Ring of fire axial a dis.., p.18
Ring of Fire Axial: A Disaster Thriller, page 18
The runway blurred beneath them until they were airborne, climbing into a sky that felt heavier than it should. Gigi leaned her head back, closing her eyes for the first time in hours. They’d made it out of the fire. Inside, she wondered if there might be a frying pan awaiting them to jump into.
The captain’s voice crackled through the intercom, too calm to be comforting. “Ladies and gentlemen, the entire state of California is under a severe atmospheric river event. Our first stop will be in Los Angeles County. Then we’ll make our way up the coast to San Fran. I’m gonna ask you to remain in your seats for the duration.”
The seatbelt light never winked off. Once they crossed the U.S. border, the weather turned for the worse. The second in a series of consecutive atmospheric rivers had reached the West Coast. The first one they encountered was just south of LA. Its remnants made for a bumpy ride. The jet rode the weather like a stubborn horse, jolting sideways on pockets of turbulence that made overhead bins creak and the aisle carts rattle in their straps.
After a quick stopover at Van Nuys Airport, one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world, the Cessna lifted off again to carry only Reid and Gigi to San Francisco. They chatted occasionally, but mostly, they slept out of pure exhaustion. Reid was restless, staring through the plane’s windows at the ocean as the pilot hugged the coastline for his northerly route.
Time passed as the day turned to near dusk as an angry tempest of wind-driven rain invaded Northern California. Somewhere over the Pacific, the sky went from bruised gray to a night that wasn’t night. Cloud stacked on cloud, black on black, stitched with distant lightning so bright it left white aberrations on his retinas.
The captain’s voice crackled through the intercom, again with a weather update. “Folks, as I mentioned earlier, the entire state is under a severe atmospheric river event. San Francisco International is diverting. Oakland is at capacity. We’ve been cleared for Palo Alto Executive under emergency landing procedures. Expect wind shear on final. Please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened.”
Gigi shot Reid a look and shook her head in dismay.
Rain hit the fuselage like thrown gravel. The windows turned to moving watercolor. Each flash of lightning wrote a new landscape no one recognized. The engines throttled, eased, throttled again. Flying by feel and instruments, not sight.
Reid pressed the camera to the window and only got noise for his trouble in the form of a smear of slate gray interrupted by veins of white. He lowered the rig, suddenly grateful for the simple fact he had a seat beneath him and the belts keeping him attached to it.
Across the aisle facing backwards, Gigi’s knuckles were white around her armrests. She, too, had abandoned the notion of a quick nap before landing. Now she was counting the seconds between lightning and thunder.
“Final approach, folks,” the captain said curtly. “Cabin, please prepare for landing.”
To Reid, a frequent flier, the descent felt wrong. It was way too fast and too shallow, wind pushing at the skin of the plane in strong gusts. The runway appeared at the last instant, a shining river of standing water with a ladder of flickering lights down its spine.
The wheels hit hard, bounced, hit again.
Too hard.
A gale, powerful and sustained, swept across the aircraft, drawing a shriek out of Gigi.
Thirty-Three
April 23
Late Morning
The Saddle
Island of Hawai’i
SILENCE FILLED THE COCKPIT so completely Beau could hear the small click of his teeth when he unclenched them.
He looked out over the bow of the UH-60 to where the Saddle breathed open and closed. He let the weight of the faces in the parking lot ride next to Sloan’s face in his head and didn’t try to choose between them because the choice had been made before he was born.
God. Family. Country.
Family, then duty. That decision had been easy. Now he had to consider the man seated to his left and his sense of priorities.
“Understood,” he said, and surprised himself with how calm he was. Beau’s mind raced. He couldn’t possibly give up on his sister, the long odds notwithstanding. “Return to MCBH.”
Taylor exhaled in a way that sounded like relief and apology poured from the same jar. “Copy.”
They broke the orbit and nosed for the bay. The rotor ring wrote its own image in ash behind them, and the helicopter moved with a grace Beau resented for a heartbeat because he wanted the machine to hurt as much as he did. He let go of that childishness.
