Fire Light Fire Bright Read online

  Fire Light Fire Bright

  a Firehawks romance story

  by M. L. Buchman

  1

  “Hi, I’m Candace Cantrell. First Rule: anyone who calls me Candy, who isn’t my dad,” she hooked a thumb at Fire Chief Carl Cantrell standing at-ease beside her, “is gonna get my boot up their ass. We clear on that?”

  A rolling mumble of “Yes, ma’am.” “Clear.” and “Got it, Candace.” rippled back to her from the recruits. Some answered almost as softly as the breeze working its way up through the tall pines. Others trumpeting it out as if to get her notice. A few offered simple nods.

  She surveyed the line of recruits slowly. Way too early to make any judgments, but it was tempting. Day One, Minute One, and she could already guess five of the forty applicants weren’t going to make it into the twenty slots she had open.

  The one thing they all, including her dad, needed to see right up front was their team leader’s complete confidence. Candace had been fighting wildfires for the U.S. Forest Service hotshot teams for a decade. She’d worked her way up to foreman twice, and had been gunning for a shot at superintendent of a whole twenty-person crew when her dad had called.

  “We’ve got permission to form up an IHC in the heart of the Okanagan-Wenatchee National Forest,” he never was long on greetings over the phone.

  Her mouth had watered. A brand new Interagency Hotshot Crew didn’t happen all that often.

  “I talked to the other captains and we want you to form it up.”

  Now her throat had gone dry and she had to fight not to let it squeak.

  “Me?”

  “You aren’t gonna let me down now, Candy Girl?”

  “You shittin’ me?” Not a chance.

  Then he’d hit her with that big belly laugh of his.

  “Knew you’d like the idea.”

  And simple as that, she’d been out of the San Juan IHC at the end of the Colorado fire season and back home in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State. She’d grown up in the resort town of Leavenworth—two thousand people and a ka-jillion tourists. The city fathers had transformed the failing timber town into a Bavarian wonderland back in the sixties. But that didn’t stop the millions of acres of the National Forest and the rugged sagebrush-steppe ecosystem further east in central Washington from torching off every summer.

  The very first thing she’d done, before she’d even left the San Juan IHC, was to call in a pair of ringers as her two foremen. Jess was short, feisty, and could walk up forested mountains all day with heavy gear without slowing down a bit. Patsy was tall, quiet, and tough. Candace had them stand in with the crews for the first days because she wanted their eyes out there as well.

  “Second, see that road?” she asked the recruits and pointed to the foot of National Forest Road 6500. She’d had their first meet-up be here rather than at the fire hall in town. A gaggle of vehicles were pulled off the dirt of Little Wenatchee River Road. Beater pickups dominated, but there were a couple of hammered Civics, a pair of muscle cars, and a gorgeous Harley Davidson that she considered stealing it was so sweet.

  The recruits all looked over their shoulders at the one lane of dirt.

  “We’re going for a walk up that road. We leave in sixty seconds.”

  Like a herd of sheep, they all swung their heads to look at her.

  “Fifty-five seconds, and this ain’t gonna be a Sunday stroll.”

  You could tell the number of seasons they’d fought fire just by their reactions.

  Five or more? They already wore their boots. Daypacks with water and energy bars were kept on their shoulders during her intro. And despite it being Day One of the ten-day shakedown, all had some tools: fold-up shovel and a heavy knife strapped to their leg at a minimum. Only she, Jess, and Patsy had Pulaski wildland fire axes tied to their gear, but all the veterans knew the drill.

  Three to four seasons? Groans and eyerolls. Packs were on the ground beside them. No tools, but they knew what was coming now that she’d told them—ten kilometers, at least, and not one meter of it flat.

  One to two seasons? Had the right boots on, but no packs. They were racing back to their vehicles to see what equipment they could assemble.

  Rookies? Tennis shoes, ball caps, no gear, blank stares.

  “Forty-five seconds, rooks. Boots and water. If you’re not on the trail in fifty seconds, you’re off the crew.” That got their asses moving.

  There was one man on the whole crew she couldn’t pigeonhole, the big guy who’d climbed off the Harley. His pack and the fold-up shovel strapped to it were so new they sparkled. But his boots and the massive hunting knife on his thigh both showed very heavy use.

  A glance at her dad’s assessing gaze confirmed it. Something was odd about the Harley man and his easy grin. Not rugged handsome, but still very nice to look at. Powerful shoulders, slim waist. Not an athlete’s build, but rather someone who really used his body. His worn jeans revealed that he already had the powerful legs that every hotshot would develop from endless miles of chasing fire over these mountains and steppes for the next six months. It was like he was a Hollywood movie: some parts of him were so very right, but a lot of the details were dead wrong.

  2

  Luke Rawlings looked at the team superintendent. Couldn’t help himself, ‘cause damn she was a treat to look at. Her white-blond hair was short and sassy, her body was seriously fit, but curved like a sweet-Candy dream girl. Her no-nonsense attitude just cracked him up; he could hear that natural state of command that you only learned the hard way, by doing it. Not something he’d ever expected to find in a hot civilian babe.

