When they hit the blue sky, her heart restarted.
Now, as she banked, headed around for another run, Jared used a word her pastor father wouldn’t approve of and actually made a grab for the controls. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Those are my jumpers down there.”
“You know these wings could rip right off—I’ve seen it happen. This old Russian Annie is a tin can of rivets and patches. If we go down there again, we die.”
“If we don’t, our friends die,” she said, her voice tight. “We’ve already had too many close calls this summer.” She didn’t bring up the tragedy from last fall, the one that killed seven smokejumpers.
The price of living in a wildland firefighting town—you grew up with and knew the people who put their lives on the line. Friends who died gruesome, horrific deaths when the flames trapped them.
She might not be a smokejumper, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t down there with her team. She’d dropped them off—and she planned on getting them all back in one piece.
“Stop and think for a second before you get us killed!” Jared snarled, finally fighting on her team to control the plane as it bucked and kicked its way into the canyon. “What are you trying to prove?”
That was a question for a different day. But even if she hadn’t made it as a jumper, she did possess one talent that might keep her friends alive.
She wasn’t afraid to fly into what felt like hell to save the people she loved.
“I’m going to bring us along the edge, then bank right, use the left rudder and slide slip down into the canyon. That way we’ll avoid the gusts coming from the center of the fire. Then I’ll bank hard again and release the load, roll right, and we’ll fly out back over the ridge. Okay?”
She didn’t look at Jared, her gaze instead on the fifty-plus-foot trees near the summit of the ridge. They crowned with brilliant red flame, the fire most definitely having jumped the service road.
Heat enveloped the plane, the smoke black, blinding. The controls of the old Russian tanker shimmied in her grip as she forced the plane through the ridgeline updrafts. Jared’s words flashed in her brain. She’d seen bombers—especially the old DC-6s—come apart under the violent gusts of a fire, and Jared was right. The forty-year-old plane had seen better years.
The world’s largest single-engine biplane, the Annie was made to survive in the Siberian wilderness. But it was all they had, and frankly, she would have flapped her arms carrying a bucket of water if it meant saving lives.
“Gilly, clearly you’re not listening.” Beck snapped over the radio. “But you’re flying blind up there. Let me help you—I’ll tell you when to release.”
She found his little lead plane, an OV-10 Bronco, off her right side. She could nearly make him out in the observation canopy, probably glaring at her.
“Roger, but we need it right in the pocket, Beck.”
She glanced at her airspeed—one hundred forty-five knots. Slow enough to spread out her drop, make it effective enough for Reuben and the team to escape, but hopefully fast enough for the kinetic energy to affect her lift and bank.
But it wouldn’t work at all, however, if she lost a wing.
Please, God.
She wasn’t ashamed to pray for help, especially when it meant saving others.
“Ready, Jared?” He’d better have his hand on the red release button.
She spotted the road, downslope three hundred yards ahead. Flames engulfed it, and a fist hit her gut as she nudged the rudder left. The plane slid down the ridgeline—too fast, perhaps—but she suddenly leveled out and aimed for the road.
A washboard of air currents jolted hard, ramming them against their restraints, tightened down so hard she might have the seat folds imprinted in her bones.
Her stomach rose to her throat, filled it with bile. C’mon, Annie, hold together. The air inside the cockpit reeked of campfire, burning resin, and oils.
From the air, the breadth of the fire could turn her weak. As she flew along the edge of the ridge, flame and ash, gray and black smoke billowed into the blue sky now bruised with the fading sun. Below in the canyon, a pit of ashes glowed red, as if the land had been raked by the breath of a dragon. It cast an eerie aura into the twilight.
And into that furnace ran her people.
Gilly glanced at her instruments.
“You’re nearly there, Five-Three—” Beck’s voice, steady in her ear.
“Ten seconds, Jared,” she said, her eyes on the road, the finest parting of forest before smoke obscured it.
