Author's Note: Yes I know that I am posting this chapter much earlier in the week, but I am stuck at home due to a sick day so posting a chapter seemed like a logical thing to do. Hopefully you will enjoy it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Planes, this chapter was betaed by thelaterose99, and this week I am blaming any errors that are still there on the fever.

Chapter 5- Change Of Winds

Maru was pretty much ready to tear Blade apart one piece at a time. For being such a stickler about making sure that his team was healthy the Chief was remarkably good at ignoring his own health. This fact was proven by the way Blade was being so nonplussed about the smug of fluid that was currently spreading underneath him.

The mechanic on the other hand was starting to go into panic mode. While the CAP Cessna had done an exceptionally good job of capturing imagines of Dusty's frame, she hadn't actually gotten any direct imagines of Blade. As a result, Maru didn't have enough information to identify exactly what type of fluid Blade was losing.

Next to Maru, Patch was also staring at a computer screen with a look of murder in her eyes. But her beef was with the Doppler images dancing across the screen. After a long moment she slammed down her coffee mug and huffed.

"It is officially, we are totally screwed."

"What is it this time?" Maru glanced up from his screen.

Patch motioned out the tower's windows towards the smoke filled sky. "You know that cold front that was supposed to go north and leave us alone?"

"Yep."

"Well turns out Mother Nature missed the memo." Patch spat as though her favorite sports team had just lost to the Chicago Cubs.

"Anything we can do about it?"

"Not unless Windlifter has been keeping some rain magic from us."

"Then stop stressing about it. There are some solid weather planes working the fire, they will do their best to keep everyone working the line safe." Maru pushed away from his screen and grabbed for Patch's mug. If the dispatcher was getting this punchy, she was probably running low of caffeine. The lack of sloshing when he picked the mug up supported his hypothesis. He rolled over to the small coffee pot they kept in the tower for these types of occasions and started to brew a new pot. "As for the winds spreading the embers, it is not like we have even come close containing this fire so what is the difference?"

"The difference might be someone's home."

"Risk of living in paradise I guess." Maru shrugged as he listened to the pot bubble.

"I am just glad that we are going to be getting Windlifter and Dipper back on base." Patch yawned unhappily. "I am getting sick of worrying about the entire team."

The Piston Peak Attack Team Smokejumpers had faced a whole lot of terrifying fire phenomenon in the past, but Dynamite was pretty sure that the burning tanks in front of them officially took the cake. Even Drip was completely still as they watched the flames boil hundreds of feet upward into the sky. The smokejumpers were not given much time to stare though. There was a job to be done and road way to be cleared.

"Never seen a fuel fire before?" One of the Cal Fire water tenders gave a low chuckle.

"NOT ONE LIKE THAT!" Avalanche exclaimed with a mixture of awe and fascination.

"How do you fight something like that?" Blackout asked wide eyed.

"We don't." The big interface engine in the lead called over his shoulder. "Fuel fires are dangerous beasts. We clear a path and then support the apparatus who are equipped to contain the problem. If they get overwhelmed we sit back and wait for the problem to burn itself out."

Watching the tower of roaring flames leaping over a hundred feet into the air, the whole Jump team couldn't help but wonder just how insane an apparatus had to be to pick tank fires as their specialty.

Maru was once again reminded just how completely useless Dipper in these types of situations. Yes she was a solid teammate and you could always trust here to follow orders, though she might argue with you about it for a bit. What the old girl lacked was creativity. Once she had stubbornly taken on a world view, no amount of discussion would make her change her mind. Not that Maru hadn't tried…repeatedly in the past…but he just didn't have time to test Dipper's cogitative boundaries right now.

Windlifter, on the other hand, was an incredibly comforting presence. The big helicopter had an eye for nonconventional approaches which was exactly what Maru needed help with at the moment. So as soon as the two Air Attack Team members landed, Maru had sent Dipper to grab a nap while he had Windlifter join him in the main hanger.

"So what do you think?"

"I will be unable to retrieve him from the air." Windlifter said without even a hint of emotion.

"That is what I thought. Those trees are just too dense to risk an air rescue and Dusty really did get himself hung up in there. So, it looks like the park is going to get a new access road." The mechanic verbalized what he had suspected when he had first looked at the aerial photos of the crash site. He then tapped the screen drawing attention to his other problem. "What about Blade?"

