Flash of Fire

Chapter 1-3

And the crowd was pretty much entirely male, which boded well for summer entertainment.

She tried to ease up to the back of the crowd. She was last to arrive, which she hated.

She didn’t get away with it.

Emily and Mark were both looking straight at her. All forty people were.

A few still half-dressed, others were lacing their boots, but they were all there and she was delaying the entire outfit on the first day. Whatever she’d thought of the Guard, she was always first to the flight line and first in the air; anything less than her best was a personal failure.

“Now that we’re all here.” Boss Man Mark Henderson spoke in a normal voice. He didn’t have to do that; she already felt embarrassed.

Not being the best was the worst feeling on the planet in Robin’s book and it sure as s**t wasn’t going to happen again.

Mickey had watched for the new pilot as they mustered but missed her arrival—on the far side of the crowd, all he could see was craned necks and a hint of sun-bright hair. She didn’t come from the direction of the barracks, and he’d been too busy trying to pry details out of the guys with no luck. All they’d added to seriously hot was serious dose of attitude. Real helpful, guys.

TJ came down the stairs from the window-wrapped comm shack at the top of the tower with fresh printouts for Mark. His heavy footsteps echoed over the sudden silence—he still had a limp from his last day of thirty years of smokejumping. As he handed off fresh data sheets to the others, the crowd of firefighters returned to chatting softly.

Barely past sunrise and the late spring day was already warm enough that people were shedding jackets. But the smokejumpers still kept their full suits on and zipped; the most gung-ho of the breed came to MHA. To pass the time and dissipate the tension, they were hazing each other about who was going to be eating a tree on their first live jump of the season.

Mickey had always loved his helicopters, but there were times, like now, listening to them before a big jump, that he thought about switching over. The idea never lasted long—battered by trees, torn knees, broken ribs. Smokejumping was a rough life. And that was all before they started eating smoke and facing the fire up close and personal. Besides, all he’d ever dreamed of was flying. But it was fun to imagine every now and then.

“Five bucks Akbar eats the first tree,” Krista, the Number Two smokie called out. Akbar, the lead smokie, was still paying for his first-ever MHA jump five years ago when he’d hung up in the thin top of two hundred feet of Douglas fir. It had taken him an hour to lower himself down on a rope as he was constantly hanging up in the lower branches. Then he’d had to climb back up to top the tree so that he could recover his chute.

“Five bucks says you do,” Akbar countered, but his voice was overwhelmed by another smokie collecting the bets for and against Akbar. Mickey kicked in a fiver for Akbar snagging a tree, knowing it was lost money. Akbar was a great jumper, but Mickey wanted him to feel the pain of the helo-jocks betting against him.

But like Mickey, Akbar was keeping a weather eye on the four up on the platform as they conferred over the pages of new information and their faces shifted to grim. A big fire on the first day; it didn’t bode well for the season. This early, it was probably California or Alaska—still too soon for Oregon or Washington to burn. At least he hoped so.

He glanced around at Jeannie and Vern. The pilots of Firehawk Oh-Two and Oh-Three had caught it as well. He’d lost track of the new pilot again. The newer pilots—Vanessa, Bruce, and Gordon—had missed the look of worry.

Mickey nudged Gordon in the ribs.

“What?” Gordon whispered.

He nodded up toward the four on the landing.

“Right.” Gordon was getting a clue. After three years, he was fine against a fire and one of Mickey’s best buddies, but he wasn’t the sharpest on reading situations on the ground. Gordon began double-checking his gear.

Mickey had already done that twice, so he resisted the urge to do so again. Instead, he looked around and finally spotted the new pilot again—back between a couple of smokejumpers, he could just see her face. She was watching the group on the landing intently. Sharp, she hadn’t missed a thing.

As more and more noticed the leader’s looks, everyone began pulling out energy bars they’d rat-holed away in their personal gear bags. Chances of having one of Betsy’s generous sit-down breakfasts at the picnic tables this morning were fast approaching zero.

The newbie caught onto that quick enough. She too began stoking up for a flight.

When Mickey had left for a short vacation, the record stood at thirty-nine applicants, twelve test flights, and no hires. Mickey had been gone for four days and returned late last night to hear there was a new hire and she was already certified to be on the line. Bang! Just like that.

Yet more strange, the new pilot was rumored to be the new flight lead. Everyone had expected Jeannie in Firehawk Oh-Two to pick up that role for the summer. At least Mickey sure had. He knew that he was a contender for the slot also, but Jeannie had a master’s degree in fire management. Mickey only had an associate’s degree in heli-aviation regardless that he had eight years of flying for MHA to Jeannie’s four.

But there was no way to replace Emily. First, she was the best pilot. Second, also the best flight commander. Third, though she was untouchable, she was an immense pleasure to look at. Six months gone, she was still a knockout. No question that Mark was one unreasonably lucky man because, damn, who knew pregnant could ever look good to a guy.

