Firelights of Christmas Read online

  The narrow ledge of his final demise was covered in a few dogwood and valley oak trees, tall grasses, and dense manzanita brush. When the fire rolled over this site, it would burn hot. Hot in the same way it had burned over the nineteen-man crew at Yarnell, the air so superheated it had burned right through their foil emergency shelters. It had done that despite the circular clearing they’d cut around themselves. And he didn’t even carry a chain saw to try to make a clearing. All he had were his cameras.

  He backed to the edge of the precipice and then turned once more to look at the flame. He wasn’t even conscious of his actions as he lifted his new Canon Mark III camera, found the frame, shot the photo. Zoomed back. Found the next, shot it. The beast was close. He’d only once been so close to the heart of the firestorm. During his days as a member of a hotshot crew, they’d have been long gone before the heart of the fire rolled this close. The camera was actually heating in his hands, prickly hot to hold.

  Too close! That was it. He dropped the camera into his bag and pulled out his old workhorse 6D body with the 28 mm wide-angle lens. No way he’d risk a lens change with all of the dust and ash in the air.

  There! He could see the image coming together that would make a cover photo. Another prize-winner was almost here. Just a few more seconds… If he could just…

  A metal shape zipped by the lens, fast. He didn’t see what it was, but some instinct had him pressing the shutter. He flicked back to the image.

  On his viewfinder a winged drone a half-dozen feet in length, painted black with gold-and-orange flames, had flown between him and the fire. It had a bold “MHA” emblazoned on its side.

  Some comfort that was. All it meant was that someone from Mount Hood Aviation was going to have the award-winning photo of the journalist who burned alive while clutching his camera like a damned idiot. All because he’d had to take that third step and now couldn’t wrench back from it.

  Cal was going to make a lousy Cinderella, no pretty gown rising from the ashes for him. But he was sure going to end up as a cinder. Another thirty seconds and he’d have to take his chances inside the foil shelter, though he’d sworn he’d never do that again.

  Maybe his life was supposed to pass before his eyes right about now, but he hoped not. He’d beaten the first sixteen years of his life down with every ounce of a firefighter’s willpower until they didn’t exist. The time since had been mostly good, but with the way his luck was running today, he’d get to see those early days before he’d named himself Calvin Jackson.

  Some idiot part of him started to raise the camera again, but then he stopped. His cameras were going to cook right along with him, even if he threw himself over them like a Marine covering a grenade to save his buddies. For once he just looked at the wall of flame. Its heart so hot it glowed gold as the fire swarmed up tree trunks six stories tall with a single breath, sheathing each tree in a cloak of flame just six inches and fifteen hundred degrees thick. The roar deepened as if gathering its breath. So loud that—

  The sharp blast of a voice over a loudspeaker not ten feet behind him so startled Cal that he almost stumbled off the ledge. Completely masked by the roar of the fire and with hundred-foot flames less than thirty yards away, a helicopter had come to hover behind him. It wore the same paint job as the drone.

  A glance up showed the rotor blades shimmering in a lethal arc just a few feet above him and no break in the smoke-cloud cover above. The hotshot crew was still invisible across the ravine. But far down below, right off the narrow spit of cliff he was perched upon, he could see the terrain. The pilot had flown up through a hole underneath the smoke and ash cloud.

  “Get aboard, you bloody git!” the speaker screamed at him. He wouldn’t have heard it if it weren’t less than ten feet away and aimed right at him.

  The chopper hung just out of reach, hovering with its open side door toward him. Over his shoulder he could see that the spinning rotor disk was within a foot or so of a stout oak tree. They couldn’t fly any closer to him. The chopper didn’t even have skids to grab on to like they always did in the movies, just wheels.

  The cargo bay door was an open four-by-four-foot square of salvation, hanging a half-dozen feet away over a hundred-yard drop. He stuffed both cameras into the padded bag, snapped it shut, and chucked the bag through the door toward the rear so it wouldn’t go out the other side, which was also open. Then, squatting to make the leap while the chopper bounced in the roiling air currents, he jumped into space.

