Wild Fire E-Book

M. L. Buchman

• Herausgeber: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

-a Firehawks romance- When Gordon Finchley crashes his wildland firefighting helicopter through burning trees into a remote lake. He knows he’s toast. Moments later, when newly-arrived Ripley Vaughan nearly slices him in two with her massive Erickson Aircrane helicopter, he discovers a whole new reason to fly. In this riveting wrap-up to the Firehawks series, the entire Mount Hood Aviation heli-attack squad needs all their skills to not get burned by the Wild Fire.

Leseprobe

Wild Fire

a Firehawks romance

M. L. Buchman

Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

Contents

Also by M. L. Buchman

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy:

Wildfire at Dawn (excerpt)

About the Author

Also by M. L. Buchman

Praise for the M. L. Buchman:

“Top 10 Romance of 2012.” (and 2015)

– Booklist, The Night Is Mine (Hot Point)

“One of our favorite authors.”

–RT Book Reviews

“Suzanne Brockmann fans will love this.”

–Booklist, Wait Until Dark

“A rousing mix of romance and military action thrills…Buchman blends tender feelings with military politics to keep readers riveted.”

-Publishers Weekly

“Buchman continues to serve up nonstop action that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.”

– Library Journal Xpress

“The Night Stalkers is a series you’ll want to read, in order or not.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“A must read for fans of

military romantic suspense… ”

– Fresh Fiction

Praise for the Firehawks:

“Buchman again pens an excellent read!”-RT Book Reviews, Full Blaze

“Full Blaze hits it out of the park.”

-Reading Reality, Full Blaze

“Full Blaze has it all;

suspense, hot-hot romance

and as much edge-of-the-seat

excitement you could possible ask for.”

-Fresh Fiction, Full Blaze

“It’s wonderful fun!”

-Reading Reality, Flash of Fire

“Buchman writes with beauty and passion.

The flames of passion burn brightly in this

meticulously researched, hard-hitting, and

suspenseful contemporary.”

- Publishers Weekly, starred review, Pure Heat

“If you are looking for an action packed

romantic read...Pure Heat is one you

will want to pick up.”

–Fresh Fiction, Pure Heat

Copyright 2016 Matthew Lieber Buchman

Published by Buchman Bookworks

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.

Cover images: Sky, Clouds, Fire And Smoke © LivingseeHealthy Young Guy Posing Near A Wall © Isn5000

Forest Fire In Night © Photosky

Pulaski Fire Ax © Jerimy Colbert

Erickson Helicopter © UDSA by Lance Cheung

Discover more by this author at: www.mlbuchman.com

Also by M. L. Buchman

The Night Stalkers

Main Flight

The Night Is Mine

I Own the Dawn

Wait Until Dark

Take Over at Midnight

Light Up the Night

Bring On the Dusk

By Break of Day

White House Holiday

Daniel’s Christmas

Frank’s Independence Day

Peter’s Christmas

Zachary’s Christmas

Roy’s Independence Day

and the Navy

Christmas at Steel Beach

Christmas at Peleliu Cove

5E

Target of the Heart

Target Lock on Love

Firehawks

Main Flight

Pure Heat

Full Blaze

Hot Point

Flash of Fire

Smokejumpers

Wildfire at Dawn

Wildfire at Larch Creek

Wildfire on the Skagit

Delta Force

Main Flight

Target Engaged

Heart Strike

Angelo’s Hearth

Where Dreams are Born

Where Dreams Reside

Maria’s Christmas Table

Where Dreams Unfold

Where Dreams Are Written

Eagle Cove

Return to Eagle Cove

Recipe for Eagle Cove

Longing for Eagle Cove

Keepsake for Eagle Cove

Deities Anonymous

Cookbook from Hell: Reheated

Saviors 101

Dead Chef

Swap Out!

One Chef!

Two Chef!

SF/F Titles

Nara

Monk’s Maze

The Me and Elsie Chronicles

Don’t miss a thing! Get a free starter library!

www.mlbuchman.com

Chapter One

“Gordon. Hit the hotspot at your two o’clock.”

“Perfect,” Gordon Finchley mumbled to himself. The call came from Mark Henderson, the Incident Commander-Air, the moment after Gordon carved his MD 530 helicopter the other way toward a flaming hotspot at eleven o’clock and hit the release on his load of water.

Two hundred gallons spilled down out of his helo’s belly tank and punched the cluster of burning alders square in the heart. He glanced back as he continued his turn and the flames were now hidden in the cloud of steam, which meant it was a good hit.

“Die, you dog!” He yelled it at the flames like…Austin Powers…yelling at something. He really had to work on his macho. Or maybe just give it up as a lost cause.

“I have the other one, Mark,” Vanessa called up to the ICA from her own MD 530. Her touch of an Italian accent still completely slayed Gordon…and any other guy who met her. Because her “Italian” was more than just her voice.

Gordon twisted his bird enough sideways to watch her, which was always a pleasure, in the air or on the ground. Vanessa Donatella flew her tiny, four-seater helicopter the same way she looked: smooth, beautiful, and just a little bit delicate. Her water attack was also dead on. It punched down the second spot fire, which had been ignited by an ember cast far ahead of the main fire.

