Chasing Fire

over to their hands and knees, then pushed to standing.
    “Just imagine you’re carrying a pretty little woman,” Dobie advised, with a wiggle of eyebrows in Libby’s direction.
    “A buck-ten’s pretty scrawny for my taste.”
    “She’ll feel like more by the time we’re done.”
    No question about it, Gull mused, and the instructor didn’t set what you’d call a meandering pace along the rocky, quad-burning trail.
    They pushed one another, that’s how it was done. Ragged one another, encouraged one another, insulted one another, to get the group another step, another yard. The spurring fact was, in a few weeks it would be real. And on the fire line everyone’s life depended on the other.
    “What do you do back in Kentucky?” Gull asked Dobie while a hawk screamed overhead and the smell of group sweat competed with pine.
    “Some of this, some of that. Last three seasons I doused fires in the national forest. One night after we beat one down, I got a little drunk, took a bet how I’d be a smoke jumper. So I got an application, and here I am.”
    “You’re doing this on a bet?” The idea just appealed to his sense of the ridiculous.
    “Hundred dollars on the line, son. And my pride that’s worth more. You ever jump out of a plane?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Takes the crazy.”
    “Some might say.” Gull passed Dobie’s earlier words back to him.
    “What’s it feel like? When you’re falling?”
    “Like hot, screaming sex with a beautiful woman.”
    “I was hoping.” Dobie shifted his pack, winced. “Because this fucking training better be worth it.”
    “Libby’s holding up.”
    “Who?”
    Gull lifted his chin. “Your most recent bet.”
    Dobie gritted his teeth as they started up yet another incline. “Day’s not over.”
    By the time it was, Gull got his shower, his shave, and managed to grab a brew before falling facedown on his bunk.
     
     
    MICHAEL LITTLE BEAR snagged Rowan on her way into the gym. “I need you to take rookie training this morning. Cards was on it, but he’s puking up his guts in the john.”
    “Hangover?”
    “No. Stomach flu or something. I need you to run them on the playground. Okay?”
    “Sure. I’m already on with Yangtree, on the slam-ulator. I can make a day eating rooks. How many do we have?”
    “Twenty-five left, and they look pretty damn good. One beat the base record on the mile-and-a-half course. Nailed it in six-thirty-nine.”
    “Fast feet. We’ll see how the rest of him does today.”
    She knocked thirty minutes off her planned ninety in the gym. Taking the recruits over the obstacle course would make up for it, and meant she’d just skated out of a stint sewing personal gear bags in the manufacturing room.
    Damn good deal, Rowan thought as she put on her boots.
    She grabbed the paperwork, a clipboard, a water bottle and, fixing a blue ball cap on her head, headed outside.
    Clouds had rolled in overnight and tucked the warm in nicely. Activity swarmed the base—runners on the track or the road, trucks off-loaded supplies, men and women crossed from building to building. A plane taxied out taking a group up for a preseason practice jump.
    Long before the fire siren screamed, work demanded attention. Sewing, stuffing, disassembling equipment, training, packing chutes.
    She started toward the training field, pausing when she crossed paths with Matt.
    “What’re you on?” he asked her.
    “Rook detail. Cards is down with some stomach deal. You?”
    “I’m up this afternoon.” He glanced skyward as the jump plane rose into the air. “I’m in the loadmaster’s room this morning.” He smiled. “Want to trade?”
    “Hmm, stuck inside loading supplies or out here torturing rookies? No deal.”
    “Figured.”
    She continued on, noting the trainees were starting to gather on the field. They’d come in from a week of camping and line work, and if they had any brains would’ve focused on getting a good night’s sleep.
    Those who had would probably feel pretty fresh this morning.
    She’d soon take care of that.
    A few of them wandered the obstacle course, trying to get a gauge. Smart, she judged. Know your enemy. Voices and laughter carried on the air. Pumping themselves up—and that was smart, too.
    The obstacle course was a bitch of the first order, and it was only the start of a long, brutal day. She checked her watch as she moved through the wooden platforms, took her place on the field.
    She took a swig from her water bottle, then