“Until you put a ring on my finger, boyfriend is as high as it goes.” Then she turned to look at him aghast. “I didn’t just say that.”
The blades kept accelerating.
“Odd,” Tim said. “You didn’t say it, but I seem to have heard it anyway.”
The turboshaft began to wind up in an increasing cry.
“Tell me you weren’t thinking it. Please tell me you weren’t. That’s way too big.” Macy had to raise her voice to be heard, but the pleading was still clear.
“Not until your father said it.”
“Dad?” She practically whimpered.
The engine settled into its groove, the rotors whipping around at full speed just a yard over his head.
Tim leaned in, took her face in both his hands, and shouted, “How about until after the fire we both agree that we never heard a thing?”
She nodded.
He kissed her quickly. And while she might be beautiful, she was also undeniably cute sitting in a million-dollar machine with a look like she’d just been thrown in the deep end of the pool and had no idea why.
“I’ll be back as fast as I can to help,” she raised her voice.
“Pick up the hunters first.”
She flinched at not thinking about them, “Where is the fire in relation to them?”
“Just go find the point of origin.”
“Oh shit!”
Tim nodded, “Your dad should have Vince waiting for you at the hangars when you get your bucket.” He could see by her look that he didn’t have to say anything else. He backed off, closed the door, and waved her aloft.
Vince had been the town cop ever since Vince’s dad had retired. The town had only needed one, so Vince had worked Fairbanks Police Department as a younger man. A Harrison had been the cop of Larch Creek for over sixty years and it was a deep disappointment to Vince that his only son Brett had gone into construction instead. Still, maybe Brett would take over his family’s legacy some day.
Vince would take the hunters off Macy’s hands. Hopefully Macy wouldn’t say anything about point-of-origin for the fire until after she’d delivered them.
Whether it was a runaway campfire or, more likely, exploding targets as they zeroed their rifle scopes, there was little question as to who would be paying for this fire. It was going to be a very expensive trip to Alaska for these Lower Forty-eighters. If they also caught a bonus of the rough edge of Macy Tyler’s tongue, then it was no more than they deserved.
She did a few final checks and then began climbing up into the air, slowly finding her way out of the tight space down in the narrow valley.
Tim still didn’t know how she’d landed there. That had to have been eight kinds of ugly. Well, the departure would be smoother. He made sure that the winch line took up cleanly with no snarls or snags as she rose.
The last of the slack came out of the winch line and Tim was swept smoothly off his feet.
Macy eased him aloft until he was level with the ridge and then slipped sideways. In a minute he was standing beside Hank, had ducked out of the lifting collar, and waved Macy off. With a side-to-side waggle of the helo she was gone and he turned to face the fire.
The blaze was still a long way off, but it was already chewing over the far edge of the next valley past the one Macy had come down in. If they didn’t stop it here, their next chance was another five miles and ten thousand acres to the east. After that, their backs would be against Larch Creek and that wasn’t going to happen.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked Hank.
Hank looked uncomfortable as he helped Tim put on his harness with his food bag, fire shelter, maps, compass, and a dozen other tools of the trade.
“Where’s Tony? Didn’t he surface?” It was a common enough occurrence in Alaska for someone to simply leave without telling anyone, but not common for a smokie.
“He surfaced,” Hank looked away and then back. “They found him a half mile from his truck. He’d gone back-country after a moose on his day off. Instead he found a bear, or other way around, it found him. Tony downed it point blank with a .45 in the ear while the bear was ripping off his leg at the knee. Applied his own tourniquet and was crawling back out when they found him. They had to take the leg at the thigh. That’s why we were slow to respond; most of us were over to the hospital to tease him about all the meat he’d left behind for the wolves by not dragging the bear back with him.”
“Oh man,” it happened, but…oh man.
“So it’s you or me, buddy? Toss a coin or are you going to man up after telling the whole damn county that you love Macy?” Hank stuck his thumbs in his harness and rocked back on his heels, very pleased at how smoothly he’d worked in the dig.
Didn’t leave Tim a whole lot of choice. But Hank wasn’t going to carry the ball into the end zone so easily.
“Okay, buddy.”
Hank winced because he could guess well enough that he’d just earned whatever was coming.
“Lead a six-man team to the north. Cut a downslope forty-five, we need to narrow the path on this beast as it climbs the ridge toward us.”
It was about the worst cut there was. You had to fell all of the trees uphill rather than the more natural downhill. And then after you trimmed off all of the branches and nipped the heavier undergrowth, you had to drag all the waste upslope as well. The idea was deny fuel to the fire, not add to it.
“Shee-it!” Hank moaned, then started calling for the crew without further hesitation.
Tim turned to face the harder task, figuring out how to make sure this whole team came out of this one safe and sound. Too many of them had a woman or man to get back to.
“Ha!” he barked out the laugh aloud.
A whole lot of them had someone waiting…including him.