The two of them were fighting their aerial battle beyond the head of the wildfire—he and Vanessa were making sure that nothing sparked to life ahead of the line of defense. He could just make out the Mount Hood Aviation smokejumpers suited up in flame-resistant yellow Nomex, defending a ridgeline. The heavy hitters of the main airshow, MHA’s three Firehawks and a Twin 212 helicopter, were attacking the primary fire, ducking in and around the columns of smoke and flame to deliver their loads where the smokejumpers most needed them.

He twisted back to straight flight, popped up high enough to clear the leading edge of the flames, then ducked through the thin veil of smoke and dove down over the burning bank at the lake’s shore. He could feel the wash of radiated heat through the large windshield that gave him such a great view—a nearly unbroken sweep of acrylic starting below his feet on the rudder pedals, then sweeping above his head. It became much cooler once he punched out over the open lake.

Gordon slid to a hover with his skids just ten feet over the water—low enough to unreel his snorkel hose and let the pump head dip below the lake’s surface. It would be forty seconds until he had two hundred more gallons aboard.

Vanessa slid her helo down close beside him and dunked her own hose.

Their helos were identical except for the large identifying numbers on the side. The MD 530 was as small as a helicopter could be and still have four seats. Last season they’d switched from dipping buckets dangling on longlines to belly tanks attached between the skids. There was an art to steering the swinging buckets to their target that Gordon could get nostalgic about, but the tank was certainly more convenient.

Their helos were painted with the MHA colors: gloss black with red-and-orange flames running down the sides. The effect was a bit ruined by the big windshields that made up the whole nose of the aircraft, but Gordon would take the visibility any day.

“Nice hit,” he offered. The pilots kept a second radio tuned to a private frequency so that they could coordinate among themselves without interfering with the ICA’s commands to the airshow. It also allowed them to chat in these brief quiet moments. In the background was a third radio tuned to the ground team. Thankfully, there weren’t any fixed-wing aircraft attacking the fire or there’d be a fourth radio running. When flying solo, it could be harder to fight the radios than the fire.

“You too. It is such a pity that you hit the wrong fire.” He could feel Vanessa’s warmth in her tease.

“Even a couple seconds more warning would have worked. If I didn’t know better, I’d think Mark was doing it on purpose.”

“Whine. Whine. Whine.”

They shared a smile across the hundred feet that separated them. It was a real bummer that it hadn’t worked out between them. After months of silent but—he eventually discovered—mutual attraction, they’d gotten together. Only to have nothing come of it. Making love to someone as beautiful and gentle as Vanessa was a joy, but there’d been no spark. They’d talked about it, tried again, and still nothing. Despite his typical awkwardness around stunning women (most women really) and Vanessa’s natural shyness—or perhaps because of the combination—they’d come out of it as close friends. Friends without benefits, which was still a pity, but good friends.

His water tank gauge reached full and he lifted aloft as he reeled in his hose. Vanessa would be about ten seconds behind him.

Together they flew over the flaming bank that sloped steeply up from the lake. No point in fighting that fire, it would burn down to the shore and then there would be nowhere else for it to go. It was simply one flank of the main fire. The head itself was a long burn running south toward a community of homes at the other end of the lake—that they had to defend.

Henderson gave him enough lead time to pick his path this time. His whine to Vanessa had some basis. Messing with a pilot didn’t sound like Henderson at all, but lately there’d definitely been something going on.

Gordon shrugged to himself.

He was never big on worrying about what came next. After three years of flying for the man, Gordon knew that whatever Henderson’s game was, it would show up only when he was good and ready to reveal it. But another part of him—the one that had told his father precisely where he could ram a hot branding iron the day he’d left the family ranch for the last time—decided that if Henderson kept it up, Gordon might need to buy a branding iron of his own.

For now, only the fire mattered. It was getting even more aggressive and it took a punch from both of their birds to kill the next flare-up.

“I’m back to base for fuel,” Vanessa announced on the command frequency.

“Roger,” Henderson called down from his spotter plane three thousand feet above the fire. “Gordon, fly twice as fast.”

Typical. “Sure thing, boss man.” He flipped a finger aloft, then wiggled his cyclic control side to side to wave at Vanessa by rocking his helicopter. She returned the gesture and peeled off to the northwest. By pure chance, this fire was less than a ten-minute flight from MHA’s base on the eastern foothills of Mt. Hood. The eleven-thousand-foot volcanic mountain was a shining beacon of glaringly bright glaciers, even in late September. The midmorning sun was blinding off the high slopes. In moments, Vanessa was a black dot against that white background. She’d be back in under half an hour and then it would be his turn.

Below him was a land of brown and green, heavy on the brown. Eastern Oregon had none of the green lushness that everyone associated with the Oregon Coast and the Willamette Valley. Out here, Ponderosa pine grew far enough apart for grass to grow tall between them. And now, late in the season, the grass was all dried to a dark gold and carried fire fast and hard. The pine and western juniper weren’t in much better shape. Several seasons of drought had taken their toll. The hundred-foot grand firs and the fifty-foot alder were all as dry as bone and lit off like Roman candles.

