Daz exhaled a ragged sigh when he unraveled the radio traffic enough to understand the three pilots had made their drops and it looked like the hotshot crew was safe, maybe at least for long enough to enact a rescue. The next thing they learned was that the forest service had dispatched a larger truck and a new crew to try to work their way up the canyon to where the embattled group had hunkered down, within a fragile fortress of slurry-soaked ground and covered with water equal to an inch of rain.
If the lower fire burned itself out, the relief crew should be able to reach the area. As the winds turned again in the evening to blow down canyon, the new fire behind the group should blow back over ground it had already charred and, lacking fuel, go out or at least drop to smoldering embers
