Full Blaze

Chapter 1-2

“Yeah, Ground Command. This is Hawk Oh-Two, I got him. You can release your crew to the next site.”

Jeannie Clark clicked off her mike and the one-word acknowledgment came right back. She was bummed. She’d finally found a flaw with her beautiful new Firehawk. Well, close to new. The machine had done a couple tours in Iraq first, but it had been totally renovated, repainted, and reconfigured with a big belly tank for dumping retardant on wildfires.

It was new to her.

Her boss and MHA’s lead pilot, Emily Beale, had certified her in this type only last month. And the helo was also new to Mount Hood Aviation’s Hoodies, one of the country’s premier firefighters-for-hire contractors. It was only the second load-rated Type I helicopter in their inventory.

Until recently, she’d only been certified in the midsize Type II Twin Huey 212 and the tiny Type III MD 500, both much lower capacity crafts. The Firehawk was built on the Sikorsky Black Hawk frame and could lift a massive thousand gallons of retardant or water, about four and a half tons.

That could make a serious dent in a blaze…except when Mama Nature was kicking up her heels with Papa Fire. That was what her Australian friend Dale always called them, as if they were part of his Aboriginal Dreamtime creation mysticism. She’d looked up the expression and it wasn’t—it was pure Dale. She’d kept using it after coming to America. People always looked at her cross-eyed when she did, so she used it as often as she could fit it in.

The thing was, with her MD 500, she could have scooted tight against that cliff edge instead of hovering out in space. Had to give the guy points—at three hundred feet up a cliff, he’d jumped across the gap with no hesitation. That said something about guts, or desperation. She’d half expected him to freeze and die there. Three more seconds and she’d have had to bug out and leave him there to burn.

She continued to maneuver hard and fast, trying to get down and out of the smoke-clear hole before it totally closed. Driving straight out through the ash wall that surrounded her on all sides had two bad things going for it. First, you couldn’t see squat—radar got dicey in the heat and ash plumes. Second, her air filters would ingest enough ash to clog them up good. Then she’d have to go back to base and wait while they were serviced. Assuming her engines kept running long enough to do that. Doing an autorotate landing into the suburbs of Santa Barbara wasn’t her idea of a good time.

Still, she might have to return to base because Mister Brainless Got-himself-trapped was hurt.

“You okay back there?”

In answer he squeezed between the pilot and copilot seats, stepping carefully over the center console despite the lunges of the helo due to her maneuverings. He also was smart enough not to bump the cyclic control between his knees as he slid into the seat and buckled up. Only once he was buckled in did he release the line attached to his harness and toss it toward the rear. That spoke of training.

The acrid scent of char and smoke was a slap to her face, it radiated off his black-smeared yellow Nomex fire suit. He was dressed like a hotshot right down to the foil shelter on his hip, but all he carried was a padded bag clutched tight against his chest.

She pointed a finger toward a dangling headset without taking her hands off the dual controls of cyclic and collective. Especially not with the cliff still a bare two rotor widths away, a hundred and seven feet and four inches, give or take the odd boulder.

His hands were fumbling as he pulled on the headset. Adrenaline letdown. She’d seen it before, had it herself when a tree had exploded below her MD 500 a few months ago and taken out the tail rotor. Crash landing in the middle of the New Tillamook Burn had been a wild ride.

He finally got the headset pulled on, once he figured out he had to remove his hard hat first.

“What the hell is in that bag,” she asked him over the intercom, “that you had to throw it in before yourself? Are you berko, Yank?” Didn’t the guy have any idea about personal safety first?

“Did I?” He glanced down at the bag as if it might know the answer. Then he pulled its strap over his head, tangling it in the headset’s cord. Took him a bit to straighten it all out before he answered.

“It’s my cameras.” He turned to face her and did that standard freeze double-take.

When Jeannie glanced over, he was grinning at her. Oh crap! She knew that look. Another smoke jock thinking, What’s a woman doing flying a big nasty helicopter like this? And how far can I get with her? The answers were: she’d busted her ass for years to get here, and he would get absolutely nowhere. She was half sorry that Steve’s drone had found a safe way in to him and she’d rescued him.

“Pretty damn stupid of me, now that you mention it.” His voice was deep and wry over the intercom.

Well, okay, he got another half a point for not saying the expected. Add that to the one he’d earned jumping into space to reach her helo, and he was still nowhere. In her personal system, it took at least ten points to get a date, though this guy might need twenty.

“Huh. It’s not like I wasn’t already wearing the strap across my chest. I never understood a reporter buddy’s story until this moment. He told me about being at a forward air base in Iraq when he heard a shell coming in. Says he knew he was dead and it was too late to move, so he chucked his bag out of their foxhole to save the pictures he’d taken.”

