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“In the same condition as the others?”
Briggs nodded.
So add the black-death toll to the one from the eruption.
As much as they’d done to defend the island against the lava, they were finding out they needed to do more.
Needed a new battle plan.
That’s what you did in war when the old plan wasn’t working.
It was time to put the planes in the air and to begin detonating Rebecca Cruz’s explosives without her.
“I can’t wait any longer to hear from MacGregor and Ms. Cruz,” Rivers said to Briggs. “When we think it’s safe from that goddamn cloud… what do you call it?”
“Vog, sir,” he said. “Gas and steam and even glass particles. It forms around volcanic vents.”
“When conditions are safe, I’m going to send an EO-5C to look for them,” Rivers said.
But that aerial reconnaissance was for later. For now, General Mark Rivers was ready to attack.Wantedto attack.
He picked up his phone, called his marshaller at Hilo International, Lieutenant Carson, told him to give the three F-22 Raptor fighters waiting there a thumbs-up. When the bombs started to drop, David Cruz—in an office down the hall—would begin to detonate in coordination with them.
“Go time, son,” Rivers said to the marshaller.
He watched on another monitor as the first jet taxied up the runway. But even as he watched, Rivers kept thinking about John MacGregor and Rebecca Cruz, wondering if the volcano had already added them to the morning’s rising death toll.
But if they are somehow still alive, where are they?
CHAPTER 92
Na‘alehu, Hawai‘i
What looked like a glowing avalanche was coming at them less than an hour after the sirens sounded, and there was nothing Sam Aukai or anyone else in Na‘alehu could do to stop it.
Sam had educated himself on volcanoes when he got this job. Because of that, he understood what was happening: A phenomenon made famous by Mount Saint Helens and believed impossible in Hawai‘i. It was callednuée ardente.
This fiery cloud filled with tumbling blocks of rock could move down even slight inclines faster than fifty miles an hour, sometimes up to a hundred.
Mauna Loa’s defiant geology was what he was witnessing. Fiery rocks crashed through Na‘alehu; the town disappeared under a dark cloud of ash.
In desperation, Sam Aukai had briefly tried to go door todoor through the Kau district, all the places that were part of the permanent geography of his life: Kama‘aina Kuts, Kalae Coffee, Hana Hou Restaurant, Patty’s Motel, the Na‘alehu Theatre, and, perhaps the most famous tourist spot in town, the Punalu‘u Bake Shop, which advertised itself as the southernmost bakery in America.
But he knew he was too late, that he’d gotten word about the avalanche of fire thundering to the south way too late. The people trapped inside those establishments were going to die there.
Sam was still ahead of the lava when he reached his car at the edge of town. Before he got in, he turned around, and he immediately wished he hadn’t, because he saw bodies floating toward him on top of the lava that followed the rocky tumult. He knew the people hit by the waves of ash, rock, and lava were already dead, burning up from the inside and the outside; their lungs had been destroyed almost instantly by the heat they’d inhaled.
Sam gunned the engine, thinking that if he could stay ahead of the volcanic debris long enough to get to Na‘alehu Spur Road and then head west on Route 11, he would—he prayed—be safe.
“Serve and protect” had always been his code. Now he tried to protect himself.
But when he reached Route 11, all he could see ahead of him was stalled traffic; all he could hear was the constant blare of car horns. People were using both lanes to drive to Hilo; there were no cars coming back to Na‘alehu from the direction of South Point.
It didn’t matter.
The traffic had stopped, but the lava kept coming.
Sam’s was the last car in the line.
