Clark’s expression changed from grim to startled. “There was a sabotage rumor going around yesterday, but…could Jeff Maze’s crash have been connected with his CIA role?”
“That’s one of the questions we need to ask and answer, because if there is any indication of sabotage, we take over the case.”
“All right.”
“I have your cell phone number. In the meantime, it’s probably a good idea not to discuss my presence here, or our conversation. And before you ask, no, I can’t tell you why.”
“Okay.”
“I will tell you there’s another Stein employee I need to find immediately.”
“Who’s that?”
“Trent Jones.”
BRYARLY, WYOMING
Jimmy Wolf had retraced his route through the forest in the Humvee while arranging for a helicopter on his satellite phone. As a result, the sound of an unseen Bell 212 came booming overhead as he rounded the last curve before town. The crew was waiting with an open door as he drove up, and they quickly brought aboard the still-unconscious copilot and Trent Jones. As soon as he’d parked and locked the Humvee, Jimmy climbed aboard as well.
“Glad you were here on time,” the copilot said. “We almost couldn’t find the landing zone, the damn smoke’s so thick.”
“How did you?”
“We had an exact GPS position and came down to a minimum altitude, and just barely saw it at eighty feet. You’re sure there’s no one else in town, right?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I didn’t see anyone.”
“Okay. ’Cause we’re the last train out of Dodge. No one’s gonna make it back in here.” He moved up to his seat in the cockpit.
The 212 lifted off through the pall of smoke, and Jimmy watched the details of the town fade and disappear, as if a dream were evaporating before his eyes. He could hear a soundtrack in his mind, but it was nothing he’d written. The music was grand and ominous and mysterious all at once, as if an American Indian chant had been woven into a symphonic suite, the music a lyrical reflection of the collision between nature and the onslaught of men and machines. Jimmy felt something changing inside himself, a feeling of belated respect for this beautiful valley, now that it was just hours away from complete destruction.
I wonder if I’ve ever really seen it before, he mused. And now Mother Nature decides there should be fire in the forest, and here we stand, clever but puny little ants trying to refuse her that right.
The pilot gained altitude up valley to the southeast, lifting above the main layer of smoke, and Jimmy could see that the entire southern flank of the cirque was on fire, the flames leaping a hundred feet or more in the air, the line of flames running from the top of the ridge down the mountain as it burned its way toward the northwest and the deserted homes of Bryarly. The battle, obviously, was lost, and the puzzle was why he didn’t feel worse about it.
A fleeting image of his collapsed roof and severely damaged home crossed his mind, but he dismissed it. It was only money, and besides, the entire place would be nothing but ash and memories before this night was over.
The pilot banked to the right, aiming at a low point between the two ridges, and Jimmy could see a small meadow that had burned along with the entire southern flank of the mountain. It looked like a war zone, and, as the 212 flashed over the tiny plateau and turned southwest toward Jackson Hole, he thought he saw figures, soldiers of this war, along the edge of the clearing.
Trent Jones moved across the interior to sit beside him with his hand outstretched.
“Wot’s this?”
“We were too busy back there for me to say thank you.”
He shook Trent’s hand quickly.
“No worries, mate.”
“Well, I appreciate it. I hadn’t realized until we got back that you stayed behind on your own just to get us out.”
“Yeah, well, I’d rather not make a big deal of it, all right?”
“Sure. I just wanted you to know.” Trent got up and began moving back across the cabin, then turned. “They would have never found us from the air, Mr. Wolf. You know that, right?”
Jimmy waved him off in dismissal and turned away, surprised at how helpless he was to suppress the smile on his face.
Chapter 37
WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT, MONTANA
Judy Deason sat on her sofa in her motor home’s living room, her arms tightly folded as she stared at Clark Maxwell. Her eyes were large and brimming with pain, but tearless in disbelief and denial.
“He’s not dead,” she said.
“Judy, we can hold out some hope, I guess, but—”
“Have they found him?”
“I don’t know. I saw the crash site, Judy. It didn’t give any hope.”
She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward, placing a hand lightly on his forearm, her green eyes studying his.
“Clark, Bill and I are tuned to each other. I would know if he was dead. I would just know.”
There was no point in arguing.
“Am I scared to death?” Judy continued. “Absolutely. What if he’s dazed and stumbling around? There are bears out there, and geysers. But he’s not dead.”
“Okay.”
She sat back, folding her arms again, her expression intense and determined, as if she would validate her words by mere force of will and love.
“That’s what loving someone will do, Clark. You can feel it when they’re in trouble. You can feel it when they’re hurting. And you know it when they’re gone. You go back to Operations, Clark. Get something to eat. Come back when you know where he is.”
Clark had closed the door of the motor home behind him and walked a few steps when a feeling of sudden dread descended on him, flickering a maddeningly indistinct spotlight on a procession of people in his mind’s eye, and stopping on Karen.
She and her squad were safe. That’s what he’d been told. The extreme chances he and his fellow pilots had taken to clear an escape path—the effort that had killed Bill Deason—had at least accomplished its purpose.
