The Complete Hotshots

by M. L. Buchman

  Jess tried not to sigh at the way she said partner. It sounded possessive. Bad luck for him, good luck for the dude still in the truck. Which was now on fire and they’d better get a move on.

  He nudged Supergirl out of the way and ducked in to look at the situation. Her partner wasn’t pinned but he had a busted arm. No way to assess anything else in this position, not in the time allowed. When Jess tucked the guy’s bad arm into his half-open jacket, it didn’t even elicit a grunt. Out cold. Jess grabbed the guy’s lapels and gave a hard yank. He was big, but he slithered free like a sack of potatoes.

  The woman ducked back into the truck through the windshield and emerged moments later with her gloves, a pair of burnover shelters, and the first aid kit. Keeping her head after what must have been a terrifying experience. Full points for that.

  Jess had been scouting the edge of the fire. His hotshot crew was up the slope of the ravine trying to cut a line ahead of the blaze and he’d come down just in time to see the engine they’d been waiting for take the hit and tumble down into the ravine.

  They’d both dragged the injured driver well clear, then he eyed the truck. There were a lot of supplies on there that they really needed. The flames weren’t near the gas tanks yet and it seemed like a reasonable risk.

  “Let’s do some salvage.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. With little ceremony she dropped one shelter and the first aid kit on her prostrate partner’s chest. She clipped the other shelter to her belt and followed him back to the truck.

  “Grab your PG bag.”

  “My what?”

  “Personal gear.”

  The fire was bright enough to see the blank look on her face. Right. She probably drove a city engine most of time; she wouldn’t know hotshot lingo.

  “Food, water, stuff like that.”

  “Oh,” she ducked in and came back out with a small knapsack and a Pulaski fire axe. Okay, not all city. Only wildland firefighters used the tool that was an axe on one side and an adze on the other.

  In moments they’d grabbed a five-gallon cube of water and two more of gas for the chainsaws. He snagged a twenty-pound bag of foodstuffs and wished he had time to riffle through more of the doomed engine’s lockers. It was trashed anyway, not even worth trying to use its own pump and water supply to put itself out. He’d expected to find two bodies as he approached the cab. And then Supergirl had kicked out the windshield.

  She came back out with a stretcher for her partner.

  “Let’s get clear.” In three ferry loads, they put another couple hundred feet between them and the now engulfed engine. They stood in the ashen forest with their salvaged gear and her partner on a stretcher. Jess waited, but even now that they were relatively safe, she didn’t slide into shock.

  “How bad is the road up to here?”

  She looked at him like he was an idiot, which wouldn’t surprise anyone, him least of all.

  “I mean for an ambulance.”

  “We don’t—” then she looked grim for a moment and glanced down at her partner where he lay strapped into the stretcher. “I don’t even know where we are. Visibility was near zero for the last hour.”

  Jess clicked on the radio, “Candace? Jess here.”

  “Wondering when you’d get off your lazy ass and check in.”

  Supergirl had a cute giggle.

  “Aww, you missed me. I’m touched. I’ve got a rollover wildfire engine here at the bottom of the ravine in sector two-six. It’s—” there was a loud boom that had both him and Supergirl ducking. She lay over her partner to protect him which was just too sweet for words. “It’s toast. That column of flame about a mile to your southeast was one of the gas tanks breaching. Need a medevac and the road is impassible. Got any helos on call?”

  “Hold. I’ll check.”

  He turned to Supergirl as she sat back up and began brushing wood chips and other detritus that was falling back down from the explosion off her partner. The engine was a complete loss, but she spared it little more than a glance. He’d seen it before, women so focused on their families that they barely thought about their own safety during evacuations.

  “You have a name?”

  “Jill Conway-Jones a.k.a. Supergirl.”

  Sense of humor despite whatever shock she was in. Stretcher boy was one lucky guy; Jess wondered which one of them was Conway and which was Jones. He could see her more clearly now by the light of the burning engine. Seriously lucky guy.

