by Cassie Cole
But seeing that we had spent all day defending part of the valley occupied by a golf course?
It rubbed me the wrong way. It made me feel like a glorified groundskeeper. Especially as we drove by the country club and saw people riding around in golf carts. They were playing golf right now. Totally oblivious to the wildfire raging just a few miles to the west.
“Must be nice,” Derek muttered as we left the golf course behind.
Not that I believed rich assholes didn’t deserve to be protected. Nobody should be left to burn, whether it was a rich family in a mansion or a trailer park. Plus we had saved a few thousand acres of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest too.
But it didn’t feel the same. Especially while we knew the rest of Redding Base was out in another part of the valley, doing real work.
The drive back to base was quiet as we all brooded. We backed the truck up to the gear building and unloaded everything into an empty corner of the warehouse. We would need to clean the tools and sharpen the blades before returning them to their shelves, but that could wait until tomorrow.
When we were done and heading inside the barracks, Trace pulled me aside from the others. “Hey. I just wanted to say you did a good job today. I’m impressed.”
“Implying you thought little of me when I arrived?”
Trace smiled ruefully. “You three were newbies. Usually we get veterans from other bases. I didn’t know what to expect from you. Nobody did. Suffice to say, you exceeded expectations.” He cleared his throat. “You, Derek, and Fox, I mean.”
“He prefers to go by Foxy,” I said.
The huge man barked a laugh. “There’s no way I’m calling another guy Foxy.”
“Give it time. He grows on you.”
Trace smiled again. Sweat and grime covered his body, as it did mine, but it somehow made him look even more attractive. Rugged in a way.
There’s nothing sexier than a man in his element, I thought.
Trace gave me a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. “I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do. The joys of being a team lead. And since it’s my first time I’m sure it will take me twice as long. But I wanted to let you know I’ll be saying nothing but good things about you in the report.”
I cocked my head. “This was your first time?”
“As a team lead,” he said. “I’m not really cut out for management, though. I intend to tell Commander Callaway that I never want to—”
“Don’t!” I interrupted. “You did fantastic today! I never would have guessed it was your first time leading a four-person team.”
He raised a brown eyebrow. “Even when I let you bring a crate full of shitty tools?”
“That can be chalked up to rookie hazing. Next time you can help us get what we need. Assuming there is a next time. I hope you’ll be my team lead again.”
Trace opened his mouth, closed it, and then did the last thing I expected: he blushed. The huge, sexy, chiseled-with-muscle smokejumper turned three different shades of red as if he was still out in the woods facing a wildfire.
“Thank you,” he said in a deep whisper, and then disappeared into the men’s locker room.
I didn’t realize complimenting his team leadership would mean so much to him.
I went into the women’s locker room and stripped my clothes. There was no better feeling in the world than a post-mission shower. I let the scalding water run over my body, carrying away the sweat and grime of the day, along with all of the built-up stress I’d been holding. I washed my hair twice to get all the dirt out of it, but even when I got out and dried off I could smell the smoke in my hair. It was one of those things that seeped into your body like a virus, permeating everything. A constant reminder of what we were doing, and that the enemy was still out there while we rested.
To my surprise, the rest of the smokejumpers were returning to base when I left the locker room. “Yeah, we fucking crushed it,” I overheard one guy say to Trace in the big common room. “Held off the entire northern end of the valley, toward Mt. Shasta. If the wind doesn’t shift, that handline might kill the wildfire once and for all.”
“How was babysitting duty?” someone else asked Trace. “You change any diapers?”
A few people laughed. Trace, who was seated at one of the cafeteria tables with papers spread out around him, only glared. “The rookies completed their mission with precision and expertise. Wish I could say the same for the way you handled a Pulaski on our last mission, Johnson.”
The man—Johnson—only laughed harder. “I bet you guys did a great job protecting that golf course. I’ll think of you the next time I’m out there working on my chipping.” He mimed swinging a golf club, and his friends laughed uproariously.
Commander Callaway chose that moment to walk into the common room. He was still wearing the jumpsuit and helmet as if he had just strode off the spotter aircraft. “Since we’re all home early, debriefing in half an hour.”
“What about dinner, sir?” someone asked.
“Dinner can wait. I want to discuss how things went now, while it’s fresh in everyone’s mind. If you’re going to shower, get it in quick.” He turned to Trace. “You finish your write-up yet, Donaldson?”
“I just started it, sir.”
“What the hell is taking so long?”
“We only just returned before everyone else, sir.”
“Be sure it’s done before the debriefing,” Callaway said before leaving. Trace clenched his jaw, but didn’t say anything more as he hunched over his paperwork.
“Want some help?” I asked as the other jumpers headed for the showers.
Trace glanced up in surprise. “Team leads are supposed to fill out reports alone. I have to give my unbiased opinion of your performance.”
I sat across the table from him. “There’s a dozen pages here. You think you can do all this before the debriefing?”
He flinched. “I didn’t realize you heard me talking to Callaway.”
I leaned in close. “You mean you didn’t know I could hear you defending us rookies?” Before he could answer, I grabbed a piece of paper. “Come on. Let me help. You’re the team lead. Emphasis on team.”
