LITMIR.BIZ

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helmet—must be Tammy Sams. Yellow—Johnny Reger. They came from different angles, leaving their squads on the slope. They disappeared into the brush. Three others started after them.

      “Careful,” Jack shouted. He held up a hand. “Don’t kick any rocks loose. Don’t come down directly above ‘em. Stay off to the side.”

      “Spot fire,” Paul Yazzi shouted. He pointed his firefighters at a smoke rising along the log’s line of descent.

      There were others. “Paul, more below you,” Jack shouted.

      Paul pointed firefighters at each of the growing fires. They quickly knocked them down with dirt.

      At the bottom of the hill, a firefighter handed his pulaski to someone in the brush.

      “What’s happening?” Jack shouted.

      “They’ve got it. It’s not going anywhere.”

      Jack took a deep breath and relaxed. For a moment it looked like yesterday all over again.

      At least there was no more talk of Montana.

      For now, anyway.

      He wanted to go home.

      — • —

      A firefighter stopped his truck. There was nothing here to stop the fire but road, and this is where he’d been ordered to start a backfire. Time was of the essence.

      A van with a satellite dish pulled up behind him. A reporter and her cameraman got out of the van. The reporter approached. She’d made her contacts well. She wore a yellow nomex shirt and green nomex pants, the same as the firefighter. She was reminiscent of a war correspondent in fatigues. There was ample smoke to make the coverage compelling.

      “I don’t have time for this,” the firefighter said. Anxiously, he fumbled with his equipment, a Very gun and flares. The backfire had to be set now. He had to have enough brush burnt on this side of the ridgeline to stop the advance of the fire. The road had to hold it. How did this reporter get in here?

      The reporter set the scene for her viewers.

      The firefighter moved away, loading a flare as he did. He stopped and fired. The flare whizzed into the brush. He fired another, and then another.

      The reporter loved it. She directed her cameraman to pan across the scene.

      There was a roar behind her.

      Flames appeared from behind the ridge, rising thirty feet above the brush like a cat pouncing on its prey. Brush burst into flame.

      The firefighter fired off more rounds, dropping them along a line in the brush. The flaming front quickly rolled over them. “Get out of here,” he shouted. He fired another flare into the air. This was his last line of defense and it wasn’t going to hold. He broke into a run.

      The reporter continued talking, but her cameraman turned and followed. She glanced back and froze, stammering as she lost concentration.

      She dropped her microphone and ran.

      CHAPTER 3

      In the end, nature herself took back control of the Gabby Fire. After two weeks of the fire doing pretty much as it pleased, a change in weather crept in overnight and humidity quickly tamed it. A few hours later, a slow steady rain knocked the life out of it.

      Jack Chastain woke to the sound of rain gently falling on his tent. Relieved, he fell into a deep, restful sleep—until five o’clock, when his alarm clock went off.

      “No! Can’t we sleep?” someone complained groggily from a nearby tent.

      Jack rolled over and turned off the clock, then sat up in his sleeping bag. “Yes, I think so,” he said. “But I can’t.”

      “Think they’ll let us go home?” asked a woman’s voice. It sounded like Cristy Manion, one of the other firefighters from Piedras Coloradas.

      “We’ll see.” For all he knew, they might be sent to another fire in some other distant corner of the county. “I’ll know more when I get back.”

      He took his time about dressing. All he had was the same smelly nomex he’d worn for the past two days. At least he had a rain parka.

      At a little before five thirty, he wandered out into the rain, across camp, though pools of standing water. At the briefing area, crew bosses, division supervisors, engine foremen, the air operations chief and others were assembling in a loose circle around the briefing board. The board was covered with maps streaked with running colors. Jack found a place and waited.

      Precisely at 5:30 a.m., the Incident Commander—a shorter, wiry man in a Forest Service ball cap—emerged from the Planning Section tent and stepped out into the rain. He slipped into the midst of the throng. His words were sparse. “The rains are gonna continue for another two days. We’re demobing most of you, starting this morning.”

      Those words summed it up. This fire was history. The IC turned the briefing over to the Demob Unit Leader, a slightly overweight man who looked not at all familiar, wearing an extremely clean nomex shirt, but none of that affected his credibility—this guy could get them home.

      He stepped to the center of the circle, and looked down at his clipboard. “Okay, we’ve got thirty some-odd crews, twenty-seven engines, four helicopters and overhead. Some of you are going back on the board, cause we’re getting orders from up north. Idaho and Montana. They’ve got new fires.”

      Jack glanced around, catching sight of other eyes nervously doing the same, all except leaders of hotshot crews, who seemed anxious to have someplace to go.

      “But,” the Demob leader said, and halted, knowing everyone hung on his words. He smiled. “Fire season’s winding down everywhere else in the country. Hotshots, we’re shipping you north. The rest of you, we’re sending you home. We’ll post the travel arrangements as we get ‘em made.”

      Those were pretty much the last words anyone really heard.

      Jack walked back to camp and let the others in on the news.

      Most of the crew of twenty slipped back into sleeping bags that smelled of smoke and sweat, while a few grouped together into tents, talking quietly with new buddies from other agencies, testing out fire stories they would likely tell over and over again when they got back home.

      Jack dug into his bag for his toilet kit. He had time for a shower. He needed one. And a shave—his beard was growing itchy.

      He made his way back through camp to the supply unit, where he got a clean change of clothes. Then he headed for the shower trailer.

      A line of firefighters stood waiting. It was not nearly as long as the one he’d given up on the night before. It worked out—he had gotten a little more sleep, and now he might get a little more time to soak.

      When it was his turn to shower, he propped himself against the wall and let the water strip away layers of soot and sweat, and soak his aching muscles as long as his conscience let him. Then he walked naked to the other end of the trailer and found a mirror. He wiped away the condensation. In the instant before it fogged over, something caught his eye. He swiped again. Gray—his beard on the sides of his face. It was gray.

      He tried to laugh. “You’re getting old,” he said aloud. How much had been brought on by everything in the past year? Maybe some, but he wasn’t getting any younger. Thirty something wasn’t old, but he wouldn’t be taking this kind of assignment much longer. It was about time to turn it over to the younger bucks. He would miss it. There was something oddly satisfying about being responsible for nineteen other people, being both their taskmaster and single parent, taking care of them, being there to see them come through when it counted most.

      This might be the last of it. The park superintendent would likely see to that. Joe Morgan seemed less than pleased about letting him leave the park for such an extended period.

      Jack shaved,

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