Full Blaze

by M. L. Buchman

  He took another bite of his energy bar and went back to working on his article.

  Cal recognized the next craft to arrive the moment he heard it—the heavy beat of a Firehawk helicopter climbing the ridge behind him. A glance over, and there was Jeannie’s chopper rising from the depths like the god Neptune. She topped the ridge and settled it on a flat spot not a hundred yards away. Damn, but he enjoyed watching that woman as she shut down the chopper, climbed down, and headed in his direction carrying a small plastic sack. Even her walk was a wonder to behold.

  “What is it with you and that camera?”

  Cal looked at her in surprise, then realized he was watching her through the viewfinder. Probably meant he’d taken several shots as well. He slid the zoom back, knocked down the exposure, and caught her bright in the foreground with a slightly hip-thrown walk like a lioness on the prowl, her silhouetted machine behind, and the distant fire. Her stonewashed jeans, freed from the Nomex pants, clung pale blue and as tight as leggings. He clicked the shutter. If that picture came out, it was another he’d never show to anyone. He lowered the camera without checking it, half afraid that he’d blush if he did.

  “What brings you up here?”

  “Lunch.” She held up the sack. “I asked Steve to make sure you got out okay, then figured you deserved something better than an MRE. I’m required to take thirty minutes down time, so…” She pulled open the bag and started inspecting the contents, while handing him a sandwich.

  Roast beef on whole wheat with a bunch of fixings. A part of him wanted to lean in and kiss her in thanks, and also because she looked so amazing. Most of him decided it was better to back away and unwrap his sandwich.

  Jeannie found her own sandwich, sat, and leaned beside him against the boulder.

  “Hell of a view you picked out here, Hotshot.”

  “Yeah, I was thinking of building my McMansion right here when I really hit it big.” The part he didn’t say was that any place with Jeannie in front of it would be a hell of a view.

  ***

  Jeannie laid her head back against the boulder, closed her eyes, and simply enjoyed the quiet. Her body had been vibrated for six hours straight by the pounding of the big Hawk’s rotors. It was another, albeit minor, problem with her new bird. Long flights made you feel as if you’d been wrapped up in an eggbeater for the entire flight. Even though the headset blocked most of the sound, the deep bass notes were driven directly into her body. She’d asked Emily about it and been told that Emily now felt odd when her body wasn’t buzzing slightly from the sonic bombardment.

  She took another bite and enjoyed the layered flavors of horseradish and mustard, of roast beef and ripe tomato. One of the many things she liked about working for MHA was that they really tried to take care of the crew. Betsy in the food truck worked just as hard as the retardant and refuel grunts who scrambled to match the mage-like efficiency of Denise’s chopper service crews. They really made it a joy to fly with Mount Hood Aviation.

  Jeannie had gone back to the helispot for a refuel and a load of retardant. Within three minutes, the bird was all set, Denise had spot-checked the air filters to make sure they weren’t ash plugged, and Henderson had delivered a double sack lunch.

  Wait a sec. Henderson had…

  “I’m gonna kill him!” Jeannie jerked upright and twisted to look down through the smoke haze toward the helispot invisible five miles away.

  “Kill who?” Cal mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich.

  No way in hell was she going to explain to Cal Jackson that they’d both just been set up by Mr. Ever-so-smooth, soon to be Mr. Ever-so-toast Henderson. No, better than killing him herself, she’d get Emily to do in her husband. Unless she was in on it? Emily had been playing with her daughter over by the food truck while they were taking their own required break…

  “Arrggghhhh!” She liked Cal. She’d been looking forward to having lunch with him as soon as…as soon as Henderson had planted the damn idea in her head. As soon as Emily had her husband plant the…

  But Emily Beale didn’t strike her as the matchmaking sort. If it wasn’t that…then MHA was interested in Cal Jackson for himself, though she wasn’t sure why. And they were using her to recruit him. They had some amazingly skilled firefighters already on staff, some of the best in the business. Why did they want another hotshot?

