The Icarus Effect Read online

  Ben turned his back and started working his way to the far end of the line. He wanted to stay as far away from Chad as possible. He kept his head down and went about his work with a will.

  “Second wind?”

  Ben looked up. The only person close to him was Eamon, but he was digging furiously at a small stump, and looked like he didn’t know Ben was even there. “Say what?”

  Eamon kept digging, but shot a quick glance at Ben. “Uh, nothin. Just looked like you got a second wind all of a sudden, is all.”

  Ben glanced back at the group on the other side of the line, then went back to hacking at the stump. “Not really. Just figured this line won’t dig itself.”

  “Good thing we’re gettin’ help then, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  Eamon glanced at the other group, then back at Ben. “Best to leave your grudges at home.”

  “Don’t know what you mean,” Ben said, clenching his jaw and taking a huge swing at the base of the stump.

  “Sure you do. You keep eyeballing Charlie crew like you hate ‘em, and then you pretend to not notice ‘em at all. My guess is it’s not the whole crew. I heard a rumor there was a fight at NIFC. People said it was between two new trainees. Wouldn’t have been you and one of the newbies on Charlie, would it?”

  Ben straightened up. “You don’t miss much.”

  “Comes from not talkin’ much,” Eamon said. He leaned his Pulaski against a boulder and stretched his back. “Easier to listen when your mouth’s shut.”

  Ben looked at him, not sure if he’d been insulted or instructed. Eamon didn’t exactly strike him as the brightest guy on the crew, but maybe that was because he was so quiet. Maybe he had a point.

  “Well, the rumors got it right about the two trainees,” Ben said. “Part of the reason for it was that one of the trainees couldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

  “What about the other one?” Eamon asked as he uprooted a large bush and tossed it to one side of the line.

  “The other one’s still learning.”

  Eamon grinned. “Never too late for that.”

  They kept working together at the far end of the line, slowly working their way further up the drainage as the rest of the combined crews followed. Ronnie came up a few times to discuss which route looked best, but mostly he allowed them to work together and set the pace. Ben was glad to see that Chad had been posted at the back of the line, far out of earshot.

  When they broke for dinner, they were all suffering from the intense heat of the day. It was already more than a hundred degrees in the shade, and the overlying shroud of smoke from the nearby fire had gotten visibly thicker. Ben felt like he was being slow-cooked in an oven. The feeble breeze had died down a half hour earlier, and the lack of wind now made it more difficult to breathe. Ben leaned back against the base of a tree and pulled his hard hat down over his eyes.

  He’d only been there a minute before somebody kicked the sole of his outstretched boot. Ben reflexively pulled his leg back, then lifted his hat. Chad was standing in front of him, a canteen raised halfway to his mouth.

  “Having a nice nap?” he flashed his crooked grin, then took a swig of water. “Must be nice.”

  “Get lost, Chad. It’s better if we just stay away from each other.” Ben pulled his hat back down.

  “Not much chance of that,” Chad said. “Now that we’re crew mates.”

  “I’m sure it’s only temporary. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Where’s your girlfriend? I bet she missed me.”

  Ben jumped up, pulling his hat off and throwing it on the ground at Chad’s feet. The sky was considerably darker than when he’d sat down a few minutes earlier, but he didn’t notice. He leaned in close, getting right in Chad’s face. “I said, get lost, Chad.”

  “You gonna sucker-punch me again?” Chad said, smiling. His lip was still split from where Ben had punched him the first time. “Don’t think you’ll get away with that twice.”

  Ben was tensed up, ready to deck him, when a loud whistle pierced the air.

  “Listen up, everybody!” Ronnie bellowed. “I just talked to NIFC on the radio. The wind has shifted, and the fire is headed this way, fast. Bravo crew is in the next drainage over, but their line of retreat got cut off, so they’re beatin’ feet through the notch at the north end of this drainage, trying to work their way back to us. From what NIFC can tell, the fire’s moving on several lines at once from the east-northeast, stretching out in fingers, leaving pockets of unburned fuel between. That means that even if it slows down, it’s still gonna have plenty of fuel close to hand within the burn zone to keep going, and it’s gonna be unpredictable.”

