Flash of Fire (23 page)

“Might help if I hadn't been the one to put him there.” Lola shrugged and went back to studying the screens. “You close to your old man?”

“Gone before his sperm got to the egg. Mama was kinda wild when she was younger.”

“And you're all mature and settled?” Lola scoffed.

“Not a chance. A girl's gotta have some fun. I'm gonna be just like Mom. No man for me.”

Lola gave her a look that Robin did her best to ignore.

Damn, but this fire was eating up terrain. “Go back a screen,” she told Lola.

“This one?”

“Go back another. There. Keep that one on the middle screen between us.”

Lola flipped it into place so that it showed on the center of the console. It wasn't Steve's usual sharp view of the fire from directly overhead, and it took Robin a few moments to adjust to the angle of the view. The drone had to do its best from safely deep in South Korean airspace.

“What's the scale?” Lola was still tinkering with it. “It doesn't look like terrain contour lines.”

“Temperature in hundreds of degrees. See along the left edge, it's down in the six to seven range. They must have the drone up over that section of the fire.”

“Six or seven hundred? Please say you're shitting me.”

“Would I do that to a fellow heli-gal?” Startling a Night Stalker! Robin was thoroughly enjoying herself. “What that tells me is that the fire is retreating from the southwest. Have to be for the fire to be that cool,” she managed with a straight face. “No readings up in our area yet, but I'm guessing fifteen to eighteen?”

“Hundred?” Lola breathed it out on a gasp.

“Hundred,” Robin confirmed, then keyed the general frequency that would reach all of the aircraft. “It's hot on our side. Jeannie, Vern, do you have any readings?”

“Just edge temperatures,” Jeannie called back. “We didn't want to fly over the fire without your say so. But we're flying in clear air within two rotors of the active flame—tells me it's heading away from us.”

“I can't even see orange,” Robin reported back. “All I'm looking at is hot black smoke. Definitely moving north and east.”

On their cockpit screen, a series of broad green lines appeared. Carly often drew on her tablet to indicate the lines of attack.

Robin had seen enough of her onscreen notes during the Dawson City fire that she could make sense of what Carly was recommending, at least she hoped so. “Start cleanup on your side, Jeannie. You and Vern start chasing the fire back into the Black and kill the boundary with a wet line. Make sure it can't escape. Swing south first to secure the tail, then sweep north along your western side.”

“Roger that. We're on it.”

“Talk to me, Mickey.” At some point they had to have time to talk…didn't they? National Guard was called out a half-dozen times a fire season. Robin had the feeling that Mount Hood Aviation's operational tempo was way higher than that. Waiting until the autumn to have a conversation when they weren't exhausted, ticked off, or surrounded by others was not going to work for her.

“Found the tail here,” he called from the south end of the fire. “We can work this, but I think the strengthening northerly winds will make it a nonissue.”

“Roger, get back up here. The North Koreans didn't give me any ground team frequency, but I'll bet they're down there and this monster is headed straight into the DMZ.” Robin hoped that Steve heard that and could find some way to get her an infrared view of bodies on the ground.

She decided that Carly's scrawled advice wasn't the best option. It was strange talking to Mickey and, at the same time, asking a question of Carly on the open air, which she would hopefully answer with a revised encrypted drawing.

“I think we need to flank the head,” Robin said. “We'll watch for it curling around behind us, but we need to start narrowing this thing before we can trap it.”

“Makes sense to me,” Mickey acknowledged. She could see him on her radar coming up fast out of the south.

Carly erased her initial attack lines and began altering them for how to take best advantage of the terrain.

“Slick,” Lola said. “That was well done. You do have fun up here.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course,” Lola continued in her cheerful tone as Mickey lined up behind Robin and they began the first dive on the fire. “I was all about having fun for me too. But Tim kept showing me that it was more fun to be with him than without him.”

“Not gonna happen to me.”

Robin slid down toward the flames and tried not to remember the feeling of flying into space off the Class III Tea Cup with Mickey's joyous smile awaiting her below.

