Flash of Fire (28 page)

“Not just women in Delta,” Robin noted.

“Awesome women who marry very hot men,” Lola concurred. “Damn, but I love this life.”

Robin hovered a moment longer until Kyle popped back up from the tunnel's entrance and waved a hand in their direction that they were in good. Then he ducked out of sight and was gone.

Robin closed her door, lifted back into the smoke, and raced south until she was once again flying under Mickey's watchful eye.

Awesome women who marry very hot men.

The hottest man she'd ever been with was Mickey Hamilton. And not only in bed. With almost no clues, he had found the perfect solution to her dilemma.

And, just as he did with every single action he'd ever taken, he delivered it straight from his heart.

Together they raced south. When they were finally over the DMZ, Mickey started to breathe again, though not for long.

Once clear of the smoke, he could see that the afternoon sky had gone black with massive storm clouds. The wind was kicking at thirty to forty knots, which was a third of his Twin 212's limits. It took them almost ten extra minutes to reach the field at Yangyang.

They hit the concrete just as Mark raced up in the white SUV. They filled him in quickly.

Mark nodded. “I'll get the rest of our people pulled out. Tell them we've done all we could before the storm.”

Robin held up her wrist. She was wearing a men's heavy silver watch that Mickey had never seen before.

“Not yet. We're going back in,” Robin said.

Mickey's heart just about stopped. “You are not going back in using that aircraft. Not until Denise has a chance to go over every inch of it and makes sure you didn't melt any critical systems.”

They all turned to look at Firehawk One. The black paint was gray with ash, as were the yellow-orange-red flames. All along the underside, there were large blisters where the finish had been overheated by the passage through the fire.

Robin had the decency to pale a little as she inspected her aircraft. She finally patted it on the nose cone over the forward radar dish. “I'm so sorry, baby, but you done good. Real good.”

“Well”—Lola and Tim came up with packs slung over their shoulders—“I'm guessing that we're about to receive orders to go meet up with a couple of Delta operators as soon as they're done pretending that they're gophers.”

Mark smiled and handed over a thin slip of paper. Mickey could see a set of coordinates scrawled on it. He saw enough to know that it was south of the DMZ, and he figured it must have been where the tunnel let out.

The North Korean official emerged from where he'd kept watch at the terminal building's windows. He looked at Firehawk One, looked inside through the still-open cargo bay doors where there was nothing to show that it had been crowded with defectors less than thirty minutes ago.

“As this aircraft is no longer serviceable,” Mark informed the official, “we're going to be changing up pilots. I will be sending Ms. Harrow and Mr. Hamilton back to fight the fire in the Twin 212 and standing down the Maloneys.”

“This is acceptable.” The official made a note and glanced uncertainly upward as the first large drops of rain spattered out of the sky, leaving dark circles on the dry concrete.

“Yes,” Mark told him. “We're going to do everything we can for your great country, but the storm will drive us out soon. We have done all we can.”

“Understood.” The official made to hurry away but then turned back. “We have uncertain times.” His eyes shifted left then right. “I do not know if our country's leader will thank any American for help, but I have seen. I will say thank you.” Then he hurried off without any offer to shake hands or otherwise acknowledge them.

“Well, if that don't beat all.” Tim chuckled. Then he wrapped Mickey in a brutal hug and lifted him off the ground even though Tim was several inches shorter. “Wasted in civilian life, I'm telling you. Totally wasted.”

At a loss for words, Mickey let his good-bye be a solid handclasp. Tim hugged Robin barely more gently while making
oh-la-la
eyebrow motions at Mickey over her shoulder, slapped Mark hard enough on the back to stagger any lesser man, and moved off to the SUV.

Lola's hug with Robin was soft and sincere. “You kicked ass, sister.” As she hugged Mickey good-bye, Lola whispered, “Don't you let her out of your sight or I
will
kick your ass.” Then she turned to Mark. “An honor as always, Mark.”

