by Nick Thacker
“Yes, Chad. I want you to ‘drag everything’ with you.” He looked at the rest of the class. “On the outside chance that anyone else missed all of the dozen or so times I said it yesterday, you will all bring all your gear with you every time we go into the field. Anyone who does not have a full kit with them on a training exercise will not train. Anyone who does not have a full kit with them on a real world fire will not deploy. Clear?”
The rest of the class responded in unison. “Clear!”
Chad looked around, addressing no one in particular. “I was just making sure, that’s all.”
Hannah raised an eyebrow at Ben, who smiled as he followed her outside to the waiting buses.
For the next two days, they alternated between first aid classes in the conference room, and loading onto the buses for trips into the hills outside of Boise. When they got to their training site, qualified fire crews would set fires, and the trainees would have to put them out, using a variety of methods and tools. It was hot, dirty work.
At one point, Ben was working with Hannah to put out a spot fire that had gotten into some manzanita bushes at the edge of a clearing. For the exercise, they were only given shovels, so they were both hurriedly digging up shovels full of dirt and throwing them at the base of the fire, but it was a losing battle. The fire quickly gathered momentum, spreading suddenly to engulf the entire section of brush, then leaping into the lowest branches of a thirty-foot ponderosa pine tree standing close by.
There was a throaty foomp as the flames leaped up, and the sudden heat felt like a wicked punch to the forehead. Ben involuntarily stepped back and stared up at the wall of flame towering over him.
Now what? He thought.
As if in answer, a sudden stream of water appeared from behind, accompanied by the growl of an industrial strength pump. Ben turned to see a green Forest Service tanker truck that had been standing by, a thick jet of water spraying from the onboard nozzle mounted on the back. Standing at the controls with a wide grin on his face was Terry, the Hotshot who had welcomed him to NIFC the first day.
Ben watched, slightly awed, as Terry knocked down the blaze with the water cannon. It took all of thirty seconds, and it was completely out.
“Now you know how fast a fire can change its character,” Terry said, hopping down off the back of the tanker. “You both had your heads down, so focused on throwing dirt that you didn’t even notice how close the fire had gotten to those branches, did you?”
Ben and Hannah exchanged a guilty look.
“Don’t let it get you down,” Terry said. “The whole point of this school is to get you thinking about how a fire can get away from you, and how to get in front of it before it does.”
“So what should we have done differently?” Hannah asked, leaning on her shovel.
Terry walked around to the far side of the manzanita, between it and the pine tree. “Well, the wind was pretty light, but it was blowing toward the higher growing fuel.” He jerked his thumb up at the charred pine branches. “If I was you, I would have gotten in front of it first, and worked on smothering the flames from this side of the bush. You guys had the right idea, but because the wind was behind you, it was pushing the fire into the untreated brush closer to the tree. If you’d have been on this side, you’d have smothered the fuel in the path of the fire, and if you’d worked fast enough, you would have got it out before it jumped to the tree.
“Now, if the wind was really blowing hard,” he said, “none of that would have made a difference. You would have been forced back in no time, and the fire would have jumped anyway - and then it would have been rolling toward you rather than away. A lot of your strategy has to depend on what the wind is doing, and how fast it’s doing it.”
“That was freaky,” Hannah said. “It felt like I was inside a jet engine when that tree went up.”
“Yeah,” Terry said. “Just wait ’til you’re on a real fire, and everything in sight is burning, not just one bush. Then you really have to think strategically, or you can get in a tight spot faster than you can imagine.”
Terry stopped talking and looked up as a Forest Service pickup pulled up next to the tanker. Carlos got out and walked over. His expression was grim.
“Terry, we need to get everybody back to NIFC for a briefing ASAP. Send all the trainees to the collection point to get back on the buses. I need you and your crew to mop things up here, and then get on back as fast as possible.”
“What’s up, boss?” Terry asked.
“Couple of things,” Carlos said. “Those thunderstorms up north last night started a bunch of fires, just like we expected, so we got a call for your crew to head out. Sooner you can get going, the better.”
“What’s the other thing?”
