by Pamela Clare
Marc wasn’t about to explain why he was late. His sex life was none of Darcangelo’s business. “I had to give you time to make your hair pretty.”
It was an old joke between the two of them. Marc kept his hair short, while Julian, who spent a lot of time on the street undercover, wore his in a ponytail.
Darcangelo chuckled, shut the door, then climbed into the passenger seat. “Hey, at least I have hair.”
“My hairline is not receding.” Marc glanced in the rearview mirror just to make sure and was relieved to see his hairline where it had always been.
They left Denver, heading west on Highway 36 toward Boulder, talking about their two favorite subjects—their families and firearms. Marc’s police radio served as background noise, the mountains looming larger with each mile.
“I hear McBride set up a lunch at that brewpub, Knockers.”
Zach McBride, the Chief Deputy US Marshal for the Colorado Territory, was a good friend of theirs. They’d met McBride through their wives, who had worked together at the Denver Independent as part of the newspaper’s Investigative Team—or I-Team. The second-highest ranking lawman in the state and a former Navy SEAL with a Medal of Honor to his name, McBride clearly knew what mattered most to other LEOs at these events—food.
Darcangelo nodded. “Good. I fucking hate MREs.”
“Tell me about it.” Marc had served in the US Army as a sniper, serving eighteen months in Afghanistan, where he’d eaten enough MREs to last this lifetime and the next.
“Did you have any trouble with your conversion kit?” Darcangelo asked.
They would be firing Sim rounds today — non-lethal Simunition filled with paint. The conversion kits ensured that no one could accidentally load a live round and kill someone. Not that real ammunition looked anything like Sim rounds, but safety came first.
“Piece of cake.” Marc started to say something about the sweet Colt Cobra he’d shot at the range yesterday when something on his police radio caught his ear.
He turned up the volume.
“… a red flag warning for the mountains until midnight tonight with a dry cold front expected to bring gusts up to fifty-five miles an hour later in the afternoon. There is an open fire ban in effect statewide.”
Marc turned it down again. “Let’s hope that cold front isn’t as dry as they think.”
They talked police department politics most of the way to Boulder and up the canyon to Scarlet Springs. Old Man Irving was retiring in the fall, so a search was on for his replacement. The bean counters were trying to figure out how best to utilize the money the department got from taxes on legal marijuana sales. And why the hell couldn’t they get decent food in the cafeteria?
“There’s the turn.” Darcangelo pointed to a sign that said “Caribou.”
“I see it.”
Caribou was the site of a ghost town and an old silver mine. The landowner—a guy named Joe Moffat—had generously given them permission to use his land for today’s exercise, enabling them to run around with their firearms away from the public. Seeing cops with weapons in their hands had a way of freaking people out.
Marc turned onto a dirt road and followed it uphill, stopping for a bull moose that stood in the middle of the road as if trying to remember why it had come this way. “Anytime now, buddy.”
The moose looked over at them, velvet still on its massive rack, and then sauntered across the road and down the embankment.
Darcangelo clicked a photo with his smartphone. “What a beautiful animal.”
“Did I ever tell you about the hunting trips I used to take up here?”
“Oh, God, here we go again. Do your kids know you killed Bambi’s mother?”
Marc chuckled. “Bambi’s mother was a deer. I hunted elk. You do know there’s a difference, don’t you?”
“Blow me, Hunter.”
“No way.”
They found a dozen or so law enforcement vehicles parked at the top of the road. Marc pulled in parallel to the black SUV marked MARSHALS SERVICE on the rear.
They climbed out and walked over to McBride, who was standing with several uniformed men and women in the shade of a big pine.
“Hunter, Darcangelo.” He grinned, shook their hands. “Glad you two could make it. Have you met Sheriff Pella?”
Pella, a lean, middle-aged man with gray at his temples, was sheriff of Forest County, which included both Scarlet Springs and Caribou.
Marc reached out a hand. “Marc Hunter, DPD SWAT captain.”
“Julian Darcangelo, DPD vice.”
