Chasing Fire

recruit training. But it’s shit-your-pants hard is what it is. I nearly did just that when I saw I was going to miss the jump spot.”
    Gull took a heat-softened Snickers out of his pack, pulled it in two. “Snickers really satisfies,” Gull said in the upbeat tone of a TV voice-over.
    Southern grinned, bit in. “It sure enough does.”
    They hit the stream, veered northeast toward the sounds of engines and saws.
    Rowan came out of a cloud of smoke, a Viking goddess through the stink of war.
    “Dry lightning’s kicking our ass.” She paused only to chug down some water. “We’d beat the head down, nearly had her, then we had a triple strike. We got crown fire along the ridge due north, and the head’s building back up west of that. We gotta cut through the middle, stop them from meeting up. Hold here until we’re clear. They’re sending another load of mud. We got another load from base coming in to take the rear flanks and tail, keep them down. Bulldozer made it through, and he’s clearing brush and downed trees. But we need the line.”
    She scanned faces. “You’ve got about five minutes till the drop. Make the most of it—eat, drink, because you won’t see another five minutes clear today.”
    She went into a confab with Cards. Gull waited until they stepped apart, then walked to her. Before he could speak, she shook her head.
    “Wind changed direction on a dime, and she just blew over. She melted fifty feet of hose before we got clear. Then boom! Boom! Boom! Fourth of July. Trees went up like torches, and the wind carried it right over the tops.”
    “Anybody hurt?”
    “No. Don’t look for clean sheets and a pillow tonight. We’ll be setting up camp, and going back at her tomorrow. She’s not going to die easy.” She looked skyward. “Here comes the tanker.”
    “I don’t see it.”
    “Not yet. You can hear it.”
    He closed his eyes, angled his head. “No. You must have super hearing. Okay, now I hear it.”
    She pulled her radio, spoke with the tanker, then with the crew on the ridge.
    “Let it rip,” she mumbled.
    The pink rain tumbled down, caught little stray rainbows of sunlight.
    “We’re clear!” Rowan shouted. “Let’s move. Watch your footing, but don’t dawdle.”
    With that, she disappeared into the smoke.
     
     
    THEY HACKED, CUT, BEAT at it into the night. Bodies trained to withstand all manner of hell began to weaken. But resolve didn’t. Gull caught sight of Rowan a few times, working the line, moving in and out as she coordinated with the other teams and with base.
    Sometime toward one, more than twelve hours after he’d landed in the clearing, the fire began to lay down.
    To rest, Gull thought, not to surrender. Just taking a little nap. And hell, he could use one himself. They worked another hour before word came down they’d camp a half mile east of the fire’s right flank.
    “How’s the first day on the job going, rook?”
    He glanced over at Cards’s exhausted face as they trudged. “I’m thinking of asking for a raise.”
    “Hell, I’d settle for a ham on rye.”
    “I’d rather have pizza.”
    “Picky Irishman. You ever been there? Ireland?”
    “A couple times, yeah.”
    “Is it really as green as they say, as it looks in the pictures?”
    “Greener.”
    Cards looked off into the smoky dark. “And cool, right? Cool and damp. Lots of rain.”
    “That’s why it’s green.”
    “Maybe I’ll go there one of these days, take Vicki and the kids. Cool and damp and green sounds good after a day like this. There we are.” He lifted a chin to the lights up ahead. “Time to ring the supper bell.”
    Those who’d already arrived had set up tents, or were doing so. Some just sat on the ground and shoveled their Meals Ready to Eat into their mouths.
    Rowan, using a rock near the campfire as a table, worked over a map with Gibbons while she ate an apple. She’d taken off her helmet. Her hair shone nearly white against her filthy face.
    He thought she looked beautiful, gloriously, eerily so—and was forced to admit she’d probably been right. He was, under it all, a romantic.
    He dumped his gear, felt his back and shoulders weep with relief before they cramped like angry fists.
    No Box to crawl into this time, he mused as he popped his tent. Then like the others, he dropped down by the campfire and ate like the starving. The cargo drop included more MREs, water, more tools, more hose and, God bless some thoughtful soul, a carton of