Once again L.B. stuck his head out the door, scanning, studying the hills, the rise of trees, the roiling walls of flame.

“Get ready!”

When the slap came down on his shoulder, Gull propelled himself out. The world tipped and turned, earth, sky, fire, smoke, as he took a ninety-mile-an-hour dive. Greens, blues, red, black tumbled around him in a filmy blur while he counted in his head. The sounds—a roaring growl—amazed. The wind knocked him sideways, clawed him into a spin while he used strength, will, training to revolve until he was head up, feet down, stabilized by the drogue.

Heart knocking—adrenaline, awe, delight, fear—he found Trigger, his jump partner, in the sky.

Wait, he ordered himself. Wait.

Lightning flared, a blue-edged lance, and added a sting of ozone to the air.

Then the tip and tug. He dropped his head back, watched his chute fly up, open in the ripping air like a flower. He let out a shout of triumph, couldn’t help it, and heard Trigger answer it with a laugh as Gull gripped his steering toggles.

It was a fight to turn to face the wind, but he reveled in it. Even choking on the smoke that wind blew smugly in his face, hearing the bombburst of thunder that followed another crack of lightning, he grinned. And with his chute rocking, his eyes tracking the ugly slash, the line of trees, the angry walls of flames—close enough now to slap heat over his face—he aimed for the jump site.

For a moment he thought the wind would beat him after all, and imagined the discomfort, embarrassment and goddamn inconvenience of hitting those jack-sawed trees. And on his first jump.

He yanked down hard on his toggle, shouted, “No fucking way.”

He heard Trigger’s wild laugh, and seconds before he hit, Gull pulled west. His feet slapped ground, just on the east end of the jump spot. Momentum nearly tumbled him into the slash, but he flipped himself back in a sloppy somersault into the clearing.

He took a moment—maybe half a moment—to catch his breath, to congratulate himself on getting down in one piece, then rolled up to gather his chute.

“Not bad, rook.” Cards gave him a waggling thumbs-up. “Ride’s over, and the fun begins. The Swede’s setting up a team to dig fire line along the flank there.” He pointed toward the wicked, bellowing wall. “And you’re elected. Another team’s going to set up toward the head, hit it with the hoses. Mud knocked her back some, but the wind’s got her feeling sexy, and we’re getting lightning strikes out the ass. You’re with Trigger, Elf, Gibbons, Southern and me on the line. And shit, there goes one in the slash and the other in the trees. Let’s haul them in and get to work.”

Gull trooped over to assist Southern, but stopped when his fellow rookie got to his feet among the jagged, jack-sawed trees.

“You hurt?” Gull shouted.

“Nah. Damn it. A little banged, and my chute’s ripped up.”

“Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been me. We’re on the fire line.”

He maneuvered through the slash to help Southern gather his tattered chute. After stowing his jumpsuit, Gull headed over to where Cards was ragging on Gibbons.

“Now that Tarzan here has finished swinging in the trees, let’s do what we get paid for.”

With his team, Gull hiked half a mile in full pack to the line Rowan had delegated Cards to dig.

They spread out, and with the fire licking closer the sounds of pick striking earth, saw and blade slicing tree filled the smoky air. Gull thought of the fire line as an invisible wall or, if they were lucky, a kind of force field that held the flames on the other side.

Heroic grunt work, he thought while sweat ran rivulets through the soot on his face. The term, and the job, satisfied him.

Twice the fire tried to jump the line, skipping testing spots like flat stones over a river. The air filled with sparks that swarmed like murderous fireflies. But they held the flank. Now and then, through the flying ash and huffing smoke, Gull spotted a quick beam of sunlight.

Little beacons of hope that glowed purple, then vanished.

Word came down the line that the hose crew had to fall back, and with the flank under control, they would move in to assist.

After more than six hours of laying line, they hiked their way up the mountain and across the black where the fire had already had her way.

If the line was the invisible wall, he thought of the black as the decimated kingdom where the battle had been waged and lost. The war continued, but here the enemy laid scourge and left what had been green and golden a smoldering, skeletal ruin.

The thin beams of sun that managed to struggle through the haze only served to amplify the destruction.

Limping a little, Southern fell into step beside him.

“How’re you holding up?” Gull asked him.

