Chapter 103

U.S. Military Reserve, Hawai‘i

The Military Reserve was empty except for a few last holdouts, General Mark Rivers and Rebecca Cruz among them.

They had stayed to monitor the flight path of the F-15. Air traffic control at Hilo International was still broadcasting over one speaker. Rivers and Rebecca knew that Mac's plan had been to wait until the last possible moment to deploy the missiles, and only if it came to that.

Rivers felt the moment was coming at them at the speed of sound.

The general's man in the control tower was Lieutenant Isaiah Jefferson. "There's a problem, sir," Jefferson said.

"What problem?" Rivers snapped.

"We just lost them," Jefferson said.

"You mean over the radio?" Rivers asked.

"Not just the radio. It's like that black cloud that blew in from the volcano made them disappear." Jefferson paused for a moment. "Sir, we just found out yesterday what clouds like that can do. You get inside one, it's like you're taking enemy fire."

There was another pause and then Jefferson said, "They could go down the way the reconnaissance plane did."

Across the room, Kenny Wong was staring at the image on his laptop.

"I've never seen vog this thick," he said. "During the 2022 eruption, it spread two hundred fifty miles, but it had far less of an effect on visibility."

He walked over to General Rivers.

"Never this much lava, never this much vog," Kenny said. He shook his head. "This is our perfect storm."

They were flying blind; the window of the cockpit was abraded by the hot sandstorm of tiny glass particles and pulverized rock embedded in the ash.

Chad Raley knew he had to get them out of here. He just didn't know in which direction, at what altitude, or at what speed, given the skewed readings on the airspeed sensors. They were in serious trouble; the ash eroding the blades of the engine compressor was as capable of bringing the Eagle down as an enemy missile.

The plane rocked again—another direct hit. Chad Raley had been shot down one time, in the Arabian Sea. He had survived, mostly by dumb luck.

Now he thought his dumb luck was running out.

A pilot survived one crash like that.

Never two.

"What the hell was that?" Mac asked after the plane passed through a driving cloud of ash and glass and rocks.

"That," Raley said, "was the sound of us losing our right engine."

The beautiful morning sky they had flown into had become blackened by a volcanic storm cloud.

The jet began to buck as if caught in hurricane-force winds.

Another loud crack, this time on the left side of the plane. Then what sounded like gunfire hit the F-15.

"Now the rocky ash is coming for the left engine," Chad Raley said, looking out the side window of the cockpit. "The engine is glowing with heat."

The plane dropped what felt like a thousand feet in a couple of seconds.

"How long can we stay in the air?" Mac yelled.

"We shouldn't still be in the air!" Raley yelled back.

Even with the sudden loss in altitude, he couldn't see anything except the cloud that was all around them.

"Got a question, Dr. MacGregor," Raley said. "You willing to die to save the world?"

Raley didn't wait for an answer.

"Because I am."

The plane dipped again and turned on its axis, the motion giving the men the feeling of flying sideways.

The Chinook carrying Rivers and Rebecca touched down on the pad at HVO. While they'd been in the air, Rivers had remained in contact with Lieutenant Jefferson, who still hadn't been able to reestablish contact with Mac and Colonel Raley.

Rebecca had been on the satellite phone with her brother and Kenny Wong as they monitored the flow of the lava almost yard by yard.

They told her it was past Saddle Road now.

Still on a collision course with the Ice Tube, with very little deviation.

Now Rivers shouted at Jefferson that he needed to talk to Mac and Colonel Raley immediately. "I don't care how they get them back. Just get them back!"

"Believe me, sir. Everyone here is trying. We're on it."

"They need to deploy the missiles now!" Rivers said.

"Not if they can't see the ground, General," Jefferson said. He paused. "Provided they're still up there."

"Have you even gotten an emergency squawk code?" Rivers asked. Squawk 7600 established that an aircraft had lost communication and needed direction from aviation light signals.

"No, sir. Nothing."

"I'm heading inside," Rivers told Jefferson. "I want to know the second you can see them. And I mean the second!"