by Jeff Buick
Lethal Dose
Jeff Buick
Jeff Buick
Lethal Dose
1
A little bit of fear is a good thing.
The thought passed through Gordon Buchanan’s mind as he gazed into the smoke from the approaching forest fire. The April sun was a hazy red ball, diffused and weakened by the floating ash. Six miles and closing quickly. Inside twenty-four hours, the flames would be licking at his timber concessions. Destroying the forest and costing him millions of dollars. No upside to the fire. None at all. And in forty-eight hours, it would be threatening his sawmill.
He glanced away from the incoming carnage as a voice, almost obscured by static, came over his two-way radio. One of the mill hands asking for him.
“This is Gordon,” he said into the transmitter. “Go ahead.”
“The forestry guys are here, Gordon. They want to speak with you.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he replied, and returned the walkie-talkie to his belt. The air was thick with smoke and ash, and his throat burned with each word he spoke and each breath he sucked in. He hailed a rugged-looking logger working the trunk of a sixty-foot Ponderosa pine with his chain saw and pointed in the general direction of the sawmill. The man nodded, and Gordon jumped in his truck and steered onto the bumpy trail leading back to the mill.
Gordon Buchanan was in his domain-the forest. His father had worked with timber, and after his father had passed away at an early age, Gordon had followed on, building the business into a thriving sawmill. At forty-four, Buchanan was a self-made multimillionaire who preferred faded jeans and denim shirts to business casual. The leather on his steel-toed work boots was cracked and peeling. He wore no jewelry and seldom carried more than fifty dollars in his pocket. His face always had a tinge of red, either from the summer sun or the blustery winter winds that howled through the Montana forests. His face was well proportioned, with a long, sloping nose, bushy eyebrows framing intelligent brown eyes, and a high forehead with a full head of dark hair swept back in a permanent wave. At six-two and a hundred and ninety-five pounds, he was lean and powerful, something most women found attractive. That he was rich didn’t hurt his appeal either. But to date, no woman had managed to get him in front of a justice of the peace, despite many trying. For good reason: Gordon Buchanan liked being single.
The sawmill materialized through the trees as he took the last sweeping turn and entered the log yard. To the north were stacks of felled pine, their limbs removed and ready for a trip through the planer. Almost five million in rough timber. To the south of the mill were hundreds of pallets of finished precision end-trim studs, another eight million in product ready for market. And between the raw and processed wood stood a thirty-million-dollar mill. He glanced again to the sky, darkened with acrid smoke, and wondered if this was the time he would lose it all.
Fires had threatened his mills in the past, burning one of his smaller ones to the ground, but he had never had so much at stake as now. This mill was different, larger and more sophisticated. The equipment was new, fast, and very expensive. The building itself had cost over three million just for the frame. Count in the timber on either side of the operation and he was looking at well over forty million in losses if the fire could not be stopped. He wasn’t sure he could recover from that.
The main administration building was attached to the east side of the mill, and he parked close to the door. Three forestry trucks were already occupying spots near the office. His brother Billy’s truck was there as well. He entered the office to exactly the scene he expected. Six forestry officers, Billy, and his mill foreman were huddled over a huge table in the center of the room. They looked up from the map as the door slammed shut.
“Hello, Gordon,” one of the forest rangers said. He was mid-fifties, with wisps of gray tracing abstract lines through his black hair. His face was worn from too much exposure to the sun and wind-too many days in the vast Montana wilderness. He was the oldest of the group and their leader.
“Sam,” Gordon said, outstretching his hand. Sam Bennett was the top dog in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest Department, and a friend for more than twenty years. Both men ended up working in the forestry industry, one saving them and the other cutting them. But it was Gordon’s commitment to responsible logging that kept the men best friends. Sam Bennett knew that if the timber concessions were granted to someone other than Gordon, his days would be filled with monitoring the areas slated for clear cut. Theirs was a symbiotic relationship that had survived many years, both bad and good.
