Ring of fire axial a dis.., p.11
Ring of Fire Axial: A Disaster Thriller, page 11
“Go back,” Gigi ordered. “Find me something that cuts south.”
“That’s the barrios of La Familia,” Miguel muttered. “El Fresa will not care about volcanoes. He is far meaner.” La Familia Michoacana was a drug cartel operating in the neighborhoods of Mexico City bordering the national park that contained Popocatépetl. It was known for its involvement in the drug trade and human trafficking. Their leader, Jose Hurtado Olascoaga, was also known as El Fresa.
“Do we have a choice?” asked Reid.
“Not if we wanna leave Mexico,” Gigi responded.
“She is correct,” added Luis, who suddenly found his voice. “This truck will be a prize to hijackers on the highways, especially in Estado de Mexico, north of the city.”
Another thump overhead. Volcanic debris was now finding them, even on the outskirts of Mexico City forty miles away. Ash shook loose from the roof, sifting down like gray flour across Reid’s knees. The odor in the cab was an unholy mix of blood, sweat, and sulfur.
Miguel reversed from the edge of the abyss and retreated several miles. He came upon a side road so narrow the mirrors brushed overgrown branches. The EFP rocked on its suspension, tires slapping through potholes, then biting into dirt. However, they were headed in a mostly southerly direction alongside the river gorge.
Gigi flinched at every impact, eyes squeezed shut. Reid kept the camera going, panning from their drawn faces to the eerie road ahead. It snaked along an unstable slope, the edge dropping into the shadows toward the river. Mud mixed with volcanic fallout sloughed off a bank above them, rattling across the hood in wet clumps. Twice, Miguel slowed so they could nose around fresh debris, the EFP’s tires crunching over stone and fallen branches.
From behind, the volcano was still speaking. A low, rolling rumble that rose and fell like an old man snoring. They were out of its immediate kill zone, but its reach was long, as faint arcs of orange lava bombs still landed sporadically in the distance reminded them.
Minute after minute, the fallout thickened as the road leveled, turning dawn into a coppery haze. The truck fought up a slope when suddenly, Mexico City spread before them, sprawling and endless. The skyline was beginning to get covered by the dark column emanating from El Popo.
Gigi tried her phone again. The signal bar flickered between nothing and one thin sliver. “Come on …” She tapped into the message screen and typed a quick message to her parents.
Popo blew. We’re alive.
Heading to Santiago for Nat Geo evac.
Don’t know when we can talk. Love you!
She hit send. The words Message Sent flashed back, and she exhaled.
Reid caught her eye. “Betsy?”
“My folks. Where’s your phone?”
For the first time, Reid realized he’d lost his cell phone during the melee on the mountain. “Back at base camp. Um, can we go back and get it?”
“Very funny, asshole,” Gigi said with a smirk. She navigated to Betsy’s text message stream. “Whadya wanna say?”
“Same thing you told your family. At this point, it’s hard to make any promises as to when we’ll be home. If the flight takes off without us, we gotta drive back, I guess.”
Gigi nodded and fired off the text to Betsy, relaying the same message delivered to her parents.
The absence of a response settled over them in the cab. No one spoke for the next mile. Finally, Reid asked, “Any reply? From either of our families?”
She checked. “That’s odd. Nothing from either of them. I know it’s early, but my mom and yours are early risers.” She shrugged it off and stuffed the phone in the cupholder.
Abandoned cars began to appear along the shoulder of the road. Some had hoods up or doors ajar. A baby seat lay on its side in the gravel, its straps cut.
“Keep moving,” Gigi told Miguel with a sense of foreboding. “Eyes open.”
They passed more abandoned vehicles. Sedans crumpled from fender benders. Trucks with tailgates open were everywhere, their contents scattered like looted convenience stores after a riot.
Then Reid saw the first body. A man lay on his back beside a dented hatchback, arms splayed, eyes open to the ash-smeared sky. No blood. Just stillness. He filmed without comment, the lens steady even when his hands weren’t.
