Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [113]
By now, several others had joined her and Javier. Clare heard, “ . . . planning to foam the cabins.”
Another man said, “Hose down the roof of the inn.”
Straining memory, she could see Frank at work, his back to her while he lifted and dragged a hose. All their training, repeating drills until reaction became instinctive. Working at A & M and at the fire academy in Houston, they had faced fake situations, but the flames had been real.
The North Fork was out there and this was definitely not a drill. In her mind’s eye, Frank never turned to look at her, but wasn’t it enough to know that if he were here, he’d lead the charge?
Steve approached and gave Clare a Coke and two Hershey bars. She popped the top and drank. “Thanks. I should have had supper, or at least some breakfast.”
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’ve run into some fellow scientists,” he said slowly.
Clare saw three people waiting for him outside the cafeteria. A tall dark man talked with a younger Asian fellow who wore glasses. A girl a few years older than Devon sat cross-legged on the sidewalk. She rooted in her backpack and came up with a cigarette pack.
“My neighbor Moru,” Steve said, “and our summer graduate students. They could use my help cataloguing some areas in the path of the burn, but if you need me . . . “
“I don’t need you right now.” She touched his arm so that he would understand the “now” aspect of the statement. Later, she reserved the right to need much more.
Clare turned and faced the southwest, staring directly into the face of the North Fork. Silhouetted against the smoke, tankers dropped retardant and helicopters ferried water.
“You help your friends,” she told Steve. “I’ve volunteered to join these guys.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
September 7
For the second time this summer, Deering found himself flying blind, trapped inside turbulent smoke. Luckily, he’d already released his load of water and was turning back toward the Firehole River to refill the bucket.
Deering hoped that Mark Liebman in the lead plane had not seen him. Flying into zero vis was strictly verboten. He corrected course, pulled up and to the right, which should have brought him into clear air. Instead, he was still within the cloud.
He straightened out to avoid putting the chopper into a tight spiral that would result in flying in circles. Using his compass, he flew in the opposite direction from which the North Fork was approaching.
Seconds passed. Deering fought to keep the craft steady and checked his altimeter. He tried not to dwell on the fact that there were a number of aircraft in the area, all flying VFR, or visual flight rules. If someone else blundered into the cloud, there could be a midair.
He stared through the windshield. The murk snugged right against the glass.
This was bad business. Today showed all the signs of being another one like Black Saturday. If the wind kept rising with the dry cold front, Old Faithful Inn was going up.
“Okay, Deering,” Mark Liebman radioed in his habitually cheerful manner, “no playing peek-a-boo.”
“The hell you say,” Deering gritted. Was there a barely perceptible thinning of the smoke?
Before he could decide, a harsh droning drowned the Huey’s engine noise. As Deering broke in a patch of clearer air, a C-130 tanker flashed past. The enormous plane dove earthward, on approach to dump retardant.
Deering’s hands stung as adrenaline rushed to them. The Huey plunged, caught in the vortex from the tanker’s four great propellers. Struggling to arrest the dive, he realized that smoke kept him from seeing the ground and that he could smash into it at any second. He kept his eyes glued to the artificial horizon and altimeter, trying not to think about instant annihilation in a fireball of fuel.
In the midst of maybe dying, he couldn’t help but think of Georgia. He’d thought of her that day in Yellowstone Lake, too, when he’d longed to be home.
He cajoled the controls and forced himself not to imagine the ridge