Wild Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  “What does ‘all the way in’ mean?” Ripley was having a hard time concentrating. Gordon’s hand was still holding hers against his shoulder. It was as if he was so focused on Henderson, he’d forgotten his hand on hers.

  “If—and it’s still a big if—what our owner expects to happen happens, Australia will only be the first stop. Should that occur, the NDA will come into effect. You will not be asked to do anything more dangerous than fighting fire, at least we hope.”

  “Which means?” Ripley prompted him again.

  “That non-disclosure agreement is no standard document. Anything you do or say will not be discussed except with other senior MHA personnel. Right now that includes all of our pilots other than you three, plus Denise. And I mean no one else. Not to judges, police, or in some dumb-ass old-age-reveal-all book like the ex-SEAL guys keep writing despite their oaths. No one. Nowhere. Ever. That’s all the information I have at the moment. Decide now.”

  Gordon barked out a laugh. “Couldn’t have told me that before you wrenched my arm out of my socket?”

  Henderson shrugged.

  “I’m in if Gordon is,” Vanessa said softly.

  Ripley looked around Gordon at her.

  “I trust him,” Vanessa read Ripley’s question and explained. “He is very smart about things like this.”

  “Well,” Brenna said. “I’m in either way. Been dying to find out what kind of shit Denise has been getting into. Just about my best friend and she doesn’t say squat about how she and Vern hooked up. Nothing on where they were last winter or those two weeks this spring either…though I know it was nasty. I saw the inventory list of parts replaced on Firehawk Oh-one and it was a damned long list. I’m so in.”

  Mark’s expression would have quelled any lesser woman.

  Gordon looked at Ripley with those bright blue eyes, and she enjoyed the moment as he squeezed her fingers just a little, then finally let go. Brenna and Vanessa were still holding onto each other as if they too were suspended in the moment. Freeze the action stage left. Now the action starts center stage.

  Ripley could see that Gordon had made his decision but wasn’t going to speak until she’d made hers.

  “Why me?” She turned to Mark and decided that it was a question she’d also have to ask Gordon at the first opportunity on a very different topic.

  “Impeccable record both firefighting and Navy. Discreet to a fault. Has a team that is equally highly recommended.” He rattled them off in fast order rather than making it up as he went along.

  “It wasn’t by chance that you contracted me and the Diana Prince while Brad and Janet were on the same rotation I was.”

  Mark didn’t bother nodding, which told her that answer clearly enough.

  “You need the Aircrane.”

  That earned her an indifferent shrug.

  Only partly? That meant he’d recruited…her. That made it a very different question. She was being asked to take a blind risk by someone who clearly knew a great deal about her. Had they investigated her parents as well? Not that it would tell them much. As much as she loved her folks, she’d never fit in with the pair of quiet academics living in eastern Oklahoma. They were to be found in the library; she was usually out in the neighbor’s barn learning how to ride a horse or drive a tractor.

  In the Navy, she’d still been the outsider. The Navy was the most gender-integrated branch of the service, all of twenty percent women. She’d also been the very first woman to be combat-rated in the Seahawk, and pilot gender ratios were still massively male. The Navy might have rules, but it didn’t mean that the old boys’ club didn’t totally suck.

  By the time she’d been bilked out of having a wedding and started flying for Erickson, she knew how to be an outsider. Shut up and fly. It’s what she did. Now she was being asked to fly blind.

  “You’re asking a hell of a lot, Henderson.”

  His nod solidly confirmed her assessment.

  “Blind faith after two days flying.”

  “Not quite the way I’d planned it, but the Southern Hemisphere timeline has moved up.” He crossed his arms and waited.

  She didn’t know Mark. There was no questioning his integrity or reputation, but still, she didn’t know him.

  She’d also seen something that even Henderson hadn’t. He was pushing Gordon, specifically testing him for some reason. Henderson might have been surprised, but Gordon had struck out at just about the moment that she’d expected him to.

  Maybe she knew Gordon a little better than she thought she did.

  Vanessa clearly knew him very well and worshipped him, trusting him to make the decision for her—that he would protect her against all comers. And she knew the man a bit as well. The one who had kissed Ripley, bragged about how she was “serious eye candy,” and then been horrified to see that she’d overheard. No, horrified perhaps that he’d even said it in the first place. She reminded herself that she had a lot of questions to ask Mr. Gordon Finchley. But there was one question she didn’t need to ask.

  She looked at Henderson and pulled her own shades down out of her hair until they shielded her eyes once again—they weren’t mirrored, but they’d have to do.

  Then, without saying a word, she nodded.

  Chapter Six

  The fast hour for lunch at The Doghouse washad been mostly quiet as MHA’s crew still processed the loss at their base. Ripley had some of her own thinking to do as well…like what the hell was MHA up to? Not that her prime rib dip sandwich had offered any answers.

  Then it had been back to Jernstedt and a half-hour flight to Portland International Airport.

  A pair of Antonov An-124s had landed at about the same time they did, and for the last few hours the entire MHA helicopter and maintenance crew had been left to mill around while their helicopters and equipment were loaded. Apparently the smokies and other support staff were not included in whatever was coming. Which said even more that this wasn’t just firefighting.

