Hot Point (22 page)

“I'm sorry.” Her voice was the barest whisper over the intercom. “I—”

“Don't!” he cut her off. “Don't you dare apologize for being human, especially when I was the one being a jerk.”

Again, she was silent for a long time. Then she was whispering as if to herself. He could barely hear it over the sound of his own rotors despite the headset. “I don't know. I don't know. I don't—”

“Denise?”

“What?”

“This is not a time to auger in.”

“I'm not even touching your helicopter controls. How could I possibly crash it?”

“On yourself, honey. Beating yourself up isn't going to help.”

“Then what is?”

Well, he'd had to go and put his foot in it. “I don't know either. But,” he cut off her exasperated breath, “maybe working together, we can figure this out. Or at least get closer so you know what the next question is. You game?”

“Hello. Willing to try anything at this point.”

“How about sex?”

“Ehhhhh!” She made the nasal buzzer sound herself. “Illegal topic change. Now help me for real!”

“Promise you won't smack me with your wrench?”

“No promises, Slick. Proceed at your own risk.” But he could hear the smile. A quick glance as he bounced over a low bluff, looking twice its size because of tall trees, confirmed it. It also confirmed that they had this fire on the run. The smoke output was definitely falling off. Another dozen runs by the three choppers and it should be dead. Then there'd be the next one on today's list.

“Okay, twenty questions.” Though he'd wager they'd end up with far more than that. “Any concerns over your ability to do the job?”

* * *

Denise scoffed. “Did you see my dining room?” She could picture the hundreds, even thousands, of hours she'd spent studying there.

“A lot of maintenance manuals on those shelves.”

“Well, if you'd slowed down enough to check the titles—”

“I was more focused on getting you into bed.”

“Do you hear me complaining?” Not for a second. That night of gentle loving still ranked as the best sexual experience of her entire life. One of the best experiences in her life. For in that moment she had discovered a man who thought so much of her, and even more importantly, she'd discovered a woman inside her who could make a man think of her that way.

Back to the topic.

“Those manuals range over the last eighty years of aircraft. It is one of the leading collections outside of a museum; I've spent years building it. And—”

“And you read them a lot. Got the picture, Wrench.” He followed the other Firehawk back out to the Laguna de Warunta. “Hey, I'm staying in sync with her.”

“What? Who?”

“Me. I'm staying in sync with Emily Beale for number of drop runs. That's so cool.”

“Why is that cool?” She squinted at Firehawk Oh-One settling over the lagoon about ten seconds ahead of them, but couldn't see what the excitement was about.

“Why? Because she's the best. Being a six-year stick jockey in the Coast Guard, I know what it means to be a SOAR pilot. Way out of my league, and rumors say she's the best one they ever had.”

“Really?”

“Trust me, Wrench. The amount you drive better than me is nothing in comparison to how far out there a SOAR pilot is. It's like me to a professional Formula One racer. She probably trained more hours in a year than I've yet flown as pilot-in-command in my career.”

“If”—she couldn't resist—“you don't get your hose down sometime soon, she's going to dust your ass.”

“Shit!” Vern hit the control to unreel the siphon hose, but Emily was already pulling aloft. She'd gained thirty seconds on Vern due to his brief inattention.

Now it was Denise's turn to laugh. Sure, there was always someone out there better than you were, even someone as skilled as Vern.

Even someone as skilled as she was.

That was one small piece of her puzzle. If she didn't take the job, the museum would still be okay. Huey had said he had a backup person. There were people who could restore those planes besides her. Maybe not as easily as she could, but they'd get the job done and do it well enough.

She leaned over to kiss Vern on the shoulder.

“What's that for?”

“That's for how much I love you. Ask the next question. It helps.”

* * *

By the time the sunset chased them from the sky, Vern had chipped away some more of the chaff but Denise could feel that they weren't near the core yet.

Could she manage the problems that would come up with the staff?

She'd been promoted to a lead mechanic slot quickly at Sikorsky and hired as chief at MHA because of her reputation for building a cohesive team. She did it by finding skilled people and giving them the room to do their job, exactly as she'd want to have done for her. Even as a teen, Huey had often had her leading a group of volunteer mechanics on a restoration. So, that was a yes.

The pressure?

“Let's see,” she'd answered Vern, “a plane that eventually has to fly three more times in its entire life, from one museum to the next on no fixed schedule. Let's compare that with a helitack chopper, where every six to ten minutes it is out of operation is another thousand gallons that doesn't get to a wildfire. Another home that burns on a bad fire.”

