Falls Like Lightning

by Shawn Grady

  Warren nodded. “Absolutely.”

  Shivner hadn’t phrased it as a question. He paused, already winded. “All right. I’ll give you the opportunity to talk, then.”

  “Thanks, Chief.”

  Shivner glanced at Silas and plodded ahead.

  Warren brought both hands behind his head and blew out a breath. “We lost a guy today, Silas.”

  His gut dropped. “What? Who?”

  “Pendleton.”

  “The spotter?”

  Warren nodded.

  “Plane go down?”

  “He was on the ground.”

  “Why wasn’t he with his plane?”

  “I didn’t stay with the plane when we went after the radio tech.”

  “That was different. We had a rescue mission. Out here—”

  “You know how it is—if another qualified spotter is available, then sometimes we’ll jump with the crew. Fact is, with all these fires and resources stretched thin, Command has assigned one incident spotter to coordinate all the jumper crews. It frees up another man on the ground for every crew.”

  Silas took a deep breath. “What happened?”

  “The details are still sketchy. Sounds like the winds changed and the fire blew up. The crew tried to outrun it with their fire shelters deployed on their backs to reflect the heat. Pendleton was the last one, making sure he had his whole crew out. The fire overtook him.”

  “Others get burned?”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  How does the head of a jumper crew get killed and none of the others get so much as a burn? Silas would drag Warren’s body through hell if he had to.

  Ahead, Shivner turned and glanced at his wristwatch.

  Warren motioned. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  The command room occupied a portion of the South Lake Tahoe aircraft control tower. Can lights illuminated an otherwise darkened room, casting warm cones over a large topographic map spread across a drafting table. A makeshift work area of collapsible tables supported a network of laptops and printers and a conflux of wires snaking to and from power strips and Internet routers. A muffled din of radio traffic and phone conversations filled the air. Elevated voices emitted from a circle of men standing around the map.

  “We’re getting lit up like a lab on a shock collar.”

  “Hanes Index has topped out at six for two straight weeks now. When are we going to realize that what we’re doing isn’t en—”

  The conversation broke as Shivner approached. The circle split to accommodate them. Silas recognized the incident commander as Chief Weathers from the Redmond, Oregon base. Weathers headed up the most respected type-one incident management team in the nation. If these guys couldn’t manage this thing . . .

  Weathers acknowledged Shivner. “Welcome back. I assume these two have been briefed.”

  “Briefly,” Shivner said, drawing scattered chuckles.

  Weathers glanced at Warren. “Adams, good to have you here.” He turned to Silas. “Mr. Kent, I assume you know what a battlefield promotion is?”

  Silas shifted the rucksack on his shoulder. “Yes, sir.”

  “Warren tells me that he’s been grooming you as his replacement. Problem is, the old goat ain’t bound to quit anytime soon.”

  Silas let a smile escape.

  Weathers ran his fingers over the topo map and exhaled. “Before today, I’d never lost a man under my command. I, my team, we’ve been here all of twenty-two hours. We were tossed a bag of hot potatoes and then got dumped on with a truckload. It is unfortunate that your elevation in rank has to come about this way. Pendleton was a good man, and in the proper time his body will be recovered and he’ll get the kind of burial he deserves. There isn’t a guy here whose heart doesn’t feel like a ton of bricks. But right now we have the potential for the largest lightning-caused fire complex the Sierra Nevada has seen in over a century, and there is an immediate need for a spotter. I’d like you to be the one to head up Pendleton’s jumper crew. I’m sure you’re aware that we have an incident spotter assigned, so you’d be acting primarily on the ground as their jumper in charge.”

  Silas shifted his weight. Why me? “Isn’t . . . I mean, thank you for the acknowledgment, Chief. But would it perhaps be better if a jumper from Pendleton’s own crew served in that role?”

  Weathers scratched an eyebrow and glanced at a man with a moustache and navy blue ball cap standing at the edge of the light shadow. Weathers seemed to choose his words with care. “You’ll have Caleb Parson to draw information and history from. He’s the senior member of their crew.”

  “Forgive me, Chief. But why not designate him as the new spotter?”

  “Call it a hunch, but I suspect that, after the loss of Pendleton, most of those guys are wound a little tight right now. We need someone out there with a clear head. Someone less encumbered. Caleb’s a good fireman. And under ordinary circumstances we’d have that whole crew off on administrative leave and assigned to a critical-incident stress management team. But we need the feet on the ground, and I’m going with my gut on this. I need someone who can act decisively and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Can I count on you to do that?”

  Silas eyed the men in the circle, catching Warren’s eye last. He set his chin and straightened. “Yes, sir, Chief.”

  “Very good. Now come in closer here to see what we’re dealing with.”

  Silas set his rucksack on the floor and propped his hands on the table’s edge. Red borders were drawn around a vast amoeba-shaped area. Smaller independent cells hovered in close proximity to the large mass, appearing in jeopardy of being absorbed by it.

  “As you can see, the fires are burning together, though there are still a myriad of spots and isolated strikes. Several thirty-to-forty acre fires are presently burning unattended. The main fire has been drawing most of them into a massive timber fire burning all the way to the crown tips of these trees. At present, the complex is zero percent contained.”