* * *

“That woman, man, she's making you crazy, isn't she?”

“Some.” Mickey wondered where Tim had come up with that idea. They were flying to fire. Something they'd done hundreds of times a day for the entire week of the Dawson City fire. For Mickey this moment was no different, yet Tim had picked up on something.

“Yeah.” Tim sighed happily over the intercom on the Twin 212. “Lola did the same to me.”

Mickey could feel Tim's hands were unsure on their joined controls. Tim had admitted it was his first time flying something other than a Black Hawk and the Twin 212 had a very different feel. Though the Night Stalker was learning very fast, smoothing out even in the short run down to the fire's tail and back.

“What's she doing now?” Tim cocked his head forward to see where Robin had gone. She'd dived down to lay down the first line of attack.

“You can't fight a fire from a thousand feet up; all of the water will evaporate before it reaches the ground.”

“I'm used to fire
fight
, bro. Not fighting fire…except from Lola.”

Mickey really didn't want to talk about women, especially not Robin, with this stranger suddenly planted beside him. He dove the Twin 212 to follow in Robin's wake. At two hundred feet, she ran a canyon line and doused a series of spot fires that were threatening the next canyon over. Mickey dumped his load on two more.

Tim was looking out the side window as they turned away from the fire to fly to a lake in the next valley over for reloading. “You actually fight a monster like that with four little helicopters? Shit, man. I thought we were the crazy ones.”

“Between the four of us, we can dump a million gallons of water a day if we have a decent water supply. Doesn't appear to be a problem around here.” Mickey had fought fires where the nearest water was a ten- or fifteen-minute flight to reach a dipping tank fed by a line of pumper-truck fire engines.

Until now, all of Mickey's attention had been on the fire and the intruder in his cockpit. Mickey had grown so used to flying alone that having a copilot was a visceral shock. He still wasn't sure why the man was here, just as Mickey still wasn't completely convinced that Mark knew as little as he claimed, but neither choice had been left in his hands.

Now he started to pay attention to the terrain, assessing the challenges. The Taebaek Mountains weren't high, but the fire was entering a rough area of valley and ridge that would be brutal work for a smokejumper or other ground crew.

In the structure of how each spot fire burned, Mickey could see that the growth was a worst-case mixture.

There was a low, bushy tree that reminded him of a Japanese maple that ignited hot and burned long.

The big trees had two primary forms. One appeared to be a big-limbed oak that started low and reached up to a hundred feet high—lots of foliage to catch and lots of hardwood to burn. Its low branches would naturally lead the fire upward into the crowns of the trees where it could move as fast as the wind and be ten times as hard to kill.

These two would have been okay together, a fire would have to struggle to progress through such a forest, so it would move slowly. But the third major tree was obviously a pine. It grew tall and dark green, and at the least hint of fire, it turned into a hundred-foot spire of burning sap, which shot bolts of flame like Roman candle explosions upward to twice that height.

The fire fought and spit. Each load of water they fired against it only seemed to make it angrier.

“Don't we have any ground teams down there?” Mickey's complaint to Robin wasn't answered right away. He was getting the hang of her pauses. She wasn't the sort to think about things or withhold information, which explained her reaction during their kayaking trip. Robin didn't hide her emotions away or make any pretense about them; they were right on the surface—even if they were a slash at the heart.

So, for her long hesitations to make sense…she was in communication with Mark and Carly. That had to be it. Well, he hoped it wasn't a pattern that the North Koreans, who were sure to be monitoring their frequency, could pick up.

“There are no ground teams in the area,” Robin finally responded.

“None? How are we supposed to—” Mickey bit down on his frustration. Beating a big fire took a coordinated effort of ground and air teams building and protecting firebreaks. Beating out a small spot fires was done far more efficiently by someone on the ground with a five-gallon backpack pump and a rake than a helo at two hundred feet. Cutting down a dozen strategic trees could make more difference than a dozen loads of water.

