Summer of Fire (36 page)

“Is the fire really coming?” a pudgy woman in Birkenstocks asked.

“Can we stay and watch?” A boy around six tugged his father’s polo shirt.

Steve’s hand closed over Clare’s shoulder. “Butler Myers, this is my friend Clare Chance. She’s with the firefighters from Houston.”

Butler nodded absently and started to deal with another agitated traveler. Finished with the social niceties, Clare grabbed the ranger’s arm. “You’ve got to do something. My daughter is missing.”

He spoke over his shoulder to a female ranger who looked about twenty. “Take over, Jen.”

“Let’s go over here, ma’am.” Butler drew Clare past a seismograph to the rear auditorium. Steve came along, still carrying his fire clothes, and turned on the lights in the vacant room.

From his breast pocket, Butler drew a small notepad and pen. “I’ll need your daughter’s name and a description.”

Clare thought how many times she’d taken information from people in crisis. With the tables turned, she took a breath and tried to stay calm. “It’s Devon, Devon Chance. She’s a couple inches taller than I am, blond hair, shoulder length . . . “

“I’m sorry,” Butler interrupted. “Did you say taller than you?”

“About five-six.”

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen.”

The woman ranger Butler had called Jen stuck her head in the door. “The wind’s kicked up. Thirty-to-fifty on the heights. That puts the North Fork here in a matter of hours.”

“Please,” Clare said. “You’ve got to find Devon.”

“How long has she been missing?”

“Since last night.” It seemed like a lot longer.

“Where did you last see her?”

“At my cabin. Number sixteen on the back side.”

“Then how did she get lost?”

Clare hesitated. “We . . . that is . . . “ She thought of lying, but it wasn’t in her. “We had a fight and she ran away.” Her back still smarted from the rough edge of the bed frame.

Butler ruffled his beard with his hand.

“She’s a good kid,” Steve put in. Clare could have kissed him for it.

The notebook lowered. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but at her age law enforcement would not track your daughter as a runaway.”

“Someone could hurt her,” Clare insisted.

“We’ve been busing folks out of here since seven,” Butler said. “She was probably on one of the first ones.” His voice had an upbeat tenor. Clare knew that tone; she used it herself on the job. “I’m sure you’ll find her, ma’am.” Butler touched the brim of his hat, gave Steve an apologetic glance and hastened back toward the front desk.

Clare sank into a chair and put her face in her hands. Steve sat beside her and said, “Devon is old enough to take care of herself.”

“How can you say that?” Clare turned on him. “She didn’t show any judgment when she ran away.”

“Point taken, but Butler’s probably right. If she’s running, she’s already gone.”

For the rest of the morning, Clare and Steve tracked back and forth across the complex. From the post office and Snow Lodge on the southeast to the Hamilton Store and Conoco station on the northwest, they scanned the common areas, both indoors and out. Just past noon, they took a seat on one of the vacant benches surrounding Old Faithful.

“Now what?” Clare asked.

“We hope she’s in West Yellowstone or Mammoth with other evacuees,” Steve said. “If so, she’ll ask around and find Fire Command or Headquarters.”

Clare hoped it would be that simple.

She looked over at Steve watching the opening of Old Faithful’s show. Strands of his hair blew over his forehead and the collar of the yellow shirt he’d put on. She thought about smoothing them. The memory of being in his arms last night came back as they watched the geyser.

The deep familiar growl of a fire truck sounded behind them. In the parking lot beyond the Visitor Center a group of structural firefighters mustered.

Steve rose, “I’m going to the snack bar and see if they’re still open. Get us something to eat.”

Clare nodded, watching the firefighters. She recognized Javier Fuentes, standing out above the crowd in the same moment that he saw her. He came to her with his long-legged gait, dark eyes bright. She reached up to hug him.

She’d seen him off and on during the firefighting effort, but today his embrace reminded her that he’d done the same after Frank had died. Javier had picked her up from the gutter and taken her from the scene, given her strong coffee, and refused to let her succumb to feeling guilty.

Her arms tightened convulsively.

“Hey, hey? What’s this?” he asked.

A sob burst from her, startling them both.

“What in hell’s happened?” Javier drew back to look at her.

“We lost a soldier the other day. A guy I was training.”

“That’s tough.” Javier checked her face again. “Ah, God, Clare, you can’t do this.”

“Who says I can’t?” she exploded.

“I say,” he insisted. “You refused to come back to the station. You wanted to rush off up here so I decided to come, too. But you can’t run away from the fact that it’s a dangerous goddamn business.”

“I’m thinking of getting out of it,” she said grimly.

Javier’s eyes went wide. “You can’t. For every student of yours who dies, there are the rest you taught something to save their life . . . and the lives of others. I’d back you up on the hose any day.”

Behind him, one of the firefighters pointed to the southwest, where a towering column of smoke looked like a nuclear weapon had exploded over the horizon.

Javier pointed toward the inferno. “We need every hand we can get.” He lifted hers and looked at them. “There are a hell of a lot of folks alive today because these are some of the best hands in the business.”

The roiling firestorm was the kind of enemy that called for somebody, anybody, to rise up and fight. Clare shook her head. “I can’t.”

“The hell you can’t!” Steve said from behind her. She thought he’d gone to the snack bar.

She turned. His eyes looked like flint chips.

Javier dropped her hands and stood back.

Her eyes held Steve’s for a long moment while his softened.

His look of encouragement spoke volumes, but he simply said, “Frank and Billy would want you to.” Putting a quick grip-and-release on her shoulder, he walked away.

Javier waited.