Please, God, let me hit this right.
She counted down, then, “Now!”
Her words echoed Beck’s, and Jared thumbed the drop switch.
The AN-2 released her load onto the forest. A plume of white smoke rose, engulfing them, and the windscreen turned white.
Jared let out a word, that yes, put a fine point on the fact they could be aiming straight for a mountain ridge and not know it.
“Help me with the yoke!” Gilly pulsed it back as she goosed the throttle.
The heated air shuddered the plane, the updrafts throwing it into a roll. The airplane shook with such violence, she couldn’t make out the instruments. She banked hard, flying blind while her plane rattled apart around her.
“Five-Three, I’ve lost you!” Beck’s voice.
Gilly fought to hold her bank into the blue, but the wind currents raked the plane, the airframe whining.
“She’s coming apart!”
With a shriek, the metal twisted. The aircraft recoiled in the air, as if jolted.
“We hit something!”
Maybe. Whatever happened, they’d lost lift on the right side, the plane pitching over. She rolled the yoke to counter, her brain fighting through checklists to keep them airborne. “Check the wing!”
Jared stared out the window. “It’s the lower right wing—it’s partially sheared off and dangling!”
Which meant, with the weight and drag, the entire wing might detach.
“METO power on—all the way, Jared! We need to get out of this chop.” Probably he’d already turned the “maximum except takeoff” setting on full.
Her arms ached with the tension of holding the plane out of the roll. They burst out into a patch of blue, and for a second she got a good look at their tragedy. The lower right wing of the biplane lay in shreds, probably caught on one of the flaming lodgepole pines at the top of the ridge.
They didn’t have enough lift to keep climbing out of the canyon.
But they might make the lake. Over the ridge and back into the canyon, she could practically cut the engine and glide them in.
With the plane on floats, she could save the plane.
“We’re setting her down in Fountain Lake.”
“What? You’re crazy, Gilly Priest. On a bright sunny day, maybe, with the wind at our back. But you’re already fighting to stay at altitude. We’ll never make it over the ridge.”
“We’re going down the other side, through the—”
“Don’t say fire.”
She looked at him. A three-year veteran, Jared was used to flying bigger planes, like the Lockheed Hercules 130, the kind that dropped slurry from higher altitudes with double engines and multiple loads, so if they didn’t get it right the first time...
But Gilly preferred the smaller, more aerodynamic planes like her Otter, which she used for dropping off her jumpers.
“We can do this,” she said.
“Have you lost your mind? Even if we survive another run into the canyon without busting apart, the sun is nearly down—there’s no way you’ll be able to judge the distance to land on the water. Please stop trying to kill us!” Jared unstrapped himself.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m jumping. There’s a reason we have chutes—”
“We’re not jumping.” She said it quietly, her decision made years ago. Besides, she wasn’t ditching her plane—not when she’d worked so hard to fin
ally be more than a glorified taxi driver. Sure, the Jude County Smokejumpers considered her a part of the smokejumping team, but they all knew—even if they didn’t say it—that she wasn’t one of them. Not brave enough, not strong enough, and certainly not risking her life with them.
But now that she had her rating as a bomber pilot, she could support them from the sky. Be a real teammate, finally.
And she certainly wasn’t going to crash on day one.
Jared had found the chutes. “C’mon. We’re going.” He stormed back up to the cockpit. “Now.”
“No!” Her arms burned, her eyes watering from the smoke that wheedled its way into the cockpit. “I’m not jumping.” Better to say, she couldn’t jump, but she didn’t have time for that now. “If you want to jump you can, but I’m staying here.”
The ridge approached, flames licking along the top. “But you’d better do it now, before we’re over the fire again.”
“Bomber Five-Three, suggest you bail.” Beck’s voice came through the line. “You’re losing altitude; you’re drifting back over the fire.”
Silence as she fought the wind currents.
“Now or never!” Jared snapped. “Let’s go!”
