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“Ah, Dick,” Sink says, pressing his lips in a flat line, as he regards Dick for a pair of seconds, then gradually stepping back with a weak cough. “I’ll have to admit I… didn’t expect you this quick.”
“Why haven’t I been notified of being mobilized?” Dick asks, as he walks into Sink’s office, glancing down to Strayer at the desk, then back up to Sink with a slight lift of his chin. He hasn’t felt half this insecure in his position since Sobel got sent down to Idaho. “Half the units are moving, but I haven’t gotten so much as an update.”
“You’re not on this one,” Strayer says, looking up from his toughbook on the desk with a peer that mostly lands on Sink. “We’ve got a conflict with personnel out in the field.”
“Conflict?” Dick repeats, as he looks up at the board, only to pause, staring at the coordinates and the label of the fire reports far too close to his name.
Only, it isn’t his name up there, is it?
“We’re getting jumpers out as soon as possible,” Sink says, in a markedly careful tone, lifting up a hand from his tablet in a condescendingly placating manner. “Currently got the crew loading up. Nix’ll be back by dinner.”
Dick stares at the board for a beat longer, then harshly clears his throat. He turns around, heading for the door with a hard shake of his head. He cannot believe they were going to keep him out of it; keep him from knowing about it.
“Winters!” Sink calls, throwing the door back open behind him. “You’re not on the team on this one.”
Dick turns around with a hard flex of his jaw. “Is there any regulation you can throw at me if I ignore that statement?”
Sink stares back for a few beats, then turns to look at Strayer just inside the room. He rolls his eyes , throwing out a hand, “I can’t lose the both of you, Dick.”
“And you won’t,” Dick says, as he turns back around, briefly tightening his hands into fists at his sides. “Not if I’m the one making the jump.”
The crew are working in a familiar organized chaos in and out of the hanger with gear and cargo, and Dick doesn’t address anyone while he pulls his own jumpsuit and gets ready for the jump in half the usual five minutes. It’s like any other, and he saw the board, so he knows they have time, even if the labels for wind glow bright at the back of his mind – high heat, vertical sheer, unstable pressure – perfect for a storm.
Harry does an obvious double take when Dick approaches the plane, his hands going a bit loose around his helmet. “Uh, hey?”
“Harry,” Dick says, dropping his head in a firm nod. “Sink says you’re lead.”
“Right,” Harry says, slowly, brow furrowing some with a twist at the edge of his mouth. “He said you were occupied?”
“Preoccupied, probably, is what he said,” Dick says, as he claps his palms against the front of the turnout suit down his front. “I’m not.”
“Preoccupied?” Harry repeats, brow slightly furrowing, head cocking to the side while he pulls on his fire hood. “By what?”
“Sink just updated that we have personnel just north of the current fireline,” Lipton says, as he walks up with a wag of a tablet and a nod for them to gather in close near the boarding door. “Looks like…” He trails off, then taps the screen again, then again, before he mutters something under his breath and looks slowly up at Dick. “Winters’ analyst team.’
“I’m a grown up, Lip,” Dick says, as he weaves his knuckles together to fit down his gloves in a pair of slaps. He ignores Harry’s more obvious aghast look, the way he mouths preoccupied with a knowing grimace, instead looking around him to the rest of the crew “Where’s Ron?”
“Out the back,” Shifty says, as he approaches up the aisle with a jerk toward the aft of the plane. He must be their spotter for this go. “We’ve got cargo loaded and secured.”
“Alright, wheels up in five,” Dick says, as he turns to approach the pilots through the aisle just past the door. He pauses at the fire door, then looks over his shoulder with a lift of his chin. “Harry?”
Harry offers a tight, flat smile. “Sounds good. If you’re good.”
Dick stares down Harry for a pair of beats. “I am.”
Shifty tilts his head with a wide blink, before he turns around with a loud click of his tongue.
It seems most of the squad had gotten word that Dick wouldn’t be on the jump, though perhaps from Harry, since none of them except Lip and Harry are looking at him with the sort of pity like they know Nix is without backup in a field cabin stocked with only old spare gear. He settles into his seat for the two hundred forty miles west over a few villages and otherwise sparsely populated bush, listening to the chatter around him, as they approach the drop point.
It’s been almost a year since he’s dropped in with Nix, who shifted to analysis fairly early in their careers, so he’s not active with the jumpers unless they’re short personnel. It’s different to drop into the fire beside him, though, to see him most of the time and have him on the radios while they work together to suppress the burn. He’s never felt like Nix might not make it before, though he tries to keep that thought brief almost to the point of repression; the fire is not burning very fast, by all the accounts of the reports around him, and that opinion is staying steady as the De Havilland eats up the air.
