13
“Did either of you sleep?”
“Shut up, Mark.” Vern wanted to jab the man in the ribs.
Mount Hood Aviation’s base camp was quite different today than when they’d left it a week ago. High noon, there should have been helos coming in from fires, lunch served, service crews doing maintenance during the pilots’ brief breaks—the mayhem of a typical day.
But now there was a fall chill on the silent air. The three Firehawks, the drone launch trailer, and Denise’s service box were the only objects left in the whole camp. The rest of it was empty. The Down Under crew was already gone, taking the four smaller helos with them. The guide and jump planes were down in a hangar at the airport in Hood River because this camp would soon be covered in snow. They’d dropped their cars off at a garage in t
