Page 135 of Eruption

“Because I am.”

The plane dipped again and turned on its axis, the motion giving the men the feeling of flying sideways.

The Chinook carrying Rivers and Rebecca touched down on the pad at HVO. While they’d been in the air, Rivers had remained in contact with Lieutenant Jefferson, who still hadn’t been able to reestablish contact with Mac and Colonel Raley.

Rebecca had been on the satellite phone with her brother and Kenny Wong as they monitored the flow of the lava almost yard by yard.

They told her it was past Saddle Road now.

Still on a collision course with the Ice Tube, with very little deviation.

Now Rivers shouted at Jefferson that he needed to talk to Mac and Colonel Raley immediately. “I don’t care how they get them back. Just get them back!”

“Believe me, sir. Everyone here is trying. We’re on it.”

“They need to deploy the missiles now!” Rivers said.

“Not if they can’t see the ground, General,” Jefferson said. He paused. “Provided they’re still up there.”

“Have you even gotten an emergency squawk code?” Rivers asked. Squawk 7600 established that an aircraft had lost communication and needed direction from aviation light signals.

“No, sir. Nothing.”

“I’m heading inside,” Rivers told Jefferson. “I want to know the second you can see them. And I mean thesecond!”

CHAPTER 104

Somewhere Above the Big Island

They couldn’t shake the thick volcanic smog. It kept washing over them in blinding, grainy waves. The wind buffeted the jet, tossing them in every direction, threatening to rip the plane apart or smash it to the ground. The ash blocked airflow to the engine, sending it toward a stall.

Then Mac felt the Eagle lose thrust. His heart nearly stopped.

“Left engine’s compromised,” Raley said before Mac had a chance to ask. “Ash and glass particles. Must be melting the components.”

The F-15 dropped another few hundred feet.

“We need some sky,” Raley said, “so I can see where the hell we are.”

The plane was hit again by glass and rock, even harder than before.

“What wasthat?” Mac said, his voice going up an octave.

“That was our left wing,” Raley said. “The rocky particles destroyed the outer surface of the fuselage where the wing connects to it.”

Mac looked at his hands. He was squeezing his knees; his knuckles were the color of chalk. “Are we going down?” Mac asked.

“Not until we do what we came up here to do.”

There was a brief patch of blue, there and then gone. But it lasted long enough for them to see another eruption at the summit and feel it in the F-15. It was as if the earthquake had suddenly reached up into the sky.

Somehow Chad Raley got control of the wounded plane. He leveled it off and said, “This shit is disabling the jet one piece at a time.”

In the next moment, they saw the ground again. It was so fucking close.

Smoke and steam were rising up from the lava, but it was clear how fast and how far the lava had traveled while they were bouncing around in the cloud.

Raley said, “That thing you talked about doing before we took off?”