Gordon climbed an extra fifty feet, crossing the worst of it. He remembered back in his rookie year with MHA when Jeannie had a tree blow up directly under her. The superheated sap had cooked off and sent a big chunk of treetop an extra hundred feet aloft. It had knocked out her rear rotor over the New Tillamook Burn Fire. She’d managed to find a clearing the same size as her helo’s rotor blades and somehow set down safely in it. Gordon had seen it and still wasn’t sure how she’d stuck that landing.

He kept up the hustle: lake, climb over fire, hit the latest flare-up, climb back over, and dive down for more water. Occasionally one of the big helos would be tanking at the same moment he was. He’d always liked his little MD. The Firehawks—the firefighting version of the Black Hawk helicopters—could carry a thousand gallons to his two hundred, and they were damn fast in flight, but they had none of the finesse of his MD. They didn’t get up close and personal with the fire. They flew higher and could knock crown fires out of trees. He flew lower and could put out your campfire without messing up the rest of the campsite…well, not too much.

He harassed his best friend Mickey at one point in his Twin 212 as they tankered together. Two-twelves were midsized helos, halfway between his own MD and the big Firehawks—the modern version of the Vietnam-era UH-1 Hueys. It made for a good spread of capabilities on the team, but it didn’t mean he had to let Mickey fly easy just because of that.

“Hey buddy, you actually getting any work done?”

“More than you, Finchley.”

“Believe that when I see it. Honeymoon over yet?”

“Not even close!” Mickey sounded pretty damned pleased.

“You better be saying that, hubbie” Robin cut in as she hovered her big Firehawk Oh-one down over the water.

Gordon was glad for Mickey. His easygoing friend had fallen for Robin, the brash, hard-edged blonde, the moment she’d hit camp at the beginning of the year. They were an unlikely couple from the outside, but it looked like it was working for them. They’d hooked up on day one, married last month, and showed no signs of the heat easing—of course, anything involving Robin Harrow would be fiery hot. Gordon wasn’t jealous, he really wasn’t. MHA’s lead pilot was a primal force and would have run right over any lesser man than Mickey. Way too out there for Gordon. The quiet Vanessa had seemed about perfect for him, except instead of fire between them, there hadn’t even been ignition.

Not being jealous was one thing. But when they were in camp during those rare quiet moments of the busy fire season, Mickey paid much more attention to Robin than to his old still-single pal. Gordon supposed it only made sense, but he was all the happier about finding a friend in Vanessa to fill that unexpected void.

Up over the fire, they headed for their respective targets.

The real battle, the make-or-break on the fire, was going to happen in the next thirty minutes. Gordon checked his fuel. Yes, he’d be good for that long and Vanessa would be back in another ten.

The wildfire would soon be slamming up against the fire break that the smokies had punched through the trees. Flames were climbing two hundred feet into the air in a thick pall of smoke gone dark gray with all of the ash that the heat was carrying aloft.

With a single load, Gordon managed to hit three separate flare-ups behind the smokies’ line. He could see the soot-stained smokie team below, clearing brush and scraping soil by hand even though the main flames were less than a hundred feet away. They had inch-and-a-half hoses charged up and were spraying down their own line.

Gordon swung for the lake, climbed through the smoke, and dove—

Something slammed into his windshield straight in front of his face.

He flinched and jerked.

Wrong shape and color for a bird.

Mechanical!

A hobby drone. A big one. Four rotors and a camera.

It star-cracked his acrylic windshield, then slid upward.

He didn’t have a moment to plead with the fates before he felt his MD jolt.

Perfect—the drone slid straight into his engine’s air intake.

Not a chance that his Allison 250 turboshaft engine would just chew up the plastic and spit it out the exhaust. Even if it did, the battery was like throwing a brick into the turbine.

The primary compressor, spinning at fifty thousand RPM, choked on the three-pound drone.

A horrendous grinding noise sounded close above his head.

Red lights flared, starting with “Engine Out” at the upper left of his console and a high warning tone in his headset.

Other indicators flared to life, but he ignored them. With the engine failed, nothing else really mattered.

Gordon eased down on the collective and twisted the throttle to the fuel cutoff position. The grinding sound slowed but grew rapidly worse—his engine wasn’t just dead, it was shredding itself. He slammed a foot on the right pedal as the nose torqued to the left.

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” At least he still had electrical power to the radios. “Hobby drone strike, straight into my engine. Going down.”

The radio fired up with questions, but Gordon was in the death zone and didn’t have time to listen. A lift-failure emergency in a helicopter below fifty feet or over four hundred was generally survivable. The range in between those two altitudes cut life expectancy a lot more than he wanted to think about at the moment. He was currently in heavy smoke, descending down through the one-fifty mark.

It was little comfort knowing that the FAA would slap the drone owner’s wrist if they could find him. Of course, if this went as badly as Gordon was expecting, MHA would go after the asshole for a million-dollar helo and the cost of one funeral.

“God damn it! And I was in such a good mood.” There, that sounded more like Vin Diesel than Austin Powers. Truly sad—he was going to have to die to get it right. Though he couldn’t place what movie the line was from.

The smoke wrapped around him and visibility left altogether. He fought for best auto-rotate speed, but at the rate he was falling, there wasn’t a whole lot of time to get there.

