Force of Blood

by Joseph Heywood

  “This is north of LOL?”

  “Yeah. It took two phone calls to get permission. Where you going?”

  “I want to swap my private ride for the Tahoe. I’ll call Friday. She can drive the Tahoe over here and take my truck back.”

  “Want to meet her at the Bomb Shelter? It’s private,” Sedge said, raising an eyebrow.

  “What’s this week’s exhibit, Pocahunkus?”

  She laughed. “Cinder blocks only. When are you leaving?”

  “I’ll spend the night, take off first light, come back the next day to give you a break.”

  Service pitched tents for himself and the professor, away from Toliver’s tent city but with a low ridge between the two shelters and the lake, to prevent them from being sloshed if the lake got exuberant.

  “I adore the sound of Superior,” Shotwiff said.

  “This time of year it should be fine, but when the Edmund Fitz went down in seventy-five, a friend of mine had a place west of Deer Park, thirty feet above the beach. The waves broke over the cliff in his yard and pushed his kids’ bikes fifty yards south up his driveway. This is not the place to be when Superior gets into a snit.”

  “That doesn’t change my feelings for the sound,” the professor countered.

  The area was parched the whole forest a bed of tinder, and the professor was, until recently, someone who thought nothing of feeding large predators. Service studied the sky. Yellowish thunder-bumpers had been building since late morning. “We might get a shower,” he told the professor. “Let’s recheck the tents, make sure they’re secure and that the rain-flies won’t blow away.”

  • • •

  It drizzled for twenty minutes around 4 p.m. Thirty minutes later the sky turned black and exploded with rumbling thunder crashing in all directions. Service watched as the sky turned dark, variegated blue and white lightning columns arcing downward, leaving the air sizzling and the taste of iron in his mouth. Two strikes were close, the interval between flash and thunder less than a second. Both strikes made him jump. The professor just stared up at the sky with his mouth hanging open.

  Sedge trotted down from the big camp. “Jesus, one of those was less than a mile away by my count.” Her eyes were wide, chest heaving, but her voice was calm and controlled. “We’re bone-dry out here,” she said.

  “You fix the loke?”

  “Close, and south southwest,” she said.

  “That’s toward my truck. Get on the radio, call Station Twenty, ask them to alert the county.”

  “My 800’s not working out here,” she said. When the DNR had gotten the 800-megahertz system, officers were promised the radios would work everywhere, under all conditions. It turned out to be just another semi-empty promise. “We are so damn isolated here, a fire could get a big head south of us and push up here, and we wouldn’t know it until it was on us.”

  “I’ll check the closest strike,” Service said. “Stay with the group. Professor, go with Officer Sedge.”

  She held out a family band radio, Motorola, red. “Ten-mile range, Channel One, backup on Ten. Let me know about the strike before you head for your truck.”

  “Channel One,” he said, nodding. “Or Ten.” The term, number ten, had meant everything bad and evil in his Southeast Asia days.

  Sedge didn’t need to provide directions. Following the course line he could smell smoke, and soon came upon an ancient eight-foot black stump, sluffing fresh smoke. It was surrounded by black swamp water. Even if it fell over, it couldn’t reach dry fuel. Still, he waded out thigh-deep through the muck and used his hat to scoop as much water and sludge on the smoldering wood as he could manage. He called Sedge on the radio. “Found it. An old stump in a little marsh. I put it out but it’s still smoldering. Who says lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place?”

  “Should I think about evacuating the group?”

  “Not yet, but tell Toliver what’s going on, and that he may have to leave everything and bug out PDQ. If you end up having to go, don’t even try for your vehicles. Just foot-boogie due east down the beach to Vermilion and set yourselves up there. You got spare radio batts?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good; conserve them. Save them for Vermilion if you need to go that route.”

  “You talk to your woman yet?”

  “No bars here,” he said of his cell phone.

  It was 6 p.m. when he reached his truck and saw a Hummer coming through the woods at a pretty good clip. It stopped and Allerdyce jumped out.

