Summer of Fire (15 page)

Putting her finished product onto the shelves covering one wall of the workroom, Sherry said, “I’m spotter on this run. Wanna go?” A smile brightened her round face.

Clare shoved off the counter and felt the familiar excitement that she’d not experienced in over a month. “Right behind you.”

She followed Sherry’s sturdy frame past two men repairing chutes on industrial sewing machines, through the three-story loft where chutes hung when they weren’t packed for use, then down the hall decorated with photos of past seasons’ teams. Just like at the fire station, the first stop in any run was the restroom, in case it was a long time to the next opportunity.

In the ready room, Sherry and two male jumpers rummaged in wooden bins for Nomex clothing.

“Clare, this is Randy’s rookie season.” Sherry introduced her to a young man buttoning his shirt over compact, taut-looking muscles. “He’s studying Forestry at the University of Montana.”

“And Hudson.” Sherry went on to a short, stout man with hands like a prizefighter’s.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” A scatter of gray marked Hudson’s temples. “I’m a career jumper. Wait tables on Maui, spring and fall. Winters I run snowmobile tours.” He described his vagabond life with pride.

The jumpers pulled two-piece, beige Kevlar suits over their fire retardant clothing and stuffed their pockets with granola packs and Hershey bars. Hudson stowed a dog-eared copy of Virgil’s
Aeneid.
Their parachutes went on next, secured with a network of black straps cinched up tight over their shoulders and around their thighs. As spotter, Sherry would be coming back without jumping, but she also put on the complete outfit with main and reserve parachutes in case she fell out of the plane.

Clare watched, comparing their gear with her turnouts, air pack, and axe.

The pilot, a lanky dark-haired man with a red handlebar mustache, smoked a preflight Winston. “We’re headed to the northeast corner of Yellowstone to a plume sighted from outside the park,” he told Clare. “If they’re only sending two jumpers, this one’s gonna be a cakewalk.”

Sherry had her gear on first and while they waited, she told Clare about the Smokejumpers’ running contest to land closest and cleanest to whatever target the spotter chose. How if they landed in a tree they wanted to spread their canopy square over the top, so they didn’t slip and slide down through the limbs, or ‘burn through’ as they called it.

Despite the advent of helicopter use in firefighting, the jumpers were never picked up. After they’d felled and buried burned trees and waited until the ashes were cold, they hiked out to the nearest highway. On these treks that sometimes took several days they carried out everything they had jumped in with. In training, the brutal march with over a hundred pounds separated successful candidates from washouts.

All three jumpers secured blue helmets with protective metal grates over their faces. Looking to Clare like space warriors from a sci-fi movie, they headed toward their waiting twin-engine Beechcraft B99.

While they checked equipment, Clare climbed in and sat forward on the bench seat. Tape-reinforced corrugated boxes strapped to metal tracks cramped her knees. She’d been told they contained water, food, Pulaskis, shovels, and sleeping bags.

The heavily laden Smokejumpers piled aboard. As the turboprops spooled up and the plane began to taxi, Clare realized the rear door had been removed. Sherry sat in front so that she could gauge the approach to the fire and decide the best landing target.

The jumpers clipped their static lines to a cable along the floor, so if anyone fell out the line would open their primary chute.

When they reached the end of the West Yellowstone runway, Hudson said, “Hi, ho.” Through the metal mask, Clare saw a big smile on his ruddy face. He hummed a bit more of the Seven Dwarfs song about going back to work. It made Clare think what her first day back at the station in Houston would be like . . . she’d probably be whistling in the dark as well.

The engines revved into a whine. Wind rushed through the open door and the noise forestalled further efforts at conversation. Clare had always enjoyed flying and found the sensation of lift-off with fresh air in her face exhilarating.