He needed the machine at its best because he had a plan.
As they flew near Hilo International Airport, Beau caught a glimpse of military transport helicopters loading refugees. He took a shot. He turned in his seat to face Taylor.
“Could you leave your wife or kids or any of your close family in that hell?”
Taylor’s face turned grim as he shook his head. “Of course not. It’s just—”
“Let me have her,” said Beau.
“What?”
“Let me drop you off by the transports at Hilo. Catch a ride back to the base. I’ll take this bird back into the Saddle to find my sister.”
“How do we explain that? Besides, you could die in there. We’ve been lucky so far. Luck runs out, ya know?”
The airport loomed large in front of them. Beau resorted to begging. “I have to try, Taylor. Let me have her. I’ll take all the heat. Please.”
Hilo airport looked more crowded in the ash-gray light. Taylor had to make a decision.
He simply nodded and made a series of banked turns to direct the chopper toward the helicopter pads. Without saying another word, he unceremoniously eased the chopper down with the grace of a ballerina’s foot, blade wash pushing ash into a blizzard.
“We’ll keep it clean,” Taylor said as he killed part of the power and left the systems live. He unlatched, pulled a small log clipboard from the pouch on the door, and flicked his pen’s clip twice.
Beau nodded, leaving fate in Taylor’s hands.
“Kaneohe, Air Wing.” He thumbed the radio. “Request PIC change authorization per urgent SAR in theater. Platform equipped with ALIAS for single-pilot envelope in degraded visual. Current PIC duty clock approaching limit in hostile conditions. Proposed PIC Captain Mercer, USMC, rotary rating UH-1Y, current IPC. Test pilot RTB Oahu for sensor inspection post static transients.” He glanced at Beau and shrugged. He threw in the test pilot status to sell the personnel change.
The reply came back through static with the kind of sharpness that said the person on the other end had been waiting for exactly this reason to be useful. “Marine Air copies. PIC change authorized. ALIAS permits single pilot within parameters. Log entry required. Test pilot RTB as directed. Godspeed.”
Taylor wrote quickly. Time, initials, and a tail number that was known but could not be seen in the blackout paint scheme. It was the kind of cramped clarity you use before someone of authority radios back with their minds changed. He flipped the board to Beau. “Sign here. You’re on the stick.”
Beau signed. His name looked like it had been written by the volcanic lightning.
Taylor held out his hand. Beau took it. It felt more like a pass of a baton rather than a shake of a palm.
“Bring her home,” Taylor said. No sermon. No warning. No please.
“I will.” Beau didn’t raise his voice, nor did he lower it. He made it sound in a way that had already been predestined.
Taylor slid, dropped onto asphalt, and jogged low. He looked back once and lifted two fingers in the way pilots do when they need to make a promise they can’t say out loud. Then he was a shape moving toward a bevy of activity as he approached an airman to secure a seat on an evac helicopter to Honolulu.
The cockpit got bigger without him. Louder. The chopper’s breathing filled all the corners. Beau swapped seats. He set the map on his knee and flattened it. He touched his phone without turning the screen on. He didn’t want Sloan’s face lit up, staring at him. He wanted a vision of her warm, loud, and maybe mad at him for taking this long.
Beau adopted a different tack than Taylor. He took a deep breath and made a shaky promise of trust in the $26-million aircraft.
“ALIAS,” he said, voice steady in the cockpit. “Assisted hover ready.”
A soft chime answered. The hover-ready cue glowed a patient icon. It looked like an animal waiting for work.
Beau glanced around the tarmac. A pack of people stood at the edge of the rotor wash, hands raised, faces turned up, questioning why he was leaving. He put their faces out of his mind. And, against his better judgment, he tapped his phone’s screen, where a picture of Sloan and the three brothers appeared. Their smiling faces were a reminder of the task at hand.
Without delay, he eased the collective. The helicopter rose with a cat’s grace. Rotor wash threw ash around again. The disc breathed the air, tested it, found a grip.
