Full Blaze

by M. L. Buchman

  “I’m jumping around a bit, but the next two seem to be equally prominent in my mind. One, that you saved my life. Thank you again.”

  “No worries.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. He’d always liked that Ozzieism. Was that even a word? In Australia, “no worries” was the standard response to any problem, delay, or misstep. And it wasn’t just a phrase as he’d first thought. It was infused throughout the culture, making it so much easier going than the American answer to everything less than perfect: “sorry.” As if someone being at fault made it better, even when they weren’t.

  “Well, imminent death worried me, I can tell you.”

  “Even though you were busy taking pictures when I arrived.”

  “Even though.”

  Henderson called in a turn to the east.

  “Are we going in circles?” They were now well north of Santa Barbara. Actually, there wasn’t a whole lot here. Their flight of five choppers climbed until they were high above the mountains. He had spotted the altimeter among all of the gauges. They were at ten thousand feet. He leaned over and looked out the bubble window—hell of a long way down.

  “Not sure where we’re going,” Jeannie answered after puzzling over the map display on the console for a bit. “Henderson says follow, I follow. So, what’s right up there with saving your life? Don’t think I did anything else particularly noteworthy.”

  Cal couldn’t help grinning. “I didn’t say it was important, just said I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Okay, Hotshot, I give up.”

  “The way you walk, Magic Lady. Damn, but you have a walk of such power and beauty that you stun me past any ability to even photograph it.”

  “I guess that’s high praise from a man who saves his cameras before he saves himself.” Again that laugh edged in.

  “It is, Helitack. It really, really is. Trust me.”

  ***

  Jeannie tried to digest Cal’s startling view of her as she followed in formation behind Emily’s Firehawk. The terrain below rapidly shifted from coastal bounty to arid California hills. At this rate, they weren’t far from the Mojave Desert.

  To distract herself, she tried to mirror Emily’s every move. Jeannie could feel herself smooth out when Emily did, but she couldn’t do that rigid control for long. The woman was textbook and Jeannie was more seat of the pants. When Jeannie flew that rock steady, she actually lost the feel of the chopper. If she rode the air currents just a little, slalomed back and forth even the tiniest fraction, she became far more aware of what the Firehawk and the air around her were doing.

  She was sure aware of Cal Jackson, and not just the latent tingles that still rippled through her body. His compliments hadn’t sounded crafted; they’d felt genuine. That they liked each other’s bodies so much after a single night together wasn’t any big surprise. That was bound to wear off, and she just planned to enjoy it while it lasted.

  That he’d complimented her flying next, and not just with empty words, struck her right to the core. Wildfire was the enemy. Yes, she understood the natural cycle, but it had taken her family’s home. It had taken friends. It would be the enemy until the day she died, and her ability to fly was the only weapon she had to bring to the fight. That a skilled hotshot, praised by both the hotshot crew boss and by Akbar, had paid her the compliment made it ten times more real.

  That MHA, through Emily and Mark, was recruiting Cal added several points in Cal’s favor. Of course, she’d already let him into her bed, so maybe she should stop counting points on him. Either way, MHA only went after the best. Steve’s drone was so cutting edge that even the U.S. Forest Service didn’t have one. Steve’s wife, Carly Mercer, was called the “Flame Witch” far and wide, and generally acknowledged as the best fire behavior analyst working in the business today. TJ and Chutes had been in on the founding of the Mount Hood Aviation firefighting team, along with Carly’s father. All of which often left Jeannie wondering why she was there, not that she was complaining.

  And Cal’s final compliment had gone to her head. She wasn’t sure if she’d be able to walk when they landed, because she’d be far too self-conscious. What she did know was how good she felt when she was walking toward Cal. And how awful she felt when he was walking away.

  “Hey, is that Edwards Air Force Base?”

  She glanced to the south. They were high enough to have a good view of the long runway lying about ten miles to the south. It was Edwards.

  “Where are we going?”

