Firestorm (26 page)

Never had she seen a fire situation like this.

Never had she thought that she’d be the one in charge.

Still, it came naturally, as instinct. She was able to keep her head, sort out the tasks that needed completion first, and move forward. Within twenty-four hours, Matt’s requested chopper arrived, an incredible blessing. Best of all, Logan was aboard.

Immediately he was beside her, hearing out her plan, helping make decisions, sending her to bed ten hours later for a few hours’ rest. Matt and Dirk, old groundpounder buddies, were outside training crew after crew recruited from around the valley. Reyne came in to give a three-hour lesson on fire behavior, practically yelling so all could hear. She was intent upon scaring them to death so they’d lose the innate bravado that came with young, inexperienced people excited about fighting off the fire and saving the town.

Many of the recruits weren’t young at all. Middle-aged ranchers turned out in droves, and Reyne thought of the early firefighting days when crews looked very much like those before her. In the old days, men had routinely been pulled away from their crops to fight fire, and they had gone willingly, feeling obligated to save the land on which they made their living.

But a good third of the crowd was female, a distinct difference from the past. Reyne was especially glad to see the women in the room. From her experience, female crew members often seemed to give the men the desire to work harder and show off, but they also pressed them to make wiser decisions that might save all their lives if a problem arose. Women were stabilizers on fire crews, and they would certainly need stability to fight effectively under these conditions.

Within twelve hours their crash course on fire safety and firefighting was over, and Dirk and Matt were leading two rookie teams to the front lines to train behind their scant veteran crews for a day
before taking on fire alone. Logan began training a new team of perhaps a hundred. With those and the reinforcements they expected to arrive at any moment, they would have a revolving supply of firefighters. When team one came off duty, the second could go in, and so on.

Now Logan and Reyne began planning strategy on how they could best use his small team of six smokejumpers, the helicopter, and the seasonally contracted A-20 tanker plane, which the mechanic assured them could be up and running in eight hours. They set the chopper to work right away, attaching a huge water bucket.

“Fill her up at Dancara Lake,” Logan told the pilot, Gene Edmonds. “You’re going after this arm of the fire here,” he added, pointing at the color-pencil sketch of the fire on the topographical map. He also showed him several satellite shots of the same arm, indicating the toughest part of the fire for groundpounders to reach.

“Got it,” said the pilot with a cocky smile, putting his aviator’s glasses on. “Time to rock ’n’ roll.”

As the third crew loaded up on big flatbed trucks requisitioned from farmers, Reyne thought again of the Depression-era pictures of Civilian Conservation Corps going out to fight fires. She breathed a sigh of relief as they grew smaller in the distance. All the preparation time had slowed them down, and Reyne knew the fire was gaining ground. Now, at last, they were going out to meet the enemy head on.

The battle had begun.

R
eyne was in the top of the airstrip barracks in the miniature weather station when Logan found her. As soon as she spotted him, hot tears sprang to her eyes. She wiped them away quickly.

“Sorry,” she said, feeling foolish. “I guess I’m a bit tired.”

“I wonder why,” Logan said, sitting down beside her. “Come here,” he said, pulling her out of her chair and into his lap on the floor.

She giggled. “What are you doing?” she asked but complied with his request.

“I haven’t held my fiancée in my arms for a good two, maybe three, days.”

“We’ve been a tad busy.”

“Still, there’s no excuse.” He gave her a quick kiss and then studied her intently. “I don’t want a day to go by in our marriage without at least one hug,” he said, squeezing her.

“Sounds good to me. I’m so tired I think I’ll pass out, Logan. How are you doing?”

“Well, I never thought I’d say this, but I’m about ready for fire season to be over.”

Reyne laughed. “Me too. I’m pretty sick of worrying whether we’ll run out of TP. I’d rather think about our wedding ceremony.”

“Oh yes,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows, “and the wedding night …”

“Logan!” she said, swatting him playfully.

“What?” he asked, pretending to be hurt. “You’re not looking forward to the wedding night?”

