“Yeah, Bill. Ten. Like the pictures you’ve all seen of Operation Plowshare in Vietnam, without the toxicity.”
“I was there,” Bill Deason replied. “And that’s a good plan.”
“Thanks, Bill. We’ll keep doing it this way until it’s time to shift to the south side. So you guys will need to maintain formation in loose trail on Tanker Forty-four, and Forty-four? You’re lead.”
“Roger,” Barrett replied.
“Jones? This is Lead Four-Two,” Sam called on one of the handheld radios, gratified that this time the voice came back immediately.
“Jones here, Four-Two. Go ahead.”
“Okay, is your squad clear of the line? This will be a live run. I’ve told the tankers we’ll be doing a continuous drop.”
“Roger,” Karen replied. “Everyone’s clear of the line.”
Sam rolled the King Air into a left bank for the first release with Barrett on his tail as Clark throttled his DC-6B back to descend and follow. Bill Deason—Tanker 10—was out of Clark’s sight above and behind, but he knew the four-engine turboprop would be sliding in behind him.
They were lining up, Clark could see, on the top of the tree line where it thinned out into the northern edge of the meadow that served as the drop zone. He knew the winds would be blowing the slurry away from the mountainside, and he watched closely as Barrett began his release and immediately readjusted his flight path to the left and slightly lower, keeping as close in as he dared, his left wing tip clearing the taller trees by probably no more than fifty feet.
“How do you know how close to come to the left side?” Rusty asked in a show of excessive diplomacy. Clark could see how wide his eyes were with a quick glance.
Clark adjusted the controls and pushed the nose down against the heavy winds flowing over the ridge, trying to avoid the wake turbulence from the lead tanker. “You mean how do I keep from snagging the left wing tip and cartwheeling us into the mountainside to certain death?”
He could see Rusty swallow hard.
“Ah, yeah.”
“Well, it’s an old tried-and-true captain technique, Rusty.”
Rusty looked across to the left again at the trees rushing by in breathtaking proximity to the left wing tip.
“What technique?”
“It requires a good copilot who can make loud noises on cue.”
Rusty turned back to look at him as Clark triggered the release button.
“What do you mean, copilot noises?”
“You aim the airplane into the mountain, flying just below the ridgeline with a closing angle of maybe fifteen degrees.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where, if you don’t eventually change course, you’ll crash. Understand?”
“Maybe.”
“Then I hold that course, and hold it, and hold it…until my copilot—you—gasps audibly. Then I turn to safely parallel the ridge.”
Rusty shook his head in disgust. “I had to fall for that. I just had to fall for that.”
Tanker 44, Barrett, was beginning his pullout ahead with a gentle climbing turn to the right as he followed the King Air. Clark ended his dump sequence and prepared to follow.
“Good show, everyone,” Sam was saying. “Standby for a BDA.”
“A what?” Rusty asked, noting that Clark was chuckling.
“BDA. Bomb damage assessment. Remember that Sam is a former wind-force jockey. They tend to talk like that, in acronyms and abbreviations.”
“Oh.”
A minute went by as all three tankers continued to fly to the west and the King Air peeled off to the south.
“Okay, guys,” Sam said at last. “Jones tells me we soaked the top rung really well. I’ll work the other inbounds farther down the mountain and see you guys in an hour.”
“Do you have the FM radio tuned, Rusty?” Clark asked.
Rusty leaned over his flight bag and pulled a Motorola portable from its depths.
“It’s inop. But I brought a handheld.” There were times when airtankers had to make drops without a lead plane, and FM radios enabled direct contact with the ground teams. He held up the walkie-talkie for Clark to see.
“It’s already on her frequency, but I haven’t turned it on.”
Clark gave him a startled look. “Her?”
Rusty shrugged. “What can I say? Her name is Karen, she’s cute as a bug, her marriage is history, and she likes you, and, given your performance this morning, you like her a whole bunch, too. What? You thought I didn’t know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I do.”
