Wild Fire Page 6

  “Shit, does everyone think that I’ve been an asshole all season every time I got near another woman?” At their several nods, he banged his head down on the table to a rattle of silverware.

  “Pretty much, yep!” Mickey was back in his merry mood. His cross-table slap on Gordon’s back only served to ram his nose harder into the table.

  Gordon didn’t raise his head but he did raise a middle finger, which earned him a laugh from the group.

  “Can’t a single guy just be good friends with a single woman?” At the silence, he looked back up. The guys were shaking their heads no. The women were looking puzzled.

  Even Ripley was staring at him with a narrowed expression he couldn’t read.

  “Actually, there is a way…” Brenna tapered off.

  “Thank you!” Gordon burst out. “At least there’s someone on my side. That’s all we are. Really good friends. It’s just how it worked out.”

  Robin actually looked to be on the verge of mush-crying, which she never did. “You told me, Mickey,” she reached over and took her husband’s hand. “That first day you told me that Gordon was too sweet.”

  “Yeah,” Gordon groaned. “He said, ‘Finchley’s just like Tweety Bird. Don’t pay him any mind.’ I think that’s a direct quote.”

  Robin leaned forward to reach around her husband and brushed a hand down his cheek. “He’s right, you know.”

  Gordon put his forehead back down on the table. Yeah, he knew. He’d been told that a lot of times over the years. “You’re so nice!” “You’re such a sweetie pie!” And on and on and on. Always just right before they dumped his ass. As if he didn’t have enough character to hold onto a woman. Yeah, totally macho.

  And now Henderson was going to dump his contract because he had no bird to fly.

  At least his luck was holding consistent: Ripley was sitting right beside him to witness it all. Nothing felt as good as crash-and-burning twice in the same day. If he could fold up and disappear, he would.

  Ripley had a lot to think about as Gordon drove back to the MHA camp. The headlights sliced through the deepening twilight, leading them like a train on a predetermined track to…somewhere. Somehow it was just the two of them. Vanessa caught a ride with Janet and Brenna; Brad and Vern had hit it off as well, bonding over their sports car passion.

  The silence between them was oddly comfortable and, at the moment, Ripley really appreciated that.

  Gordon’s mixed signals…hadn’t been mixed signals. Which meant he was attracted to her, and her random thoughts about him through the day perhaps hadn’t been so random.

  But she thought that his friends underestimated him. Four years in the Navy and she’d seen some awful things. Good friends, waving before jumping into their aircraft, only to never come back. Whoever said flying a Seahawk off an aircraft carrier was the safest kind of flying there was had never been in the Navy. If the bad guys didn’t get you, the weather did. And if the weather didn’t, the ocean might. Even the salt air was a lethal enemy, corroding out some crucial part when you were at your farthest point from the carrier. A landing missed by a dozen feet onto a heaving deck meant a sixty-foot fall into freezing ocean or getting in the way of a jet trying to trap on a wire.

  She’d been lucky: in four years at sea she’d only lost a crew chief, a lucky shot straight to the face by a pirate far below. She’d put a missile into his boat, six dead and no regrets, but it had been too late for Canter.

  And each of those returning Navy crews, if they made it back, were altered forever. Many never flew again. Reassigned to desk jobs, some even to landside because they couldn’t face the waves again after watching chance take their mate, but leave them alive. Or even after a crash with no fatalities, sometimes they couldn’t stand back up through the fear.

  Others came back unchanged, or apparently so. It would only show in brief flashes that they hid ever so carefully. A false front covering over their hidden-hell fears.

  But Gordon fell into a different category. He’d nearly died, acknowledged it to himself and others (Mark and Emily had gotten a detailed description out of him over the rest of dinner), yet he’d helped her on the fire. That, she knew, took a deep kind of strength that few others saw. Mark and Emily did, of course, perhaps Robin too, who was surprisingly gentle under her brash exterior, but none of the others. To them he was just…

  “Gordon?”

