Read Online Firestorm-pigeon 4 by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: Fiction, General, detective, Suspense, Reading Group Guide, Audiobooks, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery Fiction, Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, Fiction - Mystery, Mystery & Detective - General, Crime & mystery, Mystery & Detective - Series, Crime thriller, Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), Women park rangers, California; Northern
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hold the shelter down, the fire out.
Her mind rattled, grabbed onto a prayer long forgotten: now I lay me down to sleep—The end flashed like a telegram behind her eyes before the first words were formed and she jettisoned the rest as too prophetic.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America... She filled her mind with soundless shouting. An impotent wizard fending off genuine magic with a barren incantation.
All hell broke loose above and around her.
Fire pierced the aluminum tent in a dozen places. Sparks were falling, burning through: the shelter was a scam. Soon she would burst into flame. Spurts of adrenaline racked Anna's insides. With the odd unpleasant thrill came a stray thought: how much of the stuff could one gland secrete? Surely a quart had been pumped through her veins in the last hour.
Red, burning, a spark fell on her sleeve. She flicked her arm but couldn't dislodge it. No smolder of cloth followed, no burning through to the flesh. With a jolt of relief that brought tears to her eyes she realized the sparks were not sparks, not embers, but pinholes along the folds in her shelter. The orange light was the light of the fire, but outside glowing through. Classes in fire behavior she'd thought long forgotten came back to her. All shelters had these pinpricks, signs of wear and age. Normal. Okay. Normal. One nation under God, indivisible...
A slap as of a giant hand smashed down on her shoulders and breath gusted from her lungs. She sucked in fire and clamped her jaws closed against it. The shelter pressed down on her back, the saving pocket of air squeezed away. The yellow pack she wore protected her spine but the skin on her shoulders bubbled and Anna bucked. The tent was pushed up off her back and the searing dropped to a tolerable level.
Her nose and eyes were packed with ash and dirt. Through the thick leather gloves the little fingers of both hands, flat on the ground and holding down the shelter, began to throb. They kept the tent down, the devil out, and Anna didn't dare pull them away from the heat.
With liberty and justice for all.
Burrowing blind as a mole, she pushed into the sand and blessed all events social and geological that had formed the creek bed and led her into it before the storm broke. Sand wouldn't burn. A mental image of the creek bed melted, a ribbon of molten glass with their bodies burned into it like flies trapped in amber, flickered through her mind and she started again: I pledge allegiance...
The blessing hadn't extended to Hamlin. The ledge they'd left him on was covered in brush, half a foot deep in leaves and litter. LeFleur: maybe he'd cleared a space for the boy, covered him with a fire shelter. But it was no good. It would only prolong the burning. Newt Hamlin was toast. A ludicrous cartoon version of Wile E. Coyote burned to a crisp sprang up from Anna's subconscious.
And to the republic for which it stands...
The air was too hot to breathe. Anna pressed her lips to the sand, sucking slowly as her grandmother had once taught her to suck tea through a sugar cube. The little fingers of both hands hurt so bad she would have wept but there was no moisture in this convection oven shroud. No sweat, no tears. What was the temperature, she wondered. Five hundred degrees stuck in her mind but she didn't know if she'd read it, heard it or was making it up.
Five hundred degrees. Anna pushed her mind back to the days when she was still a meat eater. Chicken was baked at three-fifty. Roast beef at maybe four hundred. Twenty or thirty minutes for each pound. One hundred and eighteen pounds at five hundred degrees Fahrenheit—two thousand minutes. Numbers scrambled and Anna gave up the exercise. It would be a while before she was fully baked.
One nation...
Pinpricks of light on the right side of her tent swelled, the burning orange pushing through with such intensity they painted her sleeve like the beams from the laser sight on a high-powered rifle.
Her mind rattled, grabbed onto a prayer long forgotten: now I lay me down to sleep—The end flashed like a telegram behind her eyes before the first words were formed and she jettisoned the rest as too prophetic.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America... She filled her mind with soundless shouting. An impotent wizard fending off genuine magic with a barren incantation.
All hell broke loose above and around her.
Fire pierced the aluminum tent in a dozen places. Sparks were falling, burning through: the shelter was a scam. Soon she would burst into flame. Spurts of adrenaline racked Anna's insides. With the odd unpleasant thrill came a stray thought: how much of the stuff could one gland secrete? Surely a quart had been pumped through her veins in the last hour.
Red, burning, a spark fell on her sleeve. She flicked her arm but couldn't dislodge it. No smolder of cloth followed, no burning through to the flesh. With a jolt of relief that brought tears to her eyes she realized the sparks were not sparks, not embers, but pinholes along the folds in her shelter. The orange light was the light of the fire, but outside glowing through. Classes in fire behavior she'd thought long forgotten came back to her. All shelters had these pinpricks, signs of wear and age. Normal. Okay. Normal. One nation under God, indivisible...
A slap as of a giant hand smashed down on her shoulders and breath gusted from her lungs. She sucked in fire and clamped her jaws closed against it. The shelter pressed down on her back, the saving pocket of air squeezed away. The yellow pack she wore protected her spine but the skin on her shoulders bubbled and Anna bucked. The tent was pushed up off her back and the searing dropped to a tolerable level.
Her nose and eyes were packed with ash and dirt. Through the thick leather gloves the little fingers of both hands, flat on the ground and holding down the shelter, began to throb. They kept the tent down, the devil out, and Anna didn't dare pull them away from the heat.
With liberty and justice for all.
Burrowing blind as a mole, she pushed into the sand and blessed all events social and geological that had formed the creek bed and led her into it before the storm broke. Sand wouldn't burn. A mental image of the creek bed melted, a ribbon of molten glass with their bodies burned into it like flies trapped in amber, flickered through her mind and she started again: I pledge allegiance...
The blessing hadn't extended to Hamlin. The ledge they'd left him on was covered in brush, half a foot deep in leaves and litter. LeFleur: maybe he'd cleared a space for the boy, covered him with a fire shelter. But it was no good. It would only prolong the burning. Newt Hamlin was toast. A ludicrous cartoon version of Wile E. Coyote burned to a crisp sprang up from Anna's subconscious.
And to the republic for which it stands...
The air was too hot to breathe. Anna pressed her lips to the sand, sucking slowly as her grandmother had once taught her to suck tea through a sugar cube. The little fingers of both hands hurt so bad she would have wept but there was no moisture in this convection oven shroud. No sweat, no tears. What was the temperature, she wondered. Five hundred degrees stuck in her mind but she didn't know if she'd read it, heard it or was making it up.
Five hundred degrees. Anna pushed her mind back to the days when she was still a meat eater. Chicken was baked at three-fifty. Roast beef at maybe four hundred. Twenty or thirty minutes for each pound. One hundred and eighteen pounds at five hundred degrees Fahrenheit—two thousand minutes. Numbers scrambled and Anna gave up the exercise. It would be a while before she was fully baked.
One nation...
Pinpricks of light on the right side of her tent swelled, the burning orange pushing through with such intensity they painted her sleeve like the beams from the laser sight on a high-powered rifle.
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