  “I just come up One Twinnytree. Youse see all dose lightens up dis way?”

  “All around us.”

  “Bunches down south, too. I stop truck, take sniff. Got heavy smoke up dere norta One Twinnytree. Murp’y Crick. I tink youses mebbe got a burn goin’.”

  “There was one small smoker north of here.”

  Allerdyce looked him over. “You wade swamp?”

  “Tried to douse the stump. It should be okay.”

  “Where you want me go, sonnyboy?”

  “Do you know where the others’ vehicles are parked?”

  “Yeah, mile nort’easta here.”

  “Park your vehicle with theirs and report to Sedge. Help her if she has to evacuate. I told her if she has to go, to hotfoot it east to Vermilion.” Service handed the family band radio to the man. “Reach her on this: Channel One primary, Ten the backup. Be careful, old man.”

  “Youse too, sonnyboy. Looks like da Indi’n god done send us whole kick yer caboola!”

  • • •

  Service made his way south. The forest roads felt strange under the dark sky. Eventually he crawled down CR 500 to M-123 and turned southeast toward where Limpy had smelled smoke. The Bomb Shelter was in the other direction, but not far.

  Down the road he thought about the area, which he knew as intimately as any in the U.P. If there was fire north of M-123 and west of Murphy Creek, it would be the middle of nowhere and impossible to handle easily. He turned off M-123 and skirted Chesbrough Lake to where the road dead-ended into a massive Nature Conservancy peat marsh. South of him were the headquarters of the East Branch of the Two-Hearted, and Sleeper Lake, both less than two miles southeast of his position.

  He could smell the smoke and feel the wind in his face. There looked to be a little ash in the air, but not much yet. Bad, he told himself.

  He toggled his 800 and was surprised when it blooped to life. “Twenty, this is Twenty Four Fourteen. I’m on Chesbrough Road at the Nature Conservancy property, Luce County. There’s a fire southwest of my position somewhere in the direction of Sleeper Lake. Twenty Four Fourteen clear.”

  “Twenty Four Fourteen, we just had another call on the same event. The alert is going now. You close to the fire?”

  “No.”

  “Be careful out there, Chief Master Sergeant. Congratulations on your promotion.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  • • •

  By the time he got to M-123, smoke snakes were slithering across the highway. He met a Troop and a dep both rolling with their gumballs tinting the rolling gray smoke. Service pulled alongside the Troop, rolled down his window, and showed his badge.

  “Looks like a bad boy,” the Troop said. “Be careful—the gawkers are already rolling, and I damn near clipped a big bear just south of here.”

  Service tried to reach Sedge on the 800, but she was not answering. Instead he called Sergeant Bryan on his cell phone, which miraculously had two quivering and questionable bars. “Sedge is up at the dig site. Where are you?” Service asked.

  “Home.”

  “There’s a fire near Sleeper Lake, and I’m headed to the district office.”

  “Roger that, I’m rolling.”

  Service passed multiple law enforcement vehicles as he sped south toward town. He called Friday on her cell phone.

  “Finally,” she greeted him.

  “We have a fire over here. Can you drive my Tahoe to the district office and swap for my personal truck?�
�� Even with Service obviously speeding, the eyes of the officers were all to the north.

  “Now?”

  “If you can.”

  “Meet at the district office?”

  “Right.”

  “Be couple of hours,” she said. “My sis can watch Shigun. They’re just starting to talk about your fire on the radio here.”

  Great. There had been no cell phones or Internet during the Seney fire in ’76. He wondered what effect such devices would have this time. Everyone up here feared fire.

  God, don’t let it be like Seney. That fire had been a monster, burning 75,000 acres, and everyone who’d fought it or been anywhere near it knew for certain it was a real monster, not some slick trick conjured by Hollywood special effects people.

  59

  Newberry, Luce County

  FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2007

  McKower pulled into the lot the same time he did. There were trucks all over, a red fire pumper at the door, men in yellow Nomex coveralls and green DNR shirts huddled in the parking lot.

