Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 8-2

There were times that night that Tim wished he’d called up more air support. The fire had dodged south before turning east once more. It would have been a good time to have another plane or chopper on site.

When the BLM clerk had informed him that the nearest asset was three hours out, Tim had declined. Three hours from now they’d have either beaten the beast or they would be in full retreat.

They had to drive the fire break another half mile out. A dozen villagers had arrived over the rough terrain on four-wheel ATVs. He got them shifting equipment and making sure his team was kept supplied with water, food, and fuel for their saws and pumps.

Three hours.

That’s about how fast Macy and her LongRanger could be here from Larch Creek. Right. That was probably the asset that the post clerk had been referring to.

Too late now.

He hoped she wasn’t taking it personally. MHA had enough rockin’ female heli-pilots that any bias he’d had about women in harm’s way had long since been extinguished. Besides Krista bucked fire just as effectively as he and Akbar did when the three of them jumped a fire together.

He could really use the two of them right now.

“Hank!” he grabbed the man by his harness and they leaned on each other for support.

After sixteen hours on the fire, the only thing that kept them upright was being in constant motion so that they didn’t simply tip over sideways. Stopping led perilously close to the danger of simply collapsing to the soil in exhaustion.

“Cut me a hole, Hank. That line, right there,” he held out an arm. “Take your best sawyer and make a path even twenty feet wide. In ten minutes I’ll send another team to take the next twenty feet and so on. We’re going to open up the line in a wedge form, but your goal is get me even twenty feet of breathing room all the way across in front of the fire. Don’t look back, because if you do, we’ll run over your lazy behind.”

Too exhausted to speak, Hank punched his acknowledgement against Tim’s shoulder and took off shouting for Tina. Tina? Tim didn’t even know he had a woman on the crew. They were common enough among the Hot Shots now, but female smokies were few and far between.

“Go get ‘em!” he croaked after the pair as they began slicing into the tree line. Tim rubbed at his shoulder.

It wasn’t that Hank’s punch had hurt, but he’d hit right where Macy’s head had rested against his shoulder after they’d kissed. Somewhere in the firefight, he’d come to terms with that. He still had no idea at all of what to do about it, but he wasn’t going to be complaining if she was willing to try it again.