The list got pretty wild at times.
One: The DAP was one-hundred-percent pure weapon, redesigned from the ground up—exclusively by the Night Stalkers and for the Night Stalkers—to be the most lethal rotorcraft in history (they were pretty sure that one was true).
Two: The people who flew them were cyborgs wired directly into their ships (a bit less likely).
Three: They (no one was quite clear on whether “they” referred to the rotorcraft or the pilots) were built out of Area 51 composites scraped molecule by molecule off all of the alien spaceships stored there.
Four—a little closer to reality: There were maybe twenty DAPs in existence.
And five: No one doubted that they were all flown by the Night Stalkers’ very best pilots.
That made Emily and Lola…
She’d known Emily was good. But “The Best” by a DAP pilot’s standards? That was a little spooky.
“Did you fly into bin Laden’s compound? Oh, never mind, you can’t tell me even if you did.”
“No, I didn’t. I was still flying Army Combat Search and Rescue back then, fresh out of the Louisiana Army National Guard.”
Robin looked over, startled. If Robin had chosen a different path, from Guard to Army, might this be who she’d become?
“But I think Mark may have been on the bin Laden run. I’m guessing, but I think so.”
Robin was feeling hopelessly outclassed as they continued up the coast.
Yangyang International lay south of Sokcho—at eighty thousand people, it was far and away the largest city in the area—but they passed by it in just a few minutes. Soon they were running along a wide, sandy beach, only occasionally interrupted by small towns and low, depressing resort hotels. It could have been a stretch of Lola’s Louisiana Gulf Coast except for the occasional standout building with the classic red-tile roof and upward curving corners. For the most part, it was anywhere, USA.
In just a week, Robin had grown used to having the data from Steve’s drone and Carly’s analysis ready to hand, Carly often muttering audibly over the data as she strained to outsmart every last finger of flame. Robin missed them.
“Jeannie,” Robin called the other team, “how is it looking?” Vern had bowed back to let Jeannie lead their separate flight. Vern had no ego at all about his skills, just as happy in the back of the flight as in front. Like Mickey, he was just solid and he clearly loved Denise. Like Mickey said he… Crap!
“Not much yet,” Jeannie answered. “A lot of smoke in the distance. I’ll know more in a few minutes.”
“Cloud plume on this side is indicating a lot of heat,” Mickey radioed in.
“What makes him say that?” Lola asked over the intercom.
Robin felt a little better. She could see it, now that Mickey had pointed it out.
“Look at how the smoke is changing colors as it climbs. The black at the bottom is still thick with ash. At the top, where it’s white, most of the ash load has been dropped. The silvery top is as much cooling water vapor as it is smoke. We know that it’s hot by the fact that the line where the black shifts to gray is well up the smoke column. Takes a lot of heat to push the ash that high.”
Lola leaned forward to squint out the windscreen and upward. “Tall sucker too.” Even five minutes and a dozen miles out, it was still enormous.
“That tells you the fire’s size. It’s not just a leading edge that’s burning; it’s the entire area because the whole column is reaching right up into the jet stream. See how it’s getting flat-topped to the north?”
“Uh-huh.”
Robin did have skills—hard-won ones—she just needed to remember that.
“I thought we were going to come at this fire from its tail. Guess we missed it. Mickey?” She keyed the radio.
“Here, Robin.”
“Swing south, survey only. Find out what happened to the tail. I’m going to follow the smoke line north and see if I can find the head of this beast.”
“Roger. Don’t go too far alone.”
A nice way to remind her that the North Korean border didn’t lie far away. “Roger that.”
“We’ll trace a circuit around it,” she told Lola, “in the direction of building flame to find out just what it’s doing before we set up a plan of attack.”
Reports began flowing in from Jeannie and Vern. She had Lola start recording GPS coordinates of the fire so that she could get some idea of what was happening when one of her data radios began flashing red. It was a radio she hadn’t used before. It was encryption capable, military grade.
“What’s the password?” Lola asked.
“How the hell am I supposed to know?” She’d always meant to ask what it was doing on a civilian helicopter…and now she knew. It was blinking at her. Real damn useful.
“Typical,” Lola muttered.
“Hey!”
“Not you. Henderson. He always thinks he’s being so smart. If he was right a little less often, it would be a source of some comfort to this Southern gal.”
Robin considered. She’d used encrypted radios in Afghanistan, everything was encrypted there. Cipher codes varied, basic ones were four characters.
“He said, ‘Keep high. Keep safe.’ Try high.”
“No letters on these models.”
“Think cell phone, hit four 4s. H-I-G-H.”
Lola laughed, keyed it in, and the radio flashed to green.
The copilot’s screens were immediately filled with Carly’s typical array of information.
“What the hell?” Lola leaned so far forward that she bumped the cyclic as she tried to understand the information on the displays.
Robin had to pull back on her control to nudge Lola in the solar plexus as a reminder to stay off the controls. She was feeling better by the moment. Of course Robin also wouldn’t put it past Lola to do it as a tease.
Another radio flashed red.
“Try safe,” they said in unison and shared a laugh.
