Chief Beckett, two of our other volunteers, and I all disembarked from the engine on the side of the road. The fire was just off the main road, but with the winds driving the way they were, we needed to move fast if we wanted to contain it and protect any more of the wild lands from being consumed.

“Alright, guys,” Chief Beckett called as one of the other volunteers and I took turns checking the webbing on our packs, which held extra water and a hatchet, and our turnout coats for any holes or issues. I wasn’t in my normal gear, either, so it was especially important on my part. “You got enough water? Remember, we’re going to dig a firebreak out ahead of this thing first, then start moving in on the flanks. Need you on your toes out there. No heroes, no solos, just keep it clean and keep it safe as you can. Don’t make me explain to the missus why you’re coming home with burns, or not at all. Capisce?”

“Got it!” we all shouted.

“Now, ain’t gotta remind you, but you keep an eye on your water, and you keep your asses moving. You cover each other, okay?”

“Yes sir!”

This close to the freeway, there was no telling what had caused the brush fire. In all likelihood, probably a cigarette or a joint someone had tossed from their car window without even thinking about it. This far out, it wasn’t that big of a concern as far as it reaching Enchanted Rock or anything. But during fire season, a small grass burn like this could easily take hold in the dried out-pine needles that covered the forest floor. What made it even worse was that we’d had a pretty heavy winter, which meant more run-off from the mountains during spring. And that meant a better growing season for plants, which dried up once we hit summer.

We headed out to the spot as Chief Beckett worked on getting the hose off the engine and laid out behind us. He and one of the other volunteers would drag the line along behind us as we went on the attack, digging a firebreak, a trench that was all the way down to mineral earth, across the front. We needed to get all the possible fuel away from the main fire to keep it from spreading, and the only way to do that was to clear all vegetation and roots from the surrounding area. You dig it deep enough and wide enough, and you could stop a brush fire in its tracks and mitigate the amount of damage it caused.

I gripped my borrowed fire rake and tugged at the sleeves of my turnout coat, agitated, as we made our way to the fire. Stupidly, I’d forgotten my gear back at the office when I’d run out to make the call. Maybe I’d been too focused on the case or Rebecca turning away from me, but I was going into this thing in borrowed gear that was a size or two too small.

Definitely not ideal.

And whosever it was, I didn’t like their smell. Something about it just seemed off. Or like I’d smelled it before. Not like on one of the normal guys. There was a hint of something else I couldn’t detect. The whole thing, combined with the unfamiliar feel of the gear, just made me even more disorienting and uncomfortable.

But I was on call and fire didn’t give two shits whether or not you were uncomfortable about the way you went in. It was a force of a nature, and all it wanted was two things: to spread and to burn. And didn’t get one without the other.

The guys and I attacked the blaze with our fire rakes, wooden poles with a rake-like head that had four strong, sharp blades that could chew up the earth like a wolf chewing up a deer haunch. Fire needs three things to burn: heat, oxygen, and fuel. Out here in the wild, you can’t remove the second one, so you have to remove the third. Fuel.

We sliced through limbs with our rakes, chopping through roots like a scalpel through diseased flesh as we tried to stem the spread. And, as we went to work cutting off the path of the flaming beast in front of us, we chopped through grass, roots, rocks, and topsoil to cleave the earth open. We had to get out every speck of organic matter because fire consumes everything. It’ll even travel through root systems and come up on the other side of the firebreak if you’re not careful.

Fighting fires is hot work, hotter than standing next to an oven or working in a kitchen on a summer day. Sweat pours down your body, trying to keep you cool, but it doesn’t help. Because not only are you dealing with the fire in front of you and the sun bearing down on your head and shoulders, you’re also wrapped up in a heavy fire-retardant coat that does the exact opposite of breathe. It’s thick and insulated, meant for protection against the heat.

Anytime you try to keep something out, you’re also going to keep something in.

The whole time you’re doing this, you’re working like your life and the lives of the community depend on you. Within minutes, your core body temperature begins to rise and begins to outstrip how quickly your body can cool itself.

With our front firebreak dug and the heat rolling off the flames like a blast furnace, we spread out and took to the flanks of the beast. You slow the front first, then move to the sides before it can try to go around your bulwarks, spreading like a rampant disease through the tissue of the land. I circled around to the left, taking one of the other men with me. With our rakes and the hose finally coming in over the top to put down the flames, we went to work.

Moments later, I was getting tapped out by Chief Beckett, with him shouting in my ear for me to go cool off. With all the frantic work, it had felt like thirty seconds, or conversely an hour, not just ten minutes. He pulled me off the line and went to work with his own rake, moving like a heavyweight madman as he attacked the ground with gusto, like it had killed his father.

I retreated to the rest station and began to strip my coat off as I got far enough from the fire. There, we had ice buckets and cooling off spots. Sweat poured down my body like a waterfall, dripping down my back and between my pecs. I could practically feel it running over my abs as I tossed the borrowed bunker coat on the ground and plunged my arms into the buckets of ice water. Surprisingly, no steam rose from the buckets when I quenched my body, rapidly bringing my temperature back down to a safe zone.

Out here, fighting fires like these, heat stroke was your biggest enemy. Within just the ten minutes I’d been on the line, my core had probably risen four or five degrees, getting to a point where I was basically running a fever. Your arms, though, help to regulate that body temperature, and bringing them down with ice is one of the most effective ways to keep the brain cool.

“Jesus,” I breathed, looking back over my shoulder to see how the progress was going.

Already, they’d encircled the fire and begun to close it in a tight ring of a firebreak. Not much longer now. Another of the volunteer firefighters came off the line, tapped out by one of the hose guys.

I clamored to my feet, barely noticing the extra fifty pounds of gear on my body, and grabbed up my tossed-aside bunker coat. I grabbed one of the bottled waters from my backpack, drank a mouthful, and headed back out with my rake in hand.

As I did, though, the wind shifted a little, bringing me a whiff of a smell I hadn’t caught in ages from the fire engine some fifty feet behind me. Ammonium fertilizer and kerosene.

Ammonium nitrate fuel oil. ANFO. The same stuff used in the Oklahoma City bombing. The same stuff that blew up the little town of West, Texas.

Oh no, this wasn’t just a brush fire. It was a trap.

Someone was trying to blow us up.