Chapter 99

Mauna Loa, Hawai‘i

Overnight, hour by hour, minute by minute, pictures of the eruption lighting up the Hawaiian sky had circulated around the world. The intense stories accompanying the pictures told of the most massive eruption in Hawai‘i's history.

Thousands and thousands of pounds of rock had been blown into the sky. Fragments had shot hundreds of feet straight up. Clouds rose miles in seconds. Lightning lit a range of immense pyrocumulus clouds.

The world had also learned of what was being described on social media platforms as the tragic and heroic deaths of J. P. Brett and Oliver and Leah Cutler, all of whom had come to the Big Island on their own to help protect it.

Their doomed flight in J. P. Brett's helicopter was universally described as a "reconnaissance mission" the three of them had organized to aid the army's efforts to stop the flow of lava toward Hilo.

One of Brett's associates told the New York Times that before boarding the flight, Brett had said to her, "I'm going to help save this island or die trying."

Briggs had given General Mark Rivers a printout of that particular story; Rivers read it and said, "Who knows? It might even be true."

During most of those nighttime hours, Rivers had been busy mobilizing a mission to protect Saddle Road—which he'd taken to calling Apocalypse Road—trying to find a way to stop the smoldering river of lava before it reached the point of no return.

The Ice Tube. After that came hell on earth.

By the first light of day, he could see new canals and small lakes taking shape. It looked as if a whole new suburb had sprung up in the middle of the island. The work crews were doing their best to deepen the trenches and canals that had already been dug near where the canisters of deadly poison were stored in the cave.

"How much time do we have for the digging?" Rivers asked Mac.

"No time," Mac said.

They had combined the army's equipment and manpower with the equipment and employees of the twenty-some construction companies in Hilo. Mac was the foreman for Hilo's civilian construction crews.

Rebecca had desperately wanted to be on-site. She'd hot-wired a jeep at the observatory, and they'd driven it back to the Military Reserve. "I'm good with wires," she'd told Mac with a shrug. She needed to begin redrawing her bombing maps, but Rivers clearly wasn't going to allow it.

Rivers had looked at Rebecca's broken ankle, now in a walking boot. He told her that if she tried to hot-wire another one of his jeeps, she would be placed under house arrest for the duration. For the duration.

Riding in Rivers's jeep now, Mac explained to the general that the lava flow was taking the same direction as it had in the eruption of 1843. It rolled over the great expanse of lava fields that ran parallel to Mauna Loa Road, north of the unfinished road to Kona, then made a rapid descent toward Saddle Road and Mauna Kea.

Their last, best hope was threading a needle and redirecting the flow northwest, across the grassy fields south of Waimea, then toward Waikōloa Beach and the ocean. If they succeeded, fewer would die. Big if.

The original digs close to Mauna Loa had worked as well as they could have hoped. The lava was pooling in the man-made lakes, and it was continuously sprayed by a fleet of Chinooks, each helicopter dumping three thousand pounds of seawater. The bright red viscous matter darkened as it finally began to cool and harden.

They jumped out of the jeep and hurried toward the massive number of soldiers and civilians using bulldozers and excavators and even jackhammers to dig trenches. Rivers shouted over the noise, "We're talking about a massive fire drill! That's until there's enough visibility to put the bombers back in the air. Then you tell me what to hit and when to hit it."

Mac looked at the summit. The bright orange and red cloud above it was growing, and the darkness of the vog was once again moving in their direction. The lava was coming faster and faster.

"Just one thing, General," Mac said as he handed Rivers one of the bullhorns they'd brought with them.

"What's that?"

"This ain't a drill," Mac said.

Every time the workers felt the tremors of another quake, they would turn toward the summit, then get right back to work. They had no idea how soon the lava would get here, how soon they all might die.

But the message Mac had given them was the same one he had given Rivers: No time.

"These brave men, women, even kids, think they're saving their town," Rivers said.

"They might be saving the world," Mac said. "What a thought that is." Mac's satellite phone rang. "I have to take this."

Rebecca was calling from the military base. "I've got bad news," she said.

"Don't need any."

"You don't have a choice."

"How bad?"

"I can't tell you," she said. "I have to show you. Sending you a screenshot."

She did and Mac looked at it. The sensors at the base and at HVO were recording the speed of the lava and reporting a disastrous change in direction.

Mac dodged an excavator and ran as fast as he could to Rivers. He reached the general as he was about to raise his bullhorn again. Mac grabbed Rivers's arm.

Rivers started to bark something but stopped when he saw the look on Mac's face.

"Talk to me," he said.

"We might have to sacrifice Hilo."