Superintendent Jake Carson was in control.

He stared at himself in the mirror, a script playing in his head:

"Incident Command, this is Redding 5 approaching a timber fire off Route 16. We've got a high rate of spread on this one, with a line of cars blocking emergency vehicles…"

Jake took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"…so we're gonna send in the jumpers on the left flank."

Opening his eyes back to his reflection, Jake muttered at the neatly dressed young man who stared back at him: "You can do this, Carson. You got this."

"Approaching the drop zone now."

Jake stepped out of the men's room back into the dimly lit restaurant, waiting a moment for his eyes to adjust.

"Alpha team, when we get out there, cut a line upslope and prep for a burn."

He blinked a few times and found the table with an empty chair and a woman, curly blond hair arranged to fall lightly against her neck above the open back of her dress.

"Beta team, stay close to me."

Imagining he had his guys at his back, Jake began to weave his way through the other diners toward his date.

"Whoa Supe! Fire's gonna do a 180 off the line!"

Jake felt a nervous sweat break out under his arms as he got closer to the table. The lovely lady had surreptitiously taken out a compact and was checking her lipstick.

"It's gonna get real warm down there, got me?"

In a few more steps, he would be back at the table - fire out, area contained."

"Three…two…one…"

His forward motion suddenly turned into a tight right-angle b-line for the door.

"It's really bad, I don't know when… We're trapped! We can't get out! What do we do now? We need a miracle!"

Jake cut off the inner monologue as effectively as pulling the cord on his comm system. He took a deep breath of chilly, mountain air, stuck his hands deep in his pockets and began to walk quickly back to the depo with nothing but fire on the brain.