Pure Heat

by M. L. Buchman

  “There… See? Now pan right again. Okay, straight ahead and up.” There was a pause before Carly continued. “That’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “Look here.” She tried to hold the tablet where he could see it and point at the same time.

  “Just circle it with your finger. I’ll see it on my screen.”

  She drew three quick circles that faded even as she finished. But he didn’t need to see more.

  “Triple strike.”

  “What’s a triple strike?” Beale cut in.

  “This isn’t one fire—” Steve started.

  “—It’s three,” Carly finished. “Three lightning strikes on three adjacent ridges. Must have been a heck of show.”

  “Does that change how we fight the fire?”

  “Yes, it lets me know how the fire is moving. Steve, can you circle higher?”

  He’d already clicked onto the “tower” frequency and gotten clearance from Mike to do just that. He sent the drone spiraling upward as he zoomed out for a wider view. They were still five miles out in their helicopter, about two more minutes of flight time, when he got high enough to see the full fire.

  “Can you overlay a terrain map?”

  Steve tapped in the contour lines. “Damn, that’s rough terrain.”

  “Smokies earning their pay today.”

  “Spoken like an air jock.” His statement had more edge than he’d intended. Steve had humped hills like this. It was no fun at all.

  He had the system run a quick heat-area analysis. He’d had a chat with a programmer back at SkyHi. The woman had written him an auto-trace feature that outlined the boundary where there was a twenty degree or more difference in the infrared values. The algorithm traced a line, checked the scale of the view, and reported the engaged acreage.

  Steve keyed the ICA’s frequency. “It’s official, sports fans. We’re now a Class F, twelve hundred acres.”

  “Roger that,” was Henderson’s dry reply. “ICA aloft. On-site in ten minutes.”

  “Where do we hit it?” Beale’s voice indicated she wasn’t going to be wasting any more time teasing her husband.

  “Right here, full load.” Carly traced a line that showed up on Steve’s screen, then held the tablet out for Beale to see.

  Steve tried to puzzle it out. That wouldn’t have been his first call. Not even close. He’d have hit the line in front of the ground team to cool them off a bit.

  The Firehawk was already on the run for the foam drop by the time he figured it out. They had foam, not retardant. It was better at suppressing fire than blocking it. The terrain map showed a ridge hidden under the treetops. If they could keep the fire from crossing over, it would give the smokies a chance to cut a firebreak along the ridge.

  He flipped to infrared and zoomed in. Sure enough, there they were, but how did she know?

  He switched back to normal vision and saw the first tree going over, the first of many that would be cut down to make a gap in the forest that, hopefully, the fire couldn’t jump. Of all the windblown trees spread over the climbing hills, she’d seen that tree, its lone top moving differently than the others because the smokies were busy cutting it down.

  She was brilliant.

  He swallowed hard and wondered—if Carly had been his spotter in the air at Crystal Peak last summer, would his knee still be whole?

  Chapter 14

  Seven hours.

  Carly threw herself down on the grassy bank between the drone’s launch trailer and the smooth-flowing Payette. Her body thrummed with exhaustion as if she’d been fighting the fire on the ground. Three hours in transit and seven hours over the fire until the sunset had shut down flight operations. Forest Service prohibited air-attack from thirty minutes before sunset until thirty after dawn.

  There were exceptions—the Firehawk and one of MHA’s tankers were night rated. The problem was that the personnel contracts called for ten hours consecutive downtime for pilot and machine out of every twenty-four hours. A one-flight call at midnight would delay the next morning’s attack until after 10:00 a.m. So, if there were no emergencies, they were done for the night, which in midsummer was about ten hours anyway.

  But for the last seven hours, every twelve and a half minutes they’d been back with another thousand gallons of water and foam. Except for five-minute stops at the airstrip every dozen runs for refueling and getting more foam, they hadn’t stopped at all. Thirty-two runs on adrenaline and energy bars. Thirty-two thousand gallons from the Firehawk alone. That amounted to a couple of nice backyard swimming pools worth of water.

