Melinda Curtis - Back to Eden

At the roar of an airplane overhead, Cole looked up. It was one of those antique planes that the Forest Service kept threatening to ground because of performance issues, planes so old they had a high likelihood of crashing. Cole had no way of knowing if it was Rachel or not, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the plane. In some weird way, she was the only thing he had left of Missy. The sisters hadn’t looked alike, and they were as different as milk to wine, but it was a link Cole was reluctant to break now that he’d found Rachel again.

WITH A SIGH Rachel took out her camera and snapped a quick shot of the base camp as they flew overhead. She tucked the camera back into her utility vest pocket. When Rachel got home, she and Jenna would sit together in front of the computer and look at her pictures from the season. This year she’d got some spectacular shots from above of other tankers dumping their payloads on hot targets. Jenna always seemed to enjoy looking at her pictures.

Voices crackled urgently in her headset.

“Did you hear that?” Rachel shouted over the roar of the four prop engines.

“You heard right.” Danny grinned. “Wind’s shifted. There’s a crew that might be trapped if they don’t get help soon. This is no longer a milk run, kid.”

Rachel banked and brought the plane into a new trajectory. They were minutes away from the location—a deep slope in a narrow part of the valley. As approaches went, it would be easy. They’d have to fly as low as they could over the canopy of trees. It was the climb out that was going to be tricky. Not impossible for Danny and Rachel, but it would by no means be a cake walk.

Rachel flew over the drop site once, taking in the fire racing after the fleeing men and women in yellow shirts before losing them in thick plumes of smoke, examining the seamless horizon broken only by a lone pine towering forty feet above the main tree line.

“Not much time,” Rachel noted as she prayed that wasn’t Cole down there running for his life. As Rachel angled around for a final approach, she rejected the feeling of guilt for keeping the truth about Jenna from Cole.

“Don’t need much time if your aim’s good,” Danny said, always fearless.

“We’ve got to watch out for that granddaddy pine as we come out,” Rachel observed, scanning the gauges for any sign of stress in the Privateer. Everything looked normal.

She spared a quick glance at her latest picture of Jenna and Matt. Jenna smiled with the unworried expression of a preteen who hadn’t yet discovered boys. Matt’s grin had been known to melt the hearts of ice-cream store clerks.

Coming out of the turn, Rachel leveled out the plane before pushing it into a steep dive through the thickening smoke. Down, down, down they plummeted toward the flaming treetops. Rachel flew as if she had no fear. Part of her reveled when her stomach dropped at their rapid descent. Part of her worried about Jenna and Matt, orphaned back at home if Rachel ever miscalculated.

She wouldn’t disappoint her kids.

“Slow down. Don’t lose them in the smoke.” The voice of the attack boss, circling high overhead in a small Cessna, crackled through the airwaves. “You’re coming in pretty damn fast.”

“Don’t listen to him. He’s never flown a bird like this in his life,” Danny yelled, leaning forward as if that would help him see better through the smoke. “We need speed. More speed.”

Rachel agreed with Danny. They had to come in fast and slingshot out, even if they were breaking a few safety regulations by flying in near-blind conditions. She gave it more throttle.

The plane shuddered with anticipation. The air seemed thick with the heavy threat of danger, making it hard to breathe. Usually Rachel imagined a young Cole was there at her side on adrenaline-pumping runs like this, egging her on, past the fear and into a zone where she operated on instinct.

She couldn’t find that Cole today, couldn’t bring the image of the object of her teenage affections to mind. But Rachel didn’t let the fear hold her back or keep her from diving into the shrouded air space over the retreating crew, who might be consumed by flame if she didn’t slow the fire and create a path to safety.

Visibility dropped as smoke wrapped around them. Rachel craned her neck as she tried to see out. She had no time to acknowledge the fear that clenched her heart, no time for more than a fleeting thought of home.

Pockets appeared in the smoke, showing her the way, then disappeared and teased just at the edge of her vision. Common sense screamed for her to pull up, get out, but Rachel had a job to do.

She kept her hands steady. There’d be time to let the shakes and the what-ifs take over later.

“Almost there. Don’t let up.” Danny wouldn’t back off either. “And…now!”

With economy of motion, Rachel punched the button on the steering yoke and felt the first three drop doors shudder open. At their rate and angle of descent, the red slurry would fall at a ninety-degree angle. She’d planned this run to catch the front flank of the fire with her first drop, hoping it would slow, if not halt completely, the raging head of the beast.

“Right on target, kid. Hit it again,” Danny cried, peering down at the flaming forest.

Rachel released the final three doors, catching sight of some of the fleeing crew as she did so, hoping this drop would provide a safe escape route for them.

The Privateer was long gone by the time the slurry hit the ground.

The smoke ahead was dense and dark. Visibility dimmed as she entered the plume, then cleared, then dimmed again as Rachel threw the flaps to bank, forcing the plane into a blind move against their momentum, against gravity. The Privateer bucked and groaned in complaint. The cockpit was dim, the air ahead of them impenetrable to the eye.

The attack boss cursed over the airwaves. “Can’t see a damn thing. Where are you, Fire Angel?”

“Hold together, baby,” Rachel murmured, praying for a clear windshield, even if it was only a view of the smoke-filled sky.

“Steady,” Danny cautioned. “You’re doing great.” He’d undoubtedly be crowing when they made it out of here. It was just the kind of adrenaline-pumping last run he’d wanted.

The smoke thinned as the plane climbed, shuddering from the effort.

Then they were bursting out of the smoke into a blinding dose of sunlight toward a thick spire of green. Too close. It was too close!

“The tree! The damn tree!” Danny shouted, as they raced toward the lone pine. It was fifty feet ahead of them and they were flying nearly one hundred miles an hour.

But it was too late to turn. Fire Angel One took the pine head-on about thirty feet from its top. The crack of the tree and the rip of metal was all Rachel heard as the windshield shattered into the cockpit, bringing a barrage of glass, branches, wood and pine cones onto them.

Rachel’s face stung and the air whooshed out of her lungs as something struck her in the rib cage. Impossibly, the plane seemed to float there, as if deciding whether to continue or give up. And then it bucked forward.

“We’re still flying!” Danny cried, as if that were the best news ever. “Three engines running. Hot damn!”

Danny didn’t know how hard Rachel was fighting to keep the plane going or to keep her shit together. Or maybe Danny did know and was just trying to keep her spirits up.

Her ribs were on fire. Something must have hit her when the windshield shattered, because breathing had become agony. But she didn’t dare spare a glance down at herself, because she could barely control the steering yoke, much less reach the other controls hidden beneath piles of green.

The Privateer bobbed and dipped dangerously above the canopy. Rachel didn’t think they could stay in the air much longer. They’d lost an engine on the right side, possibly damaged by debris. The landing strip was too far away, and the only thing between them and the airport was miles and miles of trees.