“We’ve got the jump marked with flares. Order is Sparky, Lip, Roe, from the back, forward Welsh, Skip, Penkala, Liebgott, and Webster,” Liebgott says, then looks up, then back down again, staring at the roster than had plainly been put together without considering Dick joining along against Sink and Strayer’s advice. “And, uh – I guess, Winters Classic out last.”
“Classic?” Dick mouths, as he looks over to Harry with a lift of a brow.
Harry opens and closes his own mouth, then shakes his head with a lift of his shoulder. He taps at his headset, as Liebgott settles back and slides his checklist into place.
“Our drop point is 64°77 N 155°19 W near Big Creek in an open patch adjacent to the fire,” Harry says, as he turns the tablet to show a terrain map. “We don’t expect the fire has a lot of fuel after the burn from last year that Nixon – sorry, Winters – was out here studying, but that does mean the remains are extremely delicate.
“We have some PLBs of the analyst crew marked along some foothills east of Ruby at 64°75N 155°21W; according to Strayer, it’s unlikely they have any radios, as the cabin was only set up with a short wave HAM that is not portable. Helitack is set to arrive roughly two hours post drop to pick up the evacuees at 2300 hours, so our window is tight,” Harry says, scratching at the back of his neck with a quick, pinched glance at Dick. “They’re expected to land roughly on top of the fireline at whatever point they can. Winters is going to lead on S&R of our team so they’ll be in touch with him on point. Liebgott and Webster, you’re also, uh – yeah, assigned to that.” He taps his gloved fingers against the rest of his notes, then drops it into his lap. “Any questions?”
Skip lifts a hand from his rigging, as he taps on his headphones for the radio. “Just one. Did you just say Nix is out there?”
“I did, Muck, yeah,” Harry says, brows raising up high with an overly slow nod.
“Oh,” Skip intones, as his hand drops, sparing Dick a quick look with a cough. “Okay.”
Dick presses his mouth slightly, as he looks toward the window with a slow breath through his nose. He questions the wisdom for Harry to send him with Liebgott and Webster, who are competent as jumpers can get and have a reputation for search and rescue, but can be… difficult to listen to at times. He won’t lose them, at least, if their own radios go down.
“Two minute warning,” the pilot announces, voice echoing through the headsets and through the speakers above them in a wobbly, barely-audible echo. “Get yourselves hooked up for a quick descent.”
“Go, go, go!” Shifty says, gesturing with a sweep of his hand at the door. “Paracargo ready for kick when we see your drop zone.”
The jumpers get lined up with accordance to Liebgott’s earlier roll call, lifting their lines and hooking themselves up. Dick isn’t often at the back, maybe never has been, and it aggravates something at the back of his mind. He counts the seconds until green, then watches each jumper go before him with irrational impatience building deep in his chest. He could just push them all aside to get this over with and get through the door to find Nix somewhere down in the bush.
He finally gets in place after Webster disappears, then counts, then jumps as the light blinks. He keeps an eye on Liebgott’s bright blue parachute and Webster’s red and black, and spins down to slightly hurry himself along when he sees them aiming for a broadly more westerly landing than the rest of the crew. He’ll certainly take it, for all it’s against all procedure and will certainly irk paracargo – he’s got his own aim beyond the usual, and he’ll worry about beating back the perimeter when he’s got Nix back next to him.
The landing is a little hairy between a copse of burnt trees from last year and a jagged rock of an old riverbed. He nearly skids to a stop, but the gear saves him from a lot of the impact, and he spits out his mouthguard while quickly gathering up his chute to keep it from being caught in any stray wind.
He squints up at the De Havilland, as he packs away his chute and tugs out his axe, wondering if paracargo is going to entertain them and hoping that they don’t bother. It would just take up more time. He looks across the riverbed, as he situates his radios and checks over the rest of his gear, then stands up to hurry over and join Webster and Liebgott making their way toward each other across the riverbed.
“Hey, hotshot,” Liebgott says, as he swirls a finger up to poke without quite touching in front of Webster’s nose. “You land on your face, again?”
“You can literally see that I didn’t, Joe,” Webster says, while grabbing pointedly at the metal facemask of the front of his own helmet.
“I don’t know, hard to believe your own eyes sometimes,” Liebgott says, as he activates the GPS locator with a squint down at the small screen. He snarls when it beeps at the startup, screen stuck for seconds on the loading screen, but slowly it fills out the terrain around them. “Goddamn satellites.”
