Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 8-4

“The fire’s wrong,” Carly said it softly, but with no question in her voice as Laura’s count was coming in over the radio and Steve was doing whatever he did with radio signals to pinpoint their location.

Akbar looked at it again. The smoke was billowing up, indicating that the winds weren’t too turbulent yet. The fire itself was traveling upslope which was natural, especially in the light wind conditions.

Crap! It was burning upslope…from several areas of the mountain’s flank all at once. They were actually separate blazes in the process of joining into a single fire as they moved upslope ready to sweep over the mountain’s flank. There were only two ways to start a fire like this one.

A campfire, cigarette butt, and most other human causes that accounted for eighty percent of all wildfires had a single point of origin. A multi-point origin could be caused by a lightning strike. He glanced up at the cloudless blue sky as Laura finished her count.

“Okay, we have you,” he had to work hard to keep his voice calm as he answered her.

“Give us a sec.”

He clicked off the radio.

The second way to get a wildfire with a multi-point origin was human caused. Intentionally human caused. Arson.

Steve zoomed in the view. He’d flipped to infrared to show the seven tightly clustered heat dots of tourists on horseback deep in the trees.

“This is the Skyline Trail,” Steve overlaid the line on the map. The line passed right through the clustered group continuing side to side across the mountain’s flank, dipping into canyons and climbing over ridges.

Akbar took one look at Henderson then keyed the microphone.

“Laura?”

“Yes, Johnny?”

“Listen carefully. This is really important. Do not move from where you are. No matter what, you stay by that creek. We’re coming to get you.”

He heaved the mike aside and sprinted back around the bunkhouse to roust his crew. The others followed close on his heels. He did his best to not think about the image on the screen.

Where it climbed out of Zigzag Canyon in either direction, the Pacific Crest Trail was already on fire atop the ridges. And a new fire was starting the long crawl up the center of the canyon.