  “Damn, but those are big planes.” Ripley didn’t need to turn to see who said it—they all had said it many times as late afternoon shifted to evening. The work lights were kicked on inside the planes as darkness fell, making them seem even larger.

  The Ukrainian cargo jets hulked in a remote corner of Portland Airport. They completely dominated a 747 that was parked nearby. They were the largest model of cargo jets built except for the single enlarged version of the An-225.

  When the fire season in Australia went suddenly out of control, Erickson would hire an Antonov An-124 to deliver two Aircranes Down Under in just twenty-four hours, rather than waiting for the far cheaper trip by freighter. She’d flown one of them last year going to Australia, then come back by passenger jet and had to wait a month for her helicopter to make it home by boat. Two Antonovs together was something she’d never seen before.

  They were so big that it didn’t take much to put her Aircrane aboard. Remove the main and rear rotor blades. Remove the tall wheels and shocks to lower it onto a small hydraulic carriage. Then it simply rolled aboard.

  The Antonovs looked terribly Russian. Side by side they appeared to glower at her. Their massive nose cones were pivoted high in the air so it looked like they were devouring serpents ready to swallow her helicopter and then her. Clearly she’d seen the Alien movie and its sequels too many times growing up. Her parents, two closet science fiction buffs, had met in the line for that movie. Apparently she’d been conceived hours before they went to the sequel’s opening night, perhaps germinating the embryo during the film itself. The Ripley moniker had been inevitable.

  Ripley never actually minded that. There were worse fates than being named for an action heroine and constantly being told she could do anything. Going military hadn’t been what they had in mind, but they had let her go with a mixture of tears, fears, and cheers.

  Still, the two Antonovs were alarmingly reminiscent of the sharp maw of the monster in Alien and she felt as if she were indeed about to be swallowed.

/>   To fit Firehawk Oh-three and Vanessa’s MD 530 inside along with Diana Prince, all they had to do was fold the main rotors and drain the fuel. The cargo bay was simply that big. The other Antonov swallowed the other two Firehawks, the 212, and the two service pods without so much as a squeeze. They loaded up a launch trailer that was too small to even be a factor in the monstrous cargo bay. But it was big enough to…

  That finally gave her pause. She grabbed Gordon’s sleeve the next time he walked by. There was little enough for them to do while the loadmasters made sure that everything was placed exactly where they wanted it and chained down.

  “I recognize that trailer. That belongs to a ScanEagle drone.”

  “Sure. Steve flies it for us,” Gordon nodded toward a spare airplane tire lying on its side in the shadow of the hangar. They moved over and sat on it, which left their feet dangling above the pavement.

  She felt like a little girl again, beating her heels on the hard rubber.

  “The drone is incredibly useful on a fire,” Gordon explained. “Steve sends us direct feeds of the fire in both visible and infrared light. It’s great. Have him make sure that you’re set up for it.”

  “How many civilian outfits have a million-dollar military drone to fight fire?”

  “Actually, he has a couple of them.”

  “Gordon.”

  “What?”

  “Are you being dense on purpose?”

  “Am I…what?”

  Ripley wished they weren’t sitting in deep shadow so that she could see him more clearly.

  “About what?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Kissing you the last time we were together in the dark.” She’d swear that his voice dropped most of an octave as if he was trying to be smoothly sexy like some Eurotrash jetsetter.

  “I get why Mickey told you to just be yourself.”

  “Why doesn’t that sound good?” Gordon spoke in his normal voice.

  “You’re a nice guy, Gordon. Just go with that.”

  “Does it get me another kiss?”

  “Put that thought on hold.” Ripley wasn’t sure if she was ready for another one of those from him. “At least until you explain that drone.”

  “What’s to expla…” Gordon trailed to a stop. “Oh.”

  “Henderson said that whatever this other thing is, it wasn’t fighting fire. Add a military-grade drone and what do you have?”

  Gordon was silent a long time before he whispered, “Damned if I know.”

  Vern came out of the hangar munching on a sandwich and Gordon called him over.

  “Buddy. tell me about the kind of shit you guys got into this spring.”

  Vern, still in the wash of the hangar’s light, froze. “You guys talk to Henderson yet?” He said it in a whisper. Ripley didn’t know whether to shiver or laugh.

  “For all the good it did us. He was all mysterious.”

  Vern nodded. “That’s how it starts. Just pray to hell that it stays that way.” Then he was gone as if the Alien monster was after him now too.

  Gordon was silent as he stared after his rapidly departing friend.

  “Well, that certainly cleared up everything,” Ripley finally broke in on his silence before the pressure inside her could build to a scary point.

  “Clear as mud,” Gordon agreed.

  Ripley sighed. She should have kept her mouth shut and gone for the kiss.

  Gordon figured that the right solution was maybe to do what he’d done last night. To hell with being decent and considerate. To hell with the consequences. Just grab Ripley and—

  Vanessa rushed by, then stumbled to a halt when she spotted him and Ripley sitting on the tire. She looked even more flustered than he felt.

  “I—” it came out as more of a croak than a word. Then she rushed off into the darkness.

