Wild Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  “You better or I’ll tell everyone what a welcher you are.”

  “Well, I never,” he sounded indignant rather than Gilbert and Sullivan-esque. She really needed to take him to a show of H.M.S. Pinafore. She’d let it slide for the moment and give him an A for effort.

  Though she was looking forward to the way Gordon might be making things up to her. Even better than teasing two men at once. But the thought of them hot and sweaty in bed together looped back to calling him “lover” and that was seriously freaking her out. Who the hell was this Ripley Vaughan person who would have a lover?

  “A military question?”

  “Man oh man, talk about a mood killer.” Ripley was, however, thrilled with the subject change, but she had to get Brad back for his silence. “What do you think, Brad, should I even listen to him?”

  “Please leave me out of this,” he sounded like he was begging in earnest like the bad baronet in Ruddigore.

  “I bet you’re taking notes to tell Janet later.”

  “Sure,” Brad cheered up. “It’s just gonna kill her that she wasn’t here for this.”

  “Hear that, Gordon? I think we should go back to the subject of our sex life.”

  “I’d love to, honey, when I’m in a position to do something about it.”

  Honey? Gads! Could she like being called that? What was wrong with her?

  “If you were conducting an active fire campaign against someone, or a military campaign, would you just leave your booby traps? Or would you be monitoring to make sure that everything was running on track?”

  “Absolutely stay, if there was a risk to civilians—”

  “What if you didn’t care about the civilians?”

  That question sent a chill up her spine as she dumped the last spot fire’s worth of water out of her tank and turned back for the river.

  “I’d…” she swallowed hard, remembering her training. Major, critical US military operations were frequently aborted on the mere possibility of harming a civilian. “I’d… The US military would absolutely have a forward observer there. A forest fire can’t ignite thermite by itself and—”

  “Why not?”

  “It isn’t hot enough.”

  “A wildfire isn’t hot enough to burn thermite?”

  “Not really. That’s why they use the magnesium ribbon. A cigarette lighter can ignite magnesium, which burns around three thousand degrees. That in turn is hot enough to start the thermite reaction.”

  Gordon was silent at that. Long enough for her to reload her tank along the river. Her trip from river to fire had been growing shorter throughout the day.

  “Anyway. What I was saying is that an in-place observer could shut down thermite booby traps by just pulling the magnesium wicks.”

  “Or set up another one.”

  “Right. Easy-peasy.”

  “We can’t fight the eastern fire. We need to let it burn convincingly.”

  Now that Ripley knew where the conversation was going, her mood did evaporate like a water dump made too high above a hot fire. They could turn it aside if they shifted all of their forces to the eastern side…but they couldn’t let the bad guys know they were onto them.

  “Tham Chau,” Gordon called on the open firefighter frequency.

  “I am here, Gordon.”

  Ripley wondered that Gordon didn’t simply swoon at the sound. Despite her job, she was so delicate and feminine with no issues like herself. Holy crap! Jealous? She was being jealous? It was a miracle that her hands stayed steady on the controls.

  “We will keep narrowing the fire from the west,” Gordon transmitted calmly as if Ripley’s own world wasn’t shattering into a thousand pieces in this moment. “But I want to start a team, whatever few you can spare, far ahead of the fire on the eastern leg. Send a team close beside the main caves to start cutting a new line. We can’t control this fire, but maybe we can salvage something if we’re lucky.”

  “But you said—”

  Ripley thumbed her mike transmit and held it down. The doubled transmission would cause nothing but a high squeal of interference to anyone listening. Gordon must have told Tham Chau something on the encrypted radio that she was about to repeat over clear air.

  After ten seconds, Ripley let off the transmit key, ready to slam the key back down if Tham Chau was still transmitting.

  She wasn’t. Then their liaison started again.

  “I understand,” Tham Chau’s voice was now softly sad like a fallen leaf. “We must salvage what we can.”