  “Are we gonna bug out, Ronnie?” somebody asked.

  “No.” Ronnie’s answer was emphatic. “We’re gonna leave this line here, and bust our humps up the drainage to the top, try to hook up with Bravo. They have a couple of people that are hurt, and they’re all exhausted. They’re gonna need help getting their injured folks out, so that’s where we come in.”

  “How’s it gonna help, sending more people toward the fire?” Chad asked. “Seems to me we should be running, too.”

  Ronnie gave him a withering look. “Bravo’s been getting the worst of the fire in this sector. That means they’ve been working harder than any of us, especially those of us that have been farthest from the fire. They’re more fatigued than we are, they need our help, so we go help. That’s it.” He looked around. “Last report, the fire’s moving this way at about ten miles an hour, but some areas are moving faster than others, owing to terrain and fuel concentrations. Bravo’s maybe a mile out in front of it. We need to get to the top of the drainage, hook up with them, and then decide the best route of retreat based on the conditions at that time. Any other questions?”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Fantastic. On me, single file. Scotty, you bring up the rear, OK?”

  “Yup.” Scott Baker, the Charlie crew chief answered.

  “Let’s move.”

  Ben’s lungs were burning.

  The exertion of hurrying up the steep drainage with all his gear, combined with the ever-thickening smoke in the air, was making it very difficult to breathe. Ben’s throat was raw, and he could taste blood with every rasping breath. He was grateful that he was in good shape, but in spite of his conditioning and his youth, he was still hard pressed to keep up with Ronnie and Eamon. Eamon hardly looked winded, but he was carrying more gear than Ben. The rest of their crew was lagging, all of them veterans of at least one season of firefighting. Charlie crew was no better; Ben had left all of them well behind in the last mile, in spite of his own fatigue.

  “This is brutal, Eamon,” Ben gasped as the other man paused for a drink.

  “Just a stretch of the legs.”

  Ben had a sudden coughing fit, and Eamon paused to wait for him. “Don’t wait on me,” Ben said. “I can keep up.”

  “I know. I’m just hanging around to make sure you can.”

  Ben coughed again, then took a swig from his canteen. He had no intention of spitting any water out this time. “Thanks.”

  “I expect you’d do the same,” Eamon said.

  Ben just nodded.

  “At least, you would, if I was the one coughing up a lung.” Eamon grinned, his teeth flashing white in his soot-covered face. “C’mon.”

  Ben hung his canteen back on his belt, lowered his head, and started off again. The sky above them had gone from smoky white to almost black in the last ten minutes alone. The air around them was thick with falling ash, driven by the increasing east wind. The forest felt dry enough to burst into flame on its own at any minute. Ben thought it strange that the only fire he’d actually seen in the woods so far had been deliberately set for him during fire school. He’d spent the past couple of days digging line at the bottom of the Silver Creek drainage, and hadn’t actually seen any flames yet.

  But now, as he neared the top of the drainage, the sky on the constricted
northern horizon had an ominous orange tint painting the overlying layers of smoke from below. It was still too early for sunset, and the glow was coming from the wrong direction anyway. It was eerie, walking toward that orange and black slice of sky at the top of the draw, but it was fascinating at the same time.

  Ronnie and Baker had outpaced them all, and were at the top now, several dozen yards ahead. Ben could see them stopping and pointing to the east and southeast, down the opposite side of the ridge into the parallel drainage. The terrain here was steep and dramatic, with drainages separated by jagged, tree-choked ridges, each drainage trailing off in angles away from the mountains at their heads. To get from one to another, you could either follow the steep bottom of one drainage to where it joined the others at the top, as they were doing, or you could go straight up the valley walls and over - if those walls weren’t too steep.