“ALIAS, fly the gaps, not the glow,” he said to the machine and himself. The chopper guided them along the coast to ride the cooler seam one more time before he cut inland. The water below looked like stained metal. The grayish sky revealed the oncoming eruptions.
He continued to speak his commands, using coordinates written on the topo map by Billy and Sloan’s coworkers. The Sikorsky pointed its nose toward the Saddle. Subtly adjusting altitude and direction to account for the arduous task.
Throughout the flight, he and ALIAS conversed as if it were human-to-human contact. The AI kept Beau in the loop as long he kept his hands off the loop. No fingers on the stick. No forearms taking the wire’s vibration. Together, they rode the volcanic wind off the changing terrain, slipping into a diagonal that promised fewer punches as necessary.
He tasted hope. He swallowed pride. He let dread sit in the empty seat and flipped it the middle finger.
Ahead, the Saddle glowed like a city had been built underground and was trying to live in the wrong direction. A bolt of lightning ran along the underbelly of the vog. The helicopter dropped a handful of feet into an unexpected microburst. However, the Sikorsky handled the adjustment effortlessly. The hover-ready cue blinked as if eager to help. Beau imperceptibly nodded at the control panel, thinking, You’ll get your chance.
“Where are you, Sloan?” he asked for the thousandth time. This time, he was able to say it aloud. The machine needed to believe Beau’s sincerity. His mission. Even more than it believed itself.
He issued a command to push the nose a degree. The Saddle breathed fire as the chopper flew just above its breath.
Emotionless. On a mission.
Just like its copilot, Beau.
Thirty-Four
April 23
Late Morning
The Saddle
Island of Hawai’i
“HELP ME FIND A WAY IN!” Sloan yelled, motioning for Kane to split up as the lava approached. The two moved in opposite directions, Sloan running, Kane hopping using the basalt wall as a crutch.
Both searched for an opening while keeping a watchful eye on the approaching lava. The air was filled with destruction. From the sounds of the sugarcane being burned to the lava chewing up the planet’s surface, the sensation instilled a profound sense of urgency in Sloan and Kane.
In less than a minute, he was hollering for her. “Over here! The wall’s caved in, and we can climb through!”
Sloan ran back toward the threatening lava, where she found Kane waiting for her. He took her by the hand and led her around the curved wall until an opening appeared. With one last look toward the gulch, which was now filled with scoria, a bubbly volcanic rock darker and denser than pumice, Kane followed her up the rough, ancient stones of the outer wall.
Their hands, already raw from their ordeal, opened up old wounds and new ones from the jagged volcanic rock used to build the structure. Their footing, precarious on the ash-slicked and gravelly surface, caused them to stumble often as they climbed. Kane groaned throughout. However, he pushed with his good leg, pulling himself up by his right arm, spurred on by the overwhelming threat.
Once they were both inside the walls, Sloan said, “Let’s work our way toward the center. It’s higher than the rest.”
The two split up, searching through the ruins, which were almost mazelike. Its stones had withstood the test of time, fused together with an almost unnatural precision belying their age. The heiau comforted them, leaving them incredibly secure. It was a place of reverence, and as if Leilani’s words were prophetic, it might be their refuge from the certain death that approached.
Working together, remaining calm, the two eventually located the one section of the ruins that stood higher than the rest. Built upon a mound, a single, well-preserved statuesque structure remained that had been constructed many centuries ago.
Narrow and sheer, the ahu, a central feature of the heiau, was an altar where offerings were placed. This served as a focal point for prayer and ritual. The eight-foot-tall, eighteen-inch-wide column was used to place sacred statues as offerings to the gods. Its stones were unbroken, defiant against time and fire.
They leaned against the base, chests heaving as they gasped for breath. In addition to the surgical masks provided to them by Leilani, they still covered their noses and mouths with their shirts to filter out the rancid air that had settled over the cane fields. Kane braced himself against the altar, offering a hand to boost Sloan so she could join him. Despite his injuries, he pulled her upward, his jaw clenched against the pain.
