by Helene Young
‘Wow, I had no idea we could use the FLIR for this.’
‘We don’t often have a need to.’ She zoomed in further. The vehicle was a Rural Fire Brigade truck. Whoever was driving it had finished their work and was heading back towards Mareeba. She widened the image again and stopped in surprise. ‘What the hell?’ The containment line was in the wrong place. ‘What’s the wind doing?’ she asked.
Morgan answered. ‘It’s a south-easterly. Not much in it at the airport, probably a bit stronger on the Tablelands. Why?’
‘I think there’s fire heading towards a group of firefighters.’
‘Seriously?’ Matt asked. ‘How can you tell?’
‘See which side the vehicles are on?’
‘The left?’
‘Yep. And they’ll be fighting the fire with the wind on their backs.’
‘Right. So the fire there, the one that’s just starting, will burn towards them?’
‘That’s what it looks like to me. I hope to God they know what they’re doing.’
Matt eyed her. ‘How come you know so much about this?’
‘I had some experience a few years ago.’ It was a monumental understatement. Even with the stranglehold she had on her emotions she knew she couldn’t talk about it. Hadn’t talked about it in five years.
‘Do you want me to request a change to the holding pattern?’ Morgan asked.
‘Let’s just see what it looks like on the second pass. We must be due to turn again shortly?’ she queried.
‘In ten seconds,’ Morgan answered.
‘Okay. That’ll be fine.’ Kait adjusted the range again. They weren’t technically on task at the moment, but if she wanted to divert the aircraft for a closer look she could.
Matt hovered over her shoulder as they turned outbound again.
‘See?’ She pointed. ‘I think it’s moved closer already. It’s growing fast.’
‘So, what do we do?’
‘We call it in. We still have another ten minutes of holding, don’t we, Morgan?’
‘A bit less and we don’t have much fuel left after that.’
‘Okay, thanks.’ Kait dialled out on the satellite phone, reaching the Border Protection Command in Canberra. They took the details, but it didn’t sound like they appreciated the seriousness of the situation.
Frustrated, she pulled out her iPhone and called another number.
‘This is the Atherton Fire and Rescue Service. If this is an emergency, hang up and dial triple-0 now.’
She disconnected. ‘Damn.’
‘No joy?’ Morgan asked.
‘No, BPC don’t normally handle this sort of thing. And the fire station’s diverting to voicemail. Can we stay another ten minutes?’
‘I’ll request it.’
Kaitlyn tried other phone numbers. No luck. Either the phones were down or the people she was trying to call were fighting the fire.
Morgan had no luck with air traffic control either. If she didn’t take their approach slot in five minutes they’d be waiting another forty minutes, and they didn’t have enough fuel for that.
‘Could you be reading this wrong?’ Matt asked with a shrug, looking embarrassed.
‘It’s possible; it’s been a while, but …’ Kait focused on the screen and felt relief flow through her. Her shoulders eased down. ‘They’re moving. Maybe BPC did get through. The trucks are on the move.’
Matt leant in again. ‘That second fire looks awfully close.’
‘It is, but they should be right if they don’t mess around.’
‘We’re starting descent now, will that be a problem?’ Morgan asked.
‘No. It should give me better definition.’ They ploughed back into the smoke again. She heard the warning tone as the autopilot disconnected in the rough and tumble of the turbulence.
‘Border Watch, you’re cleared to track Biboohra, Codie, descend 6000.’ Air traffic control gave them onwards clearance via the approach waypoints.
Morgan read the instructions back and, as they turned, Kaitlyn could see that the men and equipment below had cleared the fire zone. The fire front was enormous and she doubted they’d be able to control it. She kept the FLIR focused on it. Matt was still beside her.
‘So what’s happening now?’ she asked, wanting to see how much he’d learnt.
‘They’ve shifted the trucks clear. The one that lit the fire seems to have stopped a few miles away.’
‘Good, spot on. Zoom in, maybe we can see the driver.’
Matt centred the image. ‘There. He’s got his back to us, though.’