He looked like he wanted to argue more, but instead slid a pen across the table.
There was no way he would have been able to finish the paperwork in time without my help. There was a page dedicated to describing the entire mission from start to finish: every task, every hiccup along the way, every decision he’d made and why. There was a page for describing the tools taken with us, how much fuel was used, and any damage or depreciation that occurred during the mission. There was even a page dedicated to the amount of smoke in the air and any ground-based wind patterns we observed during the mission. I hadn’t been paying attention to that, aside from a vague awareness that the wind was blowing toward us.
Then there were other pages for each individual smokejumper’s performance. And not just a numbering system grading us. Trace had to detail every single thing each of us did, how long we performed each task before rotating out, and what improvements we could have made. Trace focused on those forms while I helped with the other ones relating to the equipment and general mission steps.
We finished just in time for the debriefing. Derek and Foxy were waiting in the briefing room, front and center just like last time. I took a seat next to them. Both of them had bags under their eyes and slumped shoulders, like they could barely keep their bodies upright.
“You look like shit,” I teased Foxy.
He leaned away from me. “That’s not a very nice way to greet a colleague.”
“Just being brutally honest. I bet I look the same.”
“Fishing for compliments?” Derek asked. “That’s probably the most feminine thing I’ve ever seen you do.”
“Sometimes a girl just wants to be told she’s pretty.”
Foxy grinned as he thought of a joke, but before he could say it out loud Commander Callaway strode into the room. “It sounds
like we all did good work today. Let’s go over everything from the beginning, starting with Jump Team Alpha.”
The debriefing lasted half an hour. The team leads for both jump groups took their turns describing how their missions went, and then it was Trace’s turn. He looked awkward and nervous speaking in front of everyone, and said “umm” every fourth word, but he managed to go through everything without tripping up too much. Nobody made fun of him for it. Either that was because they were afraid of teasing the biggest, most intimidating man at Redding Base, or because they were too tired to put forth the effort.
When the debriefing was over, I rushed to catch up to Commander Callaway in the hallway.
“Is this going to be a regular thing with you?” he asked. “Because nothing annoys me more than an overeager jumper who doesn’t take a hint.”
“Sorry sir,” I said, “but I just wanted to get some feedback from you.”
He stopped in the hallway and sighed. “What feedback is that, Hinch?”
I collected myself. “You praised both jump groups for their work, but didn’t say anything about the ground team. Did you receive Donaldson’s report?”
Callaway pursed his lips. “I did receive it. He had good things to say about you three.”
He paused, staring at me.
“Is there something else, Hinch? Or did you want to hear his praise out of my mouth in front of everyone?”
“No, sir, it’s not—”
“Because if you’re the kind of smokejumper who needs a pat on the head and a treat every time she does her job, then tell me now so I can send your ass back to McCall. That may be how they did things in the Air Force, but it’s not how we do it here.”
He continued walking, but I still followed. “I didn’t want praise, sir. I just wanted to know if this means you’ll be sending us on better missions next time.”
“Better missions?” he replied.
“We defended a golf course today, sir.”
We reached the common room, where everyone was lining up for dinner. Callaway paused just inside and turned to me again, an exhausted look on his face. Exhausted with me, not from the day’s mission.
“I get my orders from higher up,” he said. “I usually get a lot of leeway with how I deploy the men and women of Redding Base, but sometimes there’s a political aspect to the targets we choose. That was the case today. Sometimes I’ll push back on bullshit requests like that, but today I wanted to see what you rookies were made of.”
I stood up a little straighter. “We graduated top of our class at McCall, sir.”
“And I bet you got a whole bunch of pats on the head for that, but nothing compares to real experience,” he shot back at me. “It doesn’t matter, though. Word from up high is we’ll be throwing your team in the next jump no matter what I want. Chief of the Forest Service is insisting on it.
“The Chief? Really?”
“In the mean time,” he went on, “if you want to impress me, find a way to make yourself useful around here. There are a lot of ways to contribute besides jumping out of an airplane.”
He went straight to the front of the line to get his dinner. I stepped into the back of the line and waited my turn like everyone else.
Dinner that night was spaghetti with a thick meat sauce. The man doling out the food was Johnson, the bald guy I’d seen arguing with Trace earlier. When I held out my tray, he filled it with a heaping portion of pasta but then only a small dollop of red sauce.
“It’s a little dry, don’t you think?”
He stared back at me. “Don’t be selfish. The sauce has to last for everyone.”
I glanced at the huge pot of meat sauce, which was still mostly full. Then I pointedly looked behind me. “I’m literally the last person in line.”
“Some of the real smokejumpers might want seconds,” Johnson replied smoothly. “Jump out of a plane and earn your sauce before making demands, rookie.”
After getting rebuked by Callaway, I was almost annoyed enough to snatch the ladle from him and pour myself all the sauce I wanted. There were loaves of garlic bread cut up into pieces as well that I wanted to grab. The only thing stopping me was the knowledge that I would regret it later. My outburst would encourage the other jumpers to torture me longer. They would come up with stupid nicknames, like sauce slut. It would go on for weeks.