  “I’m glad you understand,” Gordon transmitted back.

  The silence in the helicopter was a solid wall through her entire next drop and re-tanking.

  “Ripley,” Gordon’s voice was low and angry by the time she was once more back to the west side of the fire. “You kill this fucking fire. You hear me? Kill it dead.”

  “All by my lonesome?” She did her best to make it light. “Or is it okay if the others help me, too?”

  It earned her a growled, “Just kill it.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Got a hit!”

  The call jolted Gordon out of his lethargy. Over the last forty-eight hours they had narrowed the fire by half. The teams knew their roles so well that managing the fire was almost easy. MHA’s pilots were all so experienced that they only required the vaguest of directions to mount an attack. And the ground teams must be killing themselves for the miracles they pulled off. Hundreds of reinforcements had been sent in, but still Gordon hadn’t dared to let them tackle the eastern fire.

  At least that side of the fire was distinctly less vigorous. So far, the forward team had found all except two of the thermite booby traps. Now that they knew what to look for, Steve’s drone easily picked out the two hard flare-ups that had relaunched that side of the fire. But over a dozen others were now contained in a stack of heavily guarded buckets back at Dong Hoi Airport. Hopefully the bad guys hadn’t noticed the eastern flank was slowly losing power.

  The bad guys.

  He had lain in bed last night thinking about them after he and Ripley had spent their bodies upon each other. For once, they had both desperately needed the release of sex. It had been fast, hard, and amazing. They had used each other, but since there was no question that’s what they were doing, neither had minded. When he had flopped down on her, rather than easing down or catching himself on his elbows, Ripley had merely huffed out a breath. Her arms didn’t come up around him, but neither did her legs unlock from about his hips, keeping him pressed hard against her.

  He’d finally managed to roll his weight off her.

  Hardly pausing after he was off her, she had gone to the shower. On the second day they’d found the blinds that could be lowered over the bathroom windows, but neither of them could be bothered. She didn’t this time either.

  Ripley’s drying ritual never varied. Up one side of her body, down the other, then a hard squeeze of hair in towel, then the hair dryer. “Militarily efficient” he had accused her and she hadn’t denied it.

  He should have gotten up with her. Soaped, scrubbed, and dried her himself—a truly fun process he’d only had the opportunity to do a few times. He loved the way she looked, the way she felt, who she was.

  She had come back to bed, showing no regrets. Curled up beside him and gone to sleep.

  And he had been left to stare into the darkened bathroom where his heart had just been standing.

  And then he’d thought about the bad guys.

  Tham Chau had no doubt of who was behind it, he’d been able to see that in her face over that breakfast two days ago. It had made her furious.

  He had tried getting it out of her and she had refused. “It is too horrible. I do not want to be wrong.”

  But it didn’t take much asking around to understand. If ever there was a country doing their best to piss off Vietnam, it was Laos. All buddy-buddy on the surface, but underneath there were riots in Laos, even witch hunts leading to the murder of illegal Vietname
se residents—at least supposedly illegal. Vietnam had allied with the US and Laos with China, another area of contention, as if they needed one. The several back-and-forth invasions between Laos, China, Cambodia, and Vietnam were called the Third Indochina War; the Vietnam War was called the Second. Laos was also going out of their way to sabotage every Vietnamese initiative at the international level.

  He was sure that neither side of the conflict were innocent; they never were. But Gordon didn’t care about the details. He was here to stop a fire and someone was trying to stop him. Probably Laos, but again, didn’t care.

  When he’d rolled over, Ripley had shifted. So…not asleep.

  “I’m sorry for—” how I just used you. But the words wouldn’t come.

  “I’m not. Like I said, Gordon. Sex with you is great.” Then she’d rolled over ending the conversation. Somehow, that single round of pure sex had let her pull her shields back up around her.

  He’d have cursed himself if it would have helped. Instead, it was all part of the higher-level problems that were clogging his every thought.

