“Each group of volunteers will be running their own scenario, so expect surprises,” McBride said. “Remember that we’re above nine thousand feet elevation here, so stay hydrated. I don’t want anyone coming down with altitude sickness. After lunch, we’ll head out and get a look at the kind of damage these folks do to campgrounds and wilderness areas.”
Pella got specific. “You’ll see the trash, erosion, piles of human excrement.”
“Sounds like fun,” Darcangelo said.
Deputy Marcs gave him a wry look. “You’ll get to do what we do every day.”
Marc’s gaze shifted to the west to take in the breathtaking view of Indian Peaks.
What the hell?
He pointed. “Someone tell me that’s supposed to be there.”
In the distance, a narrow column of white smoke curled against the sky.
Jesse Moretti rodethe chairlift toward the top of Eagle Ridge, chainsaw resting across his lap. He’d been assigned to supervise the crew that was cutting whippers from the glades today. The forest was always trying to reclaim the slopes. Clearing whippers—scrub and saplings that grew more than a foot above the ground—made up a lot of the work they did here at Ski Scarlet over the summer. If they didn’t stay on top of this shit, the slopes would quickly become unskiable.
He preferred the work he did here in the winter. From November to May, he was part of Ski Patrol. He rescued people who’d gotten injured, kept stoners and drunks off the slopes, and tossed bombs—blasting powder caches with explosives so they wouldn’t cause avalanches. It didn’t feel like work most of the time because his feet were strapped to a pair of skis.
But as soon as the snow melted and ski season ended, his job changed to a kind of landscaping gig—clearing whippers and rocks from trails, removing invasive weeds, and reseeding grass on runs to prevent erosion. It was hot, sweaty, thirsty work.
Still, no one would catch Moretti complaining. He’d done hotter, dirtier work in Iraq when he’d been an Army Ranger.
What he’d experienced at war had brought him to Colorado in search of peace. He’d seen the mountains and had fallen head-over-heels in love, something beautiful after years of ugliness. He’d become obsessed with rock climbing, had learned to ski, and had gotten a job on Ski Patrol that following winter, volunteering with the Team in his free time.
The move to Colorado had been the best idea he’d ever had because it had led him to Ellie and the twins. Ellie, a widow and a registered nurse at Mountain Memorial Hospital, had lived next door to Jesse with her two small children, Daniel and Daisy, who hadn’t yet turned three. Then a highly contagious case of strep throat had brought them together, and Jesse had fallen head-over-heels in love again.
Now, he and Ellie had a little three-month-old son—Dylan—and Jesse couldn’t have been happier. The little guy was growing so fast. He could already hold up his head, roll over, and push himself up on his arms.
Yeah, fatherhood was pretty damned amazing.
Off to Jesse’s left, a golden eagle soared over the treetops, feathers gleaming golden-black against a bright blue sky. It wheeled toward the west, its wings flat.
Jesse was so caught up in its flight that it took him a moment to notice.
Smoke.
It came from a valley to the northwest of the ski area.
He sat up straighter, squinted. “Son of a bitch.”
Was there a controlled burn scheduled for today? Sometimes land managers burned piles of slash, clearing out fuels to prevent catastrophic forest fires, but Jesse hadn’t heard anything about a burn being slated for today. There was a red flag warning in effect. Only an idiot would risk a burn on a red flag day.
He reached for his hand mic. “Forty-two to dispatch.”
His boss, Matt Mayes, responded. “Forty-two, go ahead.”
“Is there a controlled burn on the schedule for today?”
“Not that I’ve heard. No one would be stupid enough to burn on a red flag day.”
That’s what Jesse had thought. “There’s smoke rising from a valley northwest of us.”
“Copy, forty-two. I’ll call it in.”
Jesse watched the smoke column, a spindly tendril that curled in the breeze. It hardly seemed menacing, but he’d heard the stories about the big fire that had almost wiped Scarlet Springs off the map back in 1878. Of course, they hadn’t had modern firefighting equipment back then—no slurry bombers or flame retardant, no smokejumpers or hotshots or helitack crews, no helos equipped with hoses or buckets for water drops.
They hadn’t had modern forecast technology either. The fire had swept down on the town from the mountains and burned most of it to the ground. Only one building had remained when the smoke cleared—the Forest Creek Inn. The Inn stood there today, still owned by the same family. But dozens had been killed by smoke and flames, most of them prospectors and miners who’d had no warning that the fire was coming.