When They Just Know
an Oregon Firebirds romance
M. L. Buchman
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1
Jana Williams sat on a lawn chair beside the Denali pickup, clicking her hooks together while staring at the smoke-gray sky. She should be doing paperwork, checking bank balances (always a serious worry, though not as bad as at the start of their first-ever firefighting season), following the feeds from the six MD 520N firefighting helicopters that made up the Firebirds team…something constructive.
Instead, she was parked in the summer- and wind-parched landscape of Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge beneath a smoke-stained, dark Purgatory of a sky, while wildfire threatened the farms around Hood River. The tarmac of Ken Jernstedt Airfield shimmered with the summer heat, hazing the tied-down small airplanes almost to invisibility though they were only a few hundred meters away.
And the most useful thing she could think to do was clicking her hooks.
It had started as an innocuous habit.
Back before she’d lost her right hand, she’d had a habit of fooling with her hair when she was worrying at a problem. She’d found a much-needed distraction in the tactile slickness as it ran through her fingers, so smooth and fine that it almost didn’t feel as if it was there at all. It was like playing with golden water. She’d wind it around her fingers one way, then the other. And while some portion of her mind and body had been distracted doing that, she’d been able to think.
Thinking seemed to come much harder now.
After the accident and the end of her Army career, she still had the habit. But her hair snagged painfully in the mechanism of the hooks. Left-handed hair fiddling hadn’t been nearly as satisfying. Besides, that hand was now twice as busy as ever because it had to do most of the work of both hands. If she was going to lose a hand, why couldn’t it have been the left one? It still took her forever to sign a distorted version of her name, and fancy stuff like tying shoelaces, just totally sucked.
It was even worse when, like now, she was worrying at a problem but didn’t even know what it was.
Now she really needed some right-handed distraction, as if her phantom hand was still sending encrypted orders after the dropped Hellfire missile had crushed it past recovery. She supposed that she should feel lucky that the missile hadn’t exploded when the arms tech had misfastened the mount on her Sikorsky MH-60 Blackhawk. Jana had wiggled it during a preflight check of her aircraft—and it had let go.
Had her hand made the difference in easing the impact of the hundred-pound missile hitting the steel deck of the aircraft carrier? Had she averted disaster or just pointlessly sacrificed her hand? No one could say for sure. The stupid medal they gave her as a replacement for her hand certainly didn’t answer the question.
On her more cynical days—she tried not to think of them as morose or, god forbid, depressed—she’d wonder if she’d have been better off letting the damn thing fall and explode. Instead, she was left to appease her phantom hand and wonder.
Clicking her hooks together had taken some practice. She had to extend her arm to increase the distance between the hooks and where the harness anchored in a strap that ran behind her back and around to her left shoulder. She could also hunch her left shoulder forward. Either technique would stretch the distance and open the hooks; shrink it and the rubber band at the hooks’ base pulled them back together. Her innocent finger-twirl had turned into a shoulder twitch.
Jana often debated whether it would be more or less satisfying if her hooks didn’t have rubber gripper pads on the insides. It was more of a soft tap than a satisfying metallic click. Maybe…
Maybe she was totally coming apart. No real question about that actually.
“Nice to just stop for a minute,” Maggie Torres, the Firebirds miracle helicopter mechanic, plummeted into the chair beside her. She handed over a bottle of water still slick with condensation before opening her own.
Jana appreciated that Maggie never tried to second guess or help. They’d had a discussion of what Jana could and couldn’t do with her hooks, and Maggie had never forgotten once. Whether it was Maggie-the-mechanic or Maggie-the-friend who remembered, Jana didn’t ask. Friends had always been a tricky thing for her and she didn’t like to question what few tenuous ties she had to the world of fully configured humans.
Jana stretched her right elbow out and down and could feel the tension on her left shoulder as the harness took up the slack. She spread the hooks over the bottle’s plastic top, then eased the tension. The hooks clamped down hard. With a sharp twist of her left hand, she got it unscrewed.
The chill water felt good sliding down her raw throat. The summer’s late afternoon heat, the smoky air, and feeling like shit had left her throat achingly dry.
“How’s the crew?”
Jana shrugged, one shoulder, because two would open her hooks and she’d have to fish the bottle cap out of the scrub grass. Instead, she waved her hooks at the radio she’d propped up on the pickup’s bumper. That motion made her drop the cap anyway. She ignored it. Just as she’d been ignoring the radio.
They both listened for a moment.
“Sounds like normal flight operations to me,” Maggie surmised.
Jana had to agree. Today’s mission for the Firebirds was saving farms: house, barn, and livestock—any orchards were an optional bonus. After half a season together, it was easy to pick out the team’s voices. Though one of them always sounded strange to her ears.
Jasper Abrams, her brother’s best friend, never spoke in camp, only in the air. Occasionally he would grunt at her brother—who led the Firebirds even if his wife Stacy was a better pilot. But that was about all Jasper ever did on the ground and even that was rare.
Whereas in the air—
2
Hey! You can hit the side of a barn.” Jasper slid in close, flying his helo in the Number Two slot behind Curt’s.
