Read Online Pure Heat by M. L. Buchman - Free Book Online

loosen the shipping strap. Carly climbed up and undid the other one. As they carried the antenna out into the light, he glanced back up at the black boxes. They were definitely there.
    After his training at SkyHi had finished. After they’d certified him in both flight and maintenance of the birds. After he’d received formal notice that MHA was hiring him for the fire season and he’d done all of their damned paperwork on top of SkyHi’s own serious stack of forms, one of the techs had taken him aside.
    Together, Steve and Carly made fast work of unfolding the antenna and hooking the sections together. Part of him paid attention as they attached the base to the socket on the outside front corner of the truck’s box. He threaded the cable from the omnidirectional antenna at the top, down through the clips on the pole, and plugged it into the socket by the truck’s passenger door. With the base attached, they tipped the antenna into place. Carly kept it stable while he seated it properly and secured the mounts up the front corner of the truck’s box.
    Now he was glad that he’d dismissed the help from the SkyHi techs. Carly was not only much easier on the eyes, but clearly good mechanically as well, bracing the antenna just right and double-checking the mounts he’d tightened down. Never hurt to have a second set of eyes on things.
    The other part of him thought back to that tech on his last day at SkyHi’s compound. A man he’d never met through the months of residence there had pulled him aside after breakfast. The guy had led Steve into a different building.
    There he’d been trained on a different kind of bird. A drone in a black box.
    At the time, he’d thought it a pretty serious breach of security. The guy had acted as if he were just showing off a cool toy. But was Steve authorized to know about this thing? Sure, they’d done some serious background checks on him. But a version of these drones was also used in the military, so he’d guessed that their tight security made sense. Even if he was just going to fly them over fires.
    The black-box birds were different. These were the military’s version of the drones. It had creeped him out even to see them, never mind receive twelve hours of training on the enhancements. He’d have to call SkyHi and find out what sort of a screwup had delivered two military drones to a forest fire helibase. What if it wasn’t a mistake? He shook his head. That didn’t make any sense.
    Some mechanics teasing each other out on the airfield brought his attention back to the otherwise quiet morning.
    Steve finished anchoring the antenna mounting and then moved to start setting up the trailer.
    Knowing his curiosity was going to get the better of him anyway, Steve decided he’d peek in the black boxes before calling SkyHi. Though one thing for certain, he was going to be alone when he opened them.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with your leg?” Carly startled him with her question.
    Stupid. When he wasn’t paying attention, he favored it more than was really needed anymore. The consequence of remembered pain. Time to bite the bullet. And usually people didn’t have the guts to ask how he’d crippled himself. They’d just give him a look of pity and step wide on the sidewalk as if a limp and a cane had made him so ungainly that he needed a six-foot-wide corridor to navigate in.
    â€œMy knee.” Why in the hell did he keep correcting her? Especially since it really was most of his leg, his knee had just been the worst part of a bad scene. “Tore it up last summer jumping the Crystal Peak fire.” He started unfolding the catcher arm on the trailer.
    â€œYou’re a smokejumper?”
    â€œPast tense.” It came out as a growl. Damn it. Maybe he should just shut up.
    He unlatched the first ten-foot section of pole from the side of the trailer and held it in place while Carly bolted it