Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

These two would have been okay together, a fire would have to struggle to progress through such a forest, so it would move slowly. But the third major tree was obviously a pine. It grew tall and dark green, and at the least hint of fire, it turned into a hundred-foot spire of burning sap, which shot bolts of flame like Roman candle explosions upward to twice that height.

  The fire fought and spit. Each load of water they fired against it only seemed to make it angrier.

  “Don’t we have any ground teams down there?” Mickey’s complaint to Robin wasn’t answered right away. He was getting the hang of her pauses. She wasn’t the sort to think about things or withhold information, which explained her reaction during their kayaking trip. Robin didn’t hide her emotions away or make any pretense about them; they were right on the surface—even if they were a slash at the heart.

  So, for her long hesitations to make sense…she was in communication with Mark and Carly. That had to be it. Well, he hoped it wasn’t a pattern that the North Koreans, who were sure to be monitoring their frequency, could pick up.

  “There are no ground teams in the area,” Robin finally responded.

  “None? How are we supposed to—” Mickey bit down on his frustration. Beating a big fire took a coordinated effort of ground and air teams building and protecting firebreaks. Beating out a small spot fires was done far more efficiently by someone on the ground with a five-gallon backpack pump and a rake than a helo at two hundred feet. Cutting down a dozen strategic trees could make more difference than a dozen loads of water.

  “I’m guessing nobody wants to work in the DMZ.” Tim pointed ahead.

  “I don’t want to either.” Mickey was rapidly become less and less happy with the situation. Even more than not wanting to go himself, he didn’t want Robin going there. Then he looked down at his navigation display and cursed.

  “That’s what I’m talking about, bro,” Tim agreed.

  Mickey had been following Robin’s flight pattern. They weren’t nearing the DMZ—they were hard against it. No wonder there were no ground teams. With over a million land mines in the 250-kilometer by four-kilometer strip of land, it was the most dangerous no-man’s-land anywhere.

  After two hours turned into three, they still hadn’t crossed into the zone, but that’s where they’d be next.

  The whole flight raced back to Yangyang airport for more fuel and a quick sandwich. They talked with the other pilots for the ten minutes the refueling took, all about burn fuels, relative humidity, and ignition points. Jeannie had some good suggestions based on the tree species. She was the only one among them—other than Carly who was still working only over the radio—with a master’s degree in fire management.

  Robin had looked great, so completely in her element.

  “Firefighting suits you,” Mickey said in a stolen moment before they returned aloft.

  “I guess.” She bounced on her toes for a moment. “I guess it does.”

  “Looks damn good on you, Ms. of the Hood.”

  She grinned at him, grabbed a sandwich, and hustled over to find out how much longer until they were all refueled.

  It looked beyond good on her. Made him want to be close and stay close and… Now wasn’t the time. But Mark was right, it wouldn’t do to wait too long. Next time they were on the ground for more than a few minutes, Mickey was done with waiting.

  Back in the air, they worked north along the fire’s edge. The lake they’d initially been using as a water supply was now farther behind them than a river was ahead.

  But it wasn’t just any river. As the two helos flew down to it, his navigation display—which automatically shifted with his movement—scrolled the river onto the screen. Along with it scrolled a bright red line that said South Korea on one side and North Korea on the other.

  Robin must have spotted the same thing at the same moment because they slid to a side-by-side halt and looked down at the terrain together.

  “This looks like fun,” Mickey managed over the radio against a dry throat.

  “Not my idea of a good time.”

  “What about them?” There was no need to explain who he meant.

  Four kilometers away—on the northern side of the Demilitarized Military Zone—Mickey’s radar showed a pair of helicopters patrolling back and forth, circling directly opposite them.

  Robin didn’t reply for a long time. “Someone please tell me there is another option.”

  “Attention, American firefighting helicopters.”

  Mickey looked down at the radio. The North Koreans were hailing them on the general frequency. He’d known that they had to be monitoring the open firefighting channel, but it was the first time they’d said a word all morning. Their English was clear, though heavily accented. Did the Korean People’s Air Force all speak English to prepare them for the Great Future Invasion? Or were these the only ones who were even allowed to learn the language? No way to tell.

  “Firefighters here,” Robin answered with her voice sounding all casual as if this was business as usual. Damn, but she was good.

  “We are your escort to make sure that no harm comes to your craft in our airspace. We are not firefighting aircraft but military escort. What are your plans, that we do not mistake your actions?” Their tone was very polite, rotorcraft to rotorcraft camaraderie. Though he’d wager they were in turn being monitored by layers of military and politicians who would watch every word. So, polite but not too friendly.

  “No harm?” Tim groaned. “Like, we want to make sure we don’t shoot your asses by mistake. Why am I not liking this experience? Where the hell’s my DAP Hawk?” He managed to make it funny.

  “Don’t say that one on the open air, amigo.” Though Mickey wasn’t going to argue with the sentiment.

  “Roger that,” Tim agreed.

