
With Jeannie, every angle formed an amazing image born fully complete. She and Connie clambering over the Firehawk, two beautiful and smart women. He felt the passion and determination that drove Jeannie ahead as hard as she now drove the Firehawk back across the water to the East Timor coast.
He could see her as a woman grown: family, children, joyful. And, strangest of all, he could see himself there as well. He’d never thought much about the future. Mostly he just ran his life from one fire season to the next. He could see them together, feel them together as clearly as he could see what he would find at the other three ignition points.
Reaching across to her, he brushed his fingertips along her cheek, earning a smile he’d never before deserved. Now, in this moment, he’d found a higher calling. Living up to the way Jeannie saw him.
They flashed over the beach and arrowed in on the first fire start, just east of the quiet southern border crossing. With the fiery destruction of the town of Tilomar, the little traffic that used the southern road between Indonesia and East Timor had entirely ceased. The fire had begun down on the coast and quickly climbed up and into the steep hills, chasing out everyone ahead of the flames.
They had to circle twice before Cal could spot the actual point of origin. Carly’s estimate had only been approximate. They landed a few hundred yards away, well into the black.
With Connie’s assistance, he identified the exact ignition point and soon had a set of photos depressingly similar to the first set.
“Different boot, same make.” She didn’t even ask to see his old photo, which was weird.
He had a good memory for images, but not that good. “What…”
“This one has two treads that were torn off near the toe.” She shared a smile with Jeannie, but he had no idea what about. “Probably uncomfortable to walk in.”
Jeannie nodded her agreement.
Women had to be the most confusing creatures on the planet.
Aloft, they climbed up into the steep hills. The two Bombardiers were working this fire, trying to keep it from overrunning Maliana and Bobonaro.
“This feels wrong,” Jeannie said over the intercom as they turned away from the fire and cruised westward over the black.
He reached out a hand and rested it on her left thigh. Her instincts were good, so he began scanning the area more carefully. But he remained aware of their connection, of the little shifts in her thigh as her muscles flexed and relaxed. He also had his feet resting lightly on the pedals, could feel her constant tap dance guiding the chopper.
So in contact with her, so connected. He felt…happy. Could it all be so simple?
“There,” Connie called over the intercom. Eleven o’clock low.
This time there was nowhere for Jeannie to land. She hovered close against a steep slope, allowing Cal and Connie to jump down. She moved back aloft above them as they scrambled downslope to the origin point of the middle fire.
They were ten miles from the first fire’s origin over rugged ground. It would have taken a significant part of a day to make the hike. Yet similar boot prints were here as well. Not a single arsonist, but rather a planned a
ttack. The tiny town of Taz had once stood here where a dry creek entered a small river, but no more. The town was gone.
“No warning.”
“Why do you say that?”
Connie pointed. And that was the moment he was glad Jeannie was still aloft. His mind had been ignoring the smell, charred meat. His gorge rose, but he fought it back as he identified the burned corpses. Two people struck down in mid-flight, three huddled together in the corner of what must once have been a hut, one still sprawled as if they’d never woken from their sleep. He forced himself to take the images. Record the event. Step back behind the camera and not let it touch him. He’d do his damnedest to make sure Jeannie never saw these. She didn’t need these images lodged forever in her mind.
“Over here.” Connie’s voice was cold, almost mechanical. But he was starting to learn to read the quiet woman. It wasn’t lack of emotion or revulsion, it was anger. Her job was to protect, and here were innocents dead from arson. He had a sneaking suspicion that despite her demure exterior, this was not a good woman to have as your enemy.
Cal followed to where she’d indicated. No boot prints this time, but the same incendiary. The difference this time was that there were no mud-brick houses to resist burning any stray accelerant. Any back spray from the igniter caused the buildings behind to burn as well. This time they found the remains of the safety fuse housing.
“Military grade,” Connie declared. “United States manufacture.”
Cal flinched. “Which means—”
“Nothing. We supply military-grade materials to well over a hundred countries including Indonesia, Australia, and East Timor, all of whom have interests in this area.”
“Damn it! What have you gotten us into?”
“I’m not sure. We need to move. Call Jeannie back down.”
There was no need to call. She was already hovering as close as she could get to the bluff by the time they reached it.
Cal didn’t like the reminiscent feel of the jump to get on board. It wasn’t a leap off a cliff to escape a lethal flame; it was only a gap of a couple feet over what had once been a grassy slope. But he still didn’t like it.
At Connie’s refusal of his offer to let her sit up front, he once again clambered forward and buckled in beside Jeannie. Once there, he inspected the third point on the map. It was down near the northern coast. The fourth point of origin was somewhere under the third, now that the wildfire had crossed over it.
“I can’t fly direct line to the Mota’ain crossing,” Jeannie informed him.
Cal looked up at the wall of fire towering ahead of them. It was a staggering sight. Between beating the Suai fire and refocusing their attention on the origin points, they’d only been flying over the black. The black was a world of blacks and grays, of ash and scorch. Small, often inexplicable patches of green survived, but it was a muted world wrapped in thin tendrils of smoke clawing its way up blackened stumps. Where the fires had burned low, due to thinning fuel on the forest floor, green-tufted tree crowns often bobbed lightly in the thin breeze.
But between them and the coast they were once again confronting the heart of the fire. The smoke towered thundercloud tall above them, a study in whites and grays. For moments, some fire-driven wind current would tear open the smoke curtain and a view of flame would flash forth. A Bombardier slashed across Cal’s sight line, tiny against such flames.
