Hot Point (12 page)

The air was descending faster than he could climb and taking him down with it.

He hit the tank dump switch and four tons of retardant spilled downward, gone in a matter of five seconds.

Lighter now.

Still going down despite full up on the collective.

A ground proximity alarm squealed to life.

He slammed from a hard left bank to a hard right bank. Sometimes you had to turn into the skid.

Four hundred feet above the ground level.

The one problem was that his skid had to end before he'd crossed the width of the saddle. Just beyond where the drafts were battering him, on the far side of this dip in the mountains, the ridge rose once more.

Three hundred feet Above Ground Level.

It was a near-vertical wall of chopper-killing conifers for another five hundred feet up.

He found the edge of the microburst.

Two hundred feet.

The rate of fall eased off, but he was still headed in the wrong direction.

Requests for status from the others rattled in his ears.

Vern ignored them.

A hundred feet.

He found clear, calm air down in the heart of the saddle.

Fifty feet above the trees, he arrested his descent.

He hovered in a tiny, fragile bubble of clear air. He glanced at the temperature gauge. The air was cold. That's why it had no smoke in it.

But dense smoke surrounded him on three sides and formed a capstone above. Inside his little bubble there was himself, the pointed shafts of towering pines clawing upward from the green forest below, and the vertical face of the next ridge—which was less than five rotors away.

It was the eye of the firestorm and it wasn't going to last.

“Coming out!” He hit the radio. “Aiming southeast, but no promises.”

The scanning radar said he was good straight ahead, and the orange glow shining deep in the smoke to his right told him there was fire coming far too soon.

Cyclic up hard, nose down, and the belly tank empty.

The Firehawk leaped like a bird of prey.

At 190 knots, only three below the rated “Never Exceed” speed, he pulled back on the cyclic and shot upward.

He punched a hole into the overhead smoke cap.

Visibility extended only as far as the thickness of his windshield. Now he was flying strictly IFR—Instrument Flight Rules.

The heat of the smoke curtain so close above the fire was intense and instantly overrode the air-conditioning.

The Firehawk was being dragged north by the wind vortices, so Vern carved the climb to the right. According to the instruments, he needed another two hundred feet up or he wouldn't be clearing the ridge.

Detritus flew by his screen, flaming branches torn from the trees and cast skyward.

If they battered his chopper, he didn't hear them. He was far too busy to hear anything. If he yelled at the heat shock, he missed that as well.

A wildfire tornado.

He'd heard of them, had seen Cal's award-winning photo of one from last year, but he'd never seen one himself.

And he sure as hell hadn't flown right next to one!

A dozen feet over and his rotor blades would be in the fire. A dozen more and he'd cook.

It reminded him of the storms off the Oregon coast when he'd flown Coast Guard. The Pacific Ocean regularly threw sixty-, eighty-, even hundred-knot winds at the shore. That basically meant that what the East Coast called a “category three hurricane,” the West Coast called a “good storm” and sent out the chopper pilots.

One thing he'd learned from the storms: the way out of a hurricane was to circle and climb.

So Vern rolled into the wind and rode it until his ground speed was truly terrifying—his own speed added to the wind's cyclonic whirl. He skimmed along right outside the fire.

Then, moments before he would have eaten the cliff face, he slammed left and punched out into clear air to the northwest.

“Got him!” someone shouted over the radio.

Vern didn't acknowledge.

He ran into the still air as if he hit a wall.

He flailed against the double cross-shoulder harness that felt as if it was trying to cut him into quarters.

Out of the high-speed winds, he was suddenly moving at far past the “never exceed” speed.

The trailing edge of his spinning rotors lost all lift and his chopper tumbled to the right. With a hard kick of the rudder pedals, he managed to turn it into a corkscrew fall into the main valley, bleeding off speed.

When at last he could fly straight again, he climbed, getting above anything that could kill him without his permission.

Let Mark keep everyone out of his way; he didn't care where he was so long as it was up and out.

