Hot Point by M. L. Buchman Page A

the presence of Vern’s morning mood wasn’t polluting the atmosphere as badly as a wildfire, “is loading your bird to capacity with gear and food for the smokies. They’re promising a clear helispot by the time you arrive. You’ll stop off on your way to Missoula to unload.
    â€œVern, you’ve got Denise, and you’ll under-sling her service container. So, you two will fly direct to the Missoula airport along with Emily before you hit the fire. It’s a ten-hour drive, and I want Denise on-site faster than that. When the other choppers follow after first light, they can bring the other two mechanics. We clear?”
    Okay, Vern was feeling less morose now. The morning—despite the obscene hour—had taken a sudden turn for the better. A three-hour flight with Denise Conroy sounded great. Even if she was someone else’s, at least he’d get to spend the time with her. Then he thought about it again. For three solid hours she’d see every single technique he didn’t do perfectly in his flight.
    Dismissed, he headed over and started the preflight on his chopper, wondering if he’d regret a third cup of coffee before a three-hour flight. There were no rest stops along the way.
    He decided against the coffee, figuring he’d find enough other ways to embarrass himself during the flight as it was.
    * * *
    â€œI haven’t made a night transit before.” Denise leaned forward as if to look out the window.
    â€œStay inside your helmet,” Vern told her.
    That was the problem. Her eyes didn’t want to. They’d been aloft about fifteen seconds. Vern had climbed to hover five feet over her shop-box. It was a twenty-foot steel cargo container sitting on a flatbed truck. Inside the container was MHA’s mobile service shop. With the tools and spares she had stocked inside, she could service almost anything on any MHA aircraft.
    Malcolm then climbed atop the van and slapped the head loop of the steel long-line into the cargo hook on the bottom of the Firehawk. The cargo-hook indicator light went on briefly, indicating the hook was down and open. Then the light blinked out again as the jaw closed over the wire loop.
    Once Malcolm was clear, Vern hit the arming switch on the emergency load-hook release. Then he went straight up, hesitated at the moment the line came under tension at a hundred feet up, then continued aloft in a clean motion lifting the three-ton steel container off the back of the truck so gently that a stray screw might well remain in place on the workbench inside the shop-box.
    And just that fast, they were in darkness. She leaned her head into the rounded window built into the door. The laminated glass bulged out far enough that she could lean into it and see straight down past the structure of the helicopter. She shifted until her helmet bumped the window and got only the briefest glimpse of the lit MHA airfield as it disappeared astern.
    After that, there was no real sense of motion without the visual aids of the helmet display. She knew in her brain that the helicopter was now tipped nose down as it raced toward the Montana fire. She could see the readout on the inside of her visor that showed they’d rapidly climbed until they were moving at 150 knots.
    â€œThis feels wrong.”
    â€œIt does, doesn’t it?” Vern was absolutely calm.
    She’d never flown with him before, not in the MD500 and not the Firehawk. She felt absolutely safe…and had nothing to base that feeling on. When she flew with Emily, she felt secure enough, but with Vern she didn’t feel any underlying tension that something she’d overlooked might break. Somehow Vern calmed the part of her brain that worried for a living.
    The helmet projected information onto the inside of her visor, but most of it was meaningless. She knew enough to understand the helmet was working properly. But more than half of the information conveyed nothing to