Fire Light Fire Bright

by M. L. Buchman

  Water flowed under the edge of the shelter and he couldn’t stop it.

  Couldn’t stop it as it flowed out of his eyes as well.

  For the first time in the year since he’d lost them, he wept into his dirt hole in the ground as the cleansing water washed over and under him inside the safety of his little shelter.

  A woman’s voice kept calling to him that it would all be okay, just stay safe.

  5

  Candace sat at the edge of the grass clearing, outside the circle of firelight, and watched the final twenty sitting around the campfire. Day Ten, they’d made it. And just as importantly, so had she. The Leavenworth IHC was happening.

  Dad and the department’s mostly volunteer crew had delivered hotdogs and burgers with all the trimmings, massive bags of chips, and local craft beer. The whole team’s laughter had that easy confidence of a crew who’d formed up well.

  She really had done it. Another three weeks of serious training and she’d list the team as ready for call out. They’d done a carefully controlled prescribed burn on Day Eight and not a one of them had flinched, which boded well. The only test left was one she couldn’t arrange, facing an angry wildfire on the run. That final trial she’d have to leave up to the whim of Mother Nature and the needs of the U.S. Forest Service.

  “Thinking pretty hard there, Cantrell.” Luke handed her a fresh beer then waved his own at the spot beside her, asking permission before he sat on the grass.

  “I do that sometimes,” she nodded for him to join her. He did, stretching out his legs and leaning back on his elbows, but not too close. That southern gentleman thing that made him such a standout from normal guys.

  Having sought her out, he remained silent.

  “Something shifted for you during the training. Something big.” When he’d gone under the shelter, she’d thought she was going to lose him for sure, but when he’d emerged…

  His shrug was noncommittal. Guy-speak for maybe.

  “All your pieces fit.”

  “Say what?” That got his attention away from the team around the campfire to studying her closely out here in the shadows.

  “When you first showed up, it’s like you were fractured. All made up of different pieces that didn’t really fit together. That’s gone now.”

  Again that long quiet study. She didn’t turn to face him. Couldn’t. A team was just that, especially when you were the leader. By season’s end, these people would be as close as brothers and sisters—to her, to each other. But Luke Rawlings made her wish for different things. Things she’d rather he didn’t see.

  “Pretty forthright there.”

  His accusation was accurate so she didn’t waste time denying it.

  He turned to watch the fire once more.

  She hoped she hadn’t scared him off. Though he didn’t look like a man who scared easily.

  “You remind me of my last commander. Lieutenant Commander Altman was about as straight ahead as they come.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “You have no idea, lady. Compliments don’t come any higher. And SEAL commanders don’t come any better than Altman.”

  “You’re a SEAL?” she finally turned to look at him and discovered his dark eyes studying her from close by.

  “Past tense.”

  “No wonder you’re so damn good at everything. Besides, is there such a thing as a past tense SEAL?”

  He grimaced, “Not really.”

  She’d never met— “I’ve never met anyone like you. You just seem so—” safe. A job didn’t get much less safe than leading an Interagency Hotshot Crew, no matter that safety was their number one priority. “—so…Shit!” Words were failing her beneath his dark gaze.

  “Never met a woman like you either ‘Not Candy’ Cantrell.” His deep voice was a little rough. “Can’t seem to stop thinking about you. Even invading my damned dreams.” He looked disgusted.

  “Wet ones, Mr. SEAL?”

  His easy laugh wrapped around them both acknowledging the pun and the way she’d learned to deal with that line head on.

  “White dress ones, lady.”

  Candace could feel herself freezing up. Yet another man who thought she belonged in some neat bride-wifely pigeonhole. So not her.

  “White dress made of Nomex,” Luke mused half to himself. “How’s that for an amazing image?”

  Nomex was the material used in making fire gear, became a second skin to a hotshot. Luke dreamed of her as a firefighter? Every man she’d ever been with had tried to talk her out of it. To him, or at least his subconscious, it was an integral part of her. Something no one else except her father had ever understood.

  She’d never been a big one on dreams, never remembered the ones at night, or made up ones during the day. But she couldn’t deny that she’d had her eye, and her thoughts, on Luke Altman since the day he’d stepped off his big Harley and joined the hotshot trials.

  She could feel him watching her by the warm shadows of firelight. Quiet like a SEAL and patient like a gentleman. Strong enough to sweep her away and safe enough that she’d never think he’d do something without permission.

  Turning to study him, she did her best to look inside herself, never one of her strengths.

  Did she want to grant that permission?

  Big time.

  Well, he’d called you forthright as a compliment, so what are you waiting on?

  Nothing.

  Candace leaned down to kiss him.

  After an initial grunt of surprise, he proved that cutting down trees and digging soil weren’t the only things he was exceptionally skilled at. She melted against his heat until they both groaned together.

  She could feel their smiles start in that instant and continue to grow. When it threatened to turn into laughter of sheer joy, she moved back until she too was resting against the soft grasses on her elbows and facing the campfire and the celebrating crews. So, her heart wanted to race as fast as his Harley? She’d let it.