  “What’s so special about you?” Crap! She hadn’t meant it to sound like that.

  “About me? Not a thing.”

  It didn’t sound like false modesty when Cal said it. For some reason his tone put her at ease far more than any glib answer could have. He already was special, or she wouldn’t be having these problems with him inside her head. And Henderson had seen something that she hadn’t in two half-days aloft with Cal. What was it? Maybe if she just stepped back for a moment and stopped trying so hard, she’d figure it out. She wasn’t very good at stopping; she preferred to be doing.

  “What brought that on?” He eyed her over a bag of chips.

  She wasn’t going to be answering that question anytime soon. New subject. She dug her own bag of chips out of the sack along with a Coke.

  “You’re a photographer. That’s your only job?”

  “Sure. Made a good living doing it for the last several years. Do you want a résumé, Magic Lady? Or maybe my bank balance?”

  Crap. This was getting worse. Maybe she should just try the truth.

  “I’m just trying to figure out why MHA is trying to recruit you so hot and heavy.”

  “They are?” He blinked at her like an owl suddenly caught out under the midday glare.

  “And you apparently didn’t know this.” If she’d just screwed up some master plan of the air attack commander…she really didn’t care.

  “There has to be something else about you.” Then she thought of the operation at the start of this summer during the New Tillamook Burn and almost blurted out, “the second contract.” She’d been warned never even to admit to its existence when questioned, let alone volunteer information. MHA’s secret special-mission contract to assist the CIA on covert assessments under the cover of fighting wildfires must be behind this. But there was no way she could ask Henderson or Emily, and she certainly couldn’t mention it to Cal. That meant she was on her own to figure it out.

  “Well, how about you show me some of your photographs and we’ll see what we can figure out.”

  “Is that an invitation?” He made his leer comic, or she might have dumped her soda over his head. But that would be a waste of a perfectly good soda.

  “Guess again. Any chance I ever saw any of them?”

  “Well, I’m one of the only two red-carded wildfire photographers there are. The other is a lady who does it as a summer hobby, when she isn’t teaching at Cornell. Here.” He dug a tablet computer out of his camera bag where he’d stuffed it to protect the screen from falling mustard. He tapped at it for a few seconds, and turned it to her. “This isn’t my best, but a lot of folks have seen it.”

  It was the cover of National Geographic. A distant shot of a fiery snake of luminescent orange leaped up into the sky from the heart of a small country church turned torch-red by the fire. The firenado, truly a twirling, wind-driven vortex of superheated flame, stretched a dozen times the church’s height before disappearing into the blackest cloud imaginable.

  Jeannie had read this issue. Most wildland firefighters in America had read this issue, and probably around the world. She still owned a copy and pulled it out every so often. The pictures and the story had so captured how she felt and thought, and what she’d experienced while doing her job.

  “Did you write the article too?” She was about to feel very humbled.

  He shrugged. “Mostly. They assigned me an amazing editor who slapped it into its final shape.” He tapped the computer screen, then stroked his index finger across it.

 
Fern Lake. The firefight in the snow. A close shot from just over a firefighter’s shoulder. Him warming his hands for a moment by holding them toward a thirty-foot wall of flame, his Pulaski fire tool propped momentarily against his hip, a puff of freezing breath turned white against the brilliant orange backdrop. She knew this one too.

  The emotional punch of his images was right to the gut every time.

  ***

  Cal didn’t quite know what to do with Jeannie’s reactions to his photos. They were good images, especially the one from the Fern Lake fire. That was more him somehow. The cover shot was pretty; the firefighter was powerful.

  Jeannie had almost bowed over the tablet as she slowly stroked from one photo to the next through most of the Fern Lake folder. The emotions on her face were unreadable, especially after her hair slipped forward and masked her face from view. He couldn’t gauge her reaction. Finally he couldn’t stand to wait any longer.

  “Told you I had two good eyes.” He added a laugh that she didn’t join. It should have worked. Cute, funny, just what the moment called for. He fell back into an uncomfortable silence and tried to eat another bite of his sandwich, which had gone leaden in his gut.

