Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [48]
“I’m a firefighter and EMT from Houston. I flew with the Smokejumpers today as an observer.” She tried to sound professional. “Our pilot radioed and found that all the choppers in the area are either specialty-rigged or farther away than yours.”
Even after hearing the story, the older man’s expression was unyielding.
“If you’re worried about getting paid, I’ll pay you myself.” Her voice went hard.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, little lady,” Karrabotsos rasped. “I’d be pleased to help, but I can’t.” Putting both hands on the edge of the desk, he pushed back his chair to reveal a cast on his right foot. “Dropped a box of fire camp rations and broke three bones.”
“What about your pilot?” Deering asked. “Can’t you get him back here?”
“He’s gone to Pocatello. Had a call that his five-month-old baby is in the emergency room.”
“For God’s sake, let Deering go,” Clare said. “The jumper severed an artery in his leg.”
Karrabotsos’s gaze locked with Deering’s. A glance at the two of them said there was something very wrong.
“Look,” she said. “How can you sit by while this war escalates from burning trees to threatening the men that fight it?”
Karrabotsos shifted his eyes back to hers for a long speculative moment.
Finally, he turned back to Deering. “You understand that I don’t want to do this,” he said, “but if we’re going to save that man’s life, you’ll have to fly.”
Although it had been less than thirty minutes since Clare had been in the high valley on Bighorn Peak, everything looked different.
Where the Beech had swept over at one hundred ten miles per hour, Deering maneuvered the chopper more slowly. Despite Sherry’s repeated attempts to raise Randy on the radio, they had not established communication since landing in West Yellowstone.
“Where?” Deering asked through their headsets. The wind’s rising fury made the Huey shudder and dance.
Sherry peered through the rear window, her cupped hands against the glass. “Can’t see them.”
The pink and yellow streamers they’d dropped to test the wind had threaded through the tops of the pines. Clare caught a flash of blue below and realized that it was either Randy or Hudson’s helmet. “There they are.”
“I’ll let you off in that clearing.” Deering pointed to the landing place where the cargo boxes lay. On a fifteen-degree slope, the open space was bisected by a dry rocky channel that probably carried snowmelt in spring.
Deering brought them lower. The Huey’s engines whined and the tail rotor chopped small limbs, raising the pungent scent of evergreen.
“It’s okay, ladies,” he said calmly. “Just making a little lodgepole salad.” When the skids were about three feet from the ground, he directed, “Better hop off here. If I set her down, we’ll never get out.”
Sherry removed her headset and shoved open the rear door. A blast of wind caught Clare in the face where she sat behind Deering. She tried to calm her jitters, comparing jumping out of a hovering helicopter to something she knew. Like working the high ladders or rappelling down a building, one of the exercises she taught at A & M.
On impulse, she touched Deering’s shoulder. Sinew and bone moved fluidly beneath her hand as he controlled the chopper. His eyes stayed forward. “Hang on until I steady her.”
There was no choice here, any more than in Houston when she had to go into a burning building. She tossed her headphones into the rear seat.
Sherry was already out the door, crouching on the skid with one hand around the vertical support. She leaped, landing on the uneven slope in what Clare recognized as the parachutist’s roll. Scrambling to her feet, Sherry held out her arms to catch the folding stretcher Clare tossed.
Hot wind from the rotors beat down. Clare hung on the downhill skid, maybe ten feet above the ground.
More limbs fell from the trees. Rotor wash flattened the grass. She jumped.
The pit of her stomach lifted. Feet first, she hit and collapsed to absorb the shock. Sherry was already heading uphill, her back barely visible through