“Likewise, Lola.”

“Oh my gawd!” Lola placed the back of her hand against her brow. “He used my first name. I think I'm a-goin' to have me a spell.”

“Get out of here,” Mark growled happily.

Lola shot him a grin and went.

“So”—Mark turned back to them and pointed to the watch still on Robin's wrist—“what's the plan?”

* * *

Refueled, they lifted into the teeth of the rising storm and turned once more for North Korea, Robin aboard the Twin 212 as his copilot.

“This had better be the last time.” It had given Mickey the creeps every time they'd crossed the border, but with Robin this close it was ten times worse. He'd flown beside her across the DMZ in separate helicopters, but this was their first time flying together and his awareness of her was huge.

Wow! There is a totally lousy adjective.
But it was huge. In two weeks she'd come to fill so much more than his bedroom fantasies. Her bravery, her dedication, her performance under pressure…the whole package just…

“I love you, Robin.”

“You aren't supposed to be saying such shit,” she replied over the onboard intercom, but her voice was a caress not a slap.

“Can't help it, lady. You're just that amazing.”

“Tell me that after we pull this off.”

“Okay,” Mickey agreed easily.

“That was far too amiable a response.” He could feel Robin looking over at him.

“After what you just did, Robin of the Hood—stealing people from the North Koreans through the heart of a wildfire—I'm supposed to doubt that you can do absolutely anything you set your mind to?”

“Well, no. A girl wants to keep her man totally dazzled. I think that's a good policy and I have no plans to change it.”

“Dazzled,” Mickey agreed. “That's the word I was looking for. You dazzle me, Robin.”

“That's a lot easier to swallow than you saying you love me.”

Should he point out what she'd just said? What the hell, why not? “You just said the
L
word.”

“But I didn't
use
it.” She stumbled out her reply a little too fast.

“Okay, just checking.”

She grumbled to herself as they crossed the DMZ. Even twenty miles from Yangyang, the winds had dropped back under twenty knots and the rain hadn't arrived yet. Despite the filters and closed doors, the air no longer smelled of rain but once more of wood smoke and char.

Their North Korean escort picked them up on the far side of the DMZ.

“The other helicopter was too damaged to return,” Mickey reported to the escort. “We also have a change of pilots that was reported to your official on the ground.”

“Understood,” the North Korean helicopter pilot replied.

“Also, we anticipate being able to fly only one more hour before the storm forces us down.”

“Understood.”

Mickey and Robin shared a laugh at the sound of relief in the pilot's voice. He didn't want to be aloft when the storm hit any more than they did.

They rejoined Jeannie and Vern and began working the fire. Mickey flew his 212 and Robin acted as the Incident Commander—Air. She had learned so much that he only found it necessary to give advice on occasion.

She led them back to the northeast section, but per the plan they'd worked out on the ground, they only made a partial show of fighting the head of the fire itself.

Instead they began steadily slicing into the body of the fire. Direct attack, a very rare tactic that took them straight into the heart of the fire. Vern and Jeannie followed after only token protests. They understood that whatever they'd come for had happened, so if the new tactics made no sense, they knew better than to complain.

“Separating the head from the main body” is what they would have given as an explanation if the North Koreans had asked. No one did. Not once during the long days of the firefight had they questioned MHA's tactics. Their escorts were military, not wildland firefighters.

They had warned the North Koreans of the coming storm-driven flare-up that would occur before the rains arrived. It was out of their hands now as to whether or not the remaining ground crews were pulled back; they'd done all they could.

* * *

Robin braced herself. They were getting close to the area that Carly had pinpointed when she asked.

Her stray comment over dinner about a lost ground crew had stuck in Robin's mind as she'd hovered over the devastation at the tunnel's entrance and stared out at the scattered guards' helmets.

