Page 6 of Burnin' For You

“Help me with the yoke!” Gilly pulsed it back as she goosed the throttle.

The heated air shuddered the plane, the updrafts throwing it into a roll. The airplane shook with such violence, she couldn’t make out the instruments. She banked hard, flying blind while her plane rattled apart around her.

“Five-Three, I’ve lost you!” Beck’s voice.

Gilly fought to hold her bank into the blue, but the wind currents raked the plane, the airframe whining.

“She’s coming apart!”

With a shriek, the metal twisted. The aircraft recoiled in the air, as if jolted.

“We hit something!”

Maybe. Whatever happened, they’d lost lift on the right side, the plane pitching over. She rolled the yoke to counter, her brain fighting through checklists to keep them airborne. “Check the wing!”

Jared stared out the window. “It’s the lower right wing—it’s partially sheared off and dangling!”

Which meant, with the weight and drag, the entire wing might detach.

“METO power on—all the way, Jared! We need to get out of this chop.” Probably he’d already turned the “maximum except takeoff” setting on full.

Her arms ached with the tension of holding the plane out of the roll. They burst out into a patch of blue, and for a second she got a good look at their tragedy. The lower right wing of the biplane lay in shreds, probably caught on one of the flaming lodgepole pines at the top of the ridge.

They didn’t have enough lift to keep climbing out of the canyon.

But they might make the lake. Over the ridge and back into the canyon, she could practically cut the engine and glide them in.

With the plane on floats, she could save the plane.

“We’re setting her down in Fountain Lake.”

“What? You’re crazy, Gilly Priest. On a bright sunny day, maybe, with the wind at our back. But you’re already fighting to stay at altitude. We’ll never make it over the ridge.”

“We’re going down the other side, through the—”

“Don’t say fire.”

She looked at him. A three-year veteran, Jared was used to flying bigger planes, like the Lockheed Hercules 130, the kind that dropped slurry from higher altitudes with double engines and multiple loads, so if they didn’t get it right the first time...

But Gilly preferred the smaller, more aerodynamic planes like her Otter, which she used for dropping off her jumpers.

“We can do this,” she said.

“Have you lost your mind? Even if we survive another run into the canyon without busting apart, the sun is nearly down—there’s no way you’ll be able to judge the distance to land on the water. Please stop trying to kill us!” Jared unstrapped himself.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m jumping. There’s a reason we have chutes—”

“We’re not jumping.” She said it quietly, her decision made years ago. Besides, she wasn’t ditching her plane—not when she’d worked so hard to finally be more than a glorified taxi driver. Sure, the Jude County Smokejumpers considered her a part of the smokejumping team, but they all knew—even if they didn’t say it—that shewasn’tone of them. Not brave enough, not strong enough, and certainly not risking her life with them.

But now that she had her rating as a bomber pilot, she could support them from the sky. Be a real teammate, finally.

And she certainly wasn’t going to crash on day one.

Jared had found the chutes. “C’mon. We’re going.” He stormed back up to the cockpit. “Now.”

“No!” Her arms burned, her eyes watering from the smoke that wheedled its way into the cockpit. “I’m not jumping.” Better to say, shecouldn’t jump, but she didn’t have time for that now. “If you want to jump you can, but I’m staying here.”

---