  “Going to be an interesting summer, Mr. Hotshot,” Candace did her best to keep her tone casual as the heat continued to ripple deliciously through her body.

  “I’m thinking it could be a whole lot more than one of them…” he paused long enough for her to turn and see his smile, “…Sweet Candy Fire.”

  Candace turned back to the fire, but could feel her smile going goofy.

  She was thinking exactly the same thing.

  About the Author

  M. L. Buchman has over 30 novels in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year” and Booklist “Top 10 of the Year.” In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.

  In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world. He is now making his living as a full-time writer on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife. He is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing by subscribing to his newsletter at

  www.mlbuchman.com.

  Full Blaze a Firehawks romance

  Cal Jackson stared up at the wall of flame eating its way toward him through the forest. He was always tempting fate one step too far. Now he was way past the second step, as well as the third. He was standing in the foreign land of totally screwed. In his seven years of fighting wildfires and five more photographing them, he’d never been this far over the line. Not even close.

  He’d ridden the edge a lot since he was a testosterone-laden teen. It had earned him his fair share of cold slaps from ticked-off women, but maybe more than his share of warm and friendly nights. It had also led to numerous interesting opportunities to travel for both work and play, so he’d learned
to take that risk without really thinking about it.

  He tried not to take that second step very often; it was his warning that he was pushing the limits. But dancing along the edge of that step was what had won him so many of his awards. Though the Pulitzer for photography and “best of” for World Press Photo still remained out of reach, he’d bagged a lot of awards including the cover on National Geographic. And Time, twice.

  Out here, way past the second step, the Grindstone Canyon Fire was in full-throated roar. The sound throbbed against his body with bass notes that actually shook his inner organs. He’d stood close beside the tracks when two-hundred-car freight trains had flown past at full speed. This was louder. Nor did it conveniently pass by and Doppler into the distance; this train of fire had him clear in its sights.

  The air was growing so hot that it hurt to breathe. His acute sense of smell for smoke, burning pitch, and carbon had long since been overwhelmed by the saturation of them in the air. He’d embedded tight with a crew of hotshot firefighters who were fast losing ground against the wildfire despite their best efforts. It happened that way. Fighting fire was a delicate back-and-forth dance between flame and attacker, almost like a hip-hop advance and retreat, attack and counterattack by both sides of the…hoedown.

  Hoedown? Where had he come up with that? Third foster father. Yuck!

  In one way the comparison was appropriate, as it was with the rakes, Pulaskis, and even hoes that a hotshot crew used to battle the flames. Not hoedown, but rather… His brain trying to work out what hip-hop dancers called that battle of dance, power, and sensuality had to be about the damn stupidest thought to have as his last on earth.

  The Grindstone in southern California was probably the last big fire of the year in the United States. The Pacific Northwest was already getting rain, and Colorado had snow, though that hadn’t slowed down the Fern Lake Fire back in 2012. He’d won two awards and gotten national headlines on that one for his piece on fighting wildfires when the supply tanks and rivers froze and the helicopters couldn’t get at the water to fight the flames.

  The Southeast had just been soaked by a really serious trio of hurricanes. So this year California was last in the hot seat, and the fires above Santa Barbara were doing their best to take back the hills for Mother Nature. It had started in the same area of Rattlesnake Canyon Park as the lethal Rattlesnake Fire of 1953 that killed fifteen firefighters. Though this time it was started by lightning rather than a psycho arsonist.

  You’d think he’d have grabbed a clue from the historical setting, though he’d been no better with history than most of the subjects in school, except fighting and photography. With maturity, he’d added “fire” as an adjective to both of them. He now knew fire history as well as any hotshot walking the hills, except for this time when it should have warned him. There hadn’t been a bad burn here in more than sixty years, so it was due.

  The hotshot crew he’d been with had been in the heat for a week, driving ahead and then retreating—dancing that careful strategic dance against the fire. Less than two minutes ago the crew had taken off down a narrow track leading across a cliff face and onto a rolling slope that led down into the distant valley. Their escape route was clean. He’d hesitated an extra fifteen seconds to get a shot of a massive fig tree, over eighty feet tall, being ripped up by fire-generated winds and tossed aside like a matchstick. Fifteen lousy seconds.

  The problem was that the fire had cast the flaming tree down right across his escape route. The tree not only lay across the path, but was catching all of the surrounding material on fire as well. The crew looked at him helplessly across the gap.

  The notch canyon that separated them was too far for a rope cast, and the vertical walls that plunged down to either side of his position required a level of mountaineering skill that included hammers and pitons, neither of which he was carrying. He carefully eyed a ledge about ten feet below, but could think of no way to get down to it. Far too narrow a landing to risk a jump. Yet.

  He could see the crew boss on the radio, but with the fire’s roar, Cal couldn’t hear him even though his own radio handset was in its pouch right against his shoulder and the volume was turned up to full.

  The smoke blotted out the boss just as he was about to make a hand sign of some sort. A glance upward into the smoke canopy told him that no helicopters would be able to save his sorry behind. The mushroom cloud of smoke—looking like a nuclear blast it was so intense—rose ten thousand feet above the California landscape would block any line of approach.

