Lethal Dose

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The thought passed through Gordon Buchanan’s mind as he gazed into the smoke from the approaching forest fire. The April sun was a hazy red ball, diffused and weakened by the floating ash. Six miles and closing quickly. Inside twenty-four hours, the flames would be licking at his timber concessions. Destroying the forest and costing him millions of dollars. No upside to the fire. None at all. And in forty-eight hours, it would be threatening his sawmill.

He glanced away from the incoming carnage as a voice, almost obscured by static, came over his two-way radio. One of the mill hands asking for him.

“This is Gordon,” he said into the transmitter. “Go ahead.”

“The forestry guys are here, Gordon. They want to speak with you.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he replied, and returned the walkie-talkie to his belt. The air was thick with smoke and ash, and his throat burned with each word he spoke and each breath he sucked in. He hailed a rugged-looking logger working the trunk of a sixty-foot Ponderosa pine with his chain saw and pointed in the general direction of the sawmill. The man nodded, and Gordon jumped in his truck and steered onto the bumpy trail leading back to the mill.

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