Summer of Fire (4 page)

“Clare,” Javier Fuentes said from behind her shoulder.

She turned. Instead of speaking, he jerked his head away from the RV. They trudged along together, her head barely coming up past his shoulder. Once out of earshot, she paused.

Javier’s face looked white beneath his tan. “The chopper crashed,” he blurted. “Down in the lake off West Thumb.”

Clare pressed her lips together. In the five days she’d been at Yellowstone, she’d supervised several teams in stopping the advance of fire onto utility lines. Save the property was the rule, but not at the risk of safety.

Today was the first time she’d seen lives threatened.

She’d been counting on the effect of the water drop to beat back the heat beside the road. Without it, it was probably still possible to drive through, but only if none of the drivers panicked and stopped.

Javier waited for instruction with alert dark eyes. As his superior, she was to command the next action. A look at what was becoming a tunnel of flame gave no encouragement. The Shoshone rose to a banshee wail.

In the moment she continued to hesitate, Javier suggested, “How about we get these folks moving?”

“Okay.” She forced an even tone. “Get the man in that RV driving, no matter what it takes.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Javier turned away.

Although it had been a break of mere seconds, a flick of his eyes said he’d noticed. Javier had been the one who reached her first, while she kicked at the fallen roof covering Frank and bent to put her gloved hands into the fire. Now, she had to admit that she’d been out of her head, trying a desperate rescue where none was possible. Javier had pulled her out of the building, refusing to let her sacrifice her life.

“Let’s go!” Clare shouted. People who had their car windows up against the smoke began to lower them. “There’s just a short stretch and then you’ll be in the clear.” She tried to keep her voice from going shrill.

Determination dawned on the faces of drivers who’d been looking helpless. The RV started. Clare went to the next vehicle, a white Caprice. Slapping the hood with the flat of her palm, she shouted, “Move it!”

It seemed to take forever for the line of traffic to pass. Each time someone slowed at the sight of leaping flames ahead, she rushed their vehicle and shouted through her raw throat for them to keep going. Gradually, the bottleneck cleared.

Clare waved at Javier. “We’ve got to check that crash site.” As wildfire fighters, it wasn’t in their job description, but city EMT training had her ready to move.

Javier drove as steadily as he had before. He was a good man, strong and solid. If she had to go into a closed warehouse where fire awaited the fuel of fresh air, she would want him with her.

Heat blasted through the open window along with the sharp snap of fire’s voracious feeding. The bare skin of her arm felt as though she held it too close to a broiler. “Javier . . . “

He obliged by picking it up perhaps ten miles per hour.

Through pursed lips, he began to whistle “Singin’ in the Rain.” She’d heard him do that before, when they were in a smoky hotel corridor and visibility was nil. They’d crept forward, waiting for the dragon to reveal itself.

It had been that way for her and Frank in the fourth floor hall. A dark tunnel that lead to their quarry, born of fuel, oxygen, and heat. What unbelievable fortune, the flying fickle finger of fate, or just plain damned being in the wrong or right place--Frank had ended up in the morgue while the blistering heat drove her back from the light.

About a quarter mile out on the Grant Village road, the monster bared its teeth. Seeing trees on both sides fully involved, Clare rolled up the window. Her instructor boss Buddy Simpson at A & M had warned her about wildfire. “Every one is different,” the Texas good old boy had hammered. “If the fuel is dry enough you’ll get a fire, but after that it’s anybody’s guess.”

Clare imagined times past, when Native Americans or settlers from the East had faced a fire such as the Shoshone. They’d had no truck to escape in, nor any pumpers or hoses to save their houses. Men and women had passed buckets until the verdict was a changed land and a new village to be built.

Now the Shoshone caught up with the backfire. The roiling glow had an eerie life, crimson, then flaring orange and wavering purple. As much as the sight exhilarated her, Clare also hated to see the forest burn. How many years must pass before it would be restored?

The heat grew more intense. Javier gunned the engine, his hands now white-knuckled. He, like Clare, wore Nomex fire retardant clothing, tested at DuPont to withstand the heat of a blowtorch. She hoped they didn’t get a chance to find out.

Just ahead, a tree uprooted and cartwheeled across the road.

Javier hit the brakes. The truck slewed sideways.

Clare nearly shrieked, but caught herself in time to keep from scaring the bejesus out of the driver. She ducked and braced against the dash. As Javier fought for control, two wheels dropped off the pavement. Gravel thrown up by the tires hailed against the undercarriage.

Her stomach clenched, for if they ended up on foot there was no telling what would happen.

After driving half in the ditch for thirty yards, Javier managed to pull back onto the highway. Clare felt as though the truck’s heater ran full blast as they sped through the screaming gale.

When they broke out, it happened suddenly. One moment they were driving through burning forest and the next, they were in the clear on the main highway. The wide thoroughfare with broad shoulders formed an efficient firebreak.

Clare rolled the window down and savored the breeze on her hot cheeks.

They left the flames behind and took the turnoff for West Thumb Geyser Basin, a mile from Grant Village. Javier parked and she ran down the boardwalk that bridged the thin crust. On either side were algae-coated spring deposits in hues of mustard, lime, and rust. Steam rose from clear turquoise pools and was whisked away. A hundred yards downslope, the boardwalk curved and ran along Yellowstone Lake.

“I don’t see anything.” Javier caught up with her in a loping stride. The wind that had fed the fires since June blew his dark hair and whipped the lake into whitecaps.

Clare fiddled with the Motorola and tried again to call West Yellowstone.

“Go back to the pay phone by the restrooms and see if you can talk to Garrett,” she told Javier. “Let me know if they’ve rescued anyone.”

