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Mac shook his head. “Not big enough,” he said. “It needs to be fifty feet high and half a mile long. At least.”
“Fifty feet?” Briggs said. “That’s the height of a four-story building. You’re joking, right?”
“With all due respect, Colonel, do I look like I’m joking?” Mac pointed to the dark slope of Mauna Loa. “It doesn’t look steep out there, but it is,” he said. “The lava flow is very liquid, especially when it’s hot. It flows like a swollen river. You’ll have lava coming down at you in flows that are going to be ten, fifteen feet high. Like a tsunami. They’ll flow right over a twenty-foot wall.”
“So would a fifty-foot wall work?”
“Probably not,” MacGregor said. “But you should build it anyway.”
Briggs said, “And I suppose bombing—”
Mac cut him off. “Won’t work.”
There was a moment of silence, the air even heavier than before.
Briggs said, “You may know there was a DARPA study about venting the volcano—”
“One that concluded that it won’t work.”
Quietly Briggs said, “There must besomethingwe can try.”
MacGregor watched the helicopters maneuvering, bringing in the big equipment. He frowned, bit his lower lip.
“Give me an hour,” MacGregor said.
“To do what?”
“To come up with a plan so we don’t have to kiss our asses goodbye,” he said.
CHAPTER 23
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Hawai‘i
Mac came into the data room at eight o’clock. The team was already there. Rick Ozaki was huddled with Kenny Wong at one monitor. Pia was working on the remote cameras with Tim Kapaana, who was out in the field, adjusting settings. From there, he’d deploy drones with thermal cameras to find the areas where lava was coming toward the surface.
Jenny fell into step beside Mac. “You might want to touch base with Tako Takayama,” she said. “You know how he gets his panties in a wad when he feels like he’s not in the loop.”
“Later,” Mac said. He lowered his voice and asked, “How soon I can get the latest satellite imagery?”
“What do you want?”
“Visible and infrared will do.”
She went to a monitor and typed, her fingers flying across the keys as she called up the orbit schedules for the Terra satellite.Mac watched over her shoulder. The Terra satellite passed over the Big Island once every forty-eight hours, and HVO could access its MODIS data.
“The satellite passed over at two forty-three a.m.,” Jenny said. “It probably hasn’t been downloaded.” She kept typing.
“How long is this going to take?” Mac said impatiently.
She gave him a look. “Would five minutes ago be soon enough, Your Excellency?”
“Not the right tone, I’m guessing?”
“Not even close.”
But then she leaned over her screen, looked back up at him, and smiled.
“Actually, we’re in luck,” she said. “The data’s already down. I can probably have it for you in ten minutes.”