Pella repeated their names, then grinned, his gaze fixed on Marc. “You’re that guy who broke out of prison and hid out up here, aren’t you? The governor gave you a pardon.”
Yeah, Marc had figured that would come up. It had been a long time ago, but people didn’t forget that sort of thing. “Yes, sir, I’m that guy.”
Pella chuckled. “Glad you could join us. This is one of my deputies, Julia Marcs. She’s been with the department for eight years now.”
Marc frowned, her name somehow familiar.
Deputy Marcs looked up at them through mirrored shades, her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. “Pleasure to meet you both.”
And then it was time to get down to business.
McBride gave a short introduction. “Since the legalization of marijuana in the state, we’ve seen a fifteen percent increase in criminal transients here in the mountains west of Boulder. Some of the transients we encounter are just folks down on their luck, but a significant percentage are felons—sex offenders, drug dealers, armed robbers. They came to Colorado thinking they’d become millionaires dealing legal weed, only to find out state law prevents anyone with a criminal record from participating in any aspect of the marijuana industry. Rather than leaving, they hide up here, camping illegally on county and national forest land and posing a threat to locals and tourists alike.”
Pella cut in. “When you boys drove them off the streets of Denver, they came here. They’ve taken over a couple of campgrounds, squeezing out decent folks. I want them out of my mountains and away from my town.”
Marc couldn’t blame Pella for that.
McBride nodded in understanding. “It’s going to take a coordinated effort from federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to make that happen. The point of today’s exercise is to explore the challenges inherent in apprehending suspects in the mountain environment.”
Pella glanced over at Marc, a grin on his face. “We’ve got an expert here.”
Marc ignored the comment, listening as McBride explained what would happen next. Several illegal campsites had been set up in the forest to the north of the old mine, away from mine shafts and other hazards. They would take turns in mixed teams of three moving in on the campsites and apprehending the DUSMs pretending to be bad guys. They would then evaluate their performance and get feedback from McBride and his crew.
“Each group of volunteers will be running their own scenario, so expect surprises,” McBride said. “Remember that we’re above nine thousand feet elevation here, so stay hydrated. I don’t want anyone coming down with altitude sickness. After lunch, we’ll head out and get a look at the kind of damage these folks do to campgrounds and wilderness areas.”
Pella got specific. “You’ll see the trash, erosion, piles of human excrement.”
“Sounds like fun,” Darcangelo said.
Deputy Marcs gave him a wry look. “You’ll get to do what we do every day.”
Marc’s gaze shifted to the west to take in the breathtaking view of Indian Peaks.
What the hell?
He pointed. “Someone tell me that’s supposed to be there.”
In the distance, a narrow column of white smoke curled against the sky.
Jesse Moretti rode the chairlift toward the top of Eagle Ridge, chainsaw resting across his lap. He’d been assigned to supervise the crew that was cutting whippers from the glades today. The forest was always trying to reclaim the slo
pes. Clearing whippers—scrub and saplings that grew more than a foot above the ground—made up a lot of the work they did here at Ski Scarlet over the summer. If they didn’t stay on top of this shit, the slopes would quickly become unskiable.
He preferred the work he did here in the winter. From November to May, he was part of Ski Patrol. He rescued people who’d gotten injured, kept stoners and drunks off the slopes, and tossed bombs—blasting powder caches with explosives so they wouldn’t cause avalanches. It didn’t feel like work most of the time because his feet were strapped to a pair of skis.
But as soon as the snow melted and ski season ended, his job changed to a kind of landscaping gig—clearing whippers and rocks from trails, removing invasive weeds, and reseeding grass on runs to prevent erosion. It was hot, sweaty, thirsty work.
Still, no one would catch Moretti complaining. He’d done hotter, dirtier work in Iraq when he’d been an Army Ranger.
What he’d experienced at war had brought him to Colorado in search of peace. He’d seen the mountains and had fallen head-over-heels in love, something beautiful after years of ugliness. He’d become obsessed with rock climbing, had learned to ski, and had gotten a job on Ski Patrol that following winter, volunteering with the Team in his free time.
