Hot Point

Chapter 1-2

She shouldn’t be aiming her anger at him; it was herself that she was furious with. She’d sent a bird aloft that had broken in the sky. That was wholly unforgivable. Her pilots counted on her to provide safe, airworthy equipment, and she’d failed one of them.

Firehawk Oh-Three had been in the Mount Hood Aviation inventory for less than a month, and now it had blown a hydraulic line. Thankfully, Vern hadn’t been in any danger from the failure—the backup system had taken the load. But she’d thought the bird was clean when she signed the airworthiness certificate, something she’d done every day for a month.

It definitely wasn’t clean at the moment. In addition to the blown hose itself, hydraulic leaks were messy and took time to clean up. Furthermore, the fluid that sprayed into the engine, which hadn’t cared in the slightest, had caused the trail of acrid black smoke that had scared the daylights out of her. She’d had to wrap her arms around herself to hold herself together until Vern set the bird safely on the ground. The burn-off of fluid had also added to the mess with sticky exhaust particulates sheathing the rear half of the pretty black-and-flame paint job.

“I can feel you aiming nasty thoughts down at me.” Vern rubbed a hand on the top of his head as if it was getting hot. Then he turned to look up at her. His lean face was rich with a summer’s tan. His mirrored shades hid the dark eyes that matched hair that, in her more psychotic moments, she’d occasionally fantasized toying with. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Not unless you’re planning to break something else on my helicopter, Slick. Go away. You’re distracting me.” And he was. Denise had principles, and those included not getting sucked in by the charm of a handsome flyboy. The last time she had let that happen was…a long time ago, and it wouldn’t be happening now.

“Yes ma’am, Wrench, sir.” Then he saluted, hitting his forehead hard enough to pretend he was knocking himself silly.

No matter how handsome and charming he was, she would not be tempted.

She lifted the exact implement that had earned most mechanics the Wrench nickname and he stumbled back, raising his hands in mock terror.

He pulled a black, Mount Hood Aviation billed hat out of his back pocket and tugged it on before shooting her one of his cockeyed grins. The blazing red-and-orange MHA logo offered her a tempting target. Maybe if she had a tennis ball handy she’d bean him one.

“Make me proud, Wrench.”

“Fall down a marmot hole, Slick.” Again? Had she honestly sassed a pilot? That wasn’t anything the Denise she knew would ever do.

He tipped his hat and headed across the narrow grass airstrip of the Hoodie base camp. On his third step he stumbled badly, pretending to fall into a marmot hole.

Denise laughed. Of the many jokers among the crews, Vern was the only one who consistently made her want to laugh. Though not usually out loud.

She watched him walk off. Had she been flirting with him? She’d never been any good at it, so she couldn’t be sure. He didn’t fly a Huey UH-1 Slick helicopter, but she liked how the nickname fit him. Nicknames were another thing she rarely used correctly. Yet another reason not to become involved with flyboys who seemed to live by them. For example, Mickey was usually called… She couldn’t even remember. Hopeless. Absolutely hopeless.

Pilots also had all these unspoken rules and codes that the women they picked up in bars seemed to already know. It was as if every one of them had gone to the same training course, but no one had told her she needed to enroll to understand men.

Denise understood none of them.

Once he was gone, she could relax somewhat. She sat back on her heels atop the helicopter. It was one of her favorite times of day, and she took a moment to enjoy it.

Malcolm shot her a wave when he noticed her watching. He’d finished servicing one of the Twin Hueys and was moving to the other one. Brenna, her other assistant, was deep in an MD 500 and didn’t look up. No need to worry though. Brenna could handle most anything on the smaller birds; she was good.

The sun was setting into the Oregon wilderness over the massive shoulder of glacier-capped Mount Hood. She could practically taste the pine-sharp chlorophyll on the ice-clean air. The birds were coming home to roost, the seven helicopters along with the three airplanes of her firefighting fleet.

The flesh-and-blood birds were also dancing in the last of the sunlight as they headed into their own nests among the towering Douglas fir trees on the north side of the runway. And if one of them pooped on her helicopters, there’d be hell to pay.

By US Forest Service contract requirements, exactly on the stroke of a half hour before sunset, all of the aircraft were out of the air and lined up on the grass. For the next dozen hours, the crews still fighting the fire on the ground would be on their own.

Emily and Jeannie were certified for nighttime firefighting, but that was awfully expensive and wasn’t called for except on the worst fires. Also, if the pilots flew at night, they still needed the mandatory ten-hour break out of every twenty-four.

It was better to let them sleep and fly again at a half hour past sunrise than miss part of the morning.

Jeannie climbed out of Firehawk Oh-Two and waved at Denise. She treated her helicopter with the most respect of all the pilots. Emily in Firehawk Oh-One was so skilled after ten years in the Army that, while she didn’t baby the firefighting Black Hawk, she never stressed the bird.

They were home safe now.

