Flash of Fire (26 page)

“Not too late, man.”

“Naw, I'm happy doing what I'm doing.” And Mickey was. He loved flying to fire. He couldn't imagine doing it with anyone other than MHA.

“Lady, huh?”

“Yep.” Mickey didn't see any point in arguing. “There's that too.” Flying with Robin had become the best part of a very good thing.

Mickey hit the next drop point. Vern slid in behind him and beat back a developing crown fire. Once a fire climbed high in the treetops, it could race along at the speed of the wind, outdistancing ground crews between one breath and the next. A lot of what they were doing today was getting the crown fire to lie back down as a ground fire.

They weren't attacked with any surprise tree-sap explosions on this run. They'd managed a clean drop with no problems. A whole lot of things were going right with his world.

They circled back for another load of water.

* * *

Mark was waiting for her on the ground the next time Robin rotated back to the airfield for fuel and inspection.

Denise was already checking the systems before Robin could finish shutting down.

Robin crawled out of the cockpit beneath the glowering sky. The wind felt good. She knew it would be causing them more trouble on the fire as it struck northward, but the air was fresh and had a decent humidity level, which would also help slow the spread of the fire.

Already thinking like a firefighter.

That's when Robin felt the first real pang. She'd barely started her first season as a heli-aviation firefighter and she was already dismayed that her contract with MHA was only for a single season. Which also meant her time with Mickey was only a single season, because it was far clearer than the muddy water they'd been sucking out of the North Korean rivers that these guys stayed busy. A relationship would only work if they were busy together.

That explained all of the MHA couples.

Though it didn't begin to explain why
she
was thinking about it.

Mark placed a bottle of Pocari Sweat in one of her hands and a roast beef sandwich in her other. She stuffed as much of the sandwich as she could manage into her mouth and closed her eyes to relish the taste. The mustard was odd and sharp, but the meat was great.

“You are a god, Henderson,” she mumbled around another bite.

“I always thought so,” Mark said complacently.

Lola, who had come up and been handed her own meal, laughed outright.

Denise scoffed as she passed by and then climbed up the kick-in steps built into the side of the helo to inspect something up on the rotors.

Robin was even getting used to the strange grapefruit-and-electrolyte taste of the soft drink. “This totally rocks!” And then her brain finally began working again. “And, Mark, you're here at the field instead of sitting beside Carly and Steve on the radio. Why am I guessing that totally
doesn't
rock?”

“Because you're a smart woman, Robin Harrow.”

“He's complimenting me,” she said to Lola as an aside. “It means we're fucked.”

Lola nodded her agreement.

Robin tore off another ravenous hunk of the roast beef so that she could have one more moment to appreciate the taste, then spoke around the mouthful. “Give it to me.”

“In exactly one hour, I need you to crash at the following coordinates.” Mark held up a slip of paper long enough for her and Lola to read it twice. Then he dropped it into her half-empty bottle of Pocari Sweat. The paper dissolved.

Robin glanced up at him as she continued chewing.

“Rice paper.”

“Duh! I already knew that.” She swallowed down most of the last bite she'd taken and handed him the unfinished bottle of Sweat. “I was wondering about the
crash
part.”

“There, with such assets as you deem necessary to mask your actions, you will wait on the ground for fifteen minutes. There may be further instructions at that time. Be sure not to attract the aid of the North Korean escort.”

“Instructions from who?” Lola asked.

At that, Mark shrugged uncomfortably, which told Robin plenty. As far as she could see, nothing made Mark uncomfortable. Mickey going toe to toe with him on safety issues hadn't bothered Henderson for a moment. The North Korean official hadn't even been a radar blip on his plans, his half smile was such a giveaway.

This was something he didn't like.

Robin thought about the coordinates again. “That's well under the smoke cloud at the leading edge of the fire.”

Mark nodded.

“And if the fire gets there first?”

“You need to make sure it doesn't.”

“So you want me to control the speed of a fire so that I can crash in front of it…”

Mark opened his mouth.

“…out of clear view under the edge of the smoke.”

Mark closed his mouth and did that smile thing again.

“Then I need to wait for fifteen minutes while calling for help—”

“But making sure that the North Koreans aren't the ones to respond,” Lola mumbled, then swilled down some electrolyte and repeated herself so that Robin could identify the actual words.

“Right. And on top of that, you don't have any idea why.”

“Roger that,” Mark confirmed.

“Anything else while I'm at it?”

“Nope, that about covers everything.” He was back to being his normal business-as-usual, pleased-with-everything self.

For Emily's sake, she didn't break that pretty nose of his.

Then Robin heard a slight sound, like someone knocking for her attention and hers alone. She glanced upward at Denise still perched atop five tons of Firehawk.

