Page 17 of Eruption

Mac unclipped one of the ropes and handed it to him. Jake clipped it to the belt at his waist. Mac bent over the door and looked inside.

In the back, the photographer was huddled in a ball at the far side of the helicopter. Still whimpering. Ahaoleguy, late twenties, skinny, his face the color of paste.

“He got a name?” Mac asked Jake.

“Glenn.” Jake was already starting up the slope.

“Glenn,” MacGregor said. “Look at me.”

The cameraman looked up at him with vacant eyes.

“I want you to stand up,” MacGregor said, “and take my hand.”

The cameraman started to stand, but as he did, the lava lake below began to burble, and a small fountain spit upward with a hiss. The cameraman collapsed back down and started to cry.

Over the headset, Mac heard Jenny say, “Mac? You’ve now been down twenty-six minutes. You know better than anyone what that means. Glenn and Jake already have pulmonary restriction. You’ve got to get out of there before you do.”

“I got this,” MacGregor said, looking at the lake through the bubble. Everything he’d learned from everywhere he’d been in the world of volcanoes told him he wasn’t fine at all.

“We’re gonna die here!”Glenn yelled, tears streaming down his cheeks.

“Just hang on,” Mac barked.

Then he climbed down into the helicopter.

CHAPTER 13

Jenny Kimura shivered as she studied Mac through the binoculars, trying to will him out of the copter and back up to safety. The connection she had always felt between them—though they’d never discussed it—was more powerful than ever.

“What’s he doing now?” Tim said, holding the ropes.

“He went all the way inside.”

“Hewhat?”

“He went inside the damn helicopter,” she said, shaking her head.

“Why?”

“You know why,” Jenny said. “Because he couldn’tnotgo in.”

“A cowboy to the end,” Tim said.

“If it’s all the same to you,” she said, “let’s not talk about the end.”

The helicopter slowly rotated on its axis. Mac gripped the seat, trying to keep his balance, watching helplessly as the world outside spun, the Plexiglas bubble closer than ever to the glowing surface.

Then it stopped, and the Plexiglas started to blister and melt, and smoke filled the interior of the helicopter.

MacGregor reached out with the Spark gas mask. “Put this on,” he said.

“I can’t!”the cameraman said. “I’m afraid I’m gonna be sick!”

No point in arguing with him; MacGregor just had to get him out of here, with or without the mask. They were minutes away from the helicopter exploding.

“Grab my hand, for Chrissake,” Mac said to the cameraman.“Now.”

In the main room at HVO, Rick Ozaki watched the monitor and said, “He takes more chances since Linda left with the boys.”