“Okay.”
“So does everyone else,” he said under his breath, smiling at the thoroughly startled reaction.
“What?”
“I’m kidding, Clark. Calm down.”
“Everyone else?”
“I just made that up.”
“But…how did you, I mean why—”
“Clark, you ask me to make sure we had the radio, which we’re always supposed to carry anyway. We’re going to be working with a particular smokejumping squad that has only one female in its number. I know you’re not gay, so that kinda triangulates things right there. Plus, there are all these rumors about you KO-ing her husband, and I’ve already asked you about that.”
“Apparently you know more about how I feel than I do!”
“Yeah, well…forgive me, Captain, sir, but you’re a little transparent.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“And…you have good taste in women.”
“For chrissakes, Rusty, she’s still married.”
“Not for long.”
“And we’re not dating! We had a drink.”
“Not counting last night?”
“What? Okay, now, dammit, that does it!”
Rusty was grinning from ear to ear as Sam’s voice cut through their headsets.
“All right, group. Tankers Eighty-eight, Forty-four, and Ten are released back for reload. Thanks, guys.”
“Tanker Forty-four, roger,” Barrett replied.
“Tanker Eighty-eight, copy,” Rusty echoed.
“And Tanker Ten, roger.”
Clark was staring at the occupant of the right seat. “All right, Rusty, what about last night?”
“Must have been beautiful, Captain. At your house, I presume?”
“You can’t…what are you doing, spying on me?”
“Aha! I guessed right. It was your place.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You’d make an easy interrogation target.”
“Look, I’m not kidding—”
“Maybe we should kind of turn back in the general direction of West Yellowstone?”
“Yeah, yeah, I am. But you’re going to tell me how you know anything at all about Karen and me.”
Clark glanced to his right, away from the dynamic image of the DC-6B ahead, to see Rusty holding an envelope out to him.
“What’s that?”
“A message from your lady.”
“Dammit, Rusty, stop that!” He took his hand off the throttles and snatched it away.
“I’ve got her.”
“What?”
“The airplane. I’ve got her, and I’m making a clearing turn to the right.”
“Whatever,” Clark said, even more irritated by the copilot’s chuckling. The envelope was sealed, and he tore it open and extracted the folded note, scanning the rounded, well-formed script.
Clark, I appreciate last night more than you can know. You’re a true gentleman, and a gentle soul, and I can’t recall feeling more warm and comfortable in any man’s presence. Thank you! Karen
“How did you get this?”
“Captain,” Rusty said with mock seriousness, “I’m flying. Please snarl at me later.”
Barrett’s DC-6B was already a receding dot on the horizon as Rusty banked around to the north and announced the turn to a puzzled Sam.
“What are you doing?” Clark asked.
“You’l
l see.”
Clark was holding Karen’s note in his right hand.
“All right, Rustoid, answer the question, please. How did you get this?”
“That beautiful young woman who answers to the name of Karen we were just discussing handed it to me to hand to you. I asked her what it was about, and told her I pass no notes to my captain without an explanation, and she just smiled and said it concerned last evening.” Rusty let a few seconds of silence mature between them. “Way to go, Captain!”
“Rusty, cut that out! I’m serious.”
“Well, she thinks so.”
“Jeez!”
“Sorry, Clark. But I am happy for you.” He adjusted something on the handheld radio and pressed the transmit button.
“Jones, this is Tanker Eighty-eight. Are you on frequency?”
Karen’s voice came back instantly puzzled.
“Ah, roger, Eighty-eight.”
“Stand by, I have Captain Maxwell on the line.”
Rusty handed the radio to the red-faced occupant of the left seat.
“She’s waiting for you. That’s why I’m turning, to keep us in line-of-sight range.”
Clark snatched it away, his expression softening immediately.
“Hi, Jones. This is Maxwell.”
“Hello,” she replied, somewhere between professional and startled.