  She shrugged. “Back of Bourke for all I know.”

  “What was that?”

  “Australian saying. Bourke is this town that’s way out there into the Outback. Back of Bourke, there’s nothing much but the Simpson Desert for close enough to forever.”

  Cal’s low chuckle did things to her. It came so easily for him. She felt as if the laughter had been driven out of her years before. Sure, she enjoyed a good joke, but she always felt like the odd cog out when she merely smiled while others laughed. Cal was appreciative, not judgmental. That allowed her a little room to ease out of her overly self-conscious state.

  For now Jeannie would do her best simply to be in the moment and accept what was. Neither were things she was terribly good at.

  They started their descent. She didn’t recognize where they were, somewhere in the Mojave Desert east of Edwards.

  “Cal, you on the air?” Henderson called.

  Jeannie lightly tapped the microphone transmit switch on the back of her cyclic control and then nodded to the one in front of him. Rather than just resting his hand there and thumbing the switch, he reached out and tentatively pressed just the button with a fingertip.

  “Here.” Then he released it as if it might bite him.

  “From here on, cameras stay in the bag until I tell you otherwise. We clear?”

  Again, the tentative finger pressed the button. “Okay. Sure.”

  “Thanks. I’ll explain later, out.”

  “Press the button again, and say, ‘Out,’” Jeannie instructed him.

  Cal did. Was the man really that thoughtful about not wanting to jar her controls or was he…

  “You afraid of a little helicopter, Hotshot?”

  “Uh, no more than I am of its pilot, Helitack.”

  Gods, but she could enjoy being around this man. “Rest your hands on the controls and your feet on the pedals.”

  He spun to face her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “Just do it, Cal. You won’t send us spinning out of control.”

  Apparently deciding she was serious, he studied her hand and foot positions intently for several seconds, glanced at the matching controls around his seat, then back at her hands. He reached out, settling his hands in place so smoothly that she barely felt him through her own set of linked controls. It wasn’t expected; his hands were large and rough with hard work. But it made sense when she thought about how delicately and delightfully he’d handled her body…which was definitely a thought she shouldn’t be having at the moment.

  “Okay. Your left hand is on the collective. ‘Collective’ because it affects the angle of all of the blades at once. You pull up, we go up. You lower down and we descend. On some choppers, if you twist it, you change the engine speed. But the Firehawks have throttles up there.” She nodded at the overhead controls on the cockpit’s ceiling. “Make sense so far?”

  “If I press any of these little buttons by my thumb, do I kill us?”

  “Well…” She couldn’t resist. “Most of them are safe.”

  He looked at her in horror and she couldn’t help laughing. “How can you know so much and yet know so little?”

  “Lady, prior to working a camera, I spent seven years out in the woods where the most dangerous thing they let me have was a Pulaski fire tool. They didn’t even let me have a McLeod rake. They only let me hand
le a hose and a pump if someone was watching me closely.”

  She knew the last was a total fabrication. She’d chatted with Akbar last night when she’d been unable to locate Cal. He’d been really impressed at how well Cal used his hose exactly where and when it was needed without wasting a moment of water flow. Said he wanted to get Cal jump-certified just in case he ever needed an extra man. That from a top smokejumper. Smokies were very particular about who they had beside them in a fire.

  “Well, the tanks are empty so the dump-and-pump controls aren’t going to matter. The searchlight controls won’t matter in broad daylight, and the emergency release would be best left alone or we’d dump that big load of all our service gear that’s slung below us on the cargo hook. By the way, thanks so much for asking permission before attaching a cop car to my belly.” Then she took her hand off the collective, trusting the steadiness of his hold, and flicked off a couple overhead breakers. “There, all shut down. You can press them all you want.”

  He ran his thumb briefly over the controls, but didn’t press any. He clearly didn’t realize that he’d had sole control of the collective for several seconds. He also wasn’t apologizing for the cop car. He’d been right, and he’d have stopped if she told him to. He hadn’t bothered to waste those precious moments by asking; he’d just gotten it done.

