She shrugged. “At least eight hours, maybe longer. The plan for us, as soon as the flame front gets close enough, is to take up a safe defensive position along the ridge up there to the west side and wait. If we succeed in stopping it and it doesn’t jump the ridge, we can get into the valley quickly to douse any remaining firebrands and spot fires that blow over. Otherwise, we hike out along the ridge westbound. We’re literally standing on the Continental Divide, so if we stay out of the trees and grasses, we’re okay, except for any lightning strikes.”
Four chain saws came to life as the squad split and moved out in opposite directions. Karen checked her watch and glanced again at the veil of smoke approaching from the south. On the radio they would be known as “Jones plus eight.” On the ground they would be scrambling. This fire is breathing down our necks, and there’s no question, she thought, that this is going to be a close race.
FOREST SERVICE OPERATIONS, WEST YELLOWSTONE AIRPORT
Rich Lassiter glanced out of the Operations window again, confirming that the DC-6B with “84” on its tail was still sitting on the ramp fifteen minutes past departure time. He could see the propellers on engines three and four turning, but one and two were still static, and the crew entry steps were still snuggled up to the entrance door.
Dammit! Rich thought, pulling the phone up and punching in the number of Jerry Stein’s office across the runway.
He’s going to be placed out of service shortly.
Timing would be everything today, and if even one airtanker came and went out of sequence, it would be a problem, especially for the number of tankers and the short turnaround time.
Rich rubbed his eyes as he waited for the line to ring. He’d had less than an hour of sleep because of all the careful planning, and his temper was razor-thin.
Jerry answered on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“Jerry? Rich. Are you flying Eighty-four or not?”
“Yes. Of course. I…just got delayed here with a call.”
“Man, I need you off the ground, or I need you to put a relief pilot in your place.”
There was a hesitation on the other end, and Rich felt a wave of disgust roll through him at the thought that this might be one of Jerry’s orchestrated little charades. He’d made a huge deal during the morning brief of flying one of his own DC-6s to calm the rumors that he was afraid of them, and now this. “Jerry?”
“Hey, scramble the relief captain. I’ll get in the saddle when he returns to refill.”
“Jerry, dammit, did you plan this?”
“Plan what?”
“To bail out and not fly that bird.”
“Of course not! I’m running a goddamned business over here, too, for chrissakes. Look, Rich, screw the relief pilot, if that’s your attitude. I’ll be there, but I’ll need five minutes.”
“We don’t have five minutes, Jerry. I’m pulling you out of service if that ship doesn’t start its taxi in five minutes.”
“Fine. Whatever. Scramble the other guy. I’ll take over on the return.”
Rich replaced the receiver knowing full well Jerry would find another excuse when Eighty-four got back. The rumors were apparently correct. Jerry Stein was afraid of his own fleet.
“Jill?” he all but bellowed across the desk, regretting his irritated tone.
“Yo?”
“Please find Captain Tate and tell him to get out there and take Tanker Eighty-four immediately.”
Two hundred yards to the south Jerry pushed out of his desk chair and opened the door, spotting Trent Jones across the hangar.
“Hey, Trent. Come here.”
Jones turned and nodded with a sullen expression, handing a clipboard to one of his employees before crossing the hangar and entering the office.
“Yes?”
“We’re short one Jet Ranger pilot, and I need you to substitute. Call Jackson Hole Helibase about the destination, but get moving. We just got the assignment.”
“Jerry, I’m up to my armpits in snakes right now.”
“Well, shove them aside and scramble your ass to the chopper, okay? Whatever’s going on can wait. If you’re a decent manager, your guys can take care of it anyway.”
“Jerry, you don’t understand. I’ve got an FAA inspector on the way—”
“DO IT, goddammit! Don’t argue with me when I give you an assignment!”