  The ravine to the south was clogged with fire, and the one to the north was now fully lit by the thrown tree, its branches ablaze like a thousand-armed candelabra. The two ravines met to the west. The only way out was east—and there raged the beast.

  The narrow ledge of his final demise was covered in a few dogwood and valley oak trees, tall grasses, and dense manzanita brush. When the fire rolled over this site, it would burn hot. Hot in the same way it had burned over the nineteen-man crew at Yarnell, the air so superheated it had burned right through their foil emergency shelters. It had done that despite the circular clearing they’d cut around themselves. And he didn’t even carry a chain saw to try to make a clearing. All he had were his cameras.

  He backed to the edge of the precipice and then turned once more to look at the flame. He wasn’t even conscious of his actions as he lifted his new Canon Mark III camera, found the frame, shot the photo. Zoomed back. Found the next, shot it. The beast was close. He’d only once been so close to the heart of the firestorm. During his days as a member of a hotshot crew, they’d have been long gone before the heart of the fire rolled this close. The camera was actually heating in his hands, prickly hot to hold.

  Too close! That was it. He dropped the camera into his bag and pulled out his old workhorse 6D body with the 28 mm wide-angle lens. No way he’d risk a lens change with all of the dust and ash in the air.

  There! He could see the image coming together that would make a cover photo. Another prize-winner was almost here. Just a few more seconds… If he could just…

  A metal shape zipped by the lens, fast. He didn’t see what it was, but some instinct had him pressing the shutter. He flicked back to the image.

  On his viewfinder a winged drone a half-dozen feet in length, painted black with gold-and-orange flames, had flown between him and the fire. It had a bold “MHA” emblazoned on its side.

  Some comfort that was. All it meant was that someone from Mount Hood Aviation was going to have the award-winning photo of the journalist who burned alive while clutching his camera like a damned idiot. All because he’d had to take that third step and now couldn’t wrench back from it.

  Cal was going to make a lousy Cinderella, no pretty gown rising from the ashes for him. But he was sure going to end up as a cinder. Another thirty seconds and he’d have to take his chances inside the foil shelter, though he’d sworn he’d never do that again.

  Maybe his life was supposed to pass before his eyes right about now, but he hoped not. He’d beaten the first sixteen years of his life down with every ounce of a firefighter’s willpower until they didn’t exist. The time since had been mostly good, but with the way his luck was running today, he’d get to see those early days before he’d named himself Calvin Jackson.

  Some idiot part of him started to raise the camera again, but then he stopped. His cameras were going to cook right along with him, even if he threw himself over them like a Marine covering a grenade to save his buddies. For once he just looked at the wall of flame. Its heart so hot it glowed gold as the fire swarmed up tree trunks six stories tall with a single breath, sheathing each tree in a cloak of flame just six inches and fifteen hundred degrees thick. The roar deepened as if gathering its breath. So loud that—

  The sharp blast of a voice over a loudspeaker not ten feet behind him so startled Cal that he almost stumbled off the ledge. Completely masked by the
roar of the fire and with hundred-foot flames less than thirty yards away, a helicopter had come to hover behind him. It wore the same paint job as the drone.

  A glance up showed the rotor blades shimmering in a lethal arc just a few feet above him and no break in the smoke-cloud cover above. The hotshot crew was still invisible across the ravine. But far down below, right off the narrow spit of cliff he was perched upon, he could see the terrain. The pilot had flown up through a hole underneath the smoke and ash cloud.

  “Get aboard, you bloody git!” the speaker screamed at him. He wouldn’t have heard it if it weren’t less than ten feet away and aimed right at him.

  The chopper hung just out of reach, hovering with its open side door toward him. Over his shoulder he could see that the spinning rotor disk was within a foot or so of a stout oak tree. They couldn’t fly any closer to him. The chopper didn’t even have skids to grab on to like they always did in the movies, just wheels.

  The cargo bay door was an open four-by-four-foot square of salvation, hanging a half-dozen feet away over a hundred-yard drop. He stuffed both cameras into the padded bag, snapped it shut, and chucked the bag through the door toward the rear so it wouldn’t go out the other side, which was also open. Then, squatting to make the leap while the chopper bounced in the roiling air currents, he jumped into space.

  He landed mostly inside the door. Far enough to drag himself the rest of the way. He spotted a rope line, made sure it was secured to something, then snapped the D ring on the front of his safety harness onto it so that he was now secure.

  “Good to go,” he shouted to the pilot. There was no way he could be heard. The freight train was screaming toward them, barely ten yards from the rotor tips.

  The pilot, flying alone, risked a quick glance back, but was skilled enough for the chopper to remain rock stable despite the turbulent environment.

  Cal only had long enough to get the impression of a narrow face and mirrored shades wrapped in a large, earmuff pilot’s headset. Seeing he was aboard, the pilot rolled the chopper hard left and dove down through the dwindling smoke hole. He caught the camera bag as it skidded across the deck plating.