Fire Flight

by John J. Nance

  Even through his disgust, Clark found himself smiling. “So…it hadn’t dawned on him that his wife leaps from airplanes because she’s a physically fit and conditioned smokejumper?”

  “Oh, but she’s a girl, Clark! And you can beat up a mere girl all you want as long as you marry her first. That marriage license is really just a deed to the woman, you see. Anyway,” she said with a dismissive gesture, “you’re right. I can hold my own.”

  He reached for the bottle of Oban and added an inch to her tumbler, and she thanked him and sniffed the golden brown liquor, inhaling deeply.

  “I can smell peat in this, and maybe a little salt air.”

  “You’re sniffing Scotland, lass,” he said.

  “Ever been there?”

  His smile turned wistful as he nodded, his eyes on the fire. “Long ago.”

  “Not a good memory, then?”

  “An old memory, involving my ex-wife, Rosanna, from when things were good. We spent the summer there touring around. She was—is—a writer. Romance novels, mostly, but she’s nosed into the mainstream now and is making good money. I’m really happy for her.”

  “But the trip to Scotland?” she prompted.

  “Yes. She wrote it off as research and brought me along, and it was idyllic. Castles and ramparts and Loch Ness and making love in the heather, which has its hazards.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Anyway, I love Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall.”

  “You’re Celtic?”

  He nodded. “Way back there somewhere. The Campbell clan, we think.”

  “I’m supposed to be mostly Irish,” she said, watching as he gazed into the fire and letting a few more moments of silence settle in. “I think the divorce hit you pretty hard. Is that why you suddenly retired from the airtanker business?”

  He nodded. “Flying these old tubs takes a lot of concentration, Karen. Concentration and a pretty good dose of self-confidence. Losing her kind of destroyed both for a while.” He looked over at her and smiled. “But time heals all wounds.”

  She chuckled. “I always thought it was the other way around. Time wounds all heels.”

  “Do we have to talk about Trent again?”

  She laughed more easily than before and smiled at him as she took a rather substantial sip of the scotch. She lowered the glass, reached for the bottle to pour some more, and watched the fire, her body swaying slightly and suggesting the possibility that the evening had included a drink or two before she’d reached his door.

  “I’m really feeling this, but it is so good.”

  “You might want to take it easy on that stuff, Karen. It’s eighty-six proof and…potent.”

  She smiled, her tongue playing around the corner of her mouth and her head cocked. “I may need potent right now. To starry nights.” She raised her glass to his and clinked, sipped some more of the Oban, and then looked at him quizzically. “So where are you from, Clark? I don’t think I ever asked.”

  “I’m from Montana, and the U.S. Air Force.” He told her about growing up on a succession of bases, as well as the Washington crash that threw his young world into turmoil.

  “I never met a Montana boy who didn’t love horses. You, too?”

  He smiled. “Oh, yeah. I spent a collegiate summer riding fence for a huge ranch in Idaho. I even rodeoed for a while after college. I was pretty lucky to get through it without breaking anything valuable. But…I quit all that when I learned to fly and got my first flying job.”

  He looked at her closely.

  “How about you, Karen? I mean, where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? Why did you develop this odd propensity for jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, that sort of thing.”

  “I’m a Seattle-area girl from a little place called Gig Harbor, across the bridge from Tacoma. We had horses, too, and my dad loved to camp. He’s still a practicing surgeon who probably should have been a mountain man. I’m the youngest of four kids, three raucous brothers and me. We grew up with constant tents and hikes and campfires, just looking for the next excuse to be outdoors. I loved it! My mother suffered through it. Roughing it to her was sleeping on unpressed sheets, but she was always there to remind me how a young lady should handle the wilderness.”

  “How?”

  “In a proper dress with makeup,” she said with a laugh.

  “But the leaping out of airplanes thing?”

  “Well, that was…my undergrad degree was in forestry at the University of Montana, and I discovered this smokejumping outfit on the edge of town….”