“That was brutal,” she finally said, bending over with her hands on her knees.
He managed a grin that hid the acute pain he was suffering. “You’re outta shape, Sloanie. Too many croissants and bowls of gumbo at Pike Place.”
She took a swing, a gentle poke, into his good leg. It drew a gasp and a groan from Kane. “Shut up,” she muttered, still not fully recovered from their escape through the gulch.
Sloan regained her composure and studied their surroundings. From this height, the view was both breathtaking and terrifying. The lava, which had completely consumed the gulch, had burst into the cane field and spread out, creating a lake of molten earth devouring everything in its path. Stalks ignited in waves, the flames racing just ahead of the molten front.
She glanced over at Kane, the roar of the approaching flow filling the air between them. “I won’t ask you this question again, okay?”
He was still panting, taking short breaths. Any attempt at a deep inhale resulted in his ribs throbbing. He simply nodded, continuously checking his shirt for the volume of blood loss. He wouldn’t admit to Sloan that he was feeling light-headed.
“Is there anything that you could’ve done to change what happened? You know, stop the mining to avoid the methane explosion?”
Kane winced as he pushed himself upright. He turned toward Sloan. He glanced past her, not in an attempt to look insincere or to stall, but to take in the rapidly approaching flow, which had now begun to form rivers in the low-lying areas. The flows didn’t stop, but were encircling faster, the spread building as a new surge of molten material crossed the field.
“No, Sloanie. For one thing, I had no authority over the operations. I was merely a consultant, one who hadn’t been there in years. I was put on VDAP by DARPA for the sole purpose of keeping field teams away from the mine entrance and to provide an assessment of the mine’s viability if the volcanic activity escalated.”
“So they knew there was a possibility that Hawai’i would end up like this?”
He nodded and then shrugged. “I guess they were big believers in your and your dad’s grand solar minimum correlation. They put me on that flight after a one-day briefing. I was studying the dossiers of the VDAP team on the flight into Honolulu.”
“You had a dossier on me?”
“No. I had no idea you were a part of it until you walked through those doors. I almost shit myself, Sloanie. I was completely at a loss as to how to fulfill my assignment for DARPA while at the same time being around you. It ate me up, I swear.”
Sloan let out a deep sigh. She wanted to forgive him. Like the other major volcanic eruptions around the Ring of Fire, the precursors had occurred at a rate that was unprecedented. Nobody—DARPA, those in the mine, or Kane—could’ve imagined the rapidly escalating events leading to Mauna Loa reawakening. Still, a heads-up might’ve saved lives.
A rush of searing heat blew across the heiau. The heat was immediate and overwhelming, a physical blow that shocked them to their core. Around them, the field dissolved into a churning, incandescent sea.
A massive lobe advanced, cresting the field’s remnants, bearing down on the ruins with a thunderous crash. The lava flow’s leading edge had reached the base of the heiau. A sickening sizzle filled the air as the molten rock consumed the last vestiges of the singed sugarcane.
The encirclement tightened, lava rivers merging into a molten moat, bubbles bursting with pops that released toxic gases curling upward. Sloan’s skin prickled from the intensity, sweat vaporizing before it could drip.
With incredible speed, it had flanked the heiau along low-lying areas, moving faster than Sloan and an injured Kane could outrun.
Now it began to peck away at the ancient basalt walls, returning the structure to whence it came. They were on an island of stone, surrounded by fire, the roar of the consuming lava now a terrifying, all-encompassing presence. As the lava flows converged, lapping at the ruins’ edges, heat radiated upward. Below them, the molten current surged and gurgled, a living, breathing inferno, threatening to engulf their fragile sanctuary.
The ruins had stood for centuries. Now Sloan and Kane would see if the heiau could stand one more day.
