Now, he was halfway through his startup cycle and not quite sure how he’d gotten here. As soon as the engines caught and he could shut down the APU, he grabbed his steel travel mug with one hand while nursing the throttle with the other and knocked back a slug of scalding caffeine. That was one of the true blessings of this assignment. Honduras’s worst coffee was at least equal to America’s best.

  The group’s ama always made sure there was a large pot of it waiting fresh for them each morning, and he always blessed her for it.

  The part that confirmed everything was okay was that Denise sat once again in the seat beside him.

  Life was good.

  “Missed you.” He really had. After three days gone, it was like she’d done a leprechaun trick and suddenly reappeared. If he’d been more awake, he’d have asked where his pot of gold was.

  Then the sun caught her hair and he knew. But he wasn’t awake enough to make the compliment come out right even in his head, so he kept his mouth shut.

  The chopper had felt empty, wrong without her beside him. He was beyond gone; she was a part of him now, and he didn’t know how he’d survive if they went their separate ways. But he wasn’t going to drop a payload like that on her until she’d made up her mind about the job.

  “Right. You missed me.” Denise’s tone was droll. She’d developed a sense of humor that, while still as gentle and sweet as the woman, snuck out now and then as if she were patting him ever so gently on the head. “I haven’t seen you since we woke up together just this morning. No wait, since breakfast. No wait, was it when we walked here from the apartment? Or was it when I preflighted the bird because you were still out on your feet?”

  “I’ve had breakfast? Oh well. As long as I didn’t miss any wake-up sex.” The coffee must be kicking in. “Did I?”

  “I don’t think either of us was awake enough for that.”

  “That’s not right!” He keyed the mic and called Mark’s frequency. “Boss. We need a break soon. I was too tired for wake-up sex this morning.” Uh! Had he really transmitted that?

  Denise squeaked with embarrassment from her seat.

  “Try having a kid,” Mark replied, “and then file your complaint. Though you have a point. We do need a break. I’ll work on it.”

  “Do that,” Vern answered lamely as Mark’s words finally sank in.

  A kid with Denise.

  Vern’s thoughts hadn’t wandered down that particular road yet. Wow! That was a whole other variable. A pregnant Denise was an image to really take his breath away. He was definitely wide awake now.

  He was also careful not to look at Denise as he checked that the engines were up to operating temperature and took them aloft to face the next fire. No point in asking for clearance; the control tower was again unmanned.

  “Not going to happen, Vern, so don’t even think about it.”

  “What?” He tried to sound innocent, but her mind-reading trick was working as flawlessly as usual. He turned northeast toward PANACOMA, Parque Nacional Montaña de Comayagua. That’s where today’s first fire was. It wasn’t going to take much to find it. The smoke plume rising fifteen miles away was visible as soon as they were clear of the local buildings. This wasn’t a small one. The plume was already dark and thick. Even at this distance, he could see the orange brightness of wildfire at the base.

  “Kids. I’m never going to have one.”

  “Why not?” Something medical maybe. Kids and marriage, two topics to approach very carefully with any woman.

  “I’m just not.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense. Can you imagine me with a kid?”

  “Yes!” It was out before he could stop himself. He shouldn’t have been so emphatic, but she’d make a great mom. “Two, one of each.”

  “No way!”

  He really needed to learn to keep his mouth shut.

  “No, Vern. Just no!”

  Okay, keeping his mouth shut wasn’t working well either.

  He’d started the morning with a full load of water, so he followed Emily and Jeannie toward the blaze. This was going to be a real headache of a day. Water sources were down around five-hundred-meters elevation, but the fire was up over two thousand meters—seven thousand feet. At that elevation, a helicopter carried a much smaller load than it did down in the sea-level lowlands like the Reserva Plátano. And the transition up and down—from fire to water and back—meant they were going to spend the whole day trying to keep their ears clear as the pressure changed every five minutes down to water and five minutes later back above the ridgelines.

  “You still haven’t said why you don’t want kids? Hang on.”

  Steve’s drone took the lead per the new Mountain Protocol they’d developed after Missoula and perfected here in Honduras. It swept in well ahead of them so that Steve could report if they had downdrafts and temperature anomalies indicative of a pending blow-up or a cold-air rotor. Now they consistently had a much better idea of what they were flying into.

  His report was negative so far, and the drone passed through clean.

  Following the twisting line of water dumped by Emily, Vern and Jeannie came in close behind. Three thousand gallons of water and foam didn’t do more than irritate the blaze.

  They dove into the valleys seeking a water source. The rivers here were buried in steep canyons guarded by trees so big they often grew right across the river, hiding its track entirely.

  Emily found a dipping point near the hamlet of Río Negro along an exposed bend in the river of the same name. Jeannie found a cattle pond on the far side of the town, and Vern was stuck waiting. There weren’t any other open spaces. He spun a quick circle of a couple miles to prove it to himself and then ducked down to the river as soon as Emily was clear.

  It was a narrow hole in the trees, three rotors across and fifty feet down. He focused on staying dead-center in the hole as he went down.

