Wildfire at Dawn Read online

  She couldn’t resist the smile. There was a sure way to blow all of Johnny’s gaskets. “Hi honey. So how many kids do you want to have? Let’s not wait.”

  “Poof!” she said it softly, the sound of Johnny’s brain exploding like a dandelion gone to seed moments before a hurricane hit. Yes, one thing at a time. First she had to wait for Johnny to—

  Mister Ed slowed to a halt and dropped his ears back.

  Laura didn’t try to force him ahead; he was a very trail-wise horse. She scanned the trail ahead for rattlesnakes. Very rare at this altitude in this area, but she looked. Bear were more likely, but she could hear no telltale crash and thump through the twenty- and thirty-foot firs that grew in the area; bears rarely moved quietly. The world was very quiet.

  Mister Ed’s reaction was wrong for elk or deer; he was as likely to want to go play with them as anything else.

  Then she caught that hint of wood smoke again. The lightest of afternoon breezes was cool against her sun-warmed face, slipping down off the glaciers in gentle wafts of ice-scented air. But there was…

  The rest of the group had come to a stop behind her. She turned slowly in her saddle scanning farther afield for the cause.

  Smoke. A little thread of it. The fire was either small… No, she saw heat ripples to the south and the west. It was hot. So hot that there was little ash yet. The breeze shifted for a moment and she caught it again. Wood smoke.

  Mister Ed snorted.

  Laura pulled out her radio. All she could pull in was static. She couldn’t reach the Lodge because there was now half a mountain between them. No rangers responded to her call either. Not even the ski patrol that would be high up on Palmer. They’d come too far around the mountain’s curve.

  Maybe they’d come far enough.

  Johnny had given her MHA’s direct frequency.

  The voice that answered was harsh and rippling with static and squelch cutouts. She adjusted her own squelch setting and tried again.

  “This is Laura Jenson. We have a fire on the west side of Mount Hood. It is around the five thousand foot level and climbing toward Zigzag Canyon.”

  She thought the crackling voice said something about ten minutes. Laura tucked away her radio and turned back to the group.

  “Okay folks. I’m sorry to do this to you, but… Can you see the smoke starting down there below us?”

  They all turned to look the direction she was indicating. The fire had found enough fuel that the smoke was now starting to show clearly.

  “It’s unlikely that it will develop into anything and I’ve already called it in. But for our own safety, I’m going to abort today’s ride. What we’ll do is turn around and head back toward the Lodge. The wildland firefighters are based just ten minutes away. They’re on their way to check out the smoke and will let us know if we should continue back to the Lodge, or if we can turn around again and continue our ride. So we may be doubling back and forth a bit, but better safe than sorry, right?”

  Everyone agreed. It took a little doing as they were in a relatively narrow portion of the trail, but they got their horses turned around. Once they were all set, she led them back into the long vertical slice of a canyon that the ice and water had carved down the face of the mountain. The fire she could see was traveling along the ridge they had just departed, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near that.

  The other horses in the group finally caught the occasional wind shifts of a sudden warm updraft laced with firesmoke from downslope. Ears went back, nerves went up.

  She started teaching the group an old Brewer and Shipley song based on a Native American chant. It leant itself to a multi-part harmony that was easy even for the untrained. The song distracted the tourists and at the same time calmed their mounts.

  Now if it would only distract her. They’d descended back into the trees and wouldn’t re-emerge for over a mile. She didn’t like riding blind with a fire so near.

  # # #

  Akbar was hunched over a breakfast of a tall stack of Betsy’s killer blueberry pancakes, ham, and two eggs over easy. It was about what the other smokies who’d struggled out of their bunks were eating. Most of them were up and about except for the real sluggards who could sleep twelve hours at a stretch with little motivation. It was actually early afternoon lunch time, but Betsy was great about shifting meals to match when people woke up.