  “We need to get to a water source.” Robin made it sound like the most normal thing on the planet to be talking to North Korean military helicopter pilots across the width of the DMZ. “We will always utilize the closest supply. At the moment, it’s that river between us. We need to hover at five meters over the water for approximately one minute each time we refill our tanks. We will circulate rapidly between the fire and the water supply, except when we are returning to our airport for fuel or needing to survey the fire line.”

  “There will be no surveying.”

  “There has to be. We will inform you when we do so and we welcome your protection.”

  “Damn straight,” Tim muttered.

  Nobody wanted standard border patrol forces trying to fry their asses.

  There was a long silence before the North Koreans answered, “It is permitted.” And they were gone off the air.

  Robin turned her helo and Mickey followed suit so that they were face-to-face, hovering a hundred feet apart. Not knowing what else to do, he offered her a nod of support.

  He was pretty sure she shrugged a “What the hell!” in return.

  In unison, they turned and rolled down into the Demilitarized Zone, the most fiercely armed and contested strip of soil in the world, to load their tanks from forbidden waters.

  Chapter 18

  “Let’s never do this again.” Mickey sat beside her in the main restaurant of the Sol Resort. The massive resort in Yangyang was close to the defunct airfield. They sat in a neat spread of tables lined up in orderly rows. A three-story-tall wall of windows shining with the last pinks and oranges of the ending day curved along one side of the room.

  And Robin knew that, despite sitting inside air-conditioned helicopters all day, they stank. She couldn’t care less.

  This stretch of the beach was only officially “open”—whatever that meant—for forty-two days of the summer, and this wasn’t one of them. That meant that the resort’s main restaurant was echoingly empty at eight at night. Five of the fifty or more tables were occupied by small, quiet groups.

&
nbsp; Which was good, because MHA’s whole team stank and were too tired to worry about polite noise levels. They smelled of wood smoke and they smelled of exhaustion.

  “Beat’s Denny’s,” she teased Mickey.

  “I meant let’s never fly in formation with a dozen tons of North Korean attack helicopters manned by the severely paranoid.” He was so tired he’d taken her statement at face value. “They stayed so close, except when we were actually dropping on the fire, that I swear I could see the bullets in their guns. My knuckles are still white from fear I was going to ram one of them.”

  “I hear ya, bro.” Tim thumped Mickey hard on the back. “We, I mean, the, you know, U.S. military guys, don’t fly formations that close.”

  Robin wanted a burger and fries but had settled for fish and chips. There was a lot of seafood on the menu, very little meat. Mickey was splitting a pepperoni pizza with Vern from which Robin stole a slice.

  “At least there’s a decent amount of darkness here. Nine full hours,” Jeannie groaned, almost nodding into her chowder. None of them had slept since Alaska.

  “Certainly beats three hours of twilight we just came from.” Cal rubbed his wife’s back.

  “And the North Koreans said no nighttime flying, which I’m not gonna argue with,” Tim agreed and worked on the steak that Robin hadn’t seen anywhere on the menu. Of course she was so tired, it might have been on the middle of the page in bold type and she wouldn’t have seen it.

  “How many people would normally be needed to fight a fire this huge?” Lola asked from Tim’s other side. She had a surf ’n’ turf, of which Robin was also quite envious.

  “This one is running around twenty thousand acres,” Mark replied. “Which is low-end average by our standards.” He too had ended up with fish and chips and was eyeing Tim’s steak.

  That made Robin feel a little better. She was wolfing her meal down anyway, her body wanted the calories, but they would have tasted so much better as red meat.

  “I’d like another two helos, a pair of air tankers, and at least one full load of smokejumpers—twenty of them would be very handy right now,” Mark continued. “Though I bet even they would hesitate about jumping into a mess like the DMZ. Normally, because the terrain is so rugged, we’d also have a half-dozen wildland fire engines on the ground and maybe a hotshot crew.”

  “Based on what I can tell from the limited feed from the drone”—Carly sipped at her tea—“and the little that I can pull off the helo’s cameras, the only assets they have are a couple hundred peasants out on the line beating at the fire with pine boughs.”

  “Damn.” Mickey sounded pissed.

  Robin wondered at his irritation and then imagined some poor, underfed farmer without any Nomex gear beating at a forty-foot flame with a highly flammable tree branch. They’d have no training about entrapment or escape routes. Now she was getting as angry as Mickey, not that they could do anything about it. “They lose any in the fire yet?”

  “Can’t be sure,” Carly said quietly enough to make the answer a clear affirmative. “I’m sure they will as the fire progresses. They don’t even have a crew boss based on how they’re deployed along the line, at least not one that’s ever faced a big fire.”

  That killed any lightness to the mood. What had been…not celebratory, because they were too exhausted for that, but positive, had just been swept under the table.

  Robin looked at the faces around the table and not a one of them didn’t look hammered down and hurting after the long flight from Alaska, the crossing from Japan, and eight hours on the fire.

  “Any word on anything else?” Robin asked Mark.

  He shook his head and didn’t look happy. He still didn’t know why they’d been sent here.

  Fine.

  “Tonight, sleep.” Robin looked over the weary and discouraged crew. “Tomorrow, we’re in the air at dawn. If we beat the shit out of this fire, it won’t have a chance to burn anybody. Deal?”

