“Roger that. We’re thirty minutes out.”
No need to acknowledge that either way. Thirty minutes to this fire could easily mean thirty more acres.
“Are we okay to head back?” Josh took them back aloft.
“I suppose,” Tim ached to get down to the fire, but there was no way and he didn’t have his gear or a team. “Nothing else we can do from up here.”
Then, moments later, they flew over the valley where Macy’s helicopter lay.
She’d said an hour to fix it.
Tim twisted in his seat to stare at the fire beyond the tail of the plane. It was too early for it to develop much of a smoke plume, but he’d been right. This dried-out landscape was going to make for a very angry and fast-moving fire. The steady westerly wind was going to work like a bellows on the flames.
Josh also twisted in his seat to look behind them and then back down at his daughter before turning to Tim. His wide eyes behind the goggles said that Josh could see the bad news, too.
Tim tapped his earpiece and Josh nodded as soon as he had the radio reset to the general aviation frequency.
“Hi Mace. Tim here. How is that repair going?” He kept his tone light. No point in scaring civilians, even when they were civilians as competent as Macy Tyler.
“Faster if you weren’t interrupting me.” Her voice was a laugh and a caress.
“You always were too cute for your own good.”
“I’m not cute, I’m beautiful. I know because you told me.”
“You’re both,” he wasn’t about to argue. “How long?”
“Slow. I’m guessing closer to two hours. Be easier if there was more than one of me. Now leave me alone. I have work to do.”
They flew in silence for a long moment before Josh asked him over the intercom, “Does she have two hours?”
Tim shook his head and tried not to pound the dash in frustration. “Where’s the nearest parachute? At the hangar? That’s over twenty minutes round trip. Or Fairbanks…” which was closer to an hour and made him feel positively ill.
“Nope,” Josh sounded oddly pleased.
“Where then?” He’d always known that nobody in the Tyler household could answer a straight question with a straight answer.
“When I rebuilt the Stearman, I wanted her to be as authentic as possible, but I didn’t want to scare the passengers.”
“And…” Tim ground his teeth.
“Pilots would wear parachutes when they flew these kites. Me? I stowed them under the seats. You’re sitting on one.”
Tim reached down and wrapped his fingers around a thick, plastic-wrapped package. He pulled it out and recognized the brand as one of the top ram-air chutes available.
“If you were a woman, Josh, I’d marry you right now!” Tim scrabbled open the package and began wrestling his way into the harness.
“If you marry my daughter, I expect we’ll both call it good.”
Tim froze with the harness buckled around one leg and the opposite shoulder.
“If I—” was all he managed because his lungs had stopped working as well.
Suddenly there was no air flow to his voice or oxygen to his brain. He felt as if he was floating and the Stearman was in a long, weightless dive that would leave him crashed upon the earth.
“If I—” he tried again with just as little success.
“Oops! Sorry.” Josh Tyler didn’t sound the least bit sorry.
Tim resumed his struggle to get into the harness in a confined space. Once he managed it, he turned again to glare at Josh in the cockpit behind him.
Josh handed him a portable radio.
“Now go down there and get the girl we both love home safe.”
Tim nodded and double-checked his gear.
“Hank packed the chutes for me.”
“He’s good. Take me in at two thousand feet up and along the ridgeline to the west above Mace.” When Josh nodded, Tim pulled off his headset to the plane’s intercom. The roar of the radial engine became gigantic and the wind an equally solid roar.
He eyed the smoke plume. It had reached a few thousand feet but still wouldn’t be visible from down in Macy’s valley, yet. His early assessment had been right. This terrain was going to burn fast and hot.
Tim clambered out of the cockpit and stepped onto the wing, staying crouched so that he didn’t bang his head on the upper wing. He moved to the trailing edge of the wing and held onto the edge of Josh’s cockpit.
“Never thought I’d have a wing walker,” Josh shouted at him. “Makes me feel like the old barnstorming days. That would have been fun.” The man had an innate cheerfulness, one of the many gifts he’d passed on to his children.
Then he rested a hand on Tim’s, “You’ve come long way since third grade. You’re a good man.”
The gesture. The kindness from a man who’d lost his son and was now trusting his daughter’s safety into Tim’s hands had him shifting his weight from foot to foot in his low squat.
Josh glanced ahead, then raised his hand to flash: five, four…
“Thanks, Mister Tyler,” he did his best to make it sound like third-grader awe.
A glance over his shoulder and he could spot the ridge and Macy’s helo.
Josh’s countdown timing was close.
Tim faced the stern, made sure he knew where the Stearman’s empennage was so that he didn’t jump into a piece of the tail, and reminded himself that he had to pull his own ripcord—no static lines on a Stearman.
Josh flashed one and then a fist.
Tim waited an extra second for the best timing and then tumbled off the wing in a tuck-roll that would guarantee he lost enough altitude before the tail caught up with him. The roar of the plane was gone and he enjoyed a moment flying free in the streaming wind. Then he popped the chute and circled down toward Macy.
She stopped work to stare up at him with a fist on one hip and the other hand shading her eyes.
