Trent whirled on him. “Thank you so very much for reminding me!” He shook his head in disgust. “As if I don’t have enough pressure.”
“You’re welcome,” Simmons said evenly. “I just wasn’t sure you understood that Jerry always demands instant reports and instant good news fixes when the fit hits the shan.”
Trent ignored him as pointedly as he could.
Andy shrugged and smiled. “I’ve been with him a long time, Trent. He’s probably fired me and rehired me more times than you latched on to your mom’s nipples as a kid.”
“I wasn’t breast-fed, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Aha! So that’s why you’re such a mean sonofabitch.”
“Shut up, Simmons.”
“Yassir, Mr. Boss Man.”
Trent began walking around the back of the engine again, his eyes scanning every exposed surface of the machinery.
“You think we’ve got a twisted or broken shaft in there?” Trent asked.
“I can’t answer you. I’m supposed to shut up, remember?” Andy replied, eliciting exactly the explosion he was looking for as Jones threw a rag on the ground and shook a finger at him.
“Dammit, Simmons! This is NOT the day for your comedy club audition, okay? I want your damned professional opinion.”
“No.”
“Don’t you friggin tell me no!”
“I meant, ‘No, I don’t think the shaft is compromised,’” Andy said with exaggerated innocence.
“Oh.”
“But we have to tear ’er down to be sure, Trent.”
“Can’t we clean it up and bench test it?”
“Nope. It’s a tear down. That’s the bottom line. I don’t know how long she ran with only two blades beating her up, but even a few seconds can do a lot of damage, and even though that fire was obviously oil-fed, the heat may have finished her off.”
Trent sighed. “Stein will never accept that expense.”
“Maybe not, but if she’s toast, as you called it, she’s toast. I can’t work magic. But somehow I suspect you already know that.”
There was no answer since the sight of Jerry Stein’s Lear 23 on final approach had commandeered Trent’s full attention.
Chapter 6
AIR OPERATIONS, WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT ATTACK BASE
Precisely when his thinking was hijacked by the burning need to visit the crash site personally, Clark wasn’t sure.
He’d left the battered form of Tanker 84 to the panicked mechanics and walked across the grass and the single runway toward the Forest Service ramp. A soft wind was whipping at him as he approached three of Jerry Stein’s small helicopters parked on the south end of the Stein Aviation property.
The fact that he might have just cheated death limping back to base in a crippled, burning old airliner seemed more of an embarrassment than a cause for celebration.
Not that he wasn’t happy to be alive.
It was the fact that Jeff Maze and his copilot hadn’t been as lucky.
The freeze-framed image of the crash site he’d mentally recorded from a thousand feet up hours before seemed pitifully insufficient as an acknowledgment of their demise. Especially since, in some ways, they had died in his place. Not for a minute had he been able to forget the fact that Tanker 86 was supposed to have been his.
There but for the grace of God, go I, he thought to himself, rolling the phrase over in his mind to see the full horror reflected in the polished surface of its meaning.
I need to be there, he decided suddenly, his eyes focusing on the Jet Rangers ahead. His many years as a rated helicopter pilot made the decision simple.
Clark walked into the Operations building with Rusty in tow, instantly chagrined by the hearty round of applause and the backslaps. These were his colleagues. Pilots. Fellow airmen. Friends—some more so than others—but all of them needing to trivialize any near-death aerial experience, toasting the successful recovery as if the experience were nothing more lethal than a football game snatched from defeat in the last seconds of the fourth quarter.
And after the loss of Jeff Maze and Mike Head just a few hours before, the home team desperately needed a win—as the hastily wiped tears from several otherwise leathery faces clearly attested.
When the uncomfortable congratulatory air had subsided and the normal beehive of activity resumed, Clark quietly moved away to find one of Rich Lassiter’s assistants on the crew desk, leaving Rusty with his hands flailing the air as he related the emergency once more in dramatic detail.