  Carly could sure use one of those now. Of course she was so tired, she’d probably drown in a kiddie pool.

  Her mind chewed over the firefight. She could picture where every single run had fallen. If they could have kept going, she could have seen how best to overlap the next twenty drops to slow the fire and turn it to help out the ground teams still sweating it out there in the dark.

  The two big airplane tankers running retardant out of Boise could deliver twice the amount, but their round trip, including landing and refill, made it so that they barely equaled what the Firehawk had delivered. The three smaller choppers had done what they could, but they were slower each trip. Besides, even combined, they carried little more than half of the Hawk’s load. Though they were great for killing spot fires that tried to jump into untouched woods.

  If she had the energy, she’d go and pat the chopper on the nose.

  No way. Maybe she’d just sleep right here.

  She heard the rustle of someone coming toward her through the knee-high grass. Then she smelled him, or rather what he was carrying.

  “Food!”

  “Two burgers, fries, slaw, an apple, and some chocolate.”

  “Oh God, Steve, I’m all yours.” She didn’t even feel too stupid for saying it. Her body was that hungry. She sat up. “What are you going to eat?”

  He handed her one plate stocked exactly as promised as he sat down with an identical one.

  “Two burgers of my very own?” She tried to look at him all moony-eyed. It must have worked because he almost dumped his own plate in his lap. She looked down at hers to hide her smile in the fading light.

  “You were amazing.” Steve’s voice was awkward, a little rough.

  “No, it was your drone imaging.” She took a big bite and talked around it. “Can you imagine how maddening it usually is for me to see the fire for only a minute at a time? And then while my flight is getting the next load, I can’t see where anyone else is hitting it, never mind being able to direct them.”

  She knew she was practically babbling with the high charge of adrenaline, all she had left going for her, but it was too strong to stop.

  She crammed down some fries, only warm but still crunchy. She was so hungry that she wouldn’t complain if they were cold and soggy.

  “We got in an extra run every hour with the Firehawk because of you. Because I could see what I had to see before we got on-station, with just a quick double-check as we did the drop. And with the drone, I could help Henderson direct all the other drops even when I wasn’t there. It’s better than the view from the ICA’s spotter because you can be wherever I need you. We kicked ass up there.” She held up a hand palm out and he high-fived it. “Damn, we were good.”

  Steve was quiet, looking north, watching the ridge that blocked their view of a fire fifteen miles away. He looked awfully good, silhouetted against the softening red of the sky. All quiet like that.

  It brought a quiet to her too. Quiet enough that the hyperawareness that had been coursing up her nerves settled into the background. At length she could hear the river running close beside them. Could hear the last of the crows and a few jays settling in for the night, nesting among the trees across the water. The last rattles of the helibase while the ground crews prepped the base for tomorrow’s attack. Each chopper would get a full servicing.

  The retardant trucks had arrived and loaded the big
tanks at the airfield. Which was good; they’d burned through most of the foam they’d brought with them. It was time to switch over the Firehawk and at least one of the Huey 212s to the gooey red retardant.

  They’d be ready to start protecting unburned fuels by morning. Water and foam were about fighting fire directly. Retardant was about spreading on the trees that hadn’t yet burned to help rebuff the fire by sealing the fuel away from the air.

  “Twenty percent.” Steve’s voice was little more than a whisper. They had it twenty percent contained.

  A good start for a half day. Today was more about slowing it down and not just letting the flames run rampant. Tomorrow they’d begin corralling the beast. Of course, that didn’t take into account any wind shift during the night, or how hard the smokies and the three D4 bulldozers they’d airlifted in could hold the line.

  Steve’s face was little more than a silhouette now against the dusky pink sky. From here, down in the Payette Valley, the fire and its massive plume were invisible. Down river, the sky had been painted a brilliant pink, descending even now to a dusky orange reflected off the river.