  “Uh-huh?” He answered as if their shared silence for the drive back to the base hadn’t been anything unusual.

  “You did really good today. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Sure, dumping my lack of love life out on the table for all to see. I’m completely rocking it. Not bad for my swan song.”

  “Your what?”

  “My last day with MHA. You know they’re going to cut loose my contract tomorrow, at least for this season. They don’t have another helo for me to fly. Henderson confirmed it would take months to replace it. I’m gone.”

  “No,” Ripley sat up as they pulled into the base parking lot. “That can’t be right.”

  Gordon parked and turned off the truck, but made no move to get out. “Trust me, Ripley. I wish it wasn’t so, but I don’t see any other way around it that makes sense. Not from their point of view.”

  Ripley tried to think of a solution, but she didn’t need another pilot. Nor did any of the other craft.

  He clambered out of the truck and came around to hold her door open for her. Another thing that her ex-fiancé had never thought to do for her. She stepped out onto the gravel, which crunched underfoot. The cool night had settled over the camp and she pulled her jacket more tightly around her shoulders. The stars above had conquered the night sky; there was no light pollution here. The Milky Way was a white band. Cygnus the Swan soared high in the sky.

  “This can’t be right,” she repeated though she wasn’t sure why. She was intensely aware of Gordon standing close beside her.

  “Trust me, Wonder Woman, there are a lot of reasons I wish it wasn’t so,” his voice was a soft caress.

  The air seemed to warm between them, wrapped in a cocoon of cool mountain air.

  “Come on. Let’s grab your gear and I’ll show you to where you’ll be bunking.”

  Ripley stumbled and almost fell despite the small penlight Gordon clicked on and aimed at the ground so that she could see where she was stepping. She’d been leaning forward…expecting…and then he’d turned on the penlight and walked away from her without looking back.

  He led her across the field, her feet catching in the tall grass to either side of the mown runway.

  By the time they reached Diana Prince and she’d snagged her duffle, her brain caught up with what had just happened.

  “You know something, Gordon Finchley?”

  “Not a thing, Wonder Woman Vaughan.”

  “There’s such a thing as being too sweet.”

  “You think?”

  “I know.” She hadn’t eviscerated her fiancé when he’d cheated on her two days from the altar; she’d just walked away. She should have shot him in the balls.

  “Huh!” It was a thoughtful sound. In the little bit of backwash from the penlight, she could see him looking at the sky. “Well, if this is my last day here, there’s something I’ll really regret if I don’t do it.”

  “What’s that?”

  He clicked off the penlight and he became a dark outline against the starry sky.

  Gordon’s hand slid around her waist and pulled her forward against him in a strong, abrupt move. He paused for an instant. If she was going to resist…but the moment for protests slipped by with no surprise attached to it. Her body pressing against his was the most natural thing in the world.

  And his kiss.

  Great Hera! There wasn’t a thing tentative, sweet, or Tweety Bird-like about Gordon Finchley’s kiss. He held her tightly, not grabbing ass or digging his hand into her hair to control her. He simply snugged their bodies together and laid one on her. A damn good one
. It was filled with need, frustration, and—

  Then, before she could tell what else or completely melt against him, he jolted back.

  “Sorry. Should have asked first. But you’re just so goddamn attractive, Ripley. Watching you fly this big ugly bug-beast,” he thumped a hand against the helicopter close beside them. “It’s unreal.”

  About ten things tried to register at once, but the one that came out of her mouth was, “How dare you call Diana Prince an ugly bug-beast!”

  He froze for a long moment, then burst out laughing. It was a good sound in the dark of the night. “I kiss you goodbye before I have a chance to say hello. I do it on the first day I’ve ever met you. And the thing you’re upset about is I insulted your helicopter?”

  “Yes,” Ripley grabbed for some degree of sanity, laughing at her own ludicrous response. “Now take it back.”

