The Gulfstream II that had brought them back from Sacramento had been serviced and restocked and waited for them at North Island. The crew chief was a cute little dark-haired second-class petty officer who checked their seat belts and made sure their gear was stowed safely.
“Good morning, SEALs. You may not know where we’re headed. Our pilot tells me he has flight orders to take you to Portland International Airport up in Oregon. From there you’ll go by CH-46 to the nearest sighting and get to work.”
“Are we all on the same trail?” DeWitt asked.
“That I don’t know. Now, settle down, we have some good Navy chow coming for you.” She grinned. “Not true. We do have some first-class flight trays that we’re waiting for. They are three minutes late, but the pilot says he won’t leave until the chow gets here. There will be one meal.”
“Flight time?” Murdock asked.
“Commander, that will be about two hours. We’re on maximum cruise of five-oh-five miles an hour and the distance is a thousand and ninety miles. Make it two hours and fifteen minutes.” She looked at the front of the craft. “Good, the food has arrived. We’ll be taking off in five minutes.”
She vanished into the front cabin.
“I could get used to this first-class living,” Jaybird said.
“The crew chief is not included on the menu,” Mahanani said.
“Don’t throw boiling pineapple juice on a man’s dreams, Hawaiian beach boy.”
Two hours later they landed in Portland, and were rushed to a pair of waiting CH-46’s with National Forestry markings.
“Two different locations,” DeWitt said.
Murdock conferred with a Forestry pilot, then motioned DeWitt and his men into one chopper. He and his Alpha Squad men boarded the other one. The doors closed and both birds took off at the same time. At once they flew in different directions.
Murdock went to the cabin and talked with the pilot.
“Orders are to take you into the Cascades just north of Government Camp,” said the pilot. “Lots of good timber up in there. Two fires have been attacked and put out, but there is another one burning and the arsonists are moving slowly east. We hope to land you in front of them so you can net them as they come through.”
“Where does the tracking come in?” Murdock asked, talking loudly over the constant roar of the engine and the whupping of the rotor blades.
“If you miss them in the net, you find their tracks and hunt them down. I understand you’re good at that.”
“We’ve done some tracking work. How long till we hit the LZ?”
“Fifteen minutes. Not far, but damn rugged territory.”
“How high is it in there?”
“You’ll be just east of Mt. Hood, which is almost twelve thousand feet. Most of the area you’ll be in is around five to six thousand. No snow this time of year, but it gets nippy at night.”
Murdock went to the back of the chopper and filled in his three men. He felt naked with only half his squad. If they were lucky there would be no gunfire and it could be wrapped up quickly. Finding a couple of firebugs should be a snap.
The crew chief came back wearing a frown. “Commander, we’ve just had word that these arsonists you’re looking for have at least one rifle and maybe two. They fired on some backpackers who happened past. No one was hit, but the packers got out of that area in a rush. They had a radio and gave the warning. Their position seems to be west of where we have our LZ and the Koreans are moving east.”
“Thanks. How long until we hit the LZ?”
“Maybe five minutes. I’m opening one side door. That enough?”
Murdock nodded, and the second Forestry man unlatched and opened the right-hand side door.
Murdock motioned for the men to stand, and they quickly checked each other’s equipment. Then they picked up their weapons and stood near the door watching the green on green of the Oregon forest passing by below. Then the chopper took a sudden diving slant to the left, straightened out, and moved slowly ahead. Then the nose came up and the craft settled the last two feet to the turf. The SEALs jumped out of the bird and ran into the woods thirty yards away. The helicopter lifted off and darted back the way it had come.
The SEALs stopped just inside the cover and looked at each other. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?” Jaybird asked.
“Find the bastards,” Lam said. “First we need to get to some high ground where we can watch the countryside to the west.”
“How we going to see anything with the thick forest cover?” Bradford asked. “These damn Douglas fir, spruce, and cedar are so close together they make a canopy over the ground. Only place we can see through them is where they burned off or were logged over.”
Murdock saw a small ridge to the left, and he led the men that way. “So we watch the open spaces. If they’re smart or tired, that’s where they’ll hike. The path of least resistance.”
When they made it up the ridge, they found there were six different areas they could see to the west that would provide any hiker with an easier trail than jamming through the brush.
“We watch them,” Murdock said. He’d made sure each of the men had a pair of binoculars. The men sat down in the grass and wildflowers and began watching their assigned areas.
“I’ve got some movement just at the edge of that little meadow down there. Second from the top,” Lam said.
“Yeah, I have it,” Bradford said. He paused. “Jeez, look at that, a white-tail doe and a fawn. Sure wish this was deer season.”
“Speaking of venison for supper, how many MREs do we have?” Jaybird asked. “I only brought three. We could be out here for days.”
“We’re only ten miles ahead of the last known fire,” Murdock said. “If these guys are any good, they’ll do ten miles along these ridges and start another fire.”
“What if they start one before then and we see the smoke?”
“We radio the Forestry people on TAC Four and report it. Then we hunker down and go meet the firebugs who must be hightailing it toward us.”
Lam scowled and shook his head. “Skipper, it seems like we’re making a lot of assumptions. We’re planning on what these guys are going to do, and we don’t know if they will do any of the four or five things we hope they will do.”
“So we sit and wait and watch.” Murdock moved his sight line higher. “Hold it. About two fingers over that last open spot, is that smoke?”
“Hell, yes, Skipper,” Jaybird chorused. “You get a merit badge for fire-fighting. They expect us to go down there and put out the fire?”
“Not until we report it. Bradford, get it in gear.”
Bradford unhooked the eleven-pound SATCOM radio from his back and set up the small dish antenna. He turned it until he picked up the satellite, and then snapped on the switches and dials and gave the handset to Murdock.
“Ready to rumble, Commander.”
“Forestry Four, this is Murdock. Over.” There was no response. Bradford checked the SATCOM antenna position. He made a small adjustment.
“Forestry Four, this is Murdock. Over.”
“Yes, Murdock we hear you. Over.”
“We have a smoke. It’s almost on a direct line west of us from where the chopper set us down. You have that position.”
“Roger that, Murdock how far on that heading?”
“How far, Lam?” Murdock asked.
“Three miles, three and a half.”
“Three to three and a half miles, Forestry Four.”
“Roger, we’re on it with a tanker and a jump crew. We expect the fire-starters to move toward you on that same heading. Over.”
“Right, Forestry. We’re about ready to go and see if we can meet these gents. Over.”
“Extreme caution. They are armed.”