  One by the one, everyone looked at her and nodded, resigned but in agreement.

  There were two exceptions.

  Mark was looking at her as if Robin had just fulfilled all of Emily’s plans for her. They’d been looking for someone to lead. Why else would they have given her command of Firehawk One? By all rights she should have been copilot in someone else’s bird for a few months first. But Mark’s smile looked terribly smug and self-satisfied. Well, they’d pushed her into the position and she’d pulled on her big-girl boots and stepped into it. He made as if he was tipping his hat to her, if he’d been wearing one.

  The other exception was Mickey. He was looking at her like…like she’d be an idiot if she didn’t drag him straight to bed.

  Robin was many things, but she wasn’t an idiot.

  “Excuse us.” She pulled Mickey to his feet, reached over to steal another slice of pepperoni pizza, and led him out of the restaurant.

  * * *

  Mickey didn’t wait for the elevator doors to close.

  He didn’t give Robin Harrow a chance to take a bite of her pizza.

  She stepped into the elevator, punched in for the fourth floor, and he drove her back against the brass rail and mahogany veneer of the elevator wall. He pinned her there and she didn’t complain when he drove his mouth against hers. He scooped her butt and pulled her hard against him, frustrated by the layers of clothes that separated them, but unable to control himself.

  He had her untucked and totally disheveled by the time the elevator door opened. The transition from elevator to room was a blur. She kept slowing him down by tossing articles of her clothing in his face as she scampered down the hall just out of his reach.

  She arrived at the door, carrying a key card and a half-eaten piece of pizza, and wearing a smile.

  Robin unlocked the door and dodged inside—it was a good thing the key card worked on the first try, or he’d have taken her right there. She made as if to close it in his face and leave him out in the hall with nothing but her clothes.

  He jammed a palm against the door as she laughed, and he forced his way into the room.

  “Oh my God, Mickey.” The wonder in her voice was enough to stop him, though she was in easy reach.

  “What?”

  “A bed. A real bed. We get to make love in a real bed.”

  No way could Mickey wait that long. It was at least a dozen steps away. He also couldn’t wait to take off his own clothes and find some protection.

  Not with Robin Harrow standing naked in front of him. A part of him wanted to hold her, cradle her to him, take his time—and that was just one more thing he discarded as he tossed his armful of her clothes aside.

  As he pushed her back against the wall and took her, she dumped her pizza slice on the entryway table. He took her with his mouth, with his hands, with kneeling down and rubbing his cheek against her, like Adam must have as a supplicant the first time he knelt before Eve.

  Robin protested.

  Writhed.

  And wholly cooperated, finally ending up with her back against the golden wallpaper and her legs over his shoulders as he held her aloft and sent her flying.

  Only when she was done, when her hands had eased their purchase in his short hair, did he finally come back to himself and rest his head on her belly.

  “So, I’m guessing you want me, Hamilton?” Her tone was teasing, though her voice was husky and her breathing hard. But her hands were gentle as they stroked and smoothed his hair back into place.

  “Seem to.” Want? He didn’t want Robin. He needed her like a drug. He tipped his head back to look up at her. “And I’m nowhere near done, my Robin of the nice breasts. Just warning you.”

  “Good!” She untangled herself from him. “Strip ’em down, Mickey me boy. We both need a shower desperately.”

  Shower was not on his list of priorities. Bury himself in this woma
n was his entire list at the moment.

  She held out the pizza for him to take a bite as he stripped, teasing him forward as if he needed more encouragement. They split the last of the crust as they went into the bathroom.

  “I want to cry,” Robin cooed. There was a big soaking tub and a glassed-in shower that would easily fit several people.

  “Never had a base camp like this one before.” Not in all of his years of flying to fire.

  “Maybe we should fight fires for an unfriendly foreign power more often.”

  “Pass.”

  She strode across the room and entered the shower.

  Mickey stood there unable to move. Robin in motion was a powerful wonder. It was the way she flew, powerful movements that didn’t doubt themselves. Graceful—not because they were delicate, but because their purpose was so consistently clear.

  Robin striding across the silver-and-black tile without a stitch of clothing on left him helpless to do anything more than watch.

  She had the shower going, the temperature set, and had stepped under the falling water, and still he couldn’t so much as blink or wiggle a toe.

  Robin turned to look at him through the glass. Her hair so light that it barely darkened in the water. Her eyes so bright. Her form ever so slightly blurred by the water sheathing over her.

  She moved, back out of the shower until she was standing close before him, dripping on the tile floor. Her blue eyes looked up at him and waited, but he couldn’t think of what to do.

  * * *

  “Oh boy. What am I going to do with you?” Robin took Mickey’s hand and pulled him toward the shower.

  Men had looked at her with need before, with hunger, with avarice, and even with a desire for vengeance—perhaps against their past, perhaps against all women. She was plenty capable of protecting herself, to many a male’s dismay she’d left on the ground in deep physical pain.

  She was less sure how to protect herself against the look on Mickey’s face. She wasn’t even sure how to interpret it.

  Deal with what you do know, honey had always been Grandma Phoebe’s advice, along with one of her whiskey-rough laughs.