“We’re good?” Dick asks, just to confirm, as he sees Liebgott press at the arrows and through settings to narrow down the focus down closer to them. It’s been a year or two, unfortunately, since he’s been involved in the sort of search and rescue that isn’t stumbling upon someone in a jam with his axe.
“I’ve got the bead on them,” Liebgott says, pointing toward the direct of the arrows on the small screen of the handheld. “See, that’s them.”
Webster exhales a heaving sigh while chewing at the corner of his mouth guard. “Can’t you just say – ?”
“Fuck no,” LIebgott interrupts, turning to Webster, then lifting the locator with a slight wag of his gloved hand. “I’m holding the damned beeper.”
“The locator,” Webster says, markedly condescending in his patient tone.
“And I’m going to call it what the hell I like,” Liebgott continues, as if he hadn’t heard him, then glances toward Dick with a slight tilt of his head. “Unless Winters has a real term.”
“What’s the direction?” Dick asks, rather than attempting to settle the argument.
“Due west from here. It’s moving a little – ” Liebgott lifts the screen to point out the list of recent coordinates for the signal. “They might have had to leave the cabin?”
“Could have,” Dick says, looking toward the rising smoke and confirming the fire travelling well beyond the sparse new growth just northwest. “It looks like it spread into the woods unaffected by the last burn.”
“We dropped a little closer than expected,” Webster says, pointing himself toward the gently rising foothills of their goal. “We’ve got more time to get to them.”
Dick swallows with a slight drop of his head. “That we do.”
The radio crackles to life between the three of them, as Harry seems to finally notice they’ve gone off course.. “We got all boots on the ground, Dick. I notice you’re not around – confirm safe landing?”
Dick reaches up for the radio. “Confirm. We landed a little further west along a warm patch of air.”
“Sure, you say so,” Harry says, though it doesn’t sound like he’s not going to use the excuse in his report. “Don’t get lost. I have a squeaky clean leadership record right now.”
Dick narrowly rolls his eyes with a short blink to the sky.
“We’re going to start with the east flank here, as planned, and work our way west,” Harry continues, “We got a burst of hot air working against us, according to some NOAA stuff sent to Lip. Helitack confirmed their takeoff and should be making contact in about an hour.”
Dick turns at movement, seeing paracargo dropping gear down toward the presumed landing of the rest of the crew. “Me and Nix’ll meet you there.”
Harry barks a laugh through the radio. “I bet. Out.”
“Out,” Dick echoes, dropping his hand from the radio with a roll of his lips against his teeth.
The fire has run amok beyond the expected radius, which is clear enough, though the burns never do quite follow the projected plotting – much to Nix’s usual annoyance, as much as he tries to predict the unpredictable – but the fact of it is less amusing now without Nix actively complaining about it beside him while he hikes deeper into the fire. It actually feels so more inadequate than usual, all the work they put into it for it just to shock them, though it feels just as bad to think like that when he knows how much Nix cares about it and is often mostly right.
The climb along the foot of the mountain is frustratingly slow and dotted with the typical surprises, oversize boulders appearing in the wake of long gone ice sheets, land broken and tree roots crawling out along exposed edges, vertical exposed rock scraped clean, and even after six years, Dick is still not quite used to how these foothills equal to the highest peaks of the Appalachians that he grew up around in Pennsylvania. It had shocked him when he first came up here, breath catching every time he stood at the bottom of any given mountain and looked up and up, and it probably still would now, if he could concentrate on anything but the blips in Liebgott’s hand.
He is comforted by the steady movement of the PLBs, for all he feels like they’re all moving too slow – every time he has to pause to shift the gear on his back, or adjust and cover his face as the smoke thickens – the dots are undeniably moving to meet them by some serendipity. He even has a briefly whimsical thought that Nix might know he’s out here – maybe he saw his red and blue chute – and is walking toward him on purpose.
“Did you know the largest gold nugget in Alaska was found near here?”
“Oh my god,” Liebgott says, but there’s an undeniable note of amusement behind the grating annoyance in his voice. “Why the fuck do you know that?”
“Swift Creek in 1998,” Webster continues, pointing vaguely southward down the hills. “294 ounces.”
“1998?” Leibgott says, clicking his tongue, then going quiet for a few good few seconds, before he looks back at Webster with a scoff. “Really?”
Webster offers a slight nod. “It kind of makes it less impressive, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Liebgott says, looking back forward with another, stronger scoff.
Dick huffs under his breath, despite himself, shaking his head while carefully navigating the broken, jutting teeth of some rocks. He looks up, as he hears a familiar noise of a helicopter, and spies the red and white helitack crew rushing past them toward the rising smoke to their north.