“What the hell happened here?” asked Gigi.
“Like I said, this territory belongs to La Familia. They prey on weakness. A car that runs out of gas is targeted. A driver who resists, well …” His voice trailed off.
The city’s edges were alive with noise. Sirens wailed and cut off. Somewhere ahead, a gunshot cracked, then another. Crowds moved out of the shadows in unpredictable bursts. As they entered the populated areas, they encountered a crowd of people breaking into a grocery store. One was shoving a grocery cart stacked with bottled water. Another carried two cases of beer. A barefoot boy standing in the middle of the road stared at them until Miguel swerved to avoid him.
They kept driving, Miguel following his instincts to pick and choose the route that would lead them back to the Circuito Exterior Mexiquense, the outer-loop toll road that circled the outskirts of the city. He caught a glimpse of stalled traffic ahead, which seemed to move very slowly.
“Roadblock ahead,” he said, assuming it was related to the vague news report they’d heard earlier.
Not military, just chaos. Two burned-out sedans angled across the intersection, their interiors charred hollow. People were streaming between them, carrying crates and sacks. A few pushed shopping carts.
Miguel threaded the EFP through a narrow gap, the mirrors clearing with inches to spare. One man slapped the passenger-side fender hard enough to make the whole frame shudder. He yelled at Gigi, spouting drunken gibberish in Spanish.
Reid turned the camera toward the window. The man’s eyes met the lens—black, sharp, and too close. Miguel wasted no time evading the man. In a few seconds, they were past him and accelerating.
At a stop to clear fallen debris, Reid opened his door halfway to get a better shot of the street. Ash drifted down on a toppled street-vendor cart, covering bright red tomatoes until they looked fossilized.
“Stay in the truck,” Gigi said sharply.
He hesitated. “Just a shot—”
“Now,” she snapped, cutting him off.
He retreated, quickly slamming the door. Through the glass, he saw why she was concerned. Three men stood in the shadow of a doorway, staring at the EFP with unreadable faces. One raised a hand in a slow, mocking wave as he took a long draw on a cigarette.
Miguel reentered the truck and gunned it. They were running on instinct now, Miguel making turns from memory. The streets grew quieter as they approached the outer loop. No sirens. No looters. Only the occasional faint pop of distant gunfire.
Reid started noticing spray paint on buildings. Crude marks resembling the letters CJNG appeared. Sometimes doubled, always red and black in color. They passed block after block of them.
“You see those?” he asked Gigi.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think they mean?”
The native of Los Angeles kept her voice low. “Territory.”
“Jalisco New Generation Cartel,” interjected Miguel. “Powerful and ruthless. Gigi is correct. We have entered their territory, and it would be best if we got through quickly.”
He slowed for a tight corner, the outer loop in sight now. That was when Reid saw it. Two busted-up sedans and a pickup forming a crude barricade ahead.
Miguel eased off the throttle. “That’s not a random wreck.” He rolled to a stop a hundred feet short of the blockage.
He was right.
Seventeen
April 23
Early Morning
Leilani’s Home
The Saddle
Island of Hawai’i
“SLOANIE, THAT’S NOT SEISMIC.” Kane tried to force himself upright in the bed, but pain shot through his body, knocking him onto his back.
“Listen,” she said quietly. “Hear it?”
“All I hear is trouble coming,” Kane said, successfully pushing himself upright with his second effort.
Leilani showed no emotion as she calmly poured tea into small enamel cups. “My grandfather said when the birds stop and the ground sings, you go. When you can’t go, you ask nicely.”
“Ask who?” Sloan wondered before she could stop herself. Leilani handed her the tea.
Leilani tipped her chin toward the outline of Mauna Loa barely visible through the ash-filled sky. “Pele. The one who writes with fire. She gives warning. She takes what’s hers. Sometimes she leaves a path for those who belong.”
Sloan turned the cup in her hands. Heat seeped into her fingers. “I belong to the data. The science.”
“Then listen to it,” Leilani said. “What does your data tell you?”