  The picnic tables that were MHA’s main gathering area were comfortable from the warming of the morning sun, but shielded from the midday heat by the kitchen and equipment buildings to the south. In the afternoon, the tall Doug firs to the west would offer sun-dappled shade. It was a good place to be.

  They’d just come off two days on a fire, a small but intense blaze in northern California. They’d trapped it between a lake and a community that had actually maintained their urban-forest interface. They’d lost a couple of garden sheds, but no homes. A job well done and the local engine company had taken over yesterday shortly before dark.

  Now they were up and relaxed. Ox was teasing Chas about not benching his own body weight when he did workouts; the fact that he could do more reps of a hundred pounds than Ox could was casually waved aside as meaningless. Krista and Tim were trying to get together a volleyball game for after breakfast, lunch, or whatever this was.

  Akbar was enjoying the scene. He wished Laura was here. It was one of those good moments. The crew was rested, sitting easy. There’d been no injuries all season worse than Chas’ sprained ankle and wrist. No bad burns at all. And they’d been able to respond to almost eighty percent of the fires they were called on—only a twenty percent “unable to be filled” rate. There were never enough resources and it wasn’t at all unusual to be requested to a fire when the team was already deeply involved in another one. But only missing twenty percent meant they were kicking ass this season, in 2012 the UTF was over forty-five percent.

  He looked around to assess the team. MHA kept a dozen of them year-round, which was very unusual. With most outfits, he’d have been lucky to keep Tim, Krista, and Ox full-time. But even his newest seasonal firefighter had five years on the line and two years jumping smoke. MHA’s salaries and up-to-date equipment attracted the very best. Damn good crew.

  Rumor had it that they’d be jumping Australia for a couple months this winter, which could be a nice change. Part of the price to keep them full-time, they’d have to travel to where the fires were. Maybe Laura could fly in for part of that and they could dive the Great Barrier Reef together or something like that.

  Yeah, right. Long range plans with a woman. He could feel himself screwing up no matter how he was fighting against his own worst nature. Someday soon the most amazing woman he’d ever met would lower the boom on his sorry head. He’d deserve it too. He was clueless how to really do this and he knew it.

  He forced himself to keep eating, he desperately needed the calories after two days on the fire line, but he wasn’t enjoying it any longer. Why did things go sour every time he thought of her?

  Like that stupid horse of hers. Every time he saw Mister Ed, he imagined how Laura looked riding him; that easy, confidant sway of a truly skilled rider. She made many things look easy, but her work with the horse was flawless. But no matter what good thoughts he tried to raise each time he looked at Mister Ed, the horse knew he didn’t have his shit together.

  A sharp whoosh and buzz overhead had most of the smokies glancing upward. Steve’s drone launched and shot by overhead, then turned sharply south. Most returned to their breakfast, barely breaking their conversation.

  Akbar glanced around. No Steve of course, he’d be at the drone’s controls in his truck parked by the launcher. Might be a fire, might be a Search-and-Rescue, might be an equipment test.

  No Carly at any of the tables either. Was she keeping her fiancé company or was she with him because there might be a fire?

  No Henderson.

  Akbar rose to his feet, took his tray to the wash bins. He rolled the remains of two pancakes ar
ound the ham and eggs like a massive and sloppy burrito. He trapped it between English muffins for a handhold, and headed over to Steve’s control trailer. He did his best to appear casual to not alarm the others just in case it was nothing.

  Around the backside of the bunkhouse where Steve kept his drone’s service truck and launch trailer parked, they were all clustered together: Steve in the truck at his controls, Carly, Mark, TJ, and Emily grouped at the tailgate. They were waiting…waiting for the drone to get where it was going.

  Akbar sidled up to the group, “What’s happening?” He knew that if he asked, “What’s up?” someone was bound to gaze uncertainly overhead and reply, “Blue sky.” One of the many legacies he’d managed to instill in the MHA lexicon of humor. He took a big bite of his pancake burrito and managed not to wear any of the egg that was dripping out the back end and onto the grass.