Thirty-Five
April 23
Early Afternoon
Mercer Residence
Washougal, Washington
THE ASTAR FLARED HARD and dropped onto the scar where lawn used to be, skids slapping down, rotors bullying ash into gray curtains. Rain, falling harder now, came sideways. Inexplicably, wind bit from two directions like it had a grudge.
The captain’s voice crackled through the intercom, too calm to be comforting. “Ladies and gentlemen, the entire state of California is under a severe atmospheric river event. Our first stop will be in Los Angeles County. Then we’ll make our way up the coast to San Fran. I’m gonna ask you to remain in your seats for the duration.”
The seatbelt light never winked off. Once they crossed the U.S. border, the weather turned for the worse. The second in a series of consecutive atmospheric rivers had reached the West Coast. The first one they encountered was just south of LA. Its remnants made for a bumpy ride. The jet rode the weather like a stubborn horse, jolting sideways on pockets of turbulence that made overhead bins creak and the aisle carts rattle in their straps.
After a quick stopover at Van Nuys Airport, one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world, the Cessna lifted off again to carry only Reid and Gigi to San Francisco. They chatted occasionally, but mostly, they slept out of pure exhaustion. Reid was restless, staring through the plane’s windows at the ocean as the pilot hugged the coastline for his northerly route.
Time passed as the day turned to near dusk as an angry tempest of wind-driven rain invaded Northern California. Somewhere over the Pacific, the sky went from bruised gray to a night that wasn’t night. Cloud stacked on cloud, black on black, stitched with distant lightning so bright it left white aberrations on his retinas.
The captain’s voice crackled through the intercom, again with a weather update. “Folks, as I mentioned earlier, the entire state is under a severe atmospheric river event. San Francisco International is diverting. Oakland is at capacity. We’ve been cleared for Palo Alto Executive under emergency landing procedures. Expect wind shear on final. Please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened.”
Gigi shot Reid a look and shook her head in dismay.
Rain hit the fuselage like thrown gravel. The windows turned to moving watercolor. Each flash of lightning wrote a new landscape no one recognized. The engines throttled, eased, throttled again. Flying by feel and instruments, not sight.
Reid pressed the camera to the window and only got noise for his trouble in the form of a smear of slate gray interrupted by veins of white. He lowered the rig, suddenly grateful for the simple fact he had a seat beneath him and the belts keeping him attached to it.
Across the aisle facing backwards, Gigi’s knuckles were white around her armrests. She, too, had abandoned the notion of a quick nap before landing. Now she was counting the seconds between lightning and thunder.
“Final approach, folks,” the captain said curtly. “Cabin, please prepare for landing.”
To Reid, a frequent flier, the descent felt wrong. It was way too fast and too shallow, wind pushing at the skin of the plane in strong gusts. The runway appeared at the last instant, a shining river of standing water with a ladder of flickering lights down its spine.
The wheels hit hard, bounced, hit again.
Too hard.
A gale, powerful and sustained, swept across the aircraft, drawing a shriek out of Gigi.
Thirty-Three
April 23
Late Morning
The Saddle
Island of Hawai’i
SILENCE FILLED THE COCKPIT so completely Beau could hear the small click of his teeth when he unclenched them.
He looked out over the bow of the UH-60 to where the Saddle breathed open and closed. He let the weight of the faces in the parking lot ride next to Sloan’s face in his head and didn’t try to choose between them because the choice had been made before he was born.
God. Family. Country.
Family, then duty. That decision had been easy. Now he had to consider the man seated to his left and his sense of priorities.
“Understood,” he said, and surprised himself with how calm he was. Beau’s mind raced. He couldn’t possibly give up on his sister, the long odds notwithstanding. “Return to MCBH.”
Taylor exhaled in a way that sounded like relief and apology poured from the same jar. “Copy.”
They broke the orbit and nosed for the bay. The rotor ring wrote its own image in ash behind them, and the helicopter moved with a grace Beau resented for a heartbeat because he wanted the machine to hurt as much as he did. He let go of that childishness.
He needed the machine at its best because he had a plan.
