Wildfire on the Skagit (Firehawks Book 9) Page 2

  “Hell, boy,” Ox drawled out in his best country-hick accent. “Your gear don’t even smell of wood smoke.”

  Protesting about the fact that MHA had issued him brand new gear would have no effect whatsoever, so he didn’t bother.

  “Besides,” Ox sneered at him, “You’re a rookie. We’ve got a rule against taking rookie money…except at poker.”

  “Don’t play,” Evan did, but not well enough to take on a table of smokejumpers. “You play pool and you’re on.”

  “Done!” Ox agreed as the line shuffled forward.

  Evan had bought his first car by pool sharking in Boise. He’d show Ox a thing or two for calling him rookie. Even if it was pretty standard hazing for the “new guy,” after five years jumping fire, it got under his skin a bit.

  They were sixth and last stick, placing Evan at the very tail of the line. He tried not to take it personally, but he did. He’d always been in the first few sticks with the Zulies, often jumping lead on secondary fires. Was it because he was once again a rookie after five years of jumping that he was at the back or was it really just the chance of the rotation after the first stick, as the MHA jumpers insisted?

  As the plane circled around to drop the next stick, Evan delayed long enough to get a good look out the window at Akbar and Krista circling down into the hole in the trees. Akbar made it down, stalling his chute hard and doing a roll between two trees at the edge of the small clearing. Clean jump.

  Krista had done his initial interview and been his test-jump partner when he’d come down to Mount Hood Aviation’s base camp just south of Hood River, Oregon.

  He’d remembered the feeling as she yanked on his gear during the buddy check, making sure everything was in place and properly attached. She’d given tips that he hadn’t learned in five years of jumping with the Zulies—little things, so small they barely mattered—which told him more about MHA than anything else had. Even the tiniest bit safer mattered deeply to these people.

  Evan had been terribly self-conscious as he’d checked Krista’s gear. Female smokejumpers were rare, it was just too hard physically. IHCs, sure. More and more women were fighting fire from the ground crews. Tough hikes, long days, and hard work, it’s what the Interagency Hotshot Crews were good at and some of the women did great.

  Smokies didn’t fight fire, they battled it. It was the Special Forces posting of the civilian world. That’s why he gravitated to jumping fire after six years in the Green Berets—a past he did not advertise. And before that there was the past he did his best to forget. Better everyone though he’d been hatched out as a smokejumper from the first day.

  When women did make the jump lineup—and the Zulies had a couple—they were about as sexy as battering rams. All grit and determination and in your face about it. Like they were trying to be more macho than the guys and always being aware that they were the outsider long after the guys had forgotten about it.

  The next two sticks jumped and the ride down was a wild one, but he watched them to the ground trying to map the shifting of the unseen winds in his head to plan his own route down.

  Krista Thorson was something else, first stick of jumpers at an outfit like MHA said that it wasn’t honorary either. There were women trying to make Special Forces, but they just didn’t have the upper body strength to qualify no matter how driven they were.

  Krista would have had no problems there. She was built on a grand scale. Tall enough to look him square in the eye, broad of frame, big chested, and sassy as hell. Her powerful shoulders emphasized by the brush of light-blond hair—a smooth fall that set off a great face and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

  She had a fast wit, a mouth that was always on the verge of a laugh, and she moved like a Master Sergeant—with the casual power of someone who knew that the battle wouldn’t even begin without her there. Master Sergeants were called the backbone of the military for a reason and Krista was clearly the Number Two smokie for the same one.

  He checked his gear for about the tenth time. He was always a little extra paranoid, but it served him well as a Special Forces Green Beret and so far it had served him well as a smokie.

  Krista was not his usual type; not at all. He typically went for the long and slender ones who populated the smokejumper bars and the Special Forces bars before that.

  But he’d practically blushed when checking Krista’s parachute harness just above those big breasts visible even through the jumpsuit. He couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to wrestle with that much woman, both her confidence and her body.

  And his body’s reaction to those thoughts inside full jump gear was decidedly uncomfortable—the material too thick and the jump harness too tight to let him rearrange anything from the outside.

