Page 137 of Eruption

“Now?”Colonel Chad Raley asked again.

The plane went into an even sharper descent.

Mac remembered the reconnaissance plane crashing into the observatory while he and Rebecca watched.

The lava was too close to the Ice Tube and the canisters inside. If the lava reached them, the effect would be like detonating a nuclear bomb.

They had to direct the lava toward Hilo. There was no other choice. “Now.”

A moment later, Chad Raley said, “The ejector rack is jammed.”

The bombs wouldn’t deploy.

Somehow Raley was able to pull the plane out of the dive, veer to the right, then veer back to the left toward the target.

“Now we are out of time!” Raley yelled.

“What do we do?” Mac yelled.

“There’s one way to create that avalanche of fire,” Chad Raley said.

“How the hell do we do that without bombs?”

Raley looked at Mac and said, not yelling now, his words measured and eerily calm, “By crashing this plane.”

“Do it,” Mac said.

CHAPTER 106

The Ice Tube, Mauna Kea, Hawai‘i

Acamera installed over the entrance to the Ice Tube showed the approach of the F-15.

“They’re going to crash,” Rivers said. “It’s too late for him to pull out.”

They patched into the cockpit again.

They heard Colonel Chad Raley’s voice: “Preparing to deploy” was all he said.

Suddenly the Eagle disappeared in the cloud. Everything in the room was quiet.

Colonel Chad Raley pulled the plane out of its dive with only precious seconds to spare before this mission became a suicide mission. They had been ready to do what they needed to do to keep the fire below them away from the Ice Tube and what was inside it, even if it meant death and destruction flowing into Hilo as well as their own deaths.

It was a sacrifice they had both been willing to make.

“Oh… my… God,” Mac said when he was able to speak.

“There is one after all,” Raley said.

They could clearly see the ground, and they looked down at what they realized was a miracle.

Because of Mauna Kea.

The other volcano.

Mauna Kea hadn’t erupted in over four thousand years. But the thick lava that had hardened and cooled long ago near its base was functioning like a natural wall to divert the flowing lava.

A natural and impenetrable wall, perfectly positioned and stronger, better, than any the army and the construction crews from Hilo could build.