TAYLOR FOUGHT PANIC as the paint on the nose of the plane began to blister. The heat in the cockpit was insufferable. Any second the gas tank might blow. Brian was right. If she wanted to live, she had to abandon the Otter. Now!
She seized the bungee cord she’d used to hold a bunch of charts together and tied off the control column, then stumbled her way along the empty belly of the plane, grabbing at one of the storage racks along the side to keep from falling when the wings abruptly tipped and, just as suddenly, righted themselves. She was gasping with fear when she finally reached Brian. He was still wearing the spotter’s helmet, but he’d replaced the spotter’s harness with his smoke-jumping parachute.
“How do you want me to hang on, once we go out the door?”
“Come here,” he said curtly.
Brian put a cage helmet, which normally protected a smoke jumper’s face from being impaled by branches on the way down, onto her head and settled a spotter’s harness around her chest. He secured the clip at the back, which had kept him attached to the plane while he was hanging out the door as the spotter, to a carabiner on his smoke jumper’s rigging belt. When he was done, she stood in front of him at the door to the plane, her back arched slightly by the PG—personal gear—bag he had strapped to his stomach.
He pointed out the door. “See that spot? That’s where we’re headed.”
Taylor looked where he’d gestured and saw a tiny circle, with patches of green and brown, surrounded by towering flames. Colored streamers he’d dropped to show the direction of the wind drifted downward through the black smoke. While she stood frozen, trying to fathom that this was really happening, that they really were going to jump into the inferno below, he kicked a tall, narrow cargo box used by smoke jumpers out the door. The box contained a sleeping bag and Brian’s Pulaski tool, along with other supplies, including three days’ worth of food and water.
She was still watching the descent of the cargo box parachute, which was headed in the same direction as the streamers, when Brian yanked her close.
“Trust the harness to hold you. Keep your arms crossed over your chest and your knees bent,” he ordered tersely. “Lean your head back against my shoulder and lift your feet off the ground.”
She barely had time to do as he’d asked, before he put his long, powerful arms around her and dropped out of the plane.
Taylor would have screamed as they fell, except she was so frightened, she couldn’t draw breath to make a sound. She whimpered when a flying cinder slipped through the metal cage protecting her face and landed on her cheek, but she was afraid to move her hands from the position she’d been told to take, so she shook her head frantically to get rid of it.
“Settle down,” Brian said in an infuriatingly calm voice, tightening his hold until she thought her ribs might crack. “I have you.”
It surprised her how much relief she felt at Brian’s deep-voiced reassurance, but that small comfort didn’t last, because she could see that they were headed straight into the hottest part of the fire. Any second, she expected to be impaled on a burning limb. She felt like she might throw up. How did smoke jumpers do this time after time after time?
Taylor followed the direction of the streamers far below, which seemed to be headed into the fiery blaze. Her search was interrupted by a jerk and a sudden reversal of direction upward, as Brian pulled the rip cord and the chute opened.
“I’m going to let go of you now. I need to adjust the risers.”
Taylor felt herself slide downward and screamed, “Brian!”
“You’re not going to fall. Just do as I say.”
Then his arms were gone.
Taylor would have given anything to be facing the other way, holding on to Brian like a baby animal clutched to its mother’s belly. It was torture watching the ground coming up at her faster and faster. She closed her eyes and felt their bodies sliding sideways as Brian adjusted the steering toggles. But the fearsome noise rising upward, as the fire hissed and growled like a multitude of predatory cats and carnivorous dogs, was too ominous to ignore.
Taylor forced herself to open her eyes, but her heart skipped a beat at the sight that greeted her.
An inferno. Nothing but death in every direction.
“There,” Brian muttered, gesturing with his chin, which nudged the back of her head.
Taylor spied their supposed destination, a tiny, unburned meadow at the base of the mountain. It was about the size of a baseball field and was bounded everywhere she looked by giant burning spruces and pines. The patch of grass Brian had spotted was too small a target. They would never make it. “You can’t—”
Taylor bit off the rest of her speech. The meadow he’d found was ridiculously tiny, but it was the only place she could see anywhere around them that wasn’t licked by flames. She watched the cargo box land in rugged brush ringed by trees that crackled viciously as they burned. Black smoke rose ominously, so thick and hot it was difficult to breathe. Maybe they weren’t going to be scorched to death after all. Maybe they were going to suffocate.
