Free Firestorm-pigeon 4 by Nevada Barr Page B

unrecognizable to Anna until Jennifer called out their names. Once labeled, their individual characteristics came back and Anna could see the men behind the dirt.
     
     
Lawrence Gonzales was a slight man in his early twenties with soft straight black hair and clear brown skin. If he spoke, it wasn't ever to Anna, but he smiled enough so that she thought him shy rather than sullen.
     
     
Hugh Pepperdine wasn't much older, if any—maybe twenty-three or -four at most. He was soft and white and pudgy. Nobody could figure out how he'd managed to pass his step test to become a red-carded firefighter. Pepperdine talked too much and worked too little, from what Anna had gathered. The crew nicknamed him "Barney" after the treacly purple dinosaur. It was not a term of endearment.
     
     
Right now Hugh didn't seem to know whether he was a hero or a victim. While Gonzales coughed and spit and murmured "pardon me," Pepperdine babbled.
     
     
Venting, Anna knew, and neither she nor Lindstrom made any effort to stop the flow of words. Blame for the burn-over was cast on everyone from John LeFleur and Newt Hamlin to the National Weather Service and the National Interagency Fire Center out of Boise, Idaho. Somebody somewhere had screwed up and Hugh wanted his pound of flesh. Mixed in with his diatribe was a thread of personal heroics of the tiny real variety: falling down but getting up again, running and getting away.
     
     
Chances were good the story would improve over time and Pepperdine would undoubtedly dine out on it for the rest of his days.
     
     
"Put a cork in it, Barney," Jennifer snapped when they'd all had enough. She shrugged out of her yellow pack. Pepperdine spluttered to silence and the five of them walked back up the creek to where Black Elk waited by the boulder.
     
     
Through the dim light Anna couldn't tell who was gathered around the rock but it was a goodly number and she dared to hope they'd all made it. All but Newt Hamlin, she corrected herself. Guilt tried to cut her but she pushed it away. No time for that now. Six dead heroes wasn't a better deal than one dead boy and five living if fallible human beings.
     
     
"Gonzales, Short and Pepperdine accounted for," Lindstrom said as they walked up to the others.
     
     
Paula Boggins sat near Howard, shivering in a white tee shirt and shorts. Second-degree burns covered the backs of her thighs and calves and the outside of her forearms. Liquid was seeping through the coating of grit.
     
     
"Somebody give me a brush jacket," Anna said. Pepperdine looked away as if he hadn't heard. LeFleur dug his from his yellow pack and Anna wrapped it around the girl's shoulders. Lindstrom's went over Paula's legs. Covering so much of her body, even second-degree burns were a serious injury. Hypothermia and shock were very real threats. "We'll get you fixed up," Anna heard herself saying again, and wondered with what. The only medical supplies not burned up in the fire were the personal first aid kits they all carried, wallet-sized plastic containers with a handful of Band-Aids and little else.
     
     
Neil Page had fared better than Paula. Long denim pants and a long-sleeved wool shirt had protected him from burns. The lower half of his face was covered in blood and the front of his shirt was stained with it. The blood was from a nosebleed, he said. He got them when he got excited.
     
     
"You're entitled," Anna said. No doubt that there had been some excitement.
     
     
Joseph Hayhurst had come through with nothing worse than the scratches and bruises they'd all gathered fleeing the fire. He sat quietly beside Black Elk, an alert look on his face and a strange little half smile on his lips. A well-mannered, well-brought-up man willing to lend a hand. The urbane pleasantness was jarring against the blackened face and wild Apache hair.
     
     
While Anna and Lindstrom were inventorying the injuries sustained by the San Juans, LeFleur attempted to contact Incident Base on