Frankly, she could use Jared’s help on the yoke to keep the plane from rolling, or worse, stalling and pancaking them right onto the side of the ridge.
But she wasn’t going to beg for help. That’s the last thing she needed—if they survived—a reputation for not being able to handle the plane on her own.
Jared threw down the chutes with another dark word and slid into the copilot seat. “Fine. This better work.”
She angled them back over the ridge, into the smoke, but she had a bead on the lake, rippling crimson and burnt orange under the setting sun and the glow of the flames. “I can get us there.”
“I’m never flying with you again.” Jared had strapped himself in again, his voice tight.
She didn’t want to cheer, but...
Their airspeed barely held at one forty-five, the canyon floor rising, a bed of embers. Flares shot into the sky, igniting the smoky horizon.
Please, God—let the jumpers have gotten to the lake.
She knew Reuben—at least what he let them all know of him—and the panic in his voice over the radio just before she dropped her tank shook her.
Not prone to emotion, Reuben, if anyone, could get the team to safety. Something about him exuded strength. Power. And it wasn’t just his size. Yes, as sawyer for the team, he had the girth of one of those bulls he rode off-season, was probably six foot two, had ropy, wide shoulders, and a solid pack of muscles from carrying his chainsaw around the forest. But he also had a quiet, get-’er-done spirit about him.
If only she didn’t have the kind of baggage that kept her at arm’s length from men, especially big ones like Rube, they might be friends.
She knew better than to get tangled up with a smokejumper. Not only that, but aside from the occasional thank you when she let him sit in the copilot seat, she barely registered on his radar.
What did she expect? She certainly wasn’t the kind of girl who attracted male attention.
Anymore.
They were close enough to the falling edge of the ridge to watch the candling effect—flames climbing up eighty-foot lodgepole pines only to burst into flame at the crown, the fire leaping from treetop to treetop.
“You’d better call in the emergency, tell them we’re putting down into the lake.”
“Roger.” Jared snapped.
The plane sank lower as she throttled forward, listening to him call in their sit rep. She dropped them toward the lake, the plane washboarding over the air currents, her arm aching with the jarring.
The fire had now consumed any remnant of the road, a storm of flame below.
Jared finished calling in their position.
Beck came on the line. “Your entire lower wing is hanging by a thread. You lose that, you lose the plane.”
“That’s a helpful bit of advice,” she said into her headset. “Jared, run the before-landing checklist.”
They’d fallen to fifty feet above the tops of the trees, the flames shooting sparks against their windshield. The rutting of the plane could jackhammer her teeth from her skull.
No wonder her sisters had cornered her at the beginning of the summer, offered her—yet again—a position at their bakery.
She might choose making cupcakes over flying a rattletrap Russian Annie over a sea of flames.
Or not.
Because as the plane cleared the edge of the forest, dropping toward the platinum-and-orange-lit waters of Fountain Lake, she couldn’t escape it—this feeling of triumph sluicing through her.
“Flaps thirty,” Jared said, his tone biting.
“Flaps coming to thirty.”
Gilly used all her remaining strength to keep the plane steady as they broke free of the fire’s windstorm. The sudden change in pressure dropped them ten feet, and if she hadn’t been strapped in, she might have hit the roof of the cockpit.
“Geez—flaps forty!” Jared yelled.
“Roger, forty.”
Landing a plane on water required just a bit more finesse, the attitude of the plane sharper, the speeds lower, so as not to nose into the water. She throttled back to one-thirty, slowing as they drifted down.
In the encroaching darkness, she fought to gauge the distance to the surface. Choppy and white-capped, it would be a bumpy put-down.
Please, Lord, don’t let the wing catch before we hit the water.
She nosed the aircraft up, fighting the drag of the plane, searching for something that might give her a reliable distance check.
“We’re going to cartwheel!” Jared said. “I swear, if we live through this—”
“Shut up, Jared.”