  A bearded man with a clipboard waved. “Rocklin, fire behavior analyst. Activity has been difficult to predict. Erratic changes have been the only reliable occurrence. Long story short, the weather largely depends on where you’re standing.”

  Silas stared at the map and nodded. “What’s the LAL at?”

  “Lightning activity level is high and dry at four, fuel moistures at record lows, though we did get a little unexpected precipitation in the basin this afternoon.”

  Ball Cap shook his head. “Just enough to stir it all up even more with the downdrafts.”

  Rocklin shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  Weathers studied the fire perimeter. “The primary issue is that the fronts are expanding in multiple directions faster than we can get equipment to keep up with them. Last numbers put the main fire at upwards of thirty thousand acres. We expect that to double in the next two days.”

  “How many strike teams did you order up?”

  “Oh, I ordered plenty. There ain’t any coming quick enough, though. Closest thing we’ve got coming is a couple type-one hand crews from Montana and three brush rigs from Florida.”

  “Florida?”

  Shivner edged into the light. “Last year’s budget cuts went deep. Everybody’s feeling it. But guess what? Mother Nature don’t—”

  “We do have a hand crew that just arrived in staging. Otherwise, nothing.” Weathers shook his head. “I’ve never seen it like this.”

  Ball Cap folded his arms. “We got guys who’ve been sleeping in the dirt on other fires for twenty-one days straight already, and then they get sent straight here with no sign of letup.”

  Silas exhaled. “So, what’s the plan?”

  Shivner pointed to the lower left section of the map. “For now we are obviously on the defensive. We’ve got rigs at five-mile intervals defending the populated perimeter, trying to keep this thing from running through the houses. Due to the fire’s relatively remote location, we’ve only lost a dozen
structures so far. Right now the wind is pushing it westward and back into the wilderness. That’s the good news.”

  Warren folded his arms. “Five-mile intervals?”

  “It’s the closest we could get the engines and still cover all the area. Eventually the eastern and northern fronts of this fire will threaten just about every neighborhood from South Lake to the North Shore.”

  Rocklin set his clipboard on the table. “Lack of resources is only the beginning. Even if we had more guys, the fire is . . .” He brought his hands up over the large red shaded area on the map. “It’s growing a huge anvil head out of the smoke column. Enormous. By this time tomorrow it’ll be making its own weather.”

  Weathers nodded. “Leaving us a short window.”

  Silas raised his eyebrows. “A short window for what?”

  Shivner stretched his hand out over the map and turned to Silas. “Anything we want to fly over this terrain will have to do so by fourteen-hundred hours tomorrow afternoon. That’s our visibility window.”

  “What happens after two o’clock?”

  “Beyond that time frame, all of this”—Rocklin circled a finger around an area twice the size of the fire perimeter—“will be impassable due to smoke, lightning, and erratic high winds.”

  They wanted more jumper crews in there now, while they still could get in. Once on the ground, they’d be on their own for a bit. “How long will my crew be without a means to fly out?”

  “Three days.” Weathers pocketed his hands. “We might be able to get a helicopter to you in two. That’s a best guess. Conditions are too unpredictable. It will be bad. We’re just not sure to what extent.”

  Great. All Silas had to do was leave his mentor and trusted crew, join up with guys he’d never trained with or fought fire with who just suffered the loss of their spotter, fill a leadership role he’d never fully performed on his own before, and do all that without the possibility of reprieve or rescue from the outside world should things go bad, which they were most certainly predicted to do.

  He cracked his knuckles. “All right, then. Sounds like the kind of thing I signed up for.”

  Weathers smiled at Warren. “Very good. Captain Westmore will fly you and your new crew in first thing tomorrow. Warren, she’ll fly your crew in as soon as she returns from that drop.” Weathers looked over Silas’s shoulder. “Elle, hello. Good to have you here.”

  Elle stepped into the light beside Silas, catching his eye. “Nowhere else I’d rather be, Chief.”

  “Gentlemen, I’m sure you don’t need me to introduce Captain Westmore. Many of you were part of the rescue effort to find her father a couple years back. She knows this terrain better than any of us.”

  Elle produced a smile, folded her arms, and looked at the map. “You looking to do a drop along the northern edge?”

  Weathers leaned over the map. “Somewhere in that radius. If we can corral the front early, we should be able to direct it away from structures and keep it in the wilderness. Warren’s crew will be dropped on the southern flank, Silas and his crew to the north.”

  “If I remember right”—she traced along the topographic lines—“there’s a number of small meadows on the way, and there’s a lake up . . . here.” She spread her fingers like a compass, leaving the middle one on the small body of water and landing the index on a blank square inch devoid of geographic changes. “And an appropriately larger landing zone for the north end jumpers here.”

  Weathers nodded. “At this point, Kent, I recommend you grab some chow. See if you can tie in with your new crew, and then get rested up.”

  “Copy that, Chief.” Silas picked up his rucksack. He looked to Elle, but she kept her eyes fixed on the map. He turned and worked his way across the room.

