Hot Point (5 page)

Okay, maybe he was feeling excessively cheerful. He spotted Emily's Firehawk pulling off the leading edge of the fire. Any question that it might be Jeannie was removed by the transponder code showing up on his radar sweep and the large “01” painted on the side of the chopper. He turned to head toward it.

Ten thousand acres of scrubland had been scorched black by the fast-moving fire. Yesterday had been mostly about steering the flames away from homes and farmland. Today was about killing it before it hit the fuel-rich rugged hills of the Ochoco National Forest.

Mark and Carly had decided that water and foam were needed at the moment rather than retardant. That decision was their job.

It was Vern's job to bring it, hard.

The flames had scorched most of the fuel out of the black. The fire looked like a fat, orange snake sliding sideways across the landscape: achingly dry dun-colored grass and brush to the left side, black sear to the right. The evil serpent spat a dark sheet of smoke aloft as it ate.

Vern approached over the black, away from the smoke. The black wasn't uniform. There were patches of green that the fire had left untouched and others that still burned orange where it had struck some fuel-rich pocket. Even as he spotted one, Vanessa—the newest MHA pilot—flew at it in Vern's old MD500. She doused the flare-up with two hundred gallons from the bright orange Bambi bucket that dangled on a long line below her bird and snuffed it out.

He double-checked. A good enough drop. If she'd hit it another dozen feet to the left, she'd have killed the whole thing. She'd learn. It took a lot of practice to nail a fire with a giant bucket swinging on a line a hundred feet below your chopper.

Vern returned his focus to the problem at hand and came down low, a mere hundred feet above the flames. Unlike a forest fire, scrubland didn't typically create massive and dangerous downdrafts, and despite how much it was eating, this fire hadn't done anything nightmarish. So it was safe to come in reasonably low and really pound the fire. And his beautiful Firehawk had a belly tank rather than the bucket and line. Which meant he got to fight fire up close and personal.

Emily had soaked the leading edge of the fire, temporarily freezing it in its tracks. He felt it, felt that moment for the first time in the Firehawk when he simply knew that he was dead-on over the heart of the flame. He triggered the dump doors on the belly tank and followed the smoke line, just enough upwind of the flame that his load of water and foam would land directly on the most active heart of the fire—and that his air conditioner wouldn't suck in lungfuls of smoke. The foam expanded the water's volume by a factor of ten and slapped the fire down hard.

“Nice,” Mark offered.

Coming from a man who rarely gave compliments, that told Vern he was really getting the hang of the larger craft. If both of his hands weren't busy on the controls, he'd do a fist pump. Of course, with Mark, he might get another compliment six months from now if he was lucky.

“Now put some hustle on it this time.”

So much for the honeymoon period. “Yes, sir!”

He managed not to giggle into the mic. Grown men didn't giggle, even if they were busy trashing a wildfire with a sweet twenty-million-dollar machine…and getting paid to do it. He turned for the reservoir to reload.

Of course breakfast this morning had given him some reason to at least chortle. It had been him and Denise and no one else. By chance in the ever-changing swirl of groups at MHA, there had only been the two of them at their table for a whole meal.

They'd talked of nothing much, mostly about the Firehawk, and he'd enjoyed every damn second. She was so… That's where words failed him. The woman with steel barricades hadn't been anywhere in sight. He had flown the machines she maintained for a year plus, and he'd never before met the woman behind those towering walls she kept raised against the world.

He really couldn't recall much of what she'd said; a lot of it had been awfully technical, and his coffee had been slow to kick in. But he'd enjoyed listening to her and had done his best to ask at least quasi-intelligent questions.

Vern bumped his cyclic side to side to rock the helicopter in a wave as he passed Jeannie returning fully loaded from the reservoir and headed back to the fire.

This time he remembered to lower the siphon over the shining water as he arrived so that it was fully extended by the time he hit his hover height. Another ten seconds shaved off each run. He popped on the pump switch and again sang the hundreds of gallons aboard.