  “I’m Jess Monroe. I’m an assistant super on the Leavenworth Interagency Hotshot Crew that’s currently up that ridge cutting line. We’ll get you and your boyfriend out of here in a minute.”

  “He’s—”

  “Jess?” The radio crackled to life sparing him whatever happy domestic story she was going to spill all over him. “Candace here. You’re getting lucky tonight, boyo. I’ve got a Jeannie Clark in Firehawk Oh-Three from MHA heading your way. Give her a beacon. ETA in one minute, she’s just finished a dump run and is turning your way. Then get back up here. Please tell me you salvaged some saw fuel.”

  “Water and food too.”

  “Love you, Monroe. Swear to god I do.”

  “You can show me some of that lovin’ when I get there. Out.” And he began fishing out the infrared beacon. It would show up far brighter in the helicopter pilot’s night-vision goggles than a normal flashlight. He hoped that Luke had his radio tuned in for that transmission; Candace’s husband was so much fun to poke at. He’d been a hotshot for a year now and married to their super for six months, but it still took him a beat or two to keep up with her. It took all of them that, because Candace rocked the job of leading the team.

  The next ten minutes were busy. The helo coming in overhead drowned any conversation beneath the heavy pounding of the big rotors. A guy came down through thick branches on a penetrator winch and helped them hook up the stretcher.

  Winch guy took a moment to unsling a camera and snap shots of the burning engine and of Jess and Supergirl double-checking on Trent.

  “Be back down for you in a minute,” the helo guy shouted to Jill.

  “No,” she yelled back. “I’m uninjured. I’m sure they can use another firefighter here.”

  Jess was about to protest.

  “I’ve got my Firefighter I and II, I’ve been driving wildfire engines for three seasons, and I’ve got my red card for wildfire.” She pointed at the three cubes of fuel and water, “And do you want to carry all those up the hill yourself?”

  At forty pounds per cube, he wasn’t looking forward to it.

  3

  “Last chance,” the helicopter guy shouted.

  Jill waved him aloft, not giving the hotshot a chance to insist. No way was she passing up a chance to work with an IHC crew. Especially not for the sake of Trent who would probably be an engine driver forever. He was headed for what he needed, med care; now it was time to head for what she needed, fire.

  In minutes, Trent and the photographer were back aboard the helicopter and the pounding of the rotor blades was fading away.

  Funny that the hotshot thought she and Trent were an item.

  Jess Monroe was awfully cute. And she’d felt his easy strength when she stumbled and ended up in his arms. Her knees had been shaky from the crash, but after he’d held her, even for that brief moment, she’d felt so much more stable. Too bad he was already taken by his supervisor.

  Giving a man too much time to think was never a good idea. So she slipped her Pulaski through the loops on her knapsack…no, her PG bag, and slung it over her shoulders. Then she looped the salvaged food bag over her head.

  With a shrug, Jess picked up one of the fuel cubes and the water cube, leaving her the other fuel cube. That was decent of him; five gallons of fuel weighed nine pounds less than the forty-three of the water cubes.

  “Ready?” His voice didn’t sound at all tight from the heavy load he was now holding.

  She scanned the ground, took one last look at the bur
ning engine, trying not to think about the paperwork involved in that loss, and nodded for him to lead the way. She’d miss the engine; it had been a fun machine to drive—had actually made her feel a little like she was Supergirl, womanhandling thirteen tons of firefighting beast.

  The first hundred feet across the ravine floor went quickly enough. The next hundred, starting up the steep hillside toward the hotshot crew, felt okay too. Then she put her head down and tackled the job of putting one foot in front of the other. In minutes she was drenched in sweat and her arms had started complaining about the load.

  Jess led slow and steady, but without stopping and she didn’t want to complain, especially as he was carrying thirty more pounds than she was. As they climbed farther into the trees, the orange light from behind faded. A stolen glance showed that they’d climbed a thousand feet or more up from the ravine. The mountains beyond glowed in a hundred shades of red and orange. To the north, flames leapt gold-orange toward the sky. To the south, it was a lower, more sullen burn in deep reds. All else was dark, the forest with night and the sky with thick clouds of smoke. If the helicopter returned, she didn’t spot it.

