Summer of Fire Part 16

Steve's stomach knotted. He wished Dugan had let him drive up the mountain, but his boss had insisted he be dropped off. "I can hike down to the parking lot and you can send a truck."

"That'll take too long. We've had a tourist report of a ma.s.sive elk kill. I want you there within the hour." Dugan's tone was final.

It was nine-fifteen a.m., with a brisk dry wind out of the north. The airwaves were alive with exchanges that bore out Garrett Anderson's dawn prediction; that today would be the worst yet. No rain since Memorial Day and here came another dry front with a forecast of up to eighty mile-per-hour winds.

Hoping that this excursion might be his ticket back to the real world, Steve packed his gear, gulped a second cup of coffee and went to wait outside. The usual daily weather pattern was already shot to h.e.l.l. Instead of morning smoke lying in the lows, boiling convection cells rose like thunderheads off every major fire in sight. Haze crept over the flanks of the mountains and cut visibility to ten miles.

Steve's palms were wet. Before he was ready, the dreaded whopping approached.

The helicopter came in, an olive drab Huey with an intimidating military look. The wash of wind from the blades flattened the dry gra.s.s around Steve's feet. His heart raced and he bit the inside of his cheek to get some saliva flowing.

The skids were down.

The pilot reached across and opened the pa.s.senger door. Steve ducked his head and hurried to climb aboard. Putting on headphones, he heard a western drawl, "No way this was my idea, Doctor Haywood."

"Deering!" Steve gripped the door handle. He almost got out, but Shad Dugan wouldn't buy cowardice.

Before he was strapped in, the chopper lifted rapidly over the treeless patch of summit. Within fifty yards, the slope dropped away and they were flying at a thousand feet.

Steve's stomach rebelled. He clapped his palm across his mouth and took a frantic look for a barf bag. Deering lifted his hand from the collective and plucked a small sack from a pocket on the side of his seat.

Steve choked back the acid liquid, but kept the bag close at hand. He'd never been p.r.o.ne to motion sickness, it was just those last ill-fated flights. He didn't need three strikes.

Although Deering appeared to handle the controls deftly, sweat trickled from Steve's brow to his cheek. Looking out, he tried to concentrate on the land.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone yawned, a steep-walled, towered chasm striped in shades of burnt orange. Hydrothermal waters had altered the rock, turning it so rotten that the river easily cut a deep gorge.

South of the canyon was another world. There, the Yellowstone meandered peacefully across the golden, gra.s.sy expanse of Hayden Valley, oblivious to its upcoming wild ride.

The Huey turned west into the wind. Steve made a conscious effort not to clench his fists.

"I was directed to drop you at Norris." Deering's voice penetrated the overpowering white noise of the engine.

Steve frowned. Just yesterday, the North Fork front had been five miles southeast of Norris Geyser Basin. He wouldn't have thought it possible, but once more, Garrett Anderson had accurately predicted trouble.

"Look," Deering went on, "about that day we went down . . . "

"I'd rather forget it." Keeping his head averted, Steve concentrated on the horizon and keeping his stomach tamed.

"Believe me, I would too," Deering went on, "but my Bell's rusting in a shed in West Yellowstone."

"Tough." Steve's hands fisted on his thighs.

"If I don't get my insurance money, the salvage company can claim her."

"What's that to do with me?"

"The insurance folks want to talk to you."

Steve gritted his teeth as the Huey flew like it was driving the potholed stretch of road between Madison and Norris. Black smoke roiled off the North Fork and the rest of the sky had a reddish cast.

Deering said, "Getting that money will help get me out of a jam. My wife's p.i.s.sed off enough."

"I don't care about your personal problems."

"You don't have to worry about them blaming you for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the bucket." Deering persuaded. "I told them I got set by wind off the firestorm."

They were coming in fast. Steve held his breath and tried to make sense of what he'd just heard.

The Huey set down. Steve crumpled the barf bag and threw it in the floorboards. "Blame me?" He opened the door and let in the howl of wind. "When I finish telling them about you," he shouted above the din, "you'll be walking."