He’d started flying fifteen years ago on his family’s ranch, spent the last three years with MHA, and this was his first real-life crash landing. All the practice in the world didn’t count for shit.

His palms were sweating against the slick plastic of the controls. The cabin was filling with smoke, but he couldn’t take his hands off the controls to close the vent to the outside.

With his right shoulder, he nudged up the release lever on the pilot-side door. It swung open two inches and stabilized just like it was supposed to. The additional airflow helped the smoke flow through the cabin faster, but it still burnt his eyes and his throat. As a firefighter, he supposed that it was no surprise that death smelled like hot wood smoke.

His visibility was under twenty feet, and the smoke was taking on a distinctly orange glow. At sixty miles an hour, that gave him absolutely no lead time for maneuvering.

He wrestled east for the water.

The first treetop that slapped against his windshield was brilliant orange with flame. Lodgepole pine.

The next one, Douglas fir, snagged his left skid, jerking him sharply to the side before he was past it. If the one that slammed into his right-side pilot’s window, white fir, made him scream, he didn’t have time to realize it.

The next one, too buried in flames to recognize, ripped the door off entirely.

Gordon’s instincts did what they could, with the controls now gone useless. One tree after another battered his helo: Ponderosa, western juniper—he ricocheted off the side of a massive Doug fir harder than being tossed by a bucking bronc.

The ends of rotor blades snapped off.

Then more of them.

The other skid snagged and twisted him the other direction, which saved him from the next flaming tree coming in through the missing door and killing him.

He realized that he was falling, treetop to treetop, down the steep bank toward the water.

His broken helicopter smashed through the last of the flaming line in a slow tumble thirty feet above the water.

With one final effort, he stomped on the right pedal and shoved the cyclic left.

No rotors. No effect.

That’s when he remembered where the movie line was from. It wasn’t Vin Diesel at all. It was John Goodman playing the hapless Al Yackey in the firefighting movie Always.

“No offense, John,” he spoke his final words aloud to his dead helicopter. “But I’d rather die as Vin Diesel.”

He plunged into the water upside down.

Five minutes earlier, Ripley Vaughan flew into sight of the firefight and eased her Erickson Aircrane to a hover.

“Wow!” “That’s a mess!” Brad and Janet White, her married copilot and crew chief, did one of their synchro-speaking things.

They were right. It was.

The Black, the area already burned by the wildfire, ranged across five hundred acres. No cleanup had been done, there were spot fires dotted all over the Black, and the fire’s flanks were eating sideways into the trees in addition to the main head of the fire driving toward a community. It could be the textbook definition of zero percent contained.

Ripley could see the hard slash of a smokejumper defense line across the rugged hills, cleared of trees and brush. It looked so small against the towering wall of fire bearing down on them, but then it always did from altitude. And there was a heavy airshow going on. The battle of this wildfire was about to be engaged big time.

They needed help.

But without a contract, she wouldn’t be insured or paid if she fought on this fire…unless.

“Are those aircraft painted black?”

Brad pulled out a small pair of binoculars. “Yep! With flames and all.”

That meant it was Mount Hood Aviation, their new outfit.

Ripley watched the airshow for another thirty seconds and could see the smooth coordination of the attack effort. She’d been flying her big Aircrane helicopter to fire for a couple of years, but had never imagined she’d get the chance to fly for Mount Hood Aviation. They had the best reputation in the business. Their for-hire smokejumping team was right on par with the Forest Service’s Missoula, Montana Zulies, but nobody had the renown of their helicopter team.

Back at Erickson’s Medford airfield in southern Oregon, Randy had called her into his office.

“I’ve got a rest-of-season contract request here.”

Ripley hadn’t particularly cared where she went, as long as it kept her flying.

“For some reason, it came through with your name on it. Something going on here I don’t know about?” He sounded some kinda pissed about it. Upsetting a chief pilot with his years of experience was never a good idea—especially not when he signed her paychecks. Randy’s cheerful demeanor and the easy smile that normally showed through his white beard were completely missing. Now she could see a flash of that kick-ass retired Army Chief Warrant that was typically hidden away. Word was that he’d graduated top of his Army flight class and hadn’t slowed down for an instant during his years with the 2/10 Air Cav, not that the stories ever came from him.

“Unless it’s for dancing,” Ripley eyed the paperwork Randy was waving at her, “I can’t imagine why it would be for me.”

With her crew being named Brad and Janet—and Janet looking like a young Susan Sarandon, it was inevitable that their crew would learn “The Time Warp” dance from The Rocky Horror Picture Show…and then get known for it. But she hadn’t been shopping for someplace else to be; she liked flying for Erickson more than she had liked anything else since she’d left the Navy.

Randy had tossed over the paperwork and Ripley had glanced down at it. She didn’t spot her name anywhere. It was a contract for “your best pilot” from Mount Hood Aviation.

His scowl changed to his usual cheery smile. “Man’s gotta have some fun. A couple pilots here are as good as you, but I don’t have any that are better. You want to fly with MHA for what’s left of the season, it’s yours. You’ve earned it. But…” and he’d aimed a finger out toward the landing apron where her helicopter baked under the Medford late-summer heat. That former-military voice came out again, “You better bring my bird back in one piece. Yourself too, while you’re at it.”