The two small MD 500s for hitting spot fires were parked at the west end of the runway. A pair of the midsized Bell 212 Twin Huey helos were lined up next, then her three Firehawks parked neatly down the side of the grass-strip field at midfield, directly opposite the main camp buildings. The seven helos looked so pristine and glossy in their black-and-flame paint jobs. All glossy, that is, except Firehawk Oh-Three with a dark smudge down the tail section from the scorched hydraulic fluid.

Denise sighed. She shouldn’t have harassed Vern. It wasn’t his fault the line had cracked and sprayed the compartment with slimy, silicone-based goo. At least it hadn’t been the older hydraulic oil. That stuff would have caused an engine fire, not merely scorches and a major mess.

She finished the repair in ten minutes and was about halfway through the cleanup when the dinner bell rang. Her hands would reek of the cleaner for hours despite the gloves. She hoped it was a knife-and-fork dinner tonight.

Betsy, the camp cook, had brought the bell back from when they’d been fighting fire Down Under in Australia over the winter. The old, brass, twelve-inch fire-truck bell announced the exact moment of sunset, spooking aloft the last of the birds who were settling into the trees for the night. They should be used to it—Betsy rang her new toy every night at this time. It echoed from one end of the airstrip to the other, calling the helitack and smokies to come eat.

From her high perch atop the Firehawk helicopter, Denise had a clear view of the whole field. Malcolm and Brenna downed tools and checklists from the nightly inspection they performed on each aircraft and began wandering across the grass strip toward the cluster of picnic tables. Mark Henderson’s twin-engine Beech King Air, the Incident Commander – Air’s aircraft, had landed without her noticing and was parked by the DC-3s used for transporting the smokejumpers when they were needed.

Yet, a part of her brain had noticed.

She could recall that the engines had sounded clean, nothing to trigger her internal alarms to hurry over to inspect them immediately. Mark’s landing had been as immaculate as she’d expect from a long-term Army pilot. Like his wife, Emily, he flew smooth and clean every minute of every day. So no other warnings arose in her head, and she knew it would be a normal nightly inspection.

All routine.

That was good. That’s what it was supposed to be when she wasn’t creating a failure like Oh-Three.

She set up a pair of work lights so they’d be ready after dinner when it was dark. She laid her flask of cleaner and her gloves across exactly the spot where she’d left off so she’d be sure to start in the right place after dinner.

Today’s fire had been a grassland range fire seventy miles to the southwest. Only the helicopter crews had been out today to help the local ground crews who’d been able to drive trucks to the fire. The MHA smokejumpers had the day off, so a lot of them were in town and the tables were less full than usual.

Most of the pilots, support crew, and ground personnel were already sitting around, reading or playing cards held in place by small stones against the light evening breeze that wandered lazily through camp. Thankfully, that same breeze washed away the bitter smells of cleaners and the sharp kerosene scent of Jet A fuel that the pumper truck had dispensed down the row.

As Denise headed for the chow line, Emily and Jeannie came up to her. They were out of their flight gear and looked casually pretty. Someday she’d like to find the nerve to ask how they made it look so effortless.

Of course, MHA’s first two Firehawk pilots wanted to know what had gone wrong with the third craft.

“Damn!” Mickey, Vern’s bunkmate and one of the twin-Huey helo pilots, let out a low whistle of appreciation. “I’ve got to say…Da-amn!”

Vern glared at his poker hand a moment longer, puzzled because his own cards certainly weren’t worth any such statement. He saw that Bruce and Gordon were both still in the game, so he folded and tossed his cards into the pile, careful not to drop one between the boards of the battered wood of the picnic table. Then he glanced up and offered a low appreciative whistle of his own.

“Da-amn is right.”

Denise, flanked by Emily and Jeannie, was strolling across the green grass airfield in the light of the setting sun. The sky was orange behind them, and the lights above the chow line illuminated them like a Maxfield Parrish painting—kind light and impossibly beautiful women who belonged exactly where they were.

The image did strange things to his heart, as if it had caught and stumbled on something it had never seen before. Or perhaps seen but not noticed.

Maybe his pulse was still stutter-stepping from that pressure alarm.

Bruce and Gordon turned to look over their shoulders and didn’t turn back too quickly. Bruce was a careful card player, except when women were involved or perhaps in the general vicinity. Vern saw enough to be glad he’d folded.

“Every time,” Mickey whispered. “Every single time they come walking toward you side-by-side like that it takes your breath away. It’s like you never get used to it. If Carly joins them, I could die a happy man.”

Vern hadn’t actually been commenting on the group; it was the slim mechanic who he would never tire of watching. He idly wondered if she’d ever been a dancer, or if she’d always walked as if she was floating half a step above the earth.

The trio moved into the chow line. Except when it was raining, Betsy always set up a long buffet table outside by the picnic tables. She always made sure it was the best quality.

The three looked so earnest that his ears were buzzing. He’d make a totally safe bet that they were discussing the smoky failure of Firehawk Oh-Three. Three beautiful women talking about him, but not. Yeah, that sounded about right.