The radio crackles to life above them a few seconds later, accompanied by a telling thump of rotors in the background. “This is 3-5-0 coming in over the Ruby-Poorman. We got word Winters is doing an evacuation of crew? Copy.”
“Copy. Winters here,” Dick says, as he lifts his radio toward his mouth with a slight wince when it gently clanks against the facemask. “We’re close to the crew. Only about a klick up to go.”
“We got you,” the pilot says, “Crew to unload. We’re set land at a fork of a creek that feeds Big Creek, which to you will be a big ass hill. 64°77N by 155°191W. Fire larger than expected, but looks mostly to be quick to control.”
“Sounds good,” Dick says, flattening his tone some while sweeping his eyes up and down the nearly sheer hill face in front of him. “We’re a little blind down here.”
“Understood,” the pilot says, “See you when we see you. Over.”
Dick shakes his head a little, as he leans his head down toward the radio. “Over.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Liebgott says, as he crests the hill, coming to a sudden stop and breaking the pace. “Look at that.”
Dick rises up to stand beside him and quickly understands the attitude, as he feels his expression collapse in some dismay at the crawling perimeter of bush fire in front of them. He swallows hard, then reaches out to grab the locator in Liebgott’s hand, staring down and confirming that the blinking quartet of dots are beyond the visible fire, and that the coordinates that the helitack gave him are even further north of it. He drops Liebgott’s hand with a slow exhale, reaching up and rubbing his gloved hand along the crown of his helmet. He can’t afford to do anything but move forward.
“It must just be a finger,” Webster says, his tone a little too close to know-it-all for Dick’s personal taste, but Liebgott doesn’t even react, so it can’t be too strong. “Or a spot fire. We saw the terrain from when we jumped. It doesn’t have the fuel to do anything but that.”
Dick steps forward between Liebgott and Webster, making his way across the plateau. He doesn’t quite need the aid of the locator, since now he can stare at a snowy peak of a farther off mountain and know he needs to be aiming right for it, for all quickly disappears behind black smoke wafting above the burning perimeter a few hundred feet ahead of him. He briefly pauses only to change his mask, then keeps marching until he’s breaking the fire, swiping at branches and brush with his beater while Liebgott and Webster follow behind him.
“Alright, we’re damned close,” Liebgott says, voice lifting to be heard over the ambient noise of the burn around them. “Hundred yard radius.”
“Nix!” Dick shouts, lifting his voice as high as he can, feeling a brief jump in his pulse when the fire licks at the corner of his vision. “Lewis! Can you hear me! Augusta!? Renee?”
“Babe!” Liebgott joins in, shout ringing loud through the forest.
“Try Eddie,” Webster suggests, as he takes the locator from Liebgott with a noticeable peek down at the blinking sets of coordinates.
“Eddie Heffron!” Liebgott shouts, a mocking lilt now in his lifted voice. “We’re here looking for an Eddie – ”
“Lieb?” A voice responds, from somewhere, and it’s unclear what precise location in the smoke.
“Don’t fucking call me that!” Babe adds, his voice nearly as loud as Liebgott’s and definitely to the southwesterly direction.
Dick dives toward the voices in the brush, concerned at the thickening dark smoke of fresh burn, and breaks through a willow thicket to find he’s on the other side of the perimeter with a crew of firefighters. It’s Nix and his team in old gear from the post, for sure, and the stumbling movement all around to his appearance betrays that it doesn’t properly fit any of them – it must have been a real slog for them since leaving the cabin. They’ve been following the edge of the fire perimeter with no idea that it’s growing on endlessly in the finger it’s now proven to be.
“Hey!” Dick says, rocking between his boots for a moment, attempting to contain himself, until Nix visibly quirks that brow of his, then Dick can’t help but lunge forward. He thinks the lack of professionalism will be forgiven, all considered – he’d like it to go unspoken, but doubts that with the likes of Liebgott and Webster as his observers that is a very realistic hope.
“Jesus, Dick,” Nix says, squeezing back, their gear rasping and crumpling between them. “You burst through that like the Kool-Aid man.”
“Are you okay?” Dick asks, as he glances up and down Nix, patting at his arms while looking for any punctures or faults in the old turnout gear. “Any damage?”
“I’m good – we’re good ,” Nix says, then rolls his head back and forth, as he gestures slightly toward the crumbling effects of the fire approaching behind them. “Hot, I guess. Only the usual amount of smoke inhalation. No goddamn radios except that HAM box, but I’m sure you figured that out.”
Dick nods quickly, rubbing his hand into Nix’s elbow, looking beyond him for the first time to the other members off the team. He gets thumbs up all around, then looks to Liebgott, who nods over at Webster, as he lifts the saw in greeting at the crew.