‘I must know him if he’s with the RFB.’ Kait looked for a distinguishing feature, but the aircraft was now heading away and descending, so the area would soon be off the screen. They reached the limit of the FLIR’s range just as the man finally turned around. She couldn’t quite make out his features.
‘Damn.’ Could he simply have lit it in the wrong place? It didn’t seem possible that the RFB would get that wrong. They were too professional. Kait felt her stomach tighten. Weren’t they?
The foreboding, coupled with the earlier vivid flashback, was making her feel sick. She turned the FLIR off. Maybe she was just too damn suspicious for her own good. Was she going to see arsonists in every fire she witnessed for the rest of her life?
They were established in the approach now and the calm voice of air traffic control transferred them to the tower frequency. Kaitlyn gazed out the window. Earl Hill was alight with orange and red. High up in the house line she could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. Seeing that battle made her desperate to get her feet back on the ground and fight, tooth and nail, to protect her land, her home, her family.
It made her desperate to scoop her boy up in her arms and keep him safe – not just from the future, but from the past.
Chapter 2
THE acrid black smoke poured out of the gaps in the doorframe. Through the visor on his self-contained breathing apparatus Ryan could feel the heat. He shifted his shoulders under the heavy coat. Perspiration ran down his spine, soaking his T-shirt and waistband.
Air hissed in his ears as he inched forward, loud even against the background of roaring fire. He tested the door for heat with the back of his gloved hand. He’d heard the warnings, understood the theory, but this was a whole lot more confronting than a burning mock-up. This was the ultimate test, and everything about it was more vicious, more fierce, more dangerous than the training.
The fire hose, rigid with water pressure, weighed down his shoulder, dragging at an old injury. He gritted his teeth and hoped like hell the muscles in his arm were as strong as he thought they were. The fire commander’s voice crackled in his earpiece.
‘Ready, Ryan. Frank.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘Affirmative,’ he rasped, hearing his partner respond as well. His tongue slid over his lips. Saliva was already hard to come by. It was only going to get worse.
‘Go, go, go.’ Frank’s voice was steady but urgent.
The pressure on the door was immense from the heat trapped inside the house. The only thing holding the door closed was the flimsy lock. Ryan leant against the timber, feeling the weight of the hose shift as Frank took the strain. The latch let go and the door slammed him back a couple of steps before his boots gripped and he closed the gap. The heat was unbearable. His eyes watered despite the protective equipment. Ryan aimed the jet of water into the wall of orange and red. The only visible effect was a curtain of steam that rose as the water vaporised. It shot the temperature even higher.
Pumping 2000 litres of water a minute, the hose kicked and bucked in their hands. Using all their strength they hung on, directing the jet into the raging inferno. Ryan’s earpiece crackled again.
‘Truck’s almost exhausted. Pull back to reconnect.’ The hose started to sag as it ran out of water.
‘We need friggin’ mains pressure if we’re going to beat this,’ Frank growled. Ryan had no response. Neither did the fire commander. T
he next team squeezed past them before they were even clear.
The small, chaotic street looked like a carnival with its crowd of onlookers. Neighbours always came to watch. Fire tenders rubbed shoulders with ambulances and police patrol cars. Beside Ryan, Frank cursed as he pulled his helmet off and slid the breathing apparatus over his head. Perspiration poured down his face, staining the neck of his blue T-shirt black in the vee of the bright yellow jacket.
Ryan eased his own helmet and breathing equipment off, feeling the air in a cooling rush down his back. Even thirty degrees felt cold after the furnace of a house fire. The rumble of the fire drawing air sounded like a freight train in a subway.
Water had never tasted so good, he thought, feeling some run down his chin as he sucked from a bottle. The water washed some of the taint from his throat, but his nostrils were still full of the stench of burning house.
‘Go, go!’ The pump man by the truck was pointing up the street. ‘They’ve got the hoses coupled to the mains. Not sure the whole family’s out yet.’