* * *

Denise couldn't breathe right until she saw all seven of the choppers come back over the horizon in the late-afternoon light. No long trails of dark smoke like yesterday.

Oh-Three was at the tail end again; she could tell by how Vern flew. Emily Beale flew the straight-arrow course, not a single wasted motion. Jeannie's bird always wandered a bit across the sky, as if she were reaching out to feel every little air current with her rotors.

Vern must be rock ‘n' roll beatboxing to get that odd bob and weave in his path. It was subtle; had he been flying alone she wouldn't have seen it. But with Emily's razor-edge straight flight for comparison, you could see his funky pulse of rhythm as he came in for a landing.

Beatboxing or an issue with the controls? She went to Firehawk Oh-Three the instant the wheels touched, before he had a chance to even shut down the engines.

“Everything okay?”

“Give a guy a break, Wrench. I'm not dumb enough to break your bird two days in a row. I don't have a death wish.”

It wasn't until he was aloft this morning that she realized he'd barely said a word over breakfast. She'd babbled at him about the differences she could see in the three Firehawks. The Black Hawk might be a production machine—the most produced medium-lift helicopter other than the Russian Mil Mi-8—but Emily's bird was ten years older than the other two and improvements had been made. Denise had spent breakfast processing aloud which upgrades were sufficiently worthwhile improvements to implement on the older craft.

Dull
as
dust.
That was her. If she ever wanted to impress a guy, she'd proven exactly how
not
to do it.

She'd learned early on never to talk about her work with Jasper. Whereas this morning over eggs and toast, Vern
had
kept after her with questions that forced her to clarify her own thinking on several points. The synergy between them had left both her mind and her body buzzing throughout the day.

“We beat the fire”—Vern stepped down—“which is a good thing.”

“A very good thing.” Denise hadn't ever noticed quite how tall he was.

He was six one to her five feet four, which meant the top of her head would just about tuck under his chin.

Dumb-as-a-thumb!
She was so dull and dumb that it was a shock he was even speaking to her. She covered her own stupid thoughts by finding something to say. “It's a very good thing because you're probably going to be in it tomorrow.”

“Really?”

She nodded downfield. It only took him a moment to notice that both of the DC-3 jump planes were gone.

“Where?”

“They jumped in Lolo National Forest about an hour ago.”

“Ouch! Rugged Montana wilderness. Where are the Zulies?” Lolo was the Missoula Smokejumpers' home turf. They were considered the top team out there. Even the MHA jumpers gave the Zulies respect, at least in their less-arrogant moments.

“The entire team jumped California yesterday, the Hard Creek Fire.”

“Double ouch for them!”

“Yeah, I know. That's already a really bad fire headed right into Pasadena. You know some of those homes up in the Wildland-Urban Interface are going to burn, and the firefighters are going to be blamed. It's a real no-win scenario. But we're off the hook for tonight because it's too late for our choppers to be on the move, especially after a full day on a fire.”

“Well”—Vern patted the nose of Oh-Three—“at least I know we'll be ready. You were flawless.”

Denise could feel herself wanting to smile at the compliment. Vern made it clear that he meant her, even if it was the helicopter he was anthropomorphizing.

“If we're headed into the boonies, we should enjoy civilization tonight. Want to get dinner in town?”

“Sure.” Denise wasn't clear on which of them was more surprised, Vern that he had asked or herself that she'd accepted. “I”—
really
need
to
cover
my
embarrassment
—“need to check over the choppers first. In an hour?”

Vern nodded too quickly. “I'll catch a shower. Take all the time you need.”

Her team kicked through the full inspection of the machines in under thirty minutes. Then she faced the question of whether or not to freshen up or dress up or…

She really didn't have any options. Unlike many of the MHA Hoodies, she'd gotten an apartment down near the base of the mountain. Vern lived on-site, sharing a bunkroom with Mickey.