  When he’d mustered out, SEAL Lieutenant Commander Altman had suggested he try firefighting. Altman was a smart dude, so Luke had followed his suggestion. He’d kicked around with a big city fire department doing ride-alongs for a while. Chicago Fire were all super guys and they kept trying to sign him aboard, but tramping pavement and cement, doing fire inspections for date tags on commercial fire extinguishers…he’d rather be back in the African jungle. If his nerves would let him, which he so wasn’t going to think about now.

  He still wasn’t sure how he’d heard about the hotshot crews, but walking into a wildfire—he just liked the way it sounded.

  And looking at “Not Candy” Cantrell, he was damn glad he’d followed his whim and ridden his Harley west. “Not Candy.” What did that make her? Cake, or main course?

  She moved to the head of the dirt forest road where it left the pavement. The old hands had already moved onto the track, but they waited once there. So, hotshot teams moved as a unit. Good. That was familiar.

  He dropped into line to watch. Candace had already picked out at least two of her team, he could see the surreptitious communication between the three of them; all three with worn fireaxes, despite it being just a training walk.

  Number One tool of their trade. Got it.

  So, her recruit assessment was underway from the inside as well. The two insiders were watching the rookies, but the superintendent also had her eye tracking him.

  Didn’t require his kind of training to catch the glance between father and daughter as they assessed him. Let them wonder. There were some things he’d rather not talk about. He was just gonna play Mr. Average Joe Firefighter Hopeful and see how it rolled.

  3

  Day Five and Candace was halfway through the selection process. She’d been right on four out of the five who’d been gone on Day One; one had made it to Day Two. She’d lost five more since then. She was down from forty to thirty on her way to the final twenty to be accepted into the crew.

  She
knew crew bosses who did it solely with physical testing: massive hikes, hard calisthenics, and so on. She preferred to incorporate as much training as possible. Here’s what the real world will be like, kids. You up for it?

  Yesterday she had them clearing a line. When a fire was working its way through the forest duff and detritus, it was up to a hotshot team to scrape and clear a wide swath down to mineral soil, and to do it in lines often a mile or more long. Upslope and down.

  Hotshots might be the elite ground crew, barely a step down from the smokejumpers, but they spent a lot of time grubbing dirt lines. Sixteen hours she’d kept them at it, sunup to well past sundown, finishing by headlamp, then sacking out right where they were. On a big fire, they’d be going twenty-four to thirty-six hours at a time and she wanted to give them a taste of that. They all wore field packs now and either a Pulaski axe or a McLeod rake. Unlike most field duty during the season, her dad’s townie crew did roll in with a wildfire engine loaded up for each meal; so at least they ate well.

  Today, she pulled Jess and Patsy out of the crowd and introduced them around the deep woods camp as her two foremen. She’d left them in the team long enough that their exceptional skills and experience had become standout obvious, so there were no hard feelings about having spies in their midst. At least none that she could spot.

  Luke Rawlings had offered her one of his enigmatic smiles that seemed to say, About time. As if he’d known about them since the first day.

  She was half tempted to boot the man, just because the puzzle of him was so damned distracting. Candace needed the team to stay focused and this man was a complete aberration. But the part of her that he was sidetracking had nothing to do with forest fires, so she did her best to ignore that and left him in place.

  He clearly had no experience with wildfire or hotshot techniques, but show him something once and he had it solid. Not just what to do, but like he’d always had it. Luke had clearly never run a chainsaw, didn’t even know how to start one. Yet after a single day that the team had spent clearing some new land for a farmer downslope near the town of Monitor, he moved like a three-year sawyer.

  And he never spoke much. Strong and silent type. “Just takin’ care of business, ma’am” attitude. When he did speak, his voice had a soft southern to it, Tennessee or Kentucky—that he clearly knew was a total charmer. Of the six women among the recruits, four had already taken a run at him. As far as Candace could tell, not a one of them had gotten past that polite shield.

  What are you hiding, Rawlings?

  He wasn’t saying. Well, today should separate out more of the recruits. Question was, did she want him separated out or not?

  She moved them downslope from where they’d camped—an uncomfortable site on the slopes of Dragontail Peak. Anyone who thought fires didn’t burn on this kind of terrain, so hotshots never walked it, would be disabused of that notion over the fast-approaching fire season.

  When they reached a small clearing, her dad had already arrived with a wildfire engine. These trucks were wide, heavy, and smaller than the standard in-town engines. More the size of a utility service truck, they could cross surprisingly rough terrain with a great deal of gear and five hundred gallons of water.

  Once they were gathered, Candace pulled out a fire shelter pouch and held it up for all to see.

  “This is a five-hundred dollar device of last resort. You will always have one on your hip and you will protect it more carefully than your own face. If everything else goes wrong and you find yourself in a burnover situation, this foil shelter is your only chance of survival.”

  That sobered a number of their faces.

  “Today, we’ll practice with plastic shelters worth about ten dollars. I don’t want to see even the smallest tear or nick in these, because if it’s a real fire, fifteen hundred degree flame will find its way right through that gap and toast your ass. I can’t begin to tell you how much paperwork that will cause me.”

