Chapter 98

U.S. Military Reserve, Hawai‘i

Get out of the truck! Sergeant, get out now."

Rivers and Briggs watched helplessly on Briggs's phone as Matthew Iona's truck slowly disappeared under an orange-red wave of lava.

They watched the boy die on a satellite phone, the same way they'd watched those pilots die on the monitor.

A boy—that was how General Mark Rivers thought of Sergeant Iona. Not as a soldier; as a boy. A college-age kid. And he had died not just for his country but for the whole world. He just hadn't known it.

The soldier in the excavator a couple hundred yards ahead of Iona had started to go back. He realized it was too late but recorded the scene on his phone before getting back to his excavator and saving his own life.

Briggs stuffed his phone into a side pocket. This was hard to take. It was like war, only worse, because so many civilians were dying.

"I'm the one who sent him there," Briggs said. "Iona worked for me."

"And you work for me," Rivers said. "You were both doing your jobs. The men who went into that cave, they were doing their jobs too."

Rivers and Briggs waited to see if the lava would move in the direction they wanted it to, toward Waimea. If it did, that would be some consolation.

"Do you think the worst is over?" Briggs asked.

But they both knew that the death toll from the town on the other side of the island, Nā‘ālehu, would keep rising. It might take days or weeks to find out how many victims there were. Likely the whole town was gone. So were countless marine creatures who'd lived in the waters in and around South Point.

They already knew approximately how many had died at the Mauna Loa Observatory. The vog had cleared enough for them to send a helicopter, and it had landed ten minutes before.

The pilot found no one alive.

A day and night filled with death and dying and unimaginable suffering.

"No, Briggs," Rivers said. "The worst is yet to come. Go do your job."

Rivers was alone in the cafeteria, a mug of steaming coffee in front of his face, needing to get away from the monitors, not wanting to watch anyone else die today. He looked up and saw Dr. John MacGregor standing in front of him. The scientist looked sick to his stomach.

"Another eruption is happening," Mac said. "It's going to be worse than the first one."