by Helene Young
Ryan was parked by the front gate, the passenger door ajar. She walked towards him, glancing up at the night sky. No sign of storm, but the clouds were scudding fast so it must be the front the weatherman had predicted would roar through. It had brought wind; wild, swirling gusts that coated her throat with dusty unease. Could be nasty tonight.
She slid into the seat and jammed her bags at her feet. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey to you, too.’ Ryan didn’t look like he’d even bothered to run a hand over his hair. It stood up, tufted with sleep, and she had to physically sit on her hands to stop herself reaching across to smooth it back. There lay the road to purgatory and beyond.
‘Get much sleep?’
She shook her head. ‘You?’
‘Couple of hours, max.’
‘Coffee?’
‘Really?
‘Really. Julia takes catering very seriously.’
‘The woman deserves a VC.’ There was a flash of a smile in the dark.
She rummaged in the bag at her feet, finding the travel mugs and thermos. Ryan drove with a considered calm. Nothing rushed, nothing unnecessary.
He glanced over at her. ‘Dispatch tell you anything about it?’
‘Not much. The bit about the truck pump being broken.’
‘Deliberately damaged, was what he told me. Smashed.’
‘No way.’
‘Yeah. We need to watch our backs. Look, I know you work for Border Watch. I remember hearing they did some work with fire detection a few years ago. Julia mentioned last night when you were in the kitchen that you were working on some project. Can you tell me? Is it to do with that? Catching arsonists?’
She looked across the car at him, measuring what she’d found out from her friend in the AFP, versus what she knew was fact. In for a penny, in for a pound, as Julia was fond of saying.
‘The Dash 8s have some pretty amazing gear. Have you heard of FLIR? Forward Looking Infrared?’
‘Sure, they use them on military aircraft and rescue choppers. They can detect heat sources. From memory, the picture looks like CCTV footage – black and white.’
‘That’s it. We have them on board. How about I leave it to your imagination as to what we can do with them?’
‘Right.’ He drew the word out. ‘So, the daughter of an arson investigator must have some theories about this.’
‘I do. But it’s complicated.’ She inclined her head. ‘And right now I don’t know who to trust.’ She was watching his face and saw his face tighten as his eyebrows drew together. Yes, he was hiding something, knew a whole lot more than she did. But how much was he willing to share?
‘Tricky, that,’ was all he said. They were almost at the RFB base. The lights were on. Speedy had the two trucks out and ready. The corner of his ute was visible at the side of the shed.
‘Speedy got here quickly.’
‘Yes,’ Kait replied as they pulled into one of the parking spaces out the front. ‘He normally does. Mustn’t sleep much.’
‘No, seems that way.’ Ryan slammed his door as Trudy pulled up behind them. Need to think about that later, Kait decided.
‘Hey, guys,’ Speedy called. ‘Hell of a time for a fire to flare.’
Kaitlyn nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘Guess the wind’s built. Must be gusting up to 40 knots.’
‘And increasing. I’ve been up for almost an hour and it’s on the rise,’ Speedy added.
‘How many crews are on this?’
‘Two of the regular crews, one rural from Dimbulah and now the two of us.’ Speedy nodded at the two trucks. ‘We got some of the other guys meeting us at Mareeba.’
‘Water bombers at first light?’
‘Yeah, the two Ag Cats from Mareeba. I think they’re trying to source some helos from Cairns as well, but the rescue chopper’s been called out to medevac someone off Lizard Island.’
‘Right. Let’s go.’ Ryan had transferred their gear into one of the trucks and swung into the driver’s seat. Kaitlyn joined him and they headed down the road. Ten minutes later they’d collected a sleepy Stan from Tolga and hit the highway again.
They spent the next thirty minutes discussing fires and the effects of wind. Now that she knew what she was looking for, Kait realised Ryan was very good at agreeing without offering new opinions. If he was a firey on sick leave, she was a lion-tamer. He had a lot of theoretical knowledge, even had the slang down pat, but was very light on war stories. Didn’t everyone who’d fought fires, lived through the danger, have war stories? You couldn’t face this raging beast and not have anecdotes of near misses, lost opportunities and moments of frightening clarity. Only way to deal with those stressful times was to talk about them.