Left alone, she looked up and down the beach. West Thumb seemed an oasis next to the Shoshone raging to the south. The pale smooth rock of the Fishing Cone broke the water’s surface a few feet offshore, while the shadows of trout hung nearby. Swirling eddies indicated more springs flowing into the lake.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the fire’s sideshow, a number of tourists strolled the geyser basin. A man with a video camera gestured for his slender blond companion to stand farther left so the plume of smoke would be in the background.

Clare headed for them. “Did you see a helicopter go down in the lake?”

The woman gasped and shook her head. The man pointed toward the fire. “Heard an engine over that way a while ago.”

Another scan of the lake turned up no sign of a floating wreck.

Clare watched the Shoshone leap through the treetops and wondered if tourists should be this close. At the flame front, pines exploded as their moisture flashed to steam. She’d always been mesmerized by fire, but until her husband, Jay, had left her, she’d never considered the challenge of fighting it for a living. Jay and her daughter, Devon, didn’t understand why she’d rushed to finish the academy nine months shy of the thirty-fifth birthday cutoff.

When she looked back, it became clear. Needing a life to replace the one that had been focused on family, she had discovered the brotherhood of fire.

Thousands had attended Frank’s memorial in Houston’s Rice University Stadium. Members of the Houston Fire and Police Departments had taken off work, along with representatives of departments all over Texas. The procession had stretched for miles while traffic cops struggled to deal with parking. Family and friends were overwhelmed by the presence of the city mayor and other dignitaries, as well as the ceremony of pipers and buglers. Frank’s coffin had been flag-draped, for he was a Navy veteran.

Clare had nearly stayed home. She’d wondered how many might whisper that she could have done more to save Frank. Who of them thought that if Frank had taken Javier, or any other man into that apartment house, he’d have walked out with little Pham Nguyen cradled in his arms.

They’d called Frank a hero, and her as well, but she had not been able to trust embraces and smiles. The department psychologist had warned about survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress, but putting labels on feelings you couldn’t control didn’t solve anything.

The only thing she figured might help was carrying on. Right now, that meant helping the people on board the chopper lost in Yellowstone Lake.

Deering floated with one arm tangled in his life vest, his teeth chattering. He wondered how much longer he could hold on.

He’d covered a fraction of the distance to shore. It looked like maybe a hundred yards to the line of trees, but it might as well be miles. He watched the Shoshone leap to the sky and eat its way toward where he would come ashore . . . if he made it.

Numbness stole over him and his shaking stopped as though the water had become warmer. He imagined he was home, lying beside Georgia in their bedroom with sun on the corner. He could take a little nap.

Deering closed his eyes. Cold water slapped at his face and into his ears, but the sensation seemed far away.

Through a growing lethargy, he heard a faint familiar rhythm. It reminded him of early morning in Nam when the first chopper in the air made a solitary song.

Opening his heavy lids, he identified the boxy silhouette of a Chinook, with rotors fore and aft. The big machine could carry thirty firefighters and their field gear or airlift a thousand gallons of water in a sling. Deering waved, shocked at how heavy his arm felt. He wished he had a purple smoke to signal with.

Without showing any sign of seeing him, the pilot guided the Chinook north past the whitened ground of West Thumb Geyser Basin.

Deering studied shore and struck out with rubbery arms and legs, failing to make headway in the wind-driven chop. It wasn’t fair that it should end like this, that he should fail with land in sight, all Georgia’s fears realized.

Behind him, the sound of rotors once more grew louder. His heart surged and adrenaline came to his rescue.

The Chinook came in low and hovered about a hundred feet off the water. The chopper door slid open and someone reached to a cable on a pulley.

The horse-collar landed three feet from Deering. In the chop, it looked like thirty. He reached to stroke and his hand splashed into the lake. The man above shouted, but the whipping wind and whine of rotors turned it to gibberish.

The Chinook moved forward, sweeping the horse-collar through the water. Deering saw it coming and let go of the vest he’d only partially donned. For a panicky moment, he was afraid he’d made a mistake, but the collar came into his hands. Although he was tempted to drape himself over it, he risked falling out when they lifted him. Another minute ticked past in the frigid water while he struggled to get the sling around his back and under his arms.

Aloft, the winch started and Deering lifted clear, dangling like a doll. He rode the twisting cable up through bright sun that failed to warm. Stiff wind whipped his flight suit, snapping the sopping cloth.

All the way up, he felt the remembered disgrace, the deep sense of leftover shame from his war years. A pilot who lost his ship was lower than whale shit, and he’d been there before--with a shot-up rotor, surrounded by VC, praying for rescue, yet reluctant to face the fellow soldiers put at risk to save him.

When most of the cable had rolled up, Deering’s rescuer reached for him. The big man was alone in the rear compartment. “We were heading back from dropping groundpounders out east and heard your Mayday.”

Deering was dragged through the doorway. The horse collar stripped over his head. When he fell forward to land with his cheek on the deck, he appreciated the heat of the metal.

Clare watched the Chinook bank away from West Thumb. Thank God, someone had been rescued, perhaps the pilot judging by what looked like a flight suit. Had there been more than one person aboard?

The wind gusted, she guessed at over forty miles per hour. Her pants and shirtsleeves popped like sails and she wished she hadn’t left her turnout coat in the truck.

She cast another look at the crown fire eating its voracious way up the lake shore and noticed something out of place in the world of gray pumice, pink rhyolite and pine. A hundred yards down the beach something lay half in the water. With a squint, she recognized the beacon of a yellow Nomex fire shirt.

As she leaped from the end of the boardwalk, she slipped on a white crust of pea-sized rocks. For an instant, she teetered on the rim of a hot pool, remembering stories of people and animals parboiled in Yellowstone. When she regained her balance and ran down the beach, it was tough going. Trees that had been battered down by winter storm waves tripped her.