Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  Robin screamed!

  A face was grinning at her from just outside her pilot’s door window. A female face, holding aloft a package of Blackhawk cabin-air filters—like the ones she’d watched Denise change just an hour ago.

  The woman knocked politely.

  Robin slid back her earphones and opened the door. The wood smoke was a hot slap to her sinuses. The fire was very close, but Robin couldn’t look away from the woman to see how close.

  “Hi, did you drop these?” The woman’s English was perfect. Her face wasn’t Korean. Though her skin was dark enough, her features were First Peoples American. Not Navajo or any of the other Arizona tribes, but maybe part Cherokee.

  “Seem to have.” Robin did her best to return the woman’s smile, but her nerves weren’t cooperating.

  She’d been shot at plenty in Afghanistan, but her last tour was three years ago. The missile shot had snapped her war-zone-triggered fight-or-flight nerves back to a full roar.

  But that wasn’t what had her knocked back so hard in her seat. Instead, it was the totally incongruity of the moment.

  She was parked on soil that she half expected to blow up if she stepped on it.

  A wall of fire was minutes from incinerating them. Minutes, as in low-end single digits.

  And to be greeted by someone so clearly American…

  It was the last piece that tipped her mental balance all the way to overwhelm. It was just too much to process.

  “You can put them in back,” she managed with a vague croak.

  The woman stepped out of view and slid open the Firehawk’s main cargo bay door. They’d been sent here to pick up something to smuggle out of the country. “What else are you going to put…”

  People began appearing out of the smoke like ash-covered wraiths. Men, women, children—over a dozen and more were coming.

  “No, wait!” She started undoing her seat harness to go find the woman. The toggles didn’t want to release as she bucked against them. “If they catch me with refugees, they’ll fry my ass. If I return to the South with a dozen North Koreans, you could start a goddamn war!”

  “We know that.” A man who stood a head taller than the others brought up the rear of the crowd. He moved up to stand close beside her open door. No Korean, he was built practically on Mickey’s scale, though his build was a little leaner.

  “And?” she demanded.

  “We have a plan.” He offered her a brilliantly white-toothed smile offset by his ash-and-char-coated features.

  “Great! That’s supposed to cheer me up?”

  “Sure. I think that it’s going well so far. Don’t you?”

  Robin could only watch in bemused confusion as what she decided were two families and a couple of outliers came out of the heavy smoke and climbed aboard. Their clothes might be worn, even tattered, but there were giveaways that they wore borrowed garb. They didn’t move like peasants or farmers, at least not poor ones. Their hair was neatly trimmed. One of the women sported polished fingernails and a very modern hairstyle. A man had an expensive wristwatch.

  Robin twisted around to look at Lola. But by her narrowed eyes, Robin would guess that she didn’t recognize anyone either, not the two Americans and none of those with them.

  * * *

  Mickey watched, aghast, as Robin allowed people to climb aboard her helicopter. “What the hell?” He had no one he could call and ask.

  “Got me, bro. I make it twelve locals, seven kids, and two military. Highly trained by the way they move.”

  “Ours or theirs?”

  “No way to tell from here.” Tim shrugged.

  “Thanks. I feel so much better now.” Then Mickey finally thought of something safe to ask. “Robin,” he called over the radio, “how’s that repair going?” There was a long enough pause that he called again. “Robin?”

  “Sorry.” She sounded breathless. “I was outside. Just finished the repair. Now to test it.”

  She’d never left her seat.

  “Roger that. Standing by.” Then Mickey looked at the smoke wall approaching them. The haze was so thick that in another minute, he wouldn’t have seen her passengers climbing aboard. What he did see was that the smoke was turning deeply orange as the flame drew closer.

  She’d just taken on a ton and a half of personnel.

  “You might want to unload your water before trying to take off.” If it were him down there, he’d probably be too rattled to remember the four tons of water she was burdened with. “Don’t want you to strain any systems getting clear of the fire.”

  Another long pause. As if she was distracted by something else.

  “Roger, thanks,” Robin answered. Moments later, a bright wash of water spilled out from beneath the helo.

  The water reflected the oncoming orange and made it look as if she was sitting in a pool of fire.

  “Move now, Robin. It’s almost on you.”

  “Lifting.” No pause this time, which made him feel much better.

  Firehawk One climbed easily.

  Soon they were up over a hundred feet. It was no longer a matter of flying safely under the smoky haze—they were in it now. Visibility was barely a hundred feet; it would be strictly a radar-and-guts job to get out of here. Firehawk One was little more than a vague blur of black-and-flame-painted helicopter against a backdrop of black-and-flame-colored wildfire. Mostly flame.

  Robin then turned her helicopter, hovering in place for a long moment, and then drove straight ahead.

  * * *

  Robin had tried to see Mickey as she dug for the courage she needed, but the smoke was too thick, and she could barely make out the blurred outline of his rotorcraft.

  “Really hope I get to see you on the other side, sweet man,” she whispered to herself.

  “Big ditto on that one, sister,” Lola whispered back.

  Then they looked at each other.

