Summer of Fire (3 page)

“I want you to climb in back,” Deering continued, “open the door, and shove that out.”

Steve bristled. He’d fought the summer fires of the West for three seasons during college and several times since coming to the park. “Wouldn’t it be smarter if we landed to deploy the bucket?”

“Just do it!” Deering snapped.

Steve thought about the people trapped in their cars, choking on smoke. He’d felt that same heat on his own back as he bent to dig a fire line. Experience had taught him that each wildfire had its own personality, from how it devoured the forest to the play of colors in its flames. What they shared was that they could all turn deadly . . . as could the process of fighting them.

Steve hurried to remove his shoulder harness and squeeze between the seats. The collapsed bucket made an unwieldy orange heap on the metal deck, with the cable snaking through a notch in the doorframe.

“Be sure,” Deering’s distorted voice came to him through the headphones, “to pitch the bucket clear of the skids.”

Steve slid open the door. After looking through tinted windows, brilliant light shocked him. The blast of wind and high-pitched whine of the helicopter was much louder. Turning to his task, he tugged at the bucket, but failed to budge it.

Five years ago, he could have tossed it out. Now, at thirty-eight, multiple surgeries had left him with knees he could no longer rely on. Ignoring a stab of pain, he bent and put his shoulder behind the work.

As the amorphous shape inched toward the bright day, he prepared to give the bucket an extra shove. Just then, the helicopter hit a pocket of rough air and dipped, nearly pitching him out. He clung to the doorframe, watching the bucket dangle perilously close to the left skid.

Deering flipped a switch and the cable paid out. The chopper banked and lost altitude until it hung so low over the lake that Steve had a clear view of white-capped waves. He wondered if he should return to his seat, but as long as he stayed back from the wind torrent, the fresh air cleared his head. Through the open door was West Thumb, a smaller arm of the cobalt expanse of Yellowstone Lake. Onshore, the hot springs of West Thumb Geyser Basin shone in a hundred colors.

“Let me know when the bucket’s full,” Deering directed.

Steve forced himself to approach the door. Downwash from the rotors beat the lake in a wide circle as the bucket touched the water. The canvas grew dark and slowly sank.

It seemed to take a long time to gather a hundred forty-four-gallons, while Steve held onto the chicken bar above the door. Deering manipulated the controls with barely perceptible adjustments that kept the craft in a hover. When the bucket was finally full, Steve said, “Ready.”

“We’re heavy on fuel,” Deering replied. It had been less than twenty minutes since they’d taken off from West Yellowstone Airport. “Fighting this wind with a full load is going to be a bitch.” He powered up to climb.

Blown sideways, the craft turned up on its side and the bucket’s sunken weight skewed out from under it.

Steve fell away from the open door to land hard on the small of his back. Cleats designed to hold a rear seat in place bruised him and his headphones slid across the metal deck. He retrieved them in time to hear Deering breathe, “Sum bitch.”

The Bell’s engines whined in crescendo and, for a long moment, it seemed to hang motionless. Steve’s toes curled inside his boots. Although it had been years since he’d seen the inside of a church, he found himself sending up a prayer.

When the bottom of the bucket pulled free, the chopper picked up speed and careened toward the burning shore. Flames leaped from the tops of the pines right down to the narrow rocky beach.

Too fast,
Steve thought, crouching on the deck. At the same time, he realized that they hadn’t gained enough elevation to clear the trees. They were unbalanced, skewing sideways.

“Release the bucket,” Steve shouted into the roaring wind.

“Can’t. Cable’s hung on the skid, thanks to you.” They headed fast for the inferno. Deering muttered a string of obscenities, the kind of language usually heard at the end of black box flight recordings.

Steve clambered to his feet and clamped his teeth hard. With a wary look at the blur of rotors, he figured it was at least a hundred feet to the water since the bucket wasn’t quite dragging. He should have known better than to fly, to once more leave the solid earth and put his fate at the mercy of wind, machine, and human fallibility.

All the fight seemed to have gone out of Deering while Steve watched his silent battle to keep the chopper aloft. His gaunt face was set in resignation, as if he were already contemplating the loss of the craft he’d shown off so proudly at the airport.

By God, this time Steve would not go down with the ship.

With as good a running start as three steps could give him, he leaped out of the helicopter.

Spreading one hand to protect his crotch, he placed the other across his chest and assumed a cross-legged position. His stomach felt as though he left it ten feet above as he plummeted.

Hurtling toward the water, Steve remembered his life vest beneath the front seat. He’d followed the pilot’s lead in not wearing the bulky, bright-orange device. Hot shot Deering must have thought a quick turn over the lake didn’t count as flying over water.

Coming up fast was all the deep blue one needed to drown in on a perfectly beautiful day.

Steve hit feet first with a mighty impact and drove deep. The cold shocked him, once, and then again, as he plunged into a more frigid layer. Spreading his arms, he pulled down until he felt his rate of sinking begin to slow.

Finally, he poised motionless in the dark.

It could have been peaceful, realizing that he’d safely separated himself from the flying machine, but it took him back, painfully, to that potent instant when the screaming metal of the Triworld Air 737 had fallen silent.

Just before he turned toward his family.

As if they remembered, too, Steve’s debilitated knees throbbed in the cold water.

He began to swim up. His heavy boots and clothes acted as sea anchors, trying to take him back to the depths. It was a good thing he’d once been a strong swimmer, but how would he fare now?

As he pulled toward the light, it began to brighten from cerulean to the shade of an October sky. He kicked the last few feet into slightly warmer water and his head and shoulders broke the surface. Chest heaving to suck in air, he found that panic’s icy fingers gripped his lungs.