I found my team sitting at the end of the table again. This time, Trace was sitting with us too. I took that as a good sign. We’d win over Redding Base even if we had to do it one man at a time.
Foxy slurped spaghetti noodles into his mouth. “Looks like they gave you as little sauce as us.”
“Get used to it,” Derek said glumly.
Trace stared at my tray, then at me. Without a word, he rose from the table and went back up to the food line. He returned with a huge plate full of pasta drenched in red sauce, and six pieces of garlic bread. He placed it between us and gestured wordlessly.
“Score!” Derek said.
“Thank you,” I said while moving some of the food onto my plate. There were huge chunks of ground beef in the sauce.
“You all need the protein,” Trace said simply. “Weak jumpers are a recipe for disaster, just like bringing a dull chainsaw.”
Foxy made an offended noise. “You saw me eating sauceless noodles and didn’t do anything. But when the pretty girl needs better food…”
Trace jerked his thumb at me. “She helped me write my reports earlier. And she hasn’t requested that I call her by some stupid nickname, like Hinchy.”
“Everyone calls me Foxy!” he argued. “And I would’ve helped with your reports if you had asked. I didn’t know there was extra credit to get on the boss’s good side.”
“I’m not your boss,” Trace replied. “Eat up and stop complaining.”
We wolfed down the delicious carbs and garlic bread. My stomach was bottomless after all the work we had done today, and I had to stop myself from eating too quickly.
Foxy gestured at me with a piece of garlic bread. “Saw you talking to Commander Callaway. Sucking up to management, huh?”
“I was asking him if we would get sent on a real mission next time.”
Derek sighed. “I don’t know why you’re so eager to be thrown into the fire.”
“Uh, because it’s what we’ve trained to do?” I gave him a confused look. “Why don’t you want to jump?”
He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. A lock of wavy blond hair fell across one eye. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I’m just not in a hurry to be the tip of the spear.”
“You afraid?” Trace asked.
“No,” Derek said stubbornly.
“Hell, I’m afraid,” Foxy chimed in. “I’m afraid every time we go out. You have to be stupid not to be. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to be part of the action anyway.”
I ignored him and focused on Derek. “What’s your deal? You’ve been in a funk since we left McCall. Hell, you were in a funk there, too. After we got our assignment.”
“I’m not in a funk. I just happen to know we’re going to be thrown into the fire sooner rather than later,” he replied.
I gave a start. “Callaway did say we would be going on the next jump.”
Derek pointed at me. “Told ya. And when we are, we’ll be on the dangerous end of the handline. Mark my words.”
Trace put down his fork. “Do you know something we don’t?”
He shrugged. “Just know how to read my cards. Trust me: we’re fucked.”
Anger rose up in my chest. I was sick of coddling Derek, and his mood was starting to bring me down. Not to mention I was in a shitty mood over the fact that we had spent all day protecting a country club.
“I think there’s more to it than that,” I said, more angry than I meant to sound. “I think you’re acting defeatist because you were hoping to be sent to a cushy smokejumper base, like Grangeville, or Winthrop. I think you’re scared to be here at Redding.”
&nb
sp; “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he spat back at me. “Scared? The only thing I’m scared of is having to be rescued from a tree by you again, and then the rest of the base taunting me for being saved by a woman.”
The words stung the moment they were out of his mouth. Foxy blinked like he was shocked to hear it, too. Only Trace stared back placidly, as if he was wondering why there was a spat between us.
I waited for Derek to take it back or apologize, but all he did was hang his head and focus on his spaghetti.
“I think I’ve had my fill,” I said, carrying my tray up to the kitchen and then leaving the big common room.
14
Haley
I practically stomped back to my bunk room. What had happened to Derek? We had gotten along so well at jump school. Teasing and flirting throughout our training. Then it was like a switch had been flipped. Why was he a completely different person out here? He was resigned to his fate, like someone on a sinking ship who had already given up.
I hoped Derek would come chasing after me to apologize, but I made it back to my bunk without being intercepted. I closed the door and laid in bed with my hands behind my head, staring at the underside of the top bunk.
I’d seen new cadets wash out of the Air Force right after going through Basic. Paradoxically, they were able to withstand the stresses of Basic because they knew it was all manufactured danger, but then they couldn’t handle an actual tour of duty on an Air Force base. Maybe Derek was the same way. He could jump out of a plane and fight a fire when he knew it was all fake, but once the danger was real he couldn’t cut it. He didn’t seem like that, but it was possible.
Maybe I should bring it up to Commander Callaway. I immediately dismissed the idea. Tattling on a jump teammate was the absolute worst thing I could do. It would shatter any trust I’d built with Derek, and the rest of Redding Base would know not to trust me. That kind of thing didn’t fly in the Air Force, and it certainly wouldn’t fly here.
I could talk to Commander Wallace. If I called my old base commander, just to get his opinion, he might have some valuable perspective to offer. Maybe there were other things going on behind the scenes with Derek I didn’t know about. Personal trouble at home. A sick parent or something.