He took one last look at the smoke plume, which hadn’t changed in the previous ten seconds, and then it disappeared from sight as he descended into the valley.
The steady westerly wind had pushed him out over the center of the valley as he’d planned. But down in the gut of it, the breezes were a little chaotic. Nothing like when jumping a fire, so he managed to land neatly close beside the broken LongRanger.
Macy picked her way over the rocks as he gathered and stuffed the chute back in the bag.
“That eager to see me, huh?”
Tim was a little surprised at just how true that was. Macy painted a picture in her boots, jeans, and tight t-shirt that proclaimed: Helicopter Pilot, because Badass isn’t an official job title. Her hair caught in the wind and her smile caught in the sunlight. A smudge of grease on her right cheek and a Bell LongRanger helicopter parked in the wilderness for a backdrop. She belonged here. Right here. She took his breath away.
“That eager to see you? Nah. Just figured you’d be lost without a guy’s help.”
She snorted out a laugh and he kissed her.
Time was precious, a fire was coming, but some things took priority. He was kissing the woman he loved and she was kissing him back in a way that left no doubt to her answer. Things changed after you said you loved someone.
Their kisses had ranged from initially tentative to brain-numbing, body-jolting erotic. But now Tim noticed everything, the way she sighed as she moved against him, the way her hair smelled of the Alaskan outdoors and the way his hands felt where they wrapped around her waist, as if they’d been formed to hold this specific woman.
“If we can find a soft patch of grass, this repair may take three hours,” she murmured when he finally released her.
That snapped him back to reality, “We have less than one.”
“We what?” her voice was still hazy from the kiss as his would
be if he hadn’t seen what was going on over the ridge.
As if in answer, the radio on his hip crackled to life, “Tim, this is Hank. We’re airborne in ten. One of the SEATs is down for maintenance. I’ve put out a call for Macy Tyler for backup, but haven’t been able to reach her yet. I left a voice mail.”
Macy squinted up at Tim in alarm.
“Roger, Hank. I’ve got her here, outside of cell service. She’s had a mechanical failure; we’re trying to get her airborne. You’ll see us when you arrive, we’re in the valley due east of the blaze. Set up on the ridgeline immediately to the west of Macy’s position; it’s going to be our first hold point and it’ll be a scramble to make it work. As soon as we have Macy’s helo repaired, I’ll send her for her bucket.”
Macy mouthed, “A fire?” while he was talking to Hank.
He nodded, pointed west, swung his arm to show it growing.
“Your smokejumper gear is still in the back of my helo,” she whispered. “I forgot to return it the other day.”
He squeezed her shoulder in thanks and continued talking to Hank, “Also, I have basic gear, but I could use a full harness and a shelter. Oh, and a Pulaski fire axe.”
“Full kit. Got it. Out,” and Hank was gone.
“We need you aloft, Mace, so lets get some hustle on.”
“You seemed to have a lot of time to spare for that kiss,” she complained as they hurried back over the rocks toward the LongRanger.
“I thought you’d be happy that I had my priorities straight,” he followed after her. This time it didn’t bother him in the slightest as he appreciated the tight jeans she wore.
“Best kiss of my life. A wildfire on its way to kill my helicopter. Hmm,” Macy made a considering hum as they reached the broken helo, but she didn’t sound too displeased with his choice.
# # #
Macy appreciated Tim’s help. The broken part was inside the top of the helicopter, close beside the main rotor assembly. She’d have had to run down to the ground a dozen different times for a tool or waste time scrounging through her spares pouch for a washer or some other small part. With Tim’s help she was able to sit here and work; and try not to think about the fire crawling toward them.
One nice thing about Tim was that he listened to her—something Billy had never done. And let her take the lead, which he’d also done any number of times while they’d been making love—yet another black mark against Billy.
She finally managed to pop free the last bushing on the broken linkage, it had been badly bent when it failed and she’d been trying desperately to get a control response as she’d autorotated down into the steep-walled valley.
Macy wondered what she’d seen in Billy to begin with. About all he had going for him was that he was tall…
“Oh shit!”
“What?” Tim rushed up to her from where he’d been digging the smokejumper gear out of the rear baggage compartment.
“I just figured out why I almost married Billy Wilkins.”
“You did what?” Tim’s shock sounded deep and profound.
“Your mom never told you?” No. Obviously not. Her son was gone from Alaska; what would be the point. “He was a…I don’t know. An aberration in judgment.” And she wasn’t going to mention, that he’d been almost the exact height and build of Tim Harada. The only things the two men had in common.
“You almost married someone?”
“Maybe I should warn you, I broke his nose and busted out a couple of teeth on the altar.”
“I’m forewarned. Any particular reason?”
Macy held the new part in place and considered the best order to install it. This end first, “Could you hand me the tube of grease from the toolkit and a pair of needle-nose pliers.”
Tim dug them out and reached up to her perch atop the LongRanger to slap them into her hand surgeon style.
“How do you feel about three ways?” she made her voice Billy Wilkins’ low and stupid, but of course Tim being Tim took the question at face value.
“Three-way whats?”