  Day eight of the fire—day two after removing most of the thermite traps—they were still narrowing the left flank and Gordon was having trouble focusing.

  In the morning, Ripley wanted a quick “wakeup fuck.” She’d managed to get her walls up higher than any time since they’d met. He’d tried to slow down, to take an extra moment that they didn’t really have.

  Instead she’d pushed him down in one of the hotel’s comfortable chairs, sheathed him, straddled him, and taken him. He knew by her shudders that she found release, as did he, but it had nothing in common with making love to her. He’d barely been done before she’d climbed off his lap and taken a quick shower before dressing and heading downstairs for breakfast ahead of him.

  The only thing he’d been able to think was how much he still wanted her.

  And then, after a long day aloft, broken by only the most sporadic need for instructions, Steve’s call had come in on the encrypted radio.

  “Got a hit!”

  Ripley had flown the entire day and into the afternoon in chilly silence, not sure who she was angrier at, herself or…herself.

  She’d been doing her normal Ripley routine, at least normal before Gordon. Sure, let the guy have what he wanted, then he was happy and you were done having to deal with him until the next time. Guys were insatiable, wanting sex day after day, but they were also easy. Give them what they want and they’re done until the next time, content in their self-image of all-conquering stud.

  Twice now she’d practically forced Gordon to simply use her. To fit into that safely familiar place of a man needing to fuck a woman and be done with her.

  Except it had never been that between them and she hated it. No matter how hard she scrubbed in the shower, she couldn’t wash away Gordon’s empty expression as he had still slouched in the chair, naked, sheathed, and limp as she headed out the door.

  She didn’t want to remember the man whose merest touch electrified her body. There was no place in her life for a permanent man who made her feel so feminine and so strong at the same time. Ripley Vaughan the Firefighting Gypsy. That was her.

  Wonder Woman would be really, really pissed at her. Diana Prince always told the truth. As if to prove her point, the Aircrane’s left engine lost ten-percent of its power. She could feel the jolt of it, right down to her unsatisfied core.

  Since when had she wanted more than sexual release from anyone?

  Engine temperature was steady. Fuel was still standing at a third of capacity.

  Since Gordon.

  “What’s happening, Brad?”

  He had been wise enough to sense the chilly atmosphere. But he’d felt the change as well and was working through the status screens. “Nothing. Some dirty fuel? Overworked oil? We’ve been pushing her awfully hard…especially today.” Brad offered the last very carefully.

  Pushing awfully hard? She always took care of her aircraft first. Who the hell was he telling her how to fly her Aircrane? Shit!

  “Gordon?” She might as well bite the bullet.

  “Busy,” was all he said back.

  “I have to return to base. Engine trouble.”

  “Then do it,” this time it was a hard snap.

  Well, Ripley. You finally did it. You got to be the one who destroyed the relationship. How does that feel?

  She called ahead to Janet to warn her about the problem…the helicopter’s problem.

  As to the relationship problem? She certainly wasn’t going anywhere near Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth.

  Halfway back to the Dong Hoi Airport, the other engine began losing power as well.

  Gordon looked up and out the window and tried to make sense of where he was. An area of pavement hung less than ten feet below his observer’s window. Where? Oh. The helicopter was settling down on the airport’s paved parking area.

  “What are we doing here?” The bird hit the pavement hard enough that he could see the rear shocks fighting to take the hit. That wasn’t like her at all. He turned enough to see that Brad’s hands weren’t on the controls, so it had to be Ripley.

  “Issue with the engines,” Ripley informed him tersely.

  “Really?”

  She stopped by his seat, had to so that she could open the rear door and prepare to climb down. “Damn Gordon, where’s your head at?”

  It should have been funny. He remembered her saying something earlier, but he’d been too busy on the encrypted radio to pay much attention.

  But it didn’t come out funny. Instead, her face looked like some crazy cross between the ice of Ripley gone behind her shields, and a slice of anguished pain that he couldn’t lend credence to.

