Expectant Father

Ahead of Spider, the fire seemed to be closing ranks around them. The heat and smoke made it difficult to fill his lungs with air. His heart pounded wildly from exertion, adrenaline and fear.

Someone stumbled. Swerving to the side, running perilously close to the tongue of flame on his right, Spider dragged Victoria back onto her feet.

“We’re not going to make it,” she cried, barely audible above the angry roar of the fire.

Even as some part of Spider agreed, he rejected defeat. At thirty, he still had things to accomplish, places to see and women to meet. He was single, with few responsibilities and few regrets, with only his dad to mourn him. The world was his oyster.

Too bad he was about to be fried.

TAP-TAP-TAP.

Inside the Fire Behavior tent at base camp, Becca Thomas smiled and tried to ignore the little one trying to get her attention. She focused instead on the most recent satellite photo of the Flathead fire taken that morning and compared it to the latest computer simulation she’d run on the computer provided by NIFC, the National Interagency Fire Center.

Tap-tap-tap.

“Give me a minute,” Becca murmured, rubbing her stomach, hoping her baby would be patient. She was happy to be pregnant, even if she was thirty-eight and single. She’d thought it all through, had planned down to the last penny. She and the baby were going to be all right on their own.

Her attention returned to the papers on the table that was her desk in this portable camp. There was something about this simulation she didn’t like. As one of NIFC’s senior Fire Behavior Analysts, Becca had learned to trust her instincts. She prided herself on finding the chaos factor in the weather, terrain and fuels, along with a dozen other things she considered when making predictions about a fire’s behavior. Still, there were things she couldn’t control—the way fires created their own wind and weather, and the decisions made by those in the field as to the risks they were willing to take, sometimes against her advice.

Tap-tap-TA-A-AP.

Sitting hunched over her makeshift desk at the Flathead fire was not her baby’s favorite position. Becca would have to get up soon. Until then…

What was it about the simulation that troubled her? She ran her finger over the inputs—the fire’s point of origin, wind speed, types of fuel, degree of slope, humidity readings. She returned her attention to the map of the area. The locations where lightning had struck and started the fire were marked, as was the perimeter of the fire as of eight hours ago.

The fire had spread from three strike points down three sides of a tall peak within the Flathead National Park, a remote, rugged mountain range lacking paved roads. It was bound to the east by the almost vertical, rocky cliffs of the Continental Divide. Everywhere else, the fire was moving hungrily through two generations of forest—giant pines and spruce towering sixty to eighty feet in the air, and younger trees twenty to forty feet high, interspersed with small, steep meadows that hadn’t yet given way to the forest. This area had not seen fire or been thinned by logging in years. Add to that two years of drought and you had one heck of a fuel source. If they didn’t stop it, the fire could easily work its way down to civilization in as little as a week.

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 want a hot meal, a cold drink and an audience of their peers. By the time she talked to them, they’d have woven the truth into something that was several steps removed from reality. She wouldn’t get the detailed information she needed to identify where her fire prediction had gone wrong.

Unless she met them along the way and got the story first.

Becca stepped into the doorway, looking for Julia.

Her assistant had hung back to talk to Sirus. She was trying to be his next Fire Behavior Analyst and, with a bit of hard work, Becca thought she might just make it. “Sir? Which Hot Shot team should we expect?”

“The Silver Bend crew,” he answered, stone-faced. His stepson, Jackson Garrett, led that team.

Becca’s fingers clenched the doorframe. Working in California, she’d effectively avoided the Silver Bend, Idaho, crew for more than seven months. She’d hoped their paths wouldn’t cross on this one special assignment.

For just a moment, Becca considered waiting in the Medical tent with the rest of IC, hiding at the back of the crowd when the fire crew reached camp.

She blinked, coming out of her panicked stupor. No. She would not compromise her duties, even if it put her plans for the future at risk. If she didn’t get to know this fire intimately, other firefighters might face unnecessary danger.

Becca knew only one Hot Shot from Silver Bend, although one was more than enough. Aiden Rodas was a wiry, good-looking, risk-loving playboy. He was younger then Becca, with a really immature nickname— Spider—and a really immature attitude. Not that most Hot Shots didn’t have nicknames, Aiden’s just seemed to stick out more than others.