  His chuckle was soft. “I really need to get a life.” Then his tone became very formal, “I apologize to you ladies both. One of the most capable helicopters I’ve ever seen and her fair mistress of whom I now have taken quite indecent advantage.”

  His shadow sketched a deep, apologetic bow against the stars.

  “C’mon. Your room is this way,” his hand brushed hers as her took her duffle bag from her nerveless fingers then headed back across the field.

  Ripley almost pulled him back into the darkness to take some more indecent advantage of her, but thought better of it and followed along instead. She knew so little about him. And if he was truly going to be gone—one-night stands were no higher on her list than meaningless sex. Of course imagining sex with Gordon to be meaningless was quite a stretch of the imagination.

  Chapter Three

  His bunk was just two doors down from Ripley’s quarters—though he kept assuring himself that wasn’t why he couldn’t get to sleep. Gordon eventually wandered out to the radio shack that sat atop the wooden lookout tower. It was unmanned at night; TJ kept a radio and his cell phone close by his bed so that he wouldn’t miss any fire calls. It made the tower a quiet place to sit and watch the field.

  Gordon often did that. He liked looking down at the shadows of the sleeping helicopters and up at the shining stars. In the quiet of the night, the tower was always a soothing place to be. Most heli-bases were just some corner of a much larger airfield. Erickson at Medford, Columbia at Aurora, Evergreen had been in McMinnville before they went under. Mount Hood Aviation was the only outfit he’d heard of that maintained their own private airfield.

  Nowhere else was he going to find such peace—or such people. Maybe, if he was lucky, they’d want him back next season. Yeah, lucky like running into a drone, losing a helicopter, and…he couldn’t bear to consider what Ripley must think of him after he’d grabbed and kissed her.

  In the hours since he’d shown Ripley to her door, the thin crescent moon had risen. Tall trees left the whole field in shadow, including the helicopters parked along the edge of the forest. Pale, cool light shone upon the low buildings and his own perch.

  The radio tower was set up like a classic fire lookout tower. A ten-foot-square cabin with counter space on three sides and a couple of squeaky chairs. A stack of old radio gear was collecting dust below the counter, and their newest radio (which could outperform all of the others combined) perched on the counter above them. The third wall had the door and a narrow cot for whoever was on radio watch. A narrow walkway wrapped around the outside of the cab.

  Gordon didn’t want to sleep tonight. He didn’t want to miss a moment of it, which was just as well since he couldn’t get to sleep anyway. Thinking didn’t seem to be of any real priority either. He just put a chair out on the walkway, propped his boot heels on the lower rung of the safety rail, and watched the night. Bats flitted by and he heard a great horned owl calling Who-Who!-who-who for a mate, somewhere off in the distance. He’d been working it for weeks now, often keeping Gordon awake when he was in camp.

  “Good luck with that, buddy.”

  The owl kept calling. There was no response.

  After what might have been hours, a tentative Who-who? sounded from the far side of the field. The call echoed back and forth between them for a while. Then there was a great flapping of wings and he caught sight of the massive girl bird flying from somewhere beyond the parking lot to the west over to the towering trees in the east.

  “You show off!” The male Great Horned Owl didn’t make any argument from his now happy perch in the thick forest.

  Gordon looked at the cluster of picnic tables by the dining hall where so many meals had been shared: both the cheery celebrations and the ragged moments before collapse after a particularly tough firefight. Birthdays, weddings. Mickey and Robin had been wed right at the base of this very tower. Emily had gotten herself ordained at some place online. Jeannie and Gordon had stood for the bride and groom.

  It had all happened so fast that Gordon had felt it was his best-man’s duty to point that out. They’d sat right here in the heat of a midsummer’s night and hashed it out. Mickey had insisted, “When it’s this right, you simply know it. Then your job is to just hold on as tight as you can and never let go.” Four months from first meeting to married.

  Gordon couldn’t even imagine what that was like. He’d known Vanessa for two years before they kissed for the first time, for all the good it had done them.

