Chasing Fire

by Pamela Clare

  “US Marshals!” Ahmad shouted. “You are surrounded! Come out of the tent slowly with your hands over your head!”

  “Don’t shoot!” a woman’s voice called from inside the tent. “I’m coming out, and I don’t have a gun.”

  Marc left her to the other two and kept his attention on his scope.

  Motion.

  Someone was up there, inching closer to the edge, probably waiting for the woman in the tent to distract them and draw them into the open.

  Not a chance.

  Through his limited peripheral vision, he saw Deputy Marcs step out from behind the tree, weapon raised as she moved in on the suspect emerging from the tent.

  The guy on the rock lifted his head to take his shot.

  Marc fired.

  Pop!

  Yellow paint splattered on the guy’s safety helmet.

  One down.

  Another pop.

  Deputy Marcs had fired, too. Marc glanced over and saw the woman from the tent sink onto the ground, paint on her shoulder, a Glock in her right hand.

  Motion.

  The barrel of a rifle nudged through the brush at the rim of a prospecting hole behind Deputy Marcs.

  With no time to think, Marc pivoted, dropped to one knee, and fired.

  Pop!

  More yellow paint.

  Deputy Marcs and Ahmad spun to look behind them and saw the man who might have killed them—if he been a real crook.

  “Shit.” Deputy Marcs scanned the surrounding mountainside.

  “Two headshots, Hunter.” McBride came up behind them. “You’re on a roll.”

  “Don’t feed his ego.” Darcangelo followed a step behind McBride. “He’s hard enough to live with as it is.”

  They debriefed the action on-site as a group, sharing feedback, which was mostly positive. The DUSMs who’d played the bad guys—two men and a woman—ribbed each other about getting killed, yellow paint on their US Marshals Service T-shirts. Then, through the trees, came the sound of shouting.

  Pella stood near the vehicles with two men dressed in wildland firefighter gear.

  McBride glanced back over his shoulder. “Let’s take a ten-minute hydration break. There’s a Porta-Potty back by the vehicles if anyone needs it.”

  Marc shouldered his rifle and made his way with the others back toward the parking area, Darcangelo on one side, Deputy Marcs and Ahmad on the other, McBride a few paces ahead.

  “Thanks for having our backs,” Deputy Marcs said. “You’re one hell of a good shot with that rifle.”

  Marc opened his mouth to respond, but Darcangelo cut him off.

  “He was an Army sniper. How many confirmed kills, Hunter? Eighty-five?”

  “Eighty-six.”

  “For a time, he held the record for long-distance kill, too. He took out a Taliban leader from three-quarters of a mile away.”

  Deputy Marcs gave a low whistle. “Wow.”

  McBride looked back at Darcangelo, grinning. “Don’t feed the ego, remember?”

  Marc didn’t have an ego—not when it came to his job. “Can I say something?”

  “No.” McBride and Darcangelo said in unison.

  “You know these two, sir?” Ahmad fell in beside McBride, a grin on his face.

  “Only too well.” McBride chuckled. “Once upon a time, they put their lives on the line to save my wife, Natalie, and me.”

  Ahmad nodded as if a mystery had been solved. “That’s why you put up with their bullshit.”

  “Yeah. That’s it.”

  Back at the row of vehicles, Marc dug into his pack for his water bottle and took a deep drink. It was easy to get dehydrated at altitude.

  “A couple of hand crews can hook this thing and have it out in a matter of hours,” said the older firefighter with a clipboard in his hand.

  A younger firefighter stood his ground, looking furious. “If this thing isn’t out before the wind hits, it will race up the slopes and make a run along the drainages that lead into town. Initial attack has to succeed. We need aircraft.”

  “We don’t—”

  “Enough!” Sheriff Pella looked like he could use a drink. “I’ve got to go with Eric on this one, Terry. I’m going to request a helo or SEAT and a team of smokejumpers, but I can’t guarantee we’ll get anything. You know how it goes. Establish a lookout, and get your hand crews up there. I want reports from both of you every thirty minutes.”

  Sometimes it sucked to be the one in charge.

