They'd Most Certainly Be Flying Read online

  They’d Most Certainly Be Flying

  an Oregon Firebirds romance

  M. L. Buchman

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  1

  “What kind of a heap is that?”

  Stacy looked up at the man climbing out of the car next to hers. He’d been riding her bumper since she’d pulled out of Cave Junction, Oregon five miles back. The tighter he’d hung in his black classic Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, the slower she went in her not so classic 1993 Toyota extended cab pickup. They’d barely been crawling when they reached the dusty Illinois Valley Airport parking lot.

  He was a big guy—in a multi-muscle way: muscle car, seriously muscled chest under his tight University of Washington Huskies t-shirt, and a total musclehead. His dark wrap-around shades were as retro as his ride.

  “My kind of heap. How many miles do you have on that Firebird?”

  He grinned down at his car like it was a beloved pet. “Just seventy-five thou. Ain’t she sweet?”

  “And she’ll be on the junk heap before a hundred and fifty. Unless,” she made a guess, “you replace the engine…again.”

  He scowled that she’d nailed it. Not hard, as it was a high odds bet that the miles he’d put on it hadn’t been easy ones.

  “I’ve already got three-hundred thousand on my heap’s original engine.”

  His scowl darkened even more.

  Maybe if she waited long enough, he’d move one step closer and she could take him out at the knees with her truck’s door. It was low enough on the little half-ton pickup. The truck had been a gift from her big brother, Bill, before he’d been blown up in a “training exercise in Alabama”—except she knew he’d been in Iraq and his death was accompanied by two new medals. They didn’t give those kinds of medals for training accidents. It was all she had left of him other than a folded flag and his dog tags.

  “What are you doing here, honey? You lost?” The guy asked her in his best demeaning tone.

  “What are you doing here… Oh, wait. Never mind. I already know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being an asshole for a living.”

  Instead of going to fury—she’d quietly put her truck in reverse and was ready to pop the clutch and peel out if necessary—he grinned. “Most folks don’t know that about me.”

  “Seemed pretty damn obvious from where I’m sitting.”

  He burst out a laugh. It was a big one that seemed to fill the air—which definitely needed something. The April morning was already hot and dry.

  The small airport was five miles south of Cave Junction, which wasn’t much of a town by anyone’s standards except rural Oregon’s. Two thousand people and six restaurants—if you counted the Dutch Bros. Coffee drive through—were tucked in the rough terrain close by the California border. The closest town that was any bigger was Grants Pass, over thirty miles back. There was an aridness to the land here that seemed wrong after growing up farther up the coast. Around here, the Douglas firs were scattered rather than growing in thick, mountain-covering expanses. Tall grasses predominated, which would be dangerously dry and brown long before fire season. Even more so around the airport: a flat, baking expanse with no activity beneath the blazing sunshine other than this two-legged laughing hyena.

  “Enjoying yourself?”

  “Immensely,” he was still grinning.

  She told herself not to, but was weak and asked, “Why?”

  “Because I just figured out who you are.”

  “You mean other than a pain in the ass.” She’d been called that enough times in her life to bury a multitude of lesser sins.

  “Yep! Other than that. You’re Stacy Richardson and you’re here to fly helicopters.”

  Only one man would know that. Curt Williams—her new boss… Who she’d just called an asshole.

  Stacy sighed and climbed out of her truck. At least she was batting her usual average.

  2

  Curt was glad for the dark glasses, so that he could take a moment and really look at the woman. His big sister had sent Stacy his way. Jana was a former heli-pilot for the 101st Airborne and was the logistics arm of their new business, the Oregon Firebirds. She may have lost a hand during a stupid accident while serving in Okinawa, but it didn’t diminish her flying smarts a bit.

  She’d kicked him a text, “I hired you a pilot. Stacy Richardson is an even better flyer than you.”

  Women were still rare in the helicopter world, so he’d assumed Stacy was a guy. He wouldn’t put it past his sister knowing that for a second. He’d ignore the last part of the message as mere sibling harassment.

  Stacy was definitely way better looking than he was though. Half a head shorter, trim of waist, but the ranting Donald Duck on her Oregon State University Ducks t-shirt was definitely nicely stretched. She had long dark hair that fell past her shoulders in soft waves tangled by the wind of driving with her window down. The sun caught red highlights and made her shine. Her aviator shades hid her eyes but not her thoughts.

  “Huskies. Oh, my, God! I can’t believe that I signed on to work for a Washington Husky fan.”

  “Beats the Ducks any day.”

  “And which football team had a twelve-year winning streak over the Huskies? Oh wait, it was the Ducks.”

  “Which was ended. By the Huskies.”

  “For the moment. I don’t know why you guys even bother showing up. Ducks are gonna wipe the field with you something fierce come fall.” And Curt hoped that the second part of Jana’s message was just exaggeration. Being humbled by a Duck in the air would be a sad state of affairs. Searching for another topic, he looked down at her battered little pickup. The backseat appeared to be crammed with a hodgepodge of belongings. The truck bed had a low cap on it, the same height as the cab. For a moment, it seemed that her whole life was parked right here in front of him just waiting to be discovered.

