Chapter Three
His bunk was just two doors down from Ripley’s quarters—though he kept assuring himself that wasn’t why he couldn’t get to sleep. Gordon eventually wandered out to the radio shack that sat atop the wooden lookout tower. It was unmanned at night; TJ kept a radio and his cell phone close by his bed so that he wouldn’t miss any fire calls. It made the tower a quiet place to sit and watch the field.
Gordon often did that. He liked looking down at the shadows of the sleeping helicopters and up at the shining stars. In the quiet of the night, the tower was always a soothing place to be. Most heli-bases were just some corner of a much larger airfield. Erickson at Medford, Columbia at Aurora, Evergreen had been in McMinnville before they went under. Mount Hood Aviation was the only