  The younger one turned to face them and gave Marc and the other LEOs the once-over, his gaze landing on Deputy Marcs. “Hey, Julia. What are you doing up here? Did something happen at Joe’s mine?”

  “It’s a training day. We’re playing a serious game of paintball.” Deputy Marcs pointed at Marc with a nod of her head. “This guy just saved my ass.”

  “Nice.” Eric shook Marc’s hand, then Darcangelo’s and Ahmad’s. “Eric Hawke, fire chief for Scarlet Springs.”

  No wonder the man had stood his ground when it came to that helicopter. If that fire took off, it might well make a run for his town.

  Marc didn’t have firefighter training, but he could use a chainsaw and dig. “If there’s anything we can do…”

  Hawke met Marc’s gaze, worry making his jaw hard. “I appreciate the offer, but you’d better hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Kenzie Morgan Conrad walked the block to Aspen Wildlife Sanctuary for a quick meeting with her friend Winona Belcourt, a wildlife vet. The two of them were Team members and had volunteered to help with this year’s Team fundraiser. It was their job to find restaurants to act as food sponsors for the event, which would be held in Boulder. The Team, an all-volunteer rescue organization, got all of its money through grants and donations, and the fundraiser brought in a substantial amount of their annual operating budget.

  Kenzie walked through the front door and toward the back, where she found Winona taking care of a golden eagle, her eyes protected by goggles, heavy gloves on her hands to keep her safe from the raptor’s talons. But the beautiful bird wasn’t putting up a fight.

  Kenzie stood outside the treatment room, waiting.

  “Poison.” Winona wiped blood from its beak with a gauze pad. “It probably picked up a rodent that had ingested an anti-coagulant and got poisoned second hand. The only thing I can do for it is euthanize it, end its suffering.”

  How awful.

  Kenzie’s heart broke for the beautiful creature.

  Winona spoke to the eagle in Lakota, her mother tongue, then wrapped it gently in a towel and carried it to the back. When she returned ten minutes later, Kenzie was still wiping tears from her eyes.

  Win gave Kenzie a hug. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  Kenzie sniffed. “How do you deal with things like that?”

  She’d never seen Winona lose her composure over the animals in her care.

  “Sweat lodge helps. I pray. I do everything I can to help the animals that come to me and leave the rest to Creator.” Win handed Kenzie a tissue. “Your job comes with some pretty tough days, too.”

  “That’s true.” Kenzie owned a dog kennel and trained search dogs, volunteering for the Team with her golden retrievers, Gizmo and Gabby, for SAR and HRD work—search and rescue and human remains detection.

  When she got toned out, someone was either missing or dead.

  “Let’s go to my office.”

  Kenzie followed her to the back. “How is Shota dealing with the heat?”

  Shota was Winona’s wolf. Stolen from the wild with the rest of his litter by poachers who had killed his mother, he’d been the only pup Winona had been able to save. Now fully grown, Shota was fiercely protective of Winona—and a potential danger to everyone else. He lived in a large enclosure behind the house where Winona lived with her brother, Chaska, and her sister-in-law, Naomi. Sometimes the wolf howled at night—a primal, haunting sound—and the dogs at the kennel howled back.

  Kenzie wondered what they were saying to each o
ther.

  Hey, I’m a big wolf.

  !Hola! I’m a Chihuahua, but my ancestors were wolves.

  Kenzie loved the howling, but it probably drove their neighbors crazy.

  “He sleeps a lot and stays in the shade. I’ve been giving him ice blocks to lick.”

  Kenzie and Winona talked through a list of restaurants they hoped they could talk into donating free food for the fundraiser in exchange for advertising in the program and on the Team’s website.

  “You know Joe will say yes, so we don’t even have to wonder about Knockers.”

  Joe Moffat was Scarlet’s homegrown philanthropist. His family had grown wealthy off the silver mine up at Caribou, where most of their ancestors had worked back in the day. He had always been one of the Team’s greatest supporters.

  “What about that fancy new place on Pearl Street in Boulder—what’s it called?” Kenzie tried to remember. “Something like Terror.”