“I need one of the Jet Rangers,” Clark said in a quiet voice, pointing to the grease board listings of Jerry’s helicopter fleet.
The young woman looked up at him with a puzzled expression. “Were you…assigned that, Clark?”
“Effectively, yes, and I’m fully rated in the Bell 206. I’m on a special mission for Jerry. He needs me to go to the crash site to answer a specific question.”
She cocked her head, studying his expression and looking for an indication that he was kidding, but Clark kept his face unreadable.
“What…question?” she asked. “You just limped in here. When did he talk to you?”
“Hey,” Clark smiled, looking around, then continuing conspiratorially. “He has a phone in his Lear, and you’ve been here long enough to know that Jerry doesn’t like all his reasons broadcast, right?”
She hesitated, unsure of herself, but unwilling to push too hard. After all, Clark Maxwell was the hero of the hour and one of the old dogs. She nodded then and quietly handed over the keys and the clipboard for one of the freshly fueled Rangers just outside.
“Thanks,” he replied. “I’ll be back in two hours.”
Clark turned away from the desk, his eyes taking in the expected panorama of pilots and Operations personnel standing and talking while others worked the phones at small desks. His eyes locked on the exit door twenty feet distant, then jumped back to the right, to one of the desks where a blond woman with her back partially to him had a phone to each ear.
For a second he thought she looked like Karen Jones, but it had been a long time since he’d seen Karen. He peered closer as he moved a little to one side to get a better view.
It was Karen, he realized, her short, blond hair swinging luxuriously whenever she moved her head. The recognition triggered a small, pleasant shock, like a splash of cold water in the face after a long, hot day.
Clark watched her as she lowered one of the receivers and scribbled a note before disconnecting. She was just as beautiful, he thought, as the last time he’d seen her, some four years ago. Her body carried not an extraounce, her skin was smooth and glowing, and he could imagine her infectious smile irradiating the room. Time had apparently been treating her very well.
He was still out of range of Karen’s peripheral vision, but he watched her head come up, and she stared out the window as if somehow sensing that she was being watched.
Karen Jones pivoted suddenly in the swivel chair, spotting Clark, a smile of recognition spreading slowly over her face. She waved at him, her voice drowning in the tidal waves of sound washing through the room, but the import of her greeting eminently readable on her lips.
“Hi!” she mouthed.
“Karen!” he said in a loud voice as he moved toward the desk separating them and looked around before leaning as far in her direction as possible. She is obviously on a mission and doing something administrative, he thought. “How are you?”
“Well, very shaken,” she replied, sweeping her hair back from her forehead. “Jeff was…a friend of mine…and, of course, a longtime friend of Trent’s, as well. I didn’t know Mike Head, the copilot, but everyone says he was a great guy. We hadn’t even had time to accept their loss when you go and scare us half to death with an engine fire.”
“Sorry,” he grinned. “I just wanted to be noticed.”
“Next time let me know, and I’ll post your picture in the post office. It’s a lot less wearing on the nerves.”
<
br /> Clark raised an index finger in a wait gesture and maneuvered around the desk to get closer as Karen got to her feet. There was a sudden uncharacteristic flutter of uncertainty in his middle as he tried to decide whether or not to hug her, but she solved the dilemma by extending her hand. It was a correct little handshake, until she reached out with her other hand and en-folded his.
“It’s really good to see you, Clark!” she said, her smile warm and broadening. He was trying to keep an appropriately serious expression, but a small flare of excitement had ignited in him, and he was sure the sudden warmth was visible on his face.
Another heavy four-engine tanker was lumbering into the air and moving past the window behind her. The rumble of its pistons and props momentarily washed out all conversation in the building, but Clark didn’t notice.
“How are—”
“What hap—”
They began simultaneously, both of them laughing at the result.
“You first,” he said.
