Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [64]
The Mink Creek spotted ahead as lone trees a hundred yards from the main body candled. In the meadow beside Howell Creek, members of the night shift mingled with the crews that had been rousted from their sleeping bags.
The bullhorn operator got it under control. “Abandon all gear, leave everything except your fire shelters. Proceed to the helipad for immediate evacuation.”
A lone chopper began its runup. Another machine added an urgent scream to the Mink Creek’s rising roar. Clare looked for Deering in the throng.
One chopper rose into the blood red sky, then another.
When Clare arrived at the helipad, she looked for the Huey Deering had flown, but it was not in the cleared space beside the creek. Word spread quickly that the game plan was to ferry all hands two miles downstream to the broad meadow at the confluence of Howell and Mountain Creeks.
“Plenty of time,” someone said, and another, deeper voice replied, “Bullshit, Monahan.”
A Bell 206 Jetranger landed in a wash of wind to take on another load without cutting power to the rotors. Seven people crowded aboard and the Bell was airborne within sixty seconds.
Clare tried not to count the number of persons ahead of her, but as the fire wailed to a screaming crescendo, she found herself murmuring, “Forty-one, forty-two . . . “
“The son-of-a-bitch is not supposed to run downhill.” Clare recognized the speaker as one of the sturdy Apaches she’d treated that afternoon. The white gauze bandage she’d taped high on his cheek was still in place.
She and everyone else knew that heat rises, therefore fire does not burn down a mountain. Unfortunately, this summer’s fires and their microclimates did not understand the laws of nature, or perhaps man’s understanding was faulty.
Clare touched the square pouch slung onto her webbed belt and was not reassured by the compact folds of her fire shelter. The flimsy material reminded her of the space blanket one of her friends had taken to carrying in her car when she moved to Denver. Clare had no more faith in the tissue-thin material keeping someone from freezing than she did in the fire shelter preventing her from roasting alive.
Another chopper came in low, hovered and landed on the flattened grass. With a start, she recognized the green Huey and Deering in the cockpit. He was flying with the cracked Jesus nut, risking the rotors flying off in mid-flight.
Was he ever afraid, Clare wondered? She’d learned in fire that while a healthy dose of fear kept you on your toes, too much was debilitating.
She had avoided watching the advancing fire front. Now, she turned and faced it, feeling the night grow warmer. The Mink Creek no longer looked beautiful. Up close, it bore a thousand brilliant teeth, snapping and biting at the darkness.
It was coming for her. Razor-sharp, it would slice through her flesh like a hot knife.
She looked for Deering, knowing that if he saw her at all, she was a mere face in the waiting crowd.
Coming in for a fourth landing at Howell Creek, Deering held tight to the controls. The Huey took a beating, slewing sideways toward rushing water while he tried to maintain a hover.
He scanned his instruments. Fuel okay, RPM steady, and if the goddamn wind held off. . . Below, the last of the firefighters turned their faces up towards him.
A sudden gust blew him past the LZ, almost into the creek.
Rolling on throttle, he gained airspeed and lifted off again, circling back until he was upwind of the helipad. Quickly, he rolled power to the off position, pushing right pedal to reduce the anti-torque produced by the tail rotor. As the RPM decayed, he increased pitch, lowering the collective so that the Huey sank.
The landing was hard.
Firefighters scrambled aboard.
Deering peered through the windshield at the spike camp.
Outhouse doors beat against their hinges. Loose papers blew along the ground. Above the rotor whine was a sound like a 747 screaming toward takeoff.
There was the tent he and Clare had shared so briefly.