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Patt's getting a tad bit bogged down in real life, so I'm taking over for her on Courage Under Fire for a bit. My name is Kel, my address is dragonbane4@aol.com
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Despite the solemnity of the occasion, with all the guys from the station gathered at the cabin, moods were being lifted left and right. Blair was in the kitchen with Megan, Jennifer, and Sarah, and the four of them were busy cooking dinner while Joel, Simon, and Henry were outside unpacking the truck, and Stephen and Brian were directing traffic. Jim was methodically unpacking the boxes as they were brought in and broke the boxes back down, carrying them out back to store them in the shed with the dry kindling.
As he was taking one bundle out to the shed, he dropped it, sniffing the air. //Smoke.// He took off towards the cabin at a run. "Simon! Simon, get to your truck! Check your scanner, there's a fire upwind!"
Everyone dropped what they were doing as Jim called it out, and no sooner had Simon gotten to his truck than the scanner went off, whooping the alarm. "Okay, guys, this is what we trained for! Brian, you and Joel go back and bring the pump truck. Jim, take Blair with you, see if you can find it." He dug in the back of his pickup and pulled out walkie-talkies. "Call in the location when you find it, and don't do any of your heroics!" Simon finished, tossing Jim one of the walkie-talkies. The Sentinel caught it one handed. "Stephen, you and Megan stay here with Sarah and Jennifer. If it gets too close, we'll call down and evac you." He tossed Stephen a second talkie. "You're on channel fifteen; Jim! You're on channel twelve. Henry! Go grab the whirlybird and get ready for an air drop; if we don't need you, Jim'll call you in on channel 12. Monitor it all, and if we need help evacuating these guys, we'll need you." Simon watched with pride as his team broke into different pieces, each team going to do their own duty.
Jim clipped the walkie-talkie to his belt and headed off, following the smell of smoke in his nose. He was in a way thankful for the fire because it allowed him to stop thinking about what was foremost on his mind and concentrate on his job. Blair was right behind him, quietly keeping pace with the big guy until he stopped. "Jim?"
"It's all around now--I can't pinpoint it like I could before."
"Okay. Localize, Jim." Blair slipped into his Guiding voice without even realizing it as he stepped up and put a hand on Jim's arm. "Just listen to my voice, focus on that, and then, uh, then just *look* around. Look and see if you can see where the smoke is denser at."
Jim took a deep breath, coughing slightly and looking around. "There," he said, veering slightly to the left of the direction they'd been heading in. "Blair, there's… two heartbeats, about fifty paces ahead." He stopped and looked in the direction he heard the heartbeats coming from. Dancing orange flames taunted him as he squinted through them. "There are three bodies--only two heartbeats. Um… looks like… a family… oh, shit, Chief, a *family!*" Jim took off again, heading for the direction of the bodies. He grabbed for the walkie. "Simon, this is Jim, over."
"I read you, Jim, where are you? Over."
He scrambled for the digital navigator on his watch, and then read off the coordinates. "Sir, about thirty paces ahead of us is where the fire's starting at; doesn't look like it's spreading very fast. There's already one fatality, two possible casualties because I can still hear heartbeats. Get a med-chopper down here now and tell Henry to saturate the area about half a mile radius. That should help keep it from spreading too badly until the pump truck makes it up here. I'm going in and trying to move the people out if I can, they're in immediate danger. Over."
"Jim! I told you no heroics! Over."
"No time for that, sir. Ellison out." He tossed the walkie-talkie to Blair. "Blair, this is what I want you to do," Jim said. "I want you to go back to the cabin and look in the closet and bring back my helmet and coat."
"No way, you'll go into that as soon as I leave," Blair said stubbornly.
"Blair, I'm going into it and get those people out whether you're here or not."
"Let me call Stephen and have him bring it up here."
"He'll get lost, and Blair, I don't have time to argue with you anymore!" Jim pulled the leather jacket up over his head. "Get going, Chief, and hurry!"
Blair started cursing as he watched Jim heading into the fire. He flipped to Stephen's channel. "Stephen, it's Blair. I need you to listen to me. Jim's fire gear is in the closet; can you bring it up to me? Leave the cabin, head… northwest, and you'll see the fire and you'll see me. Hurry, Stephen… he's going in without his gear." The blisteringly profane reply scorched Blair's ears as he followed Jim as close to the fire line as he dared. "Jim!"
"Not now, Chief!" Jim was standing outside the dancing flames, waiting for a diminishment in the heat and the flames. When it came, he jumped over the barrier. The heat was hot, almost unbearable until he dialed it down, dialed it all down. In the middle of the ring of fire that was spreading outwards, Jim saw a young child, a boy of about ten or eleven, and two men. He picked up the child first, and stripping off his jacket, he used it to smother down a few of the flames and give himself a way out. He then wrapped the boy in it as he bent his head down, and jumped through the small safe spot. "Chief!"
"Jim! Christ, Jim, are you okay?" Blair reached out and used the sleeves of his floppy shirt to beat down the smoke on the smoldering shirt and jeans of the Sentinel. "Drop, Jim, now!"
Jim didn't question the authoritative tone and dropped to the hard ground, rolling and extinguishing the smoldering before it even began to burn. "Is he alive?" he choked out through the coughing.
