Full Blaze

by M. L. Buchman

  “Sorry. I get stupid sometimes. Thanks, Helitack.”

  She ducked back to the coast and picked up another tank of seawater before spinning back to Suai. The airport hadn’t burned yet, but neither was it safe. The fire here was also the smallest and newest fire. Maybe they could stop it before it joined the others and made an even more complex situation.

  “So, any suggestions on what I’m doing here that Steve’s drone can’t do better?”

  “You tell me, Cal. I don’t know half of what you can do.”

  “Swing an ax and take pictures.”

  Jeannie spared a moment to glare at him before dumping her latest load right on top of a row of burning huts at the very edge of the field. He turned back in time to see a Bombardier scooper dump a long line of water right alongside Jeannie’s drop. The waterfall kept going and going. At least three seconds, maybe four of continuous flow. Right, it had half the capacity of the Firehawk.

  For lack of anything more inspired to do, he took a photo of the end of its drop. It was a great backdrop. The flame behind was smoky dead, subdued under the middle of the drop, and at the leading edge making one last valiant effort to burn even as its death fell from the belly of the brightly yellow-and-red aircraft.

  He watched it as they both circled back over the nearby beach to reload.

  Jeannie dipped her tanking snorkel just past the line of low breakers running up toward the white sand beach near the narrow outlet of a slow-moving river. The river itself was technically deep enough for the Firehawk’s snorkel, over a meter in places, but she said it wasn’t worth the effort of making sure she was over such a spot when the beach was so close.

  As she hovered, he nudged the anti-torque pedals with his feet and she let him. He slowly spun the chopper until he was lined up to see the run of the Bombardier. There was so little surf that they had to go out only a little farther than Jeannie did. They needed just two meters of depth for their sixty-five-foot plane to scoop up fifteen hundred gallons. He snapped some photos as he kept the pressure on the pedal to let him sweep the entire seaboard.

  First, the initial rooster tail as the plane’s hull kissed the water at around a hundred miles per hour. Then the long, twelve-second run marked by the belly of the plane being ducked down into the wave. The “full” indicator as excess scooped water was blown out the side of the aircraft by funnels at the tops of the tanks, and then the slow lift as she climbed aloft seven tons heavier than moments before.

  Jeannie pulled them aloft and circled back only moments after the Bombardier did. It really was a beautiful ballet that these pilots did. Was catching it on camera sufficient? He’d enjoyed the moments he’d spent holding the Santa Barbara fire line; liked walking the ground with the engine crews of Alice Springs and Akbar’s smokies. The two experiences made him wonder about getting back out in the field.

  He’d gotten into photography in the first place to share the experiences of the firefighters—the joy and the passion—with civilians. Had he lost too much when he’d stopped actually fighting the fire? Just like the price Henderson had paid when he left the military.

  The next thought bugged him as he watched through another round of drop and return to the ocean. It wasn’t so much the thought; it was the question.

  Would Jeannie think any better of him if he returned to hotshotting? Or even took Akbar up on his offer to jump smoke?

  He watched her profile for probably a quarter hour, through several circuit flights. For some reason, it became a question of great importance.

  Cal just didn’t dare ask it.

  ***

  Jeannie knew Cal was studying her, busy doing his “I’m a guy so I don’t speak” thing. Did he have to process every goddamn thing internally?

  Well, she was too busy to get into it. She also knew herself well enough to not start—she was too angry. Sure, yesterday had been panic-level flying to try and get some control of the fire and this morning had started off even worse, but he was sitting all of one foot away the whole time. You think he could at least—

  “Hey!” Cal leaned forward, his seat harness unspooling behind him enough to let him look down and out over the console. “Circle back.”

  “We don’t have time for this.”

  “Circle back, Jeannie.” His voice had changed, just the way it had when he was explaining his plan to fight the Alice Springs fire. It took on depth, power, and certainty. She kicked the pedals harder than she should have, dropping twenty feet in the maneuver.

  “There!” He shot out a hand to point. “Do you see it?”

  “See what?” All she saw were the bare foundations of burned homes. Made of little more than sticks and thatch, they had burned almost completely to leave cleared spaces, distinctly square, covered in ash.

  “Take us down.”

  “Cal…”

  “Just take us down, Jeannie. I need to check this out. Land us over there. I don’t want the chopper’s downdraft messing this up.”

  He was out of the Firehawk before the wheels were even on the ground. She’d placed the wheels between two houses. Well, the houses were no longer there, but she felt bad enough for the families without showing them that a pilot didn’t care about what had once been their home. She flattened the lift on the blades as quickly as she could to avoid kicking up even more ash than she already had.

  Cal sprinted away to where the black met the unburned street beyond. Where it met the unburned streets. The black formed a distinct vee here. As if the fire were only just beginning when it had burned this over.

  Jeannie dropped the collective, slid the throttles down to idle, and sprinted after Cal.

  “Point of origin. Be careful,” he said as she came up behind him. He had his camera out.

  “Someone’s cooking fire got out of control?”