Ahead, they could see the smoke rising in the dull glow thrown up by the lights of Mareeba. They took the turning towards Kuranda.
And there it was. The fire. Kait felt her body react as it always did. Her pulse sped up, her skin prickled. Once she started fighting the blaze, her heightened awareness was good. Right now it just made her sweat.
Flames licked and darted through the forest, spreading out across the tall native grass. Sparks rose in billowing clouds from exploding trees.
‘Freakin’ hell. It’s close to those freakin’ houses,’ Stan said. ‘This’ll be a bitch to contain.’
Kait called in on the radio for the GPS coordinates for the head of the fire. No town water; the mains didn’t come this far. They’d need to lay a pipe and pump from a nearby creek. The other team had lost their hold on the ground, pushed back metre by metre.
‘Dead man’s zone.’ Stan shook his head. ‘They’ve either attacked this from the wrong side or it’s jumped a containment line. What a mongrel of a night.’
‘We can only do what we can.’
‘And don’t get caught in the freakin’ zone,’ Stan said, with a sidelong glance at her.
‘We’ll make sure we don’t.’
‘Sat nav says this is the spot.’ Ryan turned the vehicle across the verge, heading for a fence line. He stopped at the gate.
If the plan worked, they’d back-burn between the blaze and the houses. Once the main fire front got to them, there’d be no fuel left. The wind was increasing with the impending dawn, throwing sparks high into the air in twisting spirals. There was always the danger that the back-burn could run away. Then they’d be in the dead man’s zone.
‘Stan, Ryan can help you lay out the water pipes. Get it pumping as fast as you can.’ Kait slammed the door, adrenalin making her voice tight. ‘I’ll get the torch ready to go.’ If Ryan was the untried novice she suspected he was, then she’d be taking extra care to keep him safe.
For two hours, they burnt and contained, shovelled and chopped, beating out spot fires that erupted as fireballs spewed from the blazing forest. The heat and smoke was intense, the noise deafening. The sharp percussion of debris raining down around them made it hard not to cringe. The crowns of the eucalypts were well alight.
She couldn’t surrender.
Having lost her own house to fire, she did everything in her power to prevent it happening to someone else. Fire was personal. She hacked and hosed and harried, letting her anger give her strength. But it wasn’t only anger at the fire that kept her going. There was something else, something more insidious.
Fear.
The nagging, underlying fear she might not win this time.
She kept that fear close. This was a serious fire, unpredictable and erratic. Rushing tongues of flames surged through in wind gusts and burst from the canopy, flaring across the sky and sending embers in a fiery shower to carpet the ground hundreds of metres ahead.
Each time that happened, Kaitlyn checked their escape route. If the fire front got to them before they’d finished the containment line, they could well be sheltering in their truck, wrapped in fire blankets and holding on for dear life.
Unrecognisable, dawn came and went, shrouded in smoke and heat and ash. A call came through on the radio. The police were
evacuating the houses on the far side of the estate and there were elderly people needing assistance. Someone had to drive a truck over there to help out.
Kait cupped her hand and yelled into Ryan’s ear. ‘You go. Leave Stan and me with the pump and a couple of fire shelters. Get back when you can.’
‘Bad idea. You can’t outrun this if it turns,’ he yelled back. ‘We all go or not at all. I say we go.’
Stan was battling a spot fire that had sprung up behind them, and the stream of water was ineffective. Kaitlyn was torn. If they left this, it could mean they’d lose the houses they’d fought so hard to save. But human life took precedence. They couldn’t leave the pump unattended; it was too valuable. Ryan was right.
‘Pack up. We’ll need to be quick.’
They were on the road in less than five minutes. The street was well alight when they got there. One house was already a roaring inferno. With the headlights on full, Kait could still only see 50 metres in front at best.