Moments later Mark’s voice came over her headset. “How do you read, over?”
“Five by five,” she and Lola said in unison.
“Sorry.” Lola made a show of taking her finger off the mic switch on the back of the cyclic control. “Old habits.”
“Tell me I’m not going to be dealing with a Greek chorus for this entire fire,” Mark whined.
Robin glanced over at Lola and mouthed Two, One, and keyed the mic. “Nope,” they managed in unison. “Not gonna happen,” collided with “Not a chance,” and gave them both the giggles.
Mark groaned over the air. “Okay. I’ll keep this short to avoid detection of our encrypted signal. Robin, I’m only connecting to your Firehawk One. I’m bouncing a signal off the drone and don’t want the North Korean air controllers getting worried when our aircraft all stop talking to each other. I don’t even want them reacting to an order that they can’t hear. So I’ll hit you and you’ll be calling the Incident Commander—Air instructions that I feed your way. You’re going to be busy as hell, so get the Stripper up to speed as fast as you can to help you with the firefighting. I don’t want you ramming any cliff walls. That would completely ruin my day.” And Henderson was gone.
“His day?” Robin asked the radio without keying her microphone.
“Sure. He’d have to give the news to my husband, who would beat the shit of Mark for killing me. What would your SO do?”
“My what?”
“Your significant other. Get a clue, girl.”
Robin knew what an SO was. “He wasn’t…isn’t, uh, won’t be my…” But what was he?
“Get a clue. Couples don’t stand the way you two were unless they’re way past the ‘mere heat’ stage.”
Robin couldn’t think of what to say. How had they been standing together?
Lola began toggling through various mod
es on the screen displays, ultimately scrambling all of Carly’s careful settings.
Mickey was what? She didn’t even know what to call him. It certainly wasn’t significant other, but Lola was right; they were way past fuck buddy. Had been past that since the first time that they’d…what…shaken hands?
“I’m going to have to kill him.” It was the only obvious way to deal with the situation.
“Works for me.” Lola kept working the displays. “Neat, simple. Glad to help if you need it, but can we do it after we beat the fire? I came close enough to offing Tim a couple of times along the way too. Almost took him out with his mom’s favorite kitchen knife one night. But what with the head of the President’s Protection Detail breathing over my shoulder, I thought better of it. Frank gets antsy when you’re wielding an eight-inch chef’s knife anywhere near the Main Man.”
Robin focused on the fire. She could deal with the fire. Sitting next to a chatty DAP Hawk pilot who had eaten with the Commander in Chief…Nope! Couldn’t deal with that.
“After the fire is fine,” she managed around a throat gone drier than fire smoke. Significant other? Mickey sure as hell wasn’t that. But then what in the wide, wide world of helitack firefighting was he?
Subject change!
“Why did Mark call you the Stripper?” Robin found the leading edge of the fire and moved to circle ahead of it.
“My maiden name was Lola LaRue. I used to have this line about how Daddy must have wanted me to be a stripper. Mark still teases me about it sometimes.”
“You two close?” Robin looked again. The only way to survey the leading edge was to fly right into the ash cloud streaming off the fire. She’d stay low and duck under the worst of it.
“To Daddy? Not very. He’s doing forty to life of hard time in a Louisiana pen, not real happy about it.”
“I can only imagine.” Robin considered shooting far enough ahead of the fire to get the lay of the land, but her grid map display showed her fast approaching the North Korean border. She eased back on the cyclic, not quite willing to cross the DMZ on her own.
“Might help if I hadn’t been the one to put him there.” Lola shrugged and went back to studying the screens. “You close to your old man?”
“Gone before his sperm got to the egg. Mama was kinda wild when she was younger.”
“And you’re all mature and settled?” Lola scoffed.
“Not a chance. A girl’s gotta have some fun. I’m gonna be just like Mom. No man for me.”
Lola gave her a look that Robin did her best to ignore.
Damn, but this fire was eating up terrain. “Go back a screen,” she told Lola.
“This one?”
“Go back another. There. Keep that one on the middle screen between us.”
Lola flipped it into place so that it showed on the center of the console. It wasn’t Steve’s usual sharp view of the fire from directly overhead, and it took Robin a few moments to adjust to the angle of the view. The drone had to do its best from safely deep in South Korean airspace.
“What’s the scale?” Lola was still tinkering with it. “It doesn’t look like terrain contour lines.”
“Temperature in hundreds of degrees. See along the left edge, it’s down in the six to seven range. They must have the drone up over that section of the fire.”
“Six or seven hundred? Please say you’re shitting me.”
“Would I do that to a fellow heli-gal?” Startling a Night Stalker! Robin was thoroughly enjoying herself. “What that tells me is that the fire is retreating from the southwest. Have to be for the fire to be that cool,” she managed with a straight face. “No readings up in our area yet, but I’m guessing fifteen to eighteen?”
“Hundred?” Lola breathed it out on a gasp.
“Hundred,” Robin confirmed, then keyed the general frequency that would reach all of the aircraft. “It’s hot on our side. Jeannie, Vern, do you have any readings?”
