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“The boys wish they were with you,” she said.
“Well, we both know that’s not going to happen any time soon.”And maybe not ever.
Neither one of them spoke for a few moments. Mac was used to that by now with the woman he already thought of as his ex-wife. By the end, before she’d taken the twins and left, the only way they’d communicated was with extended silences like these.
“I’m so sorry,” Linda said finally.
“I know how much you liked them both,” he said.
“I meant I’m so sorry aboutus,Mac,” she said. “I’m so sorry we couldn’t make it work.”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. All he knew was that he no longer wanted to be on this call.
“I know I’d sound like an idiot if I told you to stay safe,” she said. “But you can at least take some consolation in knowing that the boys are safe.”
He wanted to start screaming again in that moment, the wayhe’d screamed his throat raw when he’d gotten the call from the Galápagos.
He wanted to scream at her that their sons weren’t safe and she wasn’t safe whether they were on the mainland or not, because no one was safe no matter where in the world they were.
But he didn’t say that.
Not because he’d promised Rivers he wouldn’t tell anybody.
He didn’t say that because he couldn’t bring himself to.
There was one last silence before Linda said, “I love you, Mac.”
He acted as if he hadn’t heard, as if the call were already over. He was about to go back inside when the phone buzzed again.
A single word on the caller ID:
Rivers.
CHAPTER 79
Outside the Ice Tube, Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i
Time to eruption: 16 hours
Mac drove to the Military Reserve as if running from the night; he parked his jeep there and walked up to where Rivers was waiting for him.
Thinking the whole way about how little time they had left and how, if their projections were correct, the Big Island might be a different place by noon tomorrow.
We’re moving up on high noon,Mac thought, imagining what was happening inside Mauna Loa, how fast and how powerfully the magma was rising toward the summit, operating on the only timetable that mattered to the volcano—its own.
The magma moving toward what Jenny had insisted on calling “the big bang.”
Jenny.
After Rivers called him, he had started to hit Jenny’s number on speed dial, by reflex.
Jenny, who’d been brave.
When Mac was finally standing next to Rivers, a hundred yards or so from the entrance to the Ice Tube, he saw more flatbed trucks stacked with more titanium sheets. More lights all around them. More men working to protect this fortress with the canisters inside, some unloading the titanium, some putting another layer of it in place.
More noise than ever up here,he thought,more urgency, if such a thing is possible.
No uniform for Rivers tonight. Hard hat and fatigues again. He seemed delighted to look like a grunt, even if he was the one barking out orders.