  He landed mostly inside the door. Far enough to drag himself the rest of the way. He spotted a rope line, made sure it was secured to something, then snapped the D ring on the front of his safety harness onto it so that he was now secure.

  “Good to go,” he shouted to the pilot. There was no way he could be heard. The freight train was screaming toward them, barely ten yards from the rotor tips.

  The pilot, flying alone, risked a quick glance back, but was skilled enough for the chopper to remain rock stable despite the turbulent environment.

  Cal only had long enough to get the impression of a narrow face and mirrored shades wrapped in a large, earmuff pilot’s headset. Seeing he was aboard, the pilot rolled the chopper hard left and dove down through the dwindling smoke hole. He caught the camera bag as it skidded across the deck plating.

  A glance up at the cliff showed a tongue of flame now reaching out to grab where the chopper had hovered only moments before.

  Now that he was safe, the adrenaline rush kicked out hard. He’d fought fires from California to Alaska, and he’d photographed them in Brazil, Russia, and a dozen other places. He’d never before had his hands shake so badly that he couldn’t even open the bag to make sure the cameras were okay. All he could do was clench it to his chest and let the shakes run through him.

  ***

  “Yeah, Ground Command. This is Hawk Oh-two, I got him. You can release your crew to the next site.”

  Jeannie Clark clicked off her mike and the one-word acknowledgment came right back. She was bummed. She’d finally found a flaw with her beautiful new Firehawk. Well, almost new. The machine had done a couple tours in Iraq first, but it had been totally renovated, repainted, and reconfigured with a big belly tank for dumping retardant on wildfires. It was new to her. Her boss and MHA’s lead pilot, Emily Beale, had only just certified her in this type last month. And the chopper was also new to Mount Hood Aviation’s “Hoodies,” one of the country’s premier firefighters-for-hire contractors. It was only the second load-rated Type I helicopter in their inventory.

  Until recently, she’d only been certified in the midsize Type II Twin Huey 212 and the tiny Type III MD500, both much-lower-capacity crafts. The Firehawk was built on the Sikorsky Black Hawk frame and could lift a massive thousand gallons of retardant or water, about four and a half tons. That could make a serious dent in a blaze except when Mama Nature was really kicking up her heels with Papa Fire. That was what her Australian friend Dale always called them, as if they were part of his Aboriginal Dreamtime creation mysticism. She’d looked up the expression and it wasn’t, but she’d kept using it even after coming to America. People always looked at her cross-eyed when she used it, so she now kept it to herself.

  The thing was, with her MD500, she could have scooted right onto that cliff edge instead of hovering out in space. Had to give the guy some points—at three hundred feet up a cliff, he’d jumped right out with no hesitation. That said something about guts, or desperation. She’d half expected him to freeze and die there. Even three more seconds and she’d have had to bug out and leave him there to burn.

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  More information at: www.mlbuchman.com

  Copyright 2014 Matthew Lieber Buchman

  Published by Buchman Bookworks

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof,

  may not be reproduced
in any form

  without permission from the author.

  Discover more by this author at: www.mlbuchman.com

  Cover images:

  Outdoor Man

  © Curaphotography | Dreamstime.com

  Wildfire © U.S. Fish and Wildlife

  Service Southeast Region | Flickr

  Other works by M.L. Buchman

  The Night Stalkers

  The Night Is Mine

  I Own the Dawn

  Daniel’s Christmas

  Wait Until Dark

  Frank’s Independence Day

  Peter’s Christmas

  Take Over at Midnight

  Light Up the Night

  Firehawks

  Pure Heat

  Wildfire at Dawn

  Full Blaze

  Angelo’s Hearth

  Where Dreams are Born

  Where Dreams Reside

  Maria’s Christmas Table

  Where Dreams Unfold

  Where Dreams Are Written

  Dieties Anonymous

  Cookbook from Hell: Reheated

  Saviors 101

  Thrillers

  Swap Out!

  One Chef!

  Two Chef!

  SF/F Titles

  Nara

  Monk’s Maze