Page 130 of Eruption
Rebecca was calling from the military base. “I’ve got bad news,” she said.
“Don’t need any.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
“How bad?”
“I can’t tell you,” she said. “I have to show you. Sending you a screenshot.”
She did and Mac looked at it. The sensors at the base and at HVO were recording the speed of the lava and reporting a disastrous change in direction.
Mac dodged an excavator and ran as fast as he could to Rivers. He reached the general as he was about to raise his bullhorn again. Mac grabbed Rivers’s arm.
Rivers started to bark something but stopped when he saw the look on Mac’s face.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“We might have to sacrifice Hilo.”
CHAPTER 100
U.S. Military Reserve, Hawai‘i
Animals knew enough to run and try to find cover. Nene geese, the state bird of Hawai‘i, fled first. Then came many domesticated dogs, cats, birds. Even bees deserted their hives.
But few people on Hawai‘i knew how bad things had really gotten.
Colonel Briggs came back to supervise the last of the probably futile digging effort while Mac and Rivers raced to the base.
“With the story the sensors are telling,” Rivers said, “I have to think about evacuating this compound.”
“You have to do it in the next hour or so,” Mac said. “Maybe even sooner than that.”
“I can send people to Hawi on the north tip,” Rivers said, “if we don’t think we can save the base.”
“General,” Mac said, “right now, saving this base is the least of our worries.”
They found Rebecca and her brother huddled together in a conference room surrounded by monitors.
“How’s the ankle?” Mac asked.
“Sucks a big one,” she said with a grin that came and went. “But thanks for asking.”
Mac studied the monitor closest to him, reviewing the data from the sensors one more time; it hadn’t changed since Rebecca had asked him to interpret it. The amount of lava pooling underneath the summit would send voluminous flows from Mauna Loa toward Mauna Kea. That might prove impossible to divert. Even if the trenches held.
“Mac, that shit just keeps pouring out of the center of the earth,” Rebecca said.
“We need eyes on it,” Rivers said and made a call. The vog had cleared enough that he could order a reconnaissance plane into the air.
Mac walked to an easel propped against the front wall. He drew a crude map: the Ice Tube, Hilo, Waimea, and Saddle Road.
“The lava from the first eruption mostly ended here,” he said, pointing. “That’s the Saddle Road area. The volcano gods willing, we want it to go overthere.”
He pointed first at Waimea, then farther to the west at Waikoloa Beach.
“What if it doesn’t?” Rivers asked.
“If it doesn’t, and the new holes in the ground get overtopped, it’s like I told you before,” Mac said. “Hilo gets hit. I don’t see any way around it. And that’s probably the best case.”