Sloan stared into the tea as if it provided some kind of magical portal enabling her to see into a computer, or the future. “It says the Saddle is a kill zone. It says the atmospheric plume is thickening. It says respirable ash will hit levels that weld to lungs. It says we need N95s and sealed rooms, and none of that is here.”
Leilani nodded, satisfied. “Then we make what we can. Wet cloths. Doors tight. Pray for a wind that turns.”
“There’s more than that,” Sloan continued. “It says the lava flows will be overwhelming soon.”
Kane’s chin lifted. “And you still won’t leave?” he asked Leilani, genuinely concerned for her safety. She’d never seen an eruption sequence like this one. Nobody had.
Leilani’s answer came without hesitation. “My mother is in that hill.” She tapped the wall with two knuckles, a habit older than thought. “Her mother is with her. If I run from them now, I’ll never find my way home. One day, maybe this day, I will be in that hill with my mother and grandmother.”
Leilani wandered back to the kitchen to pour herself another cup of tea. Then she disappeared down a darkened hallway toward her bedroom.
Kane shifted, breath catching. Color had leached from his lips. A wave of sadness came over him as he looked at Sloan. He was carrying a burden that had to be offloaded.
“She’s not wrong about belonging,” he said. “I thought working with them meant I could belong to both worlds—theirs and ours. Turns out DARPA doesn’t share.”
Sloan’s stomach tightened. “Say it plain.”
He licked his dry lips. “Several years ago, they dangled an opportunity beyond my wildest imagination. I’m talking dedicated access to satellite time, deepwater ROVs, a platform big enough to map the rift with real resolution. Moana fronted the money. They wanted a predictive model for venting events. I built it. We ran simulations. The big methane lens under the Saddle looked stable unless you punched it.” He coughed, winced. “We punched it.”
“How deep?”
“Deeper than the permits, which were obtained under lies, too. Horizontal drills through a channel they swore was dead rock. Once the clathrates started to dissociate, we got pressure swings. I flagged it. They told me the vent stack would bleed it off. Then the stack clogged. The field guys, a contractor with more guts than sense, hit it with a pulse. A gentle nudge, they called it. The nudge made a chimney. Several potential chimneys.”
Sloan’s hand tightened around the cup until the enamel clicked. “And you let our people walk into that disaster built on those lies?” She walked away, running her hand through her hair. She shook her head in disbelief as she turned back to him.
He flinched, then looked into her eyes. “I thought I could keep the VDAP team out of the Saddle. I thought I could pull you out if something went wrong.” He swallowed. “I never imagined we’d be facing that.” He gestured toward the window.
Leilani emerged out of the shadows. Apparently, she’d been eavesdropping. She set a cool cloth on his neck.
“Pride breaks more bones than falls,” she said softly. “Cool water breaks fevers.”
Sloan stood, restless energy sparking under her skin. She crossed to the window and studied their surroundings, which were far more visible than when they arrived. It was a reminder that lava could be approaching. She focused on the jungle. Beyond the trees, the horizon seemed to throb, a low red pulse behind the ash veil. Volcanic lightning continued to stitch itself through the cloud tops, silent at this distance.
She turned her attention back to Kane. “You said chimney. You really mean a conduit from depth. You’re telling me you built a pipe between a clathrate body and open space.”
Kane shook his head. “No, they created a void. One large one, at first. Then multiples throughout the caverns.”
“For what purpose?”
“Sloanie, they were mining volcanic gold.” His words hung in the air as the rumble beneath the ground recommenced.
“Seriously, they went that deep? Into a volcanic plumbing system that was already primed.”
Kane’s eyes closed. “You don’t need me to explain any of it.”
“Wait. They bored through the methane clathrate reservoir?” She turned and looked toward the ceiling. “Are you freakin’ crazy? You were a part of this?”
He didn’t answer. The clock on the shelf ticked the three longest seconds of Kane’s life.
Leilani had refilled the cups and pushed a bowl of cut papaya into Sloan’s hands. “Eat. Both. Your bodies need sugar more than your anger.”