  Turning back to the trees, she saw that Jess was well ahead of her now and she did what she could to catch up with him. He had a strong, steady persistence to him.

  She wished she had the breath to ask him questions, but she’d left the ability to speak far down the slope.

  Instead, she focused her headlamp on the ground in front of her. A simple rhyme formed in her head as she climbed. It so exactly matched the pace of her steps that she was unable to eradicate it.

  Jess and Jill went up the hill,

  With damned heavy pails of water…

  4

  Jess had tried to burn her out on the hike up. He wasn’t completely sure of his own motivations. It wasn’t as if there would be any easy way to evacuate her if she reached the fire line and then wanted to go home. The only crews who worked farther from base on a fire than the hotshots were the smokejumpers. The smokies went where there were no roads at all. The hotshots drove to the end of the road and then hiked in with nothing but the saws and axes on their backs. The fact that now they were only a half mile from a forest road was the closest they’d been to civilization in five days, having started well to the west.

  But every time he glanced back to check on her, Jill Conway-Jones was still there behind him. Sometimes closer, sometimes farther back, and once stopped and turned to stare out at the forest. She hadn’t even set down her heavy load, just stood staring out at the wonder of it all.

  It was one of the best parts of being a hotshot and it surprised him—and made him like her even more—that she appreciated the land.

  The work was brutal, the hours and pay sucked, but to stand out in vast stretches of wilderness and observe the ever-changing landscape was worth almost any price. He hadn’t expected some engine driver to understand.

  He’d finally turned away from watching Jill watch the fire and continued up the slope. He was always building stupid fantasies in his head and she was just another opportunity make up false dreams.

  Jess had never held a fantasy about Candace, or Patsy the team’s other assistant super, even before they each had married. But it was still his trademark. Build a ton of stupid dreams and then watch them shatter as reality got in the way. Beautiful blond Supergirl firefighter falls into his arms, sure, but really is partner with someone named Trent. He guessed it was close enough to Clark Kent, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. The compound last name put the final stamp on his stupidity.

  His legs and arms were burning as he crested another rise and stepped into an unexpected clearing of grass and slash. Three steps later before he could stop himself, he stumbled on a passed-out hotshot and landed full upon him.

  “Uh,” Luke grunted. “Can’t I even get a nap without you crawling in with me? Been waiting on you, Jess. You got any fuel on you?”

  Jess rolled off him, too exhausted to speak. The last thousand feet his arms had burned like demons and his attention had tunneled until each step became his whole world. Instead, he thudded his knuckles against one of the cubes.

  “Good job, bro,” Candace’s husband rolled to his feet, something Jess was incapable of at the moment. “Just remember to keep your mind off my woman,” Luke paid him back for the earlier tease over the radio with a friendly slap on the shoulder that almost tumbled him back to the lying on the ground. Then Luke headed off in the other direction carrying the fuel cube as if it didn’t weigh a thing. He didn’t take the water cube. Yet more payback—still worth it.

  Now if he could just lie here for a minute until his arms stopped screami—

  Jill!

  He’d forgotten about her for the last part of the climb. How far behind had he left her? That was rude as hell no matter what he’d been thinking.

  He jerked to his feet, spun—and ploughed head on into Jill. Once again he landed on top of a firefighter in the grass.

  Jess tried to roll off her but was blocked by the fuel cube she’d been carrying that now lay beside her. He started to roll the other way, but she stopped him.

  “You roll onto the food bag after I carried it all this way, you’re going to end up being a very dead firefighter.”

  “Right, sorry.” Though it was hard to be completely sorry, lying on top of her, with their faces inches apart and lit by the side glow from their headlamps. He’d been right before how pretty she was. It wasn’t just the blond ponytail. She had bright blue eyes and an open face—presently covered with smears of smoke.

