As soon as they were in the air, Eric saw it—a thin column of white smoke in the distance. Robertson was right. It didn’t look like much.
It took just a few minutes to reach it.
The pilot hovered, giving Eric the GPS coordinates.
Eric looked down at the blaze. “Looks like an illegal campsite. The campfire got out of hand. Sparks ignited the duff.”
Below him, fire crept along the valley, burning through the duff—the layer of pine needles, debris, and old, dried branches that covered the forest floor. The point of origin looked like an illegal campsite off a dirt access road next to Tungsten Creek. The road and the creek had kept it from spreading eastward.
That was the good news.
But there was bad news, too.
The mountainsides to the east and west of the fire were steep with dense, mixed-conifer forest, giving the fire plenty of fuel in every direction. The trees hadn’t ignited yet, but when fifty-mile-an-hour winds hit those flames this afternoon, the situation would change.
“That looks like maybe fifteen acres,” Robertson said. “Whoever was camping there is probably hell and gone, run off the moment they saw the fire got out of hand. I don’t think this poses any risk to town. I’ll get one of my crews on it.”
What the fuck?
No risk to Scarlet?
Clearly, they weren’t reading the landscape in the same way.
Eric had never claimed to be God’s gift to firefighting, but fire spoke to him. He could look at the landscape, the fuels, and the weather conditions and know with some certainty what a fire was going to do. This one was not going to stay benign for long.
He tried to be diplomatic. “To be on the safe side, we ought to call for some bucket drops. If the fire is still burning when that front hits, upcanyon winds will push it to the northwest toward Ski Scarlet or send it straight eastward toward town or both.”
That was the stuff of Eric’s nightmares.
But Robertson was already on his radio, telling his crew to make ready.
A knot formed in Eric’s stomach.
Shit.
This fire was primed to burn in any direction the wind decided to take it. Initial attack had to be successful, and, in this terrain, that meant using aircraft. But helicopters and single-engine air tankers, or SEATs, didn’t grow on trees. They were hard to come by during a bad fire season.
Three fires were already burning in Colorado—one near Manitou Springs, another on Grand Mesa, and yet another outside of Eagle. The state had only a few rotary aircraft equipped to fight fires, and they were probably already committed. The SEATs and the lone 747 Supertanker were busy fighting the Manitou fire. That meant requesting a chopper from the Colorado National Guard or asking for federal resources through NIFC—the National Interagency Fire Center—a process that often resulted in denials.
Either way, it wasn’t Eric’s call. He was fire chief for Scarlet Springs, and this was county land. What happened next was up to Sheriff Pella and Robertson, who would be Incident Commander on this blaze.
But if Eric could talk to Pella first…
It would piss Robertson off, but Eric didn’t give a damn. Robertson was putting lives on the line here—not just his crew, but every person who might be in the path of this fire if it burned out of control.
Eric turned off the mic on his headset and reached into his pocket for his smartphone.
Sophie satin the passenger seat of Tessa’s Chevy Tahoe while Tessa drove, the two of them talking about everything and nothing, the four kids sitting in the back—Maire and Addy in the middle row and Chase and Tristan in the back.
Sophie loved the drive to the Cimarron, city giving way to foothills and finally to high mountains, buildings left behind for stands of aspen and pine. With every mile they put behind them, she felt the tension she seemed always to carry inside her fade, her heart growing lighter.
It was only an hour’s drive, but that could be hard for young children.
“Mommy, Tristan kicked the back of my seat,” Addy complained.
Sophie glanced over her shoulder. “I’m sure he didn’t do it to pester you. Tristan, can you be more careful? We’re almost there, kids.”
“He did it again!” Abby wailed.