Chapter 1-3
703 Words
Krista stood at the edge of the jump spot and watched them coming in. It was the sort of place to have a picnic, green, unspoiled, and it would be sunny and warm once the sun was high enough.
It was hard to believe that two hundred feet north through thick trees and thicker undergrowth, a fire raged leaving behind only scorched earth and blackened stumps.
When Tim Harada had left to take over the lead slot for the Alaska Fire Service—after falling in love with his Alaska hometown sweetheart, real damn sad—Akbar had tagged Krista as his Number Two. Which in her mind meant that it was now up to her to uphold the advantages of singlehood for the rest of the crew.
The lead men were such total saps, both Tim and Akbar falling in love like that. She wouldn’t have bet on it lasting a season for either of them—hell, she wouldn’t have bet it was even possible…not until she’d met the women. They made it easy to imagine the marriages lasting a lifetime. Just too weird.
Not in her future; not while she was jumping. Probably not after, but that thought didn’t bother her as much as it used to.
The only smokies who remained stable in relationships were single or dead—marriage for wildland firefighters was nuts, plain and simple. Smokies spent all summer and fall gone to fire; and lately—with MHA’s taste for southern hemisphere contracts—winters as well.
In addition to upholding bachelorette-hood, it also fell to her to make sure everyone was up to snuff and safe. She now assessed each one of them coming in as she jammed her chute into a stuff sack. First jump of the season was always especially worrisome.
The DC-3, painted gloss black with red-and-orange flames tracing down its length, made multiple passes, dropping only one stick at a time. The winds were too chaotic for two sticks to jump and all have a good chance of hitting the drop zone.
She could see that Axe and the Jackal—last name Jackson and could howl like a coyote—were jumping clean.
Ant-man caught a bad downdraft and plummeted the moment he crossed the edge of the clearing.
Krista held her breath.
His real name was Lee, but on his second-ever fire he’d slept next to an anthill and been forced to constantly beat them out of his food bag for the rest of the fire. At least he wasn’t Fire-ant-man.
A little hard maneuvering and he managed to save it, slamming through the treetops and snagging his chute about a hundred feet up. His curses were plenty audible down on the ground as he dug his let-down rope out of the thigh-pocket of his jumpsuit. Ant-man’s curses grew even louder when his jump partner, Nick the Greek—who was neither named Nick nor was he Greek, but had made an injudicious remark a couple years back about wanting to nail Nikki and her big breasts in My Big Fat Greek Wedding—hit his landing dead on.
Others came in more or less clean, two treed in the towering branches of an unburned Doug fir, but no injuries. Eight down and packing their jump gear, two in the trees and moving carefully to make sure they didn’t knock themselves loose and plummet to the ground.
Last stick, Ox came in as clean as a seasoned pro. He was built on Krista’s scale, big and powerful. He had this weird taste for pixie-sized women about as big around as his bicep. It was a wonder he didn’t break them; they always looked so frail beside him. Hell of a smokie though.
Krista preferred her lovers to have enough substance for a good tussle. She never dated inside the squad, just wouldn’t do. And finding extra-curricular men up to smokie standards made for sparse pickings, but she didn’t do badly despite not suffering from the modern American image of beauty. Not like high school which had totally sucked.
Ox’s rookie jump-partner caught the reverse of the bad gust that had treed Ant-man. Instead of losing most of the lift as he approached the drop zone, he was whisked back aloft on a hot thermal.
Evan Greene was there one moment and simply gone the next. Gone straight toward the fire and not a thing that even the best jumper could do about it.
Shit!
“Ox! Jackal!” She grabbed a Pulaski fire axe and bolted into the trees.
- Writer