"If the Chief will not return to base to be repaired, the only solution would be to have his mechanic go to him." After years of knowing the Skycrane, Maru could swear that a little bit of amusement actually snuck into Windlifter's voice.

Maru opened his mouth to argue. Then closed it when he thought better of it. Windlifter was completely right, the only way that the mechanic was going to be able to make sure that Blade didn't bleed out from a slow leak was to go and repair the leak himself. He glared unhappily at the Skycrane. "You know what Windy, I really hate when you are right."

The aid station got busier as the morning went on, leaving Cabbie to get pushed farther and farther into the background. Not that the C-119 really minded, between his battle and firefighting experience he knew exactly why he was at the bottom of the triage list. The cargo plane just wished that Red Cross mechanics would have put the cowling back on his engines and at least put few pieces of cloth over the vents of his unprotected intake system because the ashy dust was really starting to get uncomfortable.

As the morning progressed Cabbie managed to spot a few familiar faces in the stream of tourists who had run out of coolant or popped a tire. There was the big yellow structural apparatus from the lodge, who apparently took some damage during the evacuation. There were some pretty significant dings and his canopy nozzle looked as though it needed to be replaced, but he was deemed to be road worthy and sent down the mountain for repairs.

Cabbie also picked out the face of several park staff from other departments. They were all breathing rough and blackened with soot, but were surprisingly intact given the intensity of the fire and just how Dodge exposed they had been. The old plane had only spotted one vehicle that he was really worried about.

Apparently part of the road team had been caught in a burnover while evacuating one of the outlying campsites. The crew of construction equipment had ushered the panicked group of visitors into a tunnel, and Odus, one of the big track loaders, had literally blocked the entrance with his aft side. The warping of the metal was bad enough that the loader had barely made it to Piston Flats on his own power and the mechanics had made the decision to medievac him to San Francisco by air.

Gradually a few other vehicles were added to the not a quick fix, but no critical patient pile. There was grass wagon with breaking issues and a pumper with an electrical short that shut off pressure every time she was bumped, napping in the hazy sunlight. A small aircraft with a Wankel engine that no one really knew what to do with was soon tucked under Cabbie's port wing. The little guy was a talkative little fellow until someone arranged a tow plane to pick him up that afternoon. As the day continued to drag on, Cabbie decided that the two damaged fire apparatus probably had the right idea, and the big plane tried to nap away the wait.

The fuel fire was even more frightening close up. Even though they were working over 1000 yards away from the flames, the Air Attack team could feel the heat on their skins. The paint was literally starting to pucker on the engines who were applying foam closes to roaring tanks.

Though none of the smokejumpers would ever verbally admit it, they were kind of relieved that they had been assigned to help clear debris that had once been ranger housing before the firestorm had swept through the area. The hope was that if they kept digging they would eventually be able to find a working fire hydrant. So far they hadn't had much luck. Both hydrants they had uncovered had negligible pressure.

They had managed to locate a basement, but not in the way that Dynamite would have preferred. Drip had fallen through a set of half carbonized floorboards and it had taken the whole team just over an hour to dig him out. Even now everyone else on the team suspected that the little loader was hurting a whole lot more that he was letting on. Dynamite was about to head back to the main line to find out if there was Rehab Unit available to do some first aid, but the interface engine in command rolled off the line to meet them.

"Can your kid get out on his own power?" The commander looked at Drip with measured concern.

"Yes, why?" Dynamite pressed.

"We got a strong band of thunderstorms coming through." The engine looked towards the sky with worry in his eyes.

"Wet or dry?" The Air Attack Lead asked knowing the difference between the two was huge. Both were dangerous but a good line of wet thunderstorms offered the hope of relief.

"Above my pay grade." The big apparatus shrugged. "All they are telling me is that they think it is going to be bad enough that they are grounding all aircraft."

"What do you need us to do?"

"Take the 'Civilian'" the engine gave a sharp nod toward where Cad was cowering behind one of the CalFire big tankers, "and get the heck out of Dodge."

"What are you guy's going to do?"

"We are going to hold the line." The interface glanced towards the line of tankers, tenders, and engines trying to get the fuel fire under control with pride.

"Understood. Be safe." Dynamite locked eyes with interface engine in command before turning her attention to her team. "Well you heard him boys, Time to fall back."