  Warren walked with him in the shadows. Conversation resumed around the planning table behind them. Warren spoke in a low voice. “You know she really is the best. If anyone can get you in there safely it’s her.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “You seem concerned.”

  “Do I?” They walked on toward the exit door. “I just don’t like leaving our crew.”

  “I know. It wasn’t my plan to give you the responsibility this soon. Believe me. But, Silas . . . ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can do this. I wouldn’t recommend anyone else more highly for the job.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “So, how was the flight?”

  “What do you mean? You were on the same—”

  “No, down to Oakland. What’s the history with you two anyway?”

  “Elle? Oh, we dated for a summer.”

  “So she’s the one.” He gave a knowing nod.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s the one you left in McCall. The one that had your insides all tangled up in Alaska.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Before her little girl.”

  “What happened there anyway? Is the father still in the picture?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It didn’t come up. Like I said, it’s been a while.”

  Silas regretted asking. He didn’t need more of a guilt trip. He had a world of other things to focus on.

  Warren cleared his throat. “My info is secondhand and kind of old. I used to fly with her father at McCall’s, and we kept in touch. Great pilot. Didn’t have much in the way of kind words to say about her ex-husband though.”

  “So she’s divorced?”

  “No, actually.”

  “What then . . . ? Widowed?”

  “Not that either. The marriage contract was nullified.”

  “Nullified? Why?”

  “Turned out the guy was already married. Had a family in Boise under a different name. Closet polygamist, I guess.”

  “How did she find out?”

  “Somehow it came out on the day their daughter was born. He told her he was leaving, right there in the hospital. She filed for nullification.”

  Silas blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair. “They couldn’t have been married long.”

  “Maybe a year.” Warren studied him. “What happened between you two that summer?”

  Silas stopped beneath the glowing exit sign and rested his hand on the door handle. “We fell in love.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  Warren left to tie in with their crew. Well, Warren’s crew, at least. Silas strolled down the hall, his heart heavier than his rucksack. He couldn’t shake a sudden weighted and gaping sense of loneliness. Was it just nerves at leaving his old team? The prospect of jumping into a big complex with guys he’d never met? Or perhaps it had more to do with seeing Elle again, with reopening wounds he’d fought hard to ignore.

  He knew how to do the spotter job. In the air he would scout the fire, find the best landing zone for the jump, and send off his crew members each in turn. Once they were down he’d coordinate communications for the paracargo drop. He could do it all. Just like Warren. Instead of returning with the pilot and continuing as a liaison officer at the base, though, he’d make the jump too and be back in his element as part of a team on the ground.

  A slim man about his age walked up to him in the corridor. He had short brown hair like leaning spikes, eyes tinged red at the corners, and a face colored by the sun. “You’re the new spotter, right?”

  Had to be a member of his new crew. Silas extended his hand with a respectful smile. “Silas Kent.”

  He shook. “Caleb Parson. I just learned that we’d been reassigned a spotter and are to head out again tomorrow. You’ve been briefed on the whole situation, I imagine.”

  “It’s a blow to all of us, but I can’t imagine how it must be for you and your crew. You have my sincere condolences.”

  Caleb nodded and looked aside.

  Silas scratched his head. “Is there anything I can do to help take the load off?”

  “No, thank you. We’re good. I’m just surprised they’re se
nding us out again.”

  “If it’s too soon, I can see what I can—”

  “No, no. It’s better this way. Keeps us from sitting around and stewing on everything. You know?”

  “Sure. Yeah. This whole complex is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “Pile that on top of the budget cuts. More work for everyone. Must be the call of the wild that keeps us coming back, huh?”

  “Jack London.”

  “You like to read?”

  “When I’m not launching myself out of things.”

  “Yeah, it’s hard to see the words through your face mask.”

  Silas smiled. “And the wind . . . hard to keep your page.”

  Caleb nodded to him. “You planning on staying with the plane?”

  “No. I’ll make the jump. They’ve assigned an incident spotter to coordinate for all the crews.” He should know that. Perhaps he was just testing his new leader’s resolve.

  Silas adjusted his rucksack. “Look, you can count on me to be your eyes and ears here at Command staff meetings before we take off tomorrow. Just let me know if you need anything.”

  Caleb ran the back of his hand beneath his nose and nodded. “All right.”

  Silas cleared his throat. “So, what did you do before getting into wildland?”

  “I was a medic. In San Francisco.”

  “No kidding. I kind of grew up a little south of there.”

  He raised and lowered his eyebrows. “Yep, nearly didn’t make it out of that trap.”

  “No love for the city?”

  “It’s either that or for people.” Caleb shrugged. “I got tired of the work. Tired of working codes in the middle of the night when you know full well the guy is dead. You know what I mean?”

  “I can imagine. But my EMS experience is pretty limited.”

  “It’s in the eyes. You can always tell they’re gone from the eyes. It’s like you can see when their soul has left them.”

  He held Caleb’s gaze. “Well, hey, like I said, if you need anything let me know. I’ll do the best I can to be an advocate for the team.”

  Caleb pulled an arm across his chest to stretch. “Sounds good. I’m pretty sure each of us will need a new fire shelter. And we’re low on MREs.”