Once aloft, she had a good view of the gently rolling terrain around the town, with mountains to the west and east. To the south, she identified Yellowstone’s boundary by the line where the timber clear-cuts stopped and unbroken forest began. She recognized the area where she had taken Sergeant Ron Travis and his troops for training. In a few days, she’d have a new group of soldiers and she hoped the cocky bantam leader would have a difficult time on the line. He’d continued to be outright rude, even as she held her tongue.

The plane banked around and headed into the park. Within minutes, the terrain began to climb and they sighted the craggy pinnacles of Bighorn Peak. To the east, towering columns of smoke built skyward from the Fan Fire. Hudson bumped Clare with his elbow and shouted, “The Fan started on June twenty-fifth, back when they were letting lightning-caused blazes burn. Looks like maybe they should have let us at it.”

Sherry called, “How about the North Fork? We got there twenty minutes after it was spotted, but it was seventy-five acres gone. We had to abort.”

The smoke they were headed for wafted from a canyon on Bighorn Peak. Within the valley, the midafternoon air was turbulent.

Sherry conferred with the pilot through headphones. Finally, she pointed and nodded, then climbed back between the Beech’s front seats, squeezing past Clare and the others. As she began to shout her briefing from aft of the open door, the plane lurched in a pocket of rough air. “The drop site is downhill from the smoke, about three hundred yards. A clearing along the ravine looks grassy, so I’d suggest it as your target. Since the air’s tricky I’ve asked for a recon pass before you jump.”

Hudson leaned to looked at the rising smoke. “That doesn’t look like a two-man job.”

“Radio if you need reinforcements,” Sherry told him. “We’re short all around this summer.” West Yellowstone was the smallest of the Smokejumpers’ bases, with fewer than twenty trained and ready to parachute.

They flew up the drainage and made the first pass over the target at about a thousand feet. To check the wind Sherry tossed a pair of weighted streamers, fluttering banners of pink and yellow that drifted smartly up the canyon.

Clare studied Hudson’s face through the grille on his helmet. He was a pro, yet as they flew, his songs and jokes had quieted. Now that he’d seen the fire, his expression was taut.

They came into the valley again and Sherry called, “Randy, you’re on deck.”

He crouched in the doorway, Hudson behind him. Sherry checked Randy’s chute to make sure a red thread was still in place, signifying no one had tampered with it since a certified packer had placed it in queue. Here was where the element of trust came in, as men and women jumped with chutes packed by other team members.

It was the same in the department. When Frank had asked her to back him up on the hose, he’d placed his life in her hands.

“See you in a few days,” Randy told Sherry. He sounded a little shaky, even for a rookie. The Beech’s engines seemed to whine more loudly as it entered the steep-walled valley. Sherry had told Clare that when they exited at one hundred ten miles per hour, it was like hitting a wall. The jumpers preferred their other plane, a Twin Otter that flew at a more sedate ninety.

Clare’s heart pounded as though she were the one about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

Sherry tapped Randy on the calf. He vanished through the doorway.

Behind the plane, his thirty-foot round canopy, striped in blue, yellow and white, opened like a graceful flower. The static line flapped and Sherry drew it back inside along with the deployment bag that had held his main chute.

Looking out the window, Clare saw Randy’s parachute, floating toward the spiky green forest. She couldn’t see the clearing Sherry had spotted.

“Hudson,” Sherry called.

A tap on the leg and he left an empty doorway to the sky. Clare expected to see his canopy unfold, but he disappeared without a sign of deployment. Sherry hung on and stuck her head out the door to look back. The wind whipped strands of her brown hair free from her helmet.

“Four . . . five . . . “ Sherry shouted. “Reserve!” Her cry came with the unfurling of Hudson’s secondary parachute, a smaller twenty-eight foot round that lacked the steering capacity of the main.

The Beech hurtled up over the wall of rock at the canyon’s head. Clare didn’t see the men land. As they circled back, she put her weight behind shoving supply boxes down the tracks toward the door. Sherry checked the fifteen-foot diameter cargo chute and stuck her head out the door to see whether she could drop the load in the targeted clearing.