Damn, but he had a nice voice for storytelling, all deep and warm. No way that was worth another point. Couldn’t be.

“Ralph figured they might support his wife awhile after he died, if the cameras were recovered. But the damn mortar round missed their barricaded position and landed square on the bag. Blew six grand of cameras and lenses and a month of dangerous work to smithereens; didn’t do anything else other than make a hole in the dirt. Guess I thought the same thing on some level.”

Jeannie shook her head and paid attention to the smoke wall. It was thinning near the ground, but the air at the lower edge of the plume still had a mind of its own. And they were getting down into power-line territory. Power lines loved the taste of fresh rotor blade and always threw a power party over a roasted downed helo.

Married. Figures. How many jerks went voluntarily and died on Everest or in a godforsaken hole, leaving behind a family while in pursuit of their sport?

Military was different. If a soul was in the service, like her brother Randall in the Royal Australian Air Force, and the RAAF said, Go there, he went. It’s what he’d signed up for.

This joker wasn’t fire crew at all; he was a photographer. He’d literally jumped off the cliff without a safety net, and he’d saved his camera bag first.

“Calvin Jackson, at your service. Everyone calls me Cal.”

“Got a twin brother named Hobbes? Did people call you Calvin and Hobbes? Are you the evil one?”

“No brother.” For a moment his voice was hard and clipped, then he asked, “And you are?” His voice was abruptly all smooth in that way guys always thought was so charming.

“Smart enough to be your worst nightmare, mate,” Jeannie replied. She’d met a hundred guys like him, maybe a thousand. Wife at home, chatting up the pretty pilot in the field. She could see them homing in on her from ten thousand feet away. Ever since her days flying in the Australian bush. She’d wing into a remote cattle station, with emergency supplies or a doctor aboard, and every puppy-dog lonely cowhand would start circling around the Sheila pilot.

That silenced him.

Before he could find a new tack, she cut him off. “Are you okay? Or do I have to stop this run to get you to medico?”

She managed to clear the bottom of the plume before she reached the Santa Barbara suburb crammed up against the base of the foothills. One of the engine crews waved while spraying down houses against the flames approaching from another draw. She rocked her cyclic left and right to return the wave as she flew out.

“I’m fine. Do what you need to do.”

“You mean what I was doing before I had to fly up and rescue your sorry behind for your wife’s sake?”

“Yeah, that. Except I’m not married.”

Jeannie headed for the nearest swimming pool, a lot of those in this high-end neighborhood, then glanced over at him. Cal had settled in comfortably, looking out the window like any normal rubbernecking tourist, not like the freaked-out survivor of a close brush with death. Good recovery time. His smoke-smeared face highlighted his light brown eyes and bright smile. The man was several points worth of handsome and clearly knew it.

He turned to meet her gaze.

“Biding your time? It’s not going to work on me,” she informed him.

“Damn, and I had such hopes what with not knowing your name and all.”

Okay, she’d give him another half point for funny. She had a weak spot for funny, not that she’d ever admit that to this guy.

Cal alternated between watching the nameless pilot and admiring her skill.

She was so easy to watch. While the heavy gear covered her frame, what he could see was exceptional. Fine-fingered hands that rested lightly on the controls. She flew with no hesitation, absolute confidence in what she was doing.

It was her face that was so captivating. Not merely a pretty girl, though she was beautiful. Her face had character. He’d bet that behind her mirrored shades her eyes were dark. They’d be dark, thoughtful, and penetrating, staring right through any bullshit. Her face wasn’t merely narrow. The features were delicate, sophisticated. He liked that; it looked good on her.

Her hair, which he hadn’t noticed at first because of the high-backed pilot seat, was great. It was thick, dark brown, and streamed down behind the earmuffs of the headset in a wind-tousled cascade past her shoulders.

She leaned over to look out the bubble window built into the door.

He did the same on his side. The upper half of the door was a Plexiglas window that bulged outward enough for him to stick his head into it and look straight down. They were hovering twenty feet or so over someone’s swimming pool. Lawn furniture skittered away in every direction beneath the downward blast of the rotor wash.

But they weren’t descending any farther.

He glanced over at her and noted a bright red streak down the back of her long hair, reaching down past her shoulder blades, heart-of-fire red. He had the recent experience to remind himself of how accurately she’d reproduced the color. It looked like a home dye job by a woman skilled at doing things for herself, but it was also cute and worked on her. She was craning her neck to look toward the stern.

He looked back out his window and down. A six-inch snorkel hose hung twenty feet down into the pool. As he watched, he could hear the pumps kick on. Despite being at the other end of the hose, they vibrated the airframe against his feet on the deck plates. A swirl of water formed around the jet pump as it drove water up the snorkel hose. The helo felt as if it was settling or perhaps stabilizing as it sucked up the load.