Blair put his hand to the boy's throat, and shook his head. "No," he said softly.
"Fuck. Out of my way." Jim got up and pushed Blair gently out of the way, beginning CPR on the boy as Stephen came up the trail.
"Jim, get your gear, I know CPR, I can finish this." Blair pushed Jim towards his brother as he knelt beside the small boy and started to administer CPR.
Jim moved to Stephen and took the jacket, doubling over as he coughed. "Stevie, where are the others?"
"Henri radioed in that he's on the way with water and he'll drop it on your coordinates first, and the truck is almost here too."
Jim put his hand on Stephen's shoulder. "When Simon gets here, tell him, it's a ring. Tell him… to send Brown to the backside. Go back… get the girls ready to leave, just in case." He looked back. "Take… Blair and the boy with you."
"All right, but if Blair doesn't want to go, I'm not forcing him."
Jim nodded as he put his mask into place. Now he was ready. He plunged through the firewall again, looking around and seeing that one of the men inside had gotten up and had crawled over to his companion, an older man in his sixties. "Are you hurt?" Jim yelled through his mask. The young man looked up at him, and a shock passed through Jim. //I know this man… if I could remember!//
"Not bad! Take my dad! He passed out!"
Jim carefully lifted the older man--who reminded him of his own father, but he buried that--and was surprised at how little the man weighed. He turned towards the firewall again, heading towards the place he'd opened up to take the boy out, and was surprised to find that the tanker truck had arrived, and Brian was spraying the opening with water, carving out a safe path for Jim. He turned to the other man, who was surprisingly close behind him. "Follow me!"
Jim brought both of the other men out of the circle of fire, laying the older man on the ground, where Blair had used Jim's jacket to cover the boy's face. //Oh, God,// Jim chastised himself, //I was too late.// He stared at the leather jacket, unaware of the tears sliding down his sooty face under the mask.
"Jim?" Blair said, walking up beside him. "Jim, you did everything you could." When there was no response from the other man, Blair walked around and stared. //He's zoning out on me.// "Jim, listen to me now. You did everything that you could, and you can't blame yourself. Focus on the job you have to do now. That's right, Jim, focus." He slipped his hand under the sleeve of the protective yellow jacket and rubbed Jim's arm as he spoke. "Focus on the job you have to do now."
Joel and Megan had replaced Blair as the medics and were examining the older man as he was slowly coming back around. "We'll get the jeep to take you back down to the ambulance, Mr.--" Megan left the name open, hoping the young man would supply it.
"Delacroix," the young man supplied.
"Thank you." Her eyes fell onto the jacket-shrouded face of the young boy. "Your--"
"son," Mr. Delacroix supplied softly. "My son."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Delacroix," Megan said softly. "We tried CPR for as long as we could."
Jim was slowly coming out of his zone when he heard the name. //Delacroix! Nick Delacroix!// "Blair."
"Jim! Sit down," Blair said, leading him over to the truck and pushing him to sit on the back for a few minutes.
"Chief, I--"
"--Am in a shitload of trouble!" Simon nearly shouted, standing over Jim. The raised voice caused the Sentinel to scramble to regulate his dials. "I thought I told you no heroics!"
"There were no heroics," Jim said, his voice soft and full of regret.
"You don't call--Sandburg, what!" Then he felt his head physically turned to see the boy's covered body being loaded into the jeep with the two adults. "Oh, fuck me. Man, Jim, I--"
"I've got to get back on the line, sir," Jim said, shaking off Simon's rebuke and attempt at apology. He got up off the truck and climbed to the top, running himself another hose from the truck's supply and reeling it off as he moved to another section of the ring, down and across from Rafe, as far as the hose would stretch.
"Fuck," Simon said again, as he watched the water surge through the hose. The big man at the other end didn't even rock as the heavy spray shot out. "Sandburg--"
"I'm sorry about that, Simon, but you needed to see--"
"I was just going to say thank you." His walkie-talkie squealed. "Banks, over."
"It's Henri, Captain! The fire's not as big as I thought on this side; it's run up against a rock face and isn't spreading as fast! Another pass ought to take care of it, over!"
"Then make it and get your ass down here, we could use the help on the ground! Out," Simon ordered. He looked at Jim, who was concentrating on the fire line. He seemed to be doing fine. "Sandburg, what happened? Before we showed up."
Blair quickly explained how Jim had gone into the fire to rescue the boy first, and then went back for the adults while Blair did CPR. "…and then when he got back, well… he saw the boy and just… zoned out. The rest of it you know."
"Is he okay out there, in the middle of that wall of fire with a fifty ton hose?"
Blair studied the figure of his friend and lover. "If I told you a solid yes or no, you'd jerk him off the hose because you wouldn't believe it either way," Blair said finally, not meeting Simon's steady gaze. "I'll give you the only honest answer I have, Simon. I truly don't know. If it were just the zone out? Then I could say yes without a doubt. But those shoulders, broad as they are, are carrying a *lot* more baggage than just a zone out."
Simon followed Blair's eyes to Jim's silhouette. "I just hope he pulls through."
"The fire or the rest of it?"
Simon's silence was enough answer for both.
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