“What’s the situation?” Gordon asked. “How close is the fire?”
“About five and a half to six miles. It’s moving quicker than we thought,” Sam said, looking back to the map. He pointed to a series of closely spaced isometric lines, indicating a sharp ridge. “We thought the fire would veer once it hit Sheep Mountain, but it circled the peak and kept coming. The pines are dry, Gordon. Not enough snow, and hot spring temperatures.”
“That and the damn pine beetles. Water-starved pines don’t produce pitch, and that leaves them at the mercy of the pine beetles. We’ve got thousands of dead Ponderosa pines out there, and they make good firewood.” Gordon glanced down at the forestry map. “If it’s broached Sheep Mountain, that leaves one natural firebreak between it and the mill. Canyon Creek.”
Sam nodded. “Other than the creek, it’s all dry timber. Crazy that everything’s so dry before the end of April, but it goes with having no snow last winter.”
“It’s a tinderbox out there, all right. And there’s nothing to stop that fire from coming right at us,” Gordon said quietly. He rubbed his temples gently, fished a toothpick from his pocket, and clenched it between his teeth.“What’s the weather forecast?”
“Dry for a couple of days, but there’s a low-pressure front moving in from southern Canada. The guys in meteorology are saying there’s a good chance of rain when it hits. First couple of days should see heavy rains, tapering off to a drizzle.”
“Two days until we get rain,” Gordon said, staring at the map. “That’s going to be cutting it pretty damn close.”
Bennett looked grim. “Too close. I had my crew run the numbers using the current wind speed and direction, and extrapolating the fire’s progress since it started. It doesn’t look good.”
“How not good?” Gordon asked.
One of the technicians, a black man in his mid-twenties with close-cropped hair and a stack of papers in front of him, answered. “Given that the variables don’t change, and the fire continues its progress unabated, you’ve got between forty and fifty hours.” Lewis Carling was Sam’s second in command, meticulous in his work, and more knowledgeable about forest fires than anyone in the forestry service in the northern states or southern Canada. “Without the rain, the fire will reach the mill.”
Gordon was silent. Everything he’d worked for all his life was on the line. He was insured, but only to seventeen million, the max his insurer would cover. The shortfall, some twenty-five million, would be a total loss. It would wipe him out. Pattengail Creek was too far west to provide a break, and Trapped Creek was south, almost at the mill. Too dangerous letting the fire get that close before trying to stop it. That left Canyon Creek, a rough slash through the virgin forest. Extremely rugged country and totally impenetrable by land.
“Billy,” he said, turning to his brother. “Could you get a crew on the south edge of Canyon Creek, down in this area?” he asked, his finger stabbing at the map.
Billy Buchanan was thoughtful. He was a large man, almost six-three, with an athletic frame and chiseled features. His face was sunburned from the early-spring heat wave, highlighting his rugged features and accentuating his blue eyes. “We could cut a firebreak at the
creek, but the only way in is by chopper. I’d need at least fifteen men with chain saws. The break for the creek is already sixty to eighty feet wide. If we can extend that by another thirty feet, we could stop the fire from jumping.”
Gordon looked to the young technician. “What do you think, Lewis?”
“What height are the trees on the north side of the river?”
“Fifty feet, tops.”
Lewis checked the wind speed and slowly nodded. “If Billy can widen the break to just over a hundred feet, we might stop it.” He looked directly into Gordon’s eyes. “I say might, Gordon. There’s no ‘for sure’ here.”
Again, Gordon was silent. Everyone in the room looked to him for direction. This was Gordon’s timber, his mill, and his decision. Dropping men in to hand-slash a firebreak was not without its risks. Chain saws were dangerous, the terrain rugged and unforgiving. A misplaced foothold or a felled tree snagging and kicking back could injure or kill a man in a split second. Dropping a crew into an unreachable region and keeping them supplied with food and water as they worked was going to be difficult. The logistics were completely against it.