  The next to last stick jumped. He took one last look out the window before scooting up behind Ox.

  Krista had floated down to land dead center in the deep hole among the trees. Tuck and roll, then she popped back to her feet and was standing on Akbar’s collapsed chute as if counting coup.

  Damn but she could fly.

  # # #

  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 cl
ean, 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.

  # # #

  Evan had tried a hard turn while stalling the chute to get clear of the thermal, but it hadn’t let him down in time. He was jerked back aloft and the drop zone was now gone behind him—no way to get it back.

  Need alternate landing. You got about ten seconds, Ev.

  Down here near the valley floor, the trees were massive. Snagging a tree two hundred feet up was incredibly dangerous. He’d be as likely to collapse the chute and plummet down as to get safely stuck and then lower himself to the ground.

  The only places not thick with trees were…mostly on fire.

  The tail of the fire didn’t have the towering flames like the ones he’d seen up at the head, but it was still burning outward in all directions despite the lack of driving wind.

  He relaxed the steering toggles to get maximum flight distance. The burning edge of the fire gave him some welcome extra lift, but not enough to turn back. Even though the slap of heat punched right through his gear and the smoke stung his eyes, it bought him a hundred feet up and another few seconds of descent.

  Past the burning edge, he entered the Black—the burned-out forest that was stark with loss of color. Greens and browns had been stripped away, replaced by black char, tree bark scorched gray, and all wrapped in writhing smoke that made it look like a horror movie set.

  The trees still stood, might even still be alive. But without the cushioning smaller branches and foliage—which had all been burned away—the main branches were as brittle and dangerous as blackened spears.

  Despite the wind of his passage, there was a silence above the Black. He could hear the trickling of a stream rolling fast over rounded rocks, a glistening silver line in the gray world. The low fires of the tail now crackled a hundred meters behind him.

  A landing spot.

  Well, not even a spot, more of a narrow slot. A small ridge of rock had kept the big trees clear to either side. The fire had cleared it of brush and saplings.

  He was running with the wind. He flew past his new drop zone and did his best not to look at the fast approaching spires of taller trunks on the climbing slope.

  Evan yanked down on the parachute’s left steering toggle, initiating a braked flat turn and spun like a top right around the nastiest looking of the still standing trees. Then he dove into the headwind.

  As soon as he cleared the leading edge of the opening over the narrow bit of rock, he stalled the parachute hard. The ground rushed up toward him. At the last moment he flared the chute converting most of his speed into lift, and managed to land with just enough impact that he had to do a tuck and roll but was able to regain his feet. A quick twist and he collapsed the chute before it snagged any of the trees.

  A voice spoke from close behind him, making him jump.

  “You better not have gotten any burn holes in that chute, Rookie, or Chutes will take it out of your hide.” Chutes was the master of MHA’s parachute loft and hell on anyone who packed a chute that was less than perfect.

  Evan spun to see Krista standing just two steps away. She must have sprinted the whole way upslope from the drop zone to get here so fast. Winded, though not badly, she wore her hardhat and gripped a well-worn Pulaski in her gloved hands.

  “Just thought I’d do a little sightseeing before I started on the fire,” and he turned back to gathering his chute. Soon his heart rate would start coming down. It was always crazy on landing, even on a clean one. Missing the drop zone and nearly eating a smokie-killing tree had pumped his pulse up with a serious dose of adrenaline along the way.

  Krista standing so close and grinning at him wasn’t helping.

  “Good jump, Rook. That was a really nice save. Could get to like you. Just don’t go off worrying me again without permission.”

  “Yes, sir,” he saluted sharply.

  “Do I look like a sir?” She cupped her big hands beneath her breasts which were framed by the chest and waist straps of her safety harness. “These aren’t over-muscled pecs, Rook.”

  “Wouldn’t know, sir,” he nodded toward her chest. “You haven’t shown them to me.”

  She saluted back, but he could tell it was a civilian gesture; and not just because it was made with a middle finger flicked against the brim of her hardhat and a laugh.