Trent sighed deeply and worked to control the white-hot flash of anger that ripped up his back and through his middle. The words “sanctimonious bastard” formed in his brain, but he denied them voice, instead turning and heading for his locker to retrieve his David Clark headset and make the call to Jackson.
So let the FAA ground his whole damned fleet! he thought.
“Oh, Trent?” Jerry added. “Take that new kid with you, okay?”
He turned, genuinely puzzled. “What new kid?”
“He’s over at Forest Operations on standby. Watson. Wallace, or something. He approached me to fly as copilot for free to prove himself. Take him along and see if he knows how to scratch his ass and whistle at the same time.”
Trent nodded with forced civility as he turned and resumed the trek across the hangar floor to the nearest phone.
Chapter 25
IN FLIGHT, LEAD FOUR-TWO, FIFTY-ONE MILES SOUTHEAST OF WEST YELLOWSTONE—SEVEN FIFTY-ONE A.M.
The profusion of ruddy colors undulating over the edge of the eastern horizon were much too beautiful to ignore, and Sam reached back to his flight bag, rummaging around for the tiny camera he always carried. He snapped off a few frames and stuffed the camera back in one of the many pockets of his fishing vest as the orange rays illuminated his face.
He looked down at the control head for the autopilot and smiled to himself at the luxury of letting the plane fly itself. He would get enough hands-on stick time later, but right now this was the best job in the world, being chauffeured around the sky by an obedient silicone brain while he took pictures and reflected profound thoughts on the status of Sam Littlefox.
It was true, he decided, the old saw about the wisdom of immediately getting back on a horse that had bucked you off. He needed to be here.
And he was lucky to be alive.
No, he corrected himself. I’m ecstatic to be alive!
There had been no time to lose in getting back in the air, and it had been surprisingly easy to do so. The takeoff from West Yellowstone some thirty minutes before had been his only rocky moment, his left hand shaking slightly on the yoke as his right advanced the throttles on the Beechcraft King Air’s powerful turboprop engines. It felt right and wonderful to blow down the runway and leave his apprehensions behind. But on the other hand, it was a shotgunned commitment, forced past the point of no return by a combination of airspeed, pride, and determination.
And in less then thirty seconds he had been airborne again and out of reasonable options save one: fly.
I am so very lucky! he thought, rolling the statement over in his mind again, pleased with the way it sounded and felt, and the inherent little prayer each repetition implied.
It had been no easy feat to become the lead-plane pilot on what he expected would be the most critical day yet of the Teton-Yellowstone fire siege. All the Barons were now permanently grounded, and even if there had been a plane to fly, the command structure expected him to sit it out for a few days after his harrowing brush with a collapsing wing.
But Sam Littlefox was not about to be grounded. True, his shoulders ached like hell from the harness, but otherwise he was sound. He would, he promised, go talk to the Critical Stress Debriefing Team later. After all, they were still busy interviewing those affected by the loss of Jeff Maze’s airtanker.
It had taken wading through endless, heartfelt hugs and handshakes at the helibase before he could locate and thank the people who’d produced the flatbed out of thin air. Once that was completed, he hunkered down to phone the dispatch center in Bozeman and beg his regional aviation officer in Ogden, Utah, to let
him get back in the game.
They wanted him to rest, but he was determined to fly and take care of the incident reports later, and even more so when he discovered they had located a turboprop King Air owned by the Bureau of Land Management and were bringing it in as an emergency lead-plane replacement.
“It’s on its way to West Yellow, even as we speak.”
“Well, that’s great! A King Air. I’m current and qualified on King Airs.”
“I didn’t know that. But if I let you fly it, Sammy, we have to treat this bird very gently.”
“I will. I promise.”
“The plane has a pretty good radio package aboard, but not what you’re used to, since they only use it to haul their poobahs around.”
“Put me on the schedule for the morning launch on the North Fork fire. I know you’re planning to make a massive stand there, and I need to be the pathfinder.”
Another sigh from Ogden had been followed with the words he wanted to hear. “You got it.”
