Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 2-4

“One minute out,” the pilot announced.

Akbar and Tim moved to the back of the DC-3 to pull open the rear jump door. He’d woken everyone five minutes earlier and they’d all started selecting which gear the plane’s paracargo boss should shove out behind them.

Akbar’s phone buzzed.

He dug it out of his pocket.

Didn’t have time for it, but it might be some last minute instruction from Mark. Wouldn’t he be on the radio?

He didn’t recognize the number.

Tim popped the rear door and swung it inward. The wind’s roar grew tenfold. They were high over steeply rolling green forest.

Akbar hit View and glanced at the message. How about a run in the morning? –Space Girl.

Shit! He didn’t even have time to be pleased, never mind answer. He stuffed it back in his pocket and hurried down the aisle. Space Girl? No, she was too much of a woman for that. Space Woman sounded like she was an evil creature from outer space in a 1950s movie. He’d think of something…when he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about fire. He knelt beside Tim and looked out the open door.

The fire might have been fifty acres when it was called in, but it was thinking hard about how to reach a hundred. The tinder dry forest was catching fire brutally fast. Flames were crawling up the trees; continuous flame height was around fifty feet. Not enough heat for a running crown fire yet, fire jumping along the treetops, but that wasn’t far in the future either.

As soon as the choppers arrived, they’d be kept busy knocking the fire back out of the treetops down to the forest floor where Akbar and his team could fight it.

He grabbed the headset by the door that would connect him to the pilot.

“Talk to me, DC.” The pilot’s initials were the same as the DC-3 aircraft he flew, so no one used his real name. Akbar wasn’t even sure he knew the man’s real name though they’d flown together for several years.

“Wind’s out of the west at ten to fifteen. NOAA says they’re not expecting any major change for the next forty-eight hours. Not seeing a good spot to set you down.”

Tim pointed at a couple of possibilities. Damn. Both of them would be tight. Real squeakers. The question was would it be better than a treejump, purposely snagging themselves in the canopy and then lowering to the ground by rope.

The fire was climbing gullies, creating separate flanking heads, so they didn’t dare go down into those inviting gaps between the fires—in case the gap was suddenly engulfed. But if they ignored the fire for the moment, and the winds did hold steady as predicted, maybe they could get to the northwest-running ridge in time. A firebreak along the backside, might mean they could stop this fire cold.

“DC take us down over the ridge at two o’clock low.” Tim handed him a couple rolls of drift streamer. He tossed the rolls of crepe paper out the plane’s door, spaced along the ridgeline as the plane passed several hundred feet above the treetops. Every smokie twisted in their seats to watch the streamers flutter and catch in the air currents stirred up by the fire.

The brightly colored foot-wide strips kicked and swirled in the air currents like a Chinese dragon on hallucinogens, but there was no windsuck toward the approaching fire…yet.

“Not too bad,” Tim said. The ridgeline was far enough ahead of the fire that there weren’t a lot of nasty downdrafts developing yet, just the normal mountain madness of winds roaring and turbulent over ridges.

“There, that’s our anchor point.” Akbar pointed and Tim nodded his agreement. “DC, set us up for three drops over that bluff you overflew.”

He turned to brief the crew, “Three drops. Drop one stick first time,” that would be he and Tim as jump buddies, taking the risk and then preparing the area. “Then drop two, then three. The landing is small and pretty cluttered with alder saplings in the ten- to fifteen-foot range. Winds standard for a ridgeline, in other words a normal level of messy, out of the west at fifteen, probably twenty-five miles an hour close to the ground. So, Tim and I will punch a hole. Everyone else get in and clear the drop site to make space for the next team to hit it.” Then he thought about Henderson and his teambuilding.

“No idea where the second jumper load is gonna drop in. The nearest decent zone is a mile down the hill. Anyone want to take a bet that’s where those slugs come in? At least I know my first-load team can hit it close and clean.”

There was a cheer as they began pulling on their helmets and started double-checking each other’s gear. It didn’t matter that the roster rotated constantly and half of this team could be on the second plane for the next jump. For this moment, they were the best.

Akbar strapped on his own helmet, tugged on gloves and then turned to trade buddy checks with Two-Tall. Once that was done, they both selected smaller chainsaws and clipped them to their cargo lines.

“Race you down,” Tim yanked extra hard on Akbar’s harness to make sure it was well seated.

“Loser buys first round at the Doghouse,” Akbar shook Tim’s light frame with an easy jerk back and forth on his chainsaw’s tie-off rope.

“Only if I jump first,” Tim completed their ritual with a buddy-check-complete thumb’s up. They shared a laugh just as they did before each jump. Akbar was lead smokie. That meant he was first out of the plane and first on the ground.

When DC lit the warning light he braced in the doorway, Tim huddled right behind him. At the green, Akbar jumped and relished the freefall for several seconds. He didn’t do a somersault, because he had a chainsaw dangling at his hip. Then he popped the chute and was jerked from a hundred-plus miles an hour to under twenty.

Once he was stable under his chute and checked that Tim was as well, he let the saw hang down on the thirty-foot line. The saws would hit the ground behind his own landing point. The tank of gas in each would be plenty for what they needed until the cargo master could dump more supplies.

The ride down was a little wild. Once, he was sure he was going to eat an eighty-foot Doug fir that was guarding the bluff, twice he was convinced he’d be downslope into the forest before he hit.

But his saw landed on the soft grass and he nailed his spot right between a pair of alders, their thin branches whipping against his helmet’s mesh faceplate. He was quick enough to tug the chute closed without it collapsing over the top of some tree. Two-Tall was right beside him.

They jammed their chutes into pack-out bags and fired up their saws. By the time Chas and Ox were coming in, they’d punched a fifty-foot clearing in the center of the alder grove. The other eight dropped in clean and soon the team was ready to get down to some serious work.

Akbar stole a second to peek at his phone. Nope. They were deep in the Siskiyou National Forest. No cell reception on the ground here. No reply to beautiful brunette space lady, at least not until this was done.

He jammed the phone away and did his best not to think about how to apologize for what was sure to be several days of silence.

Right now they had a fire to fight.