Chapter 71

Rebecca and David Cruz stared down into the containment pond that was perhaps a hundred yards south of the crater lake. It looked deeper somehow as it began to fill with lava.

They had made it here just as the body of the man from the helicopter came floating along on the orange and red stream of lava emptying into the pond, exactly as the Army Corps of Engineers had intended, although they hadn't known it would be needed this soon.

It was as if the man from the copter had come down a giant slide. Or were riding a wave the color of fire.

She knew why the man, whoever he was, had not disappeared below the surface of the lava. Mac had explained to her that lava didn't behave like other liquids, that it could be two or three times denser than water.

"He fell out of a helicopter. How did he not sink?" David asked, both of them staring helplessly at the man, his eyes lifeless, on his back below them in the pit.

"You float on lava," Rebecca said quietly.

Somehow, as much as she wanted to, she could not avert her eyes from the terrible scene. She watched as the man's face and hands started to become the color of the lava underneath him.

Steam began to rise up off his body.

"His lungs burned up already," Rebecca said. "He was probably gone within a minute. Maybe two." She could hear Mac's voice in her head explaining the science of his world. "Even if he'd survived the fall somehow, he immediately began burning from the inside out."

"What the hell was he doing up there?" David asked, pointing at the sky. "Before he ended up down here."

A few seconds later, as if in answer to his question, a video camera came bobbing along on the last of the lava and into the pond. At the same time, the helicopter from which the man had fallen landed between the crater lake and the containment pond.

"Probably doing his job," Rebecca said, then added, "just like the rest of us."

The large helicopter, brETT written in huge letters across the side, was on the ground, close to the crater lake, a few hundred yards up the mountain.

J. P. Brett was the first one out of it; he ran toward what looked like a steep cliff overlooking the opposite side of the containment pond.

David and Rebecca slowly made their way in that direction. A second helicopter, this one a U.S. army helicopter, not as big as Brett's but big enough, appeared out of the sky from the east.

It landed, and General Mark Rivers jumped out as soon as its side door opened; his boots sprayed dirt and rocks as he ran straight at Brett like one of Rebecca's Houston Texans looking to make a tackle.

Mac was the next one out of the army copter, running right behind the general.