Mickey had never thought about getting serious with a girl, not really, until he’d first seen Mark and Emily together when they took over the outfit three seasons back. Joke was Emily Beale was still showing her mama bear spine of steel; Mark was the one who was so mushy around her it made a guy wonder if Mark was the one dosed with massive waves of pregnancy hormones and not his wife.

Of course, thinking about getting serious with a girl versus actually doing it…well, that was something he’d do as soon as he found the right girl. Maybe.

He’d only been at his sister’s wedding for four days but had totally missed the new pilot’s eval and training process. It had happened so fast. That had to be an amazing pilot to take the lead slot. He was sorry he’d missed the action; watching the candidates roll through camp had been amusing. Certain candidates, especially the high-hour pilots, invariably male, would get torqued when a beautiful, pregnant woman showed them the road home.

Of course Emily had never told them she was an Army Captain with the Night Stalkers Special Operations helicopter regiment. Or had she been Major? Emily and Mark rarely talked about their military backgrounds. It didn’t matter. They were the two best pilots Mickey had ever flown with.

For more serious possibilities, Mickey had his eye on the lovely yet shy Vanessa, who flew one of MHA’s small MD 500s. But it never hurt a guy to look around.

A shift in the jostling smokies and Mickey got his first good look at the newcomer.

Her short plume of white-blonde hair that shagged its way to just past her ears shone in the low-angle morning sunlight. She stood bone straight, which either meant ballerina or maybe workout instructor. She didn’t look like any ballerina he’d ever seen on one of those TV shows Sis loved—Nutcracker every damn Christmas like religion. She might be long and lean, but she was no waiflike frail flower either. The pilot had shining, blue eyes and high cheekbones on an elegant face that went well with the choppy haircut.

She looked right at Mark, not shying off despite his reprimand for being late, which meant balls of steel. Metaphorically. Though she had her flight jacket shrugged on and he couldn’t see much of the figure beneath, there was no question of a hundred-percent babe.

“Told you she was hot s**t!” Gordon leaned over to whisper in his ear.

“No ring or tan line on the finger.” Mickey played along as she raised her energy bar to bite off another chunk.

“She doesn’t walk like a married person.”

Mickey Hamilton had missed her walk. He’d make sure to watch until she moved again. He was tempted to ask Gordon how a married woman walked, to see what his friend came up with.

To pass the time, Akbar and the other smokies renewed their hot debate over who would eat a tree first. Their shifting positions exposed Vanessa standing beyond them, only a step away from the newbie.

A soft-spoken and dazzling brunette right out of an Italian travel magazine stood to one side.

To the other, a slender blonde Anne Heche look-alike from that movie on the island with Harrison Ford—and a power stance straight from Angelina Jolie.

Side-by-side comparison of the two women during a summer sunrise, with a fire on the way. His day was off to an exceptional start.

“What’s her name?”

Gordon cursed. “Thought you were after Vanessa. I was gonna have a clear shot at…”

“Buddy, she’d eat your lunch.” And by the look of her, she would.

Gordon was too decent a guy at heart for someone who looked as tough as the newcomer did.

“Besides, I am thinking about Vanessa. But she doesn’t appear to be thinking about me so much.” Hurt to admit, but it was true. His attempts at charm had produced exactly no results—yet. He could be patient when a woman looked as good as she did, and his ego wasn’t ready to admit defeat—yet. At least not in front of his buddy.

“In other words, she ate your lunch. I thought everybody fell for the Mr. Northwest outdoors guide.”

“Dad is the adventure guide. And it doesn’t mean that. It means—” Mickey stopped.

The leaders of MHA were done with their conference. Besides, it meant exactly that, but he still didn’t want to admit it. Not to Gordon. Not to himself. Vanessa had a real spine under that quiet exterior, which only made her all the more attractive for what good it did him. It wasn’t that the vibe was off or whatever it was that women said. It hadn’t…clicked for him. Or he hadn’t clicked for her?

But watching her side-by-side with the new recruit, he was suddenly glad that nothing had clicked. The blonde was spectacular. Suddenly all of his some girl, someday talk didn’t seem quite so remote.

“It seems,” Mark called out over the assembled pilots and the twenty smokejumpers of MHA, “that there has been a new ‘export’ problem and they’ve asked us to stop it from happening.”

Mickey looked at Gordon, who only shrugged. Akbar, the lead smokie, was also looking a bit lost and he always had the inside scoop.

“I thought export problems was what the Customs Service was for,” a wag shouted from back in the crowd. “Next you heli-pilots will be trimming trees and inspecting power lines,” a smokejumper called out, and others laughed.

“We’ll start using smokies for express delivery of online shopping parcels,” Mickey shouted back, and the laughter grew. “About all they’re good for anyway. Real battle is from the sky.”

There were a lot of tasks best done by helicopters, but not a one of them was as important or as hazardous as a smokie jumping in to fight wildfire.