  She finally handed back his tablet after sweeping through the entire National Geographic folder as well, both the published and unused pictures. She ate in silence for a long time before speaking.

  “Those are amazing.” When she looked at him, her eyes shone with wonder. The last thing he’d ever expected to evoke in anybody.

  Jeannie offered to have him back aboard for the afternoon.

  Cal was tempted. Really tempted. Which was exactly why he opted to finish his interrupted hike and rejoin the hotshot crew as they readied for the imminent battle at the firebreak that they’d been cutting for the last several hours. With no dozer able to reach them, it would be their will and their skill with chain saws and Pulaskis against one seriously angry fire. The aircrews would be backing them up, but they fought a clean battle from hundreds of feet up in the sky. Down here the fight was dirty and personal.

  As he hiked across the terrain, he could see Jeannie and Beale circling in, time after time. Retardant, foam, water, all depending on Henderson’s calls and the overall incident commander’s plan of attack. He enjoyed the sound of her voice over the radio accompanying him on his hike through the woods. It was as if they were walking together.

  The big fixed-wing air tankers must be reinforcing the line elsewhere. It was a battle with many fronts, and he was glad to be in on just one small part of it. Soon he’d be sweaty, exhausted, and sleep deprived just like any hotshot. And he couldn’t wait. Maybe that would help drive the woman from his head.

  He caught up with the first pair of the ground team at the southernmost edge of the firebreak. A quick glance showed that they’d chosen the spot well. A run of stony cliff defined the south edge of the break. The break itself was a wasteland of felled trees a hundred feet wide and running more than a mile to the next ridge. The slope crowned out not far above them. To get by them, the fire would have to burn downhill, which was much tougher going for the flame. In addition, every tree in the area had been toppled away from the fire, burying their crowns and upper branches into the supposed safe zone.

  Now he could see the strategy that Henderson and Dobson had been working all morning. The air tankers and helitankers had been flanking the fire with hundreds of thousands of gallons of retardant to herd it toward this break. They’d chosen a tight battle line. If the Santa Ana wind carried a single spark across the break, the fire would be into downtown Santa Barbara before they could stop it.

  As he tramped closer, Cal realized that he didn’t recognize the ground team. Then he shifted focus: these guys had parachutes on their backs. He hadn’t found his hotshot crew; he’d found a team of smokejumpers. They’d looked the same as hotshots when they were tiny dots on the drone’s infrared imaging. But these guys were the elite of the firefighting ground forces. Hotshots were known for hiking into impossible places, but these guys jumped into areas where even the hotshots couldn’t go. Of course, in a Type I incident you used every asset available, no matter how they got there. So, his team must be farther around to the north.

  “Where do I find your boss?” he shouted to a guy running a chain saw to trim the branches off the latest tree he’d felled. Get the fuel to lie down and there was less chance of it catching a spark. A swamper followed behind the sawyer, chucking all of the cutoff as far downslope as possible. Brutal work. They’d trade off every time the saw ran out of gas. Cal tossed some material downslope to help out as he came up to them.

  The guy with the chain saw pointed with his blade and shouted, “Find the midget and the giant. You want the midget.” Not a guy, a gal. Face obscured under all the smoke smudges and the bright yellow hard hat, but with a high voice. For a woman to make hotshot was common enough now, one in twenty or so. To make smokie? That took a special breed.

  Cal shouted his thanks and continued along the firebreak. He admired the handiwork. This team was good. They’d taken every advantage of the terrain, sometimes dropping trees at odd angles so that they’d lever off one another and roll farther down the edge of the break. He wouldn’t expect less from a smokejumper, but his trained eye said this was even more than usual.

  Back when he was a sawyer, he couldn’t have done better, and he’d been pretty damned good. He could definitely learn things from this lady. There were some good photos here if he were writing a training manual, but he’d never been arrogant enough to think that he was at that level, so he left his cameras tucked away at the moment.

