Summer of Fire Part 33

"I'm afraid that this morning your buddy from Houston, Javier Fuentes, heard about the search. He called in to say he saw a blonde with curly hair beside a helicopter, talking to the pilot."

"Oh, G.o.d."

Steve's hand tightened.

"Fuentes thought it might be Devon. This was during the height of the firestorm."

Clare opened her mouth to say that there were a lot of blondes, but Javier knew Devon. A pit of cold fear opened in her chest.

"The smoke is pretty thick this morning," Garrett said. "They'll be starting the air search as soon as they can."

Demetrios Karrabotsos led Clare and Steve across the tarmac at West Yellowstone Airport. Tankers and helicopters were lined up at the ready, their crews standing in groups killing time with fire gossip. Karrabotsos scanned the gray sky. "This temperature inversion should clear in another half hour."

He sipped from a Styrofoam cup, grimaced, and tossed the last inch of coffee onto a wild rosebush edging the airport ramp. "Fresh caffeine, my treat." He headed toward the crowded catering tent.

Ever since Garrett had suggested Devon was with Deering, Clare had been dwelling on what he'd said last night. Deering had been called to the scene of a fire, where people were supposed to have been trapped. Why had hikers even been permitted into the backcountry?

The orange juice she selected, in a plastic cup with foil top, tasted sour.

She tried to focus on Steve and Karrabotsos's small talk, but her mind spun scenarios.

Deering and Devon had crashed in a fireball of aviation fuel. They'd lost power and come down in the burning forest. They had landed, thinking they saw the hikers, and been overtaken by fire on the ground like Steve and his fellow scientists had nearly been.

How she wished Devon had left the park on one of those buses and was somewhere in Montana.

Karrabotsos evidently knew the dangers of fire. Those scars on his face bore the slick look of burns. Realizing she'd been caught looking at them, she averted her eyes.

"Vietnam," he said. "Chopper crash."

"And you still fly."

Black eyes fixed her with a look of disbelief. "You can't let something like that scare you off."

Thinking of her own experience in losing faith, she was fiercely glad she'd fought the firestorm at Old Faithful. Having done that, she still wasn't sure she could return to the station in Houston. Being out there in the parking lot was far different from fighting fire in close quarters. What if someone who trusted her to watch his or her back ended up in a tight spot? Could she be sure she'd act without thinking to save them?

Karrabotsos cast another look at the brightening sky. "May as well start my preflight."

Clare imagined the Huey disappearing into the haze. She'd sit around the airport with Steve and drink endless cups of black bitter coffee, wondering what was happening to Deering and Devon.

She set her jaw. "I'm going with you."

Steve swallowed and looked across the ramp at the helicopter Karrabotsos planned to take. Another Huey like the one Deering had flown. Just the sight of it started a griping in his gut.

He admired how the tough part of Clare continued to a.s.sert itself even as she warred within over her friend Frank and the young soldier Billy Jakes. She could handle this while he stayed behind.

The way she spoke to Karrabotsos and did not even turn to him said she couldn't imagine him willingly getting aboard the helicopter. Competent pilots would accomplish the search and Steve couldn't bring anything to the party.

Competent? Clare thought Deering was a good pilot and he'd crashed twice. Craggy veteran Karrabotsos must believe the same for he'd hired him. h.e.l.l, the older man had been burned in a crash, yet he was one of the most respected in the air charter business. Even after going down, he thought the idea of being deterred by it preposterous.

Steve tried to deep breathe, but the sensations he'd felt on this tarmac back in July surged up. Heart pounding, sweating palms, and a fierce anger that he had to fly, although it had been his decision. Again, on Mount Washburn when he'd flown on Black Sat.u.r.day to save his place in Yellowstone. He'd had to grab a barf bag for the same nausea that gripped him now.

Deering and Karrabotsos might keep getting back in the air, but Steve couldn't do it.

Clare put a hand on his arm. Her amber eyes were steady and without blame. "You wait for us."

He didn't deserve her. How could he spend a night like the one they'd shared and not stay by her side for this? If, G.o.d forbid, Devon was hurt or . . .

Clare might end up the first responder on an unimaginable scene.

In the deepest part of night, he'd held her to him and wanted more. At the first sign of dawn, he'd made a promise that she would not face this alone.

Hadn't he coached her to get back to fighting fires?

Hadn't she challenged him to embrace life again?

He stared hard at the helicopter. "I'm going too."

Clare looked out the Huey's left front window at the park's staggering beauty. Despite the nearby ravaging by fire, the unburned banks of the Madison teemed with game. In a few minutes Old Faithful pa.s.sed beneath, the jumping off point for the search.