Carlos shook his head, looking at his feet. “Aviation safety stand-down. We’ll fill everybody in after you get back.” He locked eyes with Terry briefly, then turned and climbed back into his truck.
As he drove off, Ben couldn’t resist asking the question. “What’s an aviation safety stand-down?”
“It means they’re grounding all fire fighting aircraft, effective immediately.”
“How come?” Hannah asked, sensing the answer was something bad.
Terry rubbed his eyes. “Because somebody crashed.”
By the time they got back to NIFC, everyone on the bus was speculating about what might have happened to cause training to come to such an abrupt halt. Ben had a strange feeling of deja vu, remembering how his mom had come home and suddenly dropped the news of his father’s death on him. He got off the bus, walking toward the building like he was in a trance. Hannah noticed.
“You ok?” she asked, looking over at him as she matched his slow stride.
“I’m not sure,” he mumbled, avoiding eye contact.
Chad shouldered past them, edging through the doors with a backward glance. “What’s your problem, Chief? You look like your dog died.”
Ben felt his face go red. He had a sudden, intense urge to throat punch Chad.
“Don’t listen to him,” Hannah said. “He’s an idiot.”
“It’d be easier to not listen to him if he wasn’t constantly making noise.”
“He’s just jealous. Come on.” She put a hand on Ben’s arm and gently guided him to a pair of chairs in the back of the conference room as more people filed in. The place was already packed. Besides the usual group of students and instructors, there were people from the flight line, the cafeteria, and the cubicle farm down the hall. Carlos waited in a chair behind the podium for several minutes, then finally stood up and addressed the room.
“All right, everybody. I’m sure you’ve all figured out by now that this is going to be bad news. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to be blunt. This morning, MAFFS10 departed here on its way back down to Colorado Springs. Somewhere northwest of Twin Falls, the crew reported an engine fire. Air traffic control was working with them to try to get them to land in Twin Falls, but shortly after they reported the fire, they made one mayday call on the radio, then dropped off of the radar.” Carlos dropped his eyes and took a deep breath. “The aircraft crashed in the desert fifteen miles short of Twin Falls. There were no survivors.”
Ben felt like he’d been punched. MAFFS10 was the same aircraft he’d caught a ride to Boise on a couple of days earlier. He stared at the floor, his eyes unseeing. He hadn’t realized he was crying until Hannah reached over and gently wiped the single tear from his cheek. It smeared in the dirt and soot there from the day’s training exercise. Ben looked up at her, but words escaped him.
The room was hushed, as Carlos went on to explain that all Forest Service aviation activity related to fire fighting would stop for at least the next forty-eight hours, to allow flight crews to conduct safety inspections of all tanker aircraft. All MAFFS aircraft would also be standing down, but on a schedule dictated by the Air Force itself. Ben couldn’t help but think what an empty gesture that would be to the families of the men
he’d flown with on MAFFS10. Before he realized what he was doing, he was on his feet and heading out the door. He needed air.
Opening the double doors leading out to the main lawn in front of NIFC, Ben took several deep breaths. He felt like everything was spinning around him with an increasingly nauseating speed. He bent over and braced his hands on his knees, gasping for air like a landed fish.
“Ben?” Hannah had followed him outside. “You okay?” She stood next to him, one cautious hand on his back as he tried to get his breathing under control.
Ben fought back a wave of nausea. His mind was suddenly back in the woods at Glacier, reeling in the wake of the bear attack and the near panic of wondering what to do next; the crushing weight of responsibility that fell on him to save his dad as well as his brother, and his own certain knowledge that he wasn’t up to the task.
Taking the job with the Forest Service had given him an outlet, an escape of sorts from the familiarity of his life and the disappointment it had come to up to that point. Talking with Colonel Enright aboard MAFFS10 on the way to Boise had given him hope that he still had a future full of opportunities, in spite of failing his family in the very recent past. He’d dared to hope that he could move on, that he could make something of himself, and put the tragedy of that sunny afternoon in the mountains far behind him.
But somehow, tragedy had followed him here.