As they flew near Hilo International Airport, Beau caught a glimpse of military transport helicopters loading refugees. He took a shot. He turned in his seat to face Taylor.
“Could you leave your wife or kids or any of your close family in that hell?”
Taylor’s face turned grim as he shook his head. “Of course not. It’s just—”
“Let me have her,” said Beau.
“What?”
“Let me drop you off by the transports at Hilo. Catch a ride back to the base. I’ll take this bird back into the Saddle to find my sister.”
“How do we explain that? Besides, you could die in there. We’ve been lucky so far. Luck runs out, ya know?”
The airport loomed large in front of them. Beau resorted to begging. “I have to try, Taylor. Let me have her. I’ll take all the heat. Please.”
Hilo airport looked more crowded in the ash-gray light. Taylor had to make a decision.
He simply nodded and made a series of banked turns to direct the chopper toward the helicopter pads. Without saying another word, he unceremoniously eased the chopper down with the grace of a ballerina’s foot, blade wash pushing ash into a blizzard.
“We’ll keep it clean,” Taylor said as he killed part of the power and left the systems live. He unlatched, pulled a small log clipboard from the pouch on the door, and flicked his pen’s clip twice.
Beau nodded, leaving fate in Taylor’s hands.
“Kaneohe, Air Wing.” He thumbed the radio. “Request PIC change authorization per urgent SAR in theater. Platform equipped with ALIAS for single-pilot envelope in degraded visual. Current PIC duty clock approaching limit in hostile conditions. Proposed PIC Captain Mercer, USMC, rotary rating UH-1Y, current IPC. Test pilot RTB Oahu for sensor inspection post static transients.” He glanced at Beau and shrugged. He threw in the test pilot status to sell the personnel change.
The reply came back through static with the kind of sharpness that said the person on the other end had been waiting for exactly this reason to be useful. “Marine Air copies. PIC change authorized. ALIAS permits single pilot within parameters. Log entry required. Test pilot RTB as directed. Godspeed.”
Taylor wrote quickly. Time, initials, and a tail number that was known but could not be seen in the blackout paint scheme. It was the kind of cramped clarity you use before someone of authority radios back with their minds changed. He flipped the board to Beau. “Sign here. You’re on the stick.”
Beau signed. His name looked like it had been written by the volcanic lightning.
Taylor held out his hand. Beau took it. It felt more like a pass of a baton rather than a shake of a palm.
“Bring her home,” Taylor said. No sermon. No warning. No please.
“I will.” Beau didn’t raise his voice, nor did he lower it. He made it sound in a way that had already been predestined.
Taylor slid, dropped onto asphalt, and jogged low. He looked back once and lifted two fingers in the way pilots do when they need to make a promise they can’t say out loud. Then he was a shape moving toward a bevy of activity as he approached an airman to secure a seat on an evac helicopter to Honolulu.
The cockpit got bigger without him. Louder. The chopper’s breathing filled all the corners. Beau swapped seats. He set the map on his knee and flattened it. He touched his phone without turning the screen on. He didn’t want Sloan’s face lit up, staring at him. He wanted a vision of her warm, loud, and maybe mad at him for taking this long.
Beau adopted a different tack than Taylor. He took a deep breath and made a shaky promise of trust in the $26-million aircraft.
“ALIAS,” he said, voice steady in the cockpit. “Assisted hover ready.”
A soft chime answered. The hover-ready cue glowed a patient icon. It looked like an animal waiting for work.
Beau glanced around the tarmac. A pack of people stood at the edge of the rotor wash, hands raised, faces turned up, questioning why he was leaving. He put their faces out of his mind. And, against his better judgment, he tapped his phone’s screen, where a picture of Sloan and the three brothers appeared. Their smiling faces were a reminder of the task at hand.
Without delay, he eased the collective. The helicopter rose with a cat’s grace. Rotor wash threw ash around again. The disc breathed the air, tested it, found a grip.
“ALIAS, fly the gaps, not the glow,” he said to the machine and himself. The chopper guided them along the coast to ride the cooler seam one more time before he cut inland. The water below looked like stained metal. The grayish sky revealed the oncoming eruptions.
