Brad nodded but didn’t laugh.
There was a stunned-puppy silence on the radio as well and she supposed that it was hard to blame the MHA pilots. Their home had just been erased…actually, pretty much everything was still on fire, but there was no question about there being anything left when this was done. She’d witnessed homes going up, and once a whole section of a town. But a firebase was personal. It was supposed to be her firebase; not anymore. It was only chance that she’d been too distracted by Gordon’s kiss last night to unpack her gear and had been able to recover everything in the few seconds they’d had. All she’d lost was a sneaker that had escaped under the bunk as she pulled on her flight boots. Ducking to grab it would have taken an extra few seconds she wasn’t willing to risk. Until she hit a store, she had boots and sandals only.
These people had lost everything. A wildland firefighter lived a gypsy life, traveling wherever the fire burned. Seniority only made matters worse, because that qualified you for the off-season southern hemisphere work.
Though, as she wasn’t tied to anyone or anything, Ripley didn’t much care as long as she was flying. She liked flying with Brad and Janet, but crew rotations didn’t place the three of them together all that often. It was usually just whoever she was paired up with that month that created some form of temporary social circle.
The various helos had come to a stop wherever they were—different altitudes, different distances from the camp. Their neat lines of practiced precision were shattered.
She gave it another thirty seconds. Still nothing from the ICA.
“Well,” she keyed the mic. “That’s certainly a hell of a greeting you gave us. Anything west of here that we don’t want burned up?” The fire was still on the move.
That finally evoked a response. Gordon’s Firehawk Oh-three made a slow one-eighty twist. A few of the other helos eventually did the same as the fire began rebuilding in the trees to the west of the airfield.
“In a couple of miles,” Gordon said in little more than a mumble. “Historic lodge, a lot of tourists, only one road out. On the slopes above the lodge sits the only year-round ski area in the country. If the fire climbs high enough, we won’t have much of a ski team at the next Olympics.”
She appreciated the gallows humor. But another bout of dead air followed.
No response from the ICA. Mark Henderson hadn’t struck her as a person prone to being surprised by much of anything.
“Merda!” Vanessa called in that lovely Italian accent of hers. “I think my secret stash of chocolate and graham crackers has now been baked. And the marshmallows, they will be all together melted.”
Ripley decided that maybe she could get to like the woman despite herself.
There was still nothing from the ICA.
Gordon looked over at Vern, who wasn’t enough out of shock to notice anything peculiar.
Emily wasn’t speaking either.
He spotted her. She was in Mickey’s 212, hovering nearby. He saw Mickey say something, but Emily held up a finger to silence him. She was waiting for something.
For twenty seconds, silence reigned despite Ripley’s and Vanessa’s attempt at levity.
Finally, Gordon couldn’t stand it anymore and keyed his mic, “This is Firehawk Oh-three. Re-tank White River and Mineral Creek. Follow my lead. We’re going to need a good set line well before Route 35. Before Mineral Creek too. National Forest road NF-48 should be our cutoff. We have a fire to fight. Let’s go!”
Gordon could just see Emily nod to herself—could feel her now watching him. He shoved the cyclic forward and racked up on the collective to gain some speed. The massive power of the Firehawk sent him shooting away from the disaster of their base.
In moments, Mark’s strange silence ended as he began rattling out the exact set line for the smokejumpers who were still on their planes circling aloft. He acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Gordon thought about that a bit as the others lined up behind him. It had been as if…
“A test,” his voice came out as little better than a croak. That was when he became aware of the burning in his eyes, and it wasn’t from fire smoke.
He turned to Vern.
“We just lost our goddamn home, and Mark and Emily are using it as a test?” His voice kept rising until it echoed about the Firehawk’s cabin.
He tried to control it.
He really tried. No one yelled at Emily Beale, ever. Not if they wanted to remain among the living. The only thing that kept him from blistering the airwaves at her was Mark’s continuing stream of instructions.
Vern blinked at him in surprise. “I guess so,” he wiped at his face. “I almost lost my wife. Kind of puts everything else in perspective.”
“You’re right. We didn’t lose any people. But we sure as hell lost everything else.” There wasn’t a person in the entire team who hadn’t just lost a vehicle, possessions, photo albums…everything. The small personal gear bag in the back of the helo now constituted his worldly possessions. There was no secret stash at a friend’s and definitely not at his parents’ place—he’d left with the clothes on his back, his meager savings, and his pilot’s license stuffed in his pocket. Whatever instinct had caused him to grab his laptop this morning was all that had saved his address book, some photos, and his collection of science fiction movies.
Vern slowly came back to life. He switched his own display to engine readouts, leaving Gordon as the pilot-in-command.
“In the Coast Guard,” Vern’s voice was finally steady, “we constantly trained to remain focused during high-stress situations. I could have done it, but I’m damn glad you were here to do it for me so that I didn’t have to reach that deep. Maybe Emily wanted to teach the civilian pilots that lesson.”
“This isn’t the goddamn military, Vern!”
Vern didn’t lash back, which made Gordon feel completely awful. He’d had to watch his wife and unborn child almost die. Another twenty seconds and nothing could have saved them—not even their Firehawk.
