Chasing Fire

handsome, interesting, a successful businessman. And a prime target for an opportunistic woman.
    A daughter held a solemn duty to look after her single, successful, naive and overly-trusting-of-women father. She wanted him to get home and call her back, so she could do just that.
    Maybe she should try him on his cell, just in case—
    No, no, no, she ordered herself. That crossed the line into interfering. He was sixty, for God’s sake. He didn’t have a curfew.
    She’d just finish the stupid report, take that walk. He was bound to call before she’d gotten it all done.
    But she finished the report, sent it to L.B. She took a long, admittedly sulky walk, before going back to her quarters and taking twice as long as necessary to get ready for bed.
    Annoyed with herself, she shut off the light. During a brutal mental debate about the justification of trying her father’s cell after midnight, she fell asleep.
     
     
    VOICES WOKE HER. Voices raised outside her window, outside her door. For a bleary moment she thought herself in the recurring dream—the aftermath of Jim’s tragic jump when everyone had been shouting, rushing. Scared, angry.
    But when her eyes opened in the half-light, the voices continued. Something’s wrong, she thought, and instinct had her out of bed, out the door before fully awake.
    “What the hell?” she demanded as Dobie pushed by her.
    “Somebody hit the ready room. Gibbons said it looks like a bomb went off.”
    “What? That can’t—”
    But Dobie continued to run, obviously wanting to see for himself. In the cotton pants and tank she’d slept in, Rowan raced out in her bare feet.
    The morning chill hit her skin, but what she saw in the faces of those who hurried with her, or quick-stepped it toward Operations, heated her blood.
    Something’s very wrong, she realized, and quickened her pace.
    She hit the door to the ready room in step with Dobie.
    A bomb wasn’t far off, she thought. Parachutes, so meticulously and laboriously rigged and packed, lay or draped like tangled, deflated balloons. Tools scattered on the torn silks with gear spilling chaotically out of lockers. From the looks of it, tools, once carefully cleaned and organized, had been used to hack and slice at packs, jumpsuits, boots, damaging or destroying everything needed to jump and contain a fire.
    On the wall, splattered in bloody-red spray paint, the message read clearly:
    JUMP AND DIE
     
     
    BURN IN HELL
    Rowan thought of pig’s blood.
    “Dolly.”
    With his hands fisted at his sides, Dobie stared at the destruction. “Then she’s worse than crazy.”
    “Maybe she is.” Rowan squatted, slid a hand through the slice in silk. “Maybe she is.”

EXTENDED ATTACK
     
    A little fire is quickly trodden out;
Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.
    WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
     

     

11
     
    E very able hand worked in manufacturing, in the loadmaster’s room, in the loft. They spread through the buildings, making Smitty bags, ponchos, finishing chutes already in for repair, rigging, repacking. Under the hum and clatter of machines, the mutters, Rowan knew everyone’s thoughts ran toward the same destination.
    Let the siren stay silent.
    Until they repaired and restocked, rerigged, inspected, there was no jump list.
    Nothing in the ready room could be touched until the cops cleared it. So they worked with what they had in manufacturing, running against the clock and the moods of nature.
    “We could maybe send eight in.” Cards worked opposite Rowan, painstakingly rigging a chute. “We can put eight together right now.”
    “I can’t think about it. And we can’t rush it. It’s a damn good thing she didn’t get in here. Bad enough as it is.”
    “Do you really think Dolly did that?”
    “Who else?”
    “That’s just fucked up. She was sort of one of us. I even . . .”
    “A lot of the guys even.”
    “Before Vicki,” Cards added. “Before Jim. Anyway, I mean, she worked right here on base, joking and flirting around in the dining hall. Like Marg and Lynn.”
    “Dolly’s never been like Marg and Lynn.”
    Focusing, Rowan arranged the chute’s lines into two perfect bundles. One tangled cord could be the difference between a good jump and a nightmare. “Who else is pissed off and crazy besides Dolly?”
    “Painting that crap on the wall, too,” Cards agreed. “Like she did in your room. I was up till damn near one, and didn’t hear a goddamn thing. Wrecking the place that way, she had