Read Online Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Koryta
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comes the harder part. Try to guess, without using the map, what distance they are from us.”
Hannah stared out the window and off to the south, locating the peak above the group, and while she didn’t look at the map, the map was in her mind. She studied the mountain, let her eyes trace a creek running down from it, and said, “Seven miles.”
“Seven?” Kyle smiled. “You like to be precise, right? Well, you’ll like Ozzy, then.”
“Ozzy?”
He shrugged. “You get bored up here, you start nicknaming shit, I don’t know. Point is, it will let you be a lot more precise. Here.” He rotated the bezel of the table and lined the brass sight up with the group of hiking boys again. She knelt and peered through, taking the boys in as a whole, not wanting to focus on any particular one—she couldn’t have the memories that might shake loose, absolutely could not revisit those memories here, in front of him.
“Okay. Got them.”
“Great. That was fast. Now pretend they’re not a group of kids but a fire. Something in there could burn you. You’re flustered, you’re scared, something out there is dangerous. You’re pointing at a hundred and sixty-one degrees, see that? So now you know it’s at a hundred and sixty-one degrees from your tower. Now look at the map and show me where you think it’s burning.”
She studied the topographic map, its gradients showing elevation changes, and found the most visible peak near the blaze, then worked down and pointed with her index finger.
“Around there?”
“Pretty close. Actually…wow, that’s real close. An inch is two miles on that map. Use the ruler there and tell me how many inches it is from us.”
It was just a shade under three and a half inches. Seven miles.
“Damn,” Kyle said softly. “Good guess.”
She allowed a smile. “I’ve watched some smoke in the past.”
“In towers?”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
“Hotshot crew.”
He tilted his head. “And now you want a tower?”
She’d said too much. Her pride had reared up, but it had been a mistake to mention the crew, because now Kyle understood. He’d listened to enough radio traffic to understand the food chain. When the regular-hand crews got into a blaze they couldn’t handle, the hotshots would roll, and the only ones higher up on the food chain than them were the smokejumpers. Bunch of guys parachuting in behind walls of flame. Cheaters, Hannah had said to Nick once, watching them descend. We had to walk our asses in here.
Nick had laughed hard at that. He’d had a beautiful laugh. At night, she went to sleep hoping that his laugh would come to her in her dreams instead of the screams.
It never did.
She kept her eyes away from Kyle’s when she said, “Yeah, the fire line is more than I can handle these days. So, listen, when I see the fire, I call it in, and what else?”
“Hang on,” he said. “Hang on. You’re Hannah Faber, aren’t you? Were you at Shepherd Mountain last year?”
“There were a lot of fires last summer,” she said. “I was part of some of them.”
He must have sensed her desire to short-circuit the conversation, because he ducked his head and spoke briskly. “You’d report the distance and heading. That way, when they send a plane out for a look, they can pinpoint it easily. Then you use this breakdown to clarify for them.”
He showed her a clipboard that contained checklists of information for each sighting—the distance, the bearing, nearby landmarks, and then three categories of information about the smoke:
Volume: small, medium, large
Type or character: thin, heavy, building, drifting, blanket
Color: white, gray, black, blue, yellow, coppery
“You report all that,” he said, “and then you sit back and listen to them sort it out.”
“No bad ones yet?”
“None. Late-season snow helped. But it melted fast, and it’s dried out since then. Temperatures started climbing, and the wind started blowing. No rain. If that holds,
Hannah stared out the window and off to the south, locating the peak above the group, and while she didn’t look at the map, the map was in her mind. She studied the mountain, let her eyes trace a creek running down from it, and said, “Seven miles.”
“Seven?” Kyle smiled. “You like to be precise, right? Well, you’ll like Ozzy, then.”
“Ozzy?”
He shrugged. “You get bored up here, you start nicknaming shit, I don’t know. Point is, it will let you be a lot more precise. Here.” He rotated the bezel of the table and lined the brass sight up with the group of hiking boys again. She knelt and peered through, taking the boys in as a whole, not wanting to focus on any particular one—she couldn’t have the memories that might shake loose, absolutely could not revisit those memories here, in front of him.
“Okay. Got them.”
“Great. That was fast. Now pretend they’re not a group of kids but a fire. Something in there could burn you. You’re flustered, you’re scared, something out there is dangerous. You’re pointing at a hundred and sixty-one degrees, see that? So now you know it’s at a hundred and sixty-one degrees from your tower. Now look at the map and show me where you think it’s burning.”
She studied the topographic map, its gradients showing elevation changes, and found the most visible peak near the blaze, then worked down and pointed with her index finger.
“Around there?”
“Pretty close. Actually…wow, that’s real close. An inch is two miles on that map. Use the ruler there and tell me how many inches it is from us.”
It was just a shade under three and a half inches. Seven miles.
“Damn,” Kyle said softly. “Good guess.”
She allowed a smile. “I’ve watched some smoke in the past.”
“In towers?”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
“Hotshot crew.”
He tilted his head. “And now you want a tower?”
She’d said too much. Her pride had reared up, but it had been a mistake to mention the crew, because now Kyle understood. He’d listened to enough radio traffic to understand the food chain. When the regular-hand crews got into a blaze they couldn’t handle, the hotshots would roll, and the only ones higher up on the food chain than them were the smokejumpers. Bunch of guys parachuting in behind walls of flame. Cheaters, Hannah had said to Nick once, watching them descend. We had to walk our asses in here.
Nick had laughed hard at that. He’d had a beautiful laugh. At night, she went to sleep hoping that his laugh would come to her in her dreams instead of the screams.
It never did.
She kept her eyes away from Kyle’s when she said, “Yeah, the fire line is more than I can handle these days. So, listen, when I see the fire, I call it in, and what else?”
“Hang on,” he said. “Hang on. You’re Hannah Faber, aren’t you? Were you at Shepherd Mountain last year?”
“There were a lot of fires last summer,” she said. “I was part of some of them.”
He must have sensed her desire to short-circuit the conversation, because he ducked his head and spoke briskly. “You’d report the distance and heading. That way, when they send a plane out for a look, they can pinpoint it easily. Then you use this breakdown to clarify for them.”
He showed her a clipboard that contained checklists of information for each sighting—the distance, the bearing, nearby landmarks, and then three categories of information about the smoke:
Volume: small, medium, large
Type or character: thin, heavy, building, drifting, blanket
Color: white, gray, black, blue, yellow, coppery
“You report all that,” he said, “and then you sit back and listen to them sort it out.”
“No bad ones yet?”
“None. Late-season snow helped. But it melted fast, and it’s dried out since then. Temperatures started climbing, and the wind started blowing. No rain. If that holds,
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