Chapter 82

The walls of the Military Reserve's conference room were shaking every five to ten minutes now. The general, Mac, and Rebecca were at the long table. None of them even acknowledged the tremors anymore.

"So by everyone's calculations, today is D-Day," Rivers said.

Or doomsday,Mac thought.

Rivers said, "So the question is, what do we do in the hours we have left other than wait?" He paused. "I mean, the hours left before the eruption."

Mac shrugged. "We keep digging as long as we can," he said. "Lay as much titanium near the cave as we can. When the eruption comes, Rebecca will be in her bunker at Mauna Loa Observatory, working her remote detonation system to set off a coordinated series of explosions via electromagnetic signal. At the same time, sir, you can put your bombers in the air, and they can wait for your command."

"We could start bombing right now," Rivers said. "Why are we waiting?"

"We need to see the direction of the lava," Mac said. "If we get lucky and Rebecca's explosives work, as we're pretty certain they will, we might need only minimal aerial support."

There was a knock on the door, and Colonel Briggs stepped into the room. "A word, sir?"

The two of them went out into the hallway. Mac watched them through the window of the conference room. Briggs was doing most of the talking. Rivers stood impassively, arms crossed.

Finally, Rivers nodded.

The general came back in, sat down, and said, "Change of plans."

"About when we start the bombing?" Mac asked.

"We're going to remove the canisters from the Ice Tube and transport them to a safe location."

Mac couldn't help himself. "Where?" he asked. "The moon?"

No one spoke as the walls shook again, rattling the windows, spilling coffee out of the cups in front of them.

"It's too late to move the canisters, and you know it, sir," Mac said. "There's no feasible way for that to happen."

"It's already happening," Rivers said. "And frankly, Dr. MacGregor, it will be too late when I say it is."

They were both seated, but Mac felt as if he and Rivers were standing toe-to-toe.

"Don't tell me that," Mac said. "Tell the volcano."

"I don't need your permission," Rivers said.

"No one said that you did."

Rivers looked down at his big hands clasped in front of him, then back up at Mac.

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way," he said quietly. "Isn't that what they say?"

Mac could see that Rivers was scared whether he admitted it or not. He wondered if anything else had ever scared this man, and he also wondered how far he could take this with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

"Sir," Mac said, trying to regain his composure. "It was too late for moving those canisters when you arrived here. Colonel Briggs told all of us it was a four-week job at the very least, not the four days we had at the time." He shook his head furiously, not believing what he'd heard. "I'm going to remind you how many of those canisters there are," Mac said, plowing ahead. "And now we've seen with our own eyes what happens when what's inside them gets out. We have no idea how many of them are damaged," Mac continued, "but all of them are sure as hell filled with deadly radwaste herbicide that is essentially the most lethal weapon in the history of this planet. And now, at this stage of the game, we're simply going to load them up and move them away in—I must have mentioned this—four fucking hours?"

"There is a platoon of my men in hazmat suits on their way up the mountain as we speak," Rivers said, ignoring everything Mac had just said and acting as if the hazmat reinforcements were all they needed.

"Something has obviously changed your thinking," Mac said. "We have a right to know what that is, General Rivers."

Now it wasn't simply fear Mac was seeing in Rivers's eyes.

It was more than that.

What he was seeing now was panic.

"What changed?" Mac said again.

"People started dying," Rivers said.