  He resisted the urge to bang his forehead on the tower’s railing, instead watching the constellation Cygnus the Swan continue her slow dive down to the horizon. At some point he must have dozed off.

  The sky now was pale blue and filling with a warm yellow.

  And Mark Henderson was standing on the walkway, leaning on the rail, mirrored shades in place. Betsy, who’d been MHA’s cook since forever, must be awake because he was holding a big MHA mug of coffee.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself.” Mark made a real show of enjoying his coffee.

  Gordon could see the steam rising in the morning air. His tired body felt a hard stab of coffee envy. If coffee was up, that meant that breakfast would be on soon. A good last meal.

  Mark wasn’t saying a word, just watching the morning. The first birds were already awake and at work. Stellar jays flitted up to perch a moment on the rail and see if he or Mark had food yet—just coffee—they were gone. Then they were back the next moment to see if food had somehow magically appeared in the past ten seconds. A turkey vulture soared high in the morning light, his identity marked by the spread “fingertips” of his outer wing feathers.

  “I’m going to miss all this.”

  “You going somewhere?”

  Gordon looked at Mark.

  Mark kept watching the morning.

  “Don’t see a spare MD sitting around for me to fly.”

  “That’s true,” Mark sipped his coffee.

  Gordon figured keeping his mouth shut was good advice from last night. He also considered mugging Henderson for his coffee, but that was a no-win scenario as Mark was a retired Army pilot and could probably kill him with a look. So Gordon stayed in his chair, leaning back with his feet on the rail.

  “Tell me about Diana Prince,” Mark said after a while.

  “Wonder Woman?”

  “Her too. But tell me about the helo first,” he tipped his cup to where the bright orange Erickson Aircrane was parked in the tree shadow across the field.

  “Impressive,” Gordon wasn’t sure what Mark was looking for. “Has a really solid feel to it. Ripley says that it is dead reliable, sort of like you’d expect. That’s how it acted on the fire too. You know there’s one named Incredible Hulk?”

  Mark nodded.

  “Well, it’s kind of like that. I can see where it could be useful laying down big lines of retardant, but its ability to slap a big fire down out of the crown and back onto the ground where it can be fought is its real strength.”

  They talked yesterday’s fire tactics back and forth for a while. Mark had a different view up above the fire; a view that Go
rdon had often thought about. Circling a thousand feet or so above the fire, the Incident Commander-Air would see the various helicopters and the smokies as chess pieces in the wildland firefighting game.

  “I used to fly our ranch’s little helicopter,” Gordon was trying to find a way to explain the muddled images in his head. “Dad had a Korean War vintage Bell 47. I’d go up to find the strays…ranches need a lot of land per head of cattle in central Wyoming. It’s rugged Front Range territory. But it wasn’t enough to find them, because if you went about it wrong, you’d spook them into places they’d never come back from. The way to attack a fire always seemed like that to me. Herding the fire this way and that, but sometimes you want the horses and sometimes a couple hands on ATV four-wheelers. A guy on a dirt bike is good in the right situation; the bad ones you just have to slog out on foot. If conditions were just right, you brought down the helo and herded them about with a bit of fear and wind. Can’t run them hard though…cattle overheat real easily and then their meat gets tougher, earns you a lower grade at market.” And Gordon could remember the painful weals left by his father’s belt to drive home that lesson.

  Mark nodded. “Battle tactics is how I always think of it. I commanded a couple of attack birds, a heavy lifter, and a flock of Little Birds—seriously armed versions of your MD. If I had the wrong element in the wrong place, some raghead could slip out the side of the box we were trying to build around them while Rangers or Delta were busy kicking down the doors.”

  Gordon added that to his thinking and saw how it might fit, but he still thought of fire more as an unruly herd.

  “You’ve flown the 212 with Mickey.”

  It wasn’t a question, so Gordon just shrugged a yes that Mark didn’t bother looking around to see.

  “I want you up with Vern a bit. Get the feel of a Firehawk.”

  Gordon tried to get his mind around that. “I’m…what?”