  Winona fought back a smile. “You mean ‘Terroir’? Let’s add them to the list.”

  They needed ten food sponsors, so they came up with a list of twenty restaurants. Then they divided the restaurants between the two of them to start making calls.

  Getting people to do things for free for the Team wasn’t difficult. It was a nonprofit, and it had the reputation of being the best search-and-rescue team in the country. People in Colorado were obsessive about outdoor sports, which made them sympathetic to the cause. They all felt safer knowing the Team was only a phone call away.

  Winona’s receptionist popped her head into the room. “Brandon Silver is on the line from the fire department. There’s a fire west of town, and he wants to know if you’ve seen Bear.”

  Winona shook her head. “I haven’t seen him for a few days.”

  Kenzie hadn’t seen Bear, either. “I hope he’s not in danger.”

  “Bear is wiser than any of us when it comes to survival in the mountains,” Winona said. “If there’s a fire nearby, he’ll know to get out of its way.”

  Kenzie hoped Winona was right. “Harrison just got toned out with the rest of the Team—a woman with a broken leg. They’re west of town, too.”

  Kenzie’s husband, Harrison Conrad, had only recently returned from climbing Nuptse, Mt. Everest, and Lhotse by himself in just five days—the first man in history to do so. He hadn’t done it for glory, but to heal emotional wounds and to claim the Khumbu Triple Crown, as some called it, for a lost friend. Kenzie had been scared to death for him every day of those five days, but she’d known it was something he had to do to find peace.

  “Megs won’t let them put their safety at risk,” Win said.

  Megs Hill, a climbing legend, was the founder of the Team. Kenzie had always thought of her as a bit of a hardass, but the kindness she’d shown Harrison during his recovery from the Everest disaster had proven to Kenzie that Megs had a soft side—one she kept well hidden.

  Winona picked up the phone. “I’m going to call Brandon back and make sure he knows about Camp Mato Sapa. It’s up there, too, not too far from Ski Scarlet. My brother and Naomi are up there with forty kids. That’s a lot of people to evacuate in an emergency.”

  “Good idea.”

  Win dialed the number, stood with the phone to her ear, her face slowly folding into a frown. “No answer. I guess they’re busy.”

  Gabe tied the top rope into his harness and climbed the ladder. Today’s lesson was about trust and teamwork. His job was to provide a little humor relief and to prove to the kids that they wouldn’t get hurt if they fell. If he impressed his wife in the meantime, so much the better. She would reward him in the bedroom.

  Kat was watching. She sat on a blanket beneath a nearby pine, Noelle playing beside her, the two older kids running about near the tipi.

  On the ground, Chaska was on belay and had taken up Gabe’s slack. Gabe started across the high rope, twenty-five feet off the ground, using the guide ropes to steady himself, his blade prosthetic not intended for this. But he’d done his share of slacklining, and this was easier.

  “See how he holds onto the guide ropes to steady himself?” Chaska looked up at him. “You know what would happen if he fell?”

  That was Gabe’s cue.

  He pitched forward, letting himself fall—and jerked to a stop in mid-air.

  Kids gasped, stared up at him, eyes wide.

  Old Man Belcourt—Chaska’s grandfather—chuckled.

  “Nothing happened. See how the rope goes through that pulley and then down to me? I’m on belay, and that means that I’ll stop him from falling. He couldn’t get to the ground now if he wanted to.”

  Gabe stretched for the ground, flailed his arms and legs. “Let me down!”

  Now the children were laughing, too.

  Chaska lowered Gabe to the ground. “I know this is new and different from anything you’ve done before, but that’s what this camp is all about, isn’t it? Who wants to be the first to cross the high rope?”

  One of the younger girls stepped forward, a shy smile on her face, hand raised.

  “Way to go, Mona. Let’s get you ready.”

  One of the counselors got little Mona into a child’s harness.

  Gabe untied himself from the rope and knelt to tie Mona in. “You don’t have to worry. We won’t let you get hurt. You’re going to have fun.”

