Summer of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  “I’ll let you off in that clearing.” Deering pointed to the landing place where the cargo boxes lay. On a fifteen-degree slope, the open space was bisected by a dry rocky channel that probably carried snowmelt in spring.

  Deering brought them lower. The Huey’s engines whined and the tail rotor chopped small limbs, raising the pungent scent of evergreen.

  “It’s okay, ladies,” he said calmly. “Just making a little lodgepole salad.” When the skids were about three feet from the ground, he directed, “Better hop off here. If I set her down, we’ll never get out.”

  Sherry removed her headset and shoved open the rear door. A blast of wind caught Clare in the face where she sat behind Deering. She tried to calm her jitters, comparing jumping out of a hovering helicopter to something she knew. Like working the high ladders or rappelling down a building, one of the exercises she taught at A & M.

  On impulse, she touched Deering’s shoulder. Sinew and bone moved fluidly beneath her hand as he controlled the chopper. His eyes stayed forward. “Hang on until I steady her.”

  There was no choice here, any more than in Houston when she had to go into a burning building. She tossed her headphones into the rear seat.

  Sherry was already out the door, crouching on the skid with one hand around the vertical support. She leaped, landing on the uneven slope in what Clare recognized as the parachutist’s roll. Scrambling to her feet, Sherry held out her arms to catch the folding stretcher Clare tossed.

  Hot wind from the rotors beat down. Clare hung on the downhill skid, maybe ten feet above the ground.

  More limbs fell from the trees. Rotor wash flattened the grass. She jumped.

  The pit of her stomach lifted. Feet first, she hit and collapsed to absorb the shock. Sherry was already heading uphill, her back barely visible through the whirling cloud of dust.

  Clare followed. The Huey’s engines went to a higher pitch and then the sound gradually receded.

  The trees grew thick, with no more than a few feet between them. Clare’s bare legs and arms were soon covered in black dirt and resin. Wearing light hikers rather than her thick fire boots, she kept slipping on the pine straw.

  She had lost sight of the fire, but the smoke reminded her she wasn’t wearing fire retardant clothing. It hadn’t seemed important when every second counted to get to Hudson.

  Randy’s relief at seeing her and Sherry was evident on his small, tight features. He had opened Hudson’s Kevlar jumpsuit and his hand pressed high on the injured man’s leg, shutting down the femoral artery in the groin area. Below the break, blood soaked the beige coveralls.

  Hudson lay still. His right leg canted at an oblique angle above the knee.

  “Is he conscious?” Clare asked.

  “Unfortunately.” Hudson opened his eyes.

  She smiled and bent close. His pupils looked normal, constricted in the forest’s filtered sunlight. “We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.” Turning to Randy, she instructed, “Keep pressure on.”

  “Uh, oh!” Sherry pointed. Not thirty yards away, small flames licked at the duff beneath the trees.

  “Maybe you better do something about that,” Clare suggested as mildly as she could.

  Sherry was off, running toward the supply boxes. Randy stayed in place, an uncertain look on his face. With a glance at Hudson’s grim expression, she instructed, “Go ahead and let go. I need to see what we’ve got.”

  He removed his hand. A bright, arterial stream pulsed with each beat of Hudson’s heart.

  Clare shot another look at the fire. There wasn’t time to clear a firebreak. Ditto for stabilizing the bleeding and straightening the leg into the proper packaging for transport.

  “Randy!” she demanded. “Give me that line you guys use for rappelling.”

  He pulled a coil from the calf pocket of his jumpsuit.

  “Cut me four feet.”

  He withdrew a folding knife from his jumpsuit pocket.

  “A tourniquet,” Clare told him as he cut, “just until we get on the chopper.”

  Sherry was back, carrying shovels and Pulaskis. The fire had taken another five yards.

  “Change of plans,” Clare said. She tied a constricting rope on Hudson’s leg just above the break. Sherry unfolded the stretcher.

  As soon as the bleeding slowed, Clare put a hand on Hudson’s chest. “We’re gonna have to move you. Are you aware of any other injuries?”