“We got to go west,” Dick says, pointing with two fingers through the unfortunately growing fireline to their left. “Helitack is close, but it’s through this – it’s just a finger right here, but there may be more and it’s definitely a steep hike. Do you think you can get through, or you want to keep trying to predict around?”
“We can take the short route,” Nix says, then looks to his team, all of whom are already eagerly nodding under their helmets. “Good refresher course, yeah?”
“We have made it this far,” Augusta says, as she shifts her borrowed helmet with a grimace at the way it slips back around her eyes.
“Alright,” Dick says, then points back into the finger with a pair of fingers. “Joe in front with the coordinates, Webster and I’ll take rear.” He reaches into his pockets with a nod, as he brings out another mask to hand to Lewis. “Let’s get ready.”
“How far?” Nix asks, as he pushes up the tab under his flimsy helmet.
“Two miles, or so,” Dick says, as he throws a thumb over his shoulder in a vague direction.
“Peachy,” Nix says, voice now slightly muffled, but no less sarcastic.
“Very,” Dick agrees, letting some of his frustration for the last few hours bleed through his tone. “But we made it through the finger in about two hundred yards. The rest is the climb down.”
“At least there’s an out,” Nix says, as he looks around with the evident goal to check on his team, before returning his focus to Dick with a point down at himself. “I hate this damned gear. I feel about as protected as an ice dancer.”
“You look it,” Dick says, reaching out and tugging at one of the yellow lapels.
Nix offers a wink with a slight lean forward.
Dick reaches up and turns the volume on his radio so the rest of the group can hear, mostly Nix, then presses the button to transmit. “Winters, checking in. We have the analyst team and are heading back down. No injuries.”
“Great to hear,” Harry says, “Roe, make your way to the helitack. It’s west-northwest of our position – I think you can probably see it if you’re on the other side of me.”
“Copy,” Roe says, voice lifting through the radio with a quiet affirmative. “I can.”
“I’ll make my way, too,” Harry says, “Have to ask the resident silver spoon why he didn’t bring a radio.”
“It was an overnight to get plots,” Nix says, leaning in close to Dick’s chest and lifting his voice to be heard in the radio. “And now my phone is melted.”
“Boo-hoo,” Harry says, a laugh at the edge of his voice. “Good to hear your voice. Over.”
Dick gently pushes Nix away before he can try to take over the radio. “Over.” He lowers the volume, again, as the chatter starts up about getting Nix back being a success. “You lose your stuff, again?”
“I learned my lesson,” Nix says, mouth pinching at the edges at the reminder of many a lost photo. “As much as I hate that crap.”
“Alright, let’s proceed,” Dick says, as he turns, gently urging Nix forward as he gestures for Liebgott to go ahead. “Analyst team in the center.”
“Yes, sir,” Liebgott says, saluting with his rubber beater while turning toward the smoldering perimeter. “Watch for active blazes – and we’ll stop to cut you a good branch, if you see one.”
Dick keeps an eye on the group, as they move forward back into the burnt area, watching for any lag from the analyst team. The gear is a major hindrance, sagging in all the wrong places, but the fire isn’t a gobbler like it could be, so they manage to keep it away with a good use of beaters. They even poke through the other side in good time, or at least Dick thinks so, though he’s been more distracted than usual by the back of Nix’s head when he should have been marking minutes on his watch.
“What a view,” Babe says, as he rolls his shoulders back, then looks over at Webster with a glance down at his axe. “Can I have one of them pulaskis?”
Webster rolls his head back and forth in a sarcastic shake. “Do we look like we have extras? We didn’t get cargo.”
Babe clicks his tongue. “Damn.”
“Hey, egghead,” Liebgott says, as he reaches toward Webster’s jumpbag, who stiffens, but doesn’t otherwise protest while Liebgott pulls out the rubber beater from the pack. He throws it at Heffron, who fumbles at the tool, but manages to extend it. “Do something useful.”
“Lieb,” Dick says, sighing through his nose, as he sends a glance sharply his way. “Refresh the group of our direction.”
“The helitack is down that way at 64°77N by 155°191W,” Leibgott says, pointing the GPS down the hills, then lifting his fingers up to point at the sky where a far off peak is visible low in the sky through the smoke. “We get separated, follow that. It’s north-northeast from this position.”
Nix glances down at his watch, looking at the small compass attached to the side, then huffs through his nose when he turns to catch the time. “11:32.”
“PM,” Liebgott adds, using his beater for leverage against the rock, as they begin their descent down the hill. “Time is real fake right now, for sure.”
“Oh no,” Augusta says, non sequitur, when they reach a flat spot against the hill.