But this was not just his livelihood on the line, it was half the town as well. Without the mill, two hundred jobs would be lost and the town would suffer immeasurably. Businesses would close and families would be forced to move away. The small town of Divide would probably not survive, and the damage to Butte would be significant.
“Well, I’ve always said that there’s nothing more useless than burnt timber.” He glanced about the room at the men waiting for his decision. “Let’s do it,” he said to Billy, running his hands through his thick brown hair. “Let’s get a crew in there and try to save the mill.”
Billy Buchanan grinned. “You got it, Gordon.” He grabbed a phone from the desk and dialed.
2
Canyon Creek slashed a jagged and dangerous line through the thick blanket of Ponderosa pines. The bank on the north side of the creek was almost vertical, a sheer rock wall with few out-croppings running parallel to the fast-flowing water. This was the side from which the fire was approaching. The slope on the opposing side was gentler, about sixty degrees, but still a good test even for an experienced climber. The gorge ran for almost six miles, and access in from either end was through dense bush, thick with thorns. With the exception of a foolhardy few, this section of Canyon Creek was seldom visited.
Billy Buchanan had ventured into the gorge twice over the past six years, both times to estimate the timber potential on the southern edge. Both times he had found the outing dangerous. His past experiences stayed fresh in his memory as he expedited supplies for the crew. Time was scarce, and once the men were in, they wouldn’t be coming out until the trees were cleared. He checked the lists on the table in front of him for adequate supplies of food, water, fuel, tents, generators, and chain saws, complete with spare parts. Once he was satisfied the crew would be properly outfitted, he signed off on the list.
The process of acquiring the gear and moving it to the helicopters began. He took one last glance at the map before he rolled it up.
Once dropped into the chasm by chopper, his crew’s job would be to hand-slash an additional thirty feet to create an eighty-foot-wide firebreak. This would entail removing almost every tree from the southern edge of the water to the start of the incline that defined the river bank. Billy had two pumps being dropped in six hours after the team, to spray down the recently cut timber and the underbrush. In theory, the idea was to stop the fire when it hit the cliffs on the northern side and not allow the flames to advance up the other bank. With the creek bed devoid of fuel for the fire, the line should hold, deflecting the fire east and west and containing its advance.
In theory, anyway.
Billy rolled up the map and slipped an elastic on to keep it from unraveling. It was a forestry map, 1 to 50,000 scale, and showed every cut line, service road, and goat path that crisscrossed through the forest. Like an American Express card to a logger: Don’t leave home without it. At two o’clock, he found his crew suited up and ready. Chris Stevens, his lead hand for the task, approached him as he slipped on a pair of steel-toed work boots.
“The guys are champin’ at the bit, Billy,” he said. “They want to get cutting before dark.” Chris Stevens was a graduate student in forestry, working on his master’s in conservation. He was mid-twenties, athletic, and well liked by everyone at the mill. Billy had decided on Chris for lead hand over any one of the three foremen who were heading into the gorge, mostly to keep from ruffling any feathers. So far, it seemed to be working.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve got lights and a generator coming in before sundown, but it’ll be a lot slower once we lose the natural light. The chopper’s ready, so let’s get it loaded. Pick seven men to come with me. You wait for the second trip.”
“Eight men max for each trip?” Chris asked, nodding his head at the company’s Bell 412 helicopter, sitting on the far side of the clearing.
“That baby can usually manage fifteen, but we’re taking in a lot of gear with us on each trip, so that cuts the number down to eight or nine.”
“That’s only two trips to get the entire crew in, Billy. That’s not bad.” He headed over to the group of men waiting for the go-ahead, and as he pointed at them, the men moved quickly to where the chopper was sitting, its blades just starting to turn. They loaded gear as they entered, and within a couple of minutes, the Bell 412 was airborne and moving over the treetops toward Canyon Creek.