“Beale to Firehawk Oh-three.”
“Go ahead!” It came out as a vicious snarl, a sound he barely recognized in his own voice.
“Pilot, are you safe to fly?”
He looked at the radio, out at Mickey’s helicopter close alongside, and back to the radio. Then he looked over at Vern.
“How the hell does she know I’m so fucking pissed at her?”
“Got me, buddy. She’s spooky. Always has been.”
“Pilot,” she’d said. Not “Gordon.”
“Self assess,” she’d meant.
Hurt. Angry. Feeling stupid about six ways to Christmas.
But there was a fire and it was still on the move. There were people who’d be in a lot of trouble very soon if MHA didn’t perform.
Emily would take him off the controls—maybe kick his ass out of MHA if he relinquished them. But that wasn’t why she and Mark had selected him to fly copilot in one of MHA’s primary aircraft. He was the pilot-in-command, at the moment, of twenty million dollars of premier wildland firefighting equipment.
“I’m fine!” It still came out as a snarl, but it was true. He scanned the instrument panel for the first time in far too long; everything was nominal…and the pilot was getting there. “I’m fine.” It came out a little closer to rational.
“Good.” That’s all she said, then she was gone. Spooky didn’t begin to explain Emily Beale.
The line of flight was ragged as they all hunted for places to tank up over the wandering creeks. He found a spot he’d used with his MD on a local arson fire a few years back. It was big enough for the Firehawk, so he headed down.
He could see the Diana Prince hovering uncertainly. There were a lot of trees and three separate creeks in the broad valley just south of Route 35. A lot to choose from, and most of it bad. But if you knew where to go…
“Wonder Woman,” it felt strange calling her that—too impersonal. He took a deep breath to calm his voice f
urther. “Ripley,” which somehow felt too personal, “this is Oh-three. There should be a big enough opening for you about five hundred yards south-southeast of my position.”
She slid that way, then doubled-clicked an acknowledgement and descended out of sight behind the scattered trees between them. When she climbed back aloft, the twenty-foot long hose of the pond snorkel suction pump dangled below the Aircrane like a loose wire. He supposed she’d have to leave it down until the next time she landed. Just as well; there were no lakes this high on the side of Mount Hood for her fancy sea snorkel.
When Gordon saw how fast the fire was moving toward the firebreak, he suggested that Vanessa could be better off helping the smokejumpers than chasing spot fires. She soon had a longline with a grabber rigged off her cargo hook—a standard logger rig for when the fires weren’t keeping MHA busy. As the smokies dropped trees, she’d lower the line. Twin pincers would snap around a section of tree that the smokies had chainsawed into one-ton pieces so that the MD could carry it. Vanessa would lift the tree away from the fire line, give it a quick swing to the other side of the firebreak, and then trigger the release midair, heaving it deep into the woods on the other side. It sped up the work on the firebreak by a huge factor while Mickey chased most of the spot fires.
It didn’t take long to kill the fire—at least not as fires went. It had flared hot, but hadn’t had time to grow past five hundred acres before the full, coordinated might of MHA descended on it. They’d killed it long before it reach a thousand. A fire this size would normally have a couple of ground teams and a helo or three assigned to it, and could be killed in a couple of days.
With twenty smokejumpers and six helos, it took less than eight hours before the fire just laid down and died. Denise had set up a refueling and service helispot in the Timberline Lodge’s parking lot and—after Vern hugged, then yelled at her—was letting Brenna and Janet do most of the servicing. All of the lodge’s high-paying patrons had set up chairs to watch the show while the bar provided outdoor food and drink service. The lodge had also shoved breakfast into the pilots whenever they were down for refueling.
They had the beast contained before the first standard ground crews arrived. With the smokies on the fire, they didn’t even need an interagency hotshot crew. In a few hours, they’d be able to pull out as well. Then a standard Type 3 wildfire team and a couple of engines could mop it up and make sure it stayed dead.
Soon, with no specific call, all of the helos were hovering once more above the devastation that had been MHA’s base.
Nothing had survived.
Not one building, not a single vehicle.
There wasn’t even a question of going down and looking for any personal belongings among the char—the propane tank for the hot water system had erased the bunkhouse. What the forest fire hadn’t taken out, the propane and vehicle gas tank explosions had.
The Black, as the area behind a wildfire was called, covered a narrow swath: barely wider than the runway was long and just over two miles from start to finish. Under a thousand acres, it wouldn’t even be a blip in the fire season that was projected to reach sixty thousand fires and seven million acres burned. In 2015, fire had eaten over ten million acres.
But this hundred acres was their home.
“It’s like the fire got tired of us beating it down and came right after us,” Gordon mumbled as much to himself as to Vern.
Vern nodded.
Gordon thought of his years spent here. The women. The good friends. The good times. He looked for the two white coffee mugs on the radio tower’s railing, but they were gone despite the charred timbers of the tower still remaining upright. How different might this morning have been if not for the fire?
He sighed and twisted the helicopter to look at the untouched wilderness around Timberline Lodge. They’d killed it, but the cost had been so high.