  “You do get that you’re going to be flying for the Firebirds.” He needed something else to think about because the more he looked at her, the more he saw to like. Good muscle tone, hard-worn running shoes, and an open stance that didn’t include the least bit of cowed.

  “And your point is?”

  With perfect timing, Jasper and a line of the three other pilots who’d be flying with him and Stacy raced into the parking lot. They swooped off the Redwood Highway at high speed, each unleashing a spray of gravel as they slid to a halt: a standard Firebird, a Camaro, and a pair of GTOs. All painted either red, or black with red flames—though none as cool as the Firebird painted on his own black hood.

  “What’s with the pickup?” Jasper asked as he climbed out of the lead car. “Got us another hot chick mechanic? Way to go, Curt.”

  “That’s my point,” Curt told Stacy pointing at the line of cars.

  “What? That you hire assholes like you?” But she backed it up with a grin that said she understood he was talking about the cars and was game to take them all on. He could get to like that in the woman.

  “Naw,” he turned to Jasper and the other guys. “Sis says she’s gonna fly the pants off us.” He could feel the eyeroll from Stacy at his word choice.

  “Sounds like a good contest to me,” Jasper tugged on a white cowboy hat.

  “Only if you like walking around in just your tighty-whities and a cowboy hat,” Stacy shot back at him. She might be a slim-and-trim cutie, but she clearly didn’t take shit from anybody and Curt definitely liked that.

  “
Let’s find out,” he nodded up the road toward the line of pickups that had followed his crew at a barely more sedate pace.

  3

  Stacy had been flying to fire for various outfits for over five years and knew what to expect from guys.

  Cowboy Hat and the other three new arrivals were predictably male, but she was having trouble pegging Curt Williams. One moment he was being true-to-expectations Mr. Macho Jerk, and other moments he appeared to be giving her the benefit of the doubt—which was rare enough in the general male pilot population to be exceptional.

  She turned to look up the road where Curt had indicated and spotted a line of three big GMC Denali 3500 pickups with rear dualies. They were serious overkill, but they were very pretty. They could haul far more load than the two helicopters they each had under wraps on a flatbed trailer.

  Jana Williams drove the first truck. She was the one who’d taken her up on a test flight over in Bend. She was a sharp contrast to her brother—a serious blonde who kept her thoughts to herself. A man and a woman drove the other two trucks that pulled in to line up on the dirt of the parking area as neat as a line of kites flying from the same string.

  Illinois Valley Airport had been the Siskiyou Smokejumper Base and launched teams to fifteen hundred fires from the 1940s through the ’80s. Now it was a sleepy, nowhere place without even a restaurant.

  “Heart of fire country,” Jana had told her during the interview. “And cheap. We like cheap.”

  There was nothing cheap about the rigs as everyone pitched in to unwrap and assemble the helos. Not only not cheap, but all of it looked factory new. There was serious money behind the outfit, which Jana had proven with the very generous offer that had bought her away from Columbia Helicopters.

  The six brilliantly red MD 520N NOTAR helicopters were small, agile craft with impressive power for their size. They were notoriously tough machines, a variant of the ones used by the Night Stalkers her brother had flown for. The NOTAR—short for No Tail Rotor—was a quieter and safer version of the 520. The tail rotor was replaced by a high speed fan to counteract the main rotor’s torque. Instead of using a four-blade rear rotor that always seemed to be begging to be taken out by flying debris, the fan simply drove air sideways out of a variable port to counteract the spin. Also, walking into the 520N’s low tail wouldn’t chop you into little pieces as there were no spinning parts.

  Stacy ran her hand over the side of the aircraft. It was brand new and completely beautiful.

  Just like a military bird, it had her name painted on the side. The Firebirds hadn’t merely hired her to fly; they’d hired her to stay. A bonus that Jana hadn’t mentioned.

  She looked over at Curt, but he was busy with Jasper swinging out the blades on another helo. The blades had been lashed in line with the tail booms for transport. Somehow she knew that putting the pilots’ names on their aircraft had been his doing, not his sister’s. Jana didn’t strike her as the kind of woman who cared about such niceties—Stacy was surprised to discover that she herself was.

  She touched her brother’s dog tags where they hung down inside her shirt. They’d soon be flying together just like they had as teens when he’d taught her his own passion for rotorcraft. Their family still had a tourist business flying a helo farther up the coast—a sideline that never did more than break even for her father’s farm.

  Why any sane person would farm in Otis, Oregon was beyond her. Just because great-granddad had been dumb enough to buy land there using his GI bill money from WWII, didn’t mean that they had to stay. It received eight feet, over ninety inches, of rain a year. It ranked eighth in the entire country for days with precipitation. It was a wonder she hadn’t drowned as a child. It was also no surprise that both of her parents were alcoholics. Thankfully they were quiet, depressive drunks, but still.