The regular fire crews were battling to contain a blaze in a big shed that was in danger of setting the houses on either side of it alight. They waved Kait and her team on down the street to a large house where six elderly residents still remained trapped. They were the last of those who’d elected to stay during the night and were now becoming increasingly distressed. A lone police motorcycle stood outside with lights flashing.
The smoke in the house was like fog. Tears streamed down everyone’s faces as Kait and Ryan bundled the first three pensioners into the cab of the truck. Stan grabbed the pump from the truck before Ryan drove off, taking the pensioners to safety before coming back for the rest.
Kait coughed, her sinuses and throat swollen from the scorching smoke. Twiddling her thumbs while waiting for Ryan to return for the other three was not an option. ‘Let’s get the pump going, Stan.’
The house had a swimming pool, and within a matter of minutes they had a steady stream of water going. She wasn’t convinced they could hold the fire off indefinitely, but it would last until Ryan came back.
Down the street a bit, the house that had been so well alight had burnt itself out in a final, shuddering collapse that sent a hail of sparks and ash scattering over the nearby houses. She could make out the circle of the sun with its halo of smoke. About eight o’clock, she decided.
The radio crackled. Water bombers were incoming. Time to get undercover. The water might be mixed with retardant, depending on where it was coming from.
Kait looked up as she heard the sound of a radial engine. Ag plane. It roared overhead, dropping its load on the frontline of the fire, laying a path that would hopefully slow its movement. She knew it wouldn’t put out a fire, but it made a hell of a difference to controlling it.
Ryan hurtled back into the street, the truck lights eerie and weak. He stopped in the gateway, swung out of the cab and sprinted across the front yard. Kaitlyn almost managed a smile as he scooped the last elderly widow up in his arms and strode to the truck. He just about had to unwind her arms from his neck. Another member of the Ryan Fan Club, Kait thought, glimpsing the woman’s tearful smile.
He ran over to Kait. ‘I’ll be back in ten,’ he said. ‘Pack up. That front’s on the move again. The others can handle this now.’
She nodded. Smoke billowed in roiling, dense clouds shot with orange from the area they’d fought so hard to hold.
By the time they made their way back to the site, the fire had jumped their containment line. It looked impossible to stop now.
Five hours later, limbs heavy with fatigue, they handed over to another crew from Cairns. The weather front had moved through and the wind had veered. It had saved them.
The fire was corralled again, away from the housing estate. The only house lost was the one in the section they’d helped to evacuate. Not bad, according to central command, but Kaitlyn saw it differently. It wasn’t just smoke making her eyes water.
She handed sports drinks, energy bars and Julia’s sandwiches to Stan and Ryan, and sat on the truck’s back bumper. Ryan dropped down beside her and she mustered half a smile.
‘Bloody hell. That was hard work.’ Ryan had ripped his overalls open down to his waist. His T-shirt was soaked. Kaitlyn knew hers was no better. Even filthy, hair flat from his helmet, and stuffing food in his face as though he’d been starved for weeks, he managed to look far too attractive – maybe more so because she’d finally seen him in action. He was the one bright spot in the whole disastrous morning.
Maybe he was still a rookie at fighting wildfires, but in the urban setting he’d come into his own. He had all the hallmarks of a trained police professional. The people they’d evacuated had responded to him. Gone was the playful flirt, replaced by a charming but firm man who cajoled and coerced without raising his voice, who got the job done with a minimum of fuss, who cooperated. He led from behind without appearing to do so. Several times she’d been on the verge of suggesting the other team change their attack when the fire was threatening to overrun them. Both times Ryan had beaten her to it, and his strategy had worked. He was instinctive, but not rash.
He’d climbed so far up in her estimation he should be dizzy with altitude sickness. She knew she was being ridiculous, but it almost brought a tired smile to her face.
Stan spoke with a mouthful of sandwich. ‘Where’s Speedy and Trudy?’
‘They left about an hour ago,’ Kait replied.
‘Really?’ Stan swung around to face her. ‘And they didn’t come around to us?’
‘I think Trudy copped a branch in the face,’ Ryan said, full of information. ‘Not sure whether it was bad enough to need medical attention.’