There—a streak of orange from the flames lit the dark water. She did a rough estimate, throttled back, nosed up.
She glanced at Jared. He sat in white-knuckled silence.
They hit the water with a jolt. Water sprayed against the window, off the floats of the plane. They bounced hard, skipped, and landed again. She kept forward pressure on the controls to stop the plane from bouncing along on the back of the floats.
The lower wing nicked the water, jerked the plane, and nearly nosed them down. Gilly kept the attitude up and righted them.
Still, as they settled into the water, the wing caught, whipping them around.
A wave pitched them up, threatened to flip them.
“Retract flaps!”
Jared braced his hand on the ceiling but somehow retracted the flaps. The plane slammed back onto the water.
Gilly cut the power, not wanting to encourage another near flip, her heart in the back of her throat.
“Lower water rudders.”
The addition of the rudders stabilized them, and for a second they rode the waves, rocking in the water.
Then she simply tasted her adrenaline pooling in her chest, felt the hammering of her heartbeat in the purple light of the cabin.
Silence fell like a rock between them.
Only then did she realize she couldn’t move her hands—stiff and hard, affixed to the yoke.
Finally, “I don’t know whether to hate you or kiss you,” Jared said.
Kiss her? Hardly, even if she couldn’t exactly remember the last time she’d been kissed.
Oh, wait...yes she did.
“Keep your lips to yourself.” She unwound her hands from the yoke, eased the burning from them, and looked over to shore.
Only then did she spot the group of smokejumpers silhouetted against the bright flame of the forest. A forest service boat had pulled up to shore, clearly on site to pluck them off the beach.
She did a quick count, then her gaze landed on a form standing slightly apart from the group. Tall, broad shouldered, he stood as a darkened, soot-covered sentry against the maelstrom of the fire. Even without his saw, and thirty feet away, she knew him, could feel the intensity of
his gaze, the way he stared out over the waters at her.
Reuben Marshall.
And for the barest of seconds, everything dropped away—the fear roiling in her gut, the tension lining her shoulders, the deep, rooted ache of failure, desperation, and longing.
Leaving only a queer breath of peace, the slightest sense of right.
The unexpected stir of warmth in her chest.
Then Jared let out a long sigh, jarring her free. “Now what? Swim to shore?”
“No,” she said, unstrapping herself. She opened the window, waved to the boat now turning its light to them. “We join our team and catch our ride home.”
Chapter 2
Just when a girl saved lives, she got benched. Or at least that’s how it felt from Gilly’s perch at the dispatch bench in the Ember Fire Base.
The weather map displayed satellite heat signatures with live updates of the dying fire, and another map on the wall pinpointed with tacks the current location of the deployed Jude County Hotshot teams, along with members of the Bitterroot, Lolo, and Flathead hotshot teams.
The wind had finally died, turned in their favor, and with a sortie of bombing runs, they’d managed to stop the fire just over the ridge, kicking it into submission.
Monday night’s storm—not a drenching, but enough to slow the fire down—worked in their favor too. Now, with the teams doing mop-up, packing up their gear, and heading home, everyone hoped the fire season might be dying. With two weeks left before Labor Day, maybe they could end the season without any more flare-ups.
Which meant her flying season was over.
Gilly tried not to let that sink into her like a stone, tried not to glance over at the flight list hanging on the wall next to the hotshot dispatch list, again searching for her name.
Which wasn’t there.
Thank you, oh, so much, Jared. Although, the man hadn’t been back in the cockpit once since their put-down in Fountain Lake nearly a week ago, so maybe she’d rattled him more than she’d thought.
It couldn’t have come as a surprise. Firebombing was one of the most dangerous professions within the firefighting community.
Still, she could admit to being unnerved when she’d gotten a good look at the damage to the Annie as they’d dragged the biplane from the lake, put her on a truck, and ferried her back to the base.
Burnin' For You: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 3) Page 2