Knowing she was trapped, Reyne changed the subject. “Back to the fire …”

“Ah yes, the fire,” Logan said wearily. He eased his grip on her, and Reyne edged away.

“Let’s go look at the maps.”

“Ah yes, the maps.”

“Logan! Are you with me?” she asked, already at the door.

“Right behind you.”

Their battle against the Great Bear fire, named for the wilderness near the flame’s source, was a daunting one. Day by day the fire crept closer to Elk Horn, eating up precious forested acres while the makeshift command team vacillated on what to do. Finally Reyne brought up the solution they’d been avoiding.

“We’ve got to light a backfire. From here to here,” she said, indicating a ten-mile-wide swath on the map. “And from here to here,” she added, pointing to the other side of the valley. “Without it, we’re toast. Weather reports indicate we’re in for wind and more dry weather. No lucky low-pressure system either. Ol’ Bear’s just gonna keep on rolling, and even our volunteer corps can’t stop it. We’d need ten thousand troops on the line. We’ve got maybe a thousand. And I’ve given up on the system sending any more our way until Great Bear’s right on top of us. But they’ll be only too happy to grant approval for the backfires. Forest, they have. Personnel, they don’t.”

Logan nodded, thinking. The few other experienced fire commanders at the table agreed. They planned the backfire, then
separated to make the appropriate calls and get some sleep—and pray that the backfires would do the job of protecting Elk Horn from the Great Bear’s rampage.

Matt was outside the barracks, flipping hamburger patties like a mad Viking chef. Reyne and Logan approached him, enjoying the view of him and five others at work on their makeshift grills—metal oil drums cut in half and placed on concrete bases.

“Ingenious,” Logan said, indicating the grills.

“Hey,” Matt said with a small smile, “gotta feed the troops. And Weber doesn’t make ’em big enough.” He glanced around, looking for Hope. Spotting her eating with a group of female firefighters, he visibly relaxed.

“How are you holding up, Matt?” Reyne asked with concern.

“Good. No, great. It’s good to get my mind off things and get away from the ranch. I have some solid men there who can take care of it all as well as I can. And working here gets me away from everything that reminds me of Beth.” He glanced up at them guiltily. “Not that I need … or want—”

Reyne shook her head, cutting him off. “We understand, Matthew.” She moved under his free arm to give him a sideways hug, stretching to reach around his wide, muscular middle. “
Beth
would understand. She’d be happy to see you able to smile a little. And if taking a breather from the memories does it, so be it. It goes without saying that you all are a godsend to us firefighters.”

“You’d better wait until you taste this burger before saying that,” he warned, waving his spatula over the sizzling patties.

“No need,” Reyne said. “You’ve proven to be invaluable, with or without the burgers!”

T
welve hours later the winds picked up, and Logan and Reyne made the decision to move up the backfire burns. They loaded some crew members with fusees and drip torches. The plan was to burn a ten-mile swath on one side of the valley and an eight-mile swath on the other. Each would be at least a quarter mile wide. In this way, they hoped to deprive the Great Bear of fuel and turn it away, denying entrance to their precious valley. Just in case they failed, Rachel and Arnie had already been detailed to begin evacuating the ranches nearest the valley’s mouth.

Logan was grounded with his smokejumpers, cleaning and repairing equipment, when the hotshots left to set their plan into motion. At the appointed time, Reyne radioed each team captain with the command to clear the fire lines of brush and debris, then set the lit fusees to the dry tinder just on the other side of the lines. Then she looked at the helicopter pilot.

“Gene, are you willing to take me up?”

“I’ve been waiting all day.”

“The wind’s bad.”

“I like a challenge. Where’re we headed, boss?”

“I want to see the front. For myself,” she said, walking beside him toward the helicopter. “Up close and personal. Make sure this is going to work.”

Logan, who was across the huge room from her, glanced around
and saw her. Reyne smiled and blew him a kiss as she left the building, ignoring his call. She knew he wouldn’t want her to go up. The winds were dangerous. But she had to see; their equipment here was more rudimentary than at any command post in which she’d ever served. In person the fire could look a lot different from what showed up on satellite.