  Carly somehow knew what Steve was thinking. She noted that he wasn’t sitting cross-legged, but rather with his left leg stretched out straight before him like it hurt too much to bend. But that wasn’t where his attention lay, despite the palm he rubbed along the sore muscles. He was facing north toward the tall ridge, thinking of the fire. That he should be there. She’d bet her next paycheck that he felt guilty about not being the one up on that burning ridge chasing the smoke, cutting the next firebreak.

  Carly rested a hand on his good thigh and leaned in to kiss him.

  He startled, returned abruptly from his thoughts, and then settled into the kiss. With a plate in one hand and a half-eaten burger in the other, he could only lean in. Their only contact was her hand on his right thigh and their lips. It was a kiss as gentle as the night. He tasted of mustard and ketchup. He tasted of fire smoke. And, someone save her, he tasted so damned good.

  She felt him set aside his plate and she started to pull back. She didn’t want to be caught and held; she’d just wanted the kiss.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” His voice sounded rough and barely louder than the water. But rather than cupping her neck or clamping his fist in her hair, he slid his fingertips soft as a wisp of smoke along the back of her jawline by her ear, creating just enough pressure to ask her to stay.

  She held there on that teetering edge, but couldn’t.

  She couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered and pulled away.

  He let her go.

  The light was gone by now. Carly could tell that he was looking at her, trying to read her. But despite the dark, she couldn’t meet his gaze. She stared down at her plate. Groped for a french fry and chewed without tasting it.

  They ate in silence past the arrival of the first stars. Past the last of the palest pink bleeding out of the west. There was a glow of some work lights from the camp, but they were not enough to block the sky, which filled with a wash of crystalline stars.

  She set aside her plate and shivered slightly. Between her racing thoughts and the exhaustion, a chill shook her again despite the warm night. There was nothing left in her.

  Unseen hands wrapped a blanket around her as she sat.

  “You were thinking…”

  “Hoping. Yeah, I’ll admit I was.” Steve shifted beside her, lay back, and gently pulled her down beside him.

  He left the choice up to her. At the last moment she shifted so that she lay inside the curl of his arm and her head came to rest on his shoulder. He arranged a second blanket over both of them.

  Carly let herself settle into his warmth and looked up at the night sky.

  “Cassiopeia.”

  She could feel his voice rumble up through his chest.

  “What? Where?”

  An arm shadowed the stars and pointed. “The big W there in the sky, like a kid’s drawing of a throne from the side. Only her throne shows, not the great and rather vain queen Cassiopeia herself. And see there, the great empty square in the sky and the two lines of stars trailing off to the northwest?”

  She nodded, knowing he’d feel it where her head rested on his shoulder. She kept her arms tucked between them, her fingers interlaced beneath her chin.

  “The square is the winged horse Pegasus and the trailing stars are the queen’s daughter Andromeda climbing upon the horse’s back to be rescued.”

  “Rescued?”

  He nodded and she tried to ignore how much she was enjoying the vibrations of his voice through his chest. She shouldn’t feel relaxed here or safe, but she did. She tentatively slid an arm onto his chest.

  “The queen boasted she was more beautiful than the sea nymphs. Being a bit vain themselves, the nymphs unleashed a monster that could only be assuaged by Cassiopeia and her husband Cepheus chaining their daughter to the sea-cliff rocks to be consumed.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Chap by the name of Perseus agreed with you. That’s him there, that bent triangle.”

  She didn’t particularly follow the sky; rather she followed the flexing of his muscles where her arm draped over his chest. It was easy to miss his chest. His dark eyes and magnetic smile dazzled, his self-conscious limp distracted. But his chest was really something wonderful. He might drive a muscle car, but he clearly had worked hard to keep his smokie conditioning despite his injury. The arm curled against her back, the hand resting lightly on her hip. They too spoke of a man who worked himself hard.