Chapter 15
Macy gathered up the hunters without shooting any of them. One, because she was outnumbered and two, firing her Henry .45-70 always hurt her shoulder. If a grizzly was coming—which is why she carried the big gun aboard her helo—she wouldn’t let it stop her. But these hunters...it seemed a waste of effort. Still, they made a tempting target.
They clearly knew what they’d done. Rather than setting up camp or going tracking, they were all sitting on a log near where she’d dropped them off. Only two of them tried pretending nothing was wrong, though they cut it out when she flew close along the edge of the fire. Silence soon reigned supreme in the LongRanger’s passenger cabin.
As she passed the leading edge of the fire, Anne Marie’s SEAT plane showed up and dumped its first load on the fire. Eight hundred gallons looked like little more than a thimbleful against a backdrop of five hundred acres of blazing trees and flames shooting fifty feet above the treetops.
As she headed down into Larch Creek and saw that Vince was indeed waiting, she spoke on the intercom for the first time in the flight.
“I’m sorry to drop you here rather than back at the airport in Fairbanks, but I’m due back on the fire as fast as possible. Alternate transportation has been arranged.”
And just in case Vince couldn’t fit them all in his Jeep Grand Cherokee—the only red vehicle in town—there were any number of irate townsfolk gathered at the hangars to watch the show who would be only too glad to escort them to the town’s lockup in the basement of the library until they could be transferred to the Fairbanks PD.
She left it for Vince to get them out of her helicopter while she crossed to the hangar to dig out the Bambi bucket and put on her Nomex protective gear in case she went down again and ended up near the flames.
Her father was waiting for her just inside the hangar.
Macy didn’t think, she didn’t ask. She simply walked straight into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder.
Since the moment the linkage had failed, Macy had held it all together.
Her hands
had been steady through Tim announcing to the whole world that he loved her, and her own equally surprising statement to him. She’d focused through delivering the man she loved to fight the fire and retrieving the idiots who had started it.
Macy had been clean on the controls when her engine had cut out, managed to clear the death-dealing ridge by less than ten feet, and found a hole in the trees. With her throttle controls gone it had come down to pitch, roll, and yaw with no spare time for prayer as she autorotated down into the rocky divide. There hadn’t even been a moment to radio, either she’d be dead or she could call later.
She’d survived and buried herself in the repair.
But now, safe in her father’s arms, the shakes took her until her bones seemed to rattle together.
“God, Daddy. That was so close. So close.”
“Knew that when I saw where you were,” he patted her back and she noted that his voice wasn’t much steadier than her own.
She breathed him in and found comfort. But at the same time she knew that she’d find even more comfort and just as much understanding in Tim’s arms.
Most men would be angry or overprotective or something. “A woman shouldn’t be…” “How could you…”
Tim knew what her certifications meant. He knew what it meant to live in Alaska. And he knew that danger was a part of the job.
“I’ve got to get going,” she pushed away from her dad’s chest and wiped at her eyes.
“You want me to ride along?”
She knew her father didn’t like helicopters. Something about the motion made him queasy in a way that even aerobatics in his biplane didn’t.
“No. I’m okay. Let’s get this bucket out. I need to top off the fuel and get to the fire. There’s a man out there that I really need to talk to, but first I have to go save his ass.”
“That’s my gal,” he grabbed the other end of the Bambi bucket and they carried it back out into the sunshine.
Two of the hunters were standing by Vince’s Jeep. The other two were on the ground with their hands cuffed behind them.
Vince strolled over to get the rest of their gear out of the back of her helicopter.
“Seems those two didn’t like the idea that they might be liable for a couple hundred thousand in fire suppression costs alone.”
“You’re looking awfully pleased there, Vince.”
“Suppose I am. Haven’t had an excuse to use my cuffs since Claude Moreau made such a fuss over the Tour de France results a couple weeks ago and I had to lock him up on a drunk and disorderly until he dried out. Haven’t used them on a real criminal since—”
Macy didn’t want to be rude, but she tuned him out and crawled under her helo to snap the Bambi bucket harness onto the center cargo hook.
Vince found being the only cop around was a lonely occupation, and was likely to spin stories out for an hour if you didn’t stop him. Thankfully, he never seemed to take offense when you went about your business in the middle of his telling one.
She also plugged in the wiring harness that would let her control the bucket’s release valve from her cockpit.
When she crawled back out, Vince was still there. Moving with a deliberate slowness as he gathered the hunters’ rifles and gear from the passenger cabin, which wasn’t like him.
She stood still to show she was listening. A quick look around showed that she could afford a moment. Her father was straightening out the hundred feet of the bucket’s lines on the ground so that it would lift cleanly. Tinka had brought over the immaculate 1958 Ford pickup—perhaps the original blue truck of Larch Creek, which matched Tinka’s hair and the leather vest that attempted to encircle her generous frame today—with the five-hundred gallon fuel tank on the back and was filling the LongRanger’s fuel tanks.
“I couldn’t help overhearing…” Vince seemed unusually cautious.
“Overhearing…what?” Macy didn’t have a clue.
