The Ides of Matt 2015

by M. L. Buchman

  When she could finally see again, Blackthorne was gone. The female was following and several bushy-tailed youngsters disappeared with them into the brush—upslope, thank god.

  She couldn’t count how many pups through her streaming eyes, so she forced her way up to the den. A lone twenty-pound pup had been left behind, Vasco by his markings—one white ear, one black—the Portuguese pilot and Blackthorne’s lone friend. So terrified that he didn’t even nip at her as she reached in to drag him out.

  Patty struggled up the steep slope.

  What had been a crashing three-minute descent became a brutal half-hour climb. She tried releasing Vasco, dropping him to the ground and shooing him upwards but he merely cowered at her feet, front paw raised. She saw it had a nasty cut and probably hurt too much to walk on. It would heal in the den, could be ignored in a three-footed run across level ground, but the pup couldn’t climb a steep slope with it.

  She eventually became aware of two things.

  The rising heat wasn’t only from her hard climb, the fire was starting to run up the narrow cleft.

  The other thing was Fireboy’s near frantic calls.

  “I’m headed upslope,” she answered in between raged gasps. “I have an injured pup. But the fire’s close. It’s hot.”

  “God damn it, Wolfgirl. Drop it and run!”

  She knew that was the smart thing, the wise thing but, “I can’t,” her voice came out as a sob and she kept struggling up the slope.

  As she climbed past where the initial radio call had spooked the rabbit and The Messenger, she started scanning for the female. There was no question, she would know to run. Wouldn’t she? Patty hadn’t.

  There was still no smell of smoke, just the insufferable heat.

  Patty continued battling her way through the brush. The slope rose so steeply that her sore knee—she must have cracked it against something during her pell-mell descent—often banged against tree roots and rocks.

  Would the wolf pup tolerate being inside a fire shelter with her? She doubted it, but they might have no choice.

  That’s when she noticed her pack was gone. She’d shed it somewhere. Her camera, data, and radio were attached to her fanny pack, but all of her clothes and gear were lost somewhere in the trees and boulders. And in it was the foil fire shelter kept for true, last-resort emergencies.

  A glance back over her shoulder was a bad mistake. The fire had reached the den, only three hundred yards below her, but with flames reaching hundreds of feet above the hundred-foot tall trees. Even glancing over her shoulder, the heat was a slap on the face. And the roar, the roar was deafening.

  There might have been a radio call, but she couldn’t hear it over the fire’s howl.

  She turned and kept climbing though her knee throbbed at every step. The stitch in her side was so bad that she was almost weeping into the wolf pup’s fur. Every step had become agony.

  Bear down, soldier! There is no such thing as quitting!

  She bore down, but she didn’t have much to bear down with.

  The roar and the wind peaked, slamming against her so hard that all she could do was drop to her knees and wait for it.

  “Hi.”

  Patty screamed as a hand touched her on the shoulder.

  A man clad in yellow Nomex and a pilot’s helmet dangled at the end of a wire not a foot from her.

  Patty’s gaze followed the wire upward until she spotted the helicopter hovering high above the trees, its engines even louder than the fire, the downblast shaking trees and brush.

  “Steve Mercer, Mount Hood Aviation. How about we get out of here?”

  She held the wolf pup closer, “I’m not leaving Vasco.”

  The man swept the pup under one arm—Vasco whined nervously but accepted the transfer—and twisted a lifting ring toward her. It was also attached to the wire; he held it so that the opening faced Patty.

  It was like a circular orange life preserver.

  “Head, arms, and shoulders through the hole,” he instructed as calmly as if they were on a quiet street corner. “Keep your arms down so that it catches you in the armpits. Keeping them down locks you in place.”

  She did as he said and moments later they were lifting up out of the trees, spinning slowly, too much like a rotisserie in the approaching fire’s heat.

  Once they were clear of the trees, the helo pulled them away from the fire and she could start to breathe again. A hundred feet above the trees, the flames still reached far higher, but they were rapidly falling astern as they continued to climb up the slope.

  “Emily says that we’ll drop you at the base of the mountain,” the man shouted to her.

  “Can you drop us near the top?”

  10

  Patty curled up on the fire tower’s bunk and tended the wolf pup. Calming the young wolf let her not think about how her eyes still stung, how much her knee hurt, or quite how close she’d come to dying.

  She listened as Fireboy worked the radio through the long afternoon.

  The smokejumpers fought the fire in pitched battle until it was trapped and couldn’t spread either way along the valley wall. The helicopters had contained it before it crossed the ridge. The second den would be safe.

  If The Messenger lived, perhaps she’d guide Blackthorne’s pack over to join the larger one to the east.

  She buried her face in Vasco’s fur and wept for only the second time since that day as a young girl when she had understood the trap that her family was in. It was the day she’d determined to find a way out.

  Patty had wept that first time in Fireboy’s arms as some impossible sense of loss had overwhelmed her, even if she hadn’t known what the loss had been. And now she wept because she understood that from the first time with him, what she had left behind was the Warrior Girl fighting for freedom against all odds. In his powerful arms, she was more truly herself than anywhere she’d ever been.

