Charlie Saint: The Saints of San Diego by Suzanne Jenkins

Author:Suzanne Jenkins [Jenkins, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

Barnacle Ben’s was packed, the raucous crowd making enough noise to be heard out on the streets, above the crashing waves. It was ten degrees cooler at the coast than it was in Elfin Forest, but Lila was ready as she ran from the parking lot to the tavern, huddled with her arms around her body. She hoped no one she’d slept with recently would be there, scouting for her. Nothing was going to interfere with a night out.

Charlie knew she’d be out, and although he tried not to think about it, he kept going back to it. Old ways of thinking said that if he was at work, she should be home, waiting. Trying to sleep while these thoughts filtered through his brain was impossible, so by four, he got up from the cot and sat at his computer. There was nothing like a rousing game of solitaire to put him to sleep.

The telltale warning that an alarm was about to sound was a tinny, live-sounding echo that pulsated over the speaker until the disembodied voice from central dispatch began to speak.

“Attention station #34, engine 5, engine 2, ladder 1, rescue 1, squad 1, squad 4, duty chief C-3, fire chief C-1, fire investigator unit 90, fire mechanic, this is a brush fire in the vicinity of San Pasquel Road and 78. All hands working.”

Out in the bunkhouse, the men started moving.

“Oh crap, that’s by the Safari Park,” Rick Jackson mumbled as they moved to their positions. “I thought I smelled smoke.”

“I did too and I figured I was dreamin’,” someone else said.

The tinny echo again as the voice announcement rang out, “Requesting a water tender.”

“I’ll drive it over,” Charlie said.

In less than five minutes, the engines had left the garages, a procession of vehicles quickly moving through the dense fog. Getting to the scene was always with a sense of emergency, but when there was a structure close by even more so. And the location was in a valley of euclyptus trees west of the zoo Safari Park. Euclyptus were ultra-flammable trees, their seeds and bark full of oil that was known to combust into an explosive inferno.

Heart sinking the closer he got to the already-dense smoke, flames moving quickly in the wind, Charlie made the call to ask the sheriffs to go door-to-door to evacuate the homes that were within proximity to the path of the fire. Within the hour as the first light of dawn just began to peek over the mountains, aerial water drops began, with three water-dropping helicopters and tankers dropping fire retardants, but they were unable to stop the forward movement of the fire.

As it burned closer to the zoo, officials started monitoring the air for smoke that could prove dangerous for animals to breathe. Meanwhile, zoo workers began preparing animals to be moved, just in case, while ground workers helped hose down nearby grassy hillsides that were most vulnerable to wildfire. Where they had irrigation systems in place, those were turned on.

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