Flash of Fire Read online

  “See.” Carly pointed to the fire. “They did a smart initial set. If they can cut these two firebreaks in time and then hold the lines, we’ll be facing three miles of flame, not five, when it clears the next ridgeline. However, in a few hours, there will be a wind shift, so they’ll have to watch for the northern edge slipping around behind them.”

  Robin glanced over her shoulder at the sun; it was already heading down to the horizon.

  “Shit!”

  “What?” Mickey was still squatting with some form of perfect balance.

  “I wish we had time for a couple of runs before sunset to help them out.”

  “We do.”

  She waved her hand at the sun to indicate that he was an idiot.

  “We’re in the Yukon Territory,” he countered with that irritating complacency of his.

  “Which means?” She could see that most of them understood something that she was missing. Jeannie didn’t either. At least that was one less person she needed to be pissed at.

  “Pretty much the same latitude as Fairbanks, Alaska.”

  “Mickey.” She managed to not go for his throat. He was clearly having too much fun, which she’d make him pay for later.

  “The Arctic Circle is only a hundred and fifty miles that way.”

  The lightbulb went on for Jeannie.

  Now she was the only one who didn’t—“Wait a minute.”

  “Ding!” Mickey called out, terribly pleased with himself. She shoved against his shoulder, but he was so stable in his squat that he merely rocked to the side and then re-centered.

  She recognized that type of training. When Mickey had joined so smoothly in her stretching routine, she’d figured him for having been a soldier or an athlete. Not a soldier, she’d decided. He didn’t have enough attitude.

  But now she could see by the way he let her shove ripple through him and the way he twisted that he too had martial arts training. For just a moment, she wondered what it might be like to spar with him. It also told her that frontal assaults were not going to affect him.

  “Arctic Circle.” Robin spoke aloud to show that she wasn’t a total idiot. “Today is June 18th, four days to the summer solstice. So when the hell is sunset around here?”

  “Twelve forty-eight,” Steve read off one of his screens.

  “Hold it! The sun doesn’t set until after midnight up here?”

  “And sunrise is just three hours later, shortly before four a.m.” Steve look amused. “Twilight in between. No true darkness.”

  “Four a.m. I’m going crazy.” Robin’s head hurt.

  “Then you’ll fit right in at MHA.” Mickey looked beyond amused.

  Robin surveyed the group of pilots crammed into the back of the Firehawk. They’d just done a punishing flight lasting a dozen hours and not a one of them was showing it.

  Not when there was a fire waiting.

  Not when their friends were already on the ground facing the beast.

  They were all watching her. Waiting for…what?

  For someone to take control. Robin suddenly wished that Emily Beale was here and she was still chasing tips at Phoebe’s Tucson Truck Stop.

  Well, Emily wasn’t here and she was.

  “Mickey?” She did her best to make her voice all sweetness and light.

  “Yes, Robin?”

  She leaned into the cargo bay until her face was mere inches from his. His easy and open expression almost invited her to lean in the last inch or so and kiss him. She would have if she thought it would shock him, but he’d been a step ahead of her since the MHA airfield back in Oregon and she’d had enough of that.

  Robin rested a palm against the center of his chest.

  Then she shoved fast and hard.

  He tumbled over backward and landed against the rear cargo net, snagging his foot high in the net and getting stuck there.

  “You have five minutes to get that cute ass of yours in the air. People”—she turned back to the others—“get calories from Betsy’s cooler and double-check your safety gear. We’re going in.”

  There was no answering cheer.

  No calls of any kind.

  Instead, they scrambled out of the cargo bay, grabbed a couple of sandwiches out of the cooler, and hit the ground running. Carly shifted forward into the copilot’s seat and began setting up a laptop where it mostly blocked the woman’s access to the flight controls.

  Robin decided that Carly hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Robin not to have an emergency that required the copilot to fly.

  Mickey untangled himself from the cargo net and rolled out of the cargo bay, landing on his feet close beside her on the grass.

  “How did I do?” she couldn’t help asking and then felt like an idiot for doing so. That wasn’t how leaders led.

  Mickey looked her up and down like a man suddenly turned greedy, but his big smile wasn’t a leer. Not quite.

  “Picture just keeps getting better and better, lady.” Then he placed a hand on either side of her face and kissed her hard and fast.

  He’d sprinted halfway to the next helicopter before she managed to recover.

  “Hamilton!”

  He stopped and turned. “What?” He had to shout over the sound of the grinding fuel truck as it finished fueling the last bird.

  “What the hell?”

  “Hey, lady, I got a fire to fight. You can pay me back later.” His cheery wave explained exactly what kind of payback he was hoping for.

  That little shit! If he thought he was going to get that, he was in for a major wake-up call.

  Of course, Robin couldn’t help noting that she was grinning as she stuffed a sandwich in her mouth and started pulling on her Nomex gear.

  Bastard!

  The others were going over their birds, still warm from the long flight. Now Robin could appreciate Denise’s tending to the helicopters immediately. They’d been on the ground under half an hour and they’d be aloft again in minutes, yet impossibly, they’d be ready.

  She turned to track down the mechanic only to find her standing beside Robin’s elbow.