  “The one in your right hand is called the cyclic because… Well, it just is.” It was always easier to show someone the swash plate in action rather than trying to describe it. “It gives you forward and back, and tips you to either side. You’re going to fly in the direction you’re tipped. The buttons are mainly radios and autopilot.” Jeannie glanced out to either side. Emily was left and ahead. The 212s and the MD500 were following in loose formation behind—plenty of maneuvering room. “Try it. Just don’t bump the nuclear missile launcher.”

  “Nice, Helitack. Real nice.” He eased the control ever so slightly forward, then back. He was one of the first people she’d ever shown the controls who didn’t overcorrect. One of the big secrets of flying a chopper was constant small corrections. If you had to do a big correction, something was really wrong, or you were over a really aggressive fire that was trying to slap you around.

  “Good. You can do more than that. Don’t worry, I’m still pilot-in-command. I still have control.”

  He wobbled them side to side. “That’s how you wave at people.”

  Cal didn’t make it a question. “Got it in one, Hotshot. Now, your feet. They work the tail rotor, changing which way you’re facing. So if you shift your direction with the rotor pedals, you set up a new direction for forward flight.”

  Again the neatly small maneuvers. She barely had to compensate for his actions to keep them in place in the formation.

  “So how do I do an autorotate landing?”

  She looked at him aghast for a moment, then laughed. She couldn’t help herself. He looked so innocent as he said it, like a six-year-old who was just asking to be sent to sit in a corner, and knew it.

  “The way you laugh, Helitack. It’s almost as good as the way you walk.”

  Jeannie really tried to stop the change in herself, but she couldn’t stop liking him just a little more for that.

  ***

  Cal cursed Henderson’s “no camera” mandate as the flight of choppers settled to the ground. A half-dozen choppers were already parked on the tarmac that shimmered with the heat. Three lonely looking buildings were doing their best to pretend they were mirages. The thing about the choppers already parked there was that they looked military, right down to the green paint, white stars, and…machine guns mounted in the forward windows.

  A half-dozen men trotted up in formation, with rifles held across their chests, to greet them.

  “What the hell?”

  Jeannie looked as if she was going to answer, then abruptly changed her mind and shook her head. No help there. Maybe Henderson. A guy with a golden oak leaf on his collar walked up to Henderson and Beale and shot them each a sharp salute, which they returned.

  “This happen a lot at MHA?” he asked Jeannie.

  “Uh, never in my experience.” Yet she was very carefully not paying any particular attention to what was going on beyond the windscreen. Too carefully.

  “You’ve really got to learn to lie better, Jeannie.”

  She replied with a grimace and stepped out into the heat.

  Cal joined her and had to gasp to catch his breath. The air was scorching, so dry that it ached in his throat as he tried to breathe. He reached back in for a water bottle and resisted the urge to guzzle the whole thing. Screw it. He knocked back the rest of the bottle. Any hotshot knew that the best place to store water was in your body. Stay hydrated above all else.

  Before he could ask her any more questions, Jeannie handed him a long strap, then climbed up on top of the chopper.

  “Loop that over the end of that rotor blade sticking out front and drag it around to about four thirty. Thanks.” She began working on something on the head of the rotor.

  Cal walked out to the end of the rotor blade and tossed the strap up and over just as if it were a tree limb. Grabbing the two ends of the strap, he began walking in a slow circle dragging the big rotor around after him. It was surprising how easily and smoothly it moved.

  “Good, good. Hold it. Right there.” Jeannie tugged it into place. “Leave the strap there. In the center of the cargo bay’s ceiling, you’ll find a handle marked ‘Gust Lock.’ Pull that down until it latches. That locks the rotor in position.”