  “Vanessa?” he twisted around and called after her.

  As far as he could see, she kept right on going.

  He jumped off the tire and pointed at Ripley, “You just remember where we were,” as if they’d been interrupted in the middle of foreplay.

  If he stopped to try and explain his way out of that one, he’d lose track of Vanessa in the dark. He cursed to himself and raced after her. Thankfully she’d stumbled to a halt just fifty yards further on at a perimeter fence around the back of the hangar.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” He managed to find her arm and rest a hand on it. She spun into him and held on more tightly than even after he’d survived the crash and gotten the shakes. The only other time the shakes had happened was the day that he’d permanently burned his bridges with his family and walked away. He’d been alone for that one. If she was feeling that awful, then what in the hell could he possibly do for her?

  “Kiss me.”

  “What?” Certainly not an option he’d expected. “We talked about this. We agreed there was nothing there.”

  “Just stop with the talking and kiss me.”

  He thought of Ripley and the kiss he’d been hoping for, when Vanessa locked her arms around his neck and pulled him into a kiss. A deep, tongue-twisting, electrifying one with full-on body contact. It reminded him of every moment of making love to her. And of all the fantasies that had come before that and, sadly, not been fulfilled in feeling even if they had been physically.

  As wild as the kiss was…there was still nothing there for her. He could tell, he’d been kissed by eager women before. Perhaps not as thoroughly, but this kiss faded away strangely and far too fast for how it had started.

  He also had the feeling that he was kissing the wrong woman, but he caught up with that thought less quickly than she did. Being kissed by a gorgeous woman that he liked so much wasn’t exactly helping his thinking.

  She eased back a half breath and then rested her forehead against his and began cursing softly in Italian. At least he assumed they were curses: beautiful in sound, harsh with an edge of desperation.

  “What’s going on, V.?” Something he’d called her at only the most intimate moments.

  She kept cursing, but she didn’t let go.

  “Vanessa?”

  “I am having thoughts. They are not thoughts that I know what to do with, Gordon.”

  Speaking of clear as mud. “Care to give me hint?”

  There was a long silence before she shook her head no.

  “Am I supposed to guess?”

  Again the pause and the head shake.

  “You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

  She nodded. A couple of times. Then stood up, brushed her lips briefly across his, and walked back toward the planes. He followed more slowly, but still didn’t know what to think by the time he’d returned to Ripley’s side.

  “Is she okay?” Ripley asked him in barely a whisper when he stopped close by. Together they watched Vanessa hesitate for a long time before going into the hangar and coming back out with a sandwich, but she didn’t it eat. It looked as if she was trying very hard to pretend everything was normal, but Gordon still didn’t know what had upset her so much.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.” He scratched his head, but that didn’t help anything.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t think she knows either,” he tried scratching his head with his other hand, but that just felt awkward.

  “What did she say?”

  “Not much. She just sort of kissed the crap out of me, then went on her way.” He supposed he shouldn’t be revealing that. Whatever was going on was Vanessa’s business and he probably shouldn’t be sharing it around.

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  Ripley wondered if there could be a more frustrating man.

  Yes, was the answer. There had been at least one and she’d been engaged to him—an event she didn’t plan on repeating anytime soon, like ever. Ellen Ripley never fell in love in any of the installments in the Alien movie series and that worked fine for Ripley Vaughan.

&
nbsp; “Gordon.”

  “Uh huh?” He simply stood there, half in and half out of the light shining from the hangar, like a conflicted Hamlet not knowing which way to turn.

  “She kissed the crap out of you, and…?”

  “Oh, she began cursing in Italian.”

  Ripley had rather thought that she was the one who was supposed to be kissing Gordon, but that possibility was getting further away instead of closer.

  “It was like…” he paused while a jet roared down the runway. They were far enough away that it didn’t really interrupt a conversation, but it seemed to distract him.

  “It was like what?” Ripley couldn’t help herself. It seemed much more voyeuristic than her norm, but she asked anyway.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. Only child. You?”

  “Couple big brothers, running the ranch now, as much as Dad will let them. And a sister just a year ahead of me. Vanessa tried, really put her heart and body into that kiss.”

  Ripley hated her.

  “And it was kind of like I figure kissing Mary would be. Just…off. Wrong.” He sat back down on the tire beside her. “Something is really bothering her.”

  Maybe Ripley didn’t hate her so much. What would an all-out kiss with Gordon be like? She’d actually had a preview of that last night, however brief.

  And she’d bet that he had an amazing gentle side.

  She slid off the plane tire. She thought she’d find some common sense when her feet hit the ground. It was supposed to work that way in metaphors. Since it didn’t, she turned to face him. Ripley rested a hand on either of his thighs and leaned in.

  “Let’s see what this does for you,” and she brushed her lips against his.

  Heat didn’t scorch through her and make her pulse pound so hard that it had driven all words from her body like last night. Instead, it was soft, gentle, luscious.

  He rested his hands on her hips, but used his grip only to keep them both in place as the kiss heated and deepened. It might still be summer, but it was the warm kiss to keep her company on a cold winter’s night.