Dynamite squared her tires and started moving. Things on the fire line were going to get hairy as the high winds of the weather front came through. As much as she didn't want to abandon her fellow fire apparatus in the face of danger, she also took her orders seriously. Dynamite was going to evacuate Cad to safety even if it required welding a tow hook to his fender and throwing him behind Avalanche.

Maru's mission to go and rescue Blade from his own stupidity was going to have to wait until at least the morning. The strengthening line of storms was starting to darken the afternoon sky and the Incident Commander had issued orders that all aircraft in the fire zone were to be grounded. There were just too many possible risks to life.

With nothing any of them could do while the storm raged on, Maru decided to order everyone to bed early. While the mechanic suspected that no one was going to get much sleep, some sleep was going to be an improvement on the amount of rest that the team had gotten the previous night.

A storm was on its way. Cabbie could taste the ozone and feel his frame settle as barometric pressure dropped. The old plane's radios sang with the Pan, Pan, Pan, reports about bad weather and the IC orders to get all the aircraft on the ground. It was that order that was causing the traffic jam at the Piston Flats Airstrip.

The many of the ground vehicles didn't really seem like they knew what they were doing as tower staggered aircraft landings between the two runways. It had gotten bad enough that the strip's fire tender was out there chancing vehicles who didn't have any business on the tarmac into the big hanger that was being used to shelter the logistics and administration teams.

The airport's two other hangers were too full to take on any lookiloos. It didn't take that many of the larger wildland fire apperatus to fill up the makeshift mechanic's bay. And, sadly, Cabbie was also not going to find shelter in the hanger used to shelter SEATs, spotters, and other aircraft that were too small to take high winds. That left Cabbie with only one option. Weather the storm outside like all of the other big planes. Cabbie would grin and bear it, but the was one thing he really needed done before the rains hit.

"Excuse me, but one of your mechanics took apart both of my engines and they are kind of exposed to the weather." Cabbie informed the first mechanic that he could convince to stop from his frantic gathering of tools and actually talk to him. "Is there anything you can do?"

Perhaps the C119 should have chosen his words a bit better, because the Red Cross tugs had simply thrown a pair of tarps over his wings, loosely tied them in place, and then tucked themselves into one of the commandeered hangers. Well, this is going to be a very fun night, Cabbie sighed to himself as the first raindrops hit his skin.

The calm before the storm had passed, and now Blade was feeling incredibly exposed. Even though he had moved from his rocky perch to a ledge where he wasn't one of the highest points on the landscape, and thus he was not a flying lightning rod, the wind still buffeted his rotors. The helicopter was starting to miss the constant companionship of the CAP spotter planes.

The constant chatter of aircraft of the radio had almost made the agonizing wait bearable. No the air frequencies were quiet, and without the highbird in place Blade couldn't even call the base and taunt Maru into an argument to help keep him away.

Then clouds opened and the rain poured down.

Aerospace Note: So this past chapter doesn't have a whole lot of radio communication in it, but because I have had a couple of questions about some of the pronunciation used in some of the radio communications. If the questions manage to filter all of the way to me, there are probably a whole lot more people who are scratching their head about what what I wrote and didn't ask a question. So today we have a short lesson emergency services radio communication.

The first thing you need to know is how to spell and count over the radio. The phonetic alphabet used for aviation and emergency services is as following: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, and Zulu. You pronounce numbers over the radio as following: Wun, Too, Tree, Fo-wer, Fife, Six, Seven, Ate, Niner, Zero.

Next you need to know a couple of prowords. Prowords are special words or short phrases with exact meanings that are use to help clarify communication. Here are a few prowords that you would expect to see at Piston Peak. Roger=your last transmission was received OK. Wilco=Roger and I will comply with your instructions. Over=I am done talking, go ahead. Out=I am done with our conversation, bye. Affirmative=Yes. Say Again= say it again, often used when a part of the transmission was garbled or the other person mumbled. Read Back=read back what I just told you, used to make sure a list of numbers or tasks was heard by the aircraft or ground crew correctly. Correction= Oops! I didn't really mean to say that.

Well hopefully you enjoyed this little lesson on terminology used over the radio. If there are any other aspects of flight or emergency services you would like to see covered in future notes please let me know.