  The blue helmet swiveled negative.

  Clare wished she had another choice for her patient.

  It was flying with the door open, Deering realized, that drove him mercilessly back to the Ia Drang valley. As soon as Clare and Sherry had shoved back the heavy metal frame, the wopping had invaded his skull.

  The tight little clearing on Bighorn Peak looked for all the world like one of the LZs Deering had gone into ‘slick’, sweating because his ship didn’t carry guns and the gunships were someplace else when there were wounded to be ferried.

  He flew the Huey around the high valley on Bighorn Peak, trying not to think about going back down there. No time for dread, though, for he sighted three people carrying a stretcher on the treacherous slope.

  Mentally Deering measured, even though he’d already been in the clearing once. He figured five times the rotor diameter of forty-eight feet. Though he’d hoped the injured man was in decent shape and he might not have to set down, the blood he saw staining the victim’s coveralls called up Plan B.

  Deering had told Clare they wouldn’t be able to take off if he landed, but he’d been in tighter spots, and under enemy fire. He would never forget the sound of bullets striking metal. The high-pitched ping had made him jump the first few hundred times until he realized that if he heard, it had missed him.

  Deering saw Clare shield her eyes from the sun. Her steady look said she trusted him.

  He went in.

  The second approach produced fewer impacts with the trees, for he’d done quite a bit of wood chopping already. As he hovered at about three feet, Clare motioned to the others to bring the injured man forward.

  Deering waved her off and landed on the flattest spot he could find. Even so, the Huey canted strongly to the side.

  Clare was last aboard and Deering got a look at the fierce concentration on her sun-browned face. The door slammed. Sherry’s hand gripped his shoulder. “Go!”

  Now was the time when déjà vu would come in handy. Deering ran up the RPMs and picked the Huey up about five feet, guiding the hover backward until the tail rotor slashed the pines. At some level, he registered that Clare and Sherry had acquired their headphones and were discussing a shot of morphine.

  With a few hundred feet of open space, Deering lifted the tail and gathered speed. There wasn’t enough room to accelerate in a straight line so he went into as tight a turn as he could.

  Flying in a circle around the clearing, he managed on the third go-round to achieve lift speed, about twenty miles per hour.

  The aircraft lurched, then leaped into the sky.

  He changed frequency to let West Yellowstone Control know he was coming, then let Sherry talk with the Smokejumpers’ base. A larger team of six had been dispatched to dig a line around the fire.

  Concentrating on flying, Deering handled the Huey with a mingled sense of strangeness and long familiarity. Although it had been nine years since he’d flown a UH-1, once he held the controls it had surged back.

  After Sherry completed her report, Deering radioed Demetrios Karrabotsos.

  “Clare says the jumper’s stable, just out cold from the pain and morphine,” he relayed. “She clamped his artery while we were shaking all over the sky. If I ever need a medic, you call her.”

  Before Karrabotsos could reply, Clare said strongly, “If you ever need a pilot, you call this guy.”

  Deering gave her a smile he was sure would make Georgia go ballistic. Clare returned it.

  He headed for West Yellowstone. In front of the Smokejumpers’ base, an ambulan
ce waited. Alongside stood a tight group with notepads, cameras and at least two video units.

  “The press is here,” Deering announced.

  “Who called them?” Clare asked.

  He powered down, flipping switches. As the ambulance attendants rushed to the chopper, he finished shutting down and climbed out. It felt odd to be standing on the tarmac in jeans instead of his usual flight suit.

  “We’ll follow them to the hospital,” Sherry told Clare. “I’ll get the other guys who aren’t on deck.” She and Randy headed off toward the base building with its tall parachute loft.

  Ignoring the press, Deering started to relax. A cold drink, maybe a steak this evening.

  Then he noted that Clare’s forehead still furrowed. Her small hands made fists as the gurney wheeled toward the pulsing blood-red emergency flashers.

  He thought of telling her that Hudson would be all right, but he didn’t know that.