She’d promised she would and then signed it on the spot. It was only later that she thought to ask Brad and Janet, but they were game as always.

The three of them with their Aircrane were supposed to be transiting to MHA’s base today but now had stumbled on their new outfit in a full-on firefight.

“Janet, let’s scoop up some water. Brad, find me this fire’s Air Attack frequency because I can’t fly into a restricted Fire Traffic Area without permission.”

There was a lake down below that she could see the other helos were using. It was just long enough that she could use the sea snorkel instead of the pond snorkel. The latter would require hovering and pumping. The sea snorkel was designed to let her fill her tanks on the fly. She could lower the snorkel’s long strut to drag the tip below the surface and use the force of her own flying speed to fill the tanks. It was much quicker.

She flew down over the south end of Rock Creek Reservoir.

“Snorkel in five,” she called out. Ripley could run the controls from her left side command seat, but since she had her crew chief aboard for the transit, Ripley let her have something to do. Her real duties would be on the ground once they arrived, but it was a chance for Janet to get a little control time in her log book.

“In five,” Janet called back. She sat in the observer’s seat directly behind Ripley, facing backward. That seat was positioned so that a pilot could control the helo during finicky winching jobs, like when they were assembling transmission towers. Not really needed for firefighting, but it gave her crew chief somewhere to sit and be a part of the firefight.

Ripley flew down until her big helo’s wheels were just ten feet above the water. Once they slowed to thirty knots, Janet lowered the sea snorkel’s strut into the water. Their speed alone would cause the water to shoot into the two submerged openings on the pipe, each the size of her palm. The water would blow upward like a thirty-five-mile-an-hour firehose. In forty seconds and just over half a mile, they could load up twenty-five hundred gallons of water, a dozen large hot tubs’ worth, and be heading for the fire.

She flew along the line of the burning shore as it curved around from east to north. Rock Creek entered at the northern tip of the reservoir, providing her with an excellent gap in the trees for her climb out.

Brad found the frequency.

MHA’s communications blasted into Ripley’s headset.

“Did anyone see where he went down?” The voice was nearly frantic.

“All aircraft,” a powerful male voice called out over the airwaves. “Climb and pull back. There was a civilian drone over the fire. It’s already taken out one of our birds, we don’t want to lose another. We need to evacuate. Keep an eye out for Gordon, but continue retreat.”

Ripley had been on a number of fires where all of the air attack—helicopters, fixed-wing tankers, and command aircraft—had to pull back because someone had spotted a stupid civilian drone. There wasn’t a firefighter aloft who hadn’t thought about the dangers. But…

Ripley pressed the button on the back of the cyclic control with the tip of her index finger and transmitted. “If it already hit someone, then it’s out of the sky. The chances of two simultaneous idiots on the same fire seems pretty low.”

“Identify!” The ICA snapped out the command.

“This is Erickson Aircrane Diana—Oh shit!”

Ripley saw the body floating directly in her path. It was too late to avoid by climbing or raising the sea snorkel’s strut.

Gordon had been floating on his back, watching the sky. It was amazing how pretty the sky was when you’d suddenly been given a reprieve from certain death. Even the fire still raging along the shore was a wonder of smoke and light as it swirled aloft.

He wanted to feel sad about the loss of his helo, but it was hard. His MD 530 had seen him through hell and given its own life to save his. He’d managed to release his seat harness and swim free before the helo hit the bottom of the reservoir. That first breath of air had been so clear and so sharp that he’d never forget it, not for as long as he lived.

A low thrumming echoed through the water, a heavy bass beat that only a helicopter could create, a big one like a Firehawk.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head to see if they’d come for him.

From less than a hundred feet away, he looked straight into the face of a beautiful helicopter pilot.

If there were moments he was never going to forget, the next three seconds were clogged with them.

The pilot sat almost fully exposed by the curved windshield of the helicopter. Gorgeous. Her straight black hair fell past her shoulders. Her skin was the color of mid-roast coffee with just that perfect amount of cream. Her dark glasses and pilot’s helmet with mic boom added to the image. Hot professional female pilot.

The next impression was how huge the approaching helicopter was—and because it was so close, it seemed twice its normal size. Instead of the vicious sleekness of a Black Hawk, it had a bulbous nose and was brilliant orange like the Muppet Beaker, who always looked as alarmed as Gordon was starting to feel.

The last impression, more memorable than anything else—except perhaps that knockout pilot now looking almost directly down at him—was the long white boom that the Aircrane was slicing through the water.

Straight toward him!

There wasn’t time to react. Hell, there wasn’t even time to blink.

Gordon braced himself to be chopped in two.

There wasn’t time to even swing aside.

Ripley did the only thing she could think of. She rammed the cyclic forward and heaved up on the collective, dumping every bit of nearly ten thousand horsepower into the massive rotor. The result was like doing a forward wheelie on a motorcycle by slamming on just the front brake.

Her helicopter nosed down hard and lifted its behind high in the air. Hopefully lifting the snorkel up and out of the water with it.

Brad squawked in surprise as he was slammed forward against his safety harness.