  “Are you going to be getting up soon or are you just planning to lie there trying to pretend there isn’t a fire coming?”

  “Uh,” he climbed off her and gave her a hand up. “I was just coming back down to—” But she was already here.

  “To rescue the poor waif?” She ignored his offer to give her a hand up. “What part of ‘I’m a firefighter’ didn’t you get?”

  “The part where you’re tougher than I am.”

  “I’m not tough,” she dusted off her Nomex fire-resistant pants and shirt as if he’d somehow dirtied them. Then she fired an absolutely radiant smile at him that almost knocked him to the ground again, “I’m just stubborn as all get out.”

  5

  And if she wasn’t, Jill would have had the good sense to have grabbed that helicopter ride and flown out with Trent. It had taken everything she had and more to conquer that ravine’s slope with fifty pounds of fuel and food in addition to her own gear. But she’d done it and now that she was here, there wasn’t a chance that they were going to find her wanting.

  “So,” she looked at Jess. He still inspected her wide-eyed as if she’d transported down off an alien ship rather than just battled up a mountain in his silent wake. “Are we good to go?” She didn’t even know if she could lift a kitten at this point, never mind a Pulaski.

  “Sure,” he picked up both his remaining water cube—she’d seen the bobbing light of someone carrying Jess’ fuel toward the fire line—and her fuel cube. She was about to call after him that she could carry her own damned fuel, but wasn’t sure if she could so she kept her mouth shut. Shouldering the food sack, she followed in his wake.

  The night was quiet here.

  A chainsaw coughed to life close ahead and then another. In moments they were biting wood.

  Okay, it was a relatively quiet night. At least there was no roaring truck engine or even louder fire. The night here was truly dark outside of their helmet lights. The smoke clouds far above glowed the deep red of reflected fire light, but it wasn’t bright enough to cast any light over the scene.

  What she’d initially taken for a clearing was one end of a fire break. It stretched for a half a mile along the ridgetop. The line had been cut, the branches dragged away, and, once they reached the far side of the cleared line, they were walking on a stretch a dozen yards wide that had been scraped down to deep soil or rock. There were no machines up here, not this
high up the mountain. Unbelievably, this had all been done by hand.

  Maybe she wasn’t ready to be a hotshot.

  They reached the far end of the cleared line. Here the chainsaws were hard at work. A line of soot-covered workers followed close behind them dragging away branches.

  Jess stopped by a woman wrestling an impossibly large branch into submission.

  “Jess! Thanks for the fuel. Helo’s down for the night and they didn’t bring any gas in the last supply run.”

  Jill recognized the voice from the earlier radio exchange. The voice had given no impression of the woman. In person, Candace the team’s superintendent looked all-powerful. Smeared with dirt and smoke char, sawdust caught in her hair, she looked like Superwoman making Jill’s own Supergirl feel more like Supertoddler.

  “I’ve got a tag-a-long,” Jess set down the cubes he was carrying but didn’t even have the decency to hug his girlfriend.

  Jill moved up beside him and shoved him hard on the shoulder. Unable to step high enough to clear the cube he’d set down, he fell sideways into the cleared dirt.

  “I am not a tag-a-long,” she practically shouted down at him. “I’m a firefighter.” She looked back up at Candace who was watching her with a half smile. “I’m no hotshot, but I’ve got my red card,” Jill said it more quietly this time.

  “Well, let’s see what kind of a hotshot you make.” Candace didn’t hold out a hand, leaving Jess to struggle back to his feet as she spoke to him. “She’s attached to your hip. Teach her. Safety, procedures, whole thing by the manual. Start with swamping.”

  “Okay,” Jess didn’t sound very happy about it, but it was more than Jill had even hoped for—a tryout on a live fire. He headed toward the sound of chainsaws punctuated by the sharp crack of a falling tree.

  Candace stopped her before Jill could follow along and looked at her with an intensity that was alarming for a moment, then she smiled brilliantly, her teeth bright in comparison to her char-stained face.