He was also close enough to see the results of the unexpected downdraft over the barn. The faded red barn was an old-style high-peaked roof with a hayloft above and cattle below. The fire-driven wind scooted fast over the top of the tall structure and created a Venturi effect turbulence wake on the backside of the barn. Curt’s load of water had been dumped, and then been sucked into the low pressure zone. Rather than dousing the encroaching fire, it had washed fifty years of grime off the side of the barn.
“Of course you can’t hit the fire to save your life.” Now that Curt’s drop had revealed the effect, Jasper was able to anticipate and use it. He dumped his two hundred gallons a second later than instinct said to. As he flew away, he twisted the helo sideways so that he could see the results. The fifteen-hundred pounds of water was sucked in by the backdraft and slammed into the fire with a perfect drop.
Amos whooped out a cheer as he blasted the rest of the fire into the ground. One more pass by the three of them to make sure the fire traveled around the barn and not through it—then they could move on to the neighbor’s. After that there was a long bend in the Columbia River that would serve as a firebreak for the fire to die against.
The late afternoon light was lost in long loops of the smoky sky. This fire wasn’t big enough to call the heavy teams off the burn out near Spokane, Washington. It was Firebirds sized.
“Show us the way, oh fearless leader,” Jasper twisted back into line behind Curt. He wasn’t sure why he was in such a good mood. It wasn’t often that Curt messed up even a little, and he liked getting a dig in on h
im. They’d been toe-and-heel since elementary school. Their rivalry had always been evenly matched—in the air and on the ground.
Until now.
Curt had found the woman of his dreams. Stacy Richardson certainly flew and looked like one. He wasn’t envious—Stacy wasn’t really his type even if she was Curt’s. It was part of what had always worked between them. There’d only been a couple times that they’d ever gunned for the same girl…but Jasper’s heart had never really been in it when they did overlap.
The golden hills of Washington leaned down over the Columbia as they flew over to retank their helicopters. The light brown of dry summer grasses and the green swatches of conifers so dark that they looked black against the grass. The river itself flowed slow and wide.
To the south the towering peak of Mount Hood was mostly obscured, the glaring white glaciers only peeking through at opportune moments like a white firebrand in the sky.
For Jasper there’d always been one girl who overshadowed them all.
But fourteen-year-olds didn’t get to go out with their best friend’s eighteen-year-old sister. By the time he was finally out of high school, she was leaving college and headed straight into the Army. His and Curt’s graduation had been the same day as Jana’s, so there hadn’t even been a road trip from Portland, Oregon down to UC Berkeley. She’d gone straight from graduation to Fort Rucker, Alabama as an Aviation Officer.
The woman who’d come home on leave had been almost unrecognizable and had left him beyond his normal tongue-tied. Her long blonde hair chopped jawline short and her cross-country runner body turned powerful and sculpted. She’d also had an equally chiseled aviator boyfriend in tow that had almost killed him to see.
And if Jasper didn’t pay attention, he was going to fly straight into Curt’s rotors and kill them both for real.
He slid thirty meters to the side and descended to a low hover over the Columbia River. The water here flowed deep and smooth, reflecting their helicopters off its glassy dark blue.
He dropped the snorkel hose into the water and kicked on the pumps. He kept one eye on the gauge as he sucked up two hundred gallons into the helo’s belly tank in twenty seconds. He kept the other eye on the lazily flowing river, slowly adding lift to maintain his altitude as he added sixteen-hundred pounds to a helicopter that weighed only that much when empty.
Amos settled beyond him so that they hovered in a long line over the river.
Curt was up and away well before Jasper due to his momentary fumble.
Did Jana have to be so damned distracting?
She’d come back from the Army a broken woman. He knew the loss of her hand ate at her. But losing her career and the Dear Jana from her fiancé—which made him both thrilled and have a serious desire to bust the guy’s balls for deserting her—had really thrown her for a loop.
For lack of anywhere else to be, she’d taken to staying at Curt’s while they flew firefighting for Columbia helicopters. She’d started to look like she was going to rot in place as she went quietly stir crazy.
He’d joined and eventually captained the high school cross-country running team just as Jana had four years ahead of him. And when he remembered that, he’d shown up at Curt’s apartment one day and tossed her running shoes at her.
“Let’s go,” were the first words he’d said directly to her since his highly lucid, “Oh, man!” when she came home with one less hand than she’d left with.
She’d glared at him from the couch. One-handed or not, she was still the most amazing woman he’d ever seen. She’d finally barked out a sharp, “Fine!” and put on the shoes. Her balance was an issue for the first mile or so. After that, they just ran. Every day before he left for work. She even started coming out to the fireline. They never spoke, but they ran together almost every morning for the last three years. It was a strange relationship, but it was the best one he’d ever had.
Then when her and Curt’s parents had died, it had taken everything just to survive that. They’d been second parents to him, but his best friend and Jana had barely made it through. But they had, and now they flew.
