Wild Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  “Good!” He snapped it out. “She needs someone like that. Wouldn’t want her settling for anything less. And don’t be sir-ing me. I’m a civilian now and so are you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gordon tried offering a wink.

  Randy winked back, grinned for a moment, then quickly resumed scowling at Ripley sorting through the paperwork.

  “This is a purchase agreement.”

  “Uh-huh!”

  Gordon decided that it was just his kind of cruel to play along with Randy, because whatever his game was, Gordon bet it would be fun. “What are you buying, honey?”

  “Don’t honey me. Not buying, selling. No! Not that either. Not me anyway,” she riffled back and forth through the pages, then sat down abruptly. If Gordon hadn’t pulled her back a quick step as her knees let go, she’d have sat on the pavement rather than the edge of the ramp.

  “Erickson is selling my Diana Prince.”

  “Really?” He eyed Randy, wondering what his game was. He could see the guy was practically bursting at the seams, but it sure as hell sounded like bad news to him. If they were selling the Aircrane, was Ripley out of a job? Maybe there’d be some way to make a place for her at MHA. He liked the sound of that idea a lot.

  Then he caught the edge of that smile that Randy couldn’t seem to keep in check. So, this couldn’t be bad news. He looked like the kind of guy Gordon would like. If this was a setup, he wasn’t going to resist.

  “Who would want the ugly bug beast?”

  He barely caught Ripley’s elbow before it slammed into his side.

  “I would, you jerk!”

  “You have a spare twenty million? Clearly I’m hanging out with the right woman.”

  “No, I don’t, double jerk. She’s being sold to…” she went back and forth through the pages once more. “It doesn’t say.”

  “It doesn’t?” Mark came over and snatched the pages from her hands. “Let me see that.” He didn’t bother to raise his mirrored shades. “Oh, I see the problem. Anybody have a pen?”

  Randy pulled one out and handed it over.

  Mark filled out something on the form, but from where Gordon sat beside Ripley, he couldn’t see what it was.

  “That should take care of it,” Mark nodded, returned the pen to Randy, and then dropped the stack of paper back into Ripley’s lap.

  Her body brushed against his as they both leaned in to read it. He could feel the nerves vibrating through her.

  He spotted the change first and glanced up to see Randy and Mark were grinning like mad commanders of the Queen’s Navy. He’d finally caught up with an online video of HMS Pinafore last night and couldn’t stop laughing.

  “Mount Hood Aviation is buying Diana Prince?” Ripley’s voice was as small as he’d ever heard it.

  “Well, it needs another signature,” Mark drawled out.

  “I guess it does,” Randy agreed drily. “If we’re going to get technical about it.”

  Ripley flipped through the pages again, “I don’t see anywhere to sign.”

  “What? Oh!” Randy patted all of his pockets before “happening” to find the missing page folded up in his back pocket.

  “Sign here,” and he handed the page to Ripley.

  She read it over, “It says that the purchase is only valid if I’m the pilot.”

  “Does it?” Randy said in a tone he might use to discuss the weather on a clear day.

  “Really?” This time Gordon could feel his own voice squeaking. Ripley being attached permanently to MHA was a possibility that neither of them had ever considered.

  “What? Is that some kind of problem?” Randy scowled at him. But Gordon could see the smile that was his natural condition.

  “No, sir!”

  “I told you to stop doing that,” Randy growled happily. “You, Ripley? Brad and Janet already agreed to it. You got a problem with your new assignment?”

  Ripley looked at Gordon for a long, heart-stopping moment before replying very softly without turning to look at Randy, “No, sir.”

  “This guy giving you problems, Ripley? Let me know. I bet I can still kick your ass, young man.”

  Gordon certainly wasn’t going to argue the point…the guy looked a little dangerous despite that smile that kept slipping out.

  “He is giving me problems, Randy,” Ripley replied as her dark eyes inspected him from just inches away. “But not that kind.” Then she leaned in to kiss him.

  The fact that they’d be together at MHA still hadn’t sunk in. It meant they’d have time to…figure out what was next. That alone was worth kissing her for.