But there was still fire on the mountain, and while Karen Jones did not need his protection, he couldn’t help but wish she was safely out of the fire’s grip.
It was a deep shame, he thought, that their combined efforts had not saved the valley and the town. They’d bought enough time to evacuate the residents of Bryarly, but now the fire would have a straight shot at the unburned portions of Yellowstone, and could easily spread back west to finish Grand Teton Park’s eastern areas, even as a huge force of ground firefighters began to get control of the North Fork fire.
But Karen was still out there, and in the aftermath of an endless day, the floating beauty of their conversation the previous night mixed with the memory of their first meeting on that Oregon ridge and stirred a deep longing.
I wonder how they’re going to get out? he thought, recalling how he’d inadvertently embarrassed himself and her earlier on the radio. He couldn’t come flying in like a white knight to yank her from the mountain. She’d be furious. They probably had a Bell 205 or 212 on the way in any event.
But something felt wrong, and the feeling was growing.
Clark returned to the crew desk in Operations, finding Lynda still behind the counter.
“Hi, Lynda. Sorry to bug you,”
“No problem, Clark. You’ll be happy to know that Rusty is fine. The doctor gave him some antinausea stuff and sent him to bed.”
“Thanks, Lynda. I got the message you left.”
“Good.”
“Ah, do you happen to know whether or how the Missoula smokejumpers are planning on getting off that ridge tonight? Are they going to hike like they normally do, or…get picked up?”
“Hold on,” she said, dialing the number to Jackson Hole Helibase. She thanked her counterpart and replaced the receiver, looking at him a few seconds before responding.
“What?” he prompted.
“Well, there’s apparently a problem. The squad is requesting
search-and-rescue support.”
“Why?”
“Two of the squad got separated just before the fire jumped them from the east.”
“Two? Do you have names?”
Her concern was apparent as she watched his face, and the words that followed broke like a stomach punch.
“The squad leader, Karen Jones, and Dave Sims.”
“Where…what happened?” He was working to keep his voice under control, but it was an effort. The memory of the vicious flame front and the accelerating speed of the fire as they’d bombed it was all too vivid.
“All I know, Clark, is that the squad had to race back to the safe zone they’d designated, and when they got there, apparently those two were missing.”
He described briefly the struggle to save them that had led to Bill’s demise.
She sighed. “Clark, it could easily be that they used their shelters and just haven’t come out. The fire has passed their drop zone now, and the winds are in the process of changing. That’s why they’re asking for search support.”
“Are we still attacking the fire?”
She nodded. “In the past half hour the winds have started to shift again and there’s some hope of saving the town.”
Clark moved to the nearest phone and yanked it up, punched in Jerry’s office number, and prayed he would answer.
“Yeah?” The voice was subdued, but it was unmistakably Jerry.
“This is Clark. I need to borrow one of the Jet Rangers, Jerry. I’ll pay for the time.”
“Why?”
“I…can’t tell you, other than that it involves helping with a search.”
“Oh. Sure, Clark. Go.”
NORTH FORK RIDGE DROP ZONE
The memory of the steep mountain slope where Karen and her squad had been threatened was etched in Clark’s mind like a three-dimensional topographic map. During the thirty-minute flight to the North Fork Ridge, he mentally ranged through it and around it, astounded at how few places there were to hide from an approaching firestorm.
He’d glimpsed some of the escaping squad during one of his bombing passes and knew where they were headed, up and across the back of the ridge to an outcropping of rocks. In that microsecond of a glimpse he had seen them running single file. They would have dropped their packs and raced ahead of the flame front, he knew, but such a climb on a steep slope was tough going. It must have been a double hell for her, he thought. Having survived the Storm King disaster and having been one of the ones who made it to safety over the ridge, Karen would be driven to get her people to safety first. She would have brought up the rear, and something, obviously, had happened to their radios.
Clark flew over the approximate location of Bryarly, pushing the Jet Ranger to its maximum speed. The town was still shrouded in heavy smoke, but he could see that the winds were now blowing from the northeast and slowing the main fire line’s progress less than three miles from the nearest house.
He flew over the valley into the clear area to the east, toward where the squad had been trapped, amazed at the destruction. There were scattered trees with flames still flickering out of the torched upper trunks, but a sea of carbon marked what had been a verdant forest, lodgepole pine and larch and aspen with their branches scorched off, and a forest floor laden with ash white enough in some places to tell of incredible temperatures.
Oh God, he thought. If she got trapped in that…
He could see men moving down laterally to the east from the smokejumpers’ drop zone, and he could see one of the 205s used for rescue operations perched in the middle of the blackened, burned-over drop zone.
He slowed the Jet Ranger to less than twenty knots and fought against the mechanical turbulence from the wind flowing over the eastern shoulder of the cirque. He began methodically searching the slope where he remembered bombing just ahead of the fire. He moved on toward the safe rock area the smokejumpers had used, and ranged from there downward.