  Then the fire.

  It towered outside the laminate windscreen. A rolling wall of orange hell, unreadable through the thick smoke.

  Before she lost her nerve, Robin yanked up on the collective, shoved the cyclic forward, and plunged straight into the flame.

  Chapter 21

  Mickey and Tim screamed together.

  “No. No. No.” Tim kept repeating it like a mantra. “They did not just do what I think they just did. No. No. No.”

  Mickey hovered in place another three seconds before he acted.

  He yanked up on the collective to gain another hundred feet and slammed the cyclic forward and to the left.

  The smoke was blackout conditions at this altitude. All he could see was the red-orange heat below and the gray-black ash everywhere else.

  But on the radar, he saw Firehawk One moving fast and low. At its upper speed, it was steadily pulling away from him. He retrimmed his flight, riding hard against the edge of his never-exceed speed and still losing ground.

  The heat hammered at them. Tim kicked the air-conditioning on high, but still it felt as if the fire was right in the cabin with them.

  The turbulence slammed at them and buffeted his helo.

  Updrafts weren’t an issue. There were plenty of them—sudden vertical express elevators that sent them shooting up two or three hundred feet before he could compensate, wrapped in a cloud of swirling embers.

  The downdrafts were utter hell.

  One moment he was well above the fire; the next moment he was fighting for every inch of altitude he could get as he looked straight at a line of trees burning dead ahead.

  And Robin was lower than he was.

  “Damn,” Tim muttered, “she’s good. And I don’t think it’s my gal doing the flying. Not her style.”

  “What?” Mickey couldn’t spare a moment to look except enough to make sure the Firehawk was still aloft at all.

&nb
sp; “Robin should compete in slalom skiing. She’s hitting the gaps between trees at close to two hundred miles per hour. If a tree cooks off, they’re going to be off to either side of her rather than directly beneath.”

  Mickey began to get a feel for her flight patterns as he followed her through the smoke. He made up a little ground because he was high enough to fly in a straight line above her twists and turns.

  The question remained: What the hell was she doing down there?

  Something the North Koreans were also demanding to know.

  * * *

  “American! Explain flight!”

  “What do we say to them?” Robin asked.

  “Hell if I know!” Then Lola keyed the mic. “We’re unsafe to climb higher pending possible recurrence of failure. Seeking shortest route back to South Korean territory so that we do not risk upsetting those who have the honor of living in the great Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” She clicked off the mic. “There, let’s see if that holds them.”

  “How did you say that with a straight face?” Robin slammed the controls left as she nearly overran a broad, hundred-foot oak that was sending a tower of flame far above their current flight level.

  “I was laughing inside,” Lola managed through gritted teeth.

  Robin had done some freaky flying in the dust bowl.

  Just because you came over as Army National Guard and were told that you’d only be used for cargo and troop transport didn’t have squat to do with reality. She’d never been on any black ops, but she’d dragged more than her fair share of gear and people in, and injured out, of nasty-ass battle zones. Her helo had gone back to America with plenty of holes in it. Whether by skill, by God, or by luck, the only injuries among her crew had been bad scrapes and a mild concussion when Josiah ran straight into a HESCO barrier while chasing an errant Frisbee. Should have been wearing his helmet.

  By comparison, this fire was Sunday preacher hellfire and brimstone, or at least hellfire and exploding trees.

  The North Koreans were still puzzling over that last broadcast.

  “Hit the encrypted radio, find out what we’re going to be landing in.”

  The polite and overly cheerful Carla and Kyle—the two obviously military types had introduced themselves as they loaded—had provided a new set of coordinates to deliver their passengers to.

  It made no sense. Robin had flown halfway around the world and then deep into the heart of North Korea.

  And for what?

  To move a group of people twenty miles across North Korea and still leave them on the wrong side of the DMZ?

  Carla and Kyle had insisted it made perfect sense.

  Well, not to her.

  Lola had finally whispered over the headset intercom, “They’re Delta Force. No one else acts like them in a battle situation. Didn’t know they had a woman aboard. We absolutely do what they say.”

  So Robin had taken them aloft and done exactly what they said. “Go to these coordinates. Stay out of sight.” She’d shot low and fast. The coordinates were two miles from the north side of the DMZ, but that was all the information they had.

  “Mark,” Lola transmitted on the encrypted radio. “Tell me about current conditions at,” and she read out the coordinates.

  “It’s on fire. What did you expect? The rains aren’t here yet, but the winds are forty knots and climbing. The whole tail of the fire has relit. Rain is two hours out. What’s the issue?”

  “The issue,” Robin kept it to herself, “is that I have to land in the middle of the fire.”

  * * *

  Mickey could feel the North Korean’s tension building and knew that Robin didn’t have time to deal with them. So, he’d take some of the heat.

  “Attention, North Korean escort.”

  “Escort here. You must both return to normal flight levels immediately.”

  “That’s what we’ve got to delay,” Tim said. “Whatever Robin and Lola are doing down there, we need to buy them some time.”