  “Crap, Vern!” Denise was cringing in her seat. He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed their talks and banter as he flew. “You can’t be serious. There’s no room in here.”

  “Why no kids?” Vern asked to distract himself and hit the pumps as soon as he could. It wasn’t quite a panic spot, but he’d have to stay dead stable for the entire exhausting day.

  She didn’t answer until he was loaded and had cleared the hole. “Are you serious?”

  “Wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t interested.”

  “I mean that.” Denise pointed back to the hole in the forest where they’d been.

  “I might check out Jeannie’s pond next. See how much it upsets the locals.”

  Denise was quiet a while—long enough for him to pop his ears a few times, hit the blaze where Mark said, and descend back down for more water.

  “My mom.” Her voice was soft over the intercom. “I know it wasn’t as if she planned it, but I never want to have a child who could lose her mother like that.”

  “Like you did?”

  “Like I did.”

  Jeannie’s pond was about five rotors clear, which was an improvement. It had a feed from the river, so they wouldn’t pull it dry. As he hovered there for the forty seconds it took his tanks to fill, he was barely two rotors from a small farm. A half-dozen cattle were up against the fence line looking very unhappy at all of the noise he was making. And the farmer looked even more so. They stared at each other—one man opening a fence made of hand-split rails and herding his cattle through with a wooden staff, the other man sitting in the cockpit of a twenty-million-dollar machine of war converted into a firefighting helicopter.

  Vern tried to imagine a whole life bounded by this pasture, this line of fence, and the small house beyond. And what of the woman who shared his life? And the children.

  “I think you’re cutting yourself off, Denise. Look at Mark and Emily. Can you imagine what their life would be like without Tessa? They’re both so damn serious except when their daughter is with them. Then they totally unwind.”

  “You want children?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Why?”

  He risked a glance over at her, but she was serious. He waited to answer until he’d hit the business end of the blaze. It was working its way downslope under a steady easterly wind that was sweeping over the ridge and pushing down on the fire. Driving it toward the hamlet far below. If it got too much closer, they’d have to evacuate the farmer and his family. There wouldn’t be time to save his cows.

  Vern spun downslope, powering the chopper’s descent down.

  “Is it to carry on your name?” Denise’s prompted.

  “No. It doesn’t even have to be my own blood. We’re good people, aren’t we?”

  “Sure,” she agreed.

  “No, I really mean this.” He’d given it a lot of thought. “Whether it’s with each other or someone else, we have a chance to pass on so much. Look at the things your parents passed on to you. I mean, look at you. You’re flying over central Honduras as chief mechanic of one of the best firefighting outfits on the planet. And you have an amazing second job offer even though you already have a job, in case you were doubting yourself. That’s not genetic. Or not only genetic. You did that. But not without your mom and dad, no matter how short a time she was around.”

  * * *

  Denise didn’t like the feeling of being lectured. She liked even less that Vern was right.

  At least he wasn’t cocky about it. Again, Vern was only what he showed, no Jasper gamesmanship. Instead, he continued to work them up and down the ridge as smoothly as if born to it.

  Her parents had given her so much. Even her dad, who she now understood better as an adult than as a lonely teen, had done the best he could for who he was. He was a quiet man who loved planes and loved his museum. And his daughter. She would deny it if she could, but he did love her as well as he could manage.

  Denise’s seat dropped out from under her. In a moment they went from the trees being a lumpy carpet a few hundred comfortable feet below to flying so close to the treetops that she pulled up her feet.

  Vern didn’t swear or curse; he simply pulled up on the collective and tipped the nose forward for more speed. “All pilots,” he called out over the radio. “We now have a downdraft of about two hundred FPM developing.”

  Denise’s fingers ached from where she’d latched on to her seat cushion. She checked their instruments. They’d actually only dropped about fifty feet, but it felt like a lot more.

  “Roger that,” Mark replied. “Everyone, flight levels up another hundred feet and keep loads at ten percent less until we see how it develops.”

  “Sorry.” Vern spoke softly as he lined up and dumped his load, spraying it directly on a line of pine trees that looked more like torches than trees.

  “I’m okay. You scared me.”

  “Huh?” He looked around as if he hadn’t really noticed the plunge toward the trees. “I meant I was sorry for getting up on my soapbox. If you don’t want to have kids, that’s your choice, of course. Not mine to say.”

  “Damn it, Taylor. I’m trying to be mad at you. Stop being so considerate.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He didn’t sound the least put-out. “Not working, huh?”

  “Not working.”

  “I’m a hard guy to stay mad at. All the best women say so.” He aimed one of those sassy grins at her. “Does this mean I can get wake-up sex tomorrow?”

  The laugh bubbled up inside her. “Only if you can wake up in time.”

  “Harsh.”

  * * *

  What was harsh was how Vern felt two exhausting days later. The PANACOMA fire had battled them back and forth. This was a country that didn’t have smokejumpers, so there was no one to cut firebreaks. Only the U.S. typically fought fire with retardant, so aerial application of retardant-based firebreaks weren’t in the battle plan either.