  But she’d survived, both the drowning rain and her drowning parents. All thanks to her brother. Bill had taught her how to fly. She’d actually paid for college by flying in the summers. She’d go land near the tourist beaches and put out a banner for sightseeing flights. Dad hadn’t cared as long as she took care of fuel and maintenance. It was the only years of success for Richardson helicopters.

  Now she didn’t know why she’d wasted the time and money. Not the flying, but the college. A degree in political science had seemed practical. Following in her brother’s footsteps…until one day his dog tags had come home without him. She’d finished her last semester, though she didn’t remember any of it, and then she’d flown. Somewhere in the air over a Montana fire she’d come to—as if she’d spent the last six months asleep. Already doing what she’d been meant to do.

  “Gonna just stand there and admire it all day?” Curt had come up beside her without her noticing. His words were teasing, but his tone was kind.

  “Thank you for my name,” she rubbed a hand over the letters again, barely able to feel the raised surface of the gloss paint.

  “It’s what a pilot deserves.”

  She looked up at the wistful tone in his voice.

  He tapped one ear, “Mostly deaf on this side. All that kept me from following my sister into the Army. Fine for commercial flying though.”

  “Bill, my—” but the words choked off on her and she had to look away. She ran her hand over the helicopter’s smooth skin again. “Thank you for both of us.”

  4

  Curt didn’t know what to say to that. There was pain there. And love. He could hear it and it humbled him. He loved his sister, he supposed. Yeah, sure he did. Because brothers loved their sisters, even if they made you batshit crazy half the time just by being alive and drawing breath. But he’d never found anything that would sound like that simple “thank you” did in Stacy Richardson’s soft voice.

  In silence, he’d helped her roll the helo off the trailer.

  They had three of the five rotor blades rigged before the silence built to the point where he couldn’t stand it any more. He started babbling about his business plans. He, Jasper, and Jana had worked them out together.

  “There’s that big outfit up in northern Oregon, Mount Hood Aviation. They fly all these big aircraft, Firehawks and even an Erickson Aircrane. I can loft all six of these 520s for the cost of one of their Firehawks. I could launch ten for the price of their Aircrane. I figure that with the pickup trucks for transport, we can be almost anywhere in the West within a day. And the 520s let us tackle fires in a way that matters to the insurance companies even more than the Forest Service.”

  “Saving structures.”

  “Bingo.” He liked that Stacy saw it right away. “With a line of six of these little babies, we can get up close and personal with spot fires before they can kill off a structure. We’re set up at a discount with the Forest Service so that we get early call to fires and an insurance bonus for every structure we save. Hence the cameras,” he pointed underneath. Everything would be videoed and then submitted to insurers as proof for each time they saved a million-dollar home, or a hundred-dollar shed. As far as he knew, it was a first-ever business set up this way and he could only hope that it worked, because he and his sister had gambled everything on it.

  They were hocked up to their eyeballs. He hated to do so, but he prayed for a busy fire season. Because if it was a slow one, the Oregon Firebirds weren’t likely to see another.

  Stacy nodded as if it all made sense to her. More than the financial scheme. As if she could see the dreams and sweat of the last three years putting together the right deals, the right gear, and the right people.

  Now why was her approval so important to him? It was like a sigh of relief went through him that it would all somehow work even if smart money said otherwise.

  They swung the last blade into place as the fuel truck finished topping up the tank.

  She took a moment to glance around the field.

  He followed her gaze. Everyone looked ready.

  Then she turned to him and smiled. It lit her up. She was already beautiful, but damn that smi
le was electric.

  “So, shall we see who gets to keep their pants on?”

  Suddenly Curt wasn’t so sure that he wanted to compete against her in a flight.

  Ten hours later, sitting down around the firepit with the other fliers, he knew he’d never risk underestimating her again. After a day of working on shakedowns and team coordination, there was no longer any question about who was the hotshot pilot of the outfit. There wasn’t a single guy here who shouldn’t be down to his skivvies.

  5

  “Something bothering you?” Jana asked as the three of them were settling into their bunks after another impossibly long firefight—their fourth major fire in five weeks. It felt good to be back at Illinois Valley Airport even if they’d been on the road more than they’d been here.

  The bunkroom wasn’t generous; it was best if they didn’t all try to get dressed at the same time. Jana had the single bed on one wall. Maggie—their ace mechanic—had the top bunk above Stacy’s lower. After the long drive back from the Idaho Trickle Creek Fire, which hadn’t been trickling at all, she was too tired to even think.

  “Sure,” Stacy mumbled. “I’m desperate to know how long we actually get to stretch out on a crappy bunk before the next fire.”

  “Hey,” Maggie stuck out her head and look down at her, temporarily blocking the too bright overhead light that no one had the energy to switch off. The shadows completely hid her expression. “I tightened the springs and put in a new board and everything.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to trigger the perfectionist in the room.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Maggie’s silhouette rolled back out of sight.

  Stacy considered rolling over to get out of the light, but just threw an arm over her face instead.