The mechanic was looking right at her.

And in her look, Robin could see the fear, no, the terror that Denise had survived when she drew the wild card on whatever last winter's mission had been. But she could also see that Denise was proud of the outcome and her part in it.

And she wanted Robin to know that.

It was a curious mixture of emotions to witness. It was mortifying to think what might be waiting for her when she “crashed” in North Korea.

She and Denise, by some mutual, unsignaled agreement, looked away at the same time. It had only lasted an instant, but Robin knew they had just become closer than perhaps any other woman had in Robin's life.

She made comfortable acquaintances easily, but it always stopped there. In this moment, it was something more. More than it had been on the flight here. When she left MHA, she was going to miss the women desperately, and Denise the gentle-hearted mechanic most of all.

Robin also knew what Denise must be feeling about Vern being on the front lines and her being trapped here doing maintenance. She'd certainly felt that enough each time she'd watched Mickey dive on a particularly bad portion of the fire.

“I'm changing up the rotation,” Robin said loudly enough for Mark and Denise to both hear. “Vern's rotation for service will be due right on the hour. I want him back early, checked over, and fully refueled before I, you know.”

“Crash,” Lola provided.

“Right.”

“In a wildfire,” Lola continued.

“Uh-huh.” Robin did her best to shut the woman down with her tone.

“On purpose.”

Somewhere above their heads, Denise giggled.

Robin threatened to dump her drink on Lola's head to squelch her.

Mark shrugged as if it made no difference to him. “You might want to pull Mickey
and Tim
back under your wing.” He made it sound completely casual, but she hadn't missed the slight emphasis.

Right!
Whatever might be happening, it was the reason they had two Night Stalker pilots aboard.

“Good idea. Actually, I'm going to pull the whole flight, all four helos, together before I land so that we're never more than a minute or so apart. And when Vern is refueled, I want Denise back up in his copilot's seat. If I'm going to ‘crash,' I want to have her close by just in case I screw up and really do.”

“Fine,” Mark agreed. “All assets forward. Good idea.”

She glanced up at Denise, who mouthed a quick
Thank you
. She, at least, understood the real reason for calling Vern back.

Mickey kept trying to make sense of Robin's attack plan, but he couldn't. It was as if she no longer fought the fire but now toyed with it instead.

When Vern had been ordered back to the airfield long before his current rotation should have arisen, Robin had once again shuffled the teams so that she and Mickey were flying together again, which was fine with him. Between the North Koreans, the approaching storm, and a wildfire, he preferred keeping her in his sights.

When Vern flashed by after his return from base, Mickey could see that Denise was aboard, which meant that when it was his turn to rotate back in about two hours, his mechanic would be off flying in North Korea. Vern and Jeannie were working the northeast flank.

And suddenly he and Robin were fighting the center of the main head. You didn't tackle the beast head on—that never worked. You harried it from the sides until you had it pinched off. He couldn't even see anything valuable that they were protecting; they were fighting the fire on an open valley between two ridges so low that they stood no chance of cutting it off.

He tried to explain the problem to Tim. He understood what Mickey was saying about the changed tactics, could see it once it was explained, but didn't have the background in fire to offer any insights as to what the hell Robin might be up to.

“Robin.”

“Here, Mickey, go ahead.”

Then he looked at the North Koreans circling close behind him as he dipped his snorkel into a pond and realized that he couldn't ask his question on an open frequency.

“Go ahead,” Robin repeated when he didn't speak.

“Just thinking about our progress on the northeast flank.”

“Roger that. I'm good with Vern and Jeannie's ability to hold that line.”

“What does that mean?” Tim asked.

“It means”—Mickey shut down the pump and pulled back aloft—“that our four helos that could shut down the entire northeast head of the fire in the next two hours are going to remain split two and two.”

“Sound pretty pissed about it, Mickey.”

“It doesn't make any goddamn sense! What is up with that woman?”

“Are we still talking about the fire? It doesn't sound to me like we are.” Tim took the controls and led them back up to the fire—the venter of the northwest head of it that wasn't particularly threatening anything at the moment.

Mickey scrubbed at his face and growled into his hands.

Robin was clearly in communication with Carly. Robin also had Lola Maloney—who had replaced Emily Beale in the Night Stalkers, which meant she was probably now the best pilot there was in the military—flying beside her. He should really trust what Robin was doing, even if he couldn't make sense of it. But it was proving harder and harder to do.