The move to Colorado had been the best idea he’d ever had because it had led him to Ellie and the twins. Ellie, a widow and a registered nurse at Mountain Memorial Hospital, had lived next door to Jesse with her two small children, Daniel and Daisy, who hadn’t yet turned three. Then a highly contagious case of strep throat had brought them together, and Jesse had fallen head-over-heels in love again.
Now, he and Ellie had a little three-month-old son—Dylan—and Jesse couldn’t have been happier. The little guy was growing so fast. He could already hold up his head, roll over, and push himself up on his arms.
Yeah, fatherhood was pretty damned amazing.
Off to Jesse’s left, a golden eagle soared over the treetops, feathers gleaming golden-black against a bright blue sky. It wheeled toward the west, its wings flat.
Jesse was so caught up in its flight that it took him a moment to notice.
Smoke.
It came from a valley to the northwest of the ski area.
He sat up straighter, squinted. “Son of a bitch.”
Was there a controlled burn scheduled for today? Sometimes land managers burned piles of slash, clearing out fuels to prevent catastrophic forest fires, but Jesse hadn’t heard anything about a burn being slated for today. There was a red flag warning in effect. Only an idiot would risk a burn on a red flag day.
He reached for his hand mic. “Forty-two to dispatch.”
His boss, Matt Mayes, responded. “Forty-two, go ahead.”
“Is there a controlled burn on the schedule for today?”
“Not that I’ve heard. No one would be stupid enough to burn on a red flag day.”
That’s what Jesse had thought. “There’s smoke rising from a valley northwest of us.”
“Copy, forty-two. I’ll call it in.”
Jesse watched the smoke column, a spindly tendril that curled in the breeze. It hardly seemed menacing, but he’d heard the stories about the big fire that had almost wiped Scarlet Springs off the map back in 1878. Of course, they hadn’t had modern firefighting equipment back then—no slurry bombers or flame retardant, no smokejumpers or hotshots or helitack crews, no helos equipped with hoses or buckets for water drops.
They hadn’t had modern forecast technology either. The fire had swept down on the town from the mountains and burned most of it to the ground. Only one building had remained when the smoke cleared—the Forest Creek Inn. The Inn stood there today, still owned by the same family. But dozens had been killed by smoke and flames, most of them prospectors and miners who’d had no warning that the fire was coming.
The Scarlet Springs Town Council and the fire department had spent the past century and a half trying to prepare for the Next Big One, educating the public about wildland fire, urging homeowners to clear fuels from around their homes, and installing a reverse 911 system. So far, every fire that had started near town had been snuffed before it could do any damage.
“Dispatch to forty-two.”
“Go ahead, Dispatch.”
“The sheriff’s department said the fire has already been called in and relayed to Scarlet FD, as well as the Rocky Mountain Control Center.”
That was good news.
Hawke and his crew would be on top of it in no time.
Matt went on. “We’re in the evac zone this time, so they want us to be ready to get out if necessary. I told them to feel free to use our space to fight this thing.”
“Great idea.”
The parking lot would make a great fire camp, and the slopes, which were cleared of trees and vegetation, were perfect safety zones.
“In the meantime, I want someone watching that smoke column. It’s much too close for comfort. The wind is going to kick up this afternoon, and it could come our way. I don’t want anyone on our crew to get caught in a runaway blaze.”
“Copy that.” Jesse dug his smartphone out of his pocket.
He wanted to warn Ellie, to tell her to be ready just in case.
Chapter 3
Eric strode through the firehouse toward his locker shouting orders to Silver. “I want eyes on Bear. Someone locate him and bring him here until the fire is controlled. If you can’t find him, I want to know.”