Frank swore again as he and Ryan headed to the other yellow-clad figures, who were hauling a hose across the grass. They both had their helmets back on and checks completed by the time the hose was in position.
‘Too hot for anyone to survive in that,’ Frank said.
Ryan could only agree. He’d never felt anything like it. Surely no one inside could be alive.
With a snap, a main beam in the roof cracked. What happened next felt like slow motion to Ryan. The already distorted iron seemed to hesitate, puff up and outwards and then, with a wrenching groan, it collapsed, showering sparks skyward like fireworks. It hit the storey below. Heat and flames shot out empty windows, debris raining down in a 50-metre radius.
Voices crackled in his earpiece. ‘Assistance required around the back. There’s someone injured. Someone down.’ It was the first crew on the scene calling for help.
‘Frank, Ryan. You get that.’ The fire commander had tabs on all his crew.
‘On our way.’
The crew in the backyard had their hose trained on the shattered upper storey of the home.
Ryan reached the body first. It was a boy, lying on the remains of the fallen back door. His face was blackened and raw, the skin round his nose and mouth crusted with soot. The hair on his head was shrivelled and patchy. Ryan could see the knees on the boy’s jeans had burnt through from crawling through the fire to escape.
‘I’ve got you, buddy. I’ve got you.’ The boy’s eyes were closed, his lashes singed back to the lids, eyebrows gone. Ryan cradled him close, again feeling the twinge in his shoulder. He struggled to keep his footing on the rubble as he stood up. ‘I’ve got you.’ Had the lad been trapped on the other side of the door? Had the roof’s collapse literally blown him outside? Ryan didn’t know, but he guessed it was probably too late anyway.
The child was feather-light. Picking his way through the broken shards of the boy’s home that were littering the yard, Ryan strode around the side of the house. The little bundle in his arms gagged and retched. All Ryan could do was shift his position and give the lad a clearer airway. He knew that damage from fire was often secondary, hidden. Lungs destroyed by inhaling smoke and heat didn’t heal. Skin so badly burnt the nerve endings no longer felt pain couldn’t fight off infections.
The paramedics had the stretcher and drip ready to go as Ryan eased the boy down onto the crisp white sheet. He could see the focus on their faces as they went about their job, the words between them short, sharp bursts of sound that meant nothing to him. Codes, acronyms.
‘Ryan, they need us to take over the hose at the front. One of ours is down with smoke.’ Frank clasped his shoulder. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah. Let’s go.’ Ryan pushed the image of the now inert child aside. Nobody knew if anyone else was still inside.
They’d barely got to the front fence when the house exploded, knocking them both off their feet and tossing the team ahead of them aside like rag dolls. The boom seemed to echo and roll across the suburb for several seconds. Then the sharp patter of falling wreckage as it showered down around them.
‘Frank?’ Ryan rolled over onto his knees next to the older man. ‘Frank!’
His partner groaned then coughed, shaking his head. ‘I’m okay. The others.’
It was pandemonium now, with uninjured workers rushing to help those closest to the blast. The house had ceased to exist. The danger now was from spot fires started by the scattered shrapnel. The hoses were already being redeployed to the new danger zones. It was going to be a long afternoon.
Four hours later they had a semblance of control again. Ryan didn’t think he’d ever been so exhausted in his life. He sat on the step of the truck, glugging straight from a two-litre bottle of water. There was so much sweat trickling down his knees that he could feel it squishing inside his boots. Two litres wasn’t going to make a dint in his thirst.
Frank, fifteen years older and at least 30 kilos heavier, didn’t look fazed. He took a sip from his bottle and clapped a hard hand on Ryan’s shoulder. ‘You get used to it, mate. Do it long enough and you stop noticing the heat, you stop craving water.’
‘Yeah, right. Tell that to the camels in the Sahara.’
Frank laughed as he took another swig. ‘You stringy blokes feel it in your bones. Me?’ He patted his substantial girth. ‘I’ve got plenty of cover.’