  Then she was gone and talking to the mechanics on the ground. A fuel truck moved in from the other side.

  He couldn’t even focus on Ripley at the moment, because his head was too busy trying to make sense of what Steve had finally uncovered after two full days of keeping both drones aloft. The day-and-night camera package was too big and heavy to be flown on the same bird as the full EM surveillance suite. So Steve had opted to keep both birds up as much as possible.

  And after two days, they’d caught a transmission.

  Steve had taped the call and was working on locating both ends of the transmission. They’d looped in Tham Chau for a translation.

  “Thermite is gone, location R-17.”

  “Gone?”

  “Scooped up. No thermite. No magnesium ignition ribbon. Nothing but Mung boot prints.”

  Gordon had to ask for an interpretation of Mung. Tham Chau had explained that it was a slur from the Vietnam War to describe Vietnamese who had moved to America. The speaker on the radio, she guessed, had been referring to the increasingly close ties between Vietnam and the US, thereby disparaging all Vietnamese people.

  “Return to base,” had been the instruction on the radio. “Tonight we will show them what we mean.”

  And the call had ended.

  The call had been by radio, so Steve’s drone was only able to localize the conversation. A cell phone he could have pinned down and tracked easily. Instead he was having to work with how far the drone had traveled during the brief conversation and attempt to triangulate the shifting angle of drone to transmission points.

  They needed to…

  Gordon looked up again.

  Three or four hours to sunset. If they were going to stop these people, it had to be soon.

  Looking around, he finally spotted his pilot.

  He couldn’t hear Ripley over the dying whine of the Aircrane’s engines, but he could see that she was standing nose-to-nose with Janet and Brad—he hadn’t even noticed Brad climbing down. Ripley had one finger jabbing angrily up toward the engine; her face set in lines of dark fury.

  Gordon wrestled with the unfamiliar harness release, and only remembered at the last moment that his helmet was wired in and would try to throttle him if he leapt to his feet. He dumped
it and scrambled down the short ladder.

  There was no point in trying to intervene with a soothing tone and a joking word. She was throwing a full-on tantrum. About to—

  He made a grab for Ripley’s arm…and missed.

  Her punch clipped Brad on the chin. He didn’t struggle, or shake it off. He simply folded up and collapsed to the concrete. His head hit hard. He lay like a rag doll, the two impacts had knocked him out cold.

  Janet cried out and knelt over him.

  Ripley’s face contorted as it shifted from fury to horror. She too tried to kneel, but Gordon simply grabbed her arm and dragged her away. Over his shoulder, he called back.

  “Brenna. Find out why Engine One is having problems. I need to get back aloft.”

  Ripley struggled, but he didn’t let go. He dragged her along, stumbling in his wake until they were out of sight behind the service pod. Then he shoved her against the side of the container and let go as her back slammed into the corrugated steel.

  She pushed back off and he shoved her again.

  “I have to go see Brad.”

  He didn’t even bother to comment.

  “I…oh shit!” Ripley’s back slid down the steel until she was sitting on the pavement.

  Gordon squatted down to face her and waited.

  “You should can my ass,” Ripley couldn’t even bring herself to look at Gordon.

  “Not today.”

  “Does it count in my favor that it was a clean punch?”

  “Not this time, Ripley.”

  “So much for laughter curing a multitude of ills.”

  “Another Shakespeare quote? Or Gilbert and whoever?”

  “Audrey Hepburn.” She shook out her hand. It didn’t hurt…much. Less than the nose breaker she’d fired at Weasel Williams. That one had felt clean and good. This one felt awful. “I can’t believe I did that.”

  “How many men have you hit in your life? Is this a pattern I should know about?”

  She pulled up her knees under folded arms and hid her face. “Two. Ever. I didn’t even hit Weasel for screwing the caterer. It took him trying to damage my helicopter for me to go after him.”