Page 18 of Light My Fire

They just might put this fire down before sunrise. Well, given that sunrise came at 4:00 a.m., perhaps that might be overreaching. But as Tucker surveyed the fire line, he let himself breathe, just for a moment.

Heard Jed in his head.Standard Firefighting Order number nine. Be in control of your forces at all times.

Oh, I’m trying, boss.

Tucker’s team had cut a line three feet wide, about two hundred back-breaking yards down the side of the ridge toward the saddle, where he’d anchored a line from the bald granite, working out below the ridge. Here in the meadow, the white reindeer moss grew four inches deep, the mineral soil easy to scratch out. Once the team cleared it of any ladder fuels and assembled along the line, he’d fire a burn and further choke out the oncoming blaze. When the fire crested the ridge, it would dead-end before it reached more forest.

Meanwhile, his jumpers were hotspotting, putting out spot fires along their line, and mopping up while he supervised the indirect attack made by the prisoners.

Correct that—firefighters. Because while he’d expected tattooed, bald, and angry men with the demeanor and girth of grizzlies, what he received from the Copper County facility was actually a handful of quiet, hardworking men. Eight in total, they wore a facsimile of the standard fire service uniforms of Nomex shirts, hard hats, and green pants, although their shirts were orange and had CCCF Prisoner stamped across the back.

“Rule number four!” he’d shouted to the prisoners after they’d first arrived, when they lined up to be accounted for. “Identify your escape routes and safety zones and make them known.” He’d gone through the safety zone they’d established, then the other fire orders, along with the watch-out situations.

One man introduced them, a fellow prisoner who seemed to be in charge, named Archer. Late fifties, thick brown hair, whiskers, a lined face, but his body was lean and toned for a man his age. He barked a few orders, picked up a shovel, and started digging with the rest of the men.

The fact they hadn’t been issued Pulaskis seemed like the right decision. The half axe, half scraper could do serious damage to a man’s skull, never mind the brush he might be trying to clear.

Tucker had pointed out the objective to the crew—dig a line three feet wide down to the mineral soil and almost two hundred feet long.

They dug in with the fervor of a bona fide hotshot crew.

“Rule number six! Be alert. Keep calm. Think clearly. Act decisively!”

Tucker worked alongside them—shouting directions when needed, stealing glances at them—and couldn’t help but wonder what they might be serving time for.

Take, for example, the three dark-haired youths no more than twenty-one. DUIs? Maybe drug charges? They stuck together, grinning like they might be frat brothers of a different order.

What about the clean-cut lawyer type with the brown hair and glasses? He looked like he’d taken the wrong turn out of some graduate school. What had he done—skipped on his taxes? Tucker tried to remember his name. Clancy, maybe?

The slightly overweight redhead hardly seemed the type who landed in prison. Baby-faced and more determined than capable, he kept his head down and worked and didn’t emanate even the faintest bad-guy aura.

And then there was the ex-military guy. Or at least he carried himself like a soldier—maybe a mercenary. He called himself Thorne. Short brown hair, thick beard, ruddy and bearlike, he kept his eyes down and stood away from the group, his arms folded, as if not looking for trouble.

The only one Tucker pegged as a real criminal might be the dark-haired, pensive-eyed fighter who worked with the intensity of three men but wore suspicion in his gaze, watching the rest of the crew as if they might turn on him. A tribal tat inked the back of his neck and darkened his right arm in a nearly full sleeve, something faded, and a scar dissected his jaw near his ear. He even had a gangsta-type name—Rio.

Yeah, Tucker might stay away from that guy.

Which only knotted his gut because he knew a little what it felt like to be judged by his looks. And outside one night in the county jail, he’d never done real prison time, despite a few predictions by his teachers and one angry mother.

“Take a water break!” Tucker yelled, walking over to the cubinators the helicopter had left behind. Barry had also dropped a gear box—a Fat Boy—with overnight supplies—a tarp, sleeping bags, MREs—but Tucker wanted the prisoners off his line before they bedded down.

And there he went again, prejudging them. So far, the crew had worked with every bit of commitment as his own jumpers.

But the last thing Tucker wanted was some sort of catastrophe, injury, or even a prisoner uprising.

Maybe he’d seen too much television.

Tucker walked up to Archer, who wiped his arm across his sweaty face after taking a drink. “Once we get across the meadow, we’re going to set a back burn. That means—”

“I know what it means, Sport,” Archer said. “I used to fight fires, long before you were even a twinkle in your mother’s eye.” He winked at Tucker.

Oh.

“Have you called in a drop?” Archer said, his eyes watering. “Because if you throw down some mud along the right flank we could box ’er in.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Tucker said, not sure why he weirdly wanted this man to like him. Or why he wasn’t annoyed at his use ofSport.“They’re short on tankers, but Barry is trying to get a drop in. Hopefully he’ll have found one by the time we’re ready to burn.”

Tucker noticed how Rio took his drink, stood off from the rest of the group, watching them. He gestured to the man with his chin. “What’s his story?”

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