From what Eric had gleaned from the calls, the fire was on Forest County’s Haley Preserve property next to Tungsten Creek. Bear lived somewhere out there, coming into town to offer his blessing to passersby in exchange for a warm meal. He’d been part of the community for as long as Eric could remember. No one knew how old he was. He’d just always been here. Big like his namesake, Bear had the mind of a child—except when it came to the Bible, which he knew chapter and verse. The residents of Scarlet watched over him, sheltering him during blizzards, making sure he got medical care, buying him meals.
Eric would not lose him to a wildfire.
“You got it, chief.” Silver stopped outside the locker room. “Do you need a ride to the Boulder County airport?”
“No.” That would lose him an hour. “The helo is picking me up at the hospital.”
Mountain Memorial had the only helipad in the area. It was the fastest way for him to get airborne. He needed to see the fire for himself, get a look at the terrain before he put a crew out there or called for resources.
Right now, he wasn’t even sure where the fire was.
Eric stepped into the locker room, opened his locker, and got into his wildland firefighting gear—brush pants, fire resistant T-shirt, brush shirt, boots—his mind running through a list of campgrounds, known transient camps, and private property west of town. All reports so far said the fire was small—a single column of white smoke. With any luck, they’d have it out in a few hours before the temperature rose, relative humidity dropped, and the winds fanned it into a threat to life and property.
Eric had spent part of every day since becoming fire chief planning for the worst-case scenario. He’d pored over maps and observed the topography around Scarlet, filing away his observations every time he went out on a call, went climbing, or drove through the mountains. He’d memorized the locations of streets, dirt roads, meadows, lakes, creeks, and trails—anything that might serve as a fire break. And he’d prayed that the next big one would never come.
Fires in Colorado’s mountains could be treacherous, in part because of unpredictable weather, but also because of the terrain. Fire burned more quickly uphill than down. If the slope was steep enough, the top of the fire column could ignite fuels high above it. Eric had seen fire consume a steep mountainside in a matter of minutes, seeming to leap and roll uphill, incinerating everything in its path. Canyons, draws, and saddles—they could change a fire’s behavior, funneling flames and super-heated gases.
That was the thing about fire. It wasn�
��t evil. It didn’t have a hidden agenda. It just went where weather, topography, and fuels enabled it to go. That didn’t mean fire behavior was always easy to predict, but it wasn’t rocket science, either.
He finished dressing, grabbed a wildland pack, a weather kit, and a charged radio, and left through the open bay door, driving himself to the hospital and parking near the helipad. The helo itself was privately owned. It had been hired by the National Forest Service to fly over the state’s vast stretches of wilderness to watch for fires.
Eric heard it before he saw it—a retired AH-1F that had seen service in Vietnam. It came into view to the east, its red and white paint a contrast to the blue sky. Eric stayed by his vehicle until the craft had touched down. He ducked down and ran through the rotor wash, then climbed through the open door into the back, settling his pack on the floor and buckling in.
He pulled on his headset, gave the pilot a thumbs-up. “Let’s chase smoke.”
Terry Robertson, fire chief for the Forest County fire crew, turned to look back at him, his voice sounding tinny in Eric’s earphones. “We could see the smoke coming in. It doesn’t look like much. A single hand crew can probably put it out by suppertime.”
Robertson was a good guy, but he’d been doing this job for too long. He loved the ceremonies and pomp that came with his position, but he no longer had the belly for making tough calls. It was as if a part of him had already retired, even while he still wore the uniform.
Eric tried logic first. “Let’s get a look at the terrain before we commit any crews. There’s a cold front coming through this afternoon. We need to hook it before that wind hits.”
As soon as they were in the air, Eric saw it—a thin column of white smoke in the distance. Robertson was right. It didn’t look like much.
It took just a few minutes to reach it.
The pilot hovered, giving Eric the GPS coordinates.
Eric looked down at the blaze. “Looks like an illegal campsite. The campfire got out of hand. Sparks ignited the duff.”
Below him, fire crept along the valley, burning through the duff—the layer of pine needles, debris, and old, dried branches that covered the forest floor. The point of origin looked like an illegal campsite off a dirt access road next to Tungsten Creek. The road and the creek had kept it from spreading eastward.