BRIAN OFTEN HAD nightmares in which the fire he was fighting took him down, sweat-drenched dreams where, no matter how hard he battled, the fire won. When he’d stepped from the Twin Otter with Tag in his arms, his body charged with adrenaline, he hadn’t allowed himself to consider what he would do if there was no path of escape once they reached the ground. His single goal was to survive.
But he’d never been in a situation quite this menacing. He’d never had the responsibility for the life of someone he loved—had loved—completely on his shoulders. He felt his pulse racing as he suppressed the knowledge of what might happen to them if they ended up in the burning trees.
He’d smelled scorched human flesh. He’d seen the remains of a charred human corpse, the face in agonized rictus. He forced that awful smell, that horrific image, from his mind, as he did every morning when he went to work. A firefighter couldn’t afford to think of the worst-case scenario. Otherwise, he’d be no good at his job. Fear—being scared shitless—led to indecision. And indecision led to disaster.
His heart galloped out of control as he searched for some tiny break in the cage of fire surrounding the meadow below—and found nothing. This fire was a gobbler, gorging on everything in sight. He estimated the flames rose sixty to eighty feet above the trees. Maybe Tag had been right. Maybe they should have stuck with the plane. He was the one who’d insisted they get out.
But he was a smoke jumper, and he worked best on the ground. He’d been sure that, if they could just get to solid footing safely, he could figure out a way to save them both. He could tell Tag was terrified, but she hadn’t panicked, which would have made the situation worse.
Ordinarily, he would have been falling through the air at ninety miles an hour, but Tag’s added weight made it much faster. He’d figured they would need the sixty-five pounds of stuff he’d packed into the pockets in his trousers and the supplies in his PG bag, so he hadn’t discarded anything before they jumped.
To compensate for the increased speed caused by the extra weight, he’d simply ratcheted up the normal count before he opened the chute—jump one thousand, look one thousand, reach one thousand, wait one thousand, pull one thousand—each element an instruction for what he should be doing in the moments before he pulled the rip cord across his chest.
The multicolored streamers had revealed four hundred yards of drift and shown him the wind was stronger down low. The terrain was mountainous, but the valley into which they’d jumped was all forest. Black smoke made the ground nearly invisible, and he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to hit the scrap of unburnt land he’d seen from the plane. He checked the surrounding forest and saw only fast-burning black and white spruce. His nose pinched at the acrid smell of pine tar and burning pitch.
There wasn’t much wind, but he held his breath in an agony of suspense, hoping it wouldn’t rise and send flying embers out into the grass and rugged brush, setting fire to the meadow before they landed. He couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t already in flames. Then he saw it—a natural barrier of rock, a ring of boulders and stones that kept the fire from spreading from the trees into the grass. All it would take was one good gust of wind to send sparks into the scrubland. After that, it wouldn’t take long for the brush to burn—along with the two of them.
He aimed the chute toward the far end of the meadow, away from the direction of the wind. Like cattle drives, fires had different areas where the firefighters—the fire’s drovers—positioned themselves: the head, the right and left flanks, and the tail. He hoped that landing near the tail of the fire, rather than closer to its head, might give them a few more seconds, seconds they would need to escape, if the meadow started to burn.
Once they were on the ground, he didn’t stop to ask Tag how she was. He simply released the carabiner and hurried to collect the chute. They might need it to keep them warm overnight, assuming they didn’t get rescued right away.
He found himself grinning like an idiot. He was worried about keeping warm overnight? They’d be lucky if they lived another half hour! He was glad Tag couldn’t see him. She’d think he’d gone around the bend. His grin became a grimace when he realized there was no break visible in the fire that encircled them.
But he’d been in plenty of tight places before and managed to come through. He wasn’t the kind of man to give up or give in. Otherwise, he never would have survived this long.
Brian’s nose was already running, and his eyes were burning and tearing from the smoke. As soon as he had the parachute bunched, he headed for the cargo box, which held four plastic quart bottles of water. From his own experience, he knew Tag would appreciate a wet cloth to wipe her eyes and to tie around her nose, so she could breathe more easily.
Brian had just reached the three-foot-tall, one-foot-wide box when he saw a fast-moving shadow on his right. He figured it was some small animal fleeing its burrow, a sight common during forest fires.