With a heavy drone, the plane dove earthward. Huge rocks and the sharp texture of the pines had looked much more benign from higher up. Just when it seemed that they would crash, the Beech’s nose lifted and they flew up the ravine at two hundred feet. If Clare had thought it turbulent before, she’d not realized how wild the ride could be. The pilot flew the big twin-engine plane like a fighter, dipping and turning to follow the terrain.

“There!” Sherry pushed and the cargo tumbled out, its chute unfurling just in time to prevent the boxes from smashing.

As they gained altitude and flew over the valley one last time, Sherry pointed out the jumpers. Randy had landed in the clearing, along with the cargo. Hudson’s smaller chute hung on the side of a tree, not far uphill.

“Should have capped it,” Sherry said. As the plane banked away from Bighorn Peak, she grinned. “All over for them now but the drudgery.”

Clare relaxed and watched the mushroom clouds from the larger fires as the sun-warmed air allowed the convection currents free rein. Each day, she had to remind herself that a building thunderhead did not promise rain.

Sherry reached for her Bendix radio with a frown. “Come in?”

An excited male voice came over the airwaves. “Hudson’s bleeding bad!”

“Randy?” Sherry asked.

“He landed in a tree and burned through. Fractured his femur and severed an artery.”

Sherry looked forward at the pilot and Clare saw her rapid calculation. “We’ll have to radio for a chopper.”

Deering smoked a Marlboro and looked around the broad West Yellowstone ramp. The usually secluded area at the north end of the runway had undergone dramatic change in the past few weeks.

The tanker traffic had become constant and the Smokejumpers were making frequent runs. After almost two weeks on the ground, Deering still couldn’t believe that no one wanted him to fly.

The chop of rotors approached. By the Island Park logo, a gold-rimmed oval with a black helicopter, this one belonged to Demetrios Karrabotsos. Deering’s yearning ache gave way to anger at Steve Haywood for carrying tales.

The Huey’s pilot, a bowlegged man Deering did not recognize climbed down, went to a Dodge pickup, and drove off.

Deering put out his smoke. Looking around to make sure Karrabotsos was not in sight, he began a leisurely walk toward the helicopter. The nostalgic fuel smell made him hurt inside.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed the Smokejumpers’ plane coming in hot from the runway. The white Beech with orange stripes careened up in front of the base building. Almost before it stopped, a small woman in khaki shorts and a tank top leaped out of the open rear doorway. Deering recognized Clare Chance, sun-pinkened and animated.

“There!” Clare pointed at Deering. She broke into a run toward him. “We need you to fly us into the park to rescue an injured Smokejumper.”

The old familiar surge propelled his heart and the rest of him into action. He turned, as if to leap into the cockpit.

Clare slammed her fist into the palm of her other hand. “Let’s go.”

Deering felt like she’d punched his stomach. Without an aircraft, he was worse than useless.

Clare waited for Deering to move, but he stared at the Island Park helicopter like he didn’t know what it was.

“It’s not mine,” he said dully. She knew his helicopter had gone in the lake, but thought he was flying this machine. Then she realized he wore jeans and a T-shirt rather than a flight suit.

Adrenaline surging like she was at a fire, she looked around the ramp.

“The pilot drove off,” Deering said. “You might find the owner in that trailer. Unless he’s out flying.”

“I’ll go, Sherry,” she told her.

“I’ll get our rescue gear.” Sherry ran away toward the base.

Clare set out for the trailer. Even with his long legs, Deering lagged her.

Three charter companies shared the rental trailer on the edge of the ramp. The Island Park logo was in the middle below Yellowstone Charter’s red and black lettering and above the bold blue triangle of Eagle Air.

Clare raised her hand to knock. Deering said, “Just go in.”

She opened the door. “Excuse me.” She stopped, stunned at the facial scars on the man behind the desk. She recovered. “I’m looking for whoever owns that Huey out front.”