  Still, Master Sergeant Krista Thorson definitely fit her—military or not. Odd, he knew the background of most of the crew after the three weeks of season-prep and dozens of practice jumps.

  He knew nothing about Krista.

  Chapter 2

  Their cargo dropped in clean and they soon had the drop zone secure. Akbar led half of the team up the right flank of the fire, leaving her to lead the rest of them to the left.

  “Nick the Greek,” Krista pointed downslope. “I want you to get a pump anchored down at the stream. Once Ant-man gets back out of his tree, run a couple hoses. I want you to focus on killing the tail.”

  “You hear that?” Nick shouted up at the tree.

  Ant-man had lowered himself down safely, and was now climbing back up into the tree to retrieve his chute. “Is that shit speaking?” a shout sounded from seventy or eighty feet up in the thick branches.

  Nick turned back to Krista, “We got ya covered.” His evil grin said that Ant-man was a long way from living down his tree landing. But if Nick said they had the situation under control, there was no doubt they did.

  “Axe, Jackal, Ox, and Rookie,” she turned to the remaining smokies, “you’re with me.”

  “I have a name,” Evan protested. “It’s—”

  “Not yet you don’t,” Ox’s deep voice shut him down. “You don’t got a name until Mama Krista tags you. Until then, you’re just Rook.”

  Krista offered Evan a smirk to keep him in his place. She might have cut him some slack if he hadn’t scared her by flying into the Black. The Black was more dangerous than tall trees, but he’d flown a perfect pattern. She doubted if she could have done better; man was a born jumper.

  “Give me a goddamn break, Ox,” he groaned but you could tell he knew it wouldn’t do any good and was just fighting the good fight.

  “Nope!” As they bantered, Evan was sorting through the piled up gear just like the rest of them.

  The parachutes and reserves were all stuffed into a big sack to be sorted out and repacked back at base. They rummaged through the fatboy boxes for food. Snickers went fast and vegetarian MRE’s went slow—because veggie-anything Meals, Ready-to-Eat weren’t fit to be eaten. Not by woman or beast.

  They also loaded up on Pulaski fire-axes, chainsaws, and a jerry can of gasoline. They all drank their water bottles dry, refilled t
hem, and Ox added the rest of the five-gallon cube of water to his load—they’d drain it fast enough.

  Akbar and four smokies had gone to the right flank, Krista led her four up the left, leaving Nick and Ant-man to deal with the tail.

  The fire wasn’t very active up the left flank. They beat it back with cut-off pine boughs and shovelfuls of dirt. The smaller trees that were burning, they cut and dropped them back into the fire. When a bigger one was burning, they’d cut away the small trees around it that were not yet burned so that the bigger tree couldn’t spark across. Ones that were really bad—snags getting ready to fall across the line or clearly dead and looking for a smokie to drop on—they cut and dropped back into the fire and attacked it with more dirt.

  With a little quick handwork as they climbed, they ensured that the lower flanks of the fire weren’t spreading any further before the hose team could get to them. A big wind shift might drive the flames, but there wasn’t one predicted this morning. And by the time the afternoon heat hit, this flank should be burned down, soaked with stream water by Nick and Ant-man, and not up to threatening anyone.

  The team moved with all the kinks of the first fire of the season. Knee problems, wrenched lower backs, and old shoulder injuries wouldn’t start surfacing until later in the season, but they all moved like a bunch of rookies. Digging a line with the hoe side of his Pulaski, Jackal almost nutted Axe with his handle. Ox was so head-down on the line he was digging that he actually walked sideways right into a burning tree. The only one working clean at the moment was the rookie.

  “Hey,” she couldn’t resist. “Is Rook the only one who remembers how to fight a fire?”

  The crew grumbled but started falling into a cleaner rhythm. Pity about the rookie not giving her anything to tease him about.

  Five hundred feet vertical and a half-mile up the slope, she called a brief halt. Two hours had passed with hardly a pause. The next three thousand feet up would not go nearly as quickly.