The Eleventh Hour. Wendy Etherington

gripped the sides of her seat to steady her rolling stomach as the chopper banked.

      “I have a one-hundred-percent success rate,” said a disembodied voice through her headset.

      She glanced over at the pilot and gave him a weak thumbs-up. She tried not to focus on the height, the noise of the whirring blades, the fact that she was thousands of feet in the air and supported by a bit of glass and metal and a five-point safety harness.

      And after taking a deep breath, she managed to look out the windshield.

      They were high over the forest and mountains now, turning trees into twigs and cars into model toys.

      The scorched blackness of much of the area made her throat tighten. From the research she’d done on wildfires, she knew smaller ones that didn’t threaten civilization were allowed a controlled burn. This cleansing of the land was actually good for the environment and encouraged new growth.

      But destruction of this magnitude was disastrous. The fire was now ripping through a stretch of land where a developer had built a collection of cabins he rented out to companies for management retreats. Small, “hot spot” fires sparked by the larger blaze were popping up all over the area. Wildlife homes were reduced to ashes. A small park and series of hiking trails that were owned and managed by the forestry service had been destroyed.

      And Fairfax was next on the list.

      Spurred by that threat, she pulled out her digital camera, with its high-powered zoom lens, to record the scene. As the pilot swung as low as was safe over the blaze, she realized the fire was beautiful, in its way. The colors, the power and the heat were mesmerizing, as well as deadly.

      The pilot set them down once near a small hot spot, where Laine was able to get out and take some close-ups of the crew.

      She forgot about her own fears as she watched them dig trenches and clear trees and brush to rob the fire of fuel, then aid that effort with extinguishing chemicals. They sweated and strained. Through her fireproof jumpsuit and without the heavy supply pack most of the crew carried, Laine could hardly stay coherent in the heat. Still, she had to stifle the urge to grab a shovel and help.

      They were an amazing breed, these men and women who challenged a force of nature that only God himself could really battle and win. It was an alliance Steve was an integral part of, and one she didn’t think she’d ever fully understand.