Summer of Fire (16 page)

“That would be me. I’m Karrabotsos.” Calmly, he sipped coffee, keeping his salt and pepper head bent.

A muscle in the side of her jaw tensed. “The Smokejumpers have a man down on Bighorn Peak.”

Karrabotsos looked at her tank top and shorts. “You’re not a Smokejumper.”

“I’m a firefighter and EMT from Houston. I flew with the Smokejumpers today as an observer.” She tried to sound professional. “Our pilot radioed and found that all the choppers in the area are either specialty-rigged or farther away than yours.”

Even after hearing the story, the older man’s expression was unyielding.

“If you’re worried about getting paid, I’ll pay you myself.” Her voice went hard.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, little lady,” Karrabotsos rasped. “I’d be pleased to help, but I can’t.” Putting both hands on the edge of the desk, he pushed back his chair to reveal a cast on his right foot. “Dropped a box of fire camp rations and broke three bones.”

“What about your pilot?” Deering asked. “Can’t you get him back here?”

“He’s gone to Pocatello. Had a call that his five-month-old baby is in the emergency room.”

“For God’s sake, let Deering go,” Clare said. “The jumper severed an artery in his leg.”

Karrabotsos’s gaze locked with Deering’s. A glance at the two of them said there was something very wrong.

“Look,” she said. “How can you sit by while this war escalates from burning trees to threatening the men that fight it?”

Karrabotsos shifted his eyes back to hers for a long speculative moment.

Finally, he turned back to Deering. “You understand that I don’t want to do this,” he said, “but if we’re going to save that man’s life, you’ll have to fly.”

Although it had been less than thirty minutes since Clare had been in the high valley on Bighorn Peak, everything looked different.

Where the Beech had swept over at one hundred ten miles per hour, Deering maneuvered the chopper more slowly. Despite Sherry’s repeated attempts to raise Randy on the radio, they had not established communication since landing in West Yellowstone.

“Where?” Deering asked through their headsets. The wind’s rising fury made the Huey shudder and dance.

Sherry peered through the rear window, her cupped hands against the glass. “Can’t see them.”

The pink and yellow streamers they’d dropped to test the wind had threaded through the tops of the pines. Clare caught a flash of blue below and realized that it was either Randy or Hudson’s helmet. “There they are.”

“I’ll let you off in that clearing.” Deering pointed to the landing place where the cargo boxes lay. On a fifteen-degree slope, the open space was bisected by a dry rocky channel that probably carried snowmelt in spring.

Deering brought them lower. The Huey’s engines whined and the tail rotor chopped small limbs, raising the pungent scent of evergreen.

“It’s okay, ladies,” he said calmly. “Just making a little lodgepole salad.” When the skids were about three feet from the ground, he directed, “Better hop off here. If I set her down, we’ll never get out.”

Sherry removed her headset and shoved open the rear door. A blast of wind caught Clare in the face where she sat behind Deering. She tried to calm her jitters, comparing jumping out of a hovering helicopter to something she knew. Like working the high ladders or rappelling down a building, one of the exercises she taught at A & M.

On impulse, she touched Deering’s shoulder. Sinew and bone moved fluidly beneath her hand as he controlled the chopper. His eyes stayed forward. “Hang on until I steady her.”

There was no choice here, any more than in Houston when she had to go into a burning building. She tossed her headphones into the rear seat.

Sherry was already out the door, crouching on the skid with one hand around the vertical support. She leaped, landing on the uneven slope in what Clare recognized as the parachutist’s roll. Scrambling to her feet, Sherry held out her arms to catch the folding stretcher Clare tossed.

Hot wind from the rotors beat down. Clare hung on the downhill skid, maybe ten feet above the ground.

More limbs fell from the trees. Rotor wash flattened the grass. She jumped.

The pit of her stomach lifted. Feet first, she hit and collapsed to absorb the shock. Sherry was already heading uphill, her back barely visible through the whirling cloud of dust.