‘Right. Let’s get going, then.’ Kaitlyn squinted at her watch. She’d missed the trip with Julia and Dan. They’d be long gone. ‘That pump of ours will need a bloody service. It was sucking all sorts of crap out of the river.’
The only sound as they drove back to the Oakey Creek depot was the music on the radio. An easy-listening station playing country.
There was no sign of the others at the depot. Their truck was parked inside, cleaned and ready to go again for next time.
And there would be a next time, until they caught this bastard. The Mareeba firies were sure this one had been deliberately lit. They and the police were investigating. In Kaitlyn’s mind the dots were starting to connect. The first responder was worth a second look and the first responder in the Oakey Creek crew was always the same man. Was she being paranoid? Could it be coincidence?
Kaitlyn rolled her shoulders as she climbed down. ‘Stan, you go. You’ll be needed at the bottle shop soon for the Sunday arvo shift.’
‘Yeah,’ he growled, ‘and I need a wash.’
‘Yep, you do.’ Kaitlyn patted him on the back. ‘We did okay today.’ She didn’t need to add more.
‘Yeah, but it makes me fuckin’ sick to the guts that some mongrel is doing this.’
‘I know.’
‘I keep going over and over in my head who it could be. We must know them. It’s gotta be a local. They’ll fuckin’ lynch him if they catch him. Speedy reckons he’s got an idea, but he’s not telling.’ The look Stan shot at Ryan was speculative.
Kaitlyn scoffed. ‘Speedy should share that with the police. It’s been going on for two seasons, maybe longer for all we know, but something’s caused it to escalate.’
‘Yeah.’ Stan shuffled his feet. ‘You sure you’re right with the gear?’
‘Go. We’ll be fine.’
Ryan waited until Stan was out of earshot. ‘Didn’t you have somewhere to be as well? With Dan and Julia?’
She shrugged. ‘Missed that already. Once we finish cleaning up here I can at least catch up on some sleep. You look like you need some too.’
His smile was devastating, white teeth against soot-stained skin, eyes more green than hazel. ‘You offering?’
‘Oh, please. Do I look like I’m offering?’ She didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed.
‘Now yo
u mention it, yes.’
‘Ryan, give up.’ She thrust the drip torch into his hand. ‘Really.’
‘I may be many things, but a quitter I’m not,’ he countered. He walked away and starting unrolling the hose.
She steered her eyes away from the play of muscles across his back and got down to her own tasks. It would have been easier to clean up with three of them, but Stan had a wife and family to feed, and fighting fires didn’t put food on the table. Selling beer to the punters did. Besides, she wanted to check the logbook to see who had arrived at the station first over the last couple of months. A long shot, but worth a look.
Ryan strode past with a hose slung over his shoulder, heading outside. He flashed her a grin. She couldn’t stop her imagination heading off on a tangent. She hadn’t been good at the dating game at university. She was invariably the one in the group who was matched up with someone else’s best friend, a loose ‘double date’. More often than not, her serious, shy conversation didn’t sparkle and she never saw the guy again.
Something in Ryan disarmed her, brought out a girlish, almost flippant side to her. He made her laugh. He eased the tension in her shoulders even as he made her stomach flutter. When his gaze wandered over her, the flaring heat of desire swamped her.
She shook her head. Stop right there. Her life had no room for that complication. She glanced around. Ryan was still outside. The logbook was on the desk inside the office.
In four strides she was beside it, flicking the pages and running her finger down the daily sign-ons. Speedy headed the list more often than not. She heard Ryan heading back inside and closed the cover, picking up the checklist she’d been working through.
Was she being paranoid?
Or did Speedy fit the profile of an arsonist?
Chapter 33
‘RIGHT. I’m done.’ Ryan stretched his arms back as he walked over to Kait. Today had been a revelation. She’d driven herself past the point of exhaustion. Fighting fires was personal for Kait; he saw that clearly now.
She ticked the final item on the checklist and dropped it onto the desk with a clatter. Twisting her torso to the left then the right, she groaned. ‘Me too. I can’t find one more thing that needs checking. This truck is in better shape than it was when we started the day.’
