prologue
March
“Team six, get back! Pull out now!”
The barking voice was my father’s, and it came over the speaker in my SCBA helmet as I hacked at the foundation of a dead bush with an axe. I straightened up, sweat dripping down my face and blurring the lenses of my goggles. It was freakishly hot today—in the high 80s in fucking March thanks to another heat inversion, or heat bomb, or whatever the talking heads were calling it these days.
I motioned to Brian, Liam, and Jordy. “C’mon! Leave it.”
We abandoned the work we’d been doing to establish a fire line to the west of the outermost houses of Sierra City and headed back up the steep hill where we’d come down.
“Did it jump?” Brian asked through our headsets.
“Must of,” Jordy replied.
I didn’t try to talk. Walking up a steep hill with all my gear, axe, and pack would have been a good workout if I wasn’t already trashed from busting ass on the fire line for the past two hours. Not to mention dying in the heat. I scanned the area. The grass was brown thanks to a dry California spring. Not unusual, sadly. Tall pine trees towered on both sides of the power-line break we followed. The haze of smoke that’d been there when we’d come down was now thick and the dark tan color of burning wood.
“It’s definitely closer,” I said.
“Who’s pulling us out? Was that your dad, Donny?” asked Jordy.
His voice was all neutral, but I heard the implication. It wasn’t often our Gridley [JB1] fire station worked a blaze alongside Pa’s station, which was in Oroville. And when it happened, I always got razzed about it. Well, me and my brother Mike got razzed, but he was still on leave after that scary, near-suicidal accident he’d had at a warehouse fire in December. When Pa was around, the guys acted like we were favored or protected or some such shit. I didn’t mind the razzing so much, ’cause it was normally just shit talking. But the idea that Pa would pull us out of necessary work because of overprotective paranoia was just dumb.
“That’s Chief Canali to you, asswipe, and he knows what he’s doin’.” I panted loudly into the mic, then shut up so I could make it up that fucking hill.
At the top, I stopped to catch a breath, hands on my knees. I was in damn good shape, but Ma’s excellent Italian cooking gave me a few extra pounds to drag around.
“Join the firefighters, they said. You’ll get to hike while you work, they said.” This was Jordy, who panted and groaned. I chuckled and wiped a sleeve over my nose and chin to catch the sweat.
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except in your case, Jordy. It just makes you crankier,” I teased, giving Jordy a grin.
“Holy mother of God.” Liam’s words, and the fear in his voice, had me standing tall and looking around.
We’d walked the power-line break to get into the area since there wasn’t a trail or road nearby. In front of us, the hill fell away more gradually, the power-line break a narrow brown avenue that shot straight through the trees. Down below, that break was now on fire. Brown billows[JH2] rose thick and toxic, hiding our path out. The fire was maybe a quarter mile away, flames feasting greedily.
“Shit,” breathed Brian. “What the fuck do we do now?”
I switched my headset to the command frequency. “Base, this is Team six. We need a new exit route. The power-line break is compromised. We’re at the top of the hill, about a mile from Calvade Road staging area. Over.”
Pa answered immediately. “There’s not enough clearance in the break for you to push through? You need to try. Double-time. Over.”
If the grass under the power lines had been green, like it should be this time of year, and if the power-line break wasn’t overgrown and poorly maintained, filled with windfall branches and dead scrub, there’d be a way through. But it wasn’t. I looked at the fire below, where the grass and brush under the power-line towers was clearly on fire, and then around at the faces of my team. Jordy was shaking his head adamantly and Brian’s eyes were bleak.
“We can go down and take a closer look, Chief,” I radioed in. “But from up here, it sure as shit doesn’t look like it. Over.”
“Getting closer isn’t gonna do jack,” Jordy protested. “We can’t get through that. There’s gotta be another exit. Tell ’em, Donny.”
My instinct was to tell Jordy to shut it and do what Pa wanted, get closer and see if we could find a break. But that was the cowboy in me—ramrod your way through anything. Kowabunga! And I’d do it just because Pa asked. I’d jump a building if he told me to. But caution and levelheaded thinking had been drilled into me at school and in training. I was responsible for other guys, not just myself. Liam, who was fairly new, was pale as a ghost with fear. Brian had a five-year-old and new baby at home. Jesus, if he got hurt, his wife Katie would kill me.
Reluctantly, I spoke back into the radio. “It looks pretty solid and thick down there, Chief. Could we head toward Sierra City? Over.”
It took a while for Pa to respond. Probably he was looking at maps and talking to the others at command. He came back on. “It’s hot to your north and south. There’s a clear route along the river, but it’d be eight, nine miles on foot if you have to go that way. We’re gonna try air support. Hang tight.”
But I already heard it—the sound of a plane.
“They can’t land here,” said Liam. “Not with these power lines.”
I scanned the skies and spotted it, coming in from the north. Hell, you couldn’t miss it. The plane was screaming yellow and red. It looked kind of like a fire tanker, but not one I’d seen before.
“Look!” Brian pointed at it.
“Good eyes, Brian. We saw it ten minutes ago,” snarked Jordy.
“What is that?” asked Liam. “It doesn’t look big enough to hold us all.”
“It ain’t a ride, newb,” said Jordy happily. “Watch and learn.”