“Just edge temperatures,” Jeannie called back. “We didn’t want to fly over the fire without your say so. But we’re flying in clear air within two rotors of the active flame—tells me it’s heading away from us.”
“I can’t even see orange,” Robin reported back. “All I’m looking at is hot black smoke. Definitely moving north and east.”
On their cockpit screen, a series of broad green lines appeared. Carly often drew on her tablet to indicate the lines of attack.
Robin had seen enough of her onscreen notes during the Dawson City fire that she could make sense of what Carly was recommending, at least she hoped so. “Start cleanup on your side, Jeannie. You and Vern start chasing the fire back into the Black and kill the boundary with a wet line. Make sure it can’t escape. Swing south first to secure the tail, then sweep north along your western side.”
“Roger that. We’re on it.”
“Talk to me, Mickey.” At some point they had to have time to talk…didn’t they? National Guard was called out a half-dozen times a fire season. Robin had the feeling that Mount Hood Aviation’s operational tempo was way higher than that. Waiting until the autumn to have a conversation when they weren’t exhausted, ticked off, or surrounded by others was not going to work for her.
“Found the tail here,” he called from the south end of the fire. “We can work this, but I think the strengthening northerly winds will make it a nonissue.”
“Roger, get back up here. The North Koreans didn’t give me any ground team frequency, but I’ll bet they’re down there and this monster is headed straight into the DMZ.” Robin hoped that Steve heard that and could find some way to get her an infrared view of bodies on the ground.
She decided that Carly’s scrawled advice wasn’t the best option. It was strange talking to Mickey and, at the same time, asking a question of Carly on the open air, which she would hopefully answer with a revised encrypted drawing.
“I think we need to flank the head,” Robin said. “We’ll watch for it curling around behind us, but we need to start narrowing this thing before we can trap it.”
“Makes sense to me,” Mickey acknowledged. She could see him on her radar coming up fast out of the south.
Carly erased her initial attack lines and began altering them for how to take best advantage of the terrain.
“Slick,” Lola said. “That was well done. You do have fun up here.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course,” Lola continued in her cheerful tone as Mickey lined up behind Robin and they began the first dive on the fire. “I was all about having fun for me too. But Tim kept showing me that it was more fun to be with him than without him.”
“Not gonna happen to me.”
Robin slid down toward the flames and tried not to remember the feeling of flying into space off the Class III Tea Cup with Mickey’s joyous smile awaiting her below.
* * *
“That woman, man, she’s making you crazy, isn’t she?”
“Some.” Mickey wondered where Tim had come up with that idea. They were flying to fire. Something they’d done hundreds of times a day for the entire week of the Dawson City fire. For Mickey this moment was no different, yet Tim had picked up on something.
“Yeah.” Tim sighed happily over the intercom on the Twin 212. “Lola did the same to me.”
Mickey could feel Tim’s hands were unsure on their joined controls. Tim had admitted it was his first time flying something other than a Black Hawk and the Twin 212 had a very different feel. Though the Night Stalker was learning very fast, smoothing out even in the short run down to the fire’s tail and back.
“What’s she doing now?” Tim cocked his head forward to see where Robin had gone. She’d dived down to lay down the first line of attack.
“You can’t fight a fire from a thousand feet up; all of the water will evaporate before it reaches the ground.”
&nbs
p; “I’m used to firefight, bro. Not fighting fire…except from Lola.”
Mickey really didn’t want to talk about women, especially not Robin, with this stranger suddenly planted beside him. He dove the Twin 212 to follow in Robin’s wake. At two hundred feet, she ran a canyon line and doused a series of spot fires that were threatening the next canyon over. Mickey dumped his load on two more.
Tim was looking out the side window as they turned away from the fire to fly to a lake in the next valley over for reloading. “You actually fight a monster like that with four little helicopters? Shit, man. I thought we were the crazy ones.”
“Between the four of us, we can dump a million gallons of water a day if we have a decent water supply. Doesn’t appear to be a problem around here.” Mickey had fought fires where the nearest water was a ten- or fifteen-minute flight to reach a dipping tank fed by a line of pumper-truck fire engines.
Until now, all of Mickey’s attention had been on the fire and the intruder in his cockpit. Mickey had grown so used to flying alone that having a copilot was a visceral shock. He still wasn’t sure why the man was here, just as Mickey still wasn’t completely convinced that Mark knew as little as he claimed, but neither choice had been left in his hands.
Now he started to pay attention to the terrain, assessing the challenges. The Taebaek Mountains weren’t high, but the fire was entering a rough area of valley and ridge that would be brutal work for a smokejumper or other ground crew.
In the structure of how each spot fire burned, Mickey could see that the growth was a worst-case mixture.
There was a low, bushy tree that reminded him of a Japanese maple that ignited hot and burned long.
The big trees had two primary forms. One appeared to be a big-limbed oak that started low and reached up to a hundred feet high—lots of foliage to catch and lots of hardwood to burn. Its low branches would naturally lead the fire upward into the crowns of the trees where it could move as fast as the wind and be ten times as hard to kill.
Flash of Fire Page 22