The hours?

“Nine to five. Sunday and Monday off.”

The pay?

“Not like the chief mechanic at an elite outfit like MHA, but enough to live pretty nicely.”

The future?

That one had rocked her back in her seat. When Vern had pushed at her silence, she'd explained the next piece. “Dad is due to retire in about ten years. I'm guessing…he and Huey want to groom me to run the main museum.”

Vern's low whistle of surprise had left her with one thing clear. He didn't doubt for a second that she could do that as well. It was one of the top ten flight museums in the country. If you didn't count the museums maintained by the military forces themselves, it might be the best.

When they'd finished the Río Plátano fire, Mark Henderson had routed them to a lightning-strike fire up in the mountains near El Carbón in the Sierra de Agalta National Park. Steve's drone was there an hour ahead of them and had it well mapped before they arrived.

Being up in the mountains made for an exciting visual change with the steep hills and valleys, though it reminded her too much of Missoula and the memory of blistered paint and half-melted hoses. But this was a much smaller fire, less than a day old from some dry lightning the night before.

Despite the challenge of flying among the hills, Vern had continued with his questions, both persistent and supportive, as they puzzled over her reaction to the job offer.

But he'd never made up that lost thirty seconds.

Something she had reminded him of only every ten minutes or so. He was so much fun to tease. She'd never done that to anyone before.

At one point she considered shedding her safety harness, opening her Nomex jacket, and flashing her breasts at him. Then she couldn't believe that she, Denise Conroy, had been the one to think up such an idea. She didn't do it, of course. Distracting your pilot over a fire in rugged mountains was never a good idea.

On their return, as they approached Palmerola Air Base, the tower was very aggressive about their identification. For over a month, there had been times where no one was even manning the tower and the MHA crew simply flew in, not even bothering with a main runway approach, and landed in their southeast corner with no one caring.

Tonight they were very carefully directed. When they came in to land, a landing officer with twin red-lit batons waved them forward to park in the closest open spot on the base. A half-dozen soldiers circled the perimeter. U.S. soldiers she was glad to see.

“Vern?”

“Don't know. Let's take it slow.”

Apparently the other crews had the same idea. They timed their shutdowns and exits to match when Mark's small plane rolled up and was also directed to a nearby tie-down.

* * *

When Mark clambered down—his daughter running over to visit her mother—he headed over to talk to the soldier who had guided them down.

Vern moved in right beside him. Denise followed immediately on his heels. He wished she'd stayed back with the other women so that… A glance over his shoulder proved how stupid a thought that was with this group of women. They were all gathered close to hear what was going on.

“What's up, Sarge?”

The man eyed Mark strangely. “Some of the guys thought you were ex-military. You fly Desert Storm or something?”

Mark grimaced. “That was a quarter century ago, Sergeant. Do I look that old?”

Vern had to grin. Mark and Emily were probably mid-thirties, which would look ancient to the baby three-striper. But there was no way for the sergeant to answer that one safely. Question was, was he smart enough to know that? Vern bet no.

But apparently the sergeant was as he doubled back to the safety of the initial question. “Unrest in the capital. We're tightening up security.”

“Your boys in the tower?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What assets do you have in the area?” Vern could see Mark was doing a security assessment just as Vern was.

Palmerola was a big, flat strip. A decent horse could jump the perimeter fence; one of the thousands of rusty VW Beetles that seemed to litter the roads here could run the fence down with minimal damage to itself.

The only decent security protocol here was a perimeter guard, which was exactly what the 1-228th was doing.

“Our assets are need-to-know, sir. As you are U.S. civilian contractors, we will do what we can to keep your aircraft inside our secure perimeter. If you remain in your quad block when on base, that will also be inside our patrol perimeter. Beyond that, you don't need to know.”

Vern could see that really ticked off Mark. Himself, he'd had four years at MHA to get used to not having inside access, unlike when in the Coast Guard. It took time for old habits to die. Mark had been out only two years, and he'd been a major. He still came on that way at times, though not many people could shut out a Special Operations Forces major. This time it needed a gentler approach if they wanted insider info. It needed—

Denise stepped forward. “Are we in…danger?” She asked it in such a worried voice that she had to be playacting. She'd nailed the right tone.

The sergeant did the practiced soothing-a-civilian tone. “We're told not, ma'am.” Then he totally softened as he looked down at her. Denise had played the small and cute card. “I've been here a year, ma'am, my commander for three. He says they go through this every now and then. Get all riled up, then nothing happens.”

