Page 44 of Smoke Season

“Not at all.” A bit of the extra weight that had settled onto her shoulders lifted. One fewer person in danger meant one fewer complication, not to mention one less way she’d let Sam down this week.

“We’ll knock on doors, encourage proactive evacs, and help the hand crews hold the line.” Hernandez turned to his second-in-command. “White? I’ll leave it to you to assign duties; then FEMA has requested we set up a remote command near the closure area.”

White started making noise about being so far from the action as Mel felt herself deflate. With her least-favorite superior in charge, she’d never get the assignment she asked for.

Ryan held up his hand. “Wait. So closing the river road wasn’t just a precaution? My folks are gonna freak.”

Lewis gave Ryan a sympathetic nod as Hernandez left the room. It was every local’s worst fear during smoke season, especially those with small businesses, like the Sloans, who were hoping their son would follow them into the fly-fishing game after he got this firefighting thing out of his system.

Or like Sam. Or True.

Mel glimpsed a rare, shared look of maturity pass between Ryan and Deklan. They were starting to get it: forest fires made far more lasting impressions than simply a scarred land and inspired far more sobering anecdotes than the boastings of rookie ground pounders.

“So where will we be assigned?” Deklan asked White cautiously.

“I’d love to help mobilize the crews from the command center,” Mel cut in carefully. Because if she knew White ...

White’s head swiveled to her. “You’re next-in-command, Bishop. I need you to head up the crew in the field while I man the command center.”

Well, that was easy.

“You’ll take Lewis and the volunteers,” White continued. Under his breath, as they all pushed out from the table, he added, “You can babysit our rookies.”

She called True back as they loaded up. “Don’t use the tag,” she told her. “I can get the ammo box.”

“What? How?”

“We’re rolling out now. River road. It will place me closer than I think your rapid tag can.”

“But how will you ...?” True trailed off.

“I’ll find a way.”

They departed Carbon at 0700 in a small convoy, keeping parallel to the fire while the hotshots from Arizona utilized whatever resources were at their disposal (a.k.a. whichever they damn well pleased, Janet muttered) to attack the blaze from the air before it hit the federallyprotected Wild and Scenic section of the Outlaw. They’d already commissioned a water tanker from the Outlaw airport and planned to scoop water from the ranches and properties with ponds.

Like Claude’s, Mel thought, picturing the old man’s acreage on Highline adjacent to Sam’s, with its carefully tended garden and duck pond used for irrigation. She imagined the boots that would soon trample down the marsh surrounding the pretty little pond, the hotshots tossing their packs and mud-caked gear on the oak bench on which Claude had hand-carved a memorial for Ingrid.

She redirected her focus from the hotshots to her own assignment. The sooner she completed her task, the sooner she could detour to Temple Bar to retrieve the ammo box, and the sooner she could get Fallows’s boot off the backs of their necks. At least while the fight, as she’d put it, was here in the river corridor, it was not up on Highline. Level 1 status there would hold.

She gripped the wheel of the command truck she’d been assigned and leaned forward into the next curve as her volunteer riding shotgun, an old-timer everyone just called Sly, braced a hand on the dash. He’d signed on with Carbon Rural after his wife told him he was driving her crazy in retirement, underfoot all the time. Deklan and Ryan rode in the back bench seat. A wildland fire engine followed; in a rare show of generosity, White had assigned them one of the good ones, she’d noticed, the West-Mark that had just come out of the shop last week. Lewis rode shotgun in it, their driver engineer—Carlos today—at the wheel. One of the two hand crews trailed about an hour behind them, tasked with burning more backfires closest to where the blaze edged toward the river. Mel’s crew’s containment lines further downriver would serve as insurance, hopefully never needed.

A stack of rapid tags sat in Deklan’s lap, ready to be delivered to the often antisocial and sometimes downright hostile residents of the off-the-grid homes out here, their green cardboard practically glowing after her debate with True. As a last resort, the tags would be affixed to the front doors, and Deklan shuffled them absently like a deck of cardsas they bumped along the rural road. The rhythmic slap of them against his leg echoed in the quiet cab, playing on Mel’s nerves. She’d assured them all this mission would run like clockwork.So much so that their battalion chief can slip away for about an hour to run a personal errand at Temple Bar?She sure as hell hoped so.

“You get enough sleep, kiddo?” Mel asked, tossing Deklan a backward glance. With the river road officially closed, she didn’t have to check her speed as she would normally; no opposing traffic should surprise them on the hairpin turns.

“I dunno. I guess.”

“After he finally got to call his mommy,” Ryan supplied with an elbow into Deklan’s rib cage.

“She was worried, okay? The wildland volunteer website never gets updated. Sheesh. Sorry someone loves me.”

“Someone loves me, too,” Ryan shot back with a dumb grin. “My girlfriend. She loves me so good, I—”

“We all know there’s no girlfriend,” Mel interjected, earning her a chuckle of amusement from Sly. He hadn’t been subjected to the Deklan-Ryan show much yet and was in for a treat.

Luckily,shecould tune them out, because even without traffic on the river road, driving now demanded her full attention. Just ten miles into the thirty that led to Temple Bar, the smoke had thickened, funneled as it was into the narrowing river canyon. This road—originally intended only for loggers—proved dangerous in good conditions, the way it wove right to the edge of the river in some places, crazily climbing in elevation to return to the ridgeline in others. The last time they’d driven a wildland rig out here, the heavy-duty tires and weighty engine had sent scree tumbling down the embankment toward the river on the tightest of the turns, the near nonexistent shoulder of the road providing little to no room for error. She was sure that behind them, the West-Mark engine was sending even more debris downhill today, Lewis navigating less cautiously than on a training run. Mel tempered her own speed, hoping it would encourage prudence.

They drove another mile or so at a crawl before starting another downhill descent as the road eased closer to the river bottom.

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