  After a bit, Randy growled. “Ripley! Just sign the damned thing, I have a flight to catch. Fire waits on no man.”

  “Or woman!” And she took the pen and signed.

  Ripley was too numb for any of it to sink in on the flight home. Instead, she’d sat there wired awake for the entire first leg of the flight. Gordon had been the same, sitting beside her, holding her hand for most of it.

  They didn’t speak, to each other or anyone else.

  Someone served up food, but she didn’t remember what it was or if she’d eaten any.

  She should have been passed out from exhaustion; they’d only finished the fire last night and then stayed up to watch Pinafore. Or she might be beyond ecstatic, but that didn’t sink in either. She couldn’t even look at Gordon, but it was as if his hand was the only thing anchoring her from disappearing into the sky.

  Something had shifted while the plane was refueling in Tokyo, and she’d collapsed into a dreamless sleep.

  It was midafternoon when they landed and unloaded at the Portland, Oregon, airport.

  “Just a short hop,” Mark had announced. “Form up on me,” and then he climbed into MHA’s own Beech King Air that had been parked in this corner of the airport since they’d left just a month before.

  Rather than joining Mark, Gordon chose to sit just behind Ripley and Brad in the jump seat. Janet was down in her usual aft-facing spot.

  “His heading’s wrong.”

  “Wrong for what?” Gordon leaned forward to stare out the window.

  It was the first words they’d actually spoken since Randy’s revelation and they were so mundane that Ripley had to fight off a sudden bout of the giggles. Their lives had just changed, but neither of them could deal with it.

  “We’re headed southeast to Mount Hood.”

  “But Jernstedt Field is that way,” Ripley nodded to the east. “Is there any other field around Mount Hood?”

  “No,” Gordon said it slowly. “Only… Oh shit!”

  “He’s taking us back to the burned-out airfield at MHA’s base,” Ripley knew it as soon as she heard Gordon’s curse.

  The numb silence between them now turned grim. For the balance of the thirty-minute flight, Ripley couldn’t think of what to say to Gordon. He’d lost the only home he had. His parents’ Wyoming ranch certainly had never been a real home as he’d described it.

  Home. That word jostled about in her mind, but it didn’t really land anywhere. She hadn’t had a home of her own. Not really. She even lived in a company apartment between jobs because she was so itinerant it was never worth renting anywhere.

  But Henderson forcing the whole crew back to the burned-out MHA field was a cruelty, especially after the long firefight and the long flight home.

  Home. There was that word again.

  They rounded the south flank of the mountain, flew over Timberline Lodge, and then flew into The Black of the burn. The whole hillside was a wasteland.

  No…it wasn’t.

  Little patches of green, as so often happened even in the harshest wildfires, still existed. A dozen trees here. A patch of scrub brush there. Without rhyme or reason, the patches of hope and new life remained.

  They crested the ridge and it looked as if Mickey’s helicopter stumbled in the sky. Then all three of the Firehawks hesitated.

  She’d been lagging
behind, wanting to protect Gordon, but they couldn’t help arriving.

  And when they did, Ripley saw why the other four helos had jerked to a confused hover, as disarrayed as they’d been after the fire.

  Gordon looked down too, unable to believe what he was seeing.

  The devastation of the bunkhouse, parachute loft, and dining hall had been scraped away. The burned-out skeletons of their vehicles had been hauled off as well.

  The area beside the runway that had been MHA’s base had been scraped clean as if it had never been there. Even the control tower was gone.

  But in the tower’s place, several dozen new logs had been planted into the soil, bolted and lashed together. The second-story platform was complete, though only a single finished wall of the central cab stood on the platform.

  “Foundation forms for new concrete footings,” Brad pointed to the perimeter of the old bunkhouse.

  “They’re expanding it,” Gordon couldn’t get over the shock. It was almost as big as Ripley not flying out of his life the moment they landed on US soil. He’d spent the whole flight holding on to her tightly and praying that it was true and not some cosmic joke. And now this.

  “Tents,” Ripley twisted Diana Prince to face toward a small patch of unburned trees at the far end of the runway. An entire tent village had been set up their shade.