The plane banked hard toward us, flying sideways, and then it dropped like a stone. I gaped as it levelled out, still descending, aiming right for us. It roared over our heads, a few feet above the power lines. Something hit my face as it buzzed us, and I reached up to wipe it off—water. The undercarriage of the plane was dripping water.
And then that bright bird of a plane flew right over the power-line break fire. Low, so fucking low! I saw its belly doors open and water gush out before it vanished into the smoke.
“Holy shit! Who the hell is flying that thing?” I murmured. I’d never seen any Cal Fire pilot fly like that.
“Oh God. Did he crash?” Liam’s voice, scared.
“Are you kidding? Not that motherfucker!” Jordy flashed a huge grin.
And then the bright yellow-and-red plane shot heavenward from out of the smoke, banking hard. It flew back over our heads, still climbing, heading to whatever water source it was using, probably a nearby lake.
Pa came on. “Donny? Er—Team six? Did you see the drop? The pilot’s gonna keep laying down water to get you out. Over.”
“Hell yeah, we saw it!” I radioed back. “Smooth moves. We’ll be tiptoeing through the tulips all the way home. Thank the pilot for us. Team six out.”
When we walked out of the woods at the staging area, I ripped off my helmet and dropped my gear, thankful to get some air. It was smoky here, of course, but I was used to that. At least it wasn’t as bad as what we’d just walked through, the soggy ground still steaming and choking smoke from the fire on either side.
“I have to tell ya, I saw my life flash before my eyes for a moment back there,” said Brian. The guy still looked spooked.
“No shit,” agreed Liam. “I was thinking I should have kept my ass back in New Jersey.”
“Hey, Cal Fire’s the real deal,” I told him. “I’ve been in plenty of hairy situations, but we’ve always gotten out.”
“Yeah, this org’s what you call pre-fessional,” said Jordy.
“Damn straight.”
Pa walked up, looking all manly in his black-and-yellow fire gear, his expression hard and businesslike, the way a chief should be. “Team six. Glad to see you. Good work out there.” Then he looked at me, and his eyes softened and shone with pride. “Good job, Donny.”
A lump appeared in my throat the size of a fucking basketball. Pa’s approval was everything and filled me with too many feels to bear. I might have gone for a back-slapping hug—we were Italian, so it was allowed—but we were on duty. “It got a bit dicey,” I admitted. “Good to have you on the horn.” And then I had to change the subject before the other guys saw me getting sappy. “Hey, who was that pilot? Never seen anybody fly like that.”
“Shit yeah!” said Jordy. “Guy dropped so fast, I thought he was gonna crash on our heads.”
Pa grinned. “That’s Dell Murphy, the new guy who transferred here from Oregon. He did good, right? Did you see it?”
“Good?” I scoffed. “Fucking aero-batic show, man. I felt like we should have bought tickets. I need to shake that guy’s hand.”
“That was the new pilot from Oregon?” Jordy said in a bewildered tone. “But I thought I heard he was a queer.”
Silence dropped like a rock and the guys stared at Jordy. I dared a glance at Pa. He was staring at Jordy, too, his smile frozen so hard it looked like a death rictus. His skin had gone tight and his eyes pained.
Just four months ago my baby bro, Mike, the latest and last of Pa’s firefighting Hot Cannolis, had come out as gay. To say it had been a blow to Pa would be the understatement of the fucking year. In our profession, being macho was everything, and we Canalis took pride in being the most macho of all. Pa still didn’t seem to know exactly how to deal with it—with the other guys, crew, maybe his fellow brass, for all I knew. I don’t know who all gave him shit about it, but Jordy sure wasn’t going to be one of them. Not while I was standing there.
“What’s his being gay got to do with anything?” I took a threatening step toward Jordy. “That supposed to mean he shouldn’t be able to fly or something? He was an army pilot, right, Pa? I mean, Chief?”
Pa straightened his spine, his chief mask back on. “Pilot Dell Murphy flew combat missions in Afghanistan while you were playing Nintendo in junior high. And he saved your ass today. So show some respect!”
Jordy grimaced guiltily. “Sorry, Chief.”
“All right. You guys get some water and take a breather. I’ll give you a sitrep shortly.” Pa stalked off, already talking again on the radio.
“Sorry,” Jordy said again to me. He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “But you were the one talking shit about gays right up until Mike came out. Now, suddenly, we all gotta be PC.”
I opened my mouth to deny it, but he was right. I used to talk shit as much as anyone. But when Mike had nearly died in that warehouse fire, and it became clear that hiding being gay was the thing that was fucking with his head so badly, everything had changed. Talk about a wake-up call. And I’d gotten to know his boyfriend, Shane, and discovered he was actually a pretty cool dude.
“Well, I was wrong to do it. I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about back then. End of story.”
“Okay! Just sayin’. It’s not like the whole world can turn on a dime just ’cause you did. I wasn’t even talking about Mike.”
“Fine. It’s over. So shut up about it.”
“Fine. I’m gonna go get some water.” Jordy stalked off.
Brian clapped me on the back. “Anyway. Glad to still be breathin’ with you, dude. And thank God for your dad and that pilot.” He walked off too.
Yeah, Cal Fire wasn’t gonna be waving rainbow flags anytime soon. But that was okay. Because I was there and I’d protect Mike, along with my brother Tony, and Pa, and any other Canalis, from the resident bozos. And I’d do it for as long as it took.
No one was gonna hurt Pa or make fun of our family. Over my flaming freaking corpse