Page 67 of Eruption
At the sight of J. P. Brett, Henry Takayama had jumped up and grabbed an empty chair from the end of his row. He’d had it next to Mac before Brett walked up the steps to the stage.
“I’m Brett,” J. P. Brett said to Mac, extending a closed fist for Mac to bump.
“Of course you are,” Mac said. He turned his attention back to the podium.
Rivers said, “I’ll take a few questions before handing things over to our experts.”
Marsha Keilani of KHON stood.
“General, you haven’t told us how major an eruption we’re talking about,” she said. “Are you and your people anticipating something bigger than the one in 1984? Perhaps the biggest ever? My sources tell me it might be the biggest in a hundred years.”
Takayama,Mac thought.That’s exactly what I told him.
It meant there was a second leak. The first, about the bombing sites, could only have come from Mac’s team.
Maybe I’m fighting a war on more than two fronts now.
“It’s simply not prudent to speculate at this point,” Rivers said.
“Butyou’rehere, sir,” Marsha Keilani said, staying with him. “Mr. Brett is here. I’m told the Cutlers flew in from Iceland. Why shouldn’t everyone on this island be alarmed?”
A large man, obviously a native, stood up in the back row and pointed at Rivers. “Tell us the truth!”
More people in the back rows were standing now; it was like the room was erupting.
Rivers waited until everyone had settled down before speaking. “No one should be alarmed, partly because weareall here, and partly because, if history tells us anything, it’s that Hilo can survive eruptions. And I assure you, Hilo will survive this one.”
Reporters shouted more questions, but Rivers ignored them. “With that,” he said, “I would like our experts to weigh in.”
Mac was already out of his chair when Rivers added, “Let’s start with Mr. Brett.”
Mac couldn’t decide whether he was more embarrassed or more pissed off that Rivers was presenting this rich man as being the same kind of expert on volcanoes and the looming danger of Mauna Loa as Mac was. He sat back down.
Brett stood; Rivers walked over to him, extending his righthand for a real handshake, not a fist bump. Brett had no choice but to take it. Rivers leaned close to him, not releasing Brett’s hand, and spoke in a low voice that only Mac and Brett could hear. “You’re in Hilo because I think you can help,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. “But don’t fuck with me.”
CHAPTER 45
J. P. Brett had been close enough for her to touch before he got a good laugh with “Nevertheless” and walked up to the stage. He replaced the silver-haired general from central casting at the podium and then, just like the general had, did his level best to cover his ass.
Rivers and Brett weren’t technically lying, but they weren’t telling the truth either. Rachel Sherrill was convinced of that.
At least, they weren’t telling thewholetruth.
Excellent timing, Rachel, girl,she told herself.It’s your first trip back to Hilo since you got fired from the botanical gardens, and this time a lot more than a grove of your precious banyan trees might get blown sky-high.
Rachel walked out the door while Brett was still speaking. She needed some air and some time to think, knowing this particular show wasn’t even close to being over.
It had been nearly a decade since her own world blew up. The decision to fire her, she was convinced, hadn’t been made by her bosses at the botanical gardens. She’d gotten nothing but praise and support from them since the moment she’d taken the job.
But after what happened in the banyan grove that day, she had been persistent with her questions about why the army had reacted with such a frightening show of force. Eventually she was told that the board members of the botanical gardens were “going in a different direction”—the corporate version of a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend saying, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
But Rachel Sherrill, Stanford graduate and no one’s fool, suspected that “going in a different direction” wasn’t the reason she’d been fired. And she’d always wondered what Henry Takayama did or didn’t know about what happened in the banyan grove that day.
All she really knew for sure was that the army had buried news of an event that had turned her trees to ashes.
How very biblical,she’d told herself at the time.Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.The dust being her career.
She’d never gotten to speak to Henry Takayama about it. Ted Murray had phoned her just before she left and said, “They know I’m your friend and that I talked to you. But I’m done with this now, Rachel.Done.Don’t ask me about it again unless you want to get me fired too.”