Becca’s finger ringed the area around the fire once, twice, trying to pinpoint what was bothering her. And then she saw it—a small, thin creek twisting its way through ridges and rises. It wasn’t much, but in a craggy place like this the wind could ride along the creek bed and push to the top of a ridge, where it could dance with the wind cresting over the top of the mountain, creating a whirling dervish that would wreak havoc on an otherwise tame bed of fire. Making it unpredictable. Making it treacherous.
Tap-tap. The baby continued its protest. Becca pushed herself up out of the chair and began an ungainly pacing. At seven-and-a-half-months pregnant, she had the grace of an elephant.
Ignoring the sweat trickling between her breasts, she paused, squinting down at the map. The creek was mostly in Sector Three. Before dawn they’d sent a team in that area to build a fire line. The crew would have looked for an anchor to their line, something that would offer a safe-retreat zone or a natural barrier to the fire. A creek?
“Is something bothering you? Can I get you anything?” Julia, Becca’s assistant, offered, starting to rise from her seat in front of their computer. “Maybe NIFC shouldn’t have sent you out here.” Julia pronounced the federal agency nif-see.
“No, I’m fine.” Becca straightened, stretching her aching back. Maybe she was overthinking this one. Maybe she was looking for pitfalls and challenges where there were none because this was her last fire before the baby came, her last fire in the field if her career plans worked out right. And her plans had to work out right. She’d bet everything on them, had even put an offer on a little house outside of Boise a few weeks ago.
Someone shouted outside, an urgent command Becca couldn’t make out.
The stuffy, cramped tent that served as the office for the two women on the Fire Behavior Team barely sheltered them from the sun’s rays and did little to keep out the constant noise of base camp. Over the last three days, NIFC had created a small tent city to organize the fight against the Flathead fire in the middle of nowhere, complete with command tents filled with computers and phones, shower and kitchen trailers, and generators large enough to power it all. Not that NIFC expected this fire to last long. The plan was to contain it with as few resources as possible, leave a skeleton crew to mop up and move on.
The unusual sound of booted feet racing past filtered through the tent’s canvas walls, accompanied by more urgent voices.
“Did you hear what they said?” Becca swung around in the direction of Julia. In the process, Becca bumped her tummy against the desk, spilling water from her open water bottle all over the fire maps spread across the worn surface. As quickly as she could, Becca shook out the maps, then mopped up with the paper towels she kept below her table because she’d become such a klutz.
When she looked up, Julia was already moving to the door wiping at the makeup under her eyes. The unusual-for-late August heat and mountain humidity melted makeup right off one’s face, but Julia kept on trying. “I think someone said the fire overran a crew.”
Becca froze, unable to move as fear raced through her veins. Her brother had died in a wildland fire when she was in college. She knew how devastating such a loss was on a family. Since then, she’d worked on fires where lives had been lost, and each time, she’d asked herself what more she could have done to prevent the tragedies.
Only when her hands started to shake did Becca snap out of her shock, running them down the sides of her belly in an attempt to regain some measure of calm. “We need to get to the Incident Command tent ASAP.”
“How could this happen? The computer didn’t predict anything that dangerous.” Julia looked at Becca with wide eyes. She was still new enough to place complete faith in computers.
“We won’t know until we talk to the Hot Shots. Let’s go see what the IC team knows.” Although Becca tried to keep her words light, she left the tent dreading what they might discover. Had she let someone else down?
Minutes later, they joined the rest of the Incident Command team in the main tent.
“We’ve got a bunch of Hot Shots heading into camp with singed whiskers and eyebrows.” Not one to waste time, Sirus— Socrates to the firefighters—the Flathead Incident Commander, had a map spread out on the old, scarred meeting table. “They were lucky. They all made it out alive and relatively unscathed. I want the IC team to meet them in Medical and find out exactly what happened. I want a complete report on my desk by morning.” For a moment, Becca was relieved, until Sirus gave her a stern look. He was no happier than she was with the situation.
Becca operated almost exclusively in California, and was only filling in on this fire. Because she’d never worked with Sirus before, Becca still had to prove to him she was capable. Erratic fire behavior when she’d predicted none wasn’t going to help Becca’s credibility. She couldn’t afford to show her new boss any weakness.
Not now. Becca passed a hand over her belly. Not when so much rested on Sirus’s recommending her for another position.
“We’ll understand what happened before the evening briefing,” Carl, the team meteorologist, assured Sirus, setting his baseball cap more firmly on his bald head. “It won’t happen again.”
In his first year with NIFC, Carl, like Julia, needed to become more familiar with the unpredictable nature of fire before he made such confident statements. Becca often found herself patiently explaining things to Carl, a tricky situation due to his unaccountable ego. Rumor had it he’d been a TV weatherman until his hair had fallen out. Carl didn’t like Becca counseling him, but that hadn’t stopped him from hitting on her.
Puh-lease. Her belly was so large she couldn’t even see her toes when she looked down. What kind of guy hit on a pregnant woman? Only the most desperate, as far as Becca was concerned.
“We may want to consider that we’ve got too much fire for the number of crew we’ve got working,” Becca said as she pulled her T-shirt lower over her belly, only to have it rise back up. Becca forced her lips into something she hoped resembled a smile for the team, a hodgepodge of men and women from different disciplines, including communications, supply and personnel. She didn’t know what had happened out on the fire line, but she was already blaming herself for not thinking about that narrow creek sooner. “Maybe we’ve even got a sleeper.”
One of the trickier fires, sleepers tended to be underestimated and take firefighters by surprise, sometimes with deadly consequences.
“Let’s not go jumping to conclusions.” Carl laughed and gave Sirus a look as if to say “Let’s not panic over what the little woman got in her little head.”
Not wanting to see IC’s reaction, Becca turned to go wait in the Medical tent, her mind already full of questions. Where had the fire crew been? Had the wind changed suddenly? What was the fire like before they realized they were in danger?
“No need to rush.” Bobby, the supply officer, pulled her aside and lowered his voice. “Unfortunately, we’ve run out of gas and they’re hiking down from the drop point.” The drop point, or DP, was five miles up the mountain trail, ten miles on a narrow, winding dirt road.
Fire crews were comprised of men and women of action. The Hot Shots would chafe at having to cool their jets while they waited for transport.
But Becca was willing to bet they wouldn’t wait. They’d hike to the camp. And when they arrived, the adrenaline of survival would have worn off and they’d be in no mood to talk to an official IC representative, much less a tent full of them. More than likely, they’d