Both men nodded.
Boone spoke to Mel. “This is the closest we can get. Establish hover over this small clearing.”
Smoke drifted, allowing glimpses of timber sticking up like furry toothpicks on the ridge. Mel slowed Juliet’s forward momentum and held his bird stationary, as Boone instructed.
“Hover established. I’ll set you up at two hundred feet and move you up from there. Get ready,” Mel instructed in their headsets.
Boone responded. “Ready. Opening doors. Starboard door open.”
Mel’s voice streamed into his ears. “Master caution.”
“Master caution reset. Position to the left—three, two, one, hold. Bring her thirty feet lower.”
“Opening doors. Port and starboard doors open,” reported Boone. “Good for altitude. How’s your power?”
“Good.” Mel scanned his airspace.
“We’re still high. Bring her down some. Dropping ropes.” Boone peered below the helo, then turned to Ryan and Gunnar.
“Heli-rappelers, hook up.” Boone extended his arms, pointing out both sides like a flight attendant doing a safety demo. “Rappelers to the skids.”
Ryan hooked himself up and Boone inspected his connections and checked hover conditions.
“Rappel the shit out of this, boys. Get into position.”
Ryan exited the port door. Gunnar out the starboard. They poised on the skids, feet spread, ready to rappel the ropes. They leaned back as the rocking helicopter hovered, Mel holding Juliet steady as she goes. A strong gust swung them, and Mel revved the rotors to counter the offset. Don’t look at the bouncing landscape. Don’t want to lose my bison burger.
“Rapellers, go!”
Both men hit the release on their ropes, leaned back to an almost upside-down position, then eased themselves to the ground below. Despite Mel’s best efforts, Juliet swung wildly, causing the Ryan and Gunnar to sway like puppets on a string.
“Damn!” yelled Ryan. Gunnar cussed the equivalent in Norwegian from the other side.
Ryan gauged the distance to the ground from the skids. “This is why I switched to smokejumping,” he muttered as the ropes lowered him, swinging under rotor wash and the deafening whup-whup of Juliet’s blades.
His feet hit the ground in time for him to see a wall of fire race across a gully and up the next ridge. The hovering helo kicked up ash, soot, and loose debris. Ryan adjusted his goggles and tugged his neckerchief over his nose and mouth.
Boone dropped the ropes and two water cubie-containers. Juliet swung away, vanishing into smoke.
Ryan removed his helmet and stuffed it in his day pack, along with his EMT kit. He and Gunns hustled along the ridgetop to reach the crew.
He held his breath, hoping for no injuries.
Chapter 36
Tara slid fast down the rock shale on her butt, digging her heels in to control her speed. She sighed relief to find that a tree had stopped Angela from rolling further down the steep incline. She moaned as Tara grabbed hold of her arm and hoisted her once more over her right shoulder, digging one boot in at a time, resuming her climb. I have to get up this sorry-assed mountain.
She continued up, squinting into smoke at a dark shape. Angela moaned. As Tara moved closer, the shape became a gray, rocky ledge, with rocks piles above and around it. Wild-eyed and legs trembling with fresh panic, she knew they were trapped. She desperately searched for an escape.
“No, God no!”
Sweat poured out of Tara as she lowered Angela to the rocky ground. She glanced back at the smoky abyss for a glimpse of fire, but only heard its snapping, deadly approach. Too smoky to see or breathe. She coughed hard.
They were out of time. Her chest clenched at the cruel, unthinkable truth that she couldn’t outrun this. The sorrow pushed up in her gut, ripping her insides.
The sound of the fire petrified her, along with the horror of what it would feel like to burn alive. Disappearing, as the old man had in the Montana fire, knocked a hole in her gut. She didn’t want to simply disappear. No one would find their bodies. Angela’s daddy would have no body to bury.
“Angie, wake up.” Tara shook her friend.
Angela lolled her head, but only moaned.
Tara rolled her pack off her shoulders and fumbled for her fire shelter. Their only chance for survival was to deploy their shelters on this rocky outcrop. Her eyes darted around, surveying their situation. She hoped the rocks would prevent flames from reaching them as the fire burned upslope.
A horrifying thought struck. I left Angela’s pack behind with her fire shelter!
“Oh, God.” The breath left her lungs. She swallowed hard.
She would have to fit them both inside a fire shelter designed for one person. Could two people survive entrapment in the same one? She racked her brain. Three people had survived a shelter deployment in a burnover on the Kincade Fire in California, in October of 2019. She knew of situations where two firefighters had survived in one entrapment.
But this was a last resort, not a fail-safe measure. Shelters had limitations. They weren’t designed to withstand more than five hundred degrees Fahrenheit before disintegrating. Please God. Don’t let this fire burn hotter than that.
Sweat ran under her shirt and pooled at the small of her back. “Angie, we have to get in my shelter. Now!”
Angela didn’t move.
Tara clawed at apple-sized rocks, tossing them aside, burrowing down to soil so they’d have pockets of precious oxygen. Unbuckling her pack, she let it fall. Ryan’s voice played in her brain. Toss all fusees away from a deployed shelter. They could ignite. She groped for her fusees and heaved them downhill.
Ryan will chew her out after his repeated safety lectures and her assuring him she’d be safe. Here she was again, caught in another situation. She felt cursed without Dad’s bandana. She imagined Jim Dolan shaking his head if she died. Like father, like daughter.
She needed to set the GPS tracker to help/rescue mode so people could find her. She tapped her back pocket. Nothing there. The pockets were torn out. The GPS must have fallen