  Henderson answered him. “We got a badly broken radio report of a fire up on Mount Hood. Southwest we think. Rangers haven’t reported anything yet. Steve’s sending a drone to check it out.”

  Akbar felt his blood run a little cold. “Southwest?”

  “Maybe she said west. It was hard to tell.”

  “She?” That cold chill turned into a deep freeze. Laura was leading a group ride today. They were supposed to overnight near the timberline on the West side. “Was it Laura?”

  “Laura?” Henderson searched around a bit. “Oh, is that the lady who gave you the smacker of a kiss on the line the other day?”

  “That’s her.”

  Henderson shrugged. “You don’t introduce me to a beautiful woman, I’m not going to recognize her voice. It was almost all static anyway. She sounded calm.”

  “Yeah, she’s good at that,” Akbar thought about it. Laura always sounded calm, even the few times he’d caught her red-eyed and choked up—something she’d never explained. And he’d been dumb enough to not ask about it the second time after the way she refused to explain it the first time. His policy was not to question crying women, ever. But for Laura he should have. Next time he would.

  He chucked the rest of his meal in a handy garbage can and tried to settle in to wait. At ninety miles an hour, it took the drone over ten minutes to swing around Mount Hood’s flank.

  “We definitely have a fire,” Steve announced.

  “Where’s Laura?”

  “I don’t even know where the fire is yet. Give me a minute.” Steve kept one of his monitors twisted to the side so that they could see it as they crowded around the tailgate. The sides of Mount Hood were practically corrugated by long ridges running from peak to valley all around its slopes.

  The smoke was spreading along either side of a long canyon that separated two long ridges. That was good. It meant there’d be water they could pump right from the stream running down the center of the canyon.

  “You’ve got to find Laura,” he told Steve.

  Steve tapped quickly at some keys, “There, I’ve configured the drone as a relay.” He handed a microphone to Henderson, but Akbar grabbed it without bothering to ask or apologize.

  “Laura, this is Johnny.” He ignored the surprised looks the others aimed his way. “Can you hear me, over?”

  # # #

  “Hey Johnny Akbar the Great.” Laura was so happy to hear his voice. She could definitely taste the smoke on the air now, though the sky that she could see straight above was still clear of smoke. But it wasn’t all that much blue through the narrow slice of trees.

  “Where are you, Laura?”

  “Almost directly below Paradise Park, down in Zigzag Canyon. At the moment we’re heading back for the Lodge. We’re fine. We’re watering the horses at the stream along the Pacific Crest Trail.” Watering them to keep them calm, she didn’t add because she didn’t want her group of tourists to hear that. The horses were getting twitchy and the cool spring water serve as only a momentary distraction. She wasn’t sure if they could get out of this canyon without the horses bolting and their riders were definitely not skilled enough to deal with that.

  There was a long silence. She began counting her own heartbeats and passed twenty so quickly that she stopped counting.

  “We’re trying to find you,” Johnny called back. “Could you do me a favor? Transmit a count to thirty nice and slow. Start now.”

  His request didn’t make a lot of sense, but she did as he asked. While she was counting aloud, she assessed the group. The tourists were still thinking this was all a part of a good story for them to tell at home. None of them were aware of how uneasy their mounts were becoming. The horses’ nostrils and ears were working hard, but it also meant that the horses weren’t trying to grab every passing berry bush so their inexperienced riders were actually having an easier time of it.

  Then she heard it. A small engine circling overhead. She tried to catch a glimpse of it. It sounded like a small and quiet lawnmower, not a helicopter. Through a gap in the trees she spotted a flicker of a black shape against the sky.

  Laura knew it instantly. It was the same type of drone her father built up in Hood River. She’d forgotten about that first meal with Johnny and her parents. He’d called over a couple who then talked to her father about using drones on wildfires. MHA had one of her father’s special drones. It must be homing in on her radio signal.