  Cal found the lever and pulled it down. He looked around and saw the other helicopters going through a similar process. The Bell 212s already had their two long blades folded back together over their tails. The MD500 had five blades, all small enough that the guy standing up top could do it by himself. Beale and Steve were working on the other Firehawk, while Mark continued chatting with the oak-leaf guy.

  “I’m ready for you to bring the blade the rest of the way,” Jeannie called down.

  “You are your own mechanic? What can’t you do?” He grabbed the strap and began dragging the blade back to her. Jeannie had pulled some pin, and the blade folded around without turning the rotor head this time until it overlapped the tail without turning the other blades with it. It now swung free on a sideways hinge.

  “Not even close to being a mechanic. I can do basic maintenance, but Denise and her two-person service crew do all of the more complex stuff. They’re off with the smokies, probably at LAX hopping a commercial flight.”

  “Uh-huh.” Cal circled around to throw his strap over the blade on the other side and drag it around. Next he went for the front left blade, which tucked under the other two as neatly as a duck’s tail feathers.

  “Then what the hell are we doing on a military base?” Cal asked as he headed for the last blade, to the front right, and tossed his strap over the tip.

  “Some questions”—Mark Henderson stood close beside him as if he’d been teleported in, causing Cal to jump in surprise—“are better if they aren’t asked just yet. We barely know each other, Cal Jackson. We’ll fix some of that on the flight.”

  “Uh, okay.” As he walked the blade around, away from Henderson, a big jet roared down to land on the long gravel runway. It was definitely military transport with big wings off the top of the fuselage and four massive jet engines, each as big as the main body of the Firehawk. It rolled up the runway and turned toward them before doing a neat pivot, the gravel crunching beneath the massive tires. With a final wash of hot jet exhaust that drove dust and sand painfully against Cal’s exposed skin, the engines shut down, descending from full roar through high whine to rumble and finally silence.

  Then the back of the plane opened, one whole section of it folding upward, and another section dropping down to form a steep ramp. At the head of the ramp, the belly of the plane appeared as a dark, yawning cavity. So f
ast he could barely follow it, the loadmasters were moving the five choppers up a wide ramp with miniature tractors, just a foot high, dragging the choppers while someone walked beside it with a remote control attached to his forearm.

  Jeannie had to slap his hand a couple times as he instinctively reached for his cameras.

  Henderson finally came up beside them, staying out of the loadmasters’ way. “Australia’s a long flight. You play poker?”

  “Sure. Do you?” Cal shot the challenge right back.

  Henderson just smiled from behind his mirrored shades. “I’ve been known to.” Then he nodded toward the big jet currently swallowing the third chopper. “We were supposed to fly cargo next week out of LAX. We would have had some time to check each other out. However, the Ozzies have a couple hot fires and asked for international aid. The military is giving us a free ride as a part of that aid package.”

  “Makes sense.” Cal was glad something was finally making sense this morning.

  “At least that’s the official story,” Henderson continued.

  Cal eyed him carefully, but the guy hadn’t changed his stance. He just stood there, arms crossed over his chest, military stiff despite his jeans and T-shirt. He didn’t miss a single thing the loadmasters were doing as they loaded his birds.

  “I thought you’d be helping them. Some kind of union thing?”

  “Uh-uh.” Henderson shook his head. “If one of these choppers is out of place by more than a foot or two, it can totally unbalance the plane, which gives it a real tendency to crash on takeoff. You never, ever mess with a loadmaster. I’d screw with a pilot long before I’d get in the way of one of these guys.”

  “Got it, lesson learned. So, when do I get the unofficial story?”

  Henderson pretended he hadn’t heard him.

  Jeannie’s face revealed that she knew at least part of what Henderson was talking about. That meant she wasn’t allowed to say.

  Military, Australia, two former U.S. Army SOAR majors, and the old rumors about Mount Hood Aviation. MHA had supposedly purchased the CIA’s old Air America equipment at the end of the Vietnam War. Further, it was said they’d also purchased the contracts to fly transport for the CIA. Nothing much was said about when that association ended, or if it ever had.