“I was just going to ask you about your engine. The whole place was hanging on to every word until you landed. Thank God you’re back safely, but in the future, could you maybe not come in trailing a hundred feet of flame?”
“It was only fifty feet.”
“How tough was she to fly?”
He shrugged. “I used a few muscles I’d forgotten I had trying to hang on to her, but otherwise it wasn’t too bad. The Douglas DC-6 is a tough, reliable old…” his voice trailed off at the vivid memory of the DC-6 wreckage in the forest and the fire he’d just survived on his right wing. She nodded as he glanced away, understanding his slip.
“Normally it is,” she said. “I know. From what I’ve been hearing, no one around here has any earthly idea what could have gone wrong with Jeff’s bird.”
He looked at her, suddenly aware he was chewing on his lip, which undoubtedly looked stupid. He forced himself to stop. “I’m…just getting ready to fly to the crash site in one of the Jet Rangers, if you’d like to come along…”
She shook her head vigorously. “No, thanks. I…I’ve got to help out in here.”
“Understood. Dumb idea.”
Karen moved her left hand away from his, and he realized they were still in the middle of a suspended handshake that was beginning to feel awkward. He gently squeezed and let her hand slide from his, feeling the loss.
She crossed her arms below her breasts, and he tried not to notice the alluring effect.
“I’ve…seen enough terrible things, Clark. Not plane crashes, really, but…other horrors.”
“Really?” he said, immediately regretting the question and the haunted look that appeared on her face.
She inclined her head toward the southeast, rocking on one foot, then the other, looking for a way around the explanation. “When I last saw you, it was a bit too fresh to talk about.”
“That was four years ago, then,” Clark offered.
“Yeah, well. My first summer smokejumping was 1994, and my third jump ever was on Storm King Mountain in Colorado.”
Clark’s eyebrows went up at the mention of the peak near Glenwood Springs that had become almost as infamous to firefighters as the 1949 Mann Gulch tragedy in Montana. An uncontrollable firestorm had roared up the natural chimney of Storm King’s valley, sending forty-nine firefighters fleeing for their lives. Three smokejumpers and nine hotshots were caught before they could reach the ridge, along with two helitacks who had been above the ridge but retreated the wrong way. Superheated gasses destroyed their lungs with a single breath long before fire could consume their bodies, and several had fallen mere yards from the top of the ridge that separated the living from the dead.
“You knew some of the victims?” he asked, not expecting the response.
She nodded. “Two of my best friends died. I was one of the thirty-five who made it. I had to identify one of my guys.” She grimaced and looked away, then sighed. “So, how are we doing on this fire?”
“Not well. Have they briefed you?”
She shook her head and told him about the summons to help with the phones, and her inbound squad.
“So, you’ll be jumping tomorrow?”
She smiled. “Maybe.”
“Where are you…uh, you and Trent staying?”
A cloud of sadness crossed her face for just a second as she glanced away and exhaled a little too sharply, then looked back as if there were no messages there to be read. “Oh, we’re at the Best Western. He’s already been here for months and his room is a pigsty, so…” She hesitated, realizing the implications of mentioning her separate room. “So we’re there.”
“Well, I’d better—” He began backing away from the counter, remembering suddenly to pick up the clipboard and key to the helicopter as she smiled at his awkward retreat. “—you know, get going.”
“Sure. It’s wonderful to see you.”
“Maybe sometime this week I could buy you a beer or something,” Clark said.
The smile intensified ever so slightly. “Maybe you can,” she replied. “I’d like that.”
Karen gave him a parting wave as Clark headed for the door, feeling self-conscious and suddenly aware of just how he was swinging his arms and walking. It was the same effect, he mused, she’d had on him four years ago. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, but Jerry Stein’s plea to come back for just this summer had become instantly more palatable when he’d called Missoula and discovered Karen Jones might be there sometime during the season to supplement the West Yellowstone Smokejumper base.
