Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Laura had avoided the worst of Grayson’s attention by descending to stratagem. She recruited everyone to unsaddle, groom, and feed their mounts. Part of the “country” experience. When they proceeded, as a group, to the Lodge for drinks, she had casually breezed through the “Employees Only” entrance to the kitchen and out the far side to her car.

Once safely off the grounds, she checked her phone. Still no response. Well, what had she expected? Nothing much. So why was she disappointed?

Had she thought that just maybe Akbar had been serious? He had taken the initiative to charm her mother along with herself. It was stupid of her to feel put out. He and his tall friend had made it clear what they wanted right from the start. Akbar, if that even was his real name, had done it with an unexpected grace and style, but it had still been the same old game.

She’d fallen for that trap twice in her life. One of the times she’d actually been foolish enough to think the altar might lie at the far end of the rainbow, only to learn that not just no, but no-how no-way. The only thing lying under Elgin’s rainbow had been his wife, who had laughed in Laura’s face. She not only knew about it, she did the same herself.

The other had talked a good game, as good as Akbar’s—to every girl he passed.

Why had she thought Akbar was any different?

She loosened her hands on the steering wheel after she almost went off the hairpin turn on the way down the mountain and toward her cabin home.

Wouldn’t that be the ultimate joke? Careening off a cliff because of someone who didn’t even have the decency to call her back.

# # #

The blowup hit at 4:38 in the afternoon. Akbar had guessed it was coming, had even sent a runner down the line around four o’clock to make sure everyone had their heads still in the game after nine straight hours.

They’d sliced a mile-long clearing fifty feet wide and turned most of it into a bone yard—scraped down to the mineral soil by hand, all of the organics had been cleared out of the fire break. Without the organics, embers would have nothing to ignite.

The fire break ran along the ridge. The choppers had worked a line of retardant to the south until it met with Krista’s cut. No fixed-wing tankers available to help; all of those resources were committed down in California and Nevada at the moment. Still, the choppers had done it.

But mid-afternoon temperatures in the Siskiyous had hit over ninety degrees, and the wind was parchingly dry. He’d been able to feel the moisture being dragged out of the trees. And himself.

At 4:30, they’d still had a five- or six-hour window of time to complete their fire break to the north. At 4:45, that had been reduced to half an hour by the blowup. Flames now tore at the sky, reaching a hundred feet into the air and releasing a hungry roar that shook the ground. Shouted orders couldn’t even be heard.

The sun was behind the smoke plumes making the sky an evil blood red and turning the day dark. The fire started ripping trees up by their roots and tossing them aside. The updrafts over the fire and the downdrafts over the ridge made it too dangerous for the choppers to get close.

Downdrafts.

He stopped and looked up at the sky.

Tim came to stand beside him.

Akbar pointed.

Tim still didn’t see it.

Akbar tried to shout, but his voice was hoarse from smoke and weak from hard work. The air was moving up from the fire; much of the smoke pluming upward and to the east. He traced the downdrafts with his arm to demonstrate. With the intensity of the blowup the low-level smoke was being pulled back in with the air to feed the base of the fire. For the moment, the fire-induced wind was actually blowing downhill, from their position atop the ridge back toward the fire to feed the raging combustion.

“Burn it,” he managed to croak out. He grabbed his radio, “MHA Smokies. Burn out the whole line. Backburn now!”

He grabbed a drip torch and sprinted across the fire break they’d spent nine hours cutting and scraping to the very edge of the ridgeline. The monster roared with a hot and hungry breath. Even though it was still far downslope from their position, he could feel its heat radiating toward them, desperate to eat, to consume.

But the fire had made a mistake. And if they were fast, they could turn it into a fatal mistake.

Lighting the wick on his drip torch, he pulled the trigger releasing the fuel. The fuel dribbled out over the burning wick and splattered onto the pine needles and dead branches along the edge of the fire break at the top of the ridge; the edge toward the fire. Even the torch’s first tiny flame tips were sucked downslope toward the oncoming blaze, drawn back toward the fire by its own heat-induced weather system.

If they could burn the whole line, sending their own fire burning right into the face of the main fire, there was a chance that the fire break could hold even against the monster coming toward them.

He and Tim headed in opposite directions along the ridgeline, spattering bits of flame as they went. He kept glancing back, saw their own fire building behind him, consuming the dry tinder. Soon, he saw other fires as the rest of the crew got moving.

Back on the radio, he pulled half of Krista’s team from the south end to the north. He had to shout to be heard over the massive roar of the approaching flames. It would be a long, hard run of more than a mile over rough terrain, but he needed all the force he could get for the unfinished north end of the line.

“Mark,” he called on the ICA’s frequency as he ran with the drip torch in one hand and his chainsaw propped over his shoulder, his forearm across the blade, his microphone bobbing in his hand, “hit the north end with everything you can. That’s our hole. We can’t let it through the gap.”

For six more hours they fought the fire back and forth across the ridge. It would spot across the line at a weak point, where the slopes had been too steep to clear well—one of the small choppers would dump a couple hundred gallons and kill it. Steve’s drone managed to be everywhere up and down the line, feeding Akbar information almost before he needed it.

The big Firehawk circled back time and again dumping a thousand gallons per load in a shower louder than any cloudburst, a resounding whomp! almost loud enough to drown the fire’s roar each time. Radio calls flew back and forth, the airwaves a clutter of moves and countermoves.

Twice he sent a runner down the line to make sure everyone was staying hydrated and were solid on their feet.

It was well past sunset—when only Emily in the Firehawk and Jeannie in her little MD500 were authorized for nighttime firefighting—that they finally broke through. They connected the retardant line to the fire break on the north end and trapped the flame.

Around midnight, they declared it contained and Akbar sent half the crew to sleep for three hours. By the time they hit crew turnover, Krista at least no longer looked cross-eyed with exhaustion. He reported to her that they had kept the fire contained—little chance of it escaping now—and were letting the flames burn out the fuel within the containment boundaries of: the burned-over black, the two heavy lines of retardant to either side, and the firebreak along the ridge. Twenty-four people had made and held a line a mile and a half long.

Now he could sleep for a few hours.

He ate an energy bar and checked his phone.

Still no signal.

He collapsed for three hours and dreamt of fire.