“Brian! Look out!”
At Tag’s shriek, he spun, then threw himself sideways, as a set of monstrous claws that would have ripped his guts out, slashed through his trouser leg instead. He was too startled to do more than spread his arms wide to make himself look bigger and shout at the top of his lungs. The young grizzly darted away, and Brian realized he had only seconds to find something with which to defend himself. When the ferocious bear realized there was nowhere to go, he’d be back.
Brian slammed open the cargo box and grabbed his Pulaski—a firefighter’s tool with an ax head on one side of the long wooden handle and a hoe for digging on the other—to defend himself when the bear attacked again. He didn’t stand much of a chance against a five-hundred-pound grizzly’s teeth and claws, but at least the ax gave him a chance. He shot a glance in Tag’s direction and, when it looked like she might move toward him, shook his head violently to warn her away. He turned to face the grizzly, putting himself between the dangerous beast and the woman he was determined to protect.
As he stared, his heart in his throat, Pulaski in hand, the grizzly shoved through a burning bush and kept on running, roaring in tragic defiance as it disappeared into the fiery hell that surrounded them.
Brian was astonished, disbelieving. What had just happened? The animal had to know it didn’t stand a chance in the fire. But he’d watched people do equally desperate things when faced with a burning inferno and no obvious means of escape—like jump out of a twenty-story window knowing they would die when their bodies hit the ground. He saw the lumbering beast catch fire and heard it scream in agony before he turned away.
“Are you hurt?” Taylor called as she ran to him, coughing and choking from the smoke. She’d gotten rid of the helmet and spotter’s harness and had her chambray shirttail up over her face, baring a naked midriff. “I saw it take a swipe at you and thought…” Her eyes were two wide white saucers surrounded by skin turned black by smoke.
He glanced at his trousers and shivered when he saw the tattered cloth surrounding his right calf, which stung a bit, relieved that he’d survived the encounter with so little damage. He dumped the spotter’s helmet on the ground and said, “I’m fine,” as he turned to see where the grizzly had come from.
He made an instant decision and acted on it. If the cave opening was large enough for the young grizzly to exit, it was probably large enough for the two of them to get inside, where they could wait for the fire to burn itself out. A can of pork and beans fell from the ragged pocket in his trouser leg as he grabbed the cargo box with one hand, keeping the Pulaski in the other, and dragged it toward the hole, nearly hidden by brush, from which the animal had emerged.
“What’s this?” Taylor asked as she picked up the can and trotted after him.
“Supper.” The wind ruffled his hair, and he glanced at the trees and saw embers being blown about. The wind was coming up. Time was running out.
“Stand back,” he said, when they reached the grizzly’s hideaway. He let go of the cargo box and took the Pulaski in both hands, wary of what might be coming out next.
It was impossible to see very far inside the hole, but it was clearly too narrow for him to enter wearing his smoke-jumping gear. He slipped off his jacket and PG bag and let them drop. He had the fleeting thought that he should try to report on his Bendix King that they’d reached the ground alive. But without a repeater, the radio had a range of only three miles—and that was on flat land. They were surrounded by mountains. No sense confirming to Tag that they had no way of contacting the outside world. Better to wait until they were safe. They weren’t out of danger yet. Not by a long shot.
He retrieved his headlamp from his PG bag and put it on, then emptied the rope from his shredded trouser pocket and left it coiled on the ground. He removed the frying pan from his other pants pocket, but left the steak, foil-wrapped potato, and another can of pork and beans where they were. He could collect the stuff he’d removed when he came back out.
Assuming I come back out, he thought grimly.
“Surely you’re not going in there,” Tag said.
“Do you see anywhere else to wait out this fire?” He didn’t pause for an answer, simply dropped to his hands and knees. He’d planned to shove the cargo box through the hole ahead of him, thinking it would keep a grizzly’s jaws and claws off him until he was inside the cave and could wield the Pulaski, which he still held. The box was too tall.
He seized the parachute instead, then settled onto his stomach, angled his broad shoulders, and began slithering into the tunnel, pushing the bulky fabric through ahead of him.
“Be careful!” Taylor called after him. “There might be another bear inside.”
He heard the panic in Taylor’s shrill voice and stopped long enough to yell back, “I’ll be fine.”
