EXCERPT - TAHOE BLOWUP

PROLOGUE

        Jake threw himself to the ground and rolled over to try and put out the fire. But the tall dead grass was sun-dried and it ignited as he writhed on the ground. A hard wind spread the fire and in a moment the entire end of the meadow was engulfed in angry orange flames. Jake scrambled to his feet and ran into the forest toward Highland Creek. The small stream was only fifty yards away, down at the bottom of the ravine. If it still flowed with water at the end of summer, and if he sprinted...

        A guttural scream ripped at the back of his throat as Jake fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. The fabric was synthetic, and before he could peel the shirt away it melted to his skin.  

        He plunged through the trees, a literal fireman carrying fire into the twilight. His fingers clawed at the melting synthetic that ran in rivulets of fire down his body. Skin came off under his fingernails.  

        The acrid smoke from his burning flesh caught inside his lungs, but it was nothing against the searing on his skin, a thousand red irons pressed on bare nerves.

         Jake jumped and slid down the steepest part of the ravine. He tripped on a root, fell forward into the dry stream bed and hit his head on a rock. He lay motionless, his blackened body still burning like a torch.

         A clump of dogwood, baked to tinder by a summer with no rain, caught fire. The flames spread to a maze of manzanita and from there touched a dead white fir that still had a full dressing of dried needles. The tree exploded like a firebomb and the growing inferno lit up the night sky.

CHAPTER ONE

        My first glimpse of the forest fire came as I was barbecuing a Salmon steak out on my deck.

        It was about nine in the evening on September 18th when Spot, my Harlequin Great Dane, gave a little growl. Little, of course, is a relative thing when it comes from a one hundred and seventy pound polka-dotted foot rest. I ignored the comment, hunched as I was over the short barbecue, trying to stay warm. If I were in Kansas City or New York or even Minneapolis, a mid-September evening would be a pleasantly cool precursor to fall weather. But the deck on my little cabin sits at 7,200 feet of elevation, a thousand feet above the east shore of Lake Tahoe. When the sun goes down the temperature plummets like a skier in a tuck.

        The weather forecast predicted that our first winter storm would hit tonight. After the standard summer of one hundred straight days of hot sun in clear blue skies, precipitation is an elixir from heaven.

        Like other Tahoe locals, I was more than eager to put up with chill and wet in order to dampen the fire danger in the forests. Besides, the snow level in the coming storm was supposed to be at seven thousand feet which meant that Spot and I would be enjoying that famous Sierra white stuff while the poor people down below in their lakeside mansions would suffer a cold, cold rain.

        I shifted my chair closer to the coals and moved the fish to make it sizzle. The wind threw ominous clouds across the moon. Spot was sprawled on the other side of the barbecue, the arc of his body wrapping halfway around the black metal cooking pot. His throat rumbled again. This time he actually lifted his head off the deck boards, an indication of seriousness.

        "What, your largeness, are you making a fuss about?"

        Spot jerked himself to his feet. His claws scraped the cedar decking like sixteen-penny nails. He upped the amplitude of his deep growl one notch, just enough to make his jowls quiver. His square body pointed over the water like a German tank above Omaha Beach.

        "Okay," I said. "Let's take a look." I pushed my chair back, stood, walked to the edge of the deck and looked down. Lake Tahoe lay below me like a twenty-two mile long puddle of black ink. The moon stabbed through the clouds and made a silver glow on the water. I leaned on the railing, listening for the sound of an intruder, wondering if yet another bear had decided to scratch its backside against the posts that supported my deck.

        I heard nothing. Which ruled out bears because they are noisy. That still left the possibility of a mountain lion or coyote or even a person, all of which have been known to be silent. Spot increased the rumble.

        "I know," I said. "You’re pretty tough."

        Spot turned and looked at me, wagged his tail a quick one-two, then went back to his growling.

        I gazed across the water, the second highest big lake in the world. Nothing appeared. I was turning back to the barbecue when my peripheral vision sensed a light just beyond the cliff ridge below my cabin.

        I looked down toward where the land dropped off into the big ravine where Highland Creek ran all the way down to the lake. Nothing moved. Aware that a faint light like a faint star is less visible when you look straight at it, I looked away.

        Staring into the black clouds that presaged the coming storm I sensed a vague glow in the air. Spot growled louder. Then I smelled a scent that prickled the hair on the back of my neck. I grabbed the deck phone off its cradle and dialed the number I know best.

        "Yeah?" a sleepy voice answered after five rings.

        "Street, my sweet, wake up."

        "I’m sleeping," she said groggily.

        "Still got jet lag from the Honolulu bug conference?"

        "Yeah. All the bugs are asleep. Me too."

        "I can tell," I said.

        Street was one of those rare people who slept as if they were under the influence of anesthesia. When I first met her I thought it was her norm, a happy, blissful somnolence. Later, I witnessed the first of what are regular wrestling matches, her slender muscles roping and twisting the sheets to the point of tearing, her jaw clenching while frightening whimpers escape from her throat. If you wake her at that point she’ll spend the next two hours shaking and refusing to say a word. But if you don’t wake her, her sleep will calm and she’ll later awaken happy and refreshed. The fact that she’d answered the phone at all told me I’d gotten her at a good time.

        "Just do me a quick favor," I said, "and look out your window, up the mountain toward my cabin. Tell me what you see."

        "Owen."

        "I know. You’re sleeping. Look. Tell. Then back to bed." I heard the phone bang on her night stand. I heard the rustle of covers and a loud, frustrated sigh, then blinds being raised. Her gasp was frightening.

        The phone was picked up, dropped, grabbed again. "Owen, Owen! My God, Owen!"

        "What do you see?"

        "Owen! You have to get out!"

        "Sweetheart, perhaps you could elaborate."

        "Owen," she said, now low-voiced and calm. "The mountain is on fire. As I'm standing here watching, the flames are racing up the ravine toward your cabin. I'd give you three or four minutes at the outside."

        Just after I hung up the phone, the first crest of fire rushed over the ridge a quarter mile below my deck.