Chasing Fire
Page 17

Then everything filled with the flame, a world of vivid orange, gold, mean red spewing choking clouds of smoke. Through the clouds and eerie glimmer she saw the silhouettes, caught glimpses of the yellow shirts and hard hats of the smoke jumpers, waging the war.
Shifting her pack, she pushed her way up the ridge toward the ferocious burn. “Check in with Gibbons,” she shouted to Matt. “Let him know we made it. Yo, Elf!” Rowan hailed Janis as she hurried forward, waving her arms. “Cavalry’s here.”
“We need it. We got scratch lines around the hottest part of the head. The mud knocked her down some, and we’ve been scratching line down toward the tail. Need to widen it, and down the snags. Jesus.”
She took a minute to gulp some water, swipe at the sweat dripping into her eyes. The pink goo of repellent pasted her hat and shirt. “First fire of the season, and this bitch has a punch. Gibbons just told me they’re sending in another load of jumpers, and they put Idaho on alert. We gotta cut off her head, Swede.”
“We can start on widening the line, downing the snags. Hit a lot of spots on the way up. She keeps trying to jump.”
“Tell me. Get started. I got the rooks up there, Libby and Stovic. Keep ’em straight.”
“You got it.”
Rowan dug, cut, beat, hacked and sweated. Hours flashed by. She sliced down snags, the still-standing dead trees the fire would use for fuel. When she felt her energy flag, she stopped long enough to stuff her mouth with the peanut-butter crackers in her PG bag, wash it down with the prize of the single Coke—nearly hot now—she’d brought with her.
Her clothes sported the pink goo from a second drop of repellent, and under it her back, legs, shoulders burned from the heat and the hours of unrelenting effort.
But she felt it, the minute it started to turn their way.
The massive cloud of smoke thinned—just a little—and through it she saw a single hopeful wink of light from the North Star.
Day had burned into night while they’d battled.
She straightened, arched her back to relieve it, and looked back, into the black—the burned-out swatch of the forest the fire had consumed, the charred logs, stumps, ghostly spikes, dead pools of ash.
Nothing to eat there now, she thought, and they’d cut off the supply of fuel at the head.
Her energy swung back. It wasn’t over, but they’d beaten it. The dragon was beginning to lie down.
She downed a dead pine, then used one of its branches to beat out a small, sneaky spot. The cry of shock and pain had her swinging around in time to see Stovic go down. His chain saw bounced out of his hands, rolled, and the blood on its teeth dripped onto the trampled ground.
Rowan let her own drop where she stood, lunged toward him. She reached him as he struggled to sit up and grab at his thigh.
“Hold on! Hold on!” She pushed his hands away, tore at his pants to widen the jagged tear.
“I don’t know what happened. I’m cut!” Beneath the soot and ash, his face glowed ghastly white.
She knew. Fatigue had made him sloppy, caused him to lose his grip on the saw or use it carelessly enough, just for a second, to allow it to jerk back.
“How bad?” he demanded as she used a knife from her pack to cut the material back. “Is it bad?”
“It’s a scratch. Toughen up, rook.” She didn’t know either way, not yet. “Get the first-aid kit,” Rowan ordered when Libby dropped down beside her. “I’m going to clean this up some, Stovic, get a better look.”
A little shocky, she determined as she studied his eyes, but holding.
And his bitter litany of curses—a few of them Russian delivered in his Brooklyn accent—made her optimistic as she cleaned the wound.
“Got a nice gash.” She said it cheerfully, and thought, Jesus, Jesus, a little deeper, a little to the left, and bye-bye, Stovic. “The blade mostly got your pants.”
She looked him in the eye again. She’d have lied if necessary, and her stomach jittered with relief she didn’t need the lie. “You’re going to need a couple dozen stitches, but that shouldn’t slow you down for long. I’m going to do a field dressing that’ll hold you until you get back to base.”
He managed a wobbly smile, but she heard the click in his throat as he swallowed. “I didn’t cut off anything essential, right?”
“Your junk’s intact, Chainsaw.”
“Hurts like hell.”
“I bet.”
He gathered himself, took a couple slow breaths. Rowan felt another wave of relief when a little color eked back into his face. “First time I jump a fire, and look what I do. It won’t keep me grounded long, will it?”
“Nah.” She dressed the wound quickly, competently. “And you’ll have this sexy scar to impress the women.” She sat back on her haunches, smiled at him. “Women can’t resist a wounded warrior, right, Lib?”
“Damn right. In fact, I’m holding myself back from jumping you right now, Stovic.”
He gave her a twisted grin. “We beat it, didn’t we, Swede?”
“Yeah, we did.” She patted his knee, then got to her feet. Leaving Libby tending him, she walked apart to contact Gibbons and arrange for Stovic to be littered out.
Eighteen hours after jumping the fire, Rowan climbed back onto the plane for the short flight back to base.
Using her pack as a pillow, she stretched out on the floor, shut her eyes. “Steak,” she said, “medium rare. A football-size baked potato drowning in butter, a mountain of candied carrots, followed by a slab of chocolate cake the size of Utah smothered in half a gallon of ice cream.”
“Meat loaf.” Yangtree dropped down beside her while somebody else—or a couple of somebody elses by the stereophonics—snored like buzz saws. “An entire meat loaf, and I’ll take my mountain in mashed potatoes with a vat of gravy. Apple pie, and make that a gallon of ice cream.”
Rowan slid open her eyes to see Matt watching her with a sleepy smile. “What’s your pick, Matt?”
“My ma’s chicken and dumplings. Best ever. Just pour it in a fivegallon bucket so I can stick my head in and chow it down. Cherry cobbler and homemade whipped cream.”
“Everybody knows whipped cream comes in a can.”
“Not at my ma’s house. But I’m hungry enough to eat five-day-old pizza, and the box it came in.”