He’d seen many hundreds of forest fires over the last ten years and thirty or so that truly deserved the title of wildfire. There was no such distinction really, but that was how they talked about them on the crews. This particular beast was a major player in the “wildfire” category of hotshot-speak. The chaotic winds were tearing trees from the ground and heaving them skyward, rather than merely tossing them aside as the Santa Barbara blaze had done. The fixed-wing water tankers would be avoiding this worst edge. Flame ripped into the sky in sheets, reaching hundreds of feet aloft before finally fading when there was nothing else to burn.
“Indonesia has offered aid,” Connie told them, “so passage over their territory shouldn’t be an issue. Besides, there won’t be anyone but villagers up in these hills on either side of the border to write us a customs violation. Cut west over Indonesia to get around this. We need to see what’s at that third ignition point. Let’s get this done and then get back to the firefight.”
Jeannie swung them due north and laid down the hammer.
Cal inspected Indonesian West Timor as they crossed over the sparse jungle. It was a lowland of valleys and small-scale agriculture. He snapped a few photos; nothing much there, but it gave him something to do while they were in transit. There was just—
“Connie. Look out the port side, quick.”
“What am I looking at?”
“Doesn’t the jungle look wrong there? Jeannie, circle back.” He leaned out again and shot a series of images as he did so. “The greens don’t match. And it looks denser.” He slid his zoom all the way out and studied the viewer.
“It’s not jungle. That’s jungle camo netting.”
Something caught his eye and he snapped the image, then scrolled back to it. “I have some sort of an emblem. Golden eagle. Looks like it has a red and white shield over its chest.”
“Jeannie! Get us out of here!” Connie’s order was cut off by an abrupt pounding against the Firehawk’s airframe.
Moments later, Cal heard a sound he’d never heard outside of a movie, a machine gun firing. Really close. He spun around to see Connie squatting in the open cargo-bay door. The case she’d loaded aboard was open beside her, and a nasty-looking weapon was raised to her shoulder. A stream of brass casings was arcing into the back of the chopper as everything shifted into slow motion.
Jeannie turning the chopper back toward East Timor, the deck tilting sharply.
Connie hooking a leg over the edge of the cargo-bay deck to hold herself in place as she continued firing.
He tried searching for the source, even as the chopper spun. There! Someone had thrown back some of the camouflage exposing a military crawler of some sort, though it didn’t look like a tank. He managed several shots of it and the dual machine guns on its back before it disappeared from view.
“Cal!”
He barely heard Jeannie’s call over the scream of Connie’s weapon and more bullets thwacking against the chopper from the ground.
“Yeah?”
“Take the cyclic.”
He jammed his camera into his case and grabbed the controls. They jerked abruptly in the air as he did so. He didn’t think he’d jarred them, but his adrenaline was running so high he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
“You have control.”
“I what?” Cal looked over in time to see Jeannie take her hands off the controls.
Then she reached her left hand to her right arm and it came away red. She reached her bloodstained left hand out toward him practically in supplication.
“Okay. I’ve got the controls.” He had no idea what he was doing. But he’d seen enough injuries on fires to know that it was up to the uninjured to keep their heads. “Clamp your hand over where you were…hit.” He couldn’t say shot.
The pounding and Connie’s firing cut off simultaneously.
“Keep driving ahead,” Connie shouted.
“Uh…sure.” He pushed the cyclic farther forward, tipping the nose down. Then he slowly raised the collective, making the rotor blades twist to bite more air, create more lift. He watched the airspeed, and they accelerated without getting any closer to the ground.
“That’s good, Cal.”
He almost cried out in relief at hearing Jeannie’s words.
“Cal?” Connie stuck her head up between the seats.
“That’s Captain Cal to you.” If he didn’t make a joke about it, he’d lose what little grip he had on what was happening.
“What the hell?” Connie’s question came out with a military snap, a side she hadn’t revealed before.
“Jeannie’s hit.” Cal had a sudden desire to turn around and ram the chopper down the throat of whoever had done that to her. Might have considered it, if he’d thought they had a chance of surviving him actually making a turn. Straight and level was freaking him out badly enough.
“Where and how bad?” Connie was leaning way forward.
“My arm,” Jeannie gasped out. “No pumping blood, but I think the bone’s broken. Oh my God, but it hurts. Cal!”
Her cry tore at him. He’d seen Jeannie in dozens of moods and imagined a hundred others. Fear was not one he’d ever contemplated. He almost panicked when he heard it. Almost reached for her. But he couldn’t and he’d never felt so helpless. He wanted to howl himself. Sweat was pouring off him, blinding his eyes, but he didn’t dare wipe them. The sweat made his hands slick on the controls. He instinctively wanted to grip the controls tighter to make sure they didn’t slip, but Jeannie had taught him that was bad.
The few gauges he thought he’d understood now blurred into the dozens he didn’t until he could make sense of none of them. The fear was right on the cusp of overwhelming him. He knew that feeling. Knew he’d walked that line before, every time he’d gone past that second step and out toward the third.
Fear. He’d been trained. There were ways to turn fear. When a rookie faced his first inferno or, worse, his first burnover. When you faced the trap, just like he had up on that ridge above Santa Barbara where Jeannie had rescued him. Where Jeannie—that was the answer.
“Okay, Helitack. I need you to focus. If we’re gonna get through this, you better start telling me what to do.” Focus on the job if you want a chance to get through it. The only way out of fear was also their one chance of survival: take action.
“Come on, Jeannie,” he coaxed her, doing the best he could to keep his voice light despite what was going on inside him. “You got me out on this limb. Don’t leave me out here.”
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