And a lot was at stake here. Her home. Her future with Logan, in a way.

They were inside the cockpit when she saw him next. He stood outside the barracks door, hands on his hips, clearly disapproving, but she nodded to Gene to start the engine. The blades above them soon whirred to a seamless blur. They rose up and away.

Half an hour later they had observed the entire southwestern front of the fire line. The backfire there was already lit and well under way, eating its way back to the Great Bear fire as if it were a small child rushing to meet its father. The southeastern flank was trickier, and crews were still struggling to clear the fire line. The rocky soil was scattered with tough, clumpy grass that resisted their efforts to pull it out. But they were getting very close.

That task accomplished, Gene suggested going to the Great Bear flank nearest them to check it out, and Reyne nodded her approval. They dipped and shot over the trees at breakneck speed. Reyne, in her weariness, stared transfixed at the view under the bubbled cockpit.

Within seconds it seemed, Great Bear was directly in front of them, just over the ridge. Then suddenly the chopper dipped and turned crazily.

Gene had paused over a low saddle in the ridge—not thinking for a crucial second about the impact of such a decision—and the
combined airflow from the cooler valley with the hot fire before them created havoc with the already stiff winds. Reyne gripped the bar above her right shoulder and the seat with her left hand. Back and forth the chopper waved as Gene swore under his breath and fought for control.

For a half-second the wind died, and Gene sighed as he regained control of the helicopter. But it was to be a brief respite. The turbulence resumed, and they swung crazily to the left, spiraling out of control.

“Mayday! Mayday!”
Gene screamed into the radio.

They crashed before he could finish his transmission.

C
hopper down! Chopper down!” the air-operations manager shouted to the stunned firefighters sitting in the command center room. He flipped a switch, frantically trying to connect with the helicopter again. “Gene, this is command center, do you read? Edmonds, this is command center, do you read?”

Logan felt queasy as he watched the man try to raise the chopper pilot again.
No. Please God, no. Reyne! Reyne!

A steady hand clapped his shoulder and remained there, and Logan turned to find Dirk to his right.

“Gene, this is command center. Do you read?”

“It’s going to be okay,” Dirk said softly to Logan.

“Gene, this is command center. Do you read?”

“I’m going after her, Dirk. We’ll take the plane up …” He stepped into motion with his friend right on his heels. Matt appeared on his left and quickly gathered what was going on. He had met Logan’s eyes as Reyne took off in the chopper less than an hour earlier.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Dirk was saying. “I mean, I don’t know much about winds, but if Gene can’t stay aloft, you don’t belong up there in some tiny plane, jumping out to try and save her.”

“You might both be killed,” Matt said.

Logan paced for a second or two and then went to find the Forest Service meteorologist, assigned to the Great Bear fire just the day before. “Joe, what do you have for me? What’s it lookin’ like?”

Joe, already aware of the downed chopper, looked up at him with a frown. “It’s not flying weather. It’s gotten worse since Reyne and Gene went up.”

Logan rubbed his eyes, frantically searching his weary mind for the answer. He was aware of Matt and Dirk flanking him. With them close behind, he walked to study the bank of computer monitors, studying the latest satellite and firsthand information from the groundpounders. Then he hurried back over to where the air-operations manager, having given up on raising the helicopter pilot, was scanning the radar for their signal.

With some turns of the dial he finally spotted the faint blip of their emergency beacon on the screen. “There,” he said, pointing. “I’ve got ’em! I’ve got a location!” He grimaced and looked up at Logan’s face, seeming to know what he was thinking. “But McCabe, there’s no guarantee they’re alive.”

Logan fought back the desire to punch the man out for even suggesting such an idea. Deep down, he knew the guy was just trying to protect him from doing something foolish. And he knew what he was about to do was just that: foolish. But if Reyne was in trouble, he saw no other option.

“Mike! John!” he barked to a group of smokejumpers and plane crewmen who were lounging on old couches in a corner. “I need to go up. Can you guys take me?”