If Macy wasn’t greasy and racing a wildfire to save her helo, she’d go down and kiss him right now.
“Oh, you mean like…” he trailed off and eyed her carefully.
She kept her attention on the repair and waited to see where he went with it.
“I guess… I mean… I was always a fan of the one man-one woman idea. If I’m with someone, it’s them I want to be paying attention to… Not…”
Macy considered going down and doing more than just kissing him, but there simply wasn’t time.
“I…” he tried once more to speak in a fit of caution.
She finally decided to let him off the hook, “Good. Because if you love me, I want it to be me that you love. I’m selfish that way.”
“I do love you,” Tim insisted without a hint of caution in his voice. He handed her the cotter pin to anchor the part in place. Then he must have connected the pieces of her question and burst out laughing. “Which explains the bloody nose on the altar.”
“Broken nose. And missing teeth,” Macy corrected him and slid in the cotter pin and bent it with the needle-nose pliers. “And I love you.”
That stopped her repair job. She had to sit there for a moment and make sure she could still breathe. Getting dizzy and falling off the top of her helicopter would hurt on these rocks.
“Wow!” she remarked when she was sure she was still conscious and functioning. “I see why you swore, Tim. Those words slip out so easily when they’re true.”
“I noticed that myself.”
They traded smiles. He brushed a hand over her foot where it dangled down the side of the helicopter, and then began stripping off his clothes.
Macy allowed herself the time to watch him peel down to his underwear. Mostly naked in the wilderness, Tim Harada was a revelation. Whack her on the head with a club and drag her into the nearest cave. His body wasn’t merely a beautiful example of male fitness, it drew her right down to the very core.
She was definitely going to have to bring him out into the wilderness…when there wasn’t a wildfire thinking about cooking them for lunch. Macy went back to work, but couldn’t help glancing over at Tim as he transformed once more before her eyes—this time into serious dude in his Nomex armor ready to face the flaming beast.
# # #
“Got you in sight, buddy,” Hank called down as the Sherpa C-23 jump plane buzzed by over the valley.
“Still look like the ridge is the place?” Tim handed up some more tools to Macy, willing her fingers to move faster—not that they probably could have. The girl…the woman was putting on some serious hustle; competence rolled off her in waves.
“Ridge is definitely our best shot, but you weren’t kidding about we need to hurry. We’re jumping now. You better get Macy’s bird out of there and fast.”
“Can’t rush perfection,” Macy called down to him from where she was still working.
He didn’t pass on the comment.
Tim eyed the valley wall. He didn’t want to leave Macy’s side until she was airborne, but it was going to take a good half hour to climb out of here and get up to the fight.
“Do me a favor, Tim?”
“Sure, Mace.”
“Turn on the battery switch and run out about sixty feet of winch cable.”
He circled around to the pilot’s door and leaned in. Her coat was draped over the back of the pilot’s seat and, though it felt oddly voyeuristic, he couldn’t resist leaning in to smell her on it and brush his hand down the sleeve.
He flipped the switch then pressed the Down button on the winch control. He laid out the cable on the ground as it unspooled.
“What do you need this for?”
“To get you to where you need to be as soon as I get this bird up and running.”
Tim looked up at the smoke plume now streaming thickly over the valley. The first curl of smoke slid down into the valley, smelling warm and homey like walking down Parisian Way along a frozen Larch Creek on a cold Arctic night and smelling the wood smoke from everyone’s chimneys.
And then the next curl of smoke brought the scent of burning brush, leaves, and the sharp bite of sap fired off like a million firecrackers and scorching the air.
The Sherpa C-23 returned with its twin plane close behind. Small black dots separated from the plane and parachutes bloomed into being across the smoky sky. He counted five sticks of jumpers and two pallets of gear out of each plane. Twenty smokies and their gear.
“Tell me you’re close, Mace. Tell me you’re real close.”
In answer, she began tossing down tools as fast as he could catch them and chuck them into the box. She pulled out a flashlight and shone it around.
“Nothing left behind?”
“That’s what I’m checking, numbskull.” She tossed down the grease tube, then waved an open hand at him. “Come on, Tim. I need the engine cowling.”
He grabbed the big piece of sheet metal and tried not to scream in frustration while she drove in screws around the edges with a small electric driver.
“Catch me!” And she slid down the side of the LongRanger nowhere near him and landed feet first on the rocky bank of the stream. “Some boyfriend you are. You were supposed to catch me.” And she was gone even faster than her teasing smile.
She circled the helo quickly doing a safety check before slipping into the pilot’s seat.
Tim had snapped a lifting collar to the hook at the end of the winch line. It was a simple padded donut never used for rescuing an untrained civilian, because they couldn’t be trusted. But by putting his head and arms through, then lowering his arms, he was anchored solidly in place for a lift.
“Hope to god this works,” Macy muttered as she began cranking the engine.
“I heard that.”
“You weren’t supposed to, boyfriend.”
“Heard that too. Is that what I am?” The two-bladed rotor began to lumber its way around in a circle. Ten seconds for the first blade to go by, five for the second, then two for the first one again.
Wildfire at Larch Creek Page 13