Chasing Fire

you’re at it,” Trigger suggested.
    “I might just. I can knit you a real pretty sling since you like keeping your ass in one.” He climbed over men and gear for another consult with the spotter and pilot.
    “He’s barely fifty.” Trigger folded gum into his mouth. “Hell, I’m going to be fifty one of these days. What’s he want to quit for?”
    “I think he’s just tired, and his knee’s killing him.” Rowan glanced forward. “He’ll probably change his mind after he gets it fixed.”
    Once again, the spotter moved to the door. “Guard your reserves!”
    Hot summer air, scorched with smoke, blasted in through the opening. Rowan repositioned to get a look out the window, at the blaze crowning through the tops of thick pines and firs. Red balls of ignited gases boomed up like antiaircraft fire.
    “She’s fast,” Rowan said, “and getting a nice lift from the wind through the canyon. We’re going to hit some serious crosswinds on the way down.”
    The first set of streamers confirmed her estimate.
    “Do you see the jump spot?” she asked Gull. “There, that gap, at eight o’clock. You’ll want to come in from the south, avoid doing a face-plant in the rock face. You’re second man, third stick, so—”
    “No. First man, second stick.” He shrugged when she frowned at him, knowing Lucas had asked L.B. to switch him to her jump partner. “I guess L.B. shuffled things when he put Matt back on.”
    “Okay, I’ll catch the drift behind you.” She nodded out the window at the next set of streamers. “Looks like we’ve got three hundred yards.”
    He studied the streamers himself, and the towers of smoke, glinting silver at the fire’s crown, mottled black at its base.
    On final, Trigger snapped the chin strap of his helmet, pulled down his mesh face mask before reaching for the overhead cable to waddle his way toward the door. Matt, second man, followed.
    Rowan studied the fire, the ground, then the flight. Canopies billowed in the black and the blue as the plane came around for its second pass.
    “We’re ready,” Gull answered at the spotter’s call. With Rowan behind him, he got in the door, braced to the roar of wind and fire. The slap on his shoulder sent him out, diving through it, buffeted by it. He found the horizon, steadied himself as the drogue stabilized him, as the main put the brakes on to a glide.
    He found Rowan, watched her canopy billow, watched the sun arrow through the smoke for an instant to illuminate her face.
    Then he had a fight on his hands as the crosswinds tried to push him into a spin. A gust whipped up, blew him uncomfortably close to the cliff face. He compensated, then overcompensated as the wind yanked, tugged.
    He drifted wide of the jump spot, adjusted, then let the wind take him, so he landed neat and soft on the edge of the gap.
    He rolled, watched Rowan land three yards to his left.
    “That was some fancy maneuvering up there,” she called out to him.
    “It worked.”
    Gathering their chutes, they joined Matt and Trigger at the edge of the jump spot. “Third stick’s coming down,” Trigger commented. “And shit, Cards is going into the trees. He can’t buy luck this season.”
    Rowan clearly heard Cards curse as the wind flipped him into the pines.
    “Come on, Matt, let’s go make sure he ain’t broke nothing important.”
    Since she could still hear Cards cursing, meaning he hadn’t been knocked unconscious, she kept her eyes on the sky.
    “Yangtree and Libby,” she said as the plane positioned for the next pass. “Janis and Gibbons.” She rattled off the remaining jumpers. “When they’re all on the ground, I want you to take charge of the paracargo.”
    She put her hands on her hips, watching the next person hurtle out of the plane. Yangtree, she thought. He’d instruct, and he’d keep jumping out of planes. But doing free falls with sports groups and tourists was a far cry from . . .
    “His drogue. His drogue hasn’t opened.” She ran forward, shouting for the others on the ground. “Drogue in tow! Jesus, Jesus, cut away! Cut away. Pull the reserve. Come on, Yangtree, for Christ’s sake.”
    Gull’s belly roiled, his heart hammered as he watched his friend, his family, tumble through the sky and smoke. Others shouted now, Trigger all but screaming into his radio.
    The reserve opened with a jerky shudder, caught air—but too late, Gull realized. Yangtree’s fall barely slowed as he crashed into the