He continued to speak his commands, using coordinates written on the topo map by Billy and Sloan’s coworkers. The Sikorsky pointed its nose toward the Saddle. Subtly adjusting altitude and direction to account for the arduous task.
Throughout the flight, he and ALIAS conversed as if it were human-to-human contact. The AI kept Beau in the loop as long he kept his hands off the loop. No fingers on the stick. No forearms taking the wire’s vibration. Together, they rode the volcanic wind off the changing terrain, slipping into a diagonal that promised fewer punches as necessary.
He tasted hope. He swallowed pride. He let dread sit in the empty seat and flipped it the middle finger.
Ahead, the Saddle glowed like a city had been built underground and was trying to live in the wrong direction. A bolt of lightning ran along the underbelly of the vog. The helicopter dropped a handful of feet into an unexpected microburst. However, the Sikorsky handled the adjustment effortlessly. The hover-ready cue blinked as if eager to help. Beau imperceptibly nodded at the control panel, thinking, You’ll get your chance.
“Where are you, Sloan?” he asked for the thousandth time. This time, he was able to say it aloud. The machine needed to believe Beau’s sincerity. His mission. Even more than it believed itself.
He issued a command to push the nose a degree. The Saddle breathed fire as the chopper flew just above its breath.
Emotionless. On a mission.
Just like its copilot, Beau.
Thirty-Four
April 23
Late Morning
The Saddle
Island of Hawai’i
“HELP ME FIND A WAY IN!” Sloan yelled, motioning for Kane to split up as the lava approached. The two moved in opposite directions, Sloan running, Kane hopping using the basalt wall as a crutch.
Both searched for an opening while keeping a watchful eye on the approaching lava. The air was filled with destruction. From the sounds of the sugarcane being burned to the lava chewing up the planet’s surface, the sensation instilled a profound sense of urgency in Sloan and Kane.
In less than a minute, he was hollering for her. “Over here! The wall’s caved in, and we can climb through!”
Sloan ran back toward the threatening lava, where she found Kane waiting for her. He took her by the hand and led her around the curved wall until an opening appeared. With one last look toward the gulch, which was now filled with scoria, a bubbly volcanic rock darker and denser than pumice, Kane followed her up the rough, ancient stones of the outer wall.
Their hands, already raw from their ordeal, opened up old wounds and new ones from the jagged volcanic rock used to build the structure. Their footing, precarious on the ash-slicked and gravelly surface, caused them to stumble often as they climbed. Kane groaned throughout. However, he pushed with his good leg, pulling himself up by his right arm, spurred on by the overwhelming threat.
Once they were both inside the walls, Sloan said, “Let’s work our way toward the center. It’s higher than the rest.”
The two split up, searching through the ruins, which were almost mazelike. Its stones had withstood the test of time, fused together with an almost unnatural precision belying their age. The heiau comforted them, leaving them incredibly secure. It was a place of reverence, and as if Leilani’s words were prophetic, it might be their refuge from the certain death that approached.
Working together, remaining calm, the two eventually located the one section of the ruins that stood higher than the rest. Built upon a mound, a single, well-preserved statuesque structure remained that had been constructed many centuries ago.
Narrow and sheer, the ahu, a central feature of the heiau, was an altar where offerings were placed. This served as a focal point for prayer and ritual. The eight-foot-tall, eighteen-inch-wide column was used to place sacred statues as offerings to the gods. Its stones were unbroken, defiant against time and fire.
They leaned against the base, chests heaving as they gasped for breath. In addition to the surgical masks provided to them by Leilani, they still covered their noses and mouths with their shirts to filter out the rancid air that had settled over the cane fields. Kane braced himself against the altar, offering a hand to boost Sloan so she could join him. Despite his injuries, he pulled her upward, his jaw clenched against the pain.
“That was brutal,” she finally said, bending over with her hands on her knees.