Renee responds with a lifting hum.
Augusta straightens the helmet on her head. “The festival.”
“Next weekend,” Babe says, voice lifting in excitement, as he waves off her concern with a jerk shift of his hand. “Made sure of that when I took this one.”
“Glad you’ve got your priorities, Heffron,” Dick says, glancing to the back to make sure the fire isn’t crawling close to quickly, but the breeze is thankfully – for them – in the opposite direction.
Liebgott barks out a laugh.
“That looks like more than a climb, Dick,” Nix says, pointing down to a fire below them spreading steadily up the hill. “How much further, again?”
“Not far at all,” Dick mutters, as he confirms with a glance at Liebgott, who nods with a lift of his GPS. “Winters, here,” he says, as he lifts the radio close to his mouth, staring across the swath of treeline in front of them with fire licking out across it. “We’re seeing a big forest burn in front of us but unsure the spread. Can Luz see our position?”
“Luz here,” Luz says, then goes quiet for a pair of beats, before his voice continues: “It probably is about seven miles backtrack to go around, best guess, from what air is telling me. It’s a pretty narrow finger, traveling up the mountain along a creek. We’ve got another team jumping in for it. Perconte, Martin, and Bull.”
“For god’s sake,” Dick mutters, letting his hand off the radio. It’s probably the same finger they broke through higher up the hills.
Nix melodramatically lifts a hand to his chest.
“What do you all think?” Dick says, looking over at the group; the only one without field experience is Heffron, not even hotshot or helitack, but he’s passed the same tests as the rest of them. “We prepared to cross this part of the burn? You’ll have to move quick in that gear – it’s a lot worse in here, than it was up there.”
“I would,” Renee says, offering a firm nod, as she lifts her hand.
“Will,” Augusta corrects, gently, while lifting her own hand to cast her vote.
“Will,” Renee repeats, glancing quickly to Augusta with a nod, then back to Dick. “I will.”
Heffron brandishes Webster’s beater with a significant turn.
Dick lifts the radio. “We’re going to proceed through.”
“You sure?” Harry says, “The helo should be able to do an air rescue, now it’s here?”
“We’re trained for this, Harry,” Dick says, as he feels his jaw tighten in realization about the helicopter. “We’ll see you on the other side.”
“Everyone drink some water. Be careful,” Dick says, as he reaches out and thumps Heffron on the shoulder while gesturing for Webster to move ahead of them to take point beside Liebgott with his axe. “Hang tough.”
“Why did they not do an air rescue to start?” Renee asks, as she tightens up the loose turnout gear around her shoulders with a pinch at her mouth.
“Above my paygrade,” Dick says, though he suspects, now he’s forced into considering why, it might be something related to budget limits. The fact they’re evacuating to the helitack rather than earning dedicated search and rescue says a lot more than he’d like hear about it, as equipped as they are for it, it isn’t quite the same
“He means he agrees,” Nix says, glancing over his shoulder with a pointed raise of both his eyebrows. “Yeah, baby?”
Dick rolls his head in a vague nod.
The fire is hot and heavy inside the perimeter, and Dick wishes they had more water with them, or at least that they all had as much as each other. It shouldn’t be a long trip, as the creek is just audible above the sound of the burn, but the terrain around it is unpredictable and the trees are tall and old, many of them swaying and crackling with fire around them, and it won’t be too much of a shock if the fire has made a jump across the creek that no one caught.
A sudden creak sounds ominously above them, a tree swaying in the smoke, then there’s a marked shriek of breaking wood from the canopy. A trunk crashes to the ground in a spinning tumble, landing in the middle of the group with a billow of ash and sparks, and it takes a pair of beats to realize it appears to have hit Nix in the descent. He’s barely visible, but clearly down, his turnout gear thrashing in the brush underneath the arching, smoldering branches.
“Nix!” Dick shouts, hearing his voice echo through the fire, diving toward Nix while the other members of the team hurry past out of the smoke with the help of Webster and Liebgott. He can’t blame them – it’s evacuee procedure – but he can’t imagine doing it himself right now. He reaches out with a wag of his hand, grabbing at Nix’s arm with a frustratingly weak brush of his glove.
“I’m good – I’m okay,” Nix croaks, as he crawls forward toward Dick through the crumbling tree with a visibly struggling scramble of heavily clothed limbs. “Damn these trees, huh?”
“Your helmet – ” Dick says, lifting his glove up to where something has pierced through the helmet.
“Keep going,” Nix says, shaking his head, reaching out and pushing at Dick to move ahead of him through the smoke. “I can hear the whirlybird.”
