Chapter 50

If Mac had been wearing a hazmat he might have tried to get closer, but he was not. He wasn't sure what the black stain meant, but it had gotten his attention.

He walked back down the hill to Jenny.

"What could you see?" Jenny asked.

"Something that scared the shit out of me," he said. He told her about something he'd heard when he arrived at HVO, about an incident at the botanical gardens and army men in hazmat suits showing up there and leveling part of the place.

"I tried to find out more," Mac said. "But there was no real record of the event."

"You think what happened there is somehow connected with what's inside those canisters?" Jenny asked.

"What I know," he said, "is that we are about to move heaven and earth to keep a lava spill from coming anywhere near here."

"We have to assume they know how to contain this," Jenny said.

"It was the army that created this goddamn problem in the first place," Mac said.

Ten minutes passed.

Then twenty.

Most of the hazmat suits were inside the Ice Tube now. It was eerily quiet out here after the initial rush of noise and activity from the other jeeps and the fire engine.

He stared at the entrance. Now no one went in or out. Mac wanted to know what was going on inside. He hated not knowing. Sometimes not knowing was the only thing in the world that frightened him.

Thirty minutes.

Forty.

"What on earth are they doing in there?" Mac asked.

Jenny gently took his hand. "Breathe," she said.

"Make me."

The sound of a vehicle shattered the silence outside the cave again. They turned to see it was another jeep heading right for them, Colonel Briggs at the wheel. He brought it to a sudden stop a few yards away, spraying lava rock and dirt. A single cargo truck followed the jeep.

General Mark Rivers himself was in the jeep's passenger seat.

Rivers was in full uniform but wore no protective gear. He walked past Mac and Jenny without a word and marched into the cave.

Briggs ran to keep up with him.

More minutes passed. Mac and Jenny stayed where they were. Then slowly one hazmat suit after another began to file out. The fire engine pulled away, then the other jeeps. The last three jeeps left were Mac and Jenny's, Iona's, and the one Briggs had been driving; it was like they were the last part of the parade.

Briggs came out of the cave, Sergeant Iona beside him.

The last man out was General Mark Rivers.

He walked briskly to Mac and Jenny, his posture militarily erect, as always, as if he were about to inspect the troops.

He stopped directly in front of Mac.

"Was it just the one canister?" Mac asked him.

"It was contained," Rivers said.

He told Mac and Jenny they could leave and let the army finish up here and added that he was about to leave himself.

Seconds after Mac and Jenny left, a soldier in a hazmat suit came running down the hill toward Rivers. "You need to come with me, sir," the soldier said. "But first you need to put on one of these suits." Rivers got his protective yellow suit out of the back of the cargo truck and quickly put it on. Colonel Briggs, also in a hazmat suit, was waiting for Rivers with three other soldiers inside the Ice Tube.

The body at their feet was also in a yellow suit. The suit was ripped along the right arm. His gloves were gone.

The right hand was already turning black.

One of the soldiers said, "He must have torn it on a jagged part of the wall." The man paused, then added, "He was one of the first ones in here."

Rivers said, "It happens this fast."

"Not always, sir," Briggs said. "But it can. And it did."

Rivers said, "What's his name?"

"Sergeant Lalakuni," Briggs said. "Tommy."

Rivers stared at the exposed hand. "Family?"

"According to the men, his wife died last year in an automobile accident in Honolulu," Briggs said. "Parents, both from here, are deceased."

Rivers took a step closer to the body.

"Don't touch anything, sir," Briggs said.

"Who took the glove off?" Rivers asked.

One of the soldiers said, "He did. He said he felt like he was burning up."

The lights were bright enough that they could see Lalakuni's face beginning to turn black behind his mask.

No one said anything for a few seconds, all of them staring at the body. "Sergeant Lalakuni died in a lava accident," Rivers said.

He waited, moving his eyes from one face to another.

"Is that understood?" he said.

They all seemed relieved to be looking at anything that wasn't the body. They nodded.

There was another silence, longer than before, in the eerie quiet of the cave.

Finally, one of the soldiers asked, "What are we going to do with him?"

General Mark Rivers didn't hesitate.

"I saw shovels in the back of that truck," he said. "Go get them."

"Where do you plan to bury him, sir?"

"In here," Rivers said.