In the pilot's seat, Karrabotsos turned his helmeted head from side to side, scanning. Steve sat in the rear seat with a hand on Clare's shoulder. She wasn't sure if he offered support or was holding on because of his own uncertainty.

Yellowstone Lake reflected the gray sky. There was the scorched sh.o.r.e between Grant Village and West Thumb where she'd found Steve. His hand tightened as they flew over.

The mosaic of burns slid past beneath the aircraft, a grim reminder of the fire reported on Nez Perce when Deering flew out. If they found the wreck of a chopper, would she have the strength to go in as a medic, checking for survivors when it might be Devon lying bleeding and battered?

Or worse.

The Absaroka Range rose before the chopper's winds.h.i.+eld, mocking her with its remoteness. No rapid Life Flight to the Houston Medical Center. No world-cla.s.s trauma ER ready to receive.

From behind Clare, Steve pointed out the gra.s.sy meadows alongside meandering Pelican Creek. Just downstream, the waterway joined the broad expanse of Yellowstone Lake. "Those flats down there are prime grizzly habitat," he told her through the headphones.

It was a good front and she suspected how much it cost him.

"I'm glad you came." She raised her hand to his and squeezed.

Karrabotsos flew east. He talked on the radio with the other pilots helping in the search.

They swept up over a low, treed pa.s.s and into what Steve pointed out as the Lamar River Valley. "The Nez Perce camped in the widest meadow where two rivers come together. Plenty of pasture for their horses." Half hidden by haze, the valley might have been a pleasant place, except where the Clover-Mist Fire had left it blackened.

They lost alt.i.tude and the valley came into sharper focus. There was no sign of a helicopter on the open ground.

Ahead, a ma.s.sive peak loomed. Its crest was sharp, with great spines of dark rock sticking out from the summit like stiff fingers. "Nez Perce," said Steve. The west slope of chock-a-block boulders must have been where Laura Sutton wrote of spending a cold and uneasy night. Her journal remained in Clare's room at the Stagecoach.

They flew nearer and Karrabotsos studied the terrain. "I don't see anyplace a helicopter could land." The jumble of great, dark rock looked even more treacherous up close.

Clare's stomach swooped as the Huey banked and flew along Nez Perce's deeply forested east flank. It was here that the Clover-Mist, the largest fire in the park, actively cut a swath through the trees. Smoke roiled up from the flame front.

"See that?" Steve pointed above the fire near the ridge crest. "The way the trees there are not quite as tall?" There was at least five feet of difference in the trees' height, along a curving line up a ravine. "There was a forest fire here in 1900," he went on. "Looks like it's going to burn again."

My G.o.d, that was where Laura Sutton had been trapped with fire sweeping up toward her. The pilot flew low enough that the ridge crest was above them. "It looks to me as if Deering isn't here," he said.

Outside, the haze grew thicker.

"I'd like to look around a wider area," Karrabotsos suggested.

Clare felt as though bands squeezed her chest, keeping her breathing shallow. She tried a deeper inhalation, but had to force it. They flew north toward the rocky summit of Saddle Mountain, barely visible through the smoke.

Karrabotsos radioed Johnny Arvela of Eagle Air. "What's the vis up your way?"

"No good," Johnny's voice came over the air. "I'm gonna have to set down at Cooke City and hope the fire doesn't come through town. They almost lost Silver Gate yesterday and they're not in the clear yet."

"I don't like the looks of this here," Karrabotsos replied.

The bands became a vice as Clare watched a gray blanket of smoke swallow the Lamar Valley. The altimeter read ten thousand and this part of the park was studded with peaks between ten and eleven thousand feet.

Karrabotsos began to climb, ten-three, then ten-five. Steve's damp hand pressed her shoulder and she placed hers over it again.

"Two choices," the pilot said. "Find a safe place to set down or go up to twelve thousand and fly on instruments back toward West Yellowstone."

"What about other planes or helicopters?" Clare asked. "How will you avoid them?"

He did not answer.

Steve swallowed, the sound audible in the headphones. "Your call, Clare."

There way no way she wanted to try for West Yellowstone, not if they could get safely on the ground. She knew that Steve felt the same and her heart swelled at his sacrifice.

It was a foolish long shot, but if they set down, maybe they could still look for Devon and Deering. Trying to tamp down anxiety and sound matter-of-fact, she said, "The summit on Nez Perce looked pretty smooth."

Karrabotsos banked sharply and headed back south. Clare strained to see the peak through the thick air. If they crashed, would there be two choppers down on the same mountain?