  Fearless, Mona climbed up the ladder as Gabe had done, followed by the camp counselor who stood on the platform behind her, encouraging her.

  Mona took hold of the guide ropes, hesitating for a moment. The other kids watched in amazed silence as she took one step and then another. She froze out in the middle, looking down at the ground as if realizing for the first time how far away it was.

  Chaska coached her through it. “Don’t look down if it scares you. Look at your feet and the rope beneath them. You’re doing great.”

  Mona shook off her nerves and moved carefully to the other side, a big smile of triumph on her face as she set foot on the platform.

  “Well done, Mona!” Chaska called up to her.

  The man was going to make a great dad.

  Old Man Belcourt was waiting for Mona at the bottom of the ladder. “You showed courage going first, but are you sure one of your ancestors isn’t Iktomi? Spider Girl. That’s what I’m gonna call you from now on.”

  Gabe knew a lot more about Navajo—or Diné—culture than he did Lakota culture, thanks to Kat and years of traveling back and forth between Denver and the Diné reservation. Still, he was pretty sure that Iktomi was a spider trickster spirit. Old Man Belcourt had complimented Mona.

  The little girl looked delighted.

  “Who’s next?” Chaska called.

  Hands shot up, the children’s faith in themselves bolstered by Mona’s example.

  Gabe found himself smiling as he tied child after child into the harness and watched them confront their fear. He couldn’t think of a better way to spend the day than up here in the mountains with Kat, the kids, and good friends.

  More than half of the kids had successfully crossed the high rope when Gabe spotted Naomi walking toward them, a hand on her rounded belly, a worried expression on her face. She waited until the child on the ropes had reached the other side then asked to speak with Chaska.

  “The phone is dead. I just tried to call Food Mart about the cake for our end-of-camp party, but I couldn’t get a dial tone.”

  Cell phones were of no use up here—not until a person got out of the canyon and down the road to the main highway.

  Kat walked up to them. “It was really windy last night. Maybe a tree fell on the lines.”

  Gabe nodded. “When we’re done here, I can drive into town and find out what’s going on. When I get down to Scarlet, I can let them know the line is dead.”

  Naomi looked relieved at this. “Thanks. I appreciate it. Sorry to interrupt.”

  She turned and walked back the way she’d come, while Chaska and Gabe got back to the kids and the ropes course.

 
; “Who hasn’t gone?” Chaska turned toward the kid who’d started the fight this morning at breakfast. “Dean?”

  Dean glowered at the ground. “I don’t want to do that.”

  “He’s afraid,” offered the kid with the fat lip.

  Chaska nodded. “It’s okay to be afraid. Do you know what courage is?”

  Dean said nothing, but a few of the kids nodded.

  “It means not being afraid.”

  Chaska shook his head. “Hey, Old Man, what is courage?”

  Grandpa Belcourt stepped up to Dean, put a hand on his shoulder. “Everyone has their own ideas about things these days. But back when I was a boy, I was told by my elders that courage is doing something you need to do even though you’re afraid.”

  Chaska knelt in front of Dean. “You can do this, buddy. I know you can.”

  Dean looked like he wanted to cry, then an expression of fury came over his face. “Fine. I’ll do your stupid high rope.”

  Gabe tied him in. “You’re going to do great.”

  Dean climbed the ladder, stood on the platform looking down like someone about to leap from a cliff. Gabe could almost feel the kid’s heart pounding. But this was a leap of faith.

  Dean took one step and another and…

  He slipped and fell with a shriek.

  Chaska stopped his fall. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

  “I want down! Put me down!”

  Chaska lowered him to the ground.

  Gabe saw shame on his face. So far, he’d been the only child to fall.

  It couldn’t end this way.

  Gabe knelt in front of him. “You’re okay. You’re safe. Do you want to try again? You can do this, Dean.”

  Dean looked up, something desperate in his brown eyes. “I’m scared.”

  “I know, but you don’t have to let that stop you.”

  Dean walked back to the ladder, climbed up, his jaw hard as he looked out over the rope. He took one step and another and another.

  “That’s it. You’ve got this.”

  Another step. Another. Yet another.