Read Wildfire at Dawn for Free Online

snagged himself in a tall larch and had to use a let-down line to get himself out of it. So that gave the first-flight team bragging rights over the second. It didn’t last long because Maribel, the second plane’s cargo master, nailed both of her pallets of gear into the clearing. Good trick with how damn small the area was.
    Once everyone was geared up, he rolled out a map and traced a wavering line in red marker. He checked his watch and wrote “7:45a.m.” at one end of the line. It was going to be a long day. Based on his one look at the fire, it was accurate enough. Then he put a red “X” on the bluff’s location.
    “This is our anchor point. We’ll have Henderson and his air crew narrow the fire as much as they can. I figure we have about fourteen hours, unless things go wrong—”
    “And they never go wrong,” Tim commented.
    “Never,” Krista agreed. “Not when Akbar the Great is in charge. Mama Nature wouldn’t dare.”
    He ignored them both and finished his sentence, “—to beat the fire. Krista. Your team starts right here by making this anchor point clean, open it up to a full helispot big enough for the Firehawk in case we need it. Then send your team southeast along the ridge and make a fire trail. I’ll be making a line northwest.” He drew the two lines along the very top of the ridge’s topographic line.
    “Deep or long?”
    Akbar considered the map for a moment, looked at the shape of the terrain. Right at that moment, Henderson flew by low overhead and waggled the wings of his twin-Beech command plane in greeting. If he was here, the choppers wouldn’t be far behind.
    “Make the cleared fire trail deep. The choppers will hopefully make it so that we don’t have to go too far along the ridgeline to trap this one. It’s only a baby, but we are not letting it get away from us. We all clear on that?” He shouted the last as a challenge to the team.
    Twenty-three smokies shouted back, “Clear!”
    “What do MHA smokies do for a living?”
    “We eat fire!”
    “Let’s do it!” And with a slap of his hands they were off. The first chainsaw was fired off before he even had the map folded and tucked away.
    The first of the thin alders to expand the clearing fell before he’d picked up his radio. By the time he’d explained the plan to Henderson, the bluff had been leveled and was in the process of being cleared.
    Akbar picked up his own saw. He’d burn through the first tank of gas, leaving the swamping to Tim. Swamping was tough work, dragging all the cut-off branches as far from the approaching fire as possible, but they’d be trading off on the next tank of gas.
    He dropped the first tree—the eight-inch diameter, sixty-foot tall larch that had snagged Baker—making sure it fell with the chute on top.
    Baker moved in to unsnag the chute he’d left in the upper branches.
    Then Akbar began lopping off branches and Tim moved right in behind him with the rhythm of long practice to shift the detritus to the downslope side.

Chapter 3
    Laura had avoided the worst of Grayson’s attention by descending to stratagem. She recruited everyone to unsaddle, groom, and feed their mounts. Part of the “country” experience. When they proceeded, as a group, to the Lodge for drinks, she had casually breezed through the “Employees Only” entrance to the kitchen and out the far side to her car.
    Once safely off the grounds, she checked her phone. Still no response. Well, what had she expected? Nothing much. So why was she disappointed?
    Had she thought that just maybe Akbar had been serious? He had taken the initiative to charm her mother along with herself. It was stupid of her to feel put out. He and his tall friend had made it clear what they wanted right from the start. Akbar, if that even was his real name, had done it with an unexpected grace and style, but it had still been the same old game.
    She’d fallen for that trap twice in her life. One of the times she’d actually been