  In this drainage as well as the next where Bravo crew was coming from, the walls were far too steep to climb. They were both deep, glacial cuts starting at a ridge on the west shoulder of Observation Peak and running to the south, emptying out into the east-west running valley where the south fork of the Payette River flowed. They had a reasonably easy downhill walk if they wanted to go back that way, but if they had to change direction, things were going to get extremely difficult in a hurry.

  Ben and Eamon caught up to the two crew chiefs just as two more firefighters crested the ridge from the east, joining the group. Ronnie was shaking hands with one of them, who Ben assumed was Bravo’s crew chief.

  Ronnie turned as Ben and Eamon came up. “All right, fellas,” he said. “It looks like they have three people hurt, and they’re all being helped up the slope by the rest of their crew. We’re gonna need six volunteers to drop down and help ‘em out. The rest of our group is gonna bug out to the west, try to get to the highway.”

  Ben looked at Eamon. “Why west? Why not go back to the south, the way we came?”

  Eamon pointed over Ben’s shoulder to the south. “That’s why.”

  Ben turned around. The east ridge bordering the Silver Creek drainage was completely obscured by smoke. He could see an orange glow permeating the layer from below, indicating where the fire was already topping the ridge. The place they’d been working just that morning was about to be overrun by a fast moving finger of the fire, while they were standing in an untouched pocket. Another similar finger was stretching out to their north, maybe a mile or two from where they stood, and the two areas joined together about a mile and a half to their east. Ben stood, gaping at the view in disbelief. They were surrounded on three sides by fire.

  “Eamon,” Ronnie said, “We’ll take one from Charlie crew; Scotty’ll lead the rest of our group out to the west. Lloyd and Clifton here will go down with us; I figure you and me plus one more from Alpha. Who do you want?”

  “I’ll go.” Ben said it without realizing he was even speaking. Something about the urgency of the situation, something about the growing tension, convinced him that he had to go. He didn’t want to be in a position again where he survived by virtue of his absence from a dangerous situation. He was going.

  Ronnie looked at him. “No offense, but I’d rather not drag a rookie into this. Thanks for offering, but you’d better bug out with Scotty and the rest.”

  “Look, Ronnie,” Ben protested, “I get it. I don’t have any experience. But I’m in better shape than everybody on both of these crews, with the exception of you and Eamon. You’ve got all the experience you need. You just need somebody else who can keep up and is in good enough shape to help those guys out. Let me come.”

  Lloyd, the Bravo crew chief, looked at Ben. “It’s your funeral, bud. Just understand, you go down there and panic, we won’t have any extra hands to carry you out. You’ll be on your own before I’ll let you be an additional burden. You got it?”

  “I got it.”

  “Let’s get some, then.” Lloyd’s face was completely black from soot and smoke, and his eyes were more red than white. He looked like he’d just spent a week in a coal mine, but he was still brimming with energy and intensity. He turned and headed back down the slope he’d just climbed, not waiting for the others.

  The other man, Clifton, stuck his hand out to Ben. “Clifton Keller. Call me Cliff.”

  “Ben Bennett.” Ben fell in step next to Cliff as Eamon and Ronnie waited for Scotty to pick somebody from the Charlie crew stragglers to come with them.

  “Appreciate you stepping up,” Cliff said.

  “No problem,” Ben answered. “A friend of mine is on Bravo. I just want to help.”

  “Yeah? Is it Hannah?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. How’d you know?”

  “Just figured. Each of the crews got one or two rookies from that broken up training class. You’re a rookie, and Bravo only got Hannah, so… I just did the math.”

  “Is she one of the ones got hurt?”

  “Yeah, but not too bad. She was helping the other two cut down a snag, and it twisted on ‘em. Fell onto some other brush, catapulted a good-sized log, and took all three of ‘em out. Hannah has a broken arm, maybe a cracked rib or two. One guy got his leg busted, and the other one has a pretty nasty head wound - probably has a concussion.”

  Ben grimaced. “I know how that feels.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Unfortunately. Has he started throwing up yet?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Cliff said. “He was out cold for a few minutes, and when he woke up he puked everywhere. We’ve been trying to keep him hydrated, but he can’t even keep water down.”