Denise didn't even have a change of clothes in the car. She'd switched out her canvas work vest and tool belt for her leather vest. She'd managed to get several streaks of lube grease on her jeans. At least her T-shirt was clean, except for the small hole over her ribs where she snagged a sharp edge while crawling under Firehawk Oh-Two's belly tank to inspect the cargo hook. At least her vest should cover that. Mostly.

Well, she was already in over her head, so there was no help for it.

Vern was waiting at one of the picnic tables. He sat backward on the bench, leaning against the table, his legs stretching out forever to rest on the bench of the next table over. His short hair was still slick from his shower, curling a little as it dried. He was so lost in his book that he didn't even notice her until she shadowed the pages.

“What are you reading?”

* * *

Vern didn't have a clue what he was reading, so he turned the book cover to Denise in answer. He'd been surreptitiously watching her across the field—had purposely sat so that he would appear to be reading from behind his sunglasses but had a good field of view.

Despite the time he'd had to sit here, he still couldn't figure out quite how he'd asked MHA's chief mechanic to dinner or what to do about it now that she'd said yes. Still, he'd enjoyed studying her while pretending to read.

He'd actually been irritated when people kept stopping to ask if he was coming down to the Doghouse for a drink. Bruce had completely blocked his view across the field and almost received a boot in the butt for it. Finally the others had cleared out or sacked out—tomorrow would be an early day.

The numbers had dwindled until it was Vern on one side of the field, Denise and her service crew on the other. There were still a few strays. He heard a couple voices behind him, people sitting at one of the other tables or headed out to the parking lot. He'd ignored them all and watched Denise work.

She inspected the three Firehawks and Mark Henderson's Beechcraft herself before checking in with her two assistants on the other four choppers. Moving no faster, she'd covered twice the ground Malcolm and Brenna had—on far more complex aircraft. And he'd wager that her inspection had been more thorough than theirs.

He'd noticed a pattern. She did each one exactly the same way, as if she'd found the most efficient path and then followed it precisely. He was half tempted to follow her around and see if she placed each foot in the same spot as she inspected successive aircraft.

Vern had maintained some idea of the book he was reading until she finished, set down that damn sexy tool belt that hung across her hips like a gunslinger's rig, and came stalking toward him across the field. She wore jeans and work boots, a tight, red T-shirt from last year's Grindstone Canyon Fire, and a worn leather vest, unclasped in the front and soft with age, that tantalized the eye as it swung open and closed.

Even now it swung open and revealed a tiny tear in the T-shirt over her lower ribs. It was just big enough to expose a fingertip-sized spot of skin. He was thankful when the vest flapped closed over the distraction.

The vision that was Denise Conroy had totally shorted out his brain. Though he wouldn't be mentioning that to the lady standing before him; she might pull out an electrical meter and a wrench and go rooting around for the cause of the cerebral malfunction. He already knew what that was.

When Denise walked, it was as forthright and efficient as everything she did, but her body belied her intent. He'd wager that she thought she was striding purposefully across the field to get from point A to point B.

Her hips knew better.

They belonged to a shapely woman as they swung slightly side to side and her hair billowed along after her, dancing and twisting in the wind like a smokejumper's crepe-paper streamer tossed out of a jump plane to test the air currents.

“Conrad?”

“Who?”

She pointed at his book. “You're reading Joseph Conrad.”

He looked at the cover, Conrad's
Typhoon
. “It's Dad's fault. Don't blame me. I was trying to pick up my Catwoman comics and got Conrad by accident. The big letter
C
on the cover fooled me. I did think the plot was kind of heavy going. You see, Dad's a sailor, runs a small marina on Vashon Island in Washington. He's a terrible influence.”
And
you're a babbling idiot, Vern
Taylor.

“Vashon?”

He couldn't read what was behind the question. Surprise? A smile? A joke? She didn't explain herself, but instead nodded toward the parking lot, asking if he was ready to go. Again, maximum efficiency of motion.

He rose to his feet, tucked the thin paperback in his back pocket, and ended up standing mere inches from her, as close as they'd been last night. So close he'd almost grabbed her and kissed the living daylights out of her, and damn the consequences.