  One by one, the pilots shook it off and landed their aircraft. Ripley’s Aircrane filled the entire area where his and Vanessa’s MD 530s were usually parked. Mark brought down the King Air last of all.

  Like a group of vagabonds, they all drifted over to the base. There were stacks of lumber, a crew shack, piles of rebar. This wasn’t a small operation. A big construction crew had been working on this hard during their absence.

  Mount Hood Aviation was going to continue. And they’d purchased the Diana Prince, so Ripley would continue with them. Surely, somehow he and Vanessa would have a place as well. She came up beside him and the three of them held hands for comfort for a moment as others looked around.

  A brand new quad-cab Ford pickup rolled up the road and turned into the empty parking lot. It was a cheery robin’s egg blue. It was towing a large trailer.

  “Damned woman,” Mark grumbled from close beside Gordon. “Never let the woman buy the pickup, Gordon. Trust me on that. Now I’m going to have to get it repainted black.” Then he hurried ahead to sweep Emily into his arms as she climbed down.

  “I wish him luck with that,” Vanessa whispered.

  They shared a laugh and a hand squeeze.

  “You hitting on my girl, Finchley?” Brenna asked as she moved up beside them.

  “Absolutely!” He tried to slip his arm around Vanessa’s waist as a tease, but she walked right out of it as if he’d ceased to exist.

  “I know what’s under that tarp,” Vanessa’s voice was soft with wonder.

  Gordon hadn’t been paying attention to what Emily had been towing, but as soon as he looked, he too knew what it was.

  In seconds she and Brenna stripped the tarp. There on the trailer stood a brand new MD 530, already painted with the MHA gloss-black-and-flames. It even had Vanessa’s name painted in small letters on the pilot’s door.

  Vanessa and Brenna clutched each other tightly. Gordon could see Brenna’s face…and she was weeping. With joy, granted, but he’d never known that the tough mechanic was even capable of that.

  Ripley slipped a hand around his waist and he hugged her tightly. Everyone had their place now…everyone except him.

  “Come along, you two. Let’s go for a walk,” Mark and Emily stood close behind them.

  Gordon did what he could to hold his nerves in check and held on to Ripley tightly in hopes that he’d still be around tomorrow. Mark and Emily led them up onto the lookout platform. The timber railing wasn’t in place yet, but a temporary railing of two-by-fours wrapped all the way around.

  For a while they just looked out at the line of helicopters parked and silent along the tree line. There was no underbrush, and the trees were badly blackened, but Gordon would guess a third of them would survive. Next spring Mark would have to arrange for the rest to be cut.

  From the other side, they looked down over the camp. The sun was low in the west, brilliantly lighting the glaciers atop Mount Hood. The rest of the crew was gathered around Vanessa’s new helicopter.

  “The transformation of this team, you two,” Gordon addressed Mark and Emily. “You’ve done an amazing thing. In the three years I’ve been here, you’ve really turned MHA into a world-class outfit. And Emily, doing the cleanup, starting the rebuild, and the new MD, that was just a miracle of a much more immediate nature.”

  “Thanks. Now just keep it that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here,” Mark handed him a set of keys.

  Ripley recognized them. They were the keys to the King Air spotter plane.

  “You should get yourself a pilot,” Mark was telling him. “That way you can concentrate on the radios and the fire, but your instincts are exceptional.”

  There was a distant round of cheers from the other pilots.

  A van had pulled up beside Mark and Emily’s new truck. She didn’t need to see Amy’s red hair or Gerald’s silent bulk to know that The Doghouse had brought dinner. They had a big barbeque grill on a trailer, which told her all she needed to know. They’d be eating well tonight.

  “He’s staying?” Ripley couldn’t quite believe that everything was coming together. It was too much! It was too fast!

  That stopped her, but instead of a cold chill, she felt a warm happiness surge over her. Gordon would be here. Flying that spotter plane to—

  “Wait a sec!”

  “What?” All three of them turned to face her.

