Page 86 of Eruption
“How much of their work?” Mac asked.
“I misspoke,” Jenny Kimura said. “I didn’t meantheirwork. I meantourwork. And they took all of it, Mac.”
CHAPTER 62
The woman reporter was named Imani Burgess. The male reporter was Sam Ito, and he wasted no time informing Mac that he’d been fascinated by volcanoes his whole life.
Ito said that his family had moved from Maui to the mainland when he was an infant and that his father had studied volcanology at Caltech, where he now taught.
Mac said nothing, just leaned back with his fingers clasped behind his head.
“Took some undergrad courses on it myself at the University of Wisconsin,” Ito said.
Mac almost told him how happy he was for him but decided to just stare at him instead.
Imani Burgess smiled. It was, Mac had to admit, a winning smile.
“The scouting report on you noted that you’re not really the chatty type,” she said.
“Who told you that?”
She held the smile. “I can’t reveal my sources.”
“Are you of the opinion that I should open up to two reportersI just met?” Mac said. “In what world would that be a good idea?” But now he smiled.
“Are we getting off on the wrong foot here?” Sam Ito asked.
“You’re the reporters,” Mac said. “You figure it out.”
“We haven’t gotten much sleep the past twenty-four hours,” Imani Burgess said. “Anyplace around here where a girl could get a cup of coffee?”
“There is,” Mac said. “But without sounding rude, you won’t be staying that long.”
“Gee,” she said, “why would anybody think that was rude?”
“We’re not trying to make trouble for you, Dr. MacGregor,” Ito said.
“Sure you are,” Mac said.
“Excuse me?”
“My experience with reporters, Sam—may I call you Sam?—is that, whether the reporters are from the paper of record or not, they generally don’t come around to help me.”
Mac knew he was being a pain in the ass but couldn’t stop himself.
“Why did you agree to see us, then?” Imani Burgess asked.
“Maybe I wanted to interview the two of you,” Mac said, “before returning to my current problems with Mother Nature.”
“Who I hear is one tough mother these days,” she said.
Before Mac could respond, Sam Ito said, “We’ve spent a fair amount of time today talking to our sources in the military and getting a sense of what you plan to do about the lava once it comes. And we’ve spoken to a lot of the locals too. It’s kind of fascinating, really, the way they talk about the volcano and the goddess Madame Pele, the force behind volcanic eruptions. But they say that what you’re trying to do, divert the lava, is like trying to dim the light of the moon.”
“But I’m sure, being as fascinated by volcanoes as you are,”Mac said, “you know how effective diversion can be if it’s done right.”
He saw Imani Burgess nodding. “Etna in 1983 and 1992,” she said. “The diversions saved Catania and a bunch of other towns on the east coast of Sicily.” She opened her reporter’s notebook and flipped through some pages. “Massive engineering effort,” she continued, studying her notes. “Gouged-out channels, earthen walls, tons of workers on the front line. The fire department finally sprayed massive amounts of water on the lava and on the bulldozers, because they had to cool them down. Pretty heroic efforts, all in all.”
“They usually are,” Mac said. “That first effort, I’m sure you know, cost about two million dollars, and that was over forty years ago. But what they did there saved more than a hundred million dollars’ worth of property. Maybe more. And they basically did it all with bulldozers and the judicious use of explosives.”