  He nodded, well aware of Missoula and its prideful association with the Missoula Smokejumpers and their dangerous art of jumping into forest fires.

  “Anyway, after two summers with the Helena Hotshots, I rookied in Missoula. I jumped every summer afterward. It was great money, too, for college. Dad may have been a successful doctor, but we were taught to pull our own weight financially.”

  She yawned and fell silent for a while, and Clark tried unsuccessfully to stifle a sympathetic yawn of his own as he patiently watched the fire, letting them both enjoy the silence of the moment. There was a soft buzzing sound in the room audible now over the hiss and crackle of the fire, and he realized it was Karen snoring.

  He turned and watched her before leaning over to move her tumbler to the hearth. Reluctantly, he glanced at his watch and read a few minutes past ten, wondering whether to wake her. There was a shadowy feeling of guilt hovering around his enjoyment of her closeness, but he refused to consider it. The comfort of having her so relaxed in his presence was profoundly soothing.

  Nevertheless, she had to be sharp and alert in the morning, and would need to get ready in her hotel room several blocks away. As much as he’d love to sit and watch her all night, duty was calling.

  “Karen?” he said softly.

  An eyelid fluttered, then closed again.

  “Karen, do you want me to take you back to the hotel now?”

  She almost nodded, then stirred, her eyes opening briefly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I fell asleep.”

  “Just for a few minutes.”

  “Lemme…rest a few…minutes more. Okay?”

  She was asleep again before he could reply.

  He got to his feet quietly and moved to the kitchen to tidy up the counter and load the coffeemaker for morning, then returned to the deeply satisfying self-appointed task of watching her sleep, until it was obvious she wasn’t going to wake up easily.

  Clark moved to the bedroom and pulled down the covers, then returned to the fireplace and gently scooped Karen from the chair, took her into the bedroom, and carefully laid her in his bed, removing her shoes before pulling up the covers.

  She snuggled into the pillow and smiled in her sleep before turning on her side, and he stood looking at her for the longest time, amazed that his thoughts were not of possible future intimacy with her or how beautiful she was, but just how good it felt to have her trust—even if the scotch had inadvertently helped relax her in his presence.

  Clark left a small night-light on in the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind him after retrieving his windup alarm clock, which he set for five forty-five. He pulled a blanket and pillow out of the living room closet and lay down on the sofa, falling asleep almost instantly.

  Chapter 24

  WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT, SEVEN-THIRTY A.M.

  The television station helicopter pilot nudged the Bell Jet Ranger a few degrees to the left as he worked the joystick camera controller with his left hand and watched the image in the high-definition monitor. The autofocus feature of the sophisticated 75 to 1 telephoto lens on the ball-turret camera under the helicopter’s nose played with the sharpness of the picture momentarily, its servo motors moving the set point back and forth before it steadied out, leaving a crystal-clear image of the amazing sight below.

  “Are we up on the bird?” he asked, referring to the communications satellite. The operator
of the satellite truck parked on the edge of West Yellowstone below answered in a sleepy voice, affirming that the video picture was being received back in Atlanta. The pilot could tell the man was practically sleepwalking after driving the truck all night from Denver.

  But, he thought, all the effort was going to be well worth it. It was a huge story with a goal-line stand against the possible reignition of Yellowstone Park and the fight to keep the eastern side of the Grand Tetons from burning.

  The image on his screen looked for all the world like a bomber launch from wartime England, and it was going out live over CNN worldwide. Dozens of large propellers turned slowly on the airfield below as a long procession of airtankers trundled toward the end of West Yellowstone’s single runway, preparing for battle.

  “Stand by,” the director was saying back in Atlanta as the voice of the anchor introduced the shot.