  A long time later, Fireboy sat down close beside her, but didn’t touch her.

  The sun had gone, but she hadn’t noticed.

  “Is it out?” her voice was rough and still stung from the pepper spray she’d inhaled.

  “Yes,” he nodded in the soft light of the small oil lamp that he’d lit. “A ground team has arrived and is making sure it stays dead. The smokies are already being lifted out by the helos. We have another fire north of Cougar Peak that they’re needed on. How’s the pup?”

  She held up the long and sharp stone sliver that she’d extracted from Vasco’s pad, “He’ll heal fine now.”

  “Is he like a permanent addition to the family?”

  “No, I can probably reintroduce him to his pack tomorrow. I think I know where they’ve moved to.” And Patty knew she’d find The Messenger there, she just had to.

  Then his words registered.

  “The family?”

  He shrugged easily, “Does seem to be what I said.”

  As she watched his face shifted. One moment he was casual, keeping up a cool façade. The next was a wash of emotion she couldn’t even recognize, but both his hands were crushing down on one of hers.

  “I thought I’d lost you. I’ve never been so afraid in my life. I couldn’t imagine this world without you in it. To never be able to talk to you again, laugh with you again, it simply wasn’t possible, but it felt so real. I could barely help on the fire until they found you.”

  “Family?” she couldn’t seem to get past the word. Was family about something more than mere survival? Hers had never been.

  But she could see in his eyes that she did mean the world to him. She didn’t need his crushing grip nor his eyes glistening in the soft lamplight to know that he’d been afraid to the very core. For her. Of losing her.

  “I’ve never been important to anyone,” Patty told him. “Not that important.”

  “I swear I
almost went charging down into the fire myself to find you. If that Mount Hood Aviation helo hadn’t called that they had you, I would have. I never knew what was important—that anything could be that important to me—until I met you.”

  And she could see the truth of that. He really would have run right into the fire for her.

  The strange thing was, she’d have done the same for him. Without knowing how it happened, she’d discovered what family was supposed to be. It wasn’t about surviving together, it was about helping each other. Not just from a fire, but from the heart.

  She raised her free hand—the one not still locked in his crushing grip—from the pup’s fur and brushed it over his cheek. How could she describe how she felt about him? How could she explain anything to someone who made her feel so important, so precious?

  She leaned forward to kiss him lightly on the lips and then leaned back to look him in the eyes.

  “Patty Dale,” she whispered because what could be more important than a name.

  “Tom Cunningham.”

  She listened to her heart and knew. Knew that this was simply right. As nothing in her life had ever been, even more than wildlife biology.

  “Patty Cunningham?” She asked it softly, as much of herself as of him.

  His smile was all the answer she needed.

  Dawn Flight

  In 2014 I had the privilege of being invited into a romance anthology with all proceeds going to support wounded veterans of our Armed Forces. I wrote the story NSDQ (which is the Night Stalkers motto: Night Stalkers Don’t Quit) about a wounded pilot and her quest on the path back to a life and to love.

  During my research, I was overwhelmed by what the pilots of Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) do. When Delta Force or SEAL teams get wounded and dial “911,” CSAR is who they reach…and they always show up.

  Dawn Flight was a further study of this world for me; a study leading toward a future CSAR series. I love this world and these people. I can’t wait to find out what their next plans are.

  But here’s what happens when things are more on the unplanned side of things, which is what CSAR is there for in the first place.

  1

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding you?”

  Captain Jack Slater looked down at the slip of a woman wearing full flight gear but no rank insignia. According to the orders tucked in his pocket, she had the unlikely name of Lois Lang-Clark. Damned cute despite the flight gear that overwhelmed her sleek frame, and the fact that one of her feet was mechanical. Cute despite the Terminator foot wasn’t a factor though, as she had a ring. Whether it was real or merely to ward off unwanted attention because she was a pretty woman in the man’s world of U.S. Army heli-aviation didn’t matter. Answer was clearly “no” to all comers, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave it totally alone.

  “Your husband named Kent?” Maybe this was all some kind of Superman joke? An initiation gag, not that Army orders were big on gags. He looked around the pristine training hangar, but they were the only occupants. No line of guys waiting to laugh when he fell for whatever the newbie game was.

  Fresh from two years of Night Stalker school, he’d been on a red-eye flight out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, landing in the predawn darkness at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He’d stepped out into the cool October morning with first light just cracking the horizon and checked his watch. His orders had sent him straight here in his first hour as a new member of the 160th’s 5th Battalion.

  But this was a training center.

  A line of three flight simulators stood on tall hydraulic pistons that could simulate harsh flight conditions. Each set of pistons supported a white block of metal that looked like nothing so much as a ten-foot-wide white egg on steroids from the outside. He knew from vast experience that the insides looked like very realistic helicopter cockpits, complete with a projection system that could convince you that a crash into downtown Kabul was truly imminent.

  After two years he was supposed to be done with this shit.

  “Kent Clark?” he nudged when she didn’t respond. “Superman in disguise,” he prompted and still got back nothing.