  The only way to stop the fire was to beat it to death from the air. There were people on the ground: armed with rakes and shovels and wearing sandals and thin shirts, not armed with chain saws and water pumps and wearing Nomex gear. They didn’t have a single trained firefighter on the ground. They didn’t even have radio communications, so the efforts were wholly uncoordinated.

  But still, they beat it. Sunrise to sunset, two days in a row. The only breaks were to refuel. Meals were a gobbled-down sandwich or an energy bar.

  Vern now hovered above the black, looking for any remaining hot spots. He was the last one aloft. Steve had his drone’s infrared camera on a feed that Vern could watch on his terrain map screen.

  “There’s one.” Denise pointed toward his screen. “Lower right corner.”

  There was. For the hundredth time in two days, he blessed that she was along. He was so tired that he wouldn’t have trusted himself to fly solo, but she kept him on his toes. Served as an extra set of eyes, did some of the simpler flying so that he could at least shake out his hands every now and then.

  “I think it’s the last one. Punch it, Vern.”

  He slid over what had once been a cluster of rosewood trees and punched it. A thousand gallons of water fell from the sky in a hard deluge, hard enough that he could see it crater the char, then create a small wave of runoff. The hot spot was extinguished so fast it didn’t even have a chance to release smoke in complaint. It was simply gone.

  And with that, he was done and done in.

  “How’s your fuel?” Mark called over the radio.

  He had to squint to see, then he remembered. “Topped off half an hour ago. I’m near full.”

  “Good. New coordinates, Vern.”

  “I’m wiped out, boss.”

  “New coordinates.” Mark’s voice was stern as he read them off.

  Denise punched them into the nav system for him and Vern turned, cursing Mark. Maybe he’d take the museum job. Or if Denise took it, maybe he’d get a job doing flight tours somewhere nearby. Or driving a taxi. Nah. He hated traffic; he liked flying over it. Air taxi?

  He slid down over the cloud forest, already wrapping itself in a soft evening fog. No flame, little smoke. Unlike in the U.S., there was no Type II or III incident response team to make sure the fire was well and truly out. Also no habitat stabilization and restoration team hot on their heels. If the fire reignited, they’d have to come back and fight it again.

  The nav directions led them back down over the hamlet of Río Negro, a town that had known little silence for the last two days because of the reloading choppers in constant circulation.

  But the coordinates weren’t to the pond; they were to the farmer’s field. It wasn’t on fire.

  He radioed Mark. “Care to explain?”

  “Just set it down. Off to one side. We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Doing as he was told, he slid as close to the trees as he dared and settled the Firehawk. There would be room for one other big Firehawk.

  He and Denise had the bird shut down and filled out the flight logs. Still no one. So, they clambered down and collapsed. The grass here was lush and—once they’d checked it to make sure it was clear of any cow patties—very comfortable to lie down in.

  Five minutes later, Firehawk Oh-Two arrived above them from the direction of the air base rather than the fire and settled onto the other side of the clearing. Once it was on the ground, the rest of the MHA crew stumbled out. Jeannie must have followed Emily back to base and picked up Mark and the Oh-One crew.

  Denise sat up, inadvertently placing an elbow in his gut as she did so. Vern didn’t even bother to try and sit up; he simply lay there and grunted.

  “Six weeks.” Mark strode up as if it was the beginning of the day, not the end. “I think after six weeks, we get a day off.”

  It sounded glorious. Vern could really do with a day of not having his butt pounded by his chopper.

  “Maybe even two.”

  “For two days off, Mark, I’m going to have to marry you.” Vern sagged with relief. He’d get to spend some conscious time with his girl.

  “Why here?”

  Yep, that was his Denise. Sharp as a tack that woman, he thought dreamily. His eyes half closed as the last of the sunlight drained out of the late-afternoon sky.

  “Here,” Mark said, “is right up Vern’s alley.”

  Vern reopened one eye to look up at his boss.

  “We are parked in the back field of the Finca Río Negro—the Negro River Estate. In addition to having some very comfortable tree-house bungalows specifically set up for well-heeled tourists, it is also considered to be one of the finest producers of artisanal coffee in the country.”

  Vern closed the open eye. Someone had just transported him to heaven.

  Chapter 16

  Vern knew how he’d gotten here, but that didn’t make it any less surprising.

  David, pronounced Da-veed, wasn’t some young dreamer entrepreneur. He was a small, wiry man who could have been anywhere on the far side of sixty, unless he was on the far side of seventy. Last night he had served them a simple platter of roasted chicken, black beans, rice, and fresh-made flour tortillas to wrap around it, with french fries on the side. Stream-chilled beer with dinner, and a mild coffee liqueur that he distilled himself, and fresh-sliced mango topped off the evening.

  With all of them limp from the exhausting day, David led them to four bungalows. Each was a small tree house perched between five and fifteen meters in the air on a group of Swietenia trees.

  “Tourists, they cancel when they see the big smoke you put out,” David informed them in his heavily accented English. “I tell them too late for to refund. So I am paid, but they yours for saving my farm.” He sniffed the air deeply; whether to deride the feeble tourists or prove that the air did indeed bear no scent of smoke, Vern couldn’t tell.