“Now that was the way to hustle.” Mark's voice was dry and almost as filled with relief as Vern's suddenly drained body felt.

Not trusting his voice yet, Vern acknowledged with a click of the mic switch.

“You're done for the day, Firehawk Oh-Three. Take her home and put your feet up.”

Vern wasn't going to argue.

He was thankful for three things.

One, that he was alive.

Two, that Denise wasn't with him.

And three, that she didn't need to know about this.

Really didn't.

* * *

Denise had her team lined up on the tarmac and ready. The fear of what she would find was so thick in her throat and chest that she couldn't breathe. Couldn't drag enough of the smoke-laden oxygen into her lungs to function. Tearing aside the white dust-filter mask didn't help.

Vern didn't land in either of the retardant-loading slots, but instead settled his chopper in the corner closest to her service box.

Smooth, so smooth.

No beatbox dancing about the sky this time. He simply flew it in and set it down.

She was at the door before his rotors had stopped spinning. “Are you okay?”

He tossed his sunglasses up on the dash and offered one of those easy smiles. “You heard?”

She tapped the radio on her belt.

“So much for number three,” he said cryptically. “I'm fine. Haven't flown something that nasty since the Coast Guard, but I'm fine.”

“I can do the shutdown for you,” she offered in her calmest voice, unsure which of them she was trying to soothe.

“No worries, Wrench. I'm really okay.”

She watched him anyway. And he did start out fine. But his hands began to shake about halfway through the shutdown. He finished that, but she plucked the logbook out of his nerveless fingers and completed the day's entry herself. She tucked it back in its slot and rested her hand over his where they'd gone limp in his lap.

“Shit, that was close.” His grip crushed down on hers. His face was drawn and pale as he leaned back against his seat with his eyes closed. “I'm really glad that you weren't there. Really glad.”

“Could I have helped?”

He rolled his head back and forth against the seat. “Never seen anything like it before. None of us has. It was a whole new level of nasty. If Steve hadn't brought his drone in so that I had some warning, I'd be—” He managed a weak smile. “At least none of us will fall for it again. I'm okay, and I didn't break your precious chopper.”

Like she gave a damn about that.

He didn't even make an attempt at a laugh to go with his comment; which scared her more than anything so far. It had been so bad it had blown the breaker on his sense of humor.

She helped him out of his seat because it was clear that his hands weren't going to work the harness releases yet.

He clambered down, landing steady, and looked down at her. He brushed a thumb along her cheek. “You're so beautiful, Denise. What are you doing hanging out with a joker like me?”

She did her best not to melt into a girly puddle of happy. But she kept her answer light for his sake. “Just slumming, I guess.”

That earned her the low chuckle she'd been hoping for. She'd made a joke at the right time, and it had worked. This was good.

They both became aware of externals at the same time. The sounds of her crew going over Vern's chopper, the roar as Emily's bird came in for another load of retardant with Jeannie's close behind. A passenger jet shot down the main runway beyond the Zulie Aerial Fire Depot and took flight. The deep bass of its engines at full burn pounded against them as it climbed out of the smoky valley.

Brenna came up. “I think you need to see this one, boss.”

Denise made sure that Vern was okay, then followed Brenna around to the other side of the chopper. She stumbled to a halt.

She heard a soft curse as Vern came up behind her.

The paint down the left side had bubbled and blistered with heat. The two big panes of laminate glass in the cargo bay door had been shattered, and the lower window on the copilot's side was star-cracked. A section of tree limb four inches in diameter stuck out of the rear fuselage, driven right through the metal as if it had been a spear.

“Didn't break my bird, Slick?” Where she found the bit of humor, she'd never know, because she was fighting against the urge to be sick over how close it had been. It might not be bullets, but the aircraft had definitely been to war. “What the hell was it really like up there?”

When she looked up at him, Vern was shaking his head. “I don't really know. I was kinda busy at the time trying to get out of it.”