Ben staggered and sat down hard. His breath was still coming in gasps. Hannah knelt beside him, trying to comfort him but still feeling awkward in the sudden painful, forced intimacy of the moment, shared with someone she’d barely known only for a couple of days. Not knowing what to say, she just stayed next to him as he sobbed, her arm draped across his shoulder in a show of compassion.
Others were starting to file out of the building now, retreating in groups of two and three to their own duties, dealing with the grief by leaning on each other. Ben had his head in his hands, his elbows braced against his knees. The emptiness he felt was all-consuming, a flood of anguish and loss. Why, he wondered, did the loss of MAFFS10 and its crew impact him so profoundly? He barely knew them, yet over the course of the short flight, Enright and his crew had treated Ben as though he was someone of value. He’d been emptied of that feeling following the bear attack, yet those strangers had managed to make him feel as though he mattered again.
Now, with Enright and the others dead, Ben had the horrifying thought that his worth had somehow died with them. He hadn’t been in the clearing when the bear attacked, and he’d survived as a result. He hadn’t been on board MAFFS10 when it crashed, so he’d cheated death again, surviving two tragedies based only on random chance.
But maybe only physically.
Emotionally, he wasn’t so sure. Seeing those others snatched into the grave so suddenly, so randomly, while he stood so near and remained unscathed - some part of him felt that he didn’t deserve to still be among the living, when other people, much better people, were gone. He took another shuddering breath.
A shadow fell across him. Ben looked up slowly, only to find Chad staring down at him. He had a twisted sort of grin on his face.
“Not now, Chad,” Hannah warned.
He ignored her. “Looks like we dodged a bullet there, didn’t we, Chief?” he asked Ben. He leaned over slightly, playing up the dominant posture in the midst of Ben’s grief. “So what are you cryin’ about, tough guy? It’s not like those guys were your family. Count yourself lucky, I say. Blow your nose and start acting like a man. You lived, they didn’t. Sucks to be them.” He straightened up, the grin a bit wider now, and a look of challenge in his eyes.
“You’re such a jerk!” Hannah caught Chad off guard. He was expecting Ben to blow up, but the petite redhead came at him like she was going to tear his head off. “How can you be so callous?” she shouted, getting in Chad’s face as much as possible, despite the foot and a half height difference. “You’re always bragging, always running your mouth! You’re selfish, and you’re arrogant, and you have absolutely nothing that anybody wants! Why don’t you do everybody a favor, and go play in the freeway?”
Chad took a step back, then gathered himself and forced the smile back on his face. “Oh, I love a woman with spirit,” he said, giving Hannah a predatory look from head to toe. “Makes me feel alive, you know? Not like those poor saps on that plane -”
Ben’s first punch connected flat against Chad’s left ear with an audible pop. Chad staggered backward, but Ben had landed two more hard punches to his head and one to his ribs before he could get his hands up in defense. He backpedaled drunkenly a few steps, then Ben shot in low and tackled him, grabbing him around the hips and slamming him bodily on the grass. The air went out of Chad’s lungs with a squeak. He tried to get his hands up to protect his face, but Ben was all over him, slipping punches between and around his flailing arms, battering his face with each shot that got through.
Then Hannah was grabbing at him, trying to pull him off, but Ben was fixated, and kept trying to throw punches. Chad managed to grab his left arm for a moment, and when Ben jerked it back to free it, his elbow connected with Hannah’s cheekbone. She dropped to the ground next to the struggling pair, blood seeping from a cut on her face.
“Hey!” someone shouted. “HEY!! Knock it off!!”
Strong hands suddenly grabbed Ben and dragged him backward off of Chad’s chest. Ben continued to struggle for a moment, then reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled away. “Easy, buddy,” a familiar voice said in his ear. Ben looked up. Terry was barely exerting himself as he hauled Ben a few paces away. He stood Ben on his feet, loosely maintaining the half-nelson he had him in. “You good?”
“I’m good.”
“You’re not gonna go pull his arm off and beat him with it if I let you go?”
“No,” Ben said. “I’m good.”
“All right, then.” Terry released the hold.