  “I’ve signed off on all four birds’ flight readiness as cleared for operations.” Denise held out a clipboard with the forms on it. There was a place for Robin’s countersignature just like in military operations.

  “Really?” She glanced over each sheet before scrawling her initials across the bottom. The list of inspections she’d done in the last thirty minutes made it all the more impressive. “You must be some kinda hot shit to get all this done.”

  “I am.”

  Robin stopped looking at the forms and looked at the mechanic instead. She was maybe five-four and could easily be mistaken for a former cheerleader type. Except her few interactions with the woman had all been simple, professional, and hadn’t had a single wasted moment.

  There was no tone of arrogance or cockiness in Denise’s “I am,” just a simple statement of fact. As if she was so clear about who she was and how she fit into the world that there was no doubt.

  Robin handed back the clipboard with the last form unsigned.

  Denise tried to hand it back to her.

  Robin just shook her head. “In the future, if you tell me an aircraft is ready, that’s all I need to know.”

  Denise looked up at her for a long moment and then offered a simple nod. “Emily was right about choosing you. Good flight.”

  And the little woman turned and was gone back into her service trailer, rather than climbing aboard Firehawk Two as copilot.

  Robin was smiling as she finished her own sandwich while going through the preflight inspection and preparing herself for flight.

  * * *

  Mickey followed the others aloft.

  They might have their big fancy Firehawks that could carry double what his 212 coul
d manage, but the 212 had an agility that the bigger Black Hawks lacked. The Twin 212 Huey was one of the many birds based on the venerable Huey, the helicopter that had changed the face of warfare in Vietnam.

  His mom’s dad had flown them there and given him his first radio-controlled helicopter. He like the connection with Pops. He was always asking about Mickey’s flights whenever he was home. The Huey was part of Mickey’s family.

  In his 212, only Emily Beale could outfly him—because what that woman could do with a Firehawk was unreal.

  Why had he kissed Robin? Mickey didn’t usually spend a whole lot of time dissecting his own actions, but that was definitely out of the norm for him. Sure, he’d picked up plenty of women with the old “I fight wildfires from a badass helicopter” line. Had cheerfully kissed and bedded them within hours of first meeting.

  But kissing Robin, however briefly, without her invitation or permission was something he simply didn’t do.

  So why had he?

  They followed Route 2, the Klondike Highway, along the Klondike River, west toward town. Massive moraines of gray dirt lined a whole section of river. Dawson City had been a gold town, and they’d dredged enough river gravel to cover the entire town of Hood River, Oregon, and more. From the air they looked like the sinuous tracks of Oregon-sized banana slugs.

  He’d kissed her…because he couldn’t help himself. Flimsy excuse, Hamilton. He’d done it because the woman was irresistible. A level of energy, of life, just poured off her. Damn, he felt better just for being around her. Still, it was going to be interesting to see what retribution she worked out for him next time they were on the ground.

  No matter what it was, he’d bet good money that it was going to be fun.

  He couldn’t wait.

  At a cruise speed of 130 miles per hour, they crossed over Dawson City just three minutes from the airport.

  There were few outlier neighborhoods. The town was a small cluster of buildings on a grid of eight blocks by a dozen, where the Klondike ran into the Yukon River. Even as they flashed by, he could see that the town was filled with turn-of-the-century buildings. There were fake storefronts like the Old West towns of Colorado and a big, brown-trimmed white church that dominated the waterfront. A broad dike and a green grass park separated the town from the river. The park was clogged with…motorcycles. Hundreds of them.

  “Well, folks,” Mickey addressed them from his solo cockpit, “if you all came for a fire show, it’s happening a dozen miles west of you. We’ll be doing our best to keep it there for you.”

  The highway ended abruptly at the north end of town. There a small ferry, currently out in mid-channel, crossed over to Highway 9, the Top of the World Highway, headed west toward Alaska.

  Or where it had headed west. On Steve’s map, Mickey had seen that the highway had been cut in four or five places by the fire and must be presently closed.

  They all hit the Yukon River and dropped their hose snorkels down into the clear water. Even in July, he’d wager it was plenty chilly.

  Once the twenty-foot-long hose was well in the water and Mickey was hovering stable at fifteen feet, he kicked on the pump. With a muted roar, water flooded into his belly tank and he had to slowly ease up on the collective in his left hand so that he didn’t sink down into the river as he picked up two tons of water.

  “Apparently we’re quite a hit,” Vern called out over the radio.

  People and motorcycles were gathering on the top of the dike to look out at the four hovering birds sucking up river water. Mickey knew from experience that a flight of the black MHA helicopters painted with drag-racer flames left a big impression. It consistently filled the post-fire bars with hot and eager women.

  “Looks like a ride or a rally. Makes me wish I had my bike here,” Mickey answered. Thirty seconds of pumping—he kept an eye on the fill gauge.

  “What’s your ride?” Robin radioed back. He glanced over at her hovering just a hundred feet to his right. Beneath each of their helos was a circle of small white waves racing away from the center of the downblast of air driven by their rotor blades. It looked as if they were each creating their own circular white landing pads. If they shifted around a bit, they could do four of the five Olympics logo rings.

