Page 127 of Eruption
The only light came from the smoldering wreckage of the plane that was spread across the compound.
Mac ran to the cockpit, which had split off from the rest of the plane. Flames still licked around its fuselage, which had broken in half. With the small flashlight on his utility belt, Mac could see the lifeless bodies of the two pilots still harnessed in their seats.
The strong smell of gas signaled that he needed to get away before there was another explosion.
He moved quickly toward what was left of the communications building. The plane had plowed through the structure, completely destroying its front half.
But if the observatory hadn’t been evacuated after the eruption, there might be people in there.
Mac went inside, saying a prayer as he did.
It was ironic, Mac thought as he glanced around, because this looked like the kind of catastrophic damage a lava bomb from the closest vents would inflict. But the direct hit from the plane had done this.
There were broken bodies everywhere in the rubble: Three scientists from the Maunakea Observatories. Two men in army fatigues.
Mac moved to the back of what was left of the main room and saw death all around him. That was where he found Katie Maurus and Rob Castillo—two kids from HVO who’d wanted to monitor the sensors near the summit from here—next to their desks; a section of the roof had clearly crushed them. Rob’s body was on top of Katie’s, as if he’d been trying to protect her in the last seconds of their lives.
Mac felt as if he couldn’t breathe, suffocated by the tragedy in this room.
To be sure, he knelt and checked for their pulses. They were dead like the others.
From outside, he heard Rebecca scream.
CHAPTER 97
Saddle Road, Hawai‘i
Sergeant Matthew Iona was driving the last Caterpillar 375 Excavator near Cinder Cone Road, closer to Mauna Loa than Mauna Kea, south of the Saddle Road area.
They were doing new digging here now that they’d seen the direction the lava was taking. The lava had surprised even the scientists, according to Colonel Briggs, by suddenly pouring from radial vents close to the base of Mauna Loa on its eastern side.
A new perimeter was needed. Briggs had said they had the same deadline they always had with General Rivers: “He wants the new holes in the ground five minutes ago,” Briggs told Iona.
Iona had become Briggs’s man on the ground. Briggs had first designated him to work as closely as possible with Dr. MacGregor and Rebecca Cruz—not just work with them but keepeyes on them. Iona was happy to do it, even if he’d occasionally felt like he was spying. He was always looking for ways to make himself indispensable to the colonel. An added benefit to Colonel Briggs was that Iona had grown up working on road crews in Hilo. He hadn’t been involved with digging like this for a while, but he assured the colonel that he still knew how to do it.
Tonight, he was acting as a foreman for this small army crew, who knew the lava from the vents was headed their way. As soon as they finished, a line of explosives set by Cruz Demolition would be detonated, and that would—hopefully—redirect the lava flow into the new trenches and the one lake to the east of Cinder Cone Road that had, almost miraculously, been dug tonight.
The bulldozers from the Hilo construction companies were gone for now. It was just Iona and his excavator and two army bulldozers, all of them basically trying to make one more fork in the road.
They had seen the lava coming closer from the south, but then it seemed to blessedly veer off, disappearing into the cloud of ash and smoke that had made breathing increasingly difficult out here.
They were about to pack it in when Colonel Briggs called Iona. He was already shouting.
“Get out of there now, Iona! The lava has picked up speed in the last fifteen minutes!”
Then: “I never should have sent you over there!”
Iona said, “I thought the lava had split off—”
“Son, I don’t care what you thought! Turn the fuck around and haul ass!”
Iona looked in the Caterpillar’s rearview mirror.
There it was.
The orange-red streak, the only color in the darkness, had suddenly appeared just a few hundred yards away.
It was speeding at them like a lit fuse.