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hold even against the monster coming toward them.
    He and Tim headed in opposite directions along the ridgeline, spattering bits of flame as they went. He kept glancing back, saw their own fire building behind him, consuming the dry tinder. Soon, he saw other fires as the rest of the crew got moving.
    Back on the radio, he pulled half of Krista’s team from the south end to the north. He had to shout to be heard over the massive roar of the approaching flames. It would be a long, hard run of more than a mile over rough terrain, but he needed all the force he could get for the unfinished north end of the line.
    “Mark,” he called on the ICA’s frequency as he ran with the drip torch in one hand and his chainsaw propped over his shoulder, his forearm across the blade, his microphone bobbing in his hand, “hit the north end with everything you can. That’s our hole. We can’t let it through the gap.”
    For six more hours they fought the fire back and forth across the ridge. It would spot across the line at a weak point, where the slopes had been too steep to clear well—one of the small choppers would dump a couple hundred gallons and kill it. Steve’s drone managed to be everywhere up and down the line, feeding Akbar information almost before he needed it.
    The big Firehawk circled back time and again dumping a thousand gallons per load in a shower louder than any cloudburst, a resounding whomp! almost loud enough to drown the fire’s roar each time. Radio calls flew back and forth, the airwaves a clutter of moves and countermoves.
    Twice he sent a runner down the line to make sure everyone was staying hydrated and were solid on their feet.
    It was well past sunset—when only Emily in the Firehawk and Jeannie in her little MD500 were authorized for nighttime firefighting—that they finally broke through. They connected the retardant line to the fire break on the north end and trapped the flame.
    Around midnight, they declared it contained and Akbar sent half the crew to sleep for three hours. By the time they hit crew turnover, Krista at least no longer looked cross-eyed with exhaustion. He reported to her that they had kept the fire contained—little chance of it escaping now—and were letting the flames burn out the fuel within the containment boundaries of: the burned-over black, the two heavy lines of retardant to either side, and the firebreak along the ridge. Twenty-four people had made and held a line a mile and a half long.
    Now he could sleep for a few hours.
    He ate an energy bar and checked his phone.
    Still no signal.
    He collapsed for three hours and dreamt of fire.

Chapter 4
    “The locals still can’t get an engine crew up into this remote corner of the Siskiyou National Forest,” Krista told Akbar when she woke him up at six a.m. “They have a dozer cutting in a new road and they should be here before noon. Jeannie and Emily in the Firehawk are both down until noon with the FAA mandated eight-hour break. So, unless you want to walk home, might as well do some work.”
    “No eight-hour rule for smokies,” Two-Tall, splayed out on the hand-scraped soil, groaned as Krista nudged him with the butt of her fire axe. Akbar lay there: still in his full gear, his Pulaski a foot from his hand. He looked up at the sky and saw the soft blue of a northwestern summer sunrise. Not towering flames. Not smoke. Actual blue.
    It would be a long slog, but they’d nipped this one before it reached into the next valley. He sat up and looked down the back side of the ridge. Ten thousand acres of now untouched forest lay green below him.
    “Worth the pain,” he made a point of sounding chipper as he rolled to his feet. Every muscle screamed. He ignored them because otherwise Two-Tall might not look so bad lying there griping about his aching body.
    But Akbar couldn’t stop the groan as he leaned over to pick up his own fire axe. Tim barely managed a smirk before they both stumbled back toward the fire line