“I’d be doing better if I hadn’t landed in that godforsaken slash,” he said in the fluid Georgia drawl that gave him his nickname. “I thought I knew what it was. I’ve got two seasons in on wildfires, and that’s before we’ll-whoop-your-ass recruit training. But it’s shit-your-pants hard is what it is. I nearly did just that when I saw I was going to miss the jump spot.”

Gull took a heat-softened Snickers out of his pack, pulled it in two. “Snickers really satisfies,” Gull said in the upbeat tone of a TV voice-over.

Southern grinned, bit in. “It sure enough does.”

They hit the stream, veered northeast toward the sounds of engines and saws.

Rowan came out of a cloud of smoke, a Viking goddess through the stink of war.

“Dry lightning’s kicking our ass.” She paused only to chug down some water. “We’d beat the head down, nearly had her, then we had a triple strike. We got crown fire along the ridge due north, and the head’s building back up west of that. We gotta cut through the middle, stop them from meeting up. Hold here until we’re clear. They’re sending another load of mud. We got another load from base coming in to take the rear flanks and tail, keep them down. Bulldozer made it through, and he’s clearing brush and downed trees. But we need the line.”

She scanned faces. “You’ve got about five minutes till the drop. Make the most of it—eat, drink, because you won’t see another five minutes clear today.”

She went into a confab with Cards. Gull waited until they stepped apart, then walked to her. Before he could speak, she shook her head.

“Wind changed direction on a dime, and she just blew over. She melted fifty feet of hose before we got clear. Then boom! Boom! Boom! Fourth of July. Trees went up like torches, and the wind carried it right over the tops.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“No. Don’t look for clean sheets and a pillow tonight. We’ll be setting up camp, and going back at her tomorrow. She’s not going to die easy.” She looked skyward. “Here comes the tanker.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Not yet. You can hear it.”

He closed his eyes, angled his head. “No. You must have super hearing. Okay, now I hear it.”

She pulled her radio, spoke with the tanker, then with the crew on the ridge.

“Let it rip,” she mumbled.

The pink rain tumbled down, caught little stray rainbows of sunlight.

“We’re clear!” Rowan shouted. “Let’s move. Watch your footing, but don’t dawdle.”

With that, she disappeared into the smoke.


They hacked, cut, beat at it into the night. Bodies trained to withstand all manner of hell began to weaken. But resolve didn’t. Gull caught sight of Rowan a few times, working the line, moving in and out as she coordinated with the other teams and with base.

Sometime toward one, more than twelve hours after he’d landed in the clearing, the fire began to lay down.

To rest, Gull thought, not to surrender. Just taking a little nap. And hell, he could use one himself. They worked another hour before word came down they’d camp a half mile east of the fire’s right flank.

“How’s the first day on the job going, rook?”

He glanced over at Cards’s exhausted face as they trudged. “I’m thinking of asking for a raise.”

“Hell, I’d settle for a ham on rye.”

“I’d rather have pizza.”

“Picky Irishman. You ever been there? Ireland?”

“A couple times, yeah.”

“Is it really as green as they say, as it looks in the pictures?”

“Greener.”

Cards looked off into the smoky dark. “And cool, right? Cool and damp. Lots of rain.”

“That’s why it’s green.”

“Maybe I’ll go there one of these days, take Vicki and the kids. Cool and damp and green sounds good after a day like this. There we are.” He lifted a chin to the lights up ahead. “Time to ring the supper bell.”

Those who’d already arrived had set up tents, or were doing so. Some just sat on the ground and shoveled their Meals Ready to Eat into their mouths.

Rowan, using a rock near the campfire as a table, worked over a map with Gibbons while she ate an apple. She’d taken off her helmet. Her hair shone nearly white against her filthy face.

He thought she looked beautiful, gloriously, eerily so—and was forced to admit she’d probably been right. He was, under it all, a romantic.

He dumped his gear, felt his back and shoulders weep with relief before they cramped like angry fists.

No Box to crawl into this time, he mused as he popped his tent. Then like the others, he dropped down by the campfire and ate like the starving. The cargo drop included more MREs, water, more tools, more hose and, God bless some thoughtful soul, a carton of apples, another of chocolate bars.