Another thud. A mechanical whine.
The helo began to spin out of control, heading straight toward the flaming front.
Holy hell.
If they crashed in the fire, they would be dead in an instant.
“Fuck!” he heard Silver say.
“Madre de Dios.” That was Ramirez.
“We’ve lost our rear rotor. Fragments from the drone must have damaged it. We’re going down!” He called it in. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Helicopter Ninety-Eight Echo is going down. A drone hit the aircraft, and we’ve lost our tail rotor.”
“Can you crash us away from the fire?” Not that Eric wanted to tell the pilot how to do his job, but that seemed really important.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to try.”
It was hard to tell which direction was which, the world spinning around them, the ground racing up at them as the helo lost altitude.
I’m pregnant.
Vicki’s sweet face flashed through Eric’s mind—her happy smile as she’d surprised him with the news, the sparkle in her eyes. He couldn’t leave her.
Not now. Not like this.
The pilot fought with the machine. “Brace for impact!”
Chapter 14
Jesse hookedthe water hose to the last of the fan guns on Eagle Ridge, the highest point at Ski Scarlet. He walked back to the hydrant, cranked the handle, watched water surge through the hose. Then he walked back to the fan gun—and turned it on.
Water sprayed from the mouth of the machine, flying maybe thirty feet before falling to land on grass, shrubs, and trees.
It was the damnedest thing he’d ever seen—every fan gun the resort owned spraying water onto the upper reaches of the mountain in the middle of summer. In the winter, at the right temperatures, the fan guns made snow, enabling the resort to stay open when Mother Nature got stingy with the white stuff.
Today, it was all about rain—and a chance to stop the south head of the fire from burning through the slopes to threaten lives and mountain homes south of Scarlet.
The fire was almost here now, racing up the back of Eagle Ridge, embers carried high above him by the wind. A crew of mostly volunteer firefighters stood by with UTVs, tools, and brush trucks to beat the shit out of any spot fires. But none of that stood a chance of working if the fan guns couldn’t deliver enough water.
Two thousand gallons a minute.
That’s how much water poured through the pipes when all of the fan guns were on full. The water was pumped at high pressure from the reservoir in the winter and returned to the reservoir as snowmelt in the spring. It was more moisture than any air tanker or helicopter could lay down.
Would it be enough?
Jesse had watched while the fire outflanked the backburn. He’d watched it jump the narrow canyon and finger off, spreading through the forest on the flanks of the mountain. It had been his idea to try the snowmaking machines, and Matt and Hawke had given him the thumbs up. But it was no easy task to hook up the system—or to haul all twelve one-ton fan guns up dry slopes and into position.
Had they been fast enough? Would the trees and grass be wet enough?
If this failed, the fire would destroy the fan guns, setting the resort back millions. Worse, it would burn through the glades and advance on Scarlet from the south. There was little chance it would burn down the resort buildings, not with the pumper truck there to spray them down. But there were a lot of homes south of town.
At least Ellie and the kids were safe. She had texted to tell him she’d finally made it to her sister’s house in Boulder.
He reached for his hand mic. “Forty-two to Dispatch. The last gun is running.”
“I want everyone away from that ridge,” Matt, his boss, replied.
He would get no argument from Jesse. The gases from the fire as it reached the top would be hot enough to kill in an instant.