  “How are you moving them?”

  “Taking turns doing two-man chair carries, but that’s tough going up this steep stuff. They’d dropped or fallen on both of the guys two or three times each by the time Lloyd and I left them. The guy with the concussion is pretty much out of it, but the one with the broken leg was screaming his head off. That Hannah’s a tough kid - she’s still walking under her own power, mostly.”

  Ben stole a look at the southern horizon. It looked like thunder clouds were growing out of the mountain. Huge columns of roiling smoke were climbing higher into the sky, lit underneath with a fiery reddish-orange. Streaks of black smoke cut through the panorama, giving the sky an unearthly, tiger-striped appearance.

  As they continued southeast through the brush and trees, the sound of the fire gradually reached them. At first it sounded like a light breeze or stronger wind from a distance; then it grew to resemble the steady drone of a factory or industrial machines. As they drew closer, the heat increased with the noise, which had grown now to sound like a jet engine coming from all directions at once. The hair was beginning to stand up at the base of Ben’s neck. He had an animal urge to turn around and run out of the canyon as fast as possible, but the sure knowledge that there were other people closer to the fire who needed his help was enough to keep him moving forward.

  The idea that one of those people was Hannah made it that much more urgent. Ben was still struggling with the idea that he had somehow failed his dad and the crew of MAFFS10, simply by not being in their place when tragedy struck. Now he was determined not to let the same thing happen with Hannah and her crew. He was resolved to do whatever it took to get them to safety.

  His throat was burning worse than ever now, and the air was thick with smoke. Visibility had dropped to about a quarter mile in places. Ben stopped to wipe his eyes and make sure that Lloyd was still in sight ahead of him when he saw a couple of new people standing next to Lloyd through the gloom. They’d found the rest of Lloyd’s crew.

  Ben passed Lloyd and the newcomers, continuing a few steps in the direction they’d come. Not seeing anyone else, he turned back. Lloyd was having an animated conversation with them, one man and one woman.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Lloyd was shouting as Ben came closer.

  “They were right behind us…” the woman’s voice trailed off.

  “How could you just take off and leave them behind?” Lloy
d was furious.

  “You think you would have done better?” the man protested. “That fire is out of control back there - we couldn’t keep waiting for them, or we’d all have gotten caught!”

  “What do you mean, ‘gotten caught’?” Ben asked. “Where’s the rest of your crew?”

  “They left ‘em,” Lloyd growled. He looked at the two exhausted firefighters. “You two get the hell outta my sight. Keep going up this draw to the northwest. You get to the top, turn due west and bug out to the highway. It’s about four miles, and there’s another crew ahead of you. Scotty Baker’s leadin’ ‘em. Get to the top, give him a shout on the radio, he’ll talk you out.”

  “What are you gonna do?” the woman asked. She looked to be in shock, her eyes nearly vacant.

  “We’re gonna finish what you two left undone.” Lloyd looked at Ben. “C’mon, Rook.”

  The man and woman stood next to the trail, uneasily watching as the rest of the cobbled-together relief team caught up, and then passed them by. Ronnie gave them a hard look as he passed, and they both looked at the ground rather than meet his eyes. When the rescuers had all gone by, the pair turned and trudged slowly off into the thickening smoke.

  Half a mile further down, Ben and Cliff met the remains of Bravo crew. Two men emerged from the smoke, carrying another injured man between them, sitting on their interlaced arms. They were followed by another pair of men carrying a third who had a clearly broken leg; Ben could see blood soaking the man’s pants from the knee down. His face was twisted in agony, and with every step he drew a shuddering breath between his clenched teeth. Ben looked past them, dread filling him when he saw no one else.

  “Where’re the others?” He asked the second trio. “Where’s Hannah?”

  They gave him blank looks as they carefully set the injured man down. Ben started to move past them when the familiar voice came to him out of the smoke ahead.