Clare followed. The Huey’s engines went to a higher pitch and then the sound gradually receded.

The trees grew thick, with no more than a few feet between them. Clare’s bare legs and arms were soon covered in black dirt and resin. Wearing light hikers rather than her thick fire boots, she kept slipping on the pine straw.

She had lost sight of the fire, but the smoke reminded her she wasn’t wearing fire retardant clothing. It hadn’t seemed important when every second counted to get to Hudson.

Randy’s relief at seeing her and Sherry was evident on his small, tight features. He had opened Hudson’s Kevlar jumpsuit and his hand pressed high on the injured man’s leg, shutting down the femoral artery in the groin area. Below the break, blood soaked the beige coveralls.

Hudson lay still. His right leg canted at an oblique angle above the knee.

“Is he conscious?” Clare asked.

“Unfortunately.” Hudson opened his eyes.

She smiled and bent close. His pupils looked normal, constricted in the forest’s filtered sunlight. “We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible.” Turning to Randy, she instructed, “Keep pressure on.”

“Uh, oh!” Sherry pointed. Not thirty yards away, small flames licked at the duff beneath the trees.

“Maybe you better do something about that,” Clare suggested as mildly as she could.

Sherry was off, running toward the supply boxes. Randy stayed in place, an uncertain look on his face. With a glance at Hudson’s grim expression, she instructed, “Go ahead and let go. I need to see what we’ve got.”

He removed his hand. A bright, arterial stream pulsed with each beat of Hudson’s heart.

Clare shot another look at the fire. There wasn’t time to clear a firebreak. Ditto for stabilizing the bleeding and straightening the leg into the proper packaging for transport.

“Randy!” she demanded. “Give me that line you guys use for rappelling.”

He pulled a coil from the calf pocket of his jumpsuit.

“Cut me four feet.”

He withdrew a folding knife from his jumpsuit pocket.

“A tourniquet,” Clare told him as he cut, “just until we get on the chopper.”

Sherry was back, carrying shovels and Pulaskis. The fire had taken another five yards.

“Change of plans,” Clare said. She tied a constricting rope on Hudson’s leg just above the break. Sherry unfolded the stretcher.

As soon as the bleeding slowed, Clare put a hand on Hudson’s chest. “We’re gonna have to move you. Are you aware of any other injuries?”

The blue helmet swiveled negative.

Clare wished she had another choice for her patient.

It was flying with the door open, Deering realized, that drove him mercilessly back to the Ia Drang valley. As soon as Clare and Sherry had shoved back the heavy metal frame, the wopping had invaded his skull.

The tight little clearing on Bighorn Peak looked for all the world like one of the LZs Deering had gone into ‘slick’, sweating because his ship didn’t carry guns and the gunships were someplace else when there were wounded to be ferried.

He flew the Huey around the high valley on Bighorn Peak, trying not to think about going back down there. No time for dread, though, for he sighted three people carrying a stretcher on the treacherous slope.

Mentally Deering measured, even though he’d already been in the clearing once. He figured five times the rotor diameter of forty-eight feet. Though he’d hoped the injured man was in decent shape and he might not have to set down, the blood he saw staining the victim’s coveralls called up Plan B.

Deering had told Clare they wouldn’t be able to take off if he landed, but he’d been in tighter spots, and under enemy fire. He would never forget the sound of bullets striking metal. The high-pitched ping had made him jump the first few hundred times until he realized that if he heard, it had missed him.

Deering saw Clare shield her eyes from the sun. Her steady look said she trusted him.

He went in.

The second approach produced fewer impacts with the trees, for he’d done quite a bit of wood chopping already. As he hovered at about three feet, Clare motioned to the others to bring the injured man forward.

Deering waved her off and landed on the flattest spot he could find. Even so, the Huey canted strongly to the side.