  “So Perseus saved the girl.”

  Carly had lost the thread of the story. “He saved the girl?”

  “He did. The poor monster didn’t get to eat the girl. Worse, Perseus showed the head of the Medusa to him, and the sorry beast turned to stone and sank. When the gods put him in the sky, they banished him down below the ecliptic. He’s still stuck there, down below the horizon for half of the night.”

  “Sounds as if you’re on the monster’s side.”

  “Always felt sorry for him from the first time Dad told me the story.”

  Carly wondered about the king and queen who had chained his daughter to a great rock. She was a wildland firefighter. It’s what she did. She stayed in the air rather than jumping into the fire like her father or TJ. Or on the ground like her grandfather, at least until the emphysema had gotten him. She liked who she was. But each fire she flew was as dangerous as being faced by a fiery monster from the depths.

  Her mother, dead and gone when Carly was still in kindergarten, couldn’t stand the life of a smokejumper’s wife. Carly might not remember much about her, but she remembered that. Her father dead now too. They might as well be among the stars.

  And Steve had rescued TJ, rather than the fair maiden, which didn’t fit the tale at all, unless it did.

  She meant to ask him how it might, but fell asleep instead and dreamed of Steve waving a banner high on the cliffs of ancient Greece.

  His was the only banner cheering for the monster.

  But even in her dreams, Carly wondered where that left the maiden.

  Chapter 15

  Carly woke alone in the predawn light.

  She hadn’t slept outdoors in a long time, not since she used to go camping with her father. Linc had never been one for camping.

  A sharp “Whoosh!” drew her attention upward.

  The drone shot low above her, out over the river, then climbed rapidly.

  She jerked upright. Both blankets had been wrapped close about her. Dew spangled her face and hair. The warm night was now gone to cool morning.

  The spot beside her was clear of dew as well. Steve must have woken a little earlier to launch the drone, but not enough for any dew to form.

  They’d slept together, just slept. She rarely slept a whole night through anymore. And never during a fire. She’d just wake up in the middle of the night with her mind churning over the fire’s variables.

>   Steve had given her a gift of sleep.

  And more, but she couldn’t put the right word to it. At least not yet. It was all muddled in last night’s dreams of monsters and maidens, daughters and flying horses.

  She watched the drone circle upward, finally high enough to catch the first ray of sunlight where it shone like a star. Then it turned tail, arrowing toward the fire, and was gone.

  Time to get moving.

  She grabbed the blankets and trotted up the hill.

  Steve was perched in the back of the Firehawk, intent over the console. TJ and Henderson were close behind him. Steve was so intent on the screen that he didn’t look up or perhaps even notice when she arrived.

  She carefully dropped the blankets behind a foam bucket, then slipped an arm around TJ’s waist and watched as the drone climbed up over the fire.

  “Looks like they made some headway last night. See, here.” Steve zoomed in on the northwest flank. The firebreak had held and been extended, well past where she’d expected.

  “What are the winds?” she asked. Something didn’t look right.

  Steve startled for a moment and shot her a quick glance even as he tapped for the information.

  He fully turned toward her, but she saw the numbers and swore.

  His smile, half-formed, was wiped from his face as he turned back to the screen.

  Last night’s winds had eased from the west-southwest. A calm night had let the ground crews do some serious rock and roll. But though the morning winds were near calm, they were out of the north. If it held as a northerly when the day’s winds picked up, the firefighters were in deep trouble.

  After just a moment, Steve was twisting the drone around and zooming as far ahead as he could to focus on the southwest flank.

  “Damn!” they cursed in unison.

  Emily came walking up with a cup of coffee and a plate of food.

  “How fast can we be aloft?” Carly cut off her greeting.

  Emily didn’t even blink at the abrupt transition. Rock steady.

  “Long enough for you to eat this if you’re fast.” Emily shoved the plate toward Carly and climbed into the chopper.