Ben went over to where a woman was examining the cut on Hannah’s cheekbone. “Are you okay?”
Hannah stared daggers at him. “What’s the matter with you? I was taking your side, and you just go ahead and hit me, too?” She snatched away the bandage the woman was trying to place on her cheek, letting a trickle of blood run from the cut. “You’ve got anger issues, Ben.”
“Come on, Hannah, that was an accident…”
“I don’t care!” Hannah said. “If you can’t control your temper enough to avoid beating on someone who’s trying to help you, you’re no better than him!” She stabbed a finger in Chad’s direction. “Just stay away from me!” Hannah threw the bandage at his feet and stomped off across the street in the direction of the hotel.
Ben stood there in disbelief. Chad was dragging himself up off the ground a few feet away. “I’m gonna have you arrested, dude!” Chad said, a manic grin showing through the mess of blood around his mouth. “You have no idea who you’re messin’ with! I’m gonna sue you, man!”
Ben stared in the direction Hannah had gone. “Good luck with that,” he mumbled. “I’ve got nothing worth taking, anyway.”
“Terry!” Carlos was standing in the main entryway, his face a mixture of grief and fury. “Drag those two idiots to my office, now!”
“You heard the man,” Terry said, looking at Chad. “After you.”
“My pleasure,” Chad sneered. “I’m gonna enjoy watching you get fired, Chief.”
“Call me ‘Chief’ one more time,” Ben muttered, “and you’re gonna enjoy eating my fist again.”
“Knock it off,” Terry said, falling in behind Ben as he followed Chad inside. “This is already deep enough as it is.”
They made their way through the cubicle farm and past the operations center, to a small office at the far end of the building. Carlos was waiting for them, standing behind his desk with his hands thrust in his pockets. Where his face had shown rage a few moments before, now he just looked exhausted.
“Sit.”
“I want you to throw the book at this guy, Boss. He assa
ulted me, and…”
“I SAID, SIT!” Carlos suddenly barked.
Chad’s mouth hung open, but he sat. Ben followed suit, reluctantly taking the chair next to him in front of Carlos’ desk. Terry pulled the door closed behind him, then leaned against it.
“You two clowns have no respect at all, do you?”
Ben stared at him in disbelief. “Disrespect was the whole reason the fight started,” he said.
“That’s the first right thing you’ve said since we met,” Chad said. He turned back to Carlos. “He disrespected me. He attacked me for no reason.”
“Liar.”
“Both of you, shut up!” Carlos shook his head. “Neither of you understands just what happened today, do you? You both still think this is somehow about you, don’t you? Don’t you?!? Well, I can tell you, it’s not. Nobody cares about two small-time losers and their petty little pissing contest. There are three families right now who are grieving the loss of their husbands, sons and brothers, and you two are fighting in the middle of it, over what? A girl? An insult? Do either of you really imagine that anything so inconsequential makes any difference to anyone but you at this exact moment?”
Ben hung his head, but Chad wouldn’t let it go. “But didn’t you see what he did to me? He attacked me!”
Carlos leaned forward, placing his balled fists on the top of his desk. “I. Don’t. Care.” He glared down at Chad until the younger man looked away, suddenly fascinated by the pattern on the carpet beneath his feet.
Carlos straightened up and took a breath. “I should fire both of you right now, send you both down the road talkin’ to yourselves. The only reason I won’t, is that we’re too short-staffed already, and now we’ve got a major fire blowing up north of here. If I send you idiots home now, I run the risk of putting valuable people in harm’s way by stretching my crews thin to cover for you.
“So here’s what’s gonna happen. Bennett, you’re on Alpha crew, effective immediately. Get your gear together, check out of the hotel, and be out front of operations, ready to get on the bus an hour from now. Turner, you’re on Charlie crew. They’re waiting on some equipment, so you won’t pull out until tomorrow morning. You are to make yourself scarce until then. Tomorrow, you get up, you check out of the hotel, and come over here and get some food first thing. Then, be out front, ready to go by seven. And you’d better not even think about showing up late, or you will be very suddenly and permanently unemployed. Got it?”