“Oh, okay.” She clung so pitifully to Vern's arm that he had to look at Mark to not snort with laughter.

Mark's foul expression that Denise's ploy had worked where his own simple question hadn't almost tipped Vern over the edge. He only managed to keep a straight face by pretending this was an official inspection by a commanding officer.

“Are you sure we're okay to go home?” Denise's voice actually quavered, and Vern wanted to pinch her as a warning. The guy wasn't an idiot.

The sergeant nodded to her. Maybe guys always turned into idiots around beautiful females who appeared helpless.

He sure had…except she'd never appeared helpless in his presence.

“And you'll be fine to continue fighting fires,” the sergeant assured her. “We're worried about anyone trying to grab our hardware assets. They don't have a single Black Hawk; there are only a dozen choppers in their whole air force that still work—and all but one are transport birds. Between our Joint Task Force and your three craft, we have an equal number of the toughest helicopters ever built. With thirty troops, fliers, and medicos right here, we'll keep you safe, ma'am.”

The sergeant grimaced as he realized that he'd told Denise exactly what he'd refused to tell Mark. With that he saluted, looked awkward because none of them were soldiers and no one returned a salute, then hurried away to check his team.

When he was gone, Denise looked up at Mark and batted her eyelashes at him. “The power of a pretty face, boss.”

Mark finally shrugged. “It's because he thinks you're twelve, Conroy.”

“It's because he thinks I'm cute.”

Vern slipped his hands around her waist from behind, pulled her back against him, and rested his chin atop her head. “She got you there, Mark. She's way cuter than either of us.”

“Lucky for her with you two ugly mugs.” Jeannie joined the conversation.

“Girls rule.” Carly offered a fist bump to Denise.

Whatever was going on in the capital of Tegucigalpa didn't affect their routine, except for the Joint Task Force maintaining a roving patrol. They didn't fall for Denise's ploys a second time, so information was limited to the daily news from Rosa, none of which seemed relevant beyond the city limits eighty kilometers away.

Denise had felt terribly risqué doing it that one time. She'd never used her sexuality before to get anything. Until Vern, she'd never known she had any sexuality to use. It had worked, but she didn't like the way it had felt afterward. Definitely something she wouldn't be adding to her repertoire.

The next two days were about hard work. Firehawk Oh-One was grounded for scheduled 150-hour maintenance. Every day of flight required a quick inspection before Denise would execute an airworthiness certificate for the next day. Every fifty hours of flight was another level of inspection, and every third one of those included significant work.

Firefighting pushed the choppers to so many in-air hours that she was often doing a major service every two to three weeks on each bird. And with the wear on Oh-One, she'd needed the time to replace a lot of small parts.

The harsh levels of silt in the brown jungle rivers wore at the pumps. The hardwood ash got into everything. Door hinges, siphon hose reels, even the swash plate that controlled the angle of the rotor blades as they spun were showing atypical signs of wear. Thankfully that was still well within service limits. It would be a major job that she'd rather attempt back in the States than under the tropical sun that was no less burning just because the climate was temperate. This near the equator, the sun was up almost exactly twelve hours and passed high overhead.

Vern had bought her a ridiculous floppy-brimmed straw hat that she'd taken to wearing whenever she did daytime service out on the tarmac. At least it was better than the white, straw cowboy hat he'd bought for himself.

“Ahm jes' a Honduran gaucho,” he'd drawl in an Old West accent.

“Y'all are jus' a drip in a straw sunbonnet,” she'd offer back in her best Southern belle.

By the time Oh-One was back aloft, she took Oh-Two out of service for a day.

Because she'd been at the base for three days, she'd been able to see the relaxing of airport security. The roving patrol went from a half dozen to four to one guard moseying along the perimeter with his M-16 slung over his shoulder and looking bored to tears.

The sergeant came over to her as she was signing off on the final airworthiness certificate for Oh-Two.

“It does seem to have gone quiet with no fuss this time, ma'am. We're standing down to normal security after today. Thought you'd want to know, ma'am.”

“Denise.”

“Yes, ma'am.” His smile was friendly and said that he wouldn't be relaxing his formality.

After he left, she had to wonder. Had Vern been as stiff and formal as this sergeant, or even Mark, when he was in the service? She expected they both were. If Vern had excelled in the Coast Guard, he'd probably had to be Mister Soldier in addition to being an exceptional flier. Why hadn't she ever asked him?