  That got her some good laughs. Even the old hands appreciated the dark humor of it. She knew that at least three of them besides herself had ridden out a burnover under a shelter. And several of them had friends among the Yarnell 19 who died in 2013; the manzanita-fed flames too hot for even the foil shelters’ protection.

  Luke Rawlings, however, looked at her as if she’d just committed a crime against humanity. His expression had gone dark enough that she suddenly feared for her safety. No. It wasn’t her he was looking at. He was looking at something that wasn’t in the grass clearing, but rather in his past. Well, she pitied whoever had put that look on his face, because she’d wager they hadn’t survived long after whatever they’d done to piss him off.

  She made it a policy to not pull a recruit’s application file during the ten-day trial, but she’d broken down last night. U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Luke Rawlings, retired. That explained some things, but not others. She’d fought fire beside plenty of ex-soldiers before, though none as quietly competent as Rawlings. Many hadn’t been able to face the fire itself when it came down to reality: some froze, some ran, and one got the shakes so bad they had to medevac him out.

  Luke was steady. Always helping the rawest rookies get their feet under them with a gentle word and a clear demonstration. Infinitely patient, he kept working with them until they really had it. He’d be a good man to have around.

  Erase that, Cantrell. Mr. Ex-Navy Luke Altman would be a good firefighter to have around. She just wished she could stop thinking about the man who watched her as much as she was watching him.

  Usually about half of the former soldiers would be weeded out by the fire shelter deployment exercise.

  It was something of a surprise when she realized that she really hoped Luke wasn’t one of those.

  4

  Deep breathing barely pulled Luke back from the edge.

  Pine scent.

  Not jungle.

  Dry air.

  Better.

  He’d been civilian for six months now, and no day was easier. The only easy day was yesterday! He kept repeating the SEAL motto to himself, but it wasn’t helping. “Yesterday” had totally sucked as well.

  There was no way to predict when it was going to slap him; half his team gone between one breath and the next. They’d been deep in the Democratic Republic of the Congo having a quiet moment in a quiet town. The woman had strolled by where they were eating lunch with a basket of melons balanced on her head. The brightly-colored flowing kanga had hidden only parts of her fine form; the part that had been five kilos of explosives. The blast had ripped her, half his team, and one whole end of a Congolese market to shreds.

  He did his best to focus on Candace Cantrell’s lecture about how to deploy a fire shelter.

  Breathe in the dry pine.

  Piece by piece he forced his brain back together.

  Only easy day was yesterday.

  U.S. soil, not the Congo.

  Training here—way easier than any single day of BUD/S.

  Essential survival techniques that didn’t include flak vests and Kevlar helmets. Weapons of the forest were a Pulaski tool and a chainsaw, not an M-249 SAW machine gun and Barrett M107 sniper rifle.

  Luke dug the toe of his boot into the thick mountain bunch grass, appreciating Candace’s steady manner and calm voice. Getting easily lost in it. She’d been growing more and more crucial to his daily control, his well being.

  Anyone who’d served and said that each day wasn’t a massive struggle was only lying to himself. But being around Candace made that struggle seem worthwhile.

  That thought finally kicked him all the way out of his downloop and left him blinking at her in surprise.

  She was important to him.

  How the hell had that happened?

  Women were…not like her. It’s like she was a different breed or species or something. A better one.

  Some part of
his brain, trained by far too many officer harangues, had kept up with the lecture. She now stood close enough that he could smell her—like sweet honey and glacier-fed streams—as she had him stepping into the shelter, pulling it up over his back and his head, and lying down with his face in a hole dug into the dirt.

  “Keep your face in the hole, it’s where the air is coolest,” Candace called out loud enough to be heard easily through the shelter. “Feet to the fire. Your team leader may call out a last moment shift. If so, you keep your face in the hole and rotate your feet around. Do not, I repeat, do not lift the edge of your shelter. That is a life-and-death decision. The edges stay down even when you think you’ll go mad.”

  Great! Just what Luke needed, another reason to lose it.

  “Fire is loud. Freight train loud. It will try to rip away your shelter. Don’t let it.”

  And then all hell broke loose.

  His shelter slapped down on him!

  A thunderclap of noise!

  He was back in battle! God, no!

  He fought the urge to scream.

  Struggled for focus.

  Orders.

  His commander had said to hold fast. To stay down. Under cover. He gripped the edges of his shelter harder than he’d clutched the stock of his MP5N machine pistol as he was blown backward into a goat merchant’s stall. Gripped so hard he wondered that his fingers didn’t break.

  He heard a voice yelling out, “Stay under the shelter!”

  The blast moved away, battered another shelter nearby, returned! and then moved off again. It was…the spray of a fire hose off the wildfire engine. Water began to trickle under the edge of the shelter.

  Shit.

  Not a bomb.

  Not a war.

  He racked in a painful breath. Just a test with water. No cracked ribs this time, he could breathe. He started laughing…then crying. Mickey, Ralph, Doug; shooting the shit over Ndakala fish curry one second and scattered in pieces the next.