  “I heard you on the radio,” McKower said. “Look bad?”

  “Can’t really tell. Lots of smoke, and the wind is in high-hoot, so it’s probably building fast. I never actually saw any flames, but I sort of mopped up a lit snag to the north. I was with Sedge and the archaeologists between Crisp Point and Vermilion. We had lightning all over the damn place, Lis. It was everywhere.”

  “The radios are jammed with traffic,” she said. “Here’s where we’ll pay the price of all agencies not being on the same commo system and over not having enough fire officers. Is Sedge going to evacuate those people?”

  “Not unless she needs to. I told her to just hike east on the beach to Vermilion and regroup there. That’s a long way from the fire if it jumps big.”

  She said, “Let’s get inside, call the chief, and see what the fire people want us to do.”

  “Is there an event commander yet?” he asked.

  “Do we have an event yet?”

  “Let’s hope not,” he said, but felt down deep they had something ugly taking shape north of them.

  • • •

  McKower worked the phones and Service sat in front of her computer radio console.

  “All right, Chief,” McKower said, flipping on the speakerphone.

  “I talked to Wassoon,” Eddie Waco said. “He’s got scouts evaluating the fire as we speak. How far from town is it?”

  “Seven or eight miles north,” Service said.

  “Tahquamenon State Park?”

  “Ten miles east of there.”

  “I just heard there’s a fire at the Upper Falls,” the chief reported. “They got right on it.”

  Bad bad bad, Service told himself. The park’s not that far south of Sedge’s group. How many lightning strikes had there been in that corridor?

  “Wassoon has asked the governor to release a couple of Guard choppers—just in case. What’s our role in this?”

  “Do what the incident commander needs,” McKower said. “A lot of routine law enforcement work, traffic, notifications, evacs, patrols—all that.”

  “If you want people from other districts, go direct to their lieutenants. We’ll tack overtime onto the fire bill. I’ll alert everyone you may call and let them know they are to pitch in. Keep me in the loop as best you can,” Waco said, and hung up.

  “Who the hell is Wassoon?” Service asked.

  “Do you pay attention to anything? Wassoon is Spiggot.”

  “No shit?” I didn’t know he had another name. Spiggot was the nickname of the State’s wildfire supervisor, a warhorse among fire officers.

  Fire Officer Gar Fox stopped at McKower’s cubicle. “It’s lightning, Sleeper Lake, and this one will be a very tough nut—hard as hell to get to. The wind’s pushing it south toward 123. I’m going to put the Incident Command Post at Four Mile Corner.”

  “You the incident commander?” McKower asked.

  “No, Kerry Brownmine out of Baraga. He’s en route.”

  “What do you need from our people?”

  “Let’s start with a meeting up at Four Mile. Kerry will run everything from there. We’ll probably have to ’doze a couple of tracks into the fire in order to get on top of it. A statewide 800 line is going in and will be debugged as quickly as we can make that happen. Fire decisions and status will all be done from the CP. Service field office personnel will work phones, back us up and take overflow. Other law enforcement is short of bods. Your people can jump in with traffic control. I’m probably going to preemptively close 123, and we’re thinking about County 407 up to Pine Stump, too. I want as much of this doped out as we can for Brownmine so he can jump right into the dance. We’ll probably also want your guys to escort fire division commanders on recon runs. Make sure your people draw fire suits. See you at Four Mile.”

  “We’re on our way,” McKower said. Her phone rang and she answered. “Okay, that will help. How many?”

  She was making notes in her little notebook. “Send them to Four Mile Corner, north of town on 123. The command post will be there. Thanks.”

  To Service: “Let’s move. The west side is sending six officers to help spell our people. Let’s get out to Four Mile. This is all going to unroll really, really fast,” she added.

  It already seemed to him that it was.