Because it was a given that the North Koreans wouldn't tolerate it if the MHA helicopters strayed off the reservation again, they'd just spent the last thirty minutes trying to slice a path to that location in what at least appeared to be a constructive, planned fashion. It was an area they hadn't flown near during any part of the firefight, but Steve's far-seeing drone had spotted it early on in the battle.

What would they find?

Nothing, a part of her hoped. Maybe Carly's interpretation of the distant image was wrong and the ground crews had gotten away.

But a part of her knew they really needed to find the burned-over firefighters.

The North Koreans would know that the head of their rocket program had come to this area along with his family. Maybe he'd used an excuse of being born here…no, he'd probably taken his family to see Diamond Mountain at the heart of Kumgang National Tourist Region.

Then the opportunity of a devastating wildfire had reared its ugly head and the U.S. Special Operations had seen it as an opportunity and sent in Delta.

He and his family had disappeared into the ranks of the peasants sent to fight the fires and had, courtesy of MHA, vanished without a trace. It was time to make sure there was a trace.

“There.” Mickey pointed.

She couldn't see it at first.

Robin had once seen an entire herd of sheep that had taken refuge in a low swale before dying from a fire's heat. Other than being covered with a thick layer of gray ash, they had looked like they were sleeping.

That wasn't the case here. There were also no foil fire shelters.

Blackened lumps and exposed bits of skeleton. Twenty people huddled together in desperation when the fire took them.

“They must have been completely surrounded,” Mickey said softly. “No one ran.”

Robin looked down in silence as Mickey hovered over them and Vern and Jeannie beat at the flames to either side that were on the verge of running over the area once more.

“Let me do this, honey. Please.”

Robin wanted to let him, let Mickey deal with it so that she wouldn't be stuck with this image in her head. But even more she didn't want to have it in his memory either.

“No.” She began unbuckling. “This is your aircraft. I could fly it, but I'm not trained on it if something goes wrong. I'll go.”

“Make it fast, try not to look.”

As Robin climbed out between the seats toward the rear of the hovering aircraft, she paused and kissed Mickey hard. She kissed him for what a good man he was and for how he made her feel.

But most of all, she kissed him for how they felt together.

Then she stumbled into the back, slid open the cargo bay's side door, and snapped the winch cable onto the front of her safety harness.

“Do it!” she shouted and stepped out into space.

They didn't dare land again, not with the North Koreans hovering just outside the walls of tearing smoke and flame. So she rode the winch cable down to the charred forest floor. Winds buffeted and spun her until she was nauseous. The heat was a physical slap far worse than at the tunnel's entrance.

Still plenty of fuel here for the wind-driven reburn.

Gods, she really was thinking like a firefighter now.

Her feet hit the ground and she did her best not to think. She ran over to the gathered corpses. Found a man and woman holding hands—though they were barely identifiable as such—and snapped the watch over his charred wrist. She didn't look at their faces but simply turned and ran back to stand below the helicopter.

Mickey reversed the winch.

And only as Mickey lifted her back into the sky did Robin really look at the devastation around her. The Black was charred and gray, all color had been leached from this part of the world. All beauty was gone. They hovered in a narrow hole made of smoke and flame that would overrun the area the moment they were gone and char the silver watch to match its deceased owner. The poor ground crew member would probably have a state funeral, one of North Korea's greatest scientists died fighting a wildfire to save the Diamond Mountain, the visual and spiritual treasure of Kumgang.

Once she was back aboard, they continued fighting along the same line of fire. Not that it mattered anymore, but it would look as if they had only paused and continued on.

For thirty more minutes, they kept up the pretense before finally calling an end to operations and turning south.

During that entire time, Robin did not look up once from where she leaned across the console and kept her face buried against Mickey's shoulder.

It took them over a month to make it back to Hood River, Oregon. Once the storm had cleared Yangyang Airfield, which Robin deeply hoped to never see again, they flew back across the Sea of Japan. Rather than going to Nagoya, because the Dreamlifter always traveled fully loaded on the return flight to the U.S., they turned south for Kadena Air Base on Okinawa.