‘How’d you reckon the young one will go?’ Ryan regretted the question as soon as he asked it, his throat tight with an emotion that was all too familiar of late. He knew it wasn’t possible to take this stuff personally and stay sane. He knew you shouldn’t, couldn’t ask these questions.
‘Not good. Maybe if his mum and sister had survived it would have helped. If the neighbours are right about hearing yet another domestic before the house went up, chances are his old man’s either shot through or died in the fire as well.’
‘Arson?’
Frank shrugged. ‘Leave that to the experts. The explosion could have been something as simple as an LPG car in the garage. Could have been something else.’
‘Right. The official line.’ Ryan took another gulp of water. His eyes were trained on Frank’s face, willing him to answer. ‘And if you were a betting man?’
His partner looked away. ‘Once a wife-beater, always a wife-beater.’
Ryan could only nod, the bottle dangling from his fingers as he felt his lungs squeeze.
‘Hey, Frank?’ The fire commander beckoned him over. The big man went, hitching at his pants and snapping his braces.
Ryan stayed where he was, his chest painfully tight. This was supposed to be his final training run before he headed back to his world as an undercover cop in the Australian Federal Police. This was conditioning him for a new role as a volunteer firefighter at Oakey Creek, on the Atherton Tablelands. It was supposed to be low-key, from an undercover perspective. His masters had deemed him burnt out after his last two-year assignment, buried deep in the Nemesis outlaw motorcycle gang.
Low-key? He looked down at his hands, recalling the stillness of the child. He felt the slow burn of anger.
Could a father do that to his own family? There may have been times growing up when Ryan had hated his father, but for all his faults his old man would never have laid a hand on his family.
How out of control could a person become? How did life become so cheap, so bloody inconsequential, that it could be snuffed out so carelessly?
And then the truth hit him.
He was guilty of the same callous disregard for life. A good man had paid the ultimate price when Ryan’s last undercover operation went south. Who was most guilty? The president of a bikie gang giving orders to kill, the hit man pulling the trigger, or he, Ryan, for not intervening to save the man?
Who?
And who the hell was Ryan, anyway? Which Ryan was responsible? He had no idea who he was any more. No idea if he ever would again.
His anger fell away and before he could contro
l the freefall, he felt a snap, an almost physical break inside. Water spilt from the bottle, splashing his boots.
He tried to breathe, but his lungs wouldn’t fill. The day narrowed into a grey fog. The bottle dropped from his grasp. When Frank’s heavy hand landed on his shoulder he felt nothing.
All the lies, the cheating, the double-dealings of his past operations had finally caught up with him. He couldn’t do this any more. He wanted out. He wanted …
‘Buddy?’ The pressure in Frank’s hand increased as he shook Ryan. It broke through the mist and he sucked in smoky air. His lungs hurt with the sudden pressure, but it brought his sight back. He still couldn’t speak.
‘Drink some more. You’re dehydrated.’ Frank thrust the bottle back into his hand and crouched down next to him. ‘First one’s hardest. Gets easier from here on in.’
‘Yeah, right.’ The words croaked in Ryan’s throat and he raised the bottle to drink. If only it was the first tragedy he’d witnessed. He tried to speak again. ‘Right. I should have drunk more.’ He avoided Frank’s candid gaze. A man of Frank’s experience would recognise his reaction for what it was.
Ryan didn’t need his pity. He’d get through it. He had before. One more time he had to reinvent himself.
He had a job to do. Catch an arsonist before he killed again.
Find the truth.
Tell more lies.
Chapter 3
THE drip torch spluttered, flared erratically, then hissed as the wick took. In the early morning light the amber flame looked gentle and benign. Chris Jackson pocketed the cigarette lighter. Liquid gold ran in a stream from the torch’s curled spout. The pile of twisted paper on the ground blackened and crackled as the fire took hold. No smoke yet; the heat was too intense. Tiny firelighters glowed blue among the twigs and leaves as they took life. With a woof the pile ignited, a column of grey smoke shot into the air and died in a swift rush. The flames leapt higher.