  Billings Live Eye captured the Smokejumper being lifted into the rear of the ambulance in blood soaked coveralls. A red-haired woman reporter in a jeans jacket pressed a microphone at him, but Hudson lay motionless.

  Deering looked down at the top of Clare’s tousled head and felt his adrenaline rush subside. He put a hand on her shoulder and remembered her touch, just before she jumped into the clearing. “Do you think he’ll be okay?” He massaged the tightness in her neck muscles.

  Her fists slowly relaxed. “Should be … if the leg is the only major injury.”

  He’d not thought of that. With the departure of the ambulance, the reporters headed toward them.

  “Mr. Deering! Could we have a word?”

  “Carol Leeds, Billings Live Eye,” said the redhead. “How does it feel to be a hero?”

  Deering broke into a grin.

  “Mr. Karrabotsos said this was your first day flying with his company,” Carol Leeds went on.

  Sonnavabitch.

  Across the ramp, Demetrios Karrabotsos balanced in the open trailer door. He propped against the frame with one hand and gave Deering a thumbs-up with the other.

  A ponytailed video cameraman crowded in and filmed.

  Someone from the West Yellowstone News raised a Nikon. “How about a photo, Mr. Deering? Of you with the helicopter.”

  “Damn right!” He gave his best shit-eating grin and slung his arm around Clare’s waist. What the hell, maybe he would ask her to dinner.

  “Congratulations on getting back in the air.” Clare raised her wine glass and clinked it against Deering’s Coke. He was flying tomorrow and he’d been smiling nonstop since she slipped into the booth opposite him at the Red Wolf Steakhouse.

  “You’re one hell of a pilot,” she went on.

  When he was happy, he didn’t look nearly as gaunt. The bruise on his cheek had faded from purple to a rainbow of yellows and greens.

  Deering cracked his glass against hers again. “You were pretty spectacular out there yourself. Karrabotsos was disappointed you were just here for the season. Said West Yellowstone could use somebody like you.”

  The praise felt good. She’d waited at the hospital until Hudson came out of surgery. His prognosis for a full recovery had lifted her spirits so high, she felt she’d been drinking champagne for hours instead of starting her first.

  In the dim light of a miner’s lamp above their table, the evening slipped away. A little more wine. Good red meat, the kind the body craved after hard work.

  Deering speared a thick bite of sirloin. “There aren’t many women in fire.”

  “More every day,” she told him. “There were gals in the volunteer departments in the Houston suburbs back in the seventies, but HFD took a little longer.”

  “You ask me, it’s a nice change.”

  After three days of Sergeant Ron Travis having no use for a woman firefighter, it was refreshing to have the pilot watch her with admiring eyes. Deering wasn’t exactly good-looking, but his taut intensity attracted. He talked with his slim-fingered hands, one of which bore a fresh scar.

  “What’d you do there?” She reached and touched a finger to the spot.

  “Oh, that? A little skin cancer.” He was cavalier, but maybe a bit worried. “The doctor said I shouldn’t have any more trouble if I stay out of the sun.” His mouth twisted in a way that said his cockpit was always sunny.

  The sunscreen lecture that Clare gave Devon on her way to the pool rose to her lips. She bit it back and forced her eyes away from those expressive hands. He didn’t need her advice, and it felt too intimate to start taking care of him. She’d done everything for Jay and look where that had gotten her.

  When they came outside, Clare saw lights in Fire Command. She wondered if Garrett Anderson was still at his post and if he’d taken time for a decent meal.

  Deering stood close, but he wasn’t invading her space. “You don’t want to drive back into the park tonight. Come sleep in Demetrios’s third bedroom.” Although his tone was innocent, his alert eyes betrayed an interest in getting her under the same roof.

  Going with him wasn’t something she’d do in Houston, but the psychologist had encouraged her to embrace the summer; the way a child swallowed whole a trip to camp.

  Part of her wanted to go along a darkened street with Deering’s arm slung around her shoulders. With all that had happened today, and that wonderful heavy meal that Deering had refused to go dutch on, she needed a soft pillow and some shut-eye. As good as she felt about Hudson’s rescue, she might even be able to sleep without nightmares.