Well, they'd be aloft again tomorrow. Time enough then.

* * *

Vern came to in his chopper when the first stab of sunlight cleared the horizon and punched him in the face right through the windscreen. At least that's what it felt like as he fumbled around for his sunglasses and pulled them on. The routine had become so grinding that he was functioning on semiconscious autopilot, which was a really bad place to be when flying a five-ton Firehawk against fires.

He double-checked. At least he hadn't tried to take off in his sleep. Everything looked shipshape. He toggled the display and saw that he'd logged the preflight. His hand was on the starter switch for the APU, so he toggled it.

He'd gone to bed with Denise last night, too exhausted to do more than curl against her. Being one chopper short for three straight days had really pushed him. Rather than trading off midday, they'd decided to let the pilot of each grounded bird get a real break while their chopper was in maintenance.

But Oh-Three hadn't been pulled out of rotation yet, and he could really feel it. It wasn't that restful anyway, since Denise recruited the hands of anyone foolish enough to be caught on the ground to help her with the major maintenance tasks.

Now, he was halfway through his startup cycle and not quite sure how he'd gotten here. As soon as the engines caught and he could shut down the APU, he grabbed his steel travel mug with one hand while nursing the throttle with the other and knocked back a slug of scalding caffeine. That was one of the true blessings of this assignment. Honduras's worst coffee was at least equal to America's best.

The group's
ama
always made sure there was a large pot of it waiting fresh for them each morning, and he always blessed her for it.

The part that confirmed everything was okay was that Denise sat once again in the seat beside him.

Life was good.

“Missed you.” He really had. After three days gone, it was like she'd done a leprechaun trick and suddenly reappeared. If he'd been more awake, he'd have asked where his pot of gold was.

Then the sun caught her hair and he knew. But he wasn't awake enough to make the compliment come out right even in his head, so he kept his mouth shut.

The chopper had felt empty, wrong without her beside him. He was beyond gone; she was a part of him now, and he didn't know how he'd survive if they went their separate ways. But he wasn't going to drop a payload like that on her until she'd made up her mind about the job.

“Right. You missed me.” Denise's tone was droll. She'd developed a sense of humor that, while still as gentle and sweet as the woman, snuck out now and then as if she were patting him ever so gently on the head. “I haven't seen you since we woke up together just this morning. No wait, since breakfast. No wait, was it when we walked here from the apartment? Or was it when I preflighted the bird because you were still out on your feet?”

“I've had breakfast? Oh well. As long as I didn't miss any wake-up sex.” The coffee must be kicking in. “Did I?”

“I don't think either of us was awake enough for that.”

“That's not right!” He keyed the mic and called Mark's frequency. “Boss. We need a break soon. I was too tired for wake-up sex this morning.” Uh! Had he really transmitted that?

Denise squeaked with embarrassment from her seat.

“Try having a kid,” Mark replied, “and then file your complaint. Though you have a point. We do need a break. I'll work on it.”

“Do that,” Vern answered lamely as Mark's words finally sank in.

A kid with Denise.

Vern's thoughts hadn't wandered down that particular road yet. Wow! That was a whole other variable. A pregnant Denise was an image to really take his breath away. He was definitely wide awake now.

He was also careful not to look at Denise as he checked that the engines were up to operating temperature and took them aloft to face the next fire. No point in asking for clearance; the control tower was again unmanned.

“Not going to happen, Vern, so don't even think about it.”

“What?” He tried to sound innocent, but her mind-reading trick was working as flawlessly as usual. He turned northeast toward PANACOMA, Parque Nacional Montaña de Comayagua. That's where today's first fire was. It wasn't going to take much to find it. The smoke plume rising fifteen miles away was visible as soon as they were clear of the local buildings. This wasn't a small one. The plume was already dark and thick. Even at this distance, he could see the orange brightness of wildfire at the base.

“Kids. I'm never going to have one.”

“Why not?” Something medical maybe. Kids and marriage, two topics to approach very carefully with any woman.

“I'm just not.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. Can you imagine me with a kid?”

“Yes!” It was out before he could stop himself. He shouldn't have been so emphatic, but she'd make a great mom. “Two, one of each.”

“No way!”

He really needed to learn to keep his mouth shut.

“No, Vern. Just no!”

Okay, keeping his mouth shut wasn't working well either.