  “We’re going to go live now to West Yellowstone, Montana, for this helicopter shot of what will be one of the most massive airborne attacks in recent memory against a forest fire. The airport is on the west side of Yellowstone Park, and you’re seeing the start of what will be an extremely critical fight today to control four major, and dozens of minor, wildfires seriously threatening the two parks. The force of fixed-wing airtankers on your screen include DC-6s and DC-7s, former airliners converted to drop thousands of pounds of fire-retardant fluid. In addition, there are several ex-Navy P-3 Orions and a variety of other support airplanes and helicopters. We’ll be bringing you live coverage of this aerial battle during the day from West Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, where no fewer than forty-two helicopters are also battling the blazes.”

  IN FLIGHT, TWIN OTTER JUMPSHIP, THIRTY-FIVE MILES SOUTHEAST OF WEST YELLOWSTONE—SEVEN-THIRTY A.M.

  At least I’m awake now! Karen thought to herself as she rubbed her eyes and balanced the thermos coffee mug on her knee. It was amazingly cold inside the passenger cabin of the Otter with the entry door removed for the upcoming jump. It would be a lot warmer in the cockpit in the empty copilot’s seat, but if her jumpmates had to suffer with the cold, so would she.

  Karen hunkered closer to the sidewall in the uncomfortable cloth seat and sipped the coffee, recalling her surprise at waking up in the wee hours in Clark’s bedroom still clothed but tucked in beneath a warm comforter. Her postsleep confusion had been brief, and a quick look at her watch had told her it was time to get moving.

  She remembered the pleasant conversation in front of the fire, but she couldn’t recall how she’d ended up in the bedroom. Clark was sound asleep on the couch, and she was going to leave him that way, but his alarm clock corked off as she was tiptoeing back to the bedroom to look for her shoes.

  He got up and made coffee, and she lingered as long as practical at the door to thank him, luxuriating in the warmth of the rekindled fire and feeling as if she’d been pulled from a delicious dream that she’d rather stay and finish. She wanted to recall more of what they’d talked about, but so far it was a comfortable blur, and a nice counterpoint to the freezing reality of the Otter’s cabin.

  Herb Jellison had been irritatingly bright-eyed when she’d reached the briefing room. He was looking around at her now from the captain’s seat, flashing a thumbs-up sign and mouthing, “Ten minutes.” The winds, as briefed, were apparently holding within limits for the jump.

  The North Fork fire had already consumed six thousand acres, and by four A.M. the flame front had closed to within nine miles of the critical ridge they were aiming for. Karen knew the fact that they’d lost an entire day in getting to the ridge might mean the effort was doomed from the start, but they were all up for the try—especially with a fleet of tankers preparing to follow them onto the ridge with tens of thousands of gallons of retardant.

  Once more Herb reached around from the cockpit and motioned for Karen.

  She hurriedly finished the coffee and stowed the thermos lid before moving forward and climbing into the copilot’s seat, where a headset awaited.

  “Can you hear me okay?” he asked.

  “Roger that, Herb.”

  “We’ll be over the target momentarily.”

  “I see it ahead,” she said, her eyes fastened to the right on the huge plume of smoke from the advancing blaze. The sun seemed barely over the horizon, and through the smoke a soft version of daylight was bathing the area. The sunlight would become more harsh and challenging through the day as it rose higher in the rarified atmosphere, the rays punching through increasing veils of smoke to deliver light and warmth and damaging UV-B radiation as well. The entire squad would need to keep drinking water to stay hydrated.

  “Okay,” he briefed, “I’ll bring us around into the wind, southbound.”

  Karen pulled off the headset and patted him on the shoulder before climbing out of the seat and getting in position in the doorway. The spotter, who had just returned and strapped into his safety harness, was already there. Herb turned when they were just past the ridge, then circled around and returned again, flying north to south over the small meadow as Karen nodded and the spotter released the streamer to test the wind. They watched it fall, then reversed course and dropped a second one, calculating the windspeed and the impact point, which was almost squarely in the targeted meadow.