Clare stared at the pavement, sprinkled with little marble-sized chunks of obsidian. As she had done so many times, she ached for a sign from Frank. Was it possible that he was irrevocably gone? Could all those people who believed in ghosts and portents from beyond be wrong? She closed her eyes and sent her own message winging, knowing it was yet another futile one-way effort.

By now, several others had joined her and Javier. Clare heard, “ . . . planning to foam the cabins.”

Another man said, “Hose down the roof of the inn.”

Straining memory, she could see Frank at work, his back to her while he lifted and dragged a hose. All their training, repeating drills until reaction became instinctive. Working at A & M and at the fire academy in Houston, they had faced fake situations, but the flames had been real.

The North Fork was out there and this was definitely not a drill. In her mind’s eye, Frank never turned to look at her, but wasn’t it enough to know that if he were here, he’d lead the charge?

Steve approached and gave Clare a Coke and two Hershey bars. She popped the top and drank. “Thanks. I should have had supper, or at least some breakfast.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’ve run into some fellow scientists,” he said slowly.

Clare saw three people waiting for him outside the cafeteria. A tall dark man talked with a younger Asian fellow who wore glasses. A girl a few years older than Devon sat cross-legged on the sidewalk. She rooted in her backpack and came up with a cigarette pack.

“My neighbor Moru,” Steve said, “and our summer graduate students. They could use my help cataloguing some areas in the path of the burn, but if you need me . . . “

“I don’t need you right now.” She touched his arm so that he would understand the “now” aspect of the statement. Later, she reserved the right to need much more.

Clare turned and faced the southwest, staring directly into the face of the North Fork. Silhouetted against the smoke, tankers dropped retardant and helicopters ferried water.

“You help your friends,” she told Steve. “I’ve volunteered to join these guys.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

September 7

For the second time this summer, Deering found himself flying blind, trapped inside turbulent smoke. Luckily, he’d already released his load of water and was turning back toward the Firehole River to refill the bucket.

Deering hoped that Mark Liebman in the lead plane had not seen him. Flying into zero vis was strictly verboten. He corrected course, pulled up and to the right, which should have brought him into clear air. Instead, he was still within the cloud.

He straightened out to avoid putting the chopper into a tight spiral that would result in flying in circles. Using his compass, he flew in the opposite direction from which the North Fork was approaching.

Seconds passed. Deering fought to keep the craft steady and checked his altimeter. He tried not to dwell on the fact that there were a number of aircraft in the area, all flying VFR, or visual flight rules. If someone else blundered into the cloud, there could be a midair.

He stared through the windshield. The murk snugged right against the glass.

This was bad business. Today showed all the signs of being another one like Black Saturday. If the wind kept rising with the dry cold front, Old Faithful Inn was going up.

“Okay, Deering,” Mark Liebman radioed in his habitually cheerful manner, “no playing peek-a-boo.”

“The hell you say,” Deering gritted. Was there a barely perceptible thinning of the smoke?

Before he could decide, a harsh droning drowned the Huey’s engine noise. As Deering broke in a patch of clearer air, a C-130 tanker flashed past. The enormous plane dove earthward, on approach to dump retardant.

Deering’s hands stung as adrenaline rushed to them. The Huey plunged, caught in the vortex from the tanker’s four great propellers. Struggling to arrest the dive, he realized that smoke kept him from seeing the ground and that he could smash into it at any second. He kept his eyes glued to the artificial horizon and altimeter, trying not to think about instant annihilation in a fireball of fuel.

In the midst of maybe dying, he couldn’t help but think of Georgia. He’d thought of her that day in Yellowstone Lake, too, when he’d longed to be home.

He cajoled the controls and forced himself not to imagine the ridge top studded with treacherously sharp pine trunks, God only knew how far below. Finally, the Huey began to respond.

Once in open air, Deering was able to see he’d been only a few hundred feet off the deck. He let out a shaky breath and wiped his sweating palms, one at a time, on his pant legs. Thank God, he wouldn’t have to tell Georgia he’d crashed twice in one summer. He thought of her arms around him, and found that the stinging in his eyes was not all from smoke.

As he headed toward the Firehole to pick up more water, along with the tattered remnants of his self-control, the radio crackled with a message from West Yellowstone Air Control. He was wanted to meet Garrett Anderson and fly recon.

All the way west, he kept expecting controller Jack Owen or Mark Liebman in the lead plane to ground everyone. For the first time in his life, he was ready.

Once on the West Yellowstone tarmac, Deering climbed out of the Huey and slammed the door.

“Hey,” Garrett called from beside the fence near the Smokejumpers’ Base.

Deering waved, but did not alter his course toward the charter trailer. Inside, Demetrios Karrabotsos sat at the Island Park desk with the phone against his salt-and-pepper head. Deering knew he’d be out flying later, for the cast had come off his foot the day before yesterday.

Down the narrow hall, Deering went into the office of Johnny Arvela of Eagle Air. He dialed, his hand trembling like it had on the collective when the C-130’s wake buffeted him.

On the third ring, Georgia said hello in a small voice that said she wasn’t smiling.

“Please,” Deering said, “don’t hang up.”

She didn’t, but neither did she speak.

“Babe, I’m sorry. Sorry for everything about this summer. That I . . . chased another woman. Jesus . . .” He gripped the edge of the metal desk. This was harder than he’d imagined. “I went after her . . . but nothing happened, not what you think, anyway.”

Still silence on her end.

“I’m begging you to forgive me.” He was sweating like a whore in church. “Let me come home. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

“Did she throw you over?” Georgia dripped ice water.

“No! I’m the one who wants our life back together. Babe, I can’t do this anymore without knowing you’re there for me.”

The hum on the line underscored that she was far away. The trailer shook as someone came up the steps.