Chapter 20 #2
He sighed. Scrubbed a hand over his face.
“We’ve got the fire trapped by the river, rock, and firebreaks we created.
Town is safe enough. But that up above…” He pointed out the cliff above them.
“I don’t think it’s stable. We need to get up above it, fuse all the vegetation between the rock and the flames. That’s when we’ll have it nailed.”
If the weather conditions remained right.
If the crew wasn’t too exhausted from the ongoing battle, not to mention last night’s fiesta.
If they weren’t thinking about something else, like their families, or what they’d had or not had for lunch.
If, if, if…
So many variables, and on a job like this, even one thing off could make or break them.
As he knew all too well.
Oh yeah, there was that sharp stab of pain.
He hadn’t forgotten. Good. He didn’t have to force himself to relive it, it was still right there.
And though there were still many dangers, this fire would not end in tragedy as his last had.
Not if he had breath left in his body. “I’m going to climb up there and see how much growth is beyond that rock.
See if you can get Hector and a few others to walk the south, west, and east perimeters to check on them. ”
“Will do.” Lyndie watched Griffin stride away, a funny feeling in the pit of her gut. She had a bad feeling it was fear, which made no sense. This was good. They had this thing under control.
But as soon as she contacted Hector, Tom ran up to her, huffing and sweating. “Just got back with more men…on the way up here we caught a weather report…” He bent over his knees and dragged air into his lungs. “Heavy winds forecasted, leading into dry thunderstorms…”
Which meant lightning, and more wind without moisture.
“Damn it.” She glanced at Griffin climbing the mountain directly ahead of her, already reaching for her radio to fill him in, but it squawked first. She brought it up to her ears just in time to hear Sergio say he was already on the northeastern edge with a crew of fifteen men.
Hearing that, she called Griffin. From above, high on the rock, she watched him pick up his radio and turn to look at her.
“Bad news, good news,” she said. “Bad first: Tom said dry thunderstorms are on their way. Good news: You have a group of men who made it to the base of that northeastern canyon directly to your right, they’re between the river and the wall of rock.
They’re above the fire. Repeat, they’re already above the fire.
They have fuses on them, just tell me what to tell them. ”
She watched him go stiff. And even though she couldn’t see his eyes, she knew they were chilled and right on her.
“Lyndie,” he said. “They’re right above the canyon next to me?”
“Yes,” she verified.
“Get them out of there.”
Next to her, Tom nodded. “Tell him they’ll be out of there as soon as they check on the perimeters…”
Lyndie repeated that for Griffin.
“No.” His voice sounded hoarse. Terrified. “Tell them to get out of there. Tell them now—”
The radio died.
“Griffin?” Lyndie banged the radio against her thigh and tried again. “Griffin?”
Her batteries had died. “Tom—”
“Got it.” He slapped his pockets for more batteries, came up empty-handed. “Shit, I gave away my extras earlier.”
And Griffin had her extras.
She could see him up there, suddenly and furiously on the move, going sideways across the rock now instead of up. He was moving…directly toward the crew she’d just told him about.
She glanced at Tom, who had shielded his eyes and was watching Griffin. “What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know…it looks like maybe he’s trying to get to where the crew is…though that’s got to be a difficult climb from there—”
She could see the glint of the hard hats of the crew now, to the right of Griffin and down a bit.
And then below them, the northern front of the fire.
The wind whipped around them suddenly, and though they were a good twenty yards from the flames, and on the other side of the fire line they’d dug, the heat made her skin feel tight. Her eyes, already tortured by the smoke and dust, watered, and her lungs burned. “What’s happening?”
“The wind is moving ahead of the thunderstorm.”
Whipped by the wind, the smoke thickened.
Griffin disappeared near where the glint of hard hats had been only a moment ago, though now none of them were visible.
Coughing, wheezing with the asthma that had never been worse, Lyndie blinked furiously but she could see nothing but flames and smoke, which seemed to blow up right before her very eyes and head northward with shocking speed.
Heading right for where Griffin and the others had disappeared.
“Oh, my God.” She ran to one of the men, grabbed his radio and lifted the radio to her mouth.
“Griffin! The fire just blew up, it’s coming at you!
Griffin, can you hear me? Ven por aca, apurarse,” she shouted, hoping if he couldn’t hear her, the men could, and that they would indeed come this way, and hurry.
No answer, just static and the sound of the fire licking at them, crackling, which she imagined was the sound of them all dying. God, she was listening to them die, and with a helpless glance at Tom, she hooked the radio on her belt and began running.
Griffin heard Lyndie’s frantic warning through the radio, just as he jumped down a ten-foot drop to the crew of about fifteen guys, getting ready to work on turning the fire back on itself across the northernmost front.
But they hadn’t heard the weather change. They didn’t know that if the wind started at the bottom of the canyon beneath them, it would whip the fire into a frenzy, creating a vacuum up the ravine, sucking the flames right up and out the cliff rock above them.
Annihilating every one of them in the process.
Just one little mistake, he told himself grimly, his heart pounding hard, he’d known that was all it would take here. In this case, that would be lack of swift communication from the fire central to the last man out in the field, a critical error that would rest on the incident commander’s head.
His.
It wouldn’t be the first time. In Idaho, the conditions hadn’t been that different, despite the fact that fire had been three times the size, their equipment the latest available, the crew all trained.
That fire had stretched out for three weeks, until every last one of them had been exhausted, made worse by the remote conditions.
With no neighboring town nearby, they’d all been camping at their base.
The food situation had been army rations for the most part.
Then there’d been the long hot hours. Everyone’s attention span had been low, they’d been sluggish.
A nightmare waiting to happen, and it had.
He wouldn’t let history repeat itself. When he leapt down, the crew all looked up in unison, surprised, just as Griffin remembered one important little fact.
He didn’t speak Spanish. “Vámanos ahora,” he shouted.
Let’s go, now thankfully being some of the only Spanish he knew, and pointed eastward, where they could go parallel across the mountain if they climbed up and over the rock cliff.
They stood at the low point in the canyon, with the fire beneath them, looking at the deep gorges and dizzying heights, some of the most scenic views in the world.
With one single burst of cold, moistureless wind, the fire would whip right up this point like a funnel.
They’d all perish.
He’d seen it happen. Hell, he’d lived it. “Move!” he shouted, pointing them in the right direction, showing them where he wanted them to go, then jumping back down to make sure every last one of them moved.
Despite the panic and fear, they began the climb out, helping each other, scrambling as fast as they could.
But the fire did exactly as he knew it would, he could feel it, hear it, roaring up the canyon wall in an unbelievable explosion of heat and wicked flame, moving in on them.
There were two men left to climb out, then one.
Paco was a rancher, not a firefighter, and doing the best he could to scramble along, but he was clearly exhausted and terrified, and upon closer look, not older than sixteen.
His fingers kept slipping on the rock, and Griffin, feeling the wall of fire at his back, hearing Lyndie’s frantic cry for him over the radio, saw his life flash before his eyes.
Not his early life, which had been full and happy and good, but the last year, which he’d completely let slip by him. He’d wasted an entire year, and now there were no second chances.
He gave the kid a shove and scrambled along after him, just as the hair on the back of his neck began to singe.
At the top, the men waited for direction from Griffin, who felt paralyzed.
The incredibly intense heat and wall of fire was coming at them, the smoke so thick and choking, they were all coughing and gasping.
But the only place to go was eastward, where there lay another ravine, this one a twenty-foot drop down.
God damn it, not now, Griffin thought. He wasn’t going to die now. Hell, he’d gone through so much, suffered so much, but he’d never planned on dying.
And he didn’t plan on it now.