“If that branch had hit six inches higher, it—”

“Don't say it!” He cut her off.

It would have gone right into the main power transfer for the rear rotor. She'd seen the terrain yesterday. There'd be no nice neat autorotation into some meadow. Instead, Vern would not be standing here beside her. Ever again.

And suddenly, that he was standing just inches away was terribly important. Far more important than their shared bed last night could explain.

“You did good, Wrench. Your bird performed when it counted, and it got me home.” Now it was her turn to laugh.

“I don't think you're the one who's supposed to be reassuring me. I think that it's the other way around.”

“Whatever works.” He pulled her against him with an arm around her shoulder, and for a moment she allowed herself to enjoy the sensation. He kissed the top of her head and murmured into her hair, “Whatever works.”

She burrowed her face into his chest for one glorious instant. This. This definitely worked.

Then she snapped herself out of it.

“Okay, team.” She patted Vern's chest where her nose had rested a moment before and then stepped out of his embrace. She felt a slight tearing in her chest as if she'd left a small part of herself behind. Denise wondered if it would come back the next time she snuggled up against him.

Malcolm and Brenna came back from around the tail section where they'd been inspecting for other damage.

“This is a full teardown inspection.” Denise plucked at a paint blister, and a six-inch patch of paint peeled off in her hand exposing silvered metal beneath. “This bird doesn't go aloft until we replace every piece of rubber on this side including the tire. I don't care if we put it in new yesterday, replace it. Then we fully inspect the other side.

“Brenna, you're on drive train. Malcolm, control systems and watch for any sign of melting in the wiring. I'll start with structural integrity and rotor blades. Let's go, folks. We want this bird aloft again. I want it perfect right down to the paint job, and we don't have a week to do it.”

They didn't need any further instruction, but were headed off to the shop-box at a good hustle. It was a tight team, maybe the best she'd worked with outside of the Sikorsky factory itself.

She went up and tugged on the tree limb that was sticking out of the rear fuselage. Its surface was scorched, as if it had been flaming when it was driven in. It was firmly embedded; they'd probably have to drop the panel and cut it out.

Then Vern's big hands wrapped around the branch above hers. Together, they managed to haul it free. Three feet of tree limb reluctantly slid out of the Firehawk's guts.

“Spartacus,” was Vern's dry comment as he hefted it.

“Like in the gladiator guy?”

“Heaving his javelin at me, but I survived.”

She looked up at him. The sunlight, softened by smoke, lit his face. The joker wasn't there; neither was the easygoing pilot. Instead, for the first time, she could see the man who'd flown for the U.S. Coast Guard and knew more about flying to fire than anyone in Mount Hood Aviation. Emily might have flown longer and be the chief pilot, but Vern had the most fire experience of anyone on the crew.

He reached out and rested a palm against the chopper and closed his eyes. It wasn't for support to stand up. It actually looked as if he was offering the damaged Firehawk his support, or perhaps thanking it for bringing him home.

She left him to it and went to fetch her tools, but the image didn't go away.

The man was so damn handsome, a military hero brought to life in a fire, and for some reason, he wanted her. Well—she felt a spring enter her step—she wanted him, so that worked out nicely.

She could feel the fear that had lurked beside her all day slide away as she set to work.

* * *

At a half hour to sunset, the other pilots were down. Five minutes later, Mark Henderson called a pilots' meeting, and five minutes more after that, they were grouped around a set of tables pulled together in a corner of the mess hall.

Three hours later, Vern's head was whirling. Right through dinner, they'd reviewed every detail of both his flight and the drone's—which Steve had managed to save through some piloting almost as creative as his own. They pieced together what radar imaging and flight tracking they could, and slowly rebuilt each step of the fire and the flight.

Twenty-seven seconds. How so much could happen in twenty-seven seconds was beyond him. Looking over the final re-creation of what he'd done only made his successful escape that much more unlikely.