Deering's hands shook as he landed at West Yellowstone. He tried to tell himself that it was because gusts kept buffeting the chopper, but he knew better.

G.o.d d.a.m.n the day he'd first set eyes on Doctor Steve Haywood. Within two hours of Deering meeting the man, his helicopter had been at the bottom of the lake. If that Smoke-jumper hadn't broken his leg, Deering would still be schlepping r.e.t.a.r.dant onto aerial tankers.

As hot as his rage was, he couldn't completely ignore its cold companion, a stony feeling in the pit of his stomach that reminded him where the real fault lay. Georgia was right about him being a daredevil. If only he could turn back the clock, take the time to find a landing spot and make sure the bucket was suspended properly beneath his chopper.

When Deering found out whom he was going to pick up this morning, he'd been half-afraid that Suzanne Ho had taken his advice and hiked up Mount Washburn. Instead, it appeared that the corporate wheels were turning more slowly.

Deering's momentary relief that she had not talked to Haywood had been wiped away when he realized his claim wasn't going to be paid until she did. Now that he knew how Haywood felt, he was sweating large caliber bullets.

Pus.h.i.+ng away his unpleasant thoughts, he wondered where Garrett Anderson was. He'd been instructed to pick him up near the charter trailer.

At the sight of the nearby Smokejumpers' Base, Deering thought of Clare and the day she'd helped him in the rescue. The urge to see her again rose as it had with unruly regularity in the past week.

Garrett came up to the Huey from behind and opened the left-hand door. Deering jumped as the wind flapped a copy of last week's Time in the floorboards. The cover bore an artist's rendering of the Crucifixion for a story on the movie, The Last Temptation of Christ.

"Can we fly in this?" Garrett slammed out the wind, reestablis.h.i.+ng the illusion of calm. "I just did. After ferrying a guy from Washburn to Norris, I was dropping incendiaries on the North Fork." The ping-pong ball sized capsules of fuel were dropped to ignite backfires. When the main fire arrived, the area of expended fuel might stop it.

"I heard the tower might call down the planes and choppers."

"This is recon, right?" Deering started flipping switches. "Let's check the wind along with everything else."

Moments later, they flew east along the Madison River at about five hundred feet. In the burned-out sector of the North Fork, National Park Mountain's stark cliffs loomed. Beyond, Madison Campground had been made into a fire camp. Colorful tourist tents had been replaced by olive drab and the RVs by troop transports.

Deering headed northeast and began to see areas of active combustion mixed with untouched vegetation. This mosaic created a patchwork effect. As they approached Norris, where Deering had dropped Steve earlier, the sky grew reddish and hazy. Radio chatter intensified as other choppers flying buckets of water checked in. The day's air controller warned someone about getting too close to the flaming trees.

"We've got battle lines at Norris and on the road to Canyon," Garrett said. "I don't think they can do anything but watch this burn."

A few miles on, a roadblock held up a line of traffic below. In an open field beside the highway, several helicopters sat idle, obviously ordered down by the air controller.

Garrett's thick fingers gripped a handhold as he looked at the grounded helicopters.

Smoke spiraled up, reminding Deering of the afternoon he'd ditched in Yellowstone Lake. He was careful to fly well clear this time.

The North Fork threw off a pocket of rough air. Deering corrected course and concentrated on keeping the aircraft steady.

Garrett peered back at the parked choppers in the drifting orange light. "I'd hoped to check out Silver Gate and Cooke City." The small towns in a high valley outside the northeast entrance had a love-hate relations.h.i.+p with the Park Service. In winter, the highway over Beartooth Pa.s.s closed, making the route through Yellowstone their only access. This summer a few hothead residents thought park officials hoped to burn them out.

Another big b.u.mp and Deering's hand tightened on the cyclic. Below, a phalanx of firefighters sprayed water on the roof of the Norris Museum, with flames not a hundred yards away.