  Deering brushed back her bangs, a light touch that could turn to something else.

  Warning lights and sirens said he was getting too close too fast. On her way back to bunk with Sherry, she thought it was one more reason to hate Jay Chance for making her wary of men.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  August 10

  Five days later, Clare dug line on the Red Fire. South of Grant Village, she and a group of soldiers worked the edge of Heart Lake in the shadow of steep-sided Factory Hill. One of her guidebooks said the early explorers had named it because the hot springs’ steam looked like a New England manufacturing town.

  The meditative effect of work and a breeze off blue water gave her time to reflect on turning down Deering’s offer that might have led to ham and eggs together in the morning. In the days since, she’d had time to regret rabbiting on him and to wonder if she’d see him again this summer.

  Since Hudson had broken his leg, Clare had visited him twice in the West Yellowstone hospital. With a plaster cast from hip to ankle, he had chafed at being sidelined.

  It was interesting the way different people reacted to adversity. When Deering had told her in the Bear Pit that he needed to get back in the air, she’d known he was one of those who climbed right back on the horse that threw him.

  She envied his ability to shrug off trouble. Her lack of confidence after Frank’s death was just beginning to be replaced by a renewed sense of purpose. Participating in Hudson’s rescue had been a real boost.

  This afternoon’s training involved soldiers she’d been working with for several days. Watching a parade of faces that changed from incomprehension to confidence was another factor in easing her anxiety.

  There was one problem, though. Sergeant Ron Travis, instead of moving on with the first group of soldiers, had been assigned to work with her for the duration.

  With a check of her watch, Clare called for the end of the day. Conversation broke out as they hiked the half-mile back to their truck. Pulaskis and shovels were tossed into a pile.

  Clare massaged her aching back, but she was getting stronger every day. It felt good to lift without effort and to keep up with the young male soldiers. It did irk that Sergeant Travis relegated himself to the role of supervisor, for all hands were needed. Just because they were training didn’t mean their fire lines were without value.

  As she wiped sweat from her forehead, she reflected that her dislike for him went deeper than that. The code of the firefighter was to do
the work. If somebody asked for your axe, you did what needed to be done rather than pass it off. A person without equipment was worse than useless. Travis’s Pulaski, issued eight days ago, rested behind the troop carrier’s front seat.

  He lounged on the open tailgate of the truck, looking cool despite the afternoon’s heat. A bottled water in his hand made her want to snatch it and pour it over her sweating head.

  “A good day’s work,” she said, loudly enough for the troops to hear. Although she started training with a tough-guy attitude, she thought it important to add praise as their ability increased.

  Travis did not second her.

  As the soldiers loaded their equipment, Clare spotted a pickup coming up the rutted trail with Javier Fuentes at the wheel. Since she’d taken on instructing soldiers, she no longer worked with the other volunteers from Houston.

  A short distance from the troop carrier, she and Javier swapped stories while she downed the lukewarm bottled water she’d gotten from the truck. “How’d a cold Coke go?” Javier produced one from a cooler and she savored the effervescent explosion in her smoke-ravaged throat.

  Javier’s eyes grew serious. “How’re you doing?” he asked in a way she thought referred to Frank’s death.

  “Getting by. You?”

  He flashed a smile born of youthful resilience and testosterone. “This is something else up here.” After a drag on his own Coke, Javier went on. “You know, if he’d lived, Frank would have come with us. Hell, he’d have fought fires till they forced him into retirement.”

  From the corner of her eye, Clare noted Travis listening. “Lose somebody in a fire, Chance?”

  Javier jumped in. “Big apartment complex in Houston, wood shingle roof fully involved.” His hands pantomimed leaping flames. “She was right in the middle of it when the ceiling came down and killed the other guy on the hose.” He must have thought he was doing her a favor, pointing out her bravery.

  Travis shifted his eyes to Clare. “So if we get in a pinch, I can’t count on you?”

  Javier’s bronzed young face frowned. “No, man, see she was lucky to get out …”