“Sorry to bother you. My copilot thinks he’s funny. He finally delivered your communique, which I deeply appreciate…not his delayed delivery, but your thoughts….” He let the transmit button go, and Karen’s voice returned.
“Ah, this is a heavily monitored command-tactical channel, Tanker Eighty-eight, and…we’re kind of all monitoring it down here. Can we, ah, deal with this later?”
Clark felt his face flushing even more.
“Roger. Sorry.”
Rusty was laughing openly, and Clark shot him a withering glance. “Damn you, Rusty!”
“Okay,” Rusty said between laughs. “Now everyone knows!”
Chapter 26
BRYARLY, WYOMING—SEVEN TWENTY-FIVE A.M.
Jimmy Wolf had never taken much of anything seriously in life, and that attitude—plus a modicum of musical talent as a singer-guitarist, a daunting stage presence, and a world-class ability to hustle—had earned him more than a hundred million dollars and the fifteen-thousand-square-foot home and recording studio built on the last mining claim in Bryarly.
There was an artistry to not caring, but even those who were best at being blasé and unimpressed knew that there were moments that required stepping out of character and actually showing concern. And if the cold feeling in the pit of his stomach was any guide, today had the potential to be a major life-changing example of just such a moment.
Jimmy emerged from the driver’s seat of his Humvee after skidding it to a stop in the heart of the small-town square to emphasize his discontent with being interrupted at seven A.M. by the community emergency siren. He looked at the siren for a second, as if unconvinced it had stopped yowling. The racket it made could shatter his thinking anywhere on his property, and he hated the thing—even though he’d voted to approve the expenditure that had purchased it.
“We need a quieter system that won’t wake up the bugging dead!” he’d complained, brushing aside the counter assertion that a community emergency warning horn that wouldn’t wake anyone up was as dumb as a police department with an unlisted emergency number.
He stood for a moment staring back up the mountain to the south, but could see no smoke flowing over the top of ridgeline. He could, by long practice, make one hell of a scene just for the fun of it based on the lack of visual evidence that a threat even existed, but most of the well-heeled residents of Bryarly knew him well enough now to be unmoved by such displays. And there was the unspoken, dark reality that, as he got older, he seemed to be drifting into a state of greater responsibility. Officially, the very concept shook him. Privately, he was tired of the tantrums, unless they were done for the cameras in L.A. or London.
The satellite map he’d downloaded from NOAA—National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—an hour ago told the tale with frightening clarity: The North Fork fire was out of control and headed toward them, whipped by high winds. With the lone bridge out of town destroyed by a boneheaded guy working for the Forest Service, he was feeling trapped and anxious.
The town government of Bryarly, such as it was, occupied a three-room log structure in the center of the one-street town. Gentry Wells, the aging star of countless tough-guy movies, was the usually absentee mayor, and thirty-four-year-old Larry Black was the long-suffering city manager they’d hired to run the town—which meant little more than keeping the water and lights on, and hiring the right lawyers to fight the Forest Service whenever they tried to suggest that maybe Bryarly shouldn’t exist.
Jimmy leapt on the porch and blew through the door of the town office.
“And where the bloody hell is Black?” he bellowed, ignoring the startled expression of the young brunette sitting at a desk in what was laughingly called the “outer office.”
She got to her feet in some confusion, well aware that the tall, lean apparition in jeans, shades, and a stylized broad-brimmed cowboy hat was one of the richest of Bryarly’s residents.
“Mr. Wolf, he’s on the phone right—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Buzz off.”
Jimmy opened the door to Larry Black’s small office. The city manager looked up and nodded to Jimmy as he covered the mouthpiece.
“Have a seat. I’ll be off in a minute.”
Jimmy made a move to rip the receiver out of Black’s hand to demonstrate yet again who ran things, then decided to be unexpectedly polite. He took off his custom-made Jimmy Wolf model Stetson and sat down in the offered chair, counting out loud backward from sixty. At zero, he assured himself, he would lean over the desk and rip the phone cord out of the wall.