  Firehawk One was still flying down below a hundred feet, deep in the flames and smoke. He was following at two hundred. Few flames reached this high, but the smoke was pea-soup thick and he often couldn’t see the outer edge of his rotor disk just thirty feet away.

  “Escort, this is MHA Twin 212,” Mickey transmitted. “Our sister ship is in trouble and must stay low in case they need to once again make an emergency landing. Because of present conditions, I am flying escort.”

  “That’s gonna hold them for only like—”

  “We have no radar contact with your Firehawk One.”

  “—about that long,” Tim finished.

  “No radar contact,” Mickey confirmed to Tim. “That’s what Robin is doing down there.”

  “Sure, if we weren’t five hundred yards off her butt, we wouldn’t have any either. And it’s not a good contact even this close. She does something radical, we could lose her.”

  “Escort”—Mickey keyed the mic again—“you may track Firehawk One following my position. I have positive contact and will not be leaving my teammate.”

  That seemed to buy them some silence.

  “Where the hell are you going, Robin of the Hood?” Mickey snarled down at the image skittering across his radar display.

  “Three miles to DMZ,” Tim announced. “She lands in South Korea with refugees aboard and gets spotted, they’re going to shoot down Vern and Jeannie back there.” Tim hooked a thumb northward.

  “Then that isn’t the plan.” Mickey knew Robin would never take such a risk.

  “Then what is her plan?”

  And in that moment, Robin disappeared from the scope.

  * * *

  “Robin, talk to me.”

  Robin did not have time to talk to Mickey at all. They’d reached the coordinates and Mark hadn’t been kidding—it was fully involved. The winds were ripping flaming embers off every tree. That was how she’d navigated in the gray-out conditions of smoke and ash. Every time her windscreen was blasted with embers, she’d know there was a burning tree straight ahead and she’d slip to the side. Sometimes the embers grew thick enough to become a shimmering whirlwind of sparks as she shifted, in which case she’d slam back the other way to find a gap between the trees.

  She’d reached her landing point, but she couldn’t have the North Koreans know she’d stopped here. If Mickey stopped, they’d know exactly where she’d landed.

  “Stay clear of the Tea Cup.” She risked the transmission over the general frequency and then went back to figuring out how to get down.

  “He’s moving again,” Lola reported. “At this speed, he’ll pass over us in about two minutes.”

  “Thank God.”

  Robin was hovering fifty feet over the end of a road; the road itself was clear of flames, though the woods to either side roared with fire. The only thing keeping the area around her clear of fire was the downdraft of her rotor blades driving the flames outward in every direction.

  The problem, Mickey—damn, but she wished she could tell him this to his face—is that I’m not in a Tea Cup. I’m truly in the Mighty Furrow of Death and Destruction.

  Two hundred feet straight ahead was a low building, or the remains of one. The roof was gone and anything that had adorned the concrete-block walls had been burned away. And still it burned with towering flames that rotor wash would only fan higher.

  “That’s our target,” Carla shouted, leaning forward between the pilot seats. “How do we get in there?”

  Robin stared at the flames. “Damned if I know!”

  * * *

  “Shit!” Mickey took his feet off the rudder pedals for a moment so that he could pound his heels on the cockpit’s floor in frustration. “I know what that is.”

  “What?” Tim shouted back.

  Mickey had stopped when
Robin had dropped off the screen. Then she’d told him to “stay clear of the Tea Cup.” It meant she was only passing through her present position and he couldn’t be in the way.

  Or he couldn’t be marking where she’d been for those watching his progress on the screen. So he’d continued ahead slow, but there was only so long he could delay.

  As he passed over her, he was able to look down and see the hole she punched in the smoke with her rotor blades.

  She hovered inches above a road that dead-ended in a burning building. But there wasn’t some big parking lot—the road simply went right into the ground.

  “It’s one of the Tunnels of Aggression,” he told Tim.

  “Tunnels of what?”

  “I read about them as a kid in school. North Korea dug infiltration tunnels along the border, right under the DMZ.”

  “There’s a river just over there.” Tim pointed to the river they’d dipped water from for much of the wildfire battle.

  “They found this one in 1990 or something like that. It was four hundred feet down. I remember being fascinated by it because I thought it would be a great way to accidentally find buried pirate treasure.”

  Tim snorted.

  “I was eight, give me a break. But that’s how they’re going to get the refugees to South Korea.”

  “They’re not going to get fifty feet.” Tim pointed at the burning building now coming visible to the naked eye as they cruised slowly over the hovering Firehawk One.

  Not unless they wanted to burn to death.

  Then Mickey had an idea.

  * * *

  “Remember how to ride a Tea Cup, honey,” Mickey’s voice sounded over the radio. “Just keep your cool and move right down the middle.”

  Robin laughed.

  “What the—” Lola sounded pissed.

  “Get ready,” Robin shouted back to the rear of the cabin.

  “But—”

  “Mickey’s up to something. And I have a pretty good guess what. It’s gonna be good.”

  She heard the cargo bay doors being slid open in the back. The heat from the fire to either side of the road poured into the cabin, but in moments it shouldn’t matter.