Ripley held the attitude for as long as she dared, then yanked back on the cyclic, pulling the joystick between her knees all the way into her lap. The nose of the helo splashed against the lake water. It wasn’t rated for water landings—meaning it would sink like a stone if she tried—but that wasn’t what she was worried about.

Her main rotor was seventy feet across and reached well ahead of the helicopter. If it even touched the water, the blades were going to shatter. They’d crash into the water and utterly destroy forty million dollars’ worth of helicopter and probably kill them all as well—a surefire way to upset Randy back at Erickson.

The Aircrane answered her brutal control maneuvers and she managed to tip the blades back up while they were still inches from the water. The downdraft blew a wall of spray across her windshield, completely blinding her until Brad hit the wipers. Pulling up, then plunging the rear boom deep back into the water. She could feel the drag, but yanking up the collective turned out to be enough to compensate—just barely.

“Did I miss him?”

“Miss who?” Brad managed to squeak out.

It had all happened in slow motion for Gordon.

The big white boom heading straight for him, slicing a bow wake to either side.

Then, as the helicopter passed directly over him, it nosed down. The boom lifted from the water. At the bottom, the broad white wedge of a yard-across hydrofoil wing rose out of the water as well. It sailed over his chest with inches to spare, inundating him with spilled water and tumbling him with the wake it had created before rising out of the water.

When he had stopped floundering about and could see again, the helicopter was splashing its nose into the reservoir and the massive flying wedge of the snorkel’s boom drove back into the water not a dozen yards past him.

It was only after the huge Aircrane helicopter recovered enough to not crash into the water that he tried to breathe again.

That nearly choked him, as if he needed another near-death experience today, when he inhaled all of the water that must have gotten into his mouth as it hung open in shock.

He was dizzy and barely still afloat before he managed to get his lungs clear enough to think.

By the time he did, the world was a wall of noise. The massive helicopter was hovering directly over him, once again beating him with downdraft and spray. This time he had the common sense to keep his mouth closed. The twin turboshaft engines were screaming with a brain-piercing shriek just a few meters over his head. The rear wheels were actually submerged into the lake to either side of him.

The construction-orange helo, that he could now see in intimate but more casual detail, was an Erickson Aircrane—the tractor trailer combination of the skies. Its “tractor” looked like some normal, large helicopter that had been sawed off right behind the cockpit. Behind that, the open-space “trailer” beneath which he floated, was defined by a thin spine that supported the two engines trying to deafen him, a massive six-bladed rotor trying to blow him back under the water, and two arching legs to support the rear wheels. In the big open space between legs and spine hung the twenty-foot long, ten-foot high, angular water tank used for firefighting.

A rear access door to the cockpit swung open and a brunette was waving him forward. He managed to swim over until he could hang onto the ladder.

“He’s alive,” the woman called out toward the pilot.

“You sure?” Gordon asked because he couldn’t tell.

“I’m sure. Now crawl on up here.”

Since he was certified as being alive, he did. The metal rungs were little more than thick rebar welded to the back of the cockpit’s hull, but being once more inside a helicopter was worth the effort.

At least he was fairly sure it was…it took all he had to climb those few rungs and drag himself through the door. He lay panting on the floor.

“Well,” he said to no one in particular, “that was a hell of a thing.”

“What kind of an idiot are you to be floating in the middle of a lake during a firefight?” The pilot was facing forward but sounded some kind of pissed.

Clearly no sense of humor to pick up on his Galaxy Quest joke. Too bad. Gorgeous pilots in massive helicopters were supposed to have a great sense of humor as well.

He decided that lack was okay with him as long as the helicopter kept climbing farther away from the water. The brunette who’d helped him aboard waved toward the only open bit of deck, which he was already sprawled on. The cockpit was tall, but otherwise not much bigger than his MD—his former MD, now sunk at the bottom of the lake.

There were the two forward pilot seats with the broad console in front of them, which came partway back between the seats. Hard against the back of the pilot’s seat was the aft-facing seat of the woman who had helped him aboard. He sat up, facing sideways on the steel deck behind the copilot with his feet in the small stairwell for the door at the back of the cockpit. Leaning back against the sidewall, he looked straight across at the cute brunette in the observer seat.

She handed him a headset. He dragged it on and sighed with relief from the noise abatement. By looking up, he could see the pilot in profile.

“Well?” The pilot sounded just as pissed over the headset. Gordon took a moment to appreciate the sight. If the pilot had been pretty, seen straight on as he’d floated in the water and she’d been on the verge of cutting him in two, she was a stunner in profile.

“I’m a pilot type person,” he finally found his voice and managed to resist the need to cough out more lake water.

“Were you flying the goddamn drone?”

Gordon had to think about that for a moment. Either he was in shock, or the pilot’s looks were distracting him. She struck him as the sort of woman who would be very likely to distract him—badly. Maybe it was a combination of both.

“No,” he managed. “I’m the type of pilot who was hit by the goddamn drone.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Now it was his turn to be amused.

“You okay?”

“Well,” Gordon tried to figure that out but his mind wouldn’t quite connect to flexing and bending to check for injuries. “Someone said I was alive, so I guess so.”