“You can’t know that!”
Brian didn’t bother arguing. He was willing to fight a grizzly for the refuge if necessary, because their only other choice was burning to death. The rock walls on either side of his body narrowed, squeezing the air from his lungs, as he struggled to get through the tapering entryway. Gravity suddenly caused the chute to slide away from him, and he heard it swoosh when it landed. He had a moment’s terror when he realized he would be pretty much helpless if something tried to escape, now that the chute was gone, while his arms were confined by the rock walls.
“How the hell did that bear get through here?” he muttered.
“What?” Taylor called down to him.
He slid out of the tunnel into the cave like a baby leaving its mother’s womb, but without the blazing light a newborn was likely to find waiting for him. He was grateful for the parachute, which allowed him a relatively soft landing.
He turned his head to illuminate the cave with his headlamp. The dark space looked about as tall and wide as his bedroom at home. He searched for anything else that might have decided to wait out the fire down here but saw nothing. He cautiously moved far enough away from the opening to determine that the cave narrowed again at the other end. He couldn’t see light or feel any sort of breeze that would suggest another exit.
The surprisingly cool cave was empty.
Brian coughed as he inhaled a breath of smoke from the entrance. He realized that once they were both inside, he would need to block the opening, in order to keep out the smoke until the fire died down. He could do that with the chute.
He crawled back out again, Pulaski in hand, aware that there might be other caves in the rocky area, with other feral animals intent on escaping. He needed to collect his coat and the rest of his gear, report their position, if that was possible, and retrieve his PG bag and the supplies from the cargo box.
“What’s down there?” Taylor asked.
“A lot of bear scat and bat guano,” he replied. “Otherwise, we’ll have the place to ourselves.” He surveyed the flames with a firefighter’s eyes, noting the direction of the wind and seeing how the dry brush along the edge of the clearing was beginning to burn. Now that the wind had picked up, it might be only a matter of seconds before the fire was at their feet.
He quickly retrieved his PG bag and took out his Bendix King. He stuffed two of the quart water bottles from the cargo box into it, then added the skillet and the can of beans Tag was holding. He handed the heavy bag to her, along with his sleeping bag, and said, “Push this down ahead of you when you crawl in.”
Tag eyed the hole skeptically, her blue eyes wide, her chin wobbling. “Where are you going to be?”
Then he remembered that she hated being alone in the dark. When they were teenagers, he’d thought she just wanted to see what the two of them were doing, when she’d insisted she didn’t want to make love without a light on. He’d smirked and said, “Are you sure you’re ready to see this big boy?”
She’d socked him in the arm and explained, “One of the maids my father hired to take care of us while he was gone locked me in a closet. I suppose I deserved some sort of punishment.”
“What did you do?” he’d asked.
“I don’t remember. The point is, she forgot about me, and I spent the rest of the day in the dark. None of my sisters were at home, and the maid must have gone shopping, because she didn’t hear me screaming, either. Or she ignored me. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.”
“So you’re not really scared of the dark?”
She’d shivered. “I was so alone. I never want to feel like that again.”
Remembering the look on her face, Brian set down his Pulaski, then took off his headlamp and arranged it on her forehead. “Take this and go on inside. I need to report that we’re on the ground and where we’re holed up, so they can find us later, and collect the rest of the supplies from the cargo box. I’ll be right behind you.”
“All right. Please hurry, Brian.”
He had to hand it to her. She might look and sound scared, but Tag was a trooper. She dropped to her knees and shoved everything through the hole ahead of her, before she flattened onto her stomach and slithered into the narrow opening.
He’d just started up the rock face above the tunnel, in hopes of getting better radio reception, when he heard an earsplitting crraaaaccck.
Brian saw a gigantic, 200-foot spruce begin to fall, its trunk massive enough to seal the cave opening. He didn’t think, he just reacted. He tripped and dropped the radio as he scrambled back down the rock, but there was no time to retrieve it. He ran full tilt for the tunnel and dove inside, just as the mighty tree, limbs on fire, crashed to the ground in a horrendous cacophony of breaking branches and crackling flames. The colossal spruce shut out what little sunlight had made it through the smoke, leaving them trapped in the pitch-black cave…with no way out.