Sloan took a piece because Leilani expected it of her despite the fact she had no appetite. Their government’s greed had pushed the envelope, assuming the volcanoes above their mining operation would never erupt. It was an epic miscalculation. Her shoulders slumped, and her chin dropped to her chest as she let out a long sigh.
A small, stressful quiet fell over the room. There was the clink of a spoon against a bowl. The rustle of bandage wrappers. The cottage shuddered, a gentle complaint as it shifted on its pilings from the constant shaking of the earth. Beneath that, the island kept speaking in long vowels—distant, relentless, a language of pressure below the surface of the planet.
Kane’s hand twitched. He reached for Sloan’s wrist and stopped short, as if that last inch required a permission he hadn’t earned.
“I’m sorry,” he began as part of his continuous apology that seemed to trickle out when the opportunity arose. “Not just for being a part of the problem. For forgetting you were inside, impacted by it.”
Sloan looked down at the burn stripe across her forearm, at the ash caked into the seams of her knuckles. Words crowded her throat. However, none of them cleared.
Accusations, data, the memory of a shaft leading into a mine they knew would potentially be filled with explosive methane roaring skyward. Despite her inner angst, she pulled another wet cloth from the basin and laid it over his chest instead of unleashing a torrent of curse words.
Leilani watched from the stove, eyes thoughtful, hands never idle.
“You both belong to fire,” she said quietly. She turned down the flame under the pot until it murmured. “But you don’t worship the same altar. Sometimes the only way across a river is to hold the same rope.”
Sloan still held her tongue, questioning what good it would do to unload on Kane at this moment. He was struggling, his breath shallower now, heat building under the bandage.
Leilani sensed Kane was slipping. She tested his forehead with the back of her fingers, then checked the window the way sailors read a tide line—head tilted, shoulders loose, attention turned outward to something no instrument could comprehend.
“The wind is shifting,” she said. “That will bring voices from the mountain. You must prepare while it’s quiet.”
Sloan listened. Beneath the steady thrum, a new note threaded in—lower, closer, like a boulder rolling under the floorboards of the world. She set her cup down and reached for the field masks Leilani had left on the table, tucking them into her pockets with quick, efficient motions that kept her hands from shaking.
Kane tried to speak but couldn’t. He cut himself off, his breath hitching as pain coursed through his body.
“You two can resolve your differences later,” Leilani said, smoothing the cloth on his chest. “You talk after the fever breaks. Talking won’t keep your blood clean.”
Sloan held his look for an instant that stretched, then gave a small nod. “We’re not done.”
“No,” he said. “We’re not.”
Eighteen
April 23
Early Morning
CVO
Menlo Park, California
THE RAIN PRESSED HARD against the windows of the Menlo Park facility, which now housed Duke and the CVO team. The steady patter, soothing amidst the turmoil inside, acted as a counterpoint to the din caused by fingers dancing across keyboards and the steady chatter between scientists.
It was early, however, as the first signs of the deluge of rain that would accompany the atmospheric river moving onshore manifested itself. As for the CVO team, the crisis that had dragged them into the building at midnight had blurred one into another.
Representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, had arrived to work side by side with the volcanologists to monitor the nationwide RadNet system, a network of air, precipitation, and drinking-water monitors that track radiation levels across the country.
The Hamaoka nuclear power plant had experienced a total meltdown, resulting in the forceful release of radioactive particles, including elements like radioactive cesium and iodine, into the atmosphere. Wind and weather patterns that would naturally carry these plumes across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S. were exacerbated by the simultaneous eruption of Mount Fuji.
The VEI 6 eruption injected immense amounts of ash and sulfur dioxide gasses into the stratosphere. Radioactive particles from the nuclear plant, normally confined to the troposphere, were lofted into the stratosphere by the volcanic plume.
Once the fallout material from both disasters reached the stratosphere, particles were able to travel much faster and remain suspended for longer periods. The EPA had confirmed the combination would lead to a wider, global dispersal.
