She sat in her tower now with her feet up and her eyes on the wispy smoke over the mountains and she spoke to the radio without keying the mike, spoke as if she were out there with them. A constant stream of chatter. She was warning them to watch out for widow makers-burning limbs that dropped from above without warning-when the pump truck reported a victim.
Hannah lifted her hands to her face and covered her eyes. Not already. Not on the first fire of the season, the first she had called in. She felt as if the death had come with her, somehow, as if the death had followed her back. A certain wind chased Hannah, and it was a killing wind.
Fifteen minutes after they announced the victim, they came back with more:
“I think we’ve got a campfire source. Appears to be a fire ring here, stones, and the fire must have jumped it and gotten into the trees that were brought down. Look like fresh cuts too. Only seeing one DOA. Can’t tell if it’s male or female. Burned up pretty good. We’ve secured the body and what’s left of an ATV and, I believe, probably a chain saw.”
There was your source. Someone had been felling timber and decided to keep a fire going while he did it, then left it untended, in the wind. Oblivious to the risk.
“Stupid bastard,” Hannah whispered, thinking of those who were walking into the flames right now for some foolish mistake, thinking of all that might be lost just because someone wanted to roast a hot dog.
It felt strange, though. Somehow, it felt off. She’d spotted the smoke around four and the sun had been high and hot, hotter than it had been all summer. Nobody would have needed or wanted a campfire for warmth. And it was late for lunch and early for dinner, and it didn’t sound as if the victim had been camping, anyhow, not with an ATV and a chain saw. He’d been working, probably. And what person doing sweaty work on a hot afternoon wanted a campfire?
There was something off with the fire source, no question. But the first task was putting the blaze out fast enough so they could figure out what the real story was. Until those flames were gone, nobody was concerned about determining their source.
The tower swayed more as the sun descended, the wind freshening at dusk.
12
As the boys sipped water and stretched aching legs beside the campfire, Ethan sent Allison a short text on his GPS messenger:
ALL FINE. WE ARE ALONE IN THE WOODS.
He put the GPS away then and let his eyes drift as he scanned the rocks and forested hills and the high mountains beyond. Empty. He had told the truth: they were alone. They had hiked all day beneath a high hot sun and a cloudless sky, and if you’d told people that only a few weeks ago, the Beartooth Pass had been closed with two feet of snow, they’d have laughed in your face.
No one was out there.
Not yet, at least.
And what if they come?
He’d asked himself that question the night Jamie Bennett had arrived and every waking hour since. What if they came, these men who were trained killers?
I’ll handle it. I’ve had my share of training too.
But he hadn’t. Not that kind. He didn’t end up in the Air Force by mistake. The son of a Marine who didn’t leave the combat overseas quite as well as he should have, Ethan had grown up pointed toward the military, and enlisting was the same sort of free-will decision that the sun made when it chose to set in the west. All his father had wanted was another Marine-a fighter, not a teacher. His old man hadn’t been impressed when Ethan tried to explain that he was teaching military personnel how to have what he called a survivor mentality.
“There are two kinds of men in war,” his father had said. “The killing kind, and the dying kind. If you’re the dying kind, you won’t survive shit. If you’re the killing kind, you will. It’s already in there. You’re teaching woodcraft, and that’s fine. But if they’re the dying kind, all your tricks won’t save ’em.”
Ethan shook himself back into the moment, back into watching, which was his job; killing wasn’t. The smoke from their campfire wasn’t heavy, the wood had been properly selected, but only a few miles out, someone else had one as well, the smoke visible above the ridgeline. It seemed like a lot of smoke. Ethan watched it for a while and wondered if a campfire had gotten away from someone. With this wind, it was certainly possible.
“You guys see that?” he said. “That smoke?”
They were tired and uninterested, but they looked.
“We’re going to keep an eye on it,” he said. “That one could turn into something.”
“Turn into something? You mean, like, a forest fire?” Drew said.
“That’s exactly what I mean. These mountains have burned before. They’ll burn again someday. Now, all of you look at the smoke and then look at your maps and tell me where it’s burning and what it means to us. First one to do that, I’ll build his shelter myself.”
Jace cared, and maybe that was a problem. The caring had started with the fire, when he struck two pieces of metal together and made a spark that made a flame that made a campfire. His vision of Connor Reynolds as a boy who did not care began to vanish. His bad attitude was disappearing even when Jace tried to keep it in place, because this stuff was pretty cool. It was real, it mattered in a way most things you were taught didn’t-this stuff could save your life.
He didn’t know what Connor Reynolds was running from up here, but back behind Jace were men who intended to take his life, and he began to think that maybe Connor should pay a little more attention. For the both of them.
Now Ethan had laid down a challenge, and while Jace really didn’t care about winning the shelter-he enjoyed building them, and they were improving with each night’s effort-he did want to be the first to place that column of smoke accurately. This was the sort of thing that most people couldn’t do. The sort of thing that could save your life.
He looked up at the mountains and down at the map and then back up again. To his right was Pilot Peak, one of the most striking landmarks in the Beartooths, easy to find. Move along from that and there was Index, and the fire wasn’t in front of either of them. Keep rolling and there was Mount Republic and beyond that Republic Peak, and now he began to get it. They were supposed to hike to Republic Peak, then claim the summit-that was what Ethan called it, at least-and hike back down the way they’d come. On every trip, though, Ethan gave them an escape route. Jace enjoyed those, even if the rest of the boys thought the idea was corny. The other kids didn’t know about the need for escape routes yet.
The smoke wasn’t between their camp and Republic Peak, but it seemed to be coming from the back side of Republic Peak. Connor traced the contour lines that lay to the west of the peak-they fell off in a tight cluster, indicating a steep and fast decline, toward Yellowstone National Park, and then those to the north were more gradual, spaced apart. A creek wound down from near the glacier that lay between Republic Peak and its nearest cousin, Amphitheater.
“It’s burning by our escape route,” he said.
Everybody looked up with interest, and Jace was proud to see it on Ethan Serbin’s face as well.
“You think?” Ethan said.
Jace felt a pang of uncertainty. He looked up at the mountains, wondering if he’d gotten it wrong.
“That’s what it looks like,” Jace said. “Like if we had to use the escape route and come down the back side of Republic, going backcountry, the way you were talking about, we’d run right into it. Or pretty close.”
Ethan watched him in silence.
“Maybe not,” Jace said, and now he was searching for the Connor Reynolds attitude again, shrugging and trying to act as if he didn’t care one way or the other. “Whatever. I don’t mind building my shelter, I don’t need you to do it.”