  A small woman with pigtails stopped at the cubicle as they stood up. She had two large red canvas bags marked DNR FIRE. “Fire suits,” she said. “We had one made special for Sergeant Bryan and it ought to fit you,” she said, flipping the jumpsuit to Service. “There are helmets, harnesses, canteens, and respirators in the big bags. Make sure you turn the stuff back in or it will be on my butt.”

  Service looked at his captain. “We supposed to wear these banana suits?”

  “It’s your call, but I’d keep it close.”

  They walked outside and got into her Tahoe. “Where’s your state vehicle?” she asked.

  “Home. We worked a plainclothes deal last Friday.”

  “You’ve been here since then?”

  “Grand, ain’t it?”

  “God, your new woman must be a saint,” McKower said, backing out of her parking spot.

  “What’s the radio situation here?” he asked as they headed north into town.

  “Mishmash. Our people will stay on the district 800.”

  “Special event?”

  “Too much trouble. We’ll all use the main one, but try to maintain discipline. I don’t want chitty-chat going on. Please help me enforce it, especially with the younger officers. We’ll monitor 48P911, Luce County’s law channel. It runs through dispatch out of Kinross and works good. Monitor Eighty for Troops out of Negaunee. It’ll be a weird mix complicated by all the fire personnel. No idea what they’ll have. I’m guessing High Band and 800 and God knows what else.” She looked over at him as she raced north. “You all right?”

  “I hate fire,” he said.

  “Good. Let’s help our fire folks get this sonuvabitch out.”

  • • •

  They found Four Mile Corner cluttered with dozens of vehicles and all kinds of fire trucks. A mobile command post trailer had been placed on the grass triangle that separated the highway from a grocery store that had gone bust years back, and never come back to life.

  “Do you know Brownmine?” Service asked.

  “Moved up from the Detroit area, rising star rep. He led the team that got national accreditation for Critical Incident Management. He’s the number-one short-team leader.” McKower looked over at him. “Don’t be so damn skeptical. You don’t have to be born in the damn U.P. to have the inside track on righteousness or competence.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Service said.

  “You didn’t have to,” she said. “Have you met our new director yet?”

  “What new director?”

  She laughed at him. “You are one of a kind, Grady. Chief Waco told me he told you about Belphoebe Cheke.”

  �
��Oh yeah,” he said. “Wyoming, wildlife type.”

  “Apparently she and the governor know each other.”

  “Great—that will help the state.”

  “Governor Timms is your friend too.”

  “Right now she needs all the friends she can get,” Service said. The state was in the economic tank, fiftieth of fifty in most economic categories. The freefall had come on Timms’s watch. Most of it was not her fault, but it had come during her watch, which in politics amounted to the same thing.

  Service and McKower stood outside the command trailer as others joined them. There were uniforms of various state law enforcement agencies, and various DNR and federal units, park service, fish and wildlife fire personnel, USFS law enforcement, tribal police from Bay Mills, and DNR specialists checking in: logistics, safety, plans, information/PR—even a financial specialist to help oversee the spending of money the State didn’t have.

  Gar Fox raised his hands for silence. “Kerry Brownmine’s coming. Until he’s here, I’ll coordinate. Time’s short. Don’t sit on your damn concerns. Get everything on the table as soon as possible so we can take it off just as fast. You’re all experienced. National Weather Service is sending us a fire weather guru from somewhere down south.”

  “Would that be like Berrien Springs, or are we talking, laahk, way down in Mississippi?” some joker drawled.

  “Okay,” Fox said, “knock off the crap. And spare the man any of your half-baked Yooper weather jokes. Let’s do this thing right.”

  He began: “The ICP is this trailer. The old store next door will house the Red Cross and Salvation Army, and warehouse donations of clothing and food, tools and miscellany. Any evacuees will be directed to the center being set up at the high school. Mo-Neeka, you here?”

  A woman raised her hand. “That’s Mo-Neeka,” Fox said. “She’ll handle accommodations for evacuees. There will also be a place for evacuated animals across the street from the high school. Luce County Animal Control is taking care of that show, up to and including horses and cattle.”