From there, a C-5 Galaxy Air Force transport had delivered them to Joint Base Fort–Lewis McChord in Washington State. At McChord, Denise scrounged up the last of the parts she needed before she'd declared Firehawk One fit to fight fire once more.

Instead of heading two hundred miles south, they first had to fly north and over the Cascade Mountains to rejoin the rest of the MHA crew. The Leavenworth fire had been beaten, but a new fire was slashing its way west out of Ellensburg and up into the North Cascades.

After that, the entire crew had fought a fierce battle in the Bitterroots of Montana and finally a nasty little burn outside of Reno, Nevada.

Robin collapsed into bed with Mickey when she could. Sometimes a tent, sometimes a crappy hotel, sometimes nothing more than a sleeping bag beneath the stars. It didn't matter, it was enough.

Somehow that flight through the fires of the Kumgang National Tourist Region had burned away the past between them. For a month, they had flown and lived only for the present. Fly to fire and sleep.

Mickey held her when the nightmares hit, which thankfully tapered off quickly, and made love to her when they could stay awake long enough.

Robin no longer questioned that's what they were doing. Making love. Not that she ever said it, but it was definitely what they did. Making love didn't necessarily mean
in love
anyway.

She couldn't afford that.

No promises.

That line remained clear between them, but it was the only one that remained.

It had been June when she'd been hired and they left Oregon. Now it was August. Her contract would be done by October and she certainly wasn't going to sign on to hang out back at the base camp as a waitress for Betsy the cook.

But they were living in the present, so Robin would take in all she could of this moment in time. This would always be the best summer of her life, just as no one would ever replace Mickey as the best lover.

It was a warm summer's day when they finally returned to the Mount Hood Aviation base camp in the Oregon foothills near Mount Hood. The sky was a beautiful blue, and once again all of the helicopters and jump planes were neatly lined up along the far side of the grass-strip runway.

She was done in. The other heli-pilots were in no better shape. The smokies were stumbling about like sodden drunkards.

“Two days dark,” Mark announced once they had all the gear unloaded and cleaned up. “I don't care if it's our own damned camp that's on fire, MHA is offline for this afternoon and two more days. You folks earned it. Now go sleep.”

Robin sagged with relief.

The crew, which had been dead on their feet moments ago, lit up like they'd just mainlined super-caffeine. Shouts of “Doghouse!” echoed from all quarters.

Mickey was shouting right along with the rest of them.

“Doghouse?” Robin asked him as everyone began racing for their vehicles.

He gave her a shove toward her quarters that forced her to run or face-plant. She managed to save herself with a shambling trot.

“Don't ask. Grab a warm jacket and sunglasses. Meet me over there.” He waved vaguely toward the mayhem of the parking area and raced away.

Robin had been on the ground here for an interview six weeks ago. She couldn't equate who she'd been so long ago. It actually took her a couple of minutes to even locate the bunk where she'd lain awake, awaiting her first fire call. The sheet and blanket were smooth; her National Guard training had made sure they were before she'd headed out to the line.

Was Mickey neat or a slob? She didn't even know that about him. Was he… She didn't even know what questions to ask. Mickey was…Mickey.

Feeling a little frivolous, Robin shed her work shirt. She didn't dig out the bit of black lace that she wore sometimes as a treat for a guy who was being especially nice to her. Instead, she dug around among the few clothes she'd left in the small room. She pulled on the robin's-egg-blue—labeled as sky blue by some clueless marketer—silk that always felt so good against her skin and really made her eyes look good. Her one good silk blouse that would feel just as good when Mickey took it off her later as it did when she pulled it on now.

Over that, she shrugged into a brown leather WWII bomber jacket. Grandma Phoebe had given it to her in a fit of sentimentality on the day she joined the AANG. If it had a story, Grandma was keeping it to herself, but there was no question about its authenticity. A line of sixteen Luftwaffe crosses had been inked down the inside of the jacket. Most of the dates were blurred out, but there was no doubting that this had been an ace's jacket, however her grandmother had come by it. Maybe her grandfather?