He could make out nothing other than the yellow shirts of perhaps twenty smokejumpers and rescuers picking their way along the same burned-out war zone.
No one waved, and no one gave him a thumbs-up. The message was sickeningly clear: They hadn’t found any sign of life.
Clark suppressed the growing feeling of loss and circled to the south side and along the ridge, looking for any sign that a human being had been there.
He maneuvered around and touched down next to the 205 on the blackened drop zone. Judging the winds not strong enough to roll the Jet Ranger off the side of the ridge, he shut down and alighted, looking around for someone he could question.
He saw Pete holding a radio loud with worried voices of those down the ridge. Clark walked over quickly and introduced himself, asking the obvious.
“We’ve been searching back over the same route,” Pete replied. “We found the remains of our packs, so we know the route is correct, but…there’s no trace of them.”
“I’m going to go down there. I looked from the air and could see nothing,” Clark told him. He showed Pete on a map exactly where he’d hovered and looked.
Pete handed him a spare handheld radio. “Keep in touch with that, okay? I guess just use your name.”
“I’m Tanker Eighty-eight. I’ll use that.”
“Okay. Take a Pulaski, too.” He tossed him the tool, and Clark began clambering down what was becoming the outlines of a trail through the burned forest floor. He moved as resolutely as possible, tripping several times on the slick, steep mountainside, but aiming toward the would-be rescuers strung along the line they’d established from the burned equipment packs to the shelter of the rocks they were trying to reach.
While the fire began to burn out to the west under heavy air attack, Clark searched for three hours, first looking higher than the baseline, then lower, and finding nothing. The rays of sunlight were becoming longer, and he calculated sundown was less than two hours away. He still had a $500,000 helicopter perched precariously on the ridge, and he had only a small flashlight.
Three more hours of daylight.
There was something downslope in the distance that caught his eye, and he rejected it subconsciously before his conscious mind overruled the decision. There was something lying on the burned grasses and ferns, something completely blackened itself, but with a rounded shape that fallen trees couldn’t achieve.
He began moving downslope toward the object, his stomach contracting at the horrific possibilities. Whatever it was appeared to be in a curled position, its charred back toward him.
He judged he was within twenty feet, but a few more steps revealed the slight optical illusion. The object was a bit larger—and farther away—than he’d thought, and as he came up to it he could see it was a deer, curled around itself in death, its body as black and carbonized as a human body would be.
Thank God, he thought, but the small deliverance brought only momentary comfort. Karen was still out here, somewhere.
He knelt by the deer for a minute, looking to the west and the setting sun.
Karen was dead, but she was not his life.
There had been promise, of course, although where it might have gone neither of them knew. She had been beautiful and exciting and had helped his love for life peel itself off the floor after Rosanna, but they had barely known each other.
A shaft of sunlight probed through a growing cloud cover from the west, just steep enough to match the slope and illuminate it like some giant searchlight shining from atop the ridge. He squinted his eyes against the brightness, and saw the utter dullness of the overall reflection from the burned forest. No drops of dew, no fluttering aspen leaves, nothing to catch the light and bounce it back.
But there was something, perhaps thirty or forty yards westward and across the slope, weakly reflecting the sunbeam.
Clark stood, running through a mental catalog of anything that could reflect light like that. Nothing matched exactly. The reflection was somewhat dull, not mirrorlike or bright, yet, there was something ther
e.
He left the deer and moved toward the source of the reflecting spot of light, worried that the ever-changing sun angle would cause it to disappear before he could reach it. And just as he had feared, it suddenly blinked out.
Clark stood still for a moment, holding on to the memory of his last sighting and carefully triangulating against a row of burned and barren tree trunks standing like darkened markers in some native graveyard.
He moved closer, seeing nothing but the same ruined landscape until he was standing beneath the trees he’d used as a target. As he had feared, whatever had caught the light wasn’t apparent.
Clark looked around, puzzled. All over the slope, trees had broken under their own weight when too much of the trunk burned away, or when other larger trees called “widow makers” fell and caused a cascade of falling timber among the shallow root systems. A large pine, perhaps 150 years old, had fallen near where he was standing, the victim of another tree hitting it. The bark had been badly charred, but surprisingly, much of the trunk was unburned.
He moved along its length, catching a snippet of human voice from one of the smokejumpers or rescuers somewhere above him.
There!
Something had caught his eye. Peering closer, he could see what looked like a piece of aluminum foil lying on the backside of the log.
And as he looked at it even more closely, it moved.
Clark stumbled along the littered forest floor to what he now saw was a silvery metallic material that seemed to be caught under the log. Someone or something was yanking at it from below and wiggling it.
“Hey! Can you hear me?” he yelled.
There was a muffled reply, and he got down on his knees and started digging around the piece of material, which was looking more and more like thermal shelter material. His hand found a deeper cavity, and he punched through it.
“Help!” The voice was clearer, and female.
“Karen? Oh God, is that you?”
Fire Flight Page 41