Clare was last aboard and Deering got a look at the fierce concentration on her sun-browned face. The door slammed. Sherry’s hand gripped his shoulder. “Go!”

Now was the time when déjà vu would come in handy. Deering ran up the RPMs and picked the Huey up about five feet, guiding the hover backward until the tail rotor slashed the pines. At some level, he registered that Clare and Sherry had acquired their headphones and were discussing a shot of morphine.

With a few hundred feet of open space, Deering lifted the tail and gathered speed. There wasn’t enough room to accelerate in a straight line so he went into as tight a turn as he could.

Flying in a circle around the clearing, he managed on the third go-round to achieve lift speed, about twenty miles per hour.

The aircraft lurched, then leaped into the sky.

He changed frequency to let West Yellowstone Control know he was coming, then let Sherry talk with the Smokejumpers’ base. A larger team of six had been dispatched to dig a line around the fire.

Concentrating on flying, Deering handled the Huey with a mingled sense of strangeness and long familiarity. Although it had been nine years since he’d flown a UH-1, once he held the controls it had surged back.

After Sherry completed her report, Deering radioed Demetrios Karrabotsos.

“Clare says the jumper’s stable, just out cold from the pain and morphine,” he relayed. “She clamped his artery while we were shaking all over the sky. If I ever need a medic, you call her.”

Before Karrabotsos could reply, Clare said strongly, “If you ever need a pilot, you call this guy.”

Deering gave her a smile he was sure would make Georgia go ballistic. Clare returned it.

He headed for West Yellowstone. In front of the Smokejumpers’ base, an ambulance waited. Alongside stood a tight group with notepads, cameras and at least two video units.

“The press is here,” Deering announced.

“Who called them?” Clare asked.

He powered down, flipping switches. As the ambulance attendants rushed to the chopper, he finished shutting down and climbed out. It felt odd to be standing on the tarmac in jeans instead of his usual flight suit.

“We’ll follow them to the hospital,” Sherry told Clare. “I’ll get the other guys who aren’t on deck.” She and Randy headed off toward the base building with its tall parachute loft.

Ignoring the press, Deering started to relax. A cold drink, maybe a steak this evening.

Then he noted that Clare’s forehead still furrowed. Her small hands made fists as the gurney wheeled toward the pulsing blood-red emergency flashers.

He thought of telling her that Hudson would be all right, but he didn’t know that.

Billings Live Eye captured the Smokejumper being lifted into the rear of the ambulance in blood soaked coveralls. A red-haired woman reporter in a jeans jacket pressed a microphone at him, but Hudson lay motionless.

Deering looked down at the top of Clare’s tousled head and felt his adrenaline rush subside. He put a hand on her shoulder and remembered her touch, just before she jumped into the clearing. “Do you think he’ll be okay?” He massaged the tightness in her neck muscles.

Her fists slowly relaxed. “Should be . . . if the leg is the only major injury.”

He’d not thought of that. With the departure of the ambulance, the reporters headed toward them.

“Mr. Deering! Could we have a word?”

“Carol Leeds, Billings Live Eye,” said the redhead. “How does it feel to be a hero?”

Deering broke into a grin.

“Mr. Karrabotsos said this was your first day flying with his company,” Carol Leeds went on.

Sonnavabitch.

Across the ramp, Demetrios Karrabotsos balanced in the open trailer door. He propped against the frame with one hand and gave Deering a thumbs-up with the other.

A pony-tailed video cameraman crowded in and filmed.

Someone from the
West Yellowstone News
raised a Nikon. “How about a photo, Mr. Deering? Of you with the helicopter.”

“Damn right!” He gave his best shit-eating grin and slung his arm around Clare’s waist. What the hell, maybe he would ask her to dinner.

“Congratulations on getting back in the air.” Clare raised her wine glass and clinked it against Deering’s Coke. He was flying tomorrow and he’d been smiling nonstop since she slipped into the booth opposite him at the Red Wolf Steakhouse.