“Maybe Tim shouldn’t have used the general frequency when he said…”
“Oh shit! He didn’t!” But she thought back and he had. “I’m going to have to kill him. I know it’s a lousy way to start a relationship, but I’m going to have to kill him. Please Vince. Don’t arrest me until after I’ve done the deed.”
“Sure, Macy. Whatever you say. I was just wondering about my boy. He…ah…” Even Vince, the king of words in town, at least spoken ones, seemed to be at a loss.
Macy blinked a few times trying to make the connection. His boy…
Vince arranged and rearranged the hunters’ four long rifles on the deck of her helo’s passenger cabin.
“Oh,” she finally got it. His boy Brett. Who she’d had a date with just a few nights ago. Back before Tim had apparently declared to the entire world that he loved her. “Did you hear that Linda Lee is moving back from Talkeetna?”
Vince looked interested, “Can’t say as I had.”
“Called me last week. I’m going to fly over and bring her back as soon as the divorce is final.”
“Seem to remember that she was sweet on Brett, but the boy was a little slow to notice.”
“Seem to recall that myself,” Macy did her best to match Vince’s dry tone.
“Huh,” was Vince’s comment.
“Might have mentioned that to Brett the other night.”
“Really?” Vince considered the thought.
Macy nodded in reply
They stood quietly in silent accord for few moments and then Vince moved smoothly back into action and hefted the rifles. “Some pretty nice equipment here. I see custom work on two of them. Might just have to impound these, pending investigation and all.”
“You just might,” Macy agreed as Vince offered her a nod and moved off with them. Men were still bizarre, even after they were married and had grown kids. That didn’t bode well for Tim. She already didn’t understand him. What was going to happen to him in another dozen years or two?
Shit! Why did her thoughts keeping asking questions like that?
Once everyone was clear, Macy lifted back into the sky, doing her best to ignore the several dozen town members who had gathered to watch the show.
Her father blew her a kiss and rested his hand on his heart.
As she looked down at the crowd standing around the Aéroport d’Orly, she noticed an inordinate number of them had handheld radios with them. Typical in winter, but not so usual in summer.
Macy would make sure any future declarations between her and Tim happened strictly face to face.
Chapter 16
Tim was barely aware when Macy checked in.
She asked where he wanted a load of water and he directed her. The cascade of white foam that washed down over the edge of the fire was a wonderful surprise that garnered his full attention.
Water usually fell from a Bambi bucket in a blue-white shower that always seemed to cover far too little of the fire. Macy had obviously sprung for the foam attachment that injected a foaming agent into the water. Suddenly two hundred gallons of water acted like two thousand and splattered against the fire in a white shroud.
“That’s it, Mace. Work that line and work it hard.”
He watched for her next drop, just six minutes later. That meant she’d found a lake or river nearby to hover over and dip her bucket for a reload.
Tim had watched a thousand drops from the ground. Maybe ten thousand. Emily, Jeannie, and the rest of the crew did it for a living, Macy did it as a sideline. She was a good pilot, but probably flew a half dozen fires in a whole season.
“Hold…” he called on her next run. She’d been dropping early. “Now! Drop. Drop. Drop!”
Half a second later a wall of white foam hit the edge of the fire that was threatening to scoot around the edge of Hank’s firebreak. With a whorl of smoke, the flames retreated for the moment.
He kept q
uiet for the next one, but she was better. Not perfect, but he could see her taking the lesson in.
“You weren’t compensating for the wind. Next time come in fifty feet higher. You’re dropping at the right height for water, but a little low for foam.”
He wondered at how easily she took instruction. No ego on the line, just doing it right. Damn but he loved that woman.
That was a problem he’d have to chew on later.
In one of those timeless blinks that happened on a fire, she called that she was headed back to refuel.
Tim had been working the line, spending a little time with each smokie, checking technique—which was generally very solid, Tony had been a good leader—and learning each one’s name and strengths.
“Pee and eat while you’re down,” he told her as he dragged spruce branches Tina had just sliced off a fallen tree. She’d been good with a saw on the Arctic Village fire. But he’d taken to showing her some new tricks and she was really tacking it down.
“Yes, dear,” Macy called down as she turned back to Larch Creek.
Yes dear? Like they were already a married couple.
Tim went to drag the next couple branches, which were too big.
“Tina. I’m not Hercules. Fix it,” he yelled out over the sound of her saw.
“Says you!” She came over to chop them in half where he indicated. “Seven impossible tasks. Filled Tony’s shoes better than Tony could. Made Macy Tyler fall in love with him. That’s two down. You’re on a roll.”
She hit the throttle on the saw cutting off all conversation.
After the cuts were done, she sliced off his ability to respond with additional sharp bursts on the throttle before sneering at him.
“Show me Number Three and maybe I’ll consider being impressed,” she gunned the throttle once more and turned back to the tree.
Tim grabbed the branches and dragged them off.
Dear? If there was going to be a third miracle it was actually finding some time with Macy.
Wildfire at Larch Creek Page 14