She was keeping him at arm's length with her goddamn “no promises” policy, yet welcoming him all the way with her body in a way no woman ever had. And she'd given back—sex with Robin Harrow was very much a two-way street. She'd been tender…and loving. He'd swear that she had been, but—

“Shit!” He dropped his hands back onto the controls. He let Tim remain pilot-in-command but floated his hands along. They now flew so much alike that Mickey didn't feel any corrections he'd make for Tim, nor that Tim made to his flights.

“Welcome to my world,” Tim practically chortled with glee. “Woman practically humps me to death at every chance and wouldn't let me anywhere near her, not where it counted.” Tim thumped his collective hand on his chest before returning it to the control.

“Yeah” was all Mickey could think to say as they ducked down under the screen of the billowing smoke clouds overhanging the northwestern head of the fire. The North Koreans fell back and continued to parallel them from farther out. “How did you solve it?”

“Stopped her from killing her father with that DAP Hawk of hers.”

“Robin doesn't know who her father is. Her mom runs a truck stop.”

“Oh.” Tim shifted smoothly to trace Robin's inexplicable attack line. “Yeah, not quite the same I guess. Sorry, bro. Best I got.”

Crap! Different people's problems.

The line of attack Robin had turned to made even less sense than her prior headings. If she dropped water anywhere down this path, it wouldn't achieve—

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Firehawk One. I have a flameout on both engines. I'm headed down. I have a spot in sight.”

“You are forbidden to land on North Korean soil!” a new and thickly Korean-accented voice cut in.

“I'm declaring a goddamn emergency.” Her voice was cool, steady, and nasty enough that Mickey sure wouldn't argue with it. “Deal with it!”

Mickey could only watch in horror as Robin headed down. They were inside a screen of heavy smoke. At least the North Koreans couldn't see her to shoot her.

But he was helpless to do anything other than watch as she descended toward the dense forest below. There was a small clearing ahead, but—

“It's out of reach,” Tim confirmed Mickey's fear. “They can't make it there without any engines. An autorotate glide slope just won't…”

“Won't what?” Mickey had done plenty of autorotates in practice. Because he flew with MHA, the gear simply didn't fail short of a tree strike.

“Their angle is wrong. I know how a Hawk goes down. They should be falling faster.”

They did seem to float for a moment before heading down into the clearing.

Mickey finally remembered how to breathe again as she landed with a good, solid thump, but she was down.

“You okay, Robin?”

“Better than when I was sitting in your goddamn eddy current, Mickey!” Her voice had a light laugh to it. Strained but with no edge of hysteria that he could detect.

“Roger that. Think fast, Robin.” Mickey eyed the head of the fire, which raged behind a wall of black smoke only a few hundred yards from where she'd gone down. They needed to solve this fast or he'd need to extract her and lose the helo. “I estimate twenty minutes max until the fire overruns your position.”

“This is Firehawk Two.” Denise's voice sliced in right behind his. “Mechanic for Mount Hood Aviation. What is the problem, Ms. Harrow?”

“What the hell?” Mickey asked Tim over the Twin 212's intercom.

Tim just shrugged. The women of MHA were tight, seriously tight. What was with the “we're strangers” double-talk?

“Double-talk,” he whispered.

Tim laughed. “Of course! Women. Man, I'm telling you. They're a very tricky gender.”

Something was up and Denise knew about it. She'd found a way to tell him that everything was okay and not alarm the North Koreans that there was a reason for the odd communications.

That's why Vern had been sent racing back to the airfield, to make sure Denise was here to cover for the failure.

The
phony
failure!

Mickey heaved out a sigh of relief. Robin was okay. Okay except for the fast-approaching fire and being on the ground in North Korea in violation of their orders.

Robin was speaking. “Air intakes clogged maybe. I haven't had a chance to look yet.”

“I have some spares aboard,” Denise answered. “We'll come down and deliver them.”

“You do not have permission to land,” the Korean radio voice shrieked.

Tim jerked back on the controls at the same moment Mickey identified a fast-moving object on the screen.

Seconds later, a missile shot past not five rotors off his nose and plunged into the fire. It exploded with a great roar of fire so bright that Mickey could see it blooming upward despite the heavy smoke.

“This has been a warning.” It wasn't the North Korean helicopter pilots. It was a command voice they hadn't heard before. “No one else is to land. We will send in a helicopter to retrieve the firefighters.”

“No need,” Robin sent back. “I can probably clean the filters myself.”

“I can fly over and drop these down to you without landing,” Denise offered.

Mickey held his position and waited for the North Korean response. It was a long time coming. Long enough that Mickey could see the fire in motion.

“This is authorized,” the commander finally announced.

Moments later, Firehawk Two moved in above Robin's position. A package was dropped, then Vern and Denise were gone once more through the smoke.