She heard Brian say, “Keep your knees bent, so they’re off the ground when we land.” Then he swore savagely, as a gust of wind caught the Ram Air chute and forced it twenty feet farther up into the air and sideways toward the inferno.
Taylor watched in horror as embers landed in the rectangular canopy and felt sure the fragile nylon was going to dissolve in flames. Any second, she expected them to plummet to their deaths. Her stomach turned topsy-turvy, and she felt her tongue latch to the roof of her mouth.
“Not on my watch, you sonofabitch!” Brian muttered.
They suddenly swirled in a circle, and Taylor heard Brian’s grunts as he wrestled the chute away from the devilish fire. But whichever way he turned them, they were surrounded by flames. There was no escape. Taylor blinked her tearing eyes and coughed as she breathed in the hot smoke that obscured everything. She had the awful feeling that the end was near, but because it was so dark, she was going to miss it.
Apparently Brian could see just fine, because he swore again.
Taylor tried to imagine the feat of superhuman strength it was taking to direct the parachute away from the flaming trees. Amazingly, a moment later, they were headed back toward the center of the meadow.
Taylor clutched her arms tighter across her chest when, once again, they shot higher into the air. This time, they dropped just as suddenly. The descent was horrifying because they ended up below the tops of the towering conifers, within the ring of excoriating fire. Sparks spit and flew. Taylor gasped and shook her head to put out another flaming ash that landed on her forehead.
She was suddenly aware of how fast they were falling. Too fast. We’re falling too fast! Which was when it dawned on her that there was too much weight on the chute, that two of them hanging from the billowing nylon intended for just one was likely contributing to the difficulty Brian was having maneuvering them into the small open space.
“Keep your knees bent, so they’re off the ground when we land,” Brian repeated.
He knew she needed the reminder, because he knew this was her very first jump. She’d always thought it was stupid to purposely exit a perfectly functioning plane, even with a perfectly functioning parachute. She didn’t respond because her breathing had gone wonky again.
Taylor was fully aware that, assuming the parachute opened, most jumping accidents occurred on landing. In fact, that was how most smoke jumpers got injured—impaled on a tree branch, falling as they tried to free themselves from a perch high in some towering pine, or running into some object on landing, like a boulder, that crushed bones. Not to mention ending up smack-dab in the middle of a raging fire.
It had been a running joke between the two of them, whenever she’d flown Brian on smoke-jumping missions over the past summer, that he was going to get her into a parachute and out of a plane someday. She fought the urge to laugh at the absurdity of the position in which she found herself and realized that she was on the verge of hysteria. This was the sort of dire emergency that happened only in novels or movies.
Except, this was real.
“Knees up!” Brian ordered.
She kept her knees raised as Brian landed, running to keep up with the speed of the chute. But a gust of wind tore at the nylon and knocked him sideways onto the grass. She felt a stone jab her hip as he rolled them over, so she was on top of him.
We’re down. And we’re not on fire!
There was no time for exultation. The chute was still full of air, and it was dragging them along the ground, faster and faster.
“We’re being pulled into the fire!” Taylor dug in her heels, but it didn’t help.
Brian reached between them to release the carabiner. He tossed her aside and was on his feet an instant later, deflating the Ram Air and gathering it into a ball.
Taylor tried to shove her way upright, but her body didn’t want to move. The air seared her lungs; the smoke was suffocating. She crouched close to the ground, where it was easier to breathe. She turned her head in a slow circle and felt her heart falter. She saw no break in the fire, no narrow passage between the burning trees through which they might escape. She had no idea why this meadow hadn’t burned yet, but it was only a matter of time before the wind blew burning embers onto the dry grass and brush, or charred trees began crashing down on top of them.
They were safely on the ground, but all they’d done was postpone the inevitable…and ensure their deaths would be excruciating.