Falls Like Lightning
Read Falls Like Lightning Online
Authors: Shawn Grady
Falls Like Lightning
Copyright © 2011
Shawn Grady
Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc.
Cover photography by: Masterfile, ©Westend61; GettyImages, ©Artyom Korotayev
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
E-book edition created 2011
ISBN 978-1-4412-3226-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Praise for
Tomorrow We Die:
“Grady’s novel should appeal to fans of fast-paced thrillers with a medical theme. The author, a firefighter and paramedic, captures the novel’s milieu perfectly. . . . [T]he plotting is solid, and the book features a strong hero, an appropriately evil villain, and a satisfying resolution.”
Booklist
“Grady’s latest is a definite page-turner. The action begins in the first paragraph and doesn’t let up for readers until the very end.”
Romantic Times, 4 stars
“Grady’s background as a firefighter and paramedic make for realistic emergency scenes filled with gritty realism and believable dialogue. His characters jump off the page with distinct personalities.”
FaithfulReader.com
“Author Shawn Grady is a Reno fireman/paramedic himself writing from the inside out. He writes with accurate authenticity and minute detail. . . . No doubt readers will close this title with a greater appreciation for all the paramedics and emergency responders who work so hard to save lives.”
TitleTrakk.com
Praise for
Through the Fire:
“This debut novel certainly shows that Grady has promise as an author of faith-based action adventures.”
Booklist
“Wow. Shawn Grady certainly knows how to craft a story.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal
“The writing is tight. The suspense is well done. . . . The experience the author has in Reno, NV as a fireman and a paramedic shows.”
Santa Monica Daily Press
“A suspense-thriller replete with leads and violent encounters . . . Throughout, the novel is a page-turner.”
Reno News & Review
“Shawn Grady’s debut novel,
Through the Fire
, introduces readers to a novelist whose work will be worth continuing to read in the future. . . . As a firefighter and a paramedic, Grady’s experience brings to life many intense scenes of suspense.”
Christian Library Journal
For my wife
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsements
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Luke 12:34
KJV
CHAPTER
01
H
eaven banished Lucifer in one air-rending fissure.
Silas Kent drew little difference—again at the doorway, one foot from the slipstream, four thousand over a crowning inferno. He closed his eyes and inhaled the oily scents of burnt pine and juniper whipping through the crew compartment. The engine roar blended into background. Convective heat buzzed at his cheeks, waving off the firestorm below. The mountain plateau lay like an altar, burnt offerings shadowed beneath its smoky pall.
The pilot tapped a dash gauge in the cockpit. The yoke vibrated and he returned his hand to it. Warren emerged from the fore bulkhead and rubbed the gray stubble at his jawline. His eyes found Silas and he gave the nod.
Once more unto the breach. Cast toward the earth and the blackened soil.
Warren slid on his sunglasses and took a knee by the jump door. He pointed to a clearing. Silas noted the spot, flipped down the caged face mask on his helmet, and gave the thumbs-up. No words needed save for the count-off that followed.
Three.
Hands on the doorframe.
Two.
Foot on the threshold.
One.
———
Silas barreled through the open air.
His chute deployed with a fabric slide and billowed jerk. Breath escaped his chest. He adjusted his joints and settled in the harness.
Alone with the wind. The great expansive ecstasy.
He angled toward the drop zone, the only suitable spot within hiking distance of the radio tower where an injured technician lay. A billowing column grew from the forest nearby. He mapped the fire in his mind, taking mental pictures of its size and perimeter, making out the shape of the radio repeater perched atop a wooded knoll. The closest rescue-equipped helicopter faced an hour and a half response time. Chances were that by the time it arrived the lack of visibility from the smoke would hamper efforts.
At its current rate of spread, the fire threatened to crest the ridge before Silas’s team could get there.
Silas sighted the meadow clearing Warren had aimed him toward. Earth approached fast. He brought his boots together, hit the ground, and rolled. In one motion he made his knees and gathered in his chute arm over arm.
He breathed in the smell of earth and evergreen and burning sage.
Fifty feet from him, chute flapping, Peña landed and rolled. Silas shook down his jumpsuit, shouldered his fireline pack, and strode to the clearing edge.
Their window was slim. If winds picked up late that afternoon, and they always did, the opportunity for rescue would narrow even further.
———
“Rock.”
A soccer-ball-sized stone tumbled down the hillside. Silas tucked his helmet and watched it bounce past him. Warren led the way, having made the jump with them this time instead of remaining with the plane as the team’s spotter usually did. The spotter generally coordinated logistics and made sure the jumpers and their tools and supplies all got to where they needed to be, at the right time. Once he tapped their legs and sent them out the door, he kept in constant communication and coordinated their pickup. A spotter wasn’t like a foreman on a hotshot crew. He didn’t play the role of drill sergeant or lieutenant. He was a jumper, like them, and held the respect that years and experience provided.
Smoke swept up the hill around them, weaving between bushes and trees, funneling from the draw below. Their crew had been hoofing it since they hit the ground, racing the head of the fire toward the repeater and the downed technician. Victim rescue was a bit outside their normal job description. But if not them, then who? Silas drove the handle of his Pulaski axe into the dirt and continued the steep trek. Shaped similarly to a pick-head axe, the Pulaski sported a flat grubbing end opposite the axe blade to use as a hoe.
The eighteen Watch Out Situations drilled into him by the U.S. Forest Service echoed in his head.
Cannot see main fire, not in contact with anyone who can.
His eyes stung and watered from the smoke.
Terrain and fuels make escape to safety zones difficult.
He thought of the lectures he’d sat through about Storm King Mountain and the fourteen firefighters who lost their lives and how the instructor listed off the Watch Outs that were in violation leading up to the tragedy. Silas was in no mood to become a statistic. He pushed his quadriceps harder, digging his boots into the hillside to make a staircase for the guys behind him.
Static chirped from the King radio brick strapped to the pouch across his chest. Warren’s voice carried. “Radio Tech Three, this is Redding Jumper Crew, how do you copy?”
Still no reply.
Per the last report before the crew had gone airborne, the radio tech had broken his leg in several places after a fall and possibly struck his head in the process. His last radio transmissions came across broken and confused. He was outside of cell service, didn’t have a satellite phone, and without further radio communication there was no way to know if he was still conscious.