Page 97 of Eruption

They were quickly descending toward the fire, and the lava kept hitting them; one rock glanced off the side of the copter a few feet from Morgan’s camera.

The combat-ready helicopter began to shake, as if being swallowed up by turbulence.

“Now or never!” Rogers yelled.

“Just a few more seconds!” Brett yelled back at him.

Morgan held on to his camera with his right hand, gave Brett a thumbs-up with his left.

Rogers knew how dangerously close to the summit they were, but he also knew that the man who had hired him didn’t care.

“Great!”J. P. Brett said as the helicopter dropped again.

“That wasn’t me!” Rogers yelled back. “The ash is sticking to the blades. Pretty sure the combustion chamber is starting to melt! I’m about to lose control of this thing!”

He seemed to be working all of the controls at once. “I need to find a place to put this down!” he said. “Nearly died up here once. Not risking it again!”

The lava was coming closer, and Jake Rogers knew better than any of his passengers that they were out of time.

Finally, J. P. Brett said, “Okay, pull out.”

Rogers managed to turn the copter sharply left, away from where the ash and steam and smoke and rocks were shooting into the sky, throwing his passengers sideways.

When Rogers came out of the turn, Morgan the cameraman was gone.

CHAPTER 70

Mauna Loa, Hawai‘i

Rebecca Cruz watched in horror as the figure fell out of the helicopter and into the lava stream below.

She had been down-mountain, making a final check of some new bomb locations, when she’d heard the explosion from the summit and saw the spray of lava rock filling the sky, along with what looked like fireworks.

So many things had happened quickly then: The helicopter came out of the suddenly orange sky; the quake knocked Rebecca and her brother David to the ground; the copter made a sharp, almost violent turn to its left.

Then the man—she assumed it was a man—fell from the helicopter, silhouetted against the morning sky like a cliff diver, like a movie special effect.

Except this was terrifyingly real.

“David, let’s go!”she yelled. She got back on her feet and ran toward where she thought the man had landed.

David stayed where he was. “Gowhere?” he yelled. “There’s no way someone could survive a fall from that height. And we need to get out of here before that thing blows again.”

But Rebecca was sprinting ahead, stumbling occasionally over the new lava rocks littering this side of Mauna Loa. The one time she did go down, she broke her fall with her hands, popped right back up, and kept going.

“There’s a crater lake over there you can’t see!” she said over her shoulder, waving him to come along. “Maybe he fell into it.” She looked down briefly, saw blood on the palms of her hands from where she’d skinned them on some jagged rocks.

Mac had shown her the lake when he’d first brought her to this area, told her that lakes like this were formed from an accumulation of rain and groundwater.

“What are the odds of him landing there?” David called out. “It looked like he was falling directly into the lava.”

But reluctantly, he followed her.

Rebecca was a runner and hiker. Her brother was not. The distance between them grew as they made their way across the rough, uneven terrain.

“We need to find out!” she said.

The volcano had quieted, and the only sound in the sky, in the distance, was the helicopter.