  With a loud rattle and hiss, the rightmost of the simulators, the one for the MH-47G Chinook heavy lift helo, bucked and slewed hard left. By the sustained nose down attitude, he could tell that its pilot was not having a good day. The left hand one for the MH-6 Little Bird was in a slow, steady climb. The one in the middle, the one for his baby, the MH-60M Black Hawk, stood quietly at rest. Waiting.

  “My husband’s name is Kendall,” the slim woman informed him in a tone as warm as an iceberg. “Kendall Clark.”

  He laughed, he couldn’t help himself. A crazy name, a ring, and a false foot. What the hell? Could she even fly with that thing?

  Her silence was more deafening than the two simulators, now both protesting loudly as they jerked and twisted.

  “I’m already FMQ. Fully Mission Qualified,” Jack explained and had the sudden feeling that he was being more rather than less of an idiot with each passing moment. He rubbed at his face trying for a reset. “Look I need some sleep. Can you point me in the right direction and we’ll play out your little game later?”

  “You signed up for Combat Search and Rescue?”

  “Damn straight!” Bringing out the wounded from a hot battle zone was the kind of serious-as-shit job he’d always dreamed of. One he’d been gunning for since the moment he’d learned it existed. He liked the idea of rescuing people who really needed it. It fit something right in his brain.

  “If you haven’t been signed off by me, then you aren’t Fully Mission Qualified for CSAR activities with the 5th Battalion. Period.”

  Jack thought of several short sharp comebacks. But there was something in her tone that gave him pause.

  One of the simulators slammed to a halt, tipped at a hard angle against the stops. Then, with a groan, it eased and lowered into the reset position.

  At that moment, two other people joined them.

  One climbed down from the Black Hawk simulator, a grizzled, gray-hair with faded Master Sergeant stripes on his uniform—those took a long time to fade. He came to a parade rest close behind Superman’s wife. That said that just maybe she was for real and it was time he started listening.

  The second was a tall brunette who’d come in the same hangar door he had. Even had a big duffle, worn pack-fashion over nice strong shoulders. Now that was his idea of a woman. Eyes as dark as her hair, a fine face wearing an easy smile, and almost as tall as he was.

  “Excuse me.” Voice smooth and low. Unlike Mrs. Superman, her flight gear didn’t overwhelm her frame.

  “Yes?” he replied before Superwoman could speak.

  The new arrival looked him up and down, “I’m guessing you’re not Major Lois Lang-Clark unless your parents hated you when they named you.”

  There might have been a twitch of a smile; or there might have been a roast-in-hell-macho-asshole look. Jack was too tired to tell. Major Lang-Clark? He’d forgotten that from his orders. He’d just been dumb enough to be harassing a major? Bad start for first day in a new battalion.

  “You want Mrs. Superman, here,” he pointed to the slender figure still glaring up at him.

  The new arrival turned and saluted sharply, “Captain Diana Price reporting.”

  Again, the laugh burst from him. He just couldn’t stop it though he knew he was only digging his grave deeper.

  The Master Sergeant and the two women turned to look at him.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack did his best to sober at their bland expressions. “Mrs. Superman Lois Lang-Clark meets Diana Price. You probably don’t know, no sane person would, but Diana Prince was the secret identity of Wonder Woman. It’s just too damned funny.”

  The tall brunette turned so that he could see the helmet
dangling off the other side of her duffle bag. On the side was painted a wide golden triangle with a red star at the center, curved like the heroine’s headband. Below that was the stylized “WW” that arced across the breasts of Wonder Woman’s comic book uniform.

  The petite instructor held out the helmet she had tucked under her arm. On it was emblazoned the Superman logo.

  He held up both his hands in hopeless resignation.

  The women didn’t look amused and he almost kept it in.

  But then he caught the merry twinkle in the gray-haired Master Sergeant’s eye and Jack totally lost it.

  2

  Some men did not deserve to live and Diana had just met a prime example. Big, handsome, and a total jerk. Of course, after a decade as an Army aviator and Black Hawk pilot, she should be used to dealing with that by now.

  It was the great laugh that was throwing her. Macho jerks weren’t supposed to have laughs that made you want to smile right along with them.

  But it wasn’t that hard to resist, especially looking at Major Lang-Clark’s serious expression.

  “Why are you flying CSAR?” the Major ignored the buffoon’s attempts to recover.

  How many times had she been asked that? Always by men who were testing, pushing, looking for that weakness that would say she was the wrong person for the role. It wasn’t sexual bias, at least not all of the time. Many of the examiners were equally stringent about men applying for CSAR, because this wasn’t the Gulf War Army of her mother’s day.

  Still, it was the first time a woman had ever asked her the question. Diana would prefer not to answer in front of Mr. Jerk, but she’d been asked, so she’d reply, with something other than the “Want to serve and save people” line.

  “My father died in Kuwait during Desert Storm. Before they knew about the Golden Hour or had the systems in place to take advantage of it.”

  Modern CSAR was now all about recovering casualties and getting them into a hospital within one hour—with faster being much better. For severe bleeding, sixty minutes was the line of near hundred percent fatality. Thirty minutes marked a fifty percent survival rate, and all but the very worst cases could be kept alive for fifteen minutes.