The woods very gradually thin of active blaze, but stay thick with smoke, as they quickly crawl, then stand up to resume the slogging jog, finding that one of the reasons the fire hasn’t crossed the creek is a muskeg widely proceeding it when breaking through the brush and thin lower branches of the spruce and birch. The slow wap-wap-wap of the helicopter isn’t quite as close as Nix had seemed to think, but it does get louder, as they move, and they start to hear the voices of the helitack crew shouting at each other outside the radios.
“Winters, we’re out here at the top of the hill with the helitack,” Webster says, through the radio, voice primly pitching almost like it’s some newscast hour. “We got three out of four, but we don’t know where – Ow! What should I say, then?”
Liebgott breaks in with a pointed cough. “We’ve got New Winters’ team ready to evac – you with him?” He pauses, then takes a breath that crackles through the radio. “It looked like he got hit. Confirm?”
“Confirm,” Dick says, as he pushes Nix to urge him along when he seems to want to try to grab his helmet to look at the damage. “He’s hit, but his head is hard.”
Nix glances over with a narrow of a single eye while shooing Dick’s hands away from his back.
“Copy,” Liebgott says, voice pitching with appreciation for the joke, though he doesn’t quite outright laugh over the radio.
“I’ve got them going back out to continue suppression with the rest of the crew, then meet up with Bull,” Harry says, a slight lift in his tone, a bit unsure, and almost like he’s asking Dick if it’s alright.
Dick nods with a slight huff. “You’re lead, Harry. Sounds good.”
Nix shakes his head, as they slow to a brisk walk, just as the crew comes into sight on the top of a hill. “Did I hear New Winters?”
Dick peers up at the bright red of a helicopter, briefly closing his eyes with a thought of thanks. “He called me Winters Classic on the ride to the drop point.”
Nix breathes hard while they stumble through a brief twenty yards of a swamp at the base of the hill. “Is it like Coke?”
“I think so?” Dick says, though he hadn’t quite connected the dots until Nix had suggested it. “Better than Winters 2?”
“Fucking hell, these kids,” Nix says, gesturing out widely in front of himself with a shake of his head. “Can’t take them anywhere.”
Dick squints up at the helicopter, as they finally begin the last leg up to it. “Joe is older than us.”
“Is he?” Nix says, wheezing out a startled laugh. “Goddamn.”
Harry is up with the recovered crew, going over a health and safety checklist with Roe in the shadow of the helicopter. The crew are on oxygen, Heffron in particular giggling at him through the waning adrenaline, and Dick hears Nix groan when Roe sets his focus over to concentrate on him.
“Just let him look,” Dick says, keeping his voice quiet, as he reaches up to pull his own helmet off. He wants to do the same for Nix, but he’s worried what he might find underneath, because while Nix is acting perfectly fine, it could be something is hidden embedded under the gear.
Nix suffers Roe poking at him with a roll of his eyes at the sky. The oxygen is handed over and his second-hand turnout gear peeled way, and finally the helmet comes off last with a collective held breath, but seems the big hole somehow hasn’t given way to anything underneath bigger than a slight red mark. He seems to feel it’s funny by the cackle he lets out when Roe shows him in a little handheld mirror.
Dick is a little less amused, and expects he’ll be watching Nix close for a week or so, for a concussion, but he’s thankful mostly that he got away otherwise untouched. He looks over when he feels Harry step up beside him, and offers a tight smile, before looking back down at Nix on the makeshift bench of cargo.
“I think most of the branches caught it,” Nix says, looking up, eyes peeking between Dick and Roe with a placating note in his voice that strikes almost equally as patronizing for the concern. “I’m honestly good. I’ve been more hurt hitting trees myself on the way down, and no one ever cares about that.”
Dick tips his head to the side in a reluctant assent.
“Professional opinion is he’s okay, as well,” Roe says, looking up, mouth in that particular medic style of a comforting smile. “A little smoke, but no worse than he’d normally get.”
“I also said that,” Nix says, raising his brows up at Dick with a cock of his head. “Way up there.”
Roe nods while he stands up, patting at his legs. “I’ll let you go. Spina back home will do a capacity test.”
“Great,” Nix says, as he too stands from the crates, rolling his shoulders back in a stretch.
Dick glances over his back and sees Harry with the helitack lead – Moose, looks like – and scratches under his chin. He feels out of place, at odds with what he should be doing, which is following Roe back out into the wildfire, and what he’d like to do, which is make sure he has Nix within sight for at least forty-eight hours. He doesn’t think Nix is going to be allowed to stay, though, and Dick doesn’t really want him to after that tree fell on him.