A King Air! Sam thought. Cool. Two 550-horsepower jet-prop engines and a big cockpit and cabin. Of course, the radios would be a big problem, since there was no way to install the extra transmitters that had been built into the forward panel of the Baron. Instead, he would be forced to use separate walkie-talkies stuffed in his fishing vest with the portable microphones clipped to his collar, triggering the right one at the right moment to communicate with the firefighters on the ground and the command post.
Sam brought himself back from the memory and looked around the interior of the King Air’s cockpit. Fortunately it had a GPS navigation unit, and he checked the readout now, confirming his visual estimate. Ten miles remained to the targeted ridgeline, and it was time to get busy. He knew smokejumpers were already on the ground because he’d passed their empty Otter five minutes before as it headed back to West Yellowstone.
Sam toggled one of the handheld portable mikes on.
“Jones plus eight, this is Lead Four-Two. How copy?”
A surprisingly lovely female voice came back.
“Good morning, Four-Two! You are bringing us a thundershower of red slurry, I trust?”
“Yes, ma’am. I have a small fleet closing behind me right now. Any modification to the plan we briefed?”
“Negative. We’re working to reinforce line along the ridge. If your guys can start wetting down everything downslope north of us first, as planned, that will help. We’re popping a smoke canister to help with the wind, but I can tell you it’s about fifteen knots south to north right over the ridge and stiffening.”
The ridge was coming into view now in his windscreen, just to the left, and he could see the thin stream of smoke coming from the clearing and bending horizontally northward as the wind swept it down the opposite slope.
The first part, as he’d figured, would be fairly simple. But when the time came later in the morning to put the tankers on the windward side—the south side—it was going to be brutal, with eddies and updrafts and all sorts of turbulence making it very hard for the tankers to get the slurry on target. The plan would be to extend what they called the “black”—the backfired area from the squad’s scratch line—southward as far as possible to meet the main fire advancing from the south and up the ridge.
Sam calculated the turn point for his first dry run and banked the King Air around to the north and then to the west, throttling back as he dropped toward the altitude of the ridge, and then below it, displaced just to the north of the ridge as he descended to less than a hundred feet above the sparse clumps of trees. He flew laterally along the slope, the trees seemingly close enough to brush the left wing tip, holding the aircraft level against the downdrift effect of the air flowing over the ridge from the south. There were bumps and lurches to be sure—enough to drive an uninitiated passenger into an airsickness bag in a microsecond—but once it became apparent the King Air wasn’t interested in flipping over on its back, he felt himself relax and began to enjoy the ride.
“Back in the saddle, again!” he began to sing, his smile broadening once more.
The King Air, despite her generic name, was an elegant lady to fly. Stable as a rock and powerful, he’d loved skippering them around with executives in the back before joining the Forest Service, staying comfortably in the middle of the flight envelope and delivering airline-smooth flights. It was going to be interesting to fly a King Air again, especially down in the weeds like a fighter as a lead plane.
Sam reached the end of the run he would have the tankers follow and banked sharply right, away from the slope, throttling up and gaining altitude as he turned to go back for a second run.
The tankers were checking in one by one as they arrived from West Yellowstone. He issued holding instructions to the first two as he completed the second run and pulled up to a downwind once more. There was no sense in waiting. He had every intention of rewriting the record books on how much fire retardant could be applied in a given number of hours.
By the time we get through with these trees, he thought, luxuriating in the bravado, you won’t be able to ignite them with a blowtorch.
He checked his kneeboard notes. First up was Dave Barrett in one of the DC-6Bs, but he needed to alert the smokejumpers.
“Jones, Lead Four-Two, how copy?”
There was silence on the frequency, and he tried again twice, wondering if their radios had failed. He could see the members of the squad busily felling a few last trees, and preparing to do small test burns along the south side of the wider line. A drip torch would be next, as soon as they were ready to light the backfire.