  Gordon looked puzzled but not by the miracle that had just happened to him. He held the keys as if he’d already taken ownership of them, flipping the ring around one fingertip, catching them, and then flipping them again. With each spin and catch he looked taller, more powerful, more utterly her alpha male with each passing moment as the new truth sank in that he was now Mount Hood Aviation’s Incident Commander-Air.

  Mark looked smug, all tall and male behind his mirrored shades.

  Emily looked at her…as if waiting for the obvious question.

  So Ripley asked it, “Where are you two going?”

  “Wait!” Gordon stopped playing with his keys. “What? Where is who going?”

  “Us,” Mark pointed toward the east. “Montana. My dad has this gorgeous ranch out on the Montana Front Range, strangely enough called Henderson’s Ranch. You two should think about getting married out there.”

  Gordon made a spluttering sound of surprise that Ripley didn’t even deign to respond to. Of course they were getting married. She didn’t have to be the Monarch of the Queen’s Navy to see that simple truth. Though kids, perhaps two kids like Mark and Emily had, that she’d have to consider. No, not even that. If they were Gordon’s, no question. Definitely two kids.

  “Sounds gr—”

  “You’re leaving?” Gordon’s shout exploded out, silencing everyone in the camp.

  They all looked up at the tower.

  “You’re leaving?” he said a little more quietly after everyone’s attention had shifted to the cooler of beer that Gerald unearthed from the back of his truck.

  “We’ve done everything we wanted to do here,” Emily confirmed what Ripley already knew, but still Gordon’s jaw dropped.

  He might be her out-of-the-box genius and the best lover that there’d ever been, but there were times that he was a little slow on the uptake.

  “Here,” Emily handed a small package to Ripley.

  Mark’s cell phone rang.

  He fished it out of his pocket and handed it to Gordon. He didn’t even look to see who was the caller.

  In moments, Gordon was uh-huh-ing into the phone. “A fire in Idaho? This time of year?” He said “uh-huh” a few more times. “Well, we’re on the ground
in Oregon right now. Can’t fly tonight, but if you need us after midday tomorrow…”

  Ripley stopped listening. If there was anything she needed to know, he’d tell her.

  She watched Mark and Emily descending the stairs hand in hand to join the celebrating crowd.

  Ripley leaned on the rail, once more facing out over the helicopters and the sleeping forest that would grow again.

  “Going to need a paint job, girl,” she whispered to Diana Price. Ripley could imagine her hard-hitting lady with the black-and-flame paint job and her name in flaming letters. “I’ll make sure you get the golden W-shaped breast plate as well.”

  This worked for her. For the first time in her life she could see a great vista before her. Not one measured in fire seasons or even years, but rather in lives…two lives.

  She unwrapped Emily’s present.

  Ripley didn’t laugh when she saw them, because they were too perfect for that. But they sure made her smile.

  She slipped off her own sunglasses and put on the mirrored Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and just knew that everything was going to turn out wonderfully.

  And when Gordon finished his call, he slipped up behind her and slid his hands around her waist; Ripley knew that she’d been absolutely right about that.

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  Wildfire at Dawn (excerpt)

  The thrilling introduction to the Firehawks Smokejumpers series!

  Mount Hood Aviation’s lead smokejumper Johnny Akbar Jepps rolled out of his lower bunk careful not to bang his head on the upper. Well, he tried to roll out, but every muscle fought him, making it more a crawl than a roll. He checked the clock on his phone. Late morning.

  He’d slept twenty of the last twenty-four hours and his body felt as if he’d spent the entire time in one position. The coarse plank flooring had been worn smooth by thousands of feet hitting exactly this same spot year in and year out for decades. He managed to stand upright…then he felt it, his shoulders and legs screamed.

  Oh, right.

  The New Tillamook Burn. Just about the nastiest damn blaze he’d fought in a decade of jumping wildfires. Two hundred thousand acres—over three hundred square miles—of rugged Pacific Coast Range forest, poof! The worst forest fire in a decade for the Pacific Northwest, but they’d killed it off without a single fatality or losing a single town. There’d been a few bigger ones, out in the flatter eastern part of Oregon state. But that much area—mostly on terrain too steep to climb even when it wasn’t on fire—had been a horror.