Page 42 of Eruption
The pit was a hundred meters deep, perhaps more. It was hard to be sure; the light beam vanished into the blackness of the lava tube as if it had been swallowed up.
One of the AOC men said, “Exactly how many chambers like this are there, Dr. MacGregor?”
“Dozens,” Mac said. “Maybe more than that. We just have to choose the right ones.”
The critical issue, Mac told them, was whether the HVO really was able to pinpoint the exact location of the magma beneath the surface. If they knew the location of the magma pipes within a few hundred meters, they could choose three or four air chambers that were directly above the rising magma, place explosives, then fill them with water.
“All in four days,” he said. “Or the whole thing is pointless.”
He looked at them, their faces illuminated by the various phone flashlight apps.
Earlier, as he was talking, the AOC team had produced some nylon line, and now they started lowering one of the men into the pit.
“They don’t waste any time, do they?” Rick said.
“We have none to waste,” Briggs said. He turned to Mac.
“We might be able to do this in four days,” Mac said. “It’ll be tight, but I think we can.”
Briggs nodded. “There’s no way in hell to keep this job a secret. You’re talking about a lot of personnel, a lot of equipment on this mountain. You can’t hide it.”
Jenny Kimura said, “Couldn’t you say the army is doing something up here? Something of a positive nature?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Repairing our access roads. We’ve lost some crucial access roads and the army is helping repair them.”
“You really think we can sell that?” Briggs asked.
“The visuals alone can sell it,” Jenny said. “This is the age of social media. All anybody cares about these days is how things look.” She turned to Mac. “You know that big fissure on jeep trail four at about nine thousand feet?”
“The one that’s been around since Truman was president?” he asked.
“Since 1950, to be exact,” she said. “It’s a good twelve feet deep and maybe eight feet wide. You show that in the afternoon when it’s in shadow, and it’s very dramatic.”
“There’s also a road that skirts around it.”
“Right. But it skirts wide, and it’s black-on-black lava. If we take the reporters up by helicopter from the Kilauea side, they’ll never see the bypass road.”
“You want to take reporters up and show them a seventy-five-year-old vent?” Mac asked.
“They’ll love it for the pictures alone, Mac.” She turned to Colonel Briggs. “Do you have your uniform with you, sir? We’ll need you in uniform.”
“For what?”
“For the photo of you and Mac standing at the edge of the fissure, talking about the repairs. It’ll look like you’re standing at the edge of the world.”
“I’d rather not appear.” Briggs seemed uneasy. “I’m not the CO on the Big Island.”
“Well, we’ll need someone in uniform talking with Mac,” Jenny said. “To make it into a movie moment.”
“Let me make some calls,” Briggs said.
The AOC team came back from the pit. Morton said, “We’ve been over this, and we’ve concluded there is a high probability it can work.”
No shit, Sherlock,Mac thought.
Morton continued, “We’re assuming five locations on the mountain, each with chain-linked resonant charges set as far as we can drill into the thick basalt. The sequencing begins with small charges that detonate very rapidly, like firecrackers. Then they get slower and slower until they’re every quarter second or so.”