But Larry Black was already replacing the receiver. He sighed and shook his head. “That was the dispatch center in Bozeman. The first choppers will be here in about an hour, and I’ve got to get the first group of thirty-seven assembled.”
“Right…and where are the focking fire trucks, or planes, or whatever they’re going to use to save my house, Mr. Manager?”
“I—”
“Have you seen the satellite map, mate? This whole place is gonna be carbon if they don’t get help in here, and I’ve got a little bungalow up on the hill there that might just be worth saving, since I spent more than this whole state’s worth building it! In fact, I think I’ll throw some bags on one of the helicopters with some of the irreplaceable things, like the Grammys, just in case they send some moron with a bulldozer through my house rather than fight the fire.”
“They…won’t take personal goods, Jimmy. I’m sorry. People only.”
“Wot d’you mean they won’t take personal goods…the bastards knocked our bridge down and stranded our property in here. They’ll take whatever I tell them to take.”
Larry Black sighed. He’d been through these exchanges before. Jimmy had tried to fire him so many times it was almost a daily ritual.
“Jimmy, frankly, I’m pretty sure they don’t care how many hit records you’ve cut or produced, or whether Cher and Tina Turner are your close friends.”
“But they bloody well are!” He smiled.
“Yeah, I know. You introduced me to them last year.”
“Did I now? But get back to the subject. Who’s gonna save my ’ouse?”
“Fact is, Jimmy, as you know, they’ve never wanted us in their forest in the first place, and while they’ll save all of us, I don’t think they’re going to be too broken up about the town, or your house, burning down.”
“We’ll just see about that! I know a senator or two who might want to be reelected.”
Larry knew the Aussie rock star–cum–record producer had no clue how to curry or use political power as anything but a blunt weapon, but Jimmy was far easier to handle
when he thought of himself as immensely powerful and respected rather than merely feared.
“Jimmy, as far as your possessions are concerned, I’d suggest the surest bet would be to hire your own helicopter and get it in here fast to haul your things out.” He located a paper on his desk. “Here’s a list of helicopter operators, but they’ll have to coordinate with the Forest Service at Jackson and the FAA to get it in here.”
Jimmy’s voice dropped from an assaultive-braying level to a conversational sober tone. “This is really serious, then, Lare?”
Larry nodded solemnly. “It is. We’ve got about four hundred people left in the area, and we’ve all got to walk away from everything we own and just pray they can stop the fire in time.”
“How much time do we have before it gets here?”
“I don’t know. I’ve heard everything from eight hours to three days to never, in turns of when it might jump the ridge. Despite the bridge incident, Jimmy, the Forest Service is throwing everything they’ve got into the battle.”
Jimmy got to his feet and plucked his hat from the edge of Larry Black’s desk, waving it at him.
“Well, I’ve got news for them. Tell them I trust them to succeed, and that’s why I’m bloody well staying.”
Larry jumped to his feet. “Jimmy, no! They don’t need a show of loyalty. They just need to get us to safety. If the fire jumps the ridge to the south, it will be too late to get you out.”
“Screw that. They can just pour enough water on my ’ouse to keep it from burning. We’ve got a lake, and they’ve got helicopters that can suck up the lake and dump it on our buildings. You take everyone else and go hide, Lare, and my blokes and I’ll stay and save the town.”
Larry eyed Jimmy carefully. You could never be sure where bravado ended and seriousness began with him, but once he dug his heels in, he was essentially unreachable.
“Jimmy, did you see any of the 1988 Yellowstone fire up close?”
“No, I was on tour. It was one of my best years. We played to eighty thousand people in—”
“Do you know what a firestorm can do, and how hot it can get?”
“Plenty hot, I’m sure. We had some real buggers in the Outback, make these things look like weenie roasts. Wot’s the point, or do you have one?”
Fire Flight Page 29