  “Someone set a firebomb. Molotov cocktail, only bigger.” He pointed. “See the scorch marks on those two unburned buildings outside the black? Ignited fuel spattered against them, but they didn’t burn. And the mud-brick building just inside the black that’s almost charred past recognition?” He took shots of each as he spoke. “This fire didn’t build. It started out instantly hot. That takes an accelerant of some kind. This was deliberate.”

  “Who would want to burn Suai, East Timor?”

  Cal stopped taking pictures and slowly turned, scanning the area. “No. The question is: Who would want to burn the Suai Airport? Ocean’s that way. Sea breeze in the night heading offshore. That’s why the fire was set inland of the airport.”

  She could see it. Nature’s gentle breeze sweeping from the cooling land toward the still warm ocean, little knowing that with its progress, it was carrying lethal fire downwind.

  “C’mon.” He grabbed her arm and began dragging her back toward the chopper.

  “What?”

  He practically threw her through her own door before latching it and racing around to his own. “Land breeze coming up!” he shouted as he jumped in beside her.

  Jeannie sat there feeling stupid even as her hands made sure everything was ready and cycled the engine RPMs back up.

  “Land breeze!” She got it. All they had to do was keep the flames at a standstill along the airport’s verge until the land breeze came up in mid-morning. If they could, the flames would double back on themselves. And when they did, the team could kill the fire as it ran out of fuel over the black.

  When she went to report it in, Cal cut her off.

  “Nothing about what we found. Only how to kill it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “We don’t know who’s listening. It’ll be easier to find the goddamn arsonists if we don’t alert them that we’re on their track.”

  It was a long morning and a close call, but they held the fire at bay. With the heat of the day, and no other weather systems in the area, the breeze stilled, then turned. The
fire turned with it, but found no fresh fuel. It attempted to break sideways several times. They beat it down with a hundred thousand gallons of seawater. By mid-afternoon, the Suai fire was done.

  Cal insisted that they not refuel at the airport but rather return to the Freedom.

  ***

  “What the hell are you doing back here? There are three more fires out there!” Henderson looked pissed when Cal breezed into the conference unannounced. “Why do you think we went to all the trouble of saving that lame excuse for an airport if you aren’t going to refuel at it?”

  “Trust me, Mark. Connie, I need to link my tablet to your screen.” He handed it to her and wished to God he was wrong. But he wasn’t. Jeannie had seen it as well.

  He explained the images as he went, pointing out the details. Connie zoomed in on a couple details he hadn’t noticed. Boot prints. Not sandals, not bare feet, not even sneakers. That was all a local would have had. No, these were heavy-duty soles.

  “Army boots.” It was the only thing that made sense to Cal. “Sorry, wish I’d gotten a better shot, but I didn’t notice them at the time.”

  “It’s sufficient”—Connie tweaked the image a bit—“to tell that it is a universal brand, probably in use in dozens of countries including East Timor. Maybe tourist hikers, but when combined with the high accelerant, I think your first instinct is right. Look at this hand scythe on the ground.”

  Cal looked and wondered how the sergeant had possibly determined what it was.

  “Melted almost past recognition. And the knockdown of these tools over a dozen feet back in the unburned zone. That’s probably a fuse cord igniter and a thermite accelerant. This line here in the dirt might have been safety fuse cord. So the profile fits.”

  “Not stuff you find on a shelf at Walmart?” Jeannie sank into a chair, and Cal came up behind her and rubbed her shoulders. It had to be her worst nightmare, someone intentionally destroying homes.

  “Definitely not. This is a professional job. Again, pointing to military action.”

  “Whose?” Henderson demanded.

  “No way to tell.”

  Henderson paced off to the far side of the room. Through the whole thing, Steve had sat quietly at his drone control terminal watching the goings-on.

  “Steve. Buddy. Pal.” Cal walked over to stand behind Steve’s triple screens. To the far left were a whole lot of flight instrument readouts, only some of which he recognized from Jeannie’s Firehawk. The other two screens showed visual and infrared images broadcast from the drone.

  “Cal. Dude.” Steve grinned back at him.

  “Have you found points of origin on the other four fires?”

  “Carly identified three of them.” He spun some controls, bringing a map view onto the center screen. Three red Xs showed up not far from the country’s western border. “She thinks the fourth one was burned over by one of the other fires.”

  “Can you drop those onto Jeannie’s chopper display?”

  Steve rattled a few keys on his keyboard. “Done.”

  “Good man.” Cal really had to find some time to check out what other cool things Steve could make his drones do. He could see how Steve and Carly made such a tight team; he gathered the information and she made sense of it.

  Did Cal and Jeannie make a tight team? What about Mark and Emily? They looked tight, acting in a unison that could only come from years of serving together and more of marriage. But did Emily know that Mark was chafing at the reins?

  Time. He needed time to get to know Mark, to learn from Steve and Carly, and most of all to figure out what the hell was going on between himself and Jeannie. Well, whenever that was, it wasn’t now.

  “You ready to go back aloft, Helitack?”

  “Ready when you are, Hotshot.” As they turned for the door, Connie called out after them.

  “Go ahead and get prepped, but wait for a couple minutes. I’ll let you know when.”

