Chris Way was flying cross-country to accept a job with Charleston County EMS when the text dinged.

The news it delivered was devastating, unimaginable: Two firefighters had been shot and killed, a third seriously injured, while trying to put out a wildfire on Canfield Mountain near Coeur d’Alene in the northern Idaho panhandle.

All signs suggested it had been an ambush.

Way, fire chief for Kootenai County Fire and Rescue, knew the fallen men — his firefighters — well. He’d even promoted one of them in his five years as chief.

“It was a gut punch, and I remember hoping no one else had been killed,” Way recalls. “I’ve known firefighters, law enforcement officers, killed in the line of duty — but that was just horrific.”

Although he wouldn’t learn the details of what became a national s

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