A loud whining surrounded him. He swiveled his head and found the chopper still in the air. For a paralyzing moment, he watched it skate straight for him. Through the windshield, a flash of light caught Deering’s sunglasses.

With a desperate gasp, Steve dove back into the lake’s cold embrace. The frigid water compressed his chest as he kicked and pulled through the first thermocline. The Bell’s impact pushed him deeper. Water churned as the tail and main rotors of the helicopter thrashed up a wake. He kept stroking, expecting any second to be chopped to pieces.

Whispering tendrils of black began at the edge of Steve’s consciousness.

“Mayday, Mayday.” Deering spoke tersely into his headset. “I have ditched off West Thumb.” Water rose over the windshield.

He’d done a helluva job leveling out and pulling off power, if he did say so himself. Despite the rough setdown, he’d hit the water without the transmission coming through the cabin and taking out the pilot’s seat. Back in Vietnam, Deering had lost his friends Joe Silva and Skip Harlan to just that accident. One night they drank tequila shots together, knowing they would still be lit when it came time for the predawn climb into the cockpit.

The next evening Deering drank alone.

Despite the shaking up, he’d climbed into the next available Huey and taken the controls. Flying was his life, all he’d wanted to do from the time he was six and his father had taken him to the Pocatello airport to gaze wide-eyed at the planes.

“Will have to abandon.” He stripped off his headphones and reached into the cold calf-deep water for the personal flotation device he cursed himself for not wearing.

The omens had all been bad this summer.

It had been years since Deering had seen a firestorm like the one sweeping toward the campground at Grant Village with those poor S.O.B.s trapped and waiting for it. He should be helping instead of sitting on his ass in a brace position while his helicopter filled with water.

Where in hell was Haywood?

Dr. Steve Haywood had rubbed Deering the wrong way from the moment they met on the tarmac at West Yellowstone. Blond and balding, a few inches shorter than Deering, Haywood had greeted him amiably enough, but Deering had divined with a pilot’s sixth sense that his passenger hid a fear of flying. With a roiling animosity Deering had figured for a cover, Steve had hefted his sturdy body stiffly into the Bell, slammed the passenger door, and planted his booted feet on the deck.

The chopper capsized, rolling over onto the open rear door. The numbing rush climbed past Deering’s waist.

During his offshore safety training, the clear warmth of a swimming pool had made it easy to do the drill. As the training cage submerged, you reached your right hand for an orientation point on the door handle and placed your left on the seat belt beside the buckle. Not easy to do while they flipped you upside down, so they made you do it until you got it right, or the instructor gave you a break.

Today he couldn’t buy one.

Deering looked down at his left hand in the rising water, at the bandage where he’d had a skin cancer removed three weeks ago. He’d spent a little time thinking about mortality, and had somehow omitted telling his wife, Georgia, about the diagnosis.

Better he should have waited for today if he wanted to think about dying.

His aircraft rolled upside down and he tried to keep track of his life jacket.

Wait
. . .
wait
. . .

All those years, Georgia had waited and worried, first during Nam when a shitload of guys got
Dear Johns,
then later when he’d flown timber charters and forest fires all over the West. Petite Georgia’s coppery hair shone like the sun, even at night. Today she was probably at their home in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho tending her summer garden beside the Portneuf River.

Cold water covered Deering’s mouth and nose.

Count it out. One cucumber, two cucumber.

At least to eight while the craft’s inverted.

Deering pushed on the door handle. The force of water pressed back.

Hell, he hadn’t done anything by the book today. Why not swim out through the rear door?

Halfway through the space between the front seats, he found out why not as his flight suit snagged on the collective. He told himself he had plenty of air, that it had only been around twenty seconds since the water had flooded his face. The lake was clear, but he couldn’t see anything through the rush of bubbles.

Pressure and darkness came down and desperation swelled. The chopper dropped steadily while he tried to ease the pain in his ears by clearing them. As the water grew colder, he kicked harder, smacking his head smartly on his way out through the rear door.

Free of the cabin, Deering fought toward the surface, still carrying the life jacket. He secured the strap around his wrist and pulled down hard on the toggles that inflated it. The extra lift nearly tore it away, but he managed to hold on as he accelerated through the brightening water.

His head broke the surface and he inhaled deeply, enjoying the draught better than the first sip of any beer he’d ever cracked. Before he could celebrate, he had more trouble. He struggled to lay the unwieldy vest open on the water and get his right hand through it. His arm, already growing heavy and numb, would not slide into the hole. Hugging the vest to his chest, he floated on his back.

Smoke billowed into the sky; an ironic parody of the towering cumulus that everyone prayed might bring rain.

Deering raised his head to see how far it was to the timbered shore. It looked like a long goddamn swim. The old adage about staying with the aircraft didn’t apply when it was probably still drifting down through the almost three hundred feet of water his map had indicated was in West Thumb.

Georgia would be crazy. The Bell was a long way from paid for and the insurance company was going to be all over his ass.

He stirred his arms and legs, treading water in a three-sixty looking for Steve Haywood. His spirits sank further as he remembered that his passenger’s life vest rested beneath the left front seat of the Bell, on its way to the bottom.

CHAPTER TWO

July 25

"What about the road up there?” the RV’s driver asked in a querulous voice.

Behind him, Clare watched a reddish glow advance beneath a smoke veil. Although the backfire seemed powerful, it could not compare with a conflagration that had been a month in the making. The Shoshone’s rumble became a roar, a hollow warning that presaged firestorm.

Clare’s heart pounded. If they couldn’t get these people out of here, the main body of the fire was going to sweep over them. She strained her ears, but there was no familiar whop of rotors bringing relief.