She turned in her seat and met Steve's eyes. "I'm sorry I got you into this."

The apprehension in his expression mixed with determination. He pointed over her shoulder. "There's the mountain."

Clare tried to relax her tensed hands when she saw that the crest of Nez Perce had broken through the murk.

Karrabotsos's calm exterior remained unchanging as he radioed his intent to West Yellowstone. He brought them in carefully against the wind sweeping the bare promontory. Rotor wash threw up reddish dust and rolled gravel away from their landing.

When the skids touched, every muscle in Clare's body was as taut as piano wire. Behind her, Steve sighed and she tried to exhale her own tension.

Outside, drifting white eddies resembled a damp mist. For a moment, she thought she saw a darker patch of smoke down along the north ridge, but before she could point it out, she lost sight of it in the haze. That didn't make sense, anyway, for the Clover-Mist was burning on the mountain's forested east flank.

The rotors wound down and finally stopped.

"Gonna stretch my back." Clare opened the door and got out onto the dark reddish gravel. The wind hit her full on, plucking up dust plumes from the tundra-like surface and whipping them away. Steve climbed down from the rear seat, groaning when he put his full weight on his right leg. She saw that he tried to move fluidly as if the last thing he wanted was sympathy. Karrabotsos opened the chopper door, but remained inside talking on the radio.

The smoke thinned and Clare caught another glimpse of what looked like a spot fire along the ridge. It didn't look right though, for the smoke was inky black.

"Down there," Steve said. "Looks like . . ." He stopped and she figured he didn't want to suggest it might be a fire set from the Huey's fuel.

"Yes, it does." She turned back to the chopper. "First aid?" She must have been brain-dead this morning, for she should have gone to the Smokejumpers Base and gotten a trauma kit.

Karrabotsos nodded at a metal box behind the rear seat. She unclipped it from the bulkhead and despaired for what it contained; gauze, tape, a few aspirin, and a useless cold remedy.

"Wait for me," Steve said.

She started down the ridge and quickly outstripped his pace. When she glanced back Karrabotsos was following, moving even slower as he favored the foot he'd broken earlier in the summer.

Clare headed for the spiny promontory, placing her feet with care on the loose volcanic gravel. The mountaintop resembled a cinder cone like Sunset Crater in Arizona where she'd also found the downhill easy. Coming back, it would be a step up and a slide down.

Surrounded by murk, she moved down into a zone of stunted, wind-ravaged trees surrounded by waist high brush and thick gra.s.ses. From down the east slope below treeline came the resinous smell of a fresh burn, and she heard the dull roar of the Clover-Mist.

Over the sound, there might have been a faint cry.

Clare stopped to listen, but it was not repeated. She swallowed around a parched patch in the back of her throat.

She climbed down farther onto hard rock that formed crooked stair steps. Out onto the ridge now with a drop off on either side, she picked her way with exquisite care. Drawing closer to the black pillar, it became clearly distinct from the wildfire below. The premonition that it was the smoking remains of a crash site grew stronger while the bands around her chest threatened to snap her in two.

From above and behind, Steve's voice came to her. "Clare, wait for us."

She knew he meant to spare her being first on the scene, but that was no good. If there was anything to be done, she needed to be there. Once more, she bargained in vain for a well-equipped trauma kit to fall out of the sky. Cooling gel for burns, an air splint for fractures . . .

She caught a glimpse of something in the trees below the ridge crest and she wasn't ready. G.o.d, don't let it be them. No, let it be them.

Her heart leaped. The twisted wreckage of rotor blades was unmistakable.

She wished she could turn away from this, to let Steve or Karrabotsos take the lead and have the first knowledge.

Then she went still inside. A firefighter approaching a scene, she went into the minute-by-minute mode that people described from accidents. Evaluating, calculating.

The ruined chopper hung tangled in the trees. Not burning. The fire had clearly been set atop the rocky ridge, a pile of green pine boughs and seat cus.h.i.+ons from the helicopter.

They weren't dead, then.

She broke into a run, heedless of the treacherous footing. She cupped her hands and shouted. "Deering!"

That cry she'd heard before, only faintly, came again.

She lost her balance and nearly went off the side. As she clung to the sharp rock, her palms sc.r.a.ped with white patches turned pink with seeping blood. A wave of nausea welled.

Breathe, breathe.

When she straightened, there was movement below. It resolved into Deering as he climbed out onto the ridge crest wearing his flight suit. He stood at a respectful distance from the fire and waved both arms over his head.

She made it the rest of the way and he grabbed her in a bear hug.

"You're okay?" she asked.