An updraft lifted and then dropped the chopper, causing Deering to bite his tongue. Swallowing the salt of blood, he said, "We've gotta turn back."

Right now Deering was probably threading his chopper through turbulence, Clare figured. Last night she'd stayed with the Smokejumpers without letting him know she was in West Yellowstone. It had seemed the right thing, and today on the North Fork front, she was certain of it. Her anger at the fires, and at herself, still drawn to a man who lied, drove her like a dervish.

She kept one eye on the rising wind. It was just past ten and in two hours, they'd fallen back three times. In each case, Sergeant Travis had watched fire eat its way toward their line with his jaw thrust out. When embers flew a hundred feet ahead, he shouted and pointed for the troops to run down spot fires.

Gone for Clare was the pleasant exertion of hefting the Pulaski. No more the meditative la.s.situde of repet.i.tion. This day's dry front was a fury.

She wondered what Steve saw from Mount Washburn. With the inversion broken so early, the sky must be filling with spectacular thunderheads rising to thirty or forty thousand feet. "Look out, Chance." Travis pointed behind her with a smug look. If she had eyes in the back of her head, she'd have seen that once more their line had been defeated. No matter that Steve called this rebirth, it was a war.

Steve knelt beside a motionless cow elk. The North Fork had left a stark and colorless landscape, save for scattered cherry embers.

Pines stood stripped of their needles, bark transformed to charcoal. Despite his attention to the elk, Steve kept a wary eye on the snags, for the forty mile per hour wind could bring one down in an instant.

Behind him on the pavement of the closed highway, a group of tourists and firefighters watched from a distance of fifty feet. That wasn't far enough, for he imagined he could feel their eyes on his back. He reached to check the cow for a pulse. Failing to find any, he touched a finger to the open, staring eye and got no reaction.

He bent to look and found the pupils fixed and dilated. He breathed relief, for the last thing the Park Service needed was for the public to witness an animal's suffering. Of course, the press corps was no doubt on the way.

Steve believed in the natural rightness of wildfire and its rejuvenation of the land, but it was d.a.m.ned hard not to take this killing personally. His boots stirred a layer of ash as he walked toward the rest of the carca.s.ses.

There were about thirty, the herd bull, a couple of younger males who had yet to challenge for the cows, and at least ten yearlings and calves. One of the spindly-legged young lay at the base of the tree it had trusted to s.h.i.+eld it from the approaching inferno. Steve's throat thickened.

There were a lot of stories about ma.s.s kills. Most were false. He had watched buffalo and elk graze with flames not fifty feet away. As fire approached, the animals usually moved calmly out of range.

It was d.a.m.ned uncommon, but something had gone terribly awry for this herd.

Steve studied their coats. Although they all rested inside an area that had been most thoroughly burned, he saw only a minor amount of singed hair. The powdery ash swirled and he could see the disturbance left by hooves.

Determined to investigate, Steve looked and found he was still in seclusion.

Pulling his folding lock blade knife, he thought this would be the easiest course. The dead calf's coat was thinner and the trachea would not be as tough as in the more mature elk. Intending to steady the throat, he placed a hand on the soft hair and nearly lost his nerve. Tears swelled, blurring the landscape into uniform gray.

Steve blinked hard and swallowed. He ran his thumb along the knife-edge to test its sharpness. If he could just have a drink to steady himself . . .

He made the cut quickly.

Thick soot coated the vocal cords that would never grow to bugle during the rut. Even as the elk had instinctively sought protection by sheltering themselves in the area that had already burned, smoke inhalation had felled them.

Steve wiped his b.l.o.o.d.y blade on the calf's coat and replaced the knife in his belt pouch. The wind s.h.i.+fted, bringing a strong smell of smoke from the firestorm raging at Norris.

When he was but halfway to the highway, a woman with a microphone came toward him, trailed by the ponytailed cameraman who'd heckled Steve at Roaring Mountain.

There were nearly thirty-five thousand elk in the park, but it would do no good to speak of them today. The loss of these thirty was news.