  He continued north past three more sticks of smokies, as their basic team unit of two jump partners was called, before he tracked down the crew boss. He really was easy to find. This guy or gal was as powerfully built as any smokie, but also a foot shorter than any other smokejumper around. The guy beside the crew boss, per description, stood a head taller than even Cal. He pulled out his camera and snapped a photo of the odd pair at a moment that emphasized both their differences and their common attention to the task of starting a backburn. He came up in clear view and gave a shout—you didn’t want to startle a guy with a flaming torch.

  “You the crew boss?” he asked when they’d waved him over.

  “Akbar the Great,” the little guy said with a bright smile shining through dark smoke smear. “And this is Two-Tall Tim because he’s twice my size.” The short guy was East Indian with a light singsong quality to his voice but also with the easy, confident tone of a seasoned firefighter. Tim was indeed too tall—a stick-thin Eurasian, mostly Japanese by his look. Tim waved and continued along the upslope edge of the firebreak with a drip torch.

  They were lighting the upper edge of the forest above the firebreak to pre-burn the closest fuel. When the main fire front showed up, it would find that much less fodder to work with. He saw similar fires being started all up the line.

  “Cal Jackson,” he introduced himself. The guy had a steel-hard grip. “Red-carded photographer, hoping I can tag along for a bit.” Like any trained firefighter, he always checked in first with the crew boss so that he could add Cal to any emergency head counts if they had to bug out. “Red card” to tell him that Cal wouldn’t be a burden.

  “Yeah, Henderson warned us about you. More than welcome.” Then he gave Cal a frequency for the team and Cal switched his radio over, though he was sad to be losing the connection to Jeannie. No—he was glad to cut that connection. Why didn’t it feel as if he was glad?

  “Henderson, huh?” Great, Cal apparently had some kind of a reputation already.

  Akbar just grinned at him. “Something about saving your cameras before your own ass. Crazy, brother. You get yourself a jump card and you’ll fit right in. You’ve got twenty to thirty minutes before the bitch comes over the horizon and we’re fully involved. All hell’s gonna break loose. Then we’re gonna kick some serious fir
e butt. After we knock her down and out, you should hit the bar with us. Two-Tall has picked us out a good one, says it has lots of local talent.”

  Tim’s smile and nod as he walked by to light the backfire in the other direction indicated exactly what kind of talent he was talking about—firefighter groupies.

  “Excellent! Thanks,” Cal responded as he always would have. But for perhaps the first time in his firefighting career, it didn’t sound so tempting. Unless Jeannie went there—Man, that woman was going to turn him into a stark raving lunatic. Maybe he would go barhopping with these guys just to clear his head.

  He fell back and checked the line. He counted six two-man sticks of smokies, pretty typical to have a full crew of twelve. Off in the distance he saw another crew. Maybe they were his hotshots or another full smoke team. The locals had no way to drive up here with their trucks and heavy equipment. This was all hand work; the territory of the wildfire specialist. Everyone was moving slow and easy. A couple of teams had dropped their tools and were chowing down on a meal and hydrating as they prepared for the battle to start. Once the fire hit, it could be a full day and night nonstop. Or longer.

  Cal spotted the paracargo load of drinking water that had been dropped, probably by Chutes, the guy he’d met his first night in camp. He raided it, loading his pack with as much water as he could fit, then clipped on a couple sacks of energy bars. The extra sixty pounds or so of load dragged at him as he set off over downed tree trunks, kicking aside brush and circling around tall stumps. He traded full bottles for the crew’s empties all down the line, getting some good shots. It earned him instant points with the crew and gave him a chance to meet them all, however briefly.

  He also kept his camera out. Partly for the relaxed shots that he’d pair up with those when they were facing fire, but also so they’d get his role here. Observer, but obviously knew what he was doing because he was working the line without an escort. That way they wouldn’t depend on him in a normal-level crisis, but they wouldn’t feel the need to keep an eye on him. Of course any trained smokie or hotshot would have an awareness of Cal anyway just out of habit. It was ingrained to always know where your entire team was in case trouble came in hard.