He'd started the morning with a full load of water, so he followed Emily and Jeannie toward the blaze. This was going to be a real headache of a day. Water sources were down around five-hundred-meters elevation, but the fire was up over two thousand meters—seven thousand feet. At that elevation, a helicopter carried a much smaller load than it did down in the sea-level lowlands like the Reserva Plátano. And the transition up and down—from fire to water and back—meant they were going to spend the whole day trying to keep their ears clear as the pressure changed every five minutes down to water and five minutes later back above the ridgelines.

“You still haven't said why you don't want kids? Hang on.”

Steve's drone took the lead per the new Mountain Protocol they'd developed after Missoula and perfected here in Honduras. It swept in well ahead of them so that Steve could report if they had downdrafts and temperature anomalies indicative of a pending blow-up or a cold-air rotor. Now they consistently had a much better idea of what they were flying into.

His report was negative so far, and the drone passed through clean.

Following the twisting line of water dumped by Emily, Vern and Jeannie came in close behind. Three thousand gallons of water and foam didn't do more than irritate the blaze.

They dove into the valleys seeking a water source. The rivers here were buried in steep canyons guarded by trees so big they often grew right across the river, hiding its track entirely.

Emily found a dipping point near the hamlet of Río Negro along an exposed bend in the river of the same name. Jeannie found a cattle pond on the far side of the town, and Vern was stuck waiting. There weren't any other open spaces. He spun a quick circle of a couple miles to prove it to himself and then ducked down to the river as soon as Emily was clear.

It was a narrow hole in the trees, three rotors across and fifty feet down. He focused on staying dead-center in the hole as he went down.

“Crap, Vern!” Denise was cringing in her seat. He'd forgotten how much he enjoyed their talks and banter as he flew. “You can't be serious. There's no room in here.”

“Why no kids?” Vern asked to distract himself and hit the pumps as soon as he could. It wasn't quite a panic spot, but he'd have to stay dead stable for the entire exhausting day.

She didn't answer until he was loaded and had cleared the hole. “Are you serious?”

“Wouldn't ask if I wasn't interested.”

“I mean
that
.” Denise pointed back to the hole in the forest where they'd been.

“I might check out Jeannie's pond next. See how much it upsets the locals.”

Denise was quiet a while—long enough for him to pop his ears a few times, hit the blaze where Mark said, and descend back down for more water.

“My mom.” Her voice was soft over the intercom. “I know it wasn't as if she planned it, but I never want to have a child who could lose her mother like that.”

“Like you did?”

“Like I did.”

Jeannie's pond was about five rotors clear, which was an improvement. It had a feed from the river, so they wouldn't pull it dry. As he hovered there for the forty seconds it took his tanks to fill, he was barely two rotors from a small farm. A half-dozen cattle were up against the fence line looking very unhappy at all of the noise he was making. And the farmer looked even more so. They stared at each other—one man opening a fence made of hand-split rails and herding his cattle through with a wooden staff, the other man sitting in the cockpit of a twenty-million-dollar machine of war converted into a firefighting helicopter.

Vern tried to imagine a whole life bounded by this pasture, this line of fence, and the small house beyond. And what of the woman who shared his life? And the children.

“I think you're cutting yourself off, Denise. Look at Mark and Emily. Can you imagine what their life would be like without Tessa? They're both so damn serious except when their daughter is with them. Then they totally unwind.”

“You want children?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Why?”

He risked a glance over at her, but she was serious. He waited to answer until he'd hit the business end of the blaze. It was working its way downslope under a steady easterly wind that was sweeping over the ridge and pushing down on the fire. Driving it toward the hamlet far below. If it got too much closer, they'd have to evacuate the farmer and his family. There wouldn't be time to save his cows.

Vern spun downslope, powering the chopper's descent down.

“Is it to carry on your name?” Denise's prompted.

“No. It doesn't even have to be my own blood. We're good people, aren't we?”

“Sure,” she agreed.

“No, I really mean this.” He'd given it a lot of thought. “Whether it's with each other or someone else, we have a chance to pass on so much. Look at the things your parents passed on to you. I mean, look at you. You're flying over central Honduras as chief mechanic of one of the best firefighting outfits on the planet. And you have an amazing
second
job offer even though you already have a job, in case you were doubting yourself. That's not genetic. Or not only genetic. You did that. But not without your mom and dad, no matter how short a time she was around.”

* * *

Denise didn't like the feeling of being lectured. She liked even less that Vern was right.

At least he wasn't cocky about it. Again, Vern was only what he showed, no Jasper gamesmanship. Instead, he continued to work them up and down the ridge as smoothly as if born to it.