Gordon Buchanan pulled up in his truck, killed the engine, and jumped out. “Everything okay, Chris?” he asked, moving toward his brother at his usual fast gait.
“No problem, Gordon. Billy just left with the first crew. Chopper will be back soon to pick up the rest of us.”
Gordon hung around the clearing, checking the piles of gear stacked near the tree line. He ticked off a checklist, concentrating on the fuel and food. At this point, any downtime could spell disaster. The crews, working toward each other from each end of the target zone, had to get firebreak cut inside forty hours or not bother. It was going to be tight. The thumping of the chopper’s rotors cut through the afternoon air, and once the wheels hit the ground the crew was ferrying supplies aboard. Gordon shouted a few words of encouragement to Chris and his men as they boarded the craft, watched it depart, then headed back to the main office.
The fate of the mill was in their hands.
Billy wiped the sweat from his brow and lowered his aching body onto one of the many stumps dotting the south side of the creek. Thirty hours and the two crews were within earshot of each other. They would have the firebreak cut inside the deadline with no problem. And there was good news from the weather forecasters. The winds were abating and rain was on the horizon. The fire was slowing, and if the rain fell, it would stall the flames in their tracks. He took a long draft of cold water and replaced the bottle on his hip.
“Billy?” It was Chris on the walkie-talkie.
“Go ahead, Chris.”
“We’re moving our pump forward another two hundred yards. We’ve soaked the hell out of the first thousand yards of underbrush. Even if a few burning spars come crashing down the slope, I don’t think anything will ignite.”
“Excellent work, Chris.”
“We’ve got this thing beat, Billy,” he said. There was pride at a job well done in his voice.
“I think you’re right. Gordon called about an hour ago. The fire’s at least twelve hours from reaching us. It’s slowing.”
“We’ll reach each other in less than eight,” he said. “We’ve got another load of logs ready to go. Send the chopper over when you’re done with it.”
“Roger that,” Billy said. He signed off and looked over to where the helicopter was hovering over a horizontal stack of logs, preparing to lift them out of the gorge and fly them back to the mill. Leaving the cut trees on the ground was senseless, as the fire could ignite them almost as easily lying prone on the ground as wh
en they were upright. The logger on the ground gave the thumbs-up, and the pilot took the machine straight up until the logs cleared the surrounding treetops, then angled off toward the mill. Billy started back toward where his crew was cutting, some hundred feet distant.
In the sea of cut trees, a solitary stump stuck up three or four feet higher than the rest. Billy knew that additional height might cause problems for the crew lifting the logs out of the ravine. He picked his way through the wet underbrush and, once he reached it, threw his feller pants on the ground next to the stump. The thick material was designed to protect his legs, but it was one simple cut, like ten thousand before, and he wanted to get back to the crew. He pulled the cord on the chain saw and it barked to life. He set the blade against the stump and pulled the trigger with his index finger.
The saw was loose in his right hand, the thirty-inch blade tight to the wood and perpendicular to his left leg. The second the clutch kicked in and the blade began to spin, the teeth kicked off the bark and flew back into his leg. Billy’s immediate reaction was to release the clutch, but he wasn’t quick enough. The blade slashed into his flesh, tearing into the muscle and tendons just below his knee. He screamed with pain as the blade embedded in his bone and stopped. He dropped to the ground, blood flowing freely from the wound.
Within seconds the entire crew was around him, two men ripping open a first-aid kit and Chris on the walkie-talkie to the mill, calling for the chopper. It took about thirty seconds for Chris to get Gordon.
“How bad is it?” Gordon asked, taking the walkie-talkie from the front-office employee who had answered the call.
“He’s cut right to the bone. We’ve taken the blade out and I’ve got a couple of guys working on the bleeding. It looks pretty bad, Gordon.”
“The chopper’s dumping that load of logs in the yard. It’ll be airborne again inside two minutes. Six to seven minutes out once it’s in the air.”