“Janet, check him out.”

“He’s already checking you out,” Janet quipped.

Great! Exactly what Ripley didn’t need. She hit the transmit key as she climbed back aloft.

“ICA, as I was saying before, this is Erickson Aircrane Diana Prince. I’d like to report that we are heavy by one pilot.” She clicked off the mic switch. “What’s your name?”

There was a long pause before he said, “Diana Prince?”

She glanced back at him to see if he was shocky and needed immediate medical, knowing that Brad would continue her climb. But he was looking at her clear-eyed. Kneeling beside him, Janet shrugged—no obvious injuries.

“That’s my aircraft. Erickson Aircranes all have names,” she did her best to remain calm, but her nerves were still shaking after how close she’d come to killing him then downing her entire crew. He was average build, blond, and nice looking without being the overly handsome jerk-type she usually fell for.

“I get that,” he had a good voice too. “Just thinking about that maneuver you used to save my life. Haven’t met a whole lot of pilots who could do that. Pretty sure I couldn’t have. Wonder Woman isn’t just the name of your aircraft.”

He actually knew that Diana Prince was Wonder Woman’s secret identity name. Ripley had always liked flying with a secret identity of Wonder Woman. She tried not to be too pleased…and failed. Then she tried to not let it show, and expected that she failed at that as well. The guy had a great smile. She faced forward once more.

“Your name?”

“Gordon. Gordon Finchley.”

She keyed the mic again. “Diana Prince to ICA. You looking for a Gordon Gordon Finchley?”

She heard Gordon’s half laugh over the intercom. More proof that he wasn’t being shocky.

“You found him? What’s his status?”

“Well, he’d dripping water all over my cockpit, but otherwise appears to be intact.”

“Gordon,” the ICA’s voice sounded a little strained. “Don’t do that again.”

Ripley keyed the mic and nodded toward Gordon without turning.

“Didn’t know that crashing was against the rules, Mark. But I promise to never do it again now that you’ve told me. I swear, Mr. Henderson, sir.” She could practically hear Gordon saluting. “By the way, your helo, though there’s not much left of her after the drone and then battering her way through the trees, is in about thirty feet of water off the easternmost curve of the shore.”

“Glad you’re in one piece. Diana Prince, once you have water, I could use you on the west end of the line. Steve was able to track the hobby drone pilot with our legal drone and you were right, he was a solo idiot. Started yelling at the fireman who found him for destroying his drone and wanting someone to pay for it. Sheriff is taking care of that. Just wait until he gets the insurance company’s bill.” The ICA delivered it in two breaths, and if there was any emotion behind his pilot being alive, he managed to hide it well.

“You good?” Ripley called back to Gordon over the intercom.

“I’ve had my bath for the week, even got my clothes washed in the bargain. So, yeah, I’m good.”

“Roger,” she keyed the mic and called in, mimicking Gordon’s tone to hide her own laugh. “Diana Prince is on the way, Mr. Henderson, sir.”

And then the desire to laugh whooshed out of her as if it had never been.

Gordon had said the ICA was Mark…Henderson. She’d heard that Major Mark Henderson of the Night Stalkers had retired to fight fires and that his wife Major Emily Beale had gone with him. Could there be two Mark Hendersons?

“Hey, Gordon,” she called over the on-board intercom. “You have a pilot name of Emily in your outfit?”

“Emily Beale? Sure. Our chief pilot and trainer. Never seen anything like her. She’s about the only other one that could have pulled off that maneuver you did back there. I think she and Mark were in the military somewhere.” The sound of worship was clear in his voice.

That was one of the problems: everyone who talked about them spoke that way. Ripley didn’t generally doubt her own skills, but Henderson and Beale were spoken of as the top two helicopter pilots in the history of the US Army’s 160th SOAR. The Night Stalkers, as they called themselves, were the very best helo pilots in any Army. Or Navy. She’d considered trying to cross over, but they required a minimum of five years flying before applying and she’d been headed out of the military by then.

She glanced back and saw that Gordon had rested his head against the side wall and had closed his eyes. It was nice to see that his easy bravado had been just that. It would be far more worrisome if he had a true devil-may-care attitude. But at the moment, he looked exhausted and more than a little stressed. So, at least one of Henderson’s pilots wasn’t superhuman, which meant she had some slim chance of fitting in. She was impressed that he’d held it together at all through such a bad crash.

Ripley focused on lining up where Mark wanted her. She came in low from the west and ended up in a line behind three Firehawks. The fire had hit the leading edge of the firebreak that the smokies had slashed through the trees. Unable to move forward, the fire was piling up on itself, building a towering wall along the entire length of the clearing. It looked as if the wave of fire was about to break, falling forward to crash down upon the smokies from above.

The Firehawks slid into a nice neat line and laid down clouds of water in long, six-second spills. As soon as each bird finished its drop, it would peel away, up and east toward the water. Then the next one opened up. Military precision in a civilian outfit.

Aircranes tended to fly alone. A major fire could have an entire airshow going, and there’d be only one Aircrane.

Well, she was here to show them what one could do.

The three Firehawks had dumped three thousand gallons between them.