“Alright,” Nix says, jerking his chin, rolling his eyes, and lifting his hands in that way he does when he’s eager for affection but can’t bring himself to outright start it. “Come on.”
Dick takes a half step and pulls Nix into a hug, squeezing hard and burying his nose into smoke-stained hair, as he rocks forward and then back to his heels. He presses a heavy kiss with an awkward crane of his neck to Nix’s lips, than down on his jaw, peppered dark with stubble from his two days in the bush. “You sure you’re good?”
“I swear,” Nix says, gloved hands settling at Dick’s sides with a clumsy squeeze that’s barely felt through the kevlar.
“Superintendents weren’t going to let me come,” Dick says, feeling his jaw tighten with lingering frustration at the effort. “Personal conflict.”
“I could almost see it,” Nix says, patting at Dick with a smack at his hips, then he narrows his eyes while shaking of his head. “If we didn’t jump together all the time, already.”
“…Exactly,” Dick says, quietly, though he hadn’t really been thinking much about any argument at all, only that he was going to go no matter what they said. It may, unfortunately, prove the point Sink may have been making, but only if Dick ever admits it.
“We’re lifting off in five,” the pilot says, as she passes, looking between Dick and Nix with a nod. “If you’re coming, make sure you’re on the bird.”
“Alright, I guess that was for me,” Nix says, slapping one last time at Dick’s sides before he steps away. “Meet you at home?”
Dick opens his mouth, then finds he can’t quite answer, settling on the dissatisfactory response of a weak nod.
Nix doesn’t seem particularly slighted, nor surprised, while smiling back wide with a nod of his head. “You stay safe too, okay?”
“Okay,” Dick says, reluctantly moving away when Nix steps toward the nose of the helicopter. The sound of the startup checks can be heard, behind Dick, as he gradually walks away toward where Harry is going over something on a toughbook over the top of the cargo.
Harry peeks up, then back down, clicking his tongue a few times. “You look worse than he did.”
Dick shakes his head, reaching up to rub at the side of his neck under the Kevlar collar, then exhales slowly to empty his lungs. “Where do you want me?”
“What?” Harry says, jerking his head toward Nix climbing into the helicopter, then looking back to Dick with a scoff from the back of his throat. “On that bird. I’m making it an order, or whatever, Major.”
Dick rolls his eyes at the nickname, and consequently finds himself looking past Harry at the roiling smoke of the fire, then swallows hard, stepping back with a firm nod. It’s not his fire this time – actually, he doesn’t even want it, which is the biggest indication that he needs to let Harry have it.
“Hell, you’re not even supposed to be out here,” Harry adds, with a dismissive wave, as he turns to head back toward the fire. “Go home!”
Dick jogs up toward the helicopter with a wave at the pilot with his helmet, then tugs off his firehood when he reaches the door. It doesn’t seem that his joining is any sort of real surprise, as an open seat is saved next to Nix along the bench.
“What started it?” He asks, buckling himself into the cabin beside Nix with a heavy press shoulder to shoulder, settling in to sit like that the rest of the ride back to Fairbanks. “Natural?”
“Don’t know yet,” Nix says, as he folds his arms against his stomach in reflex, as the blades begin to whir in increased speed above them. His voice lifts, just as the helicopter begins to do the same. “But if I had to guess, probably some lightning; I’m no weatherman, but I swear I heard thunder.”
Dick feels a weak smirk at the edge of his lips. He leans in to speak directly into Nix’s ear tilted ear. “You’re a sort of weatherman.”
Nix looks over with the evident goal to make sure that Dick sees the eyeroll. He moves back in to shout in Dick’s ear with a soft thwack at his middle. “That’s like saying you’re a sort of BASE jumper.”
“I do want to be,” Dick says, lifting his voice, unconcerned about Augusta on the other side of Nix hearing anything he’s saying to him. “But I suspect my husband wouldn’t join me.”
Nix now offers a pointed narrow of his eyes. “Sounds like a smart guy.”
“Why is it any different?” Dick asks,
“Why?” Nix repeats, softly tapping again at Dick a few more times with pointed shakes of his head. “Because the sky doesn’t have a big rock next to it I can fly into.”
“Mountains,” Dick says, pointing toward the window, though the closest one is admittedly so far off now to the point of a shadow.
Nix is quiet for a pair of beats, then smacks his lips. “There’s a difference.”
Dick hums a low tut under his breath, though it’s probably swallowed by the helo noise. He looks down, seeing Nix’s hands folded together over his safety belt, and stares at them for a beat, then reaches out to squeeze at the fold of knuckles. He gets his own hand captured between them for his efforts, caught like a trap, like he’d planned all along.