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Beyond him, Mac could see the black stain near the entrance, as if an inkwell had been turned over.
CHAPTER 50
If Mac had been wearing a hazmat he might have tried to get closer, but he was not. He wasn’t sure what the black stain meant, but it had gotten his attention.
He walked back down the hill to Jenny.
“What could you see?” Jenny asked.
“Something that scared the shit out of me,” he said. He told her about something he’d heard when he arrived at HVO, about an incident at the botanical gardens and army men in hazmat suits showing up there and leveling part of the place.
“I tried to find out more,” Mac said. “But there was no real record of the event.”
“You think what happened there is somehow connected with what’s inside those canisters?” Jenny asked.
“What I know,” he said, “is that we are about to move heaven and earth to keep a lava spill from coming anywhere near here.”
“We have to assume they know how to contain this,” Jenny said.
“It was the army that created this goddamn problem in the first place,” Mac said.
Ten minutes passed.
Then twenty.
Most of the hazmat suits were inside the Ice Tube now. It was eerily quiet out here after the initial rush of noise and activity from the other jeeps and the fire engine.
He stared at the entrance. Now no one went in or out. Mac wanted to know what was going on inside. He hated not knowing. Sometimes not knowing was the only thing in the world that frightened him.
Thirty minutes.
Forty.
“What on earth are they doing in there?” Mac asked.
Jenny gently took his hand. “Breathe,” she said.
“Make me.”
The sound of a vehicle shattered the silence outside the cave again. They turned to see it was another jeep heading right for them, Colonel Briggs at the wheel. He brought it to a sudden stop a few yards away, spraying lava rock and dirt. A single cargo truck followed the jeep.
General Mark Rivers himself was in the jeep’s passenger seat.
Rivers was in full uniform but wore no protective gear. He walked past Mac and Jenny without a word and marched into the cave.
Briggs ran to keep up with him.
More minutes passed. Mac and Jenny stayed where they were. Then slowly one hazmat suit after another began to file out. The fire engine pulled away, then the other jeeps. The last three jeeps left were Mac and Jenny’s, Iona’s, and the one Briggs had been driving; it was like they were the last part of the parade.
Briggs came out of the cave, Sergeant Iona beside him.
The last man out was General Mark Rivers.
He walked briskly to Mac and Jenny, his posture militarily erect, as always, as if he were about to inspect the troops.
He stopped directly in front of Mac.
“Was it just the one canister?” Mac asked him.