Ripley shifted another twenty feet upwind of their drop line to compensate for the increased fire intensity as she approached the middle of the line—bigger fires generated bigger winds, which shuffled the water drop sideways. Sixty knots speed and a hundred and fifty feet up. She flew along the fire’s leading edge, no more than a rotor width from the flame tops. There she unleashed her drop for a fifty-yard overlap with the last of the Firehawks and a setting for moderate coverage. She let it run. And run. And run.

Twenty-five hundred gallons laid down on the fire in a long, clean line.

“Damn! But that’s a lot of water. That’s one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.”

It wasn’t Henderson, so it must be one of the pilots. No, it wasn’t over the radio, it was over the intercom. Gordon. He was twisted around and looking out the curved bubble of Janet’s aft controller position.

“Damn straight!” Ripley didn’t get to watch her own drops, except occasionally on video, but it was an amazing feeling to make such a difference with each pass of her helicopter.

As soon as she headed back toward the water, an MD 530 zipped up close to her port side. A moment later, it had climbed over her and come up to the starboard. The little helicopters had always made her twitchy. She was a Big Iron gal herself: Seahawks for the Navy and now the Aircrane—the first weighed ten tons fully loaded and her Aircrane could pick that up without breaking a sweat. An MD 530 weighed a ton and a half all in.

“Damn it! Why do they even have one of those? They aren’t good for much more than watering the plants.”

“Well,” Gordon said. “They occasionally do a fine job of clearing the skies of little drones.”

Crap!Be rude to the guy twice in two minutes. Usually she was smoother than that with members of the opposite sex.Maybe she was still shaky from almost cutting him in half. “Okay. Well, let me know if there are any other ways I can insult you.”

“Sure thing,” he agreed complacently. “Could you open a second radio on…” and he called out a frequency.

Pilot chatter came in loud and clear. She’d need to get the rest of the frequencies soon. Brad set it so that the ICA’s calls would automatically mute the pilot’s channel.

“Gordon?” A woman asked. “Are you really okay?” Her voice was soft and smooth with an Italian accent.

“I’m fine, Vanessa. Just wet, shook up, and damn glad to be alive.”

Between the Italian accent and sexy name, if she was beautiful, Ripley would hate her just on general principles.

“Oh, thank goodness.” Then, with a waggle of wings, the little MD 530 turned to go back to the fire.

Despite its simplicity, the brief exchange had been so intimate that it was almost embarrassing to listen to.

Ripley hadn’t been that intimate with anyone since, well, Chief Petty Officer Weasel Williams. Lieutenant Ripley Vaughan, a much younger and more naive version of herself, had left the Navy three years ago because she’d fallen in love with an enlisted man. An enlisted man who’d left her two days from the altar…for the wedding caterer. It was the last time she’d let herself be so trusting. Or trusting at all really.

But having someone to care about her the way Vanessa cared about Gordon would be…nice.

Ripley wished she wasn’t such a romantic.

It was all her parents’ fault, especially her Senegalese mother. There was no way that a girl who had been raised by a theater drama professor, who wrote romance novels on the side, could be anything but a romantic. Her mixed-race Oklahoman father had taken his one-eighth Cherokee heritage as a calling to become a cultural archaeologist for the local tribes—Ripley had inherited her straight dark hair from him. He too was always bringing home legends of true love, lasting from the time of the creation myths.

Ripley ran another drag of the sea snorkel alongside the burning lake shore—glad to see nobody floating out in the middle of the lake this time. The Firehawks had left her a clear path, settling in a line as they dunked their hoses and ran their pumps.

“Damn, that’s bloody awesome!” A female pilot on the helicopter frequency, but without any hint of an Italian accent. Australian this time. How many women were in this outfit? Usually, when Ripley showed up, it increased the total to one.

“How much water, how fast?” A man asked.

“Twenty-six hundred and fifty gallons. Forty seconds,” Ripley answered as she finished the run and pulled back aloft. Though even in the S-64F she could only carry over twenty-five hundred if she was at a low altitude and had burned most of her fuel, decreasing her total load. Didn’t mean that she had to tell anyone that.

“Mommy, I want one,” the Aussie called out. The Firehawks would still have fifteen more seconds to pump aboard their measly thousand gallons while she was already flying back to the fire.

Gordon just sat back and listened to the on-going firefight. It was strange to be sitting here with nothing to do as the flight volleyed back and forth between water and fire. They finally got a retardant tanker truck and a dip tank set up. The Firehawks switched over to dumping retardant by snorkeling their loads out of a “pumpkin,” which looked like a kiddie pool on steroids kept full of the red goo by the tanker.

The retardant was laid down in broad sweeps where the fire wasn’t—over the smokies’ slash pile, along the flanks, and finally the tail. Each swath coated an area of unburned trees and grass with a sticky red solution of phosphates and sulfates that made it so that no oxygen could reach the wood—no oxygen, no fire. The red let the pilots and ICA see where they’d already dropped.

The problem was that the fire had flared up so hot and fast that it constantly threatened to jump the narrow lines of defense. Twice the flank outran how fast they could lay down the retardant. Then it skipped over and started a fresh fire with new flanks and a new head. More retardant was laid down around that.

Vanessa stayed on water and hit spot fires.