  Near the end of her count, it flashed by close above her. It might have even waggled its wings before disappearing from view behind a tree.

  # # #

  “The fire’s wrong,” Carly said it softly, but with no question in her voice as Laura’s count was coming in over the radio and Steve was doing whatever he did with radio signals to pinpoint their location.

  Akbar looked at it again. The smoke was billowing up, indicating that the winds weren’t too turbulent yet. The fire itself was traveling upslope which was natural, especially in the light wind conditions.

  Crap! It was burning upslope…from several areas of the mountain’s flank all at once. They were actually separate blazes in the process of joining into a single fire as they moved upslope ready to sweep over the mountain’s flank. There were only two ways to start a fire like this one.

  A campfire, cigarette butt, and most other human causes that accounted for eighty percent of all wildfires had a single point of origin. A multi-point origin could be caused by a lightning strike. He glanced up at the cloudless blue sky as Laura finished her count.

  “Okay, we have you,” he had to work hard to keep his voice calm as he answered her. “Give us a sec.” He clicked off the radio.

  The second way to get a wildfire with a multi-point origin was human caused. Intentionally human caused. Arson.

  Steve zoomed in the view. He’d flipped to infrared to show the seven tightly clustered heat dots of tourists on horseback deep in the trees.

  “This is the Skyline Trail,” Steve overlaid the line on the map. The line passed right through the clustered group continuing side to side across the mountain’s flank, dipping into canyons and climbing over ridges.

  Akbar took one look at Henderson then keyed the microphone.

  “Laura?”

  “Yes, Johnny?”

  “Listen carefully. This is really important. Do not move from where you are. No matter what, you stay by that creek. We’re coming to get you.”

  He heaved the mike aside and sprinted back around the bunkhouse to roust his crew. The others followed close on his heels. He did his best to not think about the image on the screen.

  Where it climbed out of Zigzag Canyon in either direction, the Pacific Crest Trail was already on fire atop the ridges. And a new fire was starting the long crawl up the center of the canyon.

  Chapter 9

  Laura had everybody dismount. It had taken almost fifteen minutes for the drone to find them from when she’d first placed the call. Fifteen more and she’d have a bunch of tourists bucked to the ground.

  “Okay everybody, listen up.” Laura wished Johnny had explained what was going on, but he hadn’t. And his vo
ice had done its dead calm, soothing thing that he did so well. And, quite frankly, that was really, really freaking her out at the moment. But the tourists didn’t know that. Johnny was being very smart. As usual.

  “We’re going to wait here for a bit.”

  “It’s getting kind of smoky.” “Aren’t we going back to the Lodge?” “Can we—”

  She raised her hands to stop all of the questions. She took a deep breath and pulled out her best trail-guide-serious tone, rather than the trail-guide-upbeat one she’d been attempting to maintain.

  “We have been asked by a team of wildland firefighters to remain in our current position. Did anyone notice the small drone that flew overhead?”

  Some had. Some hadn’t.

  “They have a much better idea of what’s going around us that we possibly could. They’re the very best.”

  It was the pre-med student daughter who put it together first. “This isn’t some campfire that we’re smelling? This is a…” she swallowed hard and then whispered it, “…a forest fire?”

  The tension in the group ratcheted up about ten levels.

  “I’d say that’s a real possibility.” So this is how Johnny did it. She could feel the change inside herself. Over the years she’d dealt with injuries, frostbite, hunger, snakebites, and a hundred other emergencies. She’d never dealt with a forest fire. Yet she’d found a place inside her that could remain the calm center no matter what she was feeling.

  That’s how Johnny fought forest fires no matter how he’d been feeling over the last month. And that’s how he’d gone so long without speaking to her. His fear was locked tightly deep inside and—at least to everyone else in the world—he appeared calm and in control.

  It wasn’t a lesson she particularly wanted to have at the moment, but for now she’d latch onto it and hope she was alive in the morning to figure out how to help.