He managed a grin that hid the acute pain he was suffering. “You’re outta shape, Sloanie. Too many croissants and bowls of gumbo at Pike Place.”
She took a swing, a gentle poke, into his good leg. It drew a gasp and a groan from Kane. “Shut up,” she muttered, still not fully recovered from their escape through the gulch.
Sloan regained her composure and studied their surroundings. From this height, the view was both breathtaking and terrifying. The lava, which had completely consumed the gulch, had burst into the cane field and spread out, creating a lake of molten earth devouring everything in its path. Stalks ignited in waves, the flames racing just ahead of the molten front.
She glanced over at Kane, the roar of the approaching flow filling the air between them. “I won’t ask you this question again, okay?”
He was still panting, taking short breaths. Any attempt at a deep inhale resulted in his ribs throbbing. He simply nodded, continuously checking his shirt for the volume of blood loss. He wouldn’t admit to Sloan that he was feeling light-headed.
“Is there anything that you could’ve done to change what happened? You know, stop the mining to avoid the methane explosion?”
Kane winced as he pushed himself upright. He turned toward Sloan. He glanced past her, not in an attempt to look insincere or to stall, but to take in the rapidly approaching flow, which had now begun to form rivers in the low-lying areas. The flows didn’t stop, but were encircling faster, the spread building as a new surge of molten material crossed the field.
“No, Sloanie. For one thing, I had no authority over the operations. I was merely a consultant, one who hadn’t been there in years. I was put on VDAP by DARPA for the sole purpose of keeping field teams away from the mine entrance and to provide an assessment of the mine’s viability if the volcanic activity escalated.”
“So they knew there was a possibility that Hawai’i would end up like this?”
He nodded and then shrugged. “I guess they were big believers in your and your dad’s grand solar minimum correlation. They put me on that flight after a one-day briefing. I was studying the dossiers of the VDAP team on the flight into Honolulu.”
“You had a dossier on me?”
“No. I had no idea you were a part of it until you walked through those doors. I almost shit myself, Sloanie. I was completely at a loss as to how to fulfill my assignment for DARPA while at the same time being around you. It ate me up, I swear.”
Sloan let out a deep sigh. She wanted to forgive him. Like the other major volcanic eruptions around the Ring of Fire, the precursors had occurred at a rate that was unprecedented. Nobody—DARPA, those in the mine, or Kane—could’ve imagined the rapidly escalating events leading to Mauna Loa reawakening. Still, a heads-up might’ve saved lives.
A rush of searing heat blew across the heiau. The heat was immediate and overwhelming, a physical blow that shocked them to their core. Around them, the field dissolved into a churning, incandescent sea.
A massive lobe advanced, cresting the field’s remnants, bearing down on the ruins with a thunderous crash. The lava flow’s leading edge had reached the base of the heiau. A sickening sizzle filled the air as the molten rock consumed the last vestiges of the singed sugarcane.
The encirclement tightened, lava rivers merging into a molten moat, bubbles bursting with pops that released toxic gases curling upward. Sloan’s skin prickled from the intensity, sweat vaporizing before it could drip.
With incredible speed, it had flanked the heiau along low-lying areas, moving faster than Sloan and an injured Kane could outrun.
Now it began to peck away at the ancient basalt walls, returning the structure to whence it came. They were on an island of stone, surrounded by fire, the roar of the consuming lava now a terrifying, all-encompassing presence. As the lava flows converged, lapping at the ruins’ edges, heat radiated upward. Below them, the molten current surged and gurgled, a living, breathing inferno, threatening to engulf their fragile sanctuary.
The ruins had stood for centuries. Now Sloan and Kane would see if the heiau could stand one more day.
Thirty-Five
April 23
Early Afternoon
Mercer Residence
Washougal, Washington
THE ASTAR FLARED HARD and dropped onto the scar where lawn used to be, skids slapping down, rotors bullying ash into gray curtains. Rain, falling harder now, came sideways. Inexplicably, wind bit from two directions like it had a grudge.