“Damn, but your woman has a load of cool in her,” Tim observed.

“Okay, Robin, honey.” Mickey didn't key the radio but wished she could answer. “What's your next move?”

* * *

“What the hell are we doing here?” Robin demanded.

The clearing barely bigger than her rotor blades a dozen miles into North Korea. She'd half expected the ground to explode beneath her with a thousand land mines when she landed, even though the DMZ was far behind them.

“And what the hell was that thing they shot?” She looked toward the fire in horror. Whatever it was had exploded and blown the fire in her direction. Her carefully chosen and pampered clearing among the tall trees wasn't going to last for twenty minutes.

“I'm thinking it was an Vympel R-77 air-to-air missile.” Lola spoke matter-of-factly. “At least that's what the MiG-21 was flaunting up and down the line. It also didn't have the feel of a 9M117 Phalanga. They tend to have a little less accuracy and a little less oomph. Someone is going to be ticked off; those are expensive missiles. North Korea doesn't fire Vympels very often, even in their bigger exercises.”

Robin was suddenly very glad of her career choice. She was fine going through life not being able to distinguish Vympels from Phalangas from…her freaked-out brain had run out of the ability to metaphor…from flying zucchini bread!

Then she eyed the smoke wall and was less than sure of her present career choice. The missile really had driven an outward blast of fresh heat into the flames. Her twenty minutes had just become closer to five.

She twisted to look back and see if Mickey was still hovering up and behind her. He had a load of water still and might buy them another couple of minu—

Robin screamed!

A face was grinning at her from just outside her pilot's door window. A female face, holding aloft a package of Blackhawk cabin-air filters—like the ones she'd watched Denise change just an hour ago.

The woman knocked politely.

Robin slid back her earphones and opened the door. The wood smoke was a hot slap to her sinuses. The fire was very close, but Robin couldn't look away from the woman to see how close.

“Hi, did you drop these?” The woman's English was perfect. Her face wasn't Korean. Though her skin was dark enough, her features were First Peoples American. Not Navajo or any of the other Arizona tribes, but maybe part Cherokee.

“Seem to have.” Robin did her best to return the woman's smile, but her nerves weren't cooperating.

She'd been shot at plenty in Afghanistan, but her last tour was three years ago. The missile shot had snapped her war-zone-triggered fight-or-flight nerves back to a full roar.

But that wasn't what had her knocked back so hard in her seat. Instead, it was the totally incongruity of the moment.

She was parked on soil that she half expected to blow up if she stepped on it.

A wall of fire was minutes from incinerating them. Minutes, as in low-end single digits.

And to be greeted by someone so clearly American…

It was the last piece that tipped her mental balance all the way to overwhelm. It was just too much to process.

“You can put them in back,” she managed with a vague croak.

The woman stepped out of view and slid open the Firehawk's main cargo bay door. They'd been sent here to pick up something to smuggle out of the country. “What else are you going to put…”

People began appearing out of the smoke like ash-covered wraiths. Men, women, children—over a dozen and more were coming.

“No, wait!” She started undoing her seat harness to go find the woman. The toggles didn't want to release as she bucked against them. “If they catch me with refugees, they'll fry my ass. If I return to the South with a dozen North Koreans, you could start a goddamn war!”

“We know that.” A man who stood a head taller than the others brought up the rear of the crowd. He moved up to stand close beside her open door. No Korean, he was built practically on Mickey's scale, though his build was a little leaner.

“And?” she demanded.

“We have a plan.” He offered her a brilliantly white-toothed smile offset by his ash-and-char-coated features.

“Great! That's supposed to cheer me up?”

“Sure. I think that it's going well so far. Don't you?”

Robin could only watch in bemused confusion as what she decided were two families and a couple of outliers came out of the heavy smoke and climbed aboard. Their clothes might be worn, even tattered, but there were giveaways that they wore borrowed garb. They didn't move like peasants or farmers, at least not poor ones. Their hair was neatly trimmed. One of the women sported polished fingernails and a very modern hairstyle. A man had an expensive wristwatch.

Robin twisted around to look at Lola. But by her narrowed eyes, Robin would guess that she didn't recognize anyone either, not the two Americans and none of those with them.

* * *

Mickey watched, aghast, as Robin allowed people to climb aboard her helicopter. “What the hell?” He had no one he could call and ask.

“Got me, bro. I make it twelve locals, seven kids, and two military. Highly trained by the way they move.”

“Ours or theirs?”

“No way to tell from here.” Tim shrugged.

“Thanks. I feel so much better now.” Then Mickey finally thought of something safe to ask. “Robin,” he called over the radio, “how's that repair going?” There was a long enough pause that he called again. “Robin?”