The parking lot had quieted by the time she returned. About half the vehicles were gone. Some had apparently looked at their bunks and seen no farther. Others had hit the showers.

In the bright August sunshine, Mickey stood in a sleek, black leather jacket and black jeans. In his hands he held a pair of motorcycle helmets.

And parked close behind the smiling goofball was…

“No way, Mickey! No self-respecting girl would ever ride on such a thing.” The Gold Wing motorcycle was painted in the MHA motif, black with flames. And he looked so damn good standing in front of it that her knees threatened to go weak.

She took a deep breath. Robin Harrow went weak in the knees for no man, especially not one whose ride was a Honda Gold Wing.

All he did was give her one of those big smiles that always stopped her in her tracks. Then he walked up, kissed her like he really meant it, and used that as a distraction to pull a helmet down over her head and buckle it in place.

“Hey! I mean it.”

“Robin of the Hood. You cannot possibly look as good in that jacket as you do and think that you belong in a twenty-year-old Toyota.”

The fact that her Toyota sedan was parked behind a truck stop in Tucson seemed to make that statement a little irrelevant.

By the simple expedient of scooping her paralyzed-in-dismay form into his arms as if she was weightless, he dropped her into the pillion seat. It
was
cushy. It had a comfortable backrest and a very handsome man slid in front of her.

“Okay, but just this once.”

He nodded that happy, it-ain't-nothing-but-a-Class-83-Tea Cup nod of his.

She jab-punched him in the kidney, lightly, and then wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

“I haven't even started the engine yet.”

“You just feel that good, Blue Eyes.”

He rested his hand where her arms crossed over his chest and pressed them more tightly against him.

Then he fired off the engine that awoke with a soft throb rather than a mighty roar, and they were rolling out of the gravel parking lot. A Ninja would have ripped gravel, spewed a rooster tail cloud of dry earth, and shot off down the road. Mickey driving a Gold Wing was like riding on the back of a limousine. The comfort was whole levels above the seat in her Firehawk, the view of the surrounding countryside from the raised pillion was spectacular, and she could feel that the man between her knees and in her arms was strong and sure in every action.

They swept down out of the high camp, descended through forested foothills, and rolled along country roads thick with apple orchards and vast blueberry fields.

There was something going on inside her that she had trouble identifying. For the length of the half-hour ride, it remained as elusive as that key water drop that would finally break the back of a fire and put it on notice that its end was near.

Robin finally let it go with a shrug and let herself simply enjoy the ride as they flew into the small town of Hood River, perched on the edge of the Columbia Gorge.

Mickey rolled up to a ramshackle bar on the edge of town. The sign said Doghouse Inn, so it must be the place, but Robin couldn't understand why it was so popular. The building looked like it shouldn't even still be upright.

But the street and a nearby parking lot were thick with the trademark vehicles of firefighters: hot cars and battered pickup trucks. Plenty of bragging bumper stickers to make sure everyone knew just how cool they were.
Wildland Firefighter! Smokejumpers like it HOT!

An immaculate quad-cab Ford pickup pulled up as Mickey was locking their helmets away in the bike's side carriers.

Robin hustled over as soon as she saw who it was and held the door for Emily.

“Oh my God. You're huge!”

“Why thank you, Robin.”

“And you look fantastic,” Mickey said, walking up.

“Good choice,” Mark said protectively as he came up beside his wife and scooped an arm around her waist like she was an invalid.

Emily rolled her eyes at her oblivious husband.

“Shoo!” Robin unwrapped his arm and gave him a little shove. “She's mine. Go away.” And she slipped her own arm around Emily's waist. “Go fetch Tessa or something.”

“Our daughter is visiting her grandmother in Montana for a week,” Mark protested but finally gave way.