Clark picked up his flight bag and walked quickly toward the Jet Ranger, calculating how much time he’d have to get to the crash site and avoiding the subject of why staying away was impossible. He could see Jerry Stein’s Lear 23 coming to a stop in the distance on the Stein Aviation ramp, and the ground crew closing in around it.
Diana Stein emerged first from the cramped interior of the Lear 23, unfolded her perfectly trim supermodel body, and shook her mane of auburn hair—well aware that every male eye in the vicinity was carefully taking note of the boss’s wife and trying to hide the fact.
She glanced back to see Jerry hanging up the sky phone. He motioned for her to stand back as he jumped out of the door like a large cat pouncing onto the tarmac, his eyes rapidly taking in who was there before pointing to his small Operations building and setting off at a pace that forced everyone else to jog.
Diana leaned languidly against the leading edge of the left wing, watching one of Jerry’s employees clamber into the cabin to fetch their bags. She was expected to follow her husband into Operations on such arrivals. She was the walking validation of his status as the alpha male, the only one allowed to flaunt his elegant and sexy woman before the other men. It was a role Diana understood as clearly as she understood his immutable need for it.
She smiled to herself and shook her head almost imperceptibly before pushing away from the wing and following.
Jerry was already inside his Operations shack, shaking the outstretched hands of his employees and nodding at the offered updates as he moved toward the windows forming the wall of a small briefing room on the other side. He was oblivious to the Jet Ranger lifting off outside.
Pivoting, he pointed in turn at four of the contingent who were following him.
“James, Hawkins, Brown, and Jones. In here.”
The four men moved nervously past him into the cramped room and began unfolding metal chairs as he closed the door behind them and plunked down in the first one offered, waiting for the others to get settled.
“You want the maintenance realities first?” Trent Jones asked.
Jerry Stein shook his head, his voice low and tense. “All right, listen closely. As we were landing, I got a call from a guy in D.C. who watches over us, so to speak. I pay him good money to keep his ear to the ground. He’s got good sources in Congress, deep-throat sources in the FAA, Interior Department, and the Forest Service. He’s plugged in, and he knows about the crash and the engine
loss on Eighty-four and that damned Blue Ribbon report and the problems the retardant manufacturers have been generating. He also knows that the only thing we’ve got going in our favor right now is the fact that the forests near Jackson are burning and we have only so many airplanes.”
“He’s worried about us?” Bill James asked.
“Worried?” Jerry snorted. “Guys, are you in any way dependent on the money Stein Aviation pays you?”
They all glanced at one another before focusing back on Jerry and nodding nervously yes.
“Okay. You want to hear worst case? The secretary of the interior and the secretary of agriculture held a meeting this morning over breakfast. Know what they discussed? How to terminate immediately the contracts of all airtanker companies and call in the Air National Guard and the Air Force with C-130Hs or some other more modern version.”
“Can…can they do that?”
“Oh, it gets worse. They called in the Department of Justice and were asking for opinions on whether they could refuse to pay us for what we’ve already accomplished, and whether they could back charge us under the contract for hundreds of thousands in fees and penalties, as well as the possibility of attaching the airplanes to make sure they’ll never fly again. Even the guaranteed availability money in the contracts could be tied up for years. That means instant shutdown, instant Chapter Seven liquidation bankruptcy, zero paychecks, and we’re all on the street.”
“Okay, but…is that likely?” Trent asked, his voice hesitant.
Jerry took a deep breath, feeling another burst of the occasional throbbing pain in his temple that had been worrying him increasingly over the past few days. He glanced beyond the men into the room, his eyes instantly finding Diana, who was standing in her usual alluring way by the counter, smiling in his direction. He tried to smile back to hide what was probably written all over his face: The possibility that he was truly on the verge of losing everything. Including her.
He turned back to his employees.
“The word I get? One more incident, one more accident, one more embarrassment, and it’s all over.” He let that sink in before looking at Trent.
Fire Flight Page 9