  “Drift is about a thousand feet,” Karen said, noting the spotter’s nodded agreement.

  “Much better.”

  “Okay, Herb!” she yelled above the roar. “Next time is a live run.”

  All the members of her squad were on their feet now, the first two coming forward and hooking on to the static line, a fixed piece of wire running the length of the Otter’s cabin that yanked the parachutes open as the jumpers left the door.

  “Winds are about eighteen maximum right now, from the south,” she relayed. “Come in as hot as you can…the air is very turbulent right over the target.”

  “Gotcha,” George Baird replied, slapping his partner on the shoulder as the spotter watched the terrain unfold again below and timed their exit.

  “Now!”

  In rapid succession the “stick” of two men jumped from the doorway, their round chutes opening instantly. Karen felt the same visceral thrill as always watching the two canopies suddenly go rigid, jerking each jumper from 120 miles per hour down to a gentle descent rate in the space of a few seconds.

  They watched the first two overshoot the zone slightly but land safely, one of them getting his chute under control and unholstering his radio almost immediately.

  “Hey, Triple Nickel. Adjust your drop path another hundred feet south.”

  “Roger that,” Herb replied on the air-to-ground channel.

  The second stick nailed their landing, and with two more passes and two more sticks, it was Karen’s turn.

  Stepping out the door of an airplane in flight was an incredible rush, no matter how many times she did it, but getting to the door with almost eighty pounds of gear was awkward.

  Karen thrust herself out of the Otter and into space a quarter-mile south of the meadow and more than twenty-five hundred feet above the steep, forested slope directly below. The bracing rush of cold air and the immediate snap of the harnesses as her chute opened were exhilarating, and she let out a small yelp of glee before getting down to the business of modifying her chute by pulling free two of the lines on each side. The so-called “four-line modification” gave her a slight ability to steer by banking left and right and riding the wind.

  Karen checked her speed and banked left a bit, calculating the descent rate, aware of the strong aroma of burning wood in the air, the calling card of the approaching inferno. The sky to the north was incredibly blue against the deep green of the forest, and it was hard not to drink in the beauty of the living portrait before her and just enjoy the ride. But miscalculations could be very dangerous and land her in a tree, or worse.

  She tore her eyes away from the horizon and concentrated on the quick mental calculations needed to make the landing. All but the first sticks had
sailed right into the middle of the drop zone, and she was on the same course. She would let her flexed legs absorb the impact of landing and roll in what was called a PLF, or parachute landing fall, then race to unhook at least one of her shoulder harnesses to collapse the parachute. Any delay in getting out of the harness in a stiff wind could give a billowing chute time to yank its jumper back in the air and over a cliff, or drag him or her through trees and rocks.

  She could see her entire squad on the ground working hard to stow their chutes, and almost before she’d become used to the ride, it was over and she was bouncing back to her feet to release and collapse her chute before verifying that everyone was in good shape. The Twin Otter made its approach for the equipment drop, and three chutes bloomed overhead, the packs landing almost perfectly in the middle of the tiny meadow. There was one last, low pass, and Herb dipped the wing before heading back to base, leaving the squad in the process of unpacking the rest of their gear.

  When the chain saws had been fueled and the other equipment readied, they spread out quickly to scout out and tie in any natural breaks and light fuel before returning for a quick tactical briefing.

  Karen spread a laminated map on the ground, and they gathered around to review the plan.

  “Remember, we’re going to split the squad with half of us cutting line this way, east, and the other half working away to the west. This saddle is less than a mile wide, and when we’re comfortable, I want to test burn out some of the line, then plan to backfire from the scratch line. So we’ll need a scratch line wide enough to burn out from. When we get the tankers in, we’ll start them on the north side, then down the ridge south of us, running east to west, and soak a line clear across the mountain, and have them work up toward where we want the burnout boundary.”

  “How long do you think we have, Karen?” Scott asked.