"Carol Leeds," called the reporter. "Billings Live Eye." The wind snapped her jeans jacket.

Clare heard it coming through the treetops, a sudden downburst off the North Fork's convection cell. The raging gale bordered on hurricane force.

Snags scattered through the forest went down as though a scythe mowed them.

A shower of embers began. In front of Clare's feet, one landed on a log and burned a small black patch. Within seconds, it burst into flame.

Sergeant Travis was already in retreat, as were the troops. That was good, for if Clare had shouted no one could have heard. Down the line, the group of California hotshots she'd seen on the Mink Creek abandoned their position.

Once in the truck, bouncing along the rutted dirt track, Clare was pleased that Sergeant Travis routinely invoked executive privilege and rode shotgun. It was nice not to listen to his twist on their retreat. It was also pleasant to be in the company of the young people the nation relied on for defense. Wide-eyed at the almost nuclear forces the fires released, they nonetheless recovered quickly. Eager voices expressed determination to get back out there and slay the dragon.

Once again, they reminded Clare of Devon, whose October birthday was just over a month away. It was difficult to believe that her little girl was almost old enough to serve her country, but there it was. Many of these soldiers must have mothers at home; women who worried and watched the nightly news, praying no harm would come to their child. As youthful as they were, some probably had wives and children.

When the troop transport reached the highway, it joined a line of cars and trucks held up by the road closure. Clare switched on her radio and listened to the biggest battle going on in the world this day.

South of the park, downed trees on power lines had started two new conflagrations. One had caused the evacuation of Flagg Ranch, where Deering had picked up meals for the Mink Creek camp. The Clover-Mist, h.e.l.lroaring, and Storm Creek fires were torching over a mile of forest an hour. The renamed Red-Shoshone was making another run at West Thumb, causing a new evacuation.

When Clare heard that Dr. Steve Haywood had discovered thirty dead elk, she was sorry for the animals, but glad Steve was off Mount Washburn.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

August 20 Steve took a deep swallow of the double bourbon he'd ordered from the Mammoth Hot Springs Bar. It seared all the way down. He looked for anyone he knew in the anonymous tourist crowd, telling himself that he was safe here even as he d.a.m.ned it for a lie.

Through the wide windows opposite, he saw the oasis that irrigation had created, a sanctuary for Mammoth's elk herd. A group of perhaps fifteen lay in the soft gra.s.s while daylight waned.

Steve imagined what would happen if the North Fork, only ten miles south, burned to here. Over two thousand firefighters were on the lines, but today's blowups made it clear that man was helpless in the face of such natural forces.

If the North Fork came to Mammoth, he wanted to be on the front lines, to cut that b.a.s.t.a.r.d down the way it had destroyed those defenseless elk.

Steve took another drink. It didn't burn as much.

If Clare knew he'd succ.u.mbed, she'd be disappointed. He wished he knew where she was on his first evening in civilization. At Old Faithful, West Yellowstone, or was she in one of the myriad fire camps? With the thought, he had a nagging feeling of betraying Susan, even after four years.

He raised his gla.s.s and was surprised to find it empty. Sliding it across the bar, he gestured for another.

A hand clapped him on the shoulder. "I b.l.o.o.d.y heard you were back," Moru Mzima said in his deep, Oxford-accented voice.

Word spread fast on the Mammoth telegraph. A tourist could think it an impersonal place, with thousands of people pa.s.sing through every day, but those who lived at Park Headquarters knew how small a town it truly was. Here Steve was, back from supposedly drying out on the mountain, with a double bourbon in his hand.

He cursed his judgment in coming to the hotel. He should have driven down the canyon to Gardiner for a bottle. Only the fact that drink came quicker here had swayed him.

"Yeah," Steve said dully, "I'm b.l.o.o.d.y back, all right."

Sure enough, Moru glanced at Steve's drink. "You made Peter Jennings."

Big f.u.c.king deal. Steve suppressed it because Moru did not use foul language.