What he wanted right now was a hot shower and one of Betsy’s burgers with all the fixings. What he was going to get right now was squat. He didn’t even want to land here.
“Flight, this is Henderson. Reassemble at Ken Jernstedt Airfield, two-five miles north at town of Hood River.”
That gave Gordon an idea.
“Vern,” he said over the intercom, “Take control.”
“Roger, have control.” Vern had left him to fly the entire fire. Instead of taking back command once he’d shaken off the terror, he had taught Gordon how to get the most out of the Firehawk. It had been something to distract them both from all that had happened beyond the windscreen…until now.
Gordon pulled out his cell phone. One advantage to a helicopter: even over the wilderness, the extra altitude was typically enough to reach a cell tower. Two bars, good enough.
He made a quick call.
Vern simply nodded his head, which felt good, as if at least something was returning to normal.
Chapter Five
Ripley followed Gordon into Jernstedt Airfield. She’d done that a lot during the firefight, following Firehawk Oh-three.
Robin and Jeannie flew just a little wild for her taste and the lower maneuverability of her big Aircrane. Ex-military stood out all over the way Robin carved turns, and Jeannie in Oh-two looked more like she was dancing across the sky than anything else. When they descended, it wasn’t some calm lowering of altitude—they were all steep dive and hard pull-out. Gordon, on the other hand, flew with a smooth steadiness of action that might be a percent or two less efficient, but it was far easier on the aircraft and the pilot.
She liked that about him. Rather than trying to match the others, he remained himself. After the first hour she could pick him out miles away just by how he moved across the sky.
Henderson had picked up on it quickly enough and had paired them together for attack patterns against the fire. The fire had reached close enough to the creek that her slower flying speed back and forth to the fire was less critical. Even the slower pond snorkel still picked up two thousand gallons as fast as the Firehawk could pick up the seven hundred that it could manage at this altitude.
Jernstedt Airfield had a single east-west paved surface with no control tower, just the standard, open Unicom frequency—announce yourself and pay attention. There were twenty-odd private planes at tie-downs and a half-dozen lines of hangars: one cluster to the south at midfield, and another to the northwest corner where Henderson directed them. The area all around was cultivated fields and fruit orchards. No towering Douglas firs blocking sightlines like around MHA…like had been around MHA.
Word must have spread about the destruction of Mount Hood Aviation’s base and apparently that was important to the locals.
The airport hands had cleared a whole section of the northwest parking area for their helos. Before she was even shut down, mechanics had the helos tied down, and local fuel trucks were hitting the birds. As she stepped out onto the runway, another local tossed her a water bottle, a cold one thank god, that she pressed against her forehead and cheeks. No matter how they’d twisted and turned through the firefight, she seemed to only have two positions: facing full-on into the sun and facing straight into the heat blast of the fire. If her skin was as light as Gordon’s, she would be bright pink at the moment.
Jernstedt was just like a hundred other airfields. The sun re-radiating off the vast spread of sun-bleached asphalt. The whiff of av-gas, bright and biting on the hot air. Thankfully, the air was dry—not New Mexico desert, but comfortable.
The two MHA mechanics were waiting. Denise had a service cart and wore a tool belt, low on her hips to accommodate her pregnancy. Brenna had her shoulder-length black hair back in a ponytail, her similar tool-laden attire made her look like some fierce Asian warrior of old.
Ripley wondered if there even would be a crew after today’s loss.
One of the pilots who she’d barely met rushed over from his Firehawk, Vern from Oh-Three. He towered at least a foot over Denise and wrapped her into a hard hug. They simply clung to each other. Other similar scene
s were playing out around the airfield.
Oddly, Gordon and Vanessa were not among them. They sought each other out, but their hug was brief. It wasn’t cold, but it was quick. If anything was the final proof that they weren’t a couple, Ripley supposed that was it. They were just steadying each other was all.
Hell, Ripley herself was feeling off-balance from witnessing the destruction and it wasn’t even her base.
Brenna came striding over. “Hi, I think they’re going to be a while. Vern is a worrier. Janet,” she put a hand on Brad’s arm as he searched the crowd, “is at the gas station with her service truck, but should be here any minute.”
Brad thanked her and climbed back into the cockpit.
Vern wasn’t showing any sign of releasing his wife—she was the one patting him consolingly on the back.
“Anything immediate or should I leave it for Janet?”
Ripley decided that her first greeting had been a little abrupt yesterday, telling Brenna to keep her hands off Diana Prince. “Nothing to report. You can go ahead if you’re ready to.”
“I heard that,” Brenna said cheerfully.
“What?”
“You’re nice, but I could still hear, ‘Don’t touch my precious Aircrane until Janet is here to watch you.’ Am I right?” Her smile was bright.
Ripley shrugged, “Caught. Sorry.”
“No worries. Don’t you just love that phrase. No worries. I picked that up from Jeannie. It’s an Australian saying that covers a whole lot of issues. I like it. Really, no offense taken. I’ll wait for your crew chief.” Brenna headed over to Vern and Denise, poked Vern in the ribs sharply enough to make him let go of his wife. Then she and Denise began working their way down the line of helicopters.
Wild Fire Page 9