  “A Gold Wing.” He hadn’t thought of picturing Robin on a motorcycle, but it definitely fit.

  What he got back was a snort somewhere between laughter and derision.

  At forty seconds, he’d hit his load limit and began lifting up and out of the water. He nudged the pump switch off, reeled in the hose, and started flying west. He could see Robin lag significantly behind. She was doing one thing at a time: killing pump, reeling in hose, and then focusing on her flying. She’d figure the shortcuts out fast enough or he’d underestimated her.

  Actually, he’d bet that even being careful not to underestimate her, he’d still be coming in below the bar. This was the pilot that Emily Beale had chosen to take her place. That meant something way more than merely being a kick-ass fire pilot.

  The others held back to let her take the lead again, but Mickey didn’t bother. He knew where he was going. Besides, that scoff hit his pride a bit. A Gold Wing wasn’t some flashy crotch rocket of a machine. It was safe, reliable, and comfortable. He’d done any number of long-distance road tours on it, and it was far more comfortable than the seat of his 212, even if it wasn’t flashy.

  “An Indian Blackhawk isn’t all that much sexier a bike.” He made a guess in the dark that a Black Hawk pilot would ride a Blackhawk motorcycle. They left the Yukon River behind as the flight turned for the fire.

  Mark would be circling high over the fire waiting for them. As ICA, he would feed Mickey what he needed to know soon enough.

  “No, it isn’t,” Robin replied over the air. “But my Kawasaki Ninja certainly is.”

  Damn! Robin on the fastest production street bike made. Somehow it both made and broke the image.

  Hot lady on a hot bike, sure.

  But it was also a woman on the far side of some dangerous edge, way on the far side. A racing bike that the manufacturer had to electronically limit to under two hundred miles per hour just to make it street legal.

  He made sure that she was still flying a safe distance behind him.

  A Ninja wasn’t a motorcycle; it was a death wish.

  * * *

  At least a Ninja is what Robin always wished she had, rather than a twenty-year-old Toyota Camry hanging on by a thread—that particular life choice she could only attribute to her mother’s conservative spending advice. Mom was eminently practical, but at times she was a bit of a killjoy—even Grandma said so—but she was also right.

  Robin had left the Guard with a nicely padded bank account. And due to following her mother’s advice all these years, her account still was. It had actually grown with all of the waitressing money, despite the car purchase and having a little fun.

  Maybe after this summer of flying she could justify a bike. Though no way would it be a Gold Wing. That was an old fogey’s machine. Mickey made less and less sense to her with time.

  She shook her head to clear it; she was flying to fire in a twenty-million-dollar machine. This was something she definitely understood and could never get enough of.

  To get back in the air, she’d almost have paid MHA. To get out of waitressing, she definitely would. She’d certainly have taken any wage close to what she made at the truck stop.

  In among the huge stack of paperwork to sign aboard with MHA—including a few curious documents like a nondisclosure agreement and a form to authorize a high-level governmental security check, both of which she’d signed with a shrug of indifference—Queen Beale had handed her a payment schedule that had shocked Robin right down to her boots. Base pay as a civilian Firehawk pilot was high living by Robin’s standards, a number that acknowledged hard-learned skills and then some. But if she
spent even a few weeks over the summer collecting the hazard pay for each day spent on a fire, it would be life changing.

  There was another payment category labeled “Special Projects,” but that number was ludicrous, double the hazard pay number, so she’d ignored it. Obviously it was meant for someone else. There were also nice bumps with each additional year of service, though that wouldn’t apply, as she was under a one-season contract.

  Standard hazard pay was plenty sweet.

  Of course wishing for fire was…bad. But at that pay rate, even a reasonable amount of fire and she could afford any bike she wanted.

  Meanwhile, she’d let Mickey and his Gold Wing touring bike suffer under the image of her ripping past him on the fastest street bike made. What sort of a guy under sixty drove a Gold Wing anyway?

  The smoke was thickening ahead of them.

  Somehow Robin had ended up at the rear of the flight, and she wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. Well, QB Beale had told her to watch and learn. So, like a good soldier, she stayed where she was and watched.

  Carly looked at her oddly from the copilot’s seat, which Robin chose to ignore.

  “Incident Command—Air, this is MHA Firehawk One,” Carly called over the radio. “Flight of four, inbound from Dawson.”

  Oh, that’s what Carly had been waiting for. They were the flight leader, no matter their position in the air.

  “Wondering when y’all was gonna show up out he-ah.” Emily had said Mark was from Montana, so why was he talking like Texas?

  “That thar”—Robin put on the thick drawl she’d picked up from a thousand Lone Star State truckers passing down the I-10—“is about the worst damn fake Texas it has ever been my burden to have-ta listen to.”

  Steve snorted with laughter over the intercom.

  “What have you got for me, Carly?” Mark actually sounded sullen as he spoke normally over the radio from his spotting plane circling high overhead. He’d be up around six thousand feet, and the helos would only rarely be above five hundred and never above a thousand. All other air traffic was forbidden from the zone except Steve’s drone.