“I'm guessing nobody wants to work in the DMZ.” Tim pointed ahead.

“I don't want to either.” Mickey was rapidly become less and less happy with the situation. Even more than not wanting to go himself, he didn't want Robin going there. Then he looked down at his navigation display and cursed.

“That's what I'm talking about, bro,” Tim agreed.

Mickey had been following Robin's flight pattern. They weren't nearing the DMZ—they were hard against it. No wonder there were no ground teams. With over a million land mines in the 250-kilometer by four-kilometer strip of land, it was the most dangerous no-man's-land anywhere.

After two hours turned into three, they still hadn't crossed into the zone, but that's where they'd be next.

The whole flight raced back to Yangyang airport for more fuel and a quick sandwich. They talked with the other pilots for the ten minutes the refueling took, all about burn fuels, relative humidity, and ignition points. Jeannie had some good suggestions based on the tree species. She was the only one among them—other than Carly who was still working only over the radio—with a master's degree in fire management.

Robin had looked great, so completely in her element.

“Firefighting suits you,” Mickey said in a stolen moment before they returned aloft.

“I guess.” She bounced on her toes for a moment. “I guess it does.”

“Looks damn good on you, Ms. of the Hood.”

She grinned at him, grabbed a sandwich, and hustled over to find out how much longer until they were all refueled.

It looked beyond good on her. Made him want to be close and stay close and… Now wasn't the time. But Mark was right, it wouldn't do to wait too long. Next time they were on the ground for more than a few minutes, Mickey was done with waiting.

Back in the air, they worked north along the fire's edge. The lake they'd initially been using as a water supply was now farther behind them than a river was ahead.

But it wasn't just any river. As the two helos flew down to it, his navigation display—which automatically shifted with his movement—scrolled the river onto the screen. Along with it scrolled a bright red line that said South Korea on one side and North Korea on the other.

Robin must have spotted the same thing at the same moment because they slid to a side-by-side halt and looked down at the terrain together.

“This looks like fun,” Mickey managed over the radio against a dry throat.

“Not my idea of a good time.”

“What about them?” There was no need to explain who he meant.

Four kilometers away—on the northern side of the Demilitarized Military Zone—Mickey's radar showed a pair of helicopters patrolling back and forth, circling directly opposite them.

Robin didn't reply for a long time. “Someone please tell me there is another option.”

“Attention, American firefighting helicopters.”

Mickey looked down at the radio. The North Koreans were hailing them on the general frequency. He'd known that they had to be monitoring the open firefighting channel, but it was the first time they'd said a word all morning. Their English was clear, though heavily accented. Did the Korean People's Air Force all speak English to prepare them for the Great Future Invasion? Or were these the only ones who were even allowed to learn the language? No way to tell.

“Firefighters here,” Robin answered with her voice sounding all casual as if this was business as usual. Damn, but she was good.

“We are your escort to make sure that no harm comes to your craft in our airspace. We are not firefighting aircraft but military escort. What are your plans, that we do not mistake your actions?” Their tone was very polite, rotorcraft to rotorcraft camaraderie. Though he'd wager they were in turn being monitored by layers of military and politicians who would watch every word. So, polite but not too friendly.

“No harm?” Tim groaned. “Like,
we want to make sure we don't shoot your asses by mistake.
Why am I not liking this experience? Where the hell's my DAP Hawk?” He managed to make it funny.

“Don't say that one on the open air, amigo.” Though Mickey wasn't going to argue with the sentiment.

“Roger that,” Tim agreed.

“We need to get to a water source.” Robin made it sound like the most normal thing on the planet to be talking to North Korean military helicopter pilots across the width of the DMZ. “We will always utilize the closest supply. At the moment, it's that river between us. We need to hover at five meters over the water for approximately one minute each time we refill our tanks. We will circulate rapidly between the fire and the water supply, except when we are returning to our airport for fuel or needing to survey the fire line.”