  Cal did his best not to be irritated at not being privy to what Connie and Henderson were about to discuss.

  Halfway down the corridor leading back to the helideck, a narrow, windowless space with a single light every twenty feet, Jeannie shoved him against the wall.

  Before he could figure out what was wrong or how to protect himself, she filled his arms and was driving him back against the bulkhead with a kiss that practically seared his flesh with its heat. Once he understood what was happening, he didn’t waste any time with dumb questions.

  Despite the heavy flight gear they both still wore, he found groping her a very satisfying use for his hands. And, damn, but the woman could kiss. Then as abruptly as she’d slammed into him, she was gone.

  “Come on, Hotshot.”

  He lay against the bulkhead a moment longer and watched her do her lioness walk down the corridor away from him. That was a sight he would never tire of. Never. Never? It was a strange word for him to use about anything, especially a woman. But with Jeannie, it was definitely true. That was food for later thought. He shoved himself into motion, a harder task than it sounded.

  “What was that for, Helitack?”

  “You mean aside from the fact that I love you?”

  Crap! Another thing they hadn’t had time to discuss. He’d almost forgotten it; he’d tried to, but hadn’t succeeded. He also hadn’t found a way to talk about anything else that he found to be less intimidating while that topic remained untouched all morning.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat as he followed her up a ladderway to the deck above, trying not to let his hormones dwell too much on his butt-level view of her. “Aside from that.”

  “The way you see things. And the way you stick to your guns. I’d have totally caved when I saw how ticked off Mark was, but you just breezed right over him. Even Emily can’t do that.”

  “Mark wasn’t pissed.” Well, not at them. He was pissed at being trapped in a nonmilitary job. But Cal wasn’t sure that was his to share. He’d want to check in with Mark before letting that one spread any wider. Especially not to Jeannie who was so cozy with Mark’s wife…

  Cal stopped on the top step of the ladderway where it came up into the hangar. He’d said he wouldn’t lie to Jeannie. But this had that same pinch. Not only did it feel wrong not telling her, but he wanted her view. He wanted her take on the situation. She took on yet another type of importance that no other woman ever had. He valued her opinion as much as his own. Maybe even more.

  “Jeannie?”

  She stopped at the question in his voice.

  He finished climbing the ladder and met her in the cool darkness of the empty hangar. This time he kissed her. Long and slow, appreciating the soft moan as she flowed against him. As his pulse sped, then pounded in his ears. He pulled back and studied her face. Such an amazing face, beautiful and expressive and…and something else he could never tire of.

  “Look, beautiful. I know there are about a hundred things we need to talk about. As I said, I’ll do my best. But right now, we need to figure out how to help Henderson.”

  “Help him? What kind of help does he need?”

  “I was hoping you could figure that out. All I know is that he’s hurting. This assignment is hurting him: seeing Connie in charge, not being able to wander the ship at will, leaving the military. He doesn’t strike me as a guy who gets angry about things.”

  “He isn’t.” Jeannie glanced back toward the darkened ladderway, thinking hard. “Except these last few days.”

  “Do you think he and Emily…” He didn’t want to ask the question. He’d come to like them.

  “No,” Connie said, climbing up out of the ladderway and joining their conversation as if she’d always been a part of it. “Something else is bothering him. Major Henderson is the savviest commander ever to fly for the Night Stalkers. And he and Emily—you can’t imagine what they’re really like together. If I could
figure out how to be more like them, I would be. It’s something else that’s bothering him. Come, give me a hand.” And the enigmatic sergeant walked over to the equipment rack at the rear of the hangar, leaving the conversation just as abruptly as she’d entered it.

  Jeannie offered a whispered, “I’ll think about it.” Then they followed along.

  Connie handed Cal two small, heavy steel cases. One was labeled “7.62x51,” while the other bore several labels including a yellow triangle with bold, black letters inside: “EX kit.” He thought about asking what they were, then thought better of it. After that, Connie pulled a long, heavy case off the shelf, one of a half dozen there, and herded them back into the sunshine. Cal had a bad feeling about that when he saw the FN-SCAR label; he was fairly sure the last three letters stood for combat assault rifle.

  Chapter 16

  The sun battered Jeannie like a sledgehammer after the cool interior of the ship. She started to preflight her chopper and literally ran into Connie. The woman was on the same quest.

  “Sorry, force of habit,” Connie apologized. “I was Emily’s chief mechanic for her last year in the Night Stalkers. I still take care of her helicopter, though Chief Warrant Lola Maloney now flies the Vengeance.”

  Jeannie did her best not to feel daunted by Connie’s obvious competence, especially since she was learning to see her own skills as far less meager than she’d thought only a week or so before. Actually Cal did a fairly good job of convincing her she was capable. That a man that competent kept seeing her as so much better than he was; it certainly elevated her self-esteem a bit. They had quite the little mutual admiration society going on. Now if they could each just acknowledge their own strengths.

  Well, it was time she started. This chopper was her baby. She felt a hesitation at letting a super-professional mechanic critique her maintenance and care. Then she decided that as part of her new trust-yourself campaign, she would simply decide she was good enough, let Connie say what she would, and learn from that.