Okay, set up my tankers first, he told himself.
“Okay, Tanker Forty-four, I’m off your left wing now, and if you and Tankers Eighty-eight and Ten are ready, let me brief you on what we need to do.”
NORTH FORK RIDGE DROP ZONE
Even with the walkie-talkie strapped to her belt, Karen could hear nothing above the cacophony of the chain saw next to her. But there had been a distant noise, like a handheld radio corking off far, far away in her conscious memory. She motioned for her companion to idle the saw for a few seconds and listened, but there was no break in squelch.
I must have imagined it. She glanced around and took a quick nose count of her squad in both directions.
Behind her to the east she could see the King Air rolling in with a tanker following, and she forced herself to resist the desire to watch them make the first pass. It was always surreal to stand on a ridge and look down on a huge airliner flying past below, but there was too much work ahead to play observer, and she throttled up the saw and started to place the blade against the trunk of a twisted, windblown pine when the subject of volume crossed her mind. She idled the saw again and reached for her radio’s volume control, embarrassed to find it was at the lowest possible setting.
She unclipped the microphone from her yellow fire-shirt pocket and boosted the volume to maximum before pressing the transmit button. “Aircraft over North Fork Ridge, this is Jones.”
“Yeah, that was me, Jones. Stand by, please. I’m briefing my tankers and we’ll be ready inside two minutes. You might want to start getting your squad farther to the south of the ridge for our first pass. We’re going to be right over the tree line bordering the north of your drop zone meadow. There are two sixes and a P-3 Orion.”
Karen acknowledged the call and kept the transmit button pushed.
“Attention, Dave. Please acknowledge.”
She could hear a chain saw dropping to idle behind and spotted Dave waving to her as he held his radio to his ear. She repeated the warning in the radio and watched him nod and begin to round up the four members of the squad on the east end of the ridge as she was doing the same on the west. It was both dangerous and messy to be caught in the cascade of heavy red fire-retardant, and she wanted to give it a wide berth.
A gust of wind blew at her from the southern slope, ruffling the adjacent trees and forcing her eyes closed against the dirt and ground-rock flour the
zephyr had puffed into the air. She rubbed her eyes clear and looked south, wondering if the forecasted increase in wind speed was already happening. The huge low that was now moving south over Idaho was expected to intensify, pulling even higher winds into its vortex.
The angry plume of smoke from the North Fork fire was inching closer, and she could see the beginnings of crowning behavior less than four miles from the base of the ridge.
IN FLIGHT, TANKER 88
Clark slowed the DC-6B to 185 knots in preparation for his first turn in the holding pattern as he watched Dave Barrett—Tanker 44—make his second turn in holding along the south flank of what they were calling North Fork Ridge. The smoke from the advancing fire was not yet thick enough to blot out good visibility over the ridge, and Sam was taking advantage of it by changing the plan.
It was good to hear Sam back in the air, and Clark thought how easily the previous day’s emergency could have gone the other way. When Sam showed up for the morning briefing and announced he was moving up in the world by flying a King Air, his determination had buoyed everyone.
The King Air could pull up and come around far faster than the lumbering bulk of a DC-6, so Sam at first had wanted to wheel around and lead Clark in next, then do the same thing with Tanker 10—Bill Deason. But something had inspired him to change the plan again.
“I’m going to work you guys one right after the other, in loose trail formation,” Sam explained. “I know it’s totally nonstandard, but this is an emergency pre-treating mission and I think conditions are clear enough. So, if no one objects, it’ll save a lot of time.”
The frequency remained silent.
“Okay, I’ll bring in the lead ship, which is Forty-four, and Tanker Eighty-eight will follow in trail, offset a bit to the right, with Tanker Ten behind him, offset again to the right. The object is a trail drop the entire length of the line they’ve flagged and constructed, as rapidly as possible.”
“And…you want us in trail, right?” Bill Deason asked.
Fire Flight Page 28