He, Curt, and Amos doused the last of the fire at the barn and were soon chasing the flames as they started on the neighbor’s apple orchard. Here, each tree saved was precious. No swatch of annual wheat, but living tree with plenty of years to bear fruit.
Amos and Curt were still ragging each other about something.
But all Jasper could think was how Jana had looked during this morning’s run. Her hair was again long, just over her shoulders—the color of sunshine. She ran in gym shorts and a tight t-shirt. Rather than a fire shirt, honoring whatever wildfire they’d recently flown to, it was a helicopter shirt—Helicopters don’t fly, they beat the air into submission. That described Jana perfectly.
She knocked the breath out of him every single time he looked at her.
A fact he’d never told anyone. Especially not his best friend.
“Let’s bring it home, buddy.”
“Yep!” Jasper did his best to join in. “We beat that one into submission.” And they had. The fire hadn’t gotten anywhere near the last barn. They’d even saved a significant portion of his fruit orchard.
“Got a hot lady waiting for me.” Curt always had to rub it in.
“Asshole!” Twelve of the last thirteen hours had been in the air. The idea that he was going back to his woman had Curt supercharged despite the hard day. Jasper was going to creak when he climbed down.
“Stacy’s got you so whipped, my friend.” Curt’s wife had him completely wrapped around her pinkie.
“Absolutely!” Curt took full ownership of the slur.
What was Jasper supposed to do with someone that ridiculously pleased with his life?
“I got Stacy. Palo got Maggie. My new mission is getting you a hot babe.”
“Me, too,” Amos called over the radio.
“What?” Jasper could deal with Amos. “We all thought you and Drew were like forever-after-together dudes.” The two of them joked and bickered like twins, even during babe-reconnaissance at the local pub.
Amos could only sputter in protest.
Jasper didn’t need some hot babe. He had a woman waiting…
Except she didn’t know it and it was becoming clear that he was never going to tell her. Because as long as he never asked, the answer would never be “Hell no!” He didn’t think his ego could take that. And he’d rather be part of Jana’s life and never have her, than not be around her at all.
3
Jana waited as the first three helos returned from the firefight to land on the tarmac at Jernstedt field. Stacy landed first, with Palo and Drew hot on her heels, because none of the pilots could keep up with Stacy. At each helo, Jana would plug in her tablet computer and download all of the flight data and video. The Firebirds were partially financed by the insurance companies for all of the structures they saved and this documentation was their income in a very real way.
She ignored the pain of even touching a helicopter each time, trying to accept that she couldn’t fly it. Why couldn’t she have lost a foot? Feet were simple. All they had to do was push on a rudder pedal. But without a hand, the complexities of the multiple controls on the head of the cyclic joystick were beyond her capacity.
The ache in her heart was good though. It reminded her that she was alive. Like the ache in her body when she ran each day with Jasper.
He’d saved her life with that running. She hadn’t been in complete despair yet, but she’d been able to feel the end lurking off in the distance. Unable to do the only thing she’d ever loved—to fly—what was left for her? And Jasper had reminded her of something she’d forgotten: the simple joy of running.
For a long time that daily run was her lifeline. It was almost an illness when they missed a day. She never ran alone. Even though he never spoke to her, it had felt disloyal to run without him. It was stupid, she knew, but it was Jasper who had reconnected her to…herself.
Whoever the hell that was.
Maggie rushed up to Palo’s helo the moment the engine cycled down and practically threw herself into the cockpit.
Stacy looked up at the sky as she stretched out the kinks of a long day aloft.
“He’s five minutes out,” Jana told her as she plugged her tablet into Stacy’s helo.
Her new sister-in-law flashed a smile at her. “Am I that obvious?”
“Yes.”
Stacy laughed. “I’m just so happy. I keep waiting to wake up.”
“Don’t,” Jana actually gave Stacy a one-armed hug that surprised them both. She stepped aside quickly.
“I can’t thank you enough times for hiring me.”
“Or for letting you have my little brother. I know, you keep telling me,” which came out kinda crappy—which was more about her pain-in-the-neck little brother than Stacy. “You’re welcome to him,” which didn’t sound much better.
Stacy was eyeing her like she was a grenade that might or might not still have a pin in it.
“Seriously, Stacy. I’ve never seen Curt happier than when he’s with you. Let’s call it sisterly jealousy and leave it at that.”
“Okay, Jana.” It was a stiff response by Stacy standards who had every bit of naturally bubbly that Jana had never been able to cultivate.
“Shit! I’m being a crappy sister-in-law.” She unplugged her tablet from the helo and prepared to move on.
“Jana,” Stacy stopped her with a hand on her good arm. Stacy looked right at her with those big brown eyes of hers that had sucked her brother right in. “You’re my idol—you know that, right? You are the woman I keep trying to be.”
Jana’s jaw didn’t go loose, but it felt as if it should. She had no idea what to say to that except perhaps recommend her sister-in-law get some serious counseling.
“You’re so strong. I know my husband’s shortcomings. I guess they’re part of what I love about him. I know that you are the one who built the Firebirds. I’d never have thought to do something like that.”
When They Just Know Page 1