“Because her mother really needed a break.” Emily sighed. “The Terrible Twos, they certainly were not kidding.”

They walked side by side toward the Doghouse.

“Mickey's right, by the way,” Robin whispered to her. “You really do look fantastic.”

“Month eight. I forgot about month eight. I'd never have let him touch me again if I'd remembered month eight. Terrible Twos and Month Eight. Don't give in, Robin. Men will implore and you'll regret it forever.”

“Sure, like I believe that.” They shared a smile. There was something else Robin had to say, but she wasn't sure how to do it.

“What?” Of course Emily would see right through her.

“I get it now.”

“What?”

Could Robin be more obtuse? How was she supposed to speak to someone she respected so much?

Just do it!

“I get why you left the military. I didn't understand how a soldier like you could do that. Before MHA, I spent a lot of time thinking it was a major mistake on my part…because I'm sure a crappy waitress. But I understand now.”

“Oh.” Emily's tone was carefully neutral, but her smile gave her away.

“Because you didn't, not really.”

Emily's smile was radiant. “Head of the class, Harrow. MHA was a way for me to raise a family and keep a hand in.”

Robin decided she had a new goal. She was either going to rejoin the Army and track down Lola Maloney, or she was going to stick until MHA decided they had to hire her long-term.

Two handsome men jostled to hold the door open so that she and Emily could enter the Doghouse together.

Robin had worked both the restaurant and the bar at the truck stop back home. And she'd definitely been to her fair share of others. Nothing had prepared her for this.

The seedy outdoors disappeared at the threshold. Warm light washed in through big windows tinted just enough to make them look dark from the outside. The walls and ceiling were covered in a mixture of cedar and white pine. A long bar of bright oak occupied one side of the room. No hard liquor, but enough draft beer taps to keep the most itinerant drinker content—and she didn't recognize any of the names; they must all be from microbreweries and craft beers.

The main area of the room was packed with tables. Robin knew the spacing; it was for socialization of the customers between tables, not for the ease of the waitresses or the maximum packing for profit. It was the same table spacing Grandma insisted on at the truck stop. It gave the crowded mayhem a friendly, homey feel.

And then there were the walls.

Every inch of the walls and much of the ceiling were covered in photos of dogs in their doghouses. Miniature dachshunds in a child-painted shoe box, a Saint Bernard in the classic white-clapboard-and-red-roof home complete with a pussycat weather vane atop a tiny cupola, a miniature pink poodle in ribbons curled up on the plush mattress of an equally miniature four-poster bed complete with heat lamps.

They went on forever, thousands of them.

Looking for somewhere to focus, her gaze finally landed on the far wall. A giant Snoopy had been painted directly on the wall. He sat atop his doghouse in full WWI flying ace regalia ready to battle the Red Baron.

The smells of rich bar food were not lost among the low roar of happy people.

“A little overwhelming at first, isn't it?” Emily was the one guiding her rather than the other way around as they headed for an open table. At a big table in the center, pilots and smokejumpers had gathered and were already being loud over platters of nachos and pints of beer. There were other tables packed with Columbia Gorge windsurfers—and the smokies were clearly evaluating the fresh targets as they scanned the women among them. Akbar was right in the middle of it but with his hand clasping that of an elegant brunette wearing a wedding band—the trail guide spouse he talked about every time he had the chance.

Robin rested her hand on Jeannie's shoulder to get her to scoot in closer to her husband, so that Emily could get by. Denise leaned over and whispered something to Vern.

In moments, their end of the room had been reorganized so that an empty table was pulled up with the other pilots. Robin ended up between Denise and Mickey, across from Emily and Mark.

“Oh. My. God,” she finally managed.

Emily laughed.

“I'm moving in.” She turned to Mickey, though she wasn't quite sure why. “I mean it. Right here. This table. I'm never going to leave. It's almost as good as…well, you know.”

And his smile agreed. The meadow by the lake on Larch Creek would always be their special spot.