Chapter 87

The White House, Washington, DC

The president of the United States, who took great pride in staying calm in any crisis, could not get his heart to stop beating like a jackhammer.

He looked around, afraid the others in the Situation Room might actually be able to hear it, waited for them to turn and stare at him.

The president remembered the famous pictures of Barack Obama in this same Situation Room the night they had taken out bin Laden, remembered how calm Obama had looked.

Obama's national security team had been there with him. Vice President Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton, Obama's secretary of state. All of them watching and waiting for the kill shot on bin Laden.

This was different.

This time the enemy wasn't a terrorist who had blown up some buildings.

This time a volcano on the other side of the world was the terrorist, and if they couldn't stop it in time, it would destroy the world.

"Rivers says it's even more powerful than they thought it would be," the president said quietly.

His mouth was dry. He drank some water. It took all of his willpower to regulate his breathing.

His heart kept pounding, even as he tried to appear in charge and in control.

"It looks like that doggone mountain is on fire," said the vice president in his Louisiana accent.

"They have to stop it before it gets there," the president said.

They all knew what "there" meant.

They continued to watch the images they were getting from the military jets that were flying over the volcano Mauna Loa far enough away to be safe but close enough to capture the brilliant colors shooting out of the volcano like ground-to-air missiles and the lava that continued to spread in all directions.

But the only direction the president of the United States cared about was northeast, where those goddamn canisters were stored in that goddamn cave. He imagined them like ducks in a shooting gallery.

General Mark Rivers had just told him that bombing would commence shortly, as soon as the lava got closer to the military base and to Hilo; the people from Cruz Demolition were already detonating their explosives to divert the lava, the way the bombers would.

The president kneaded his forehead and thought about all the crises he'd faced, often on a daily basis. Terrorism and the Middle East and Russia and China and whatever new virus had popped up that day. His job was to defend this country against all of it, with aggression when necessary. He had promised to leave a better and safer America to his successor than his predecessor had left him.

And he believed he would.

Until now.

He sat there, starting to sweat, and found himself thinking about the pressure Truman must have felt before dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.

This was a different kind of pressure, pressure unlike anyone who had ever sat in this room had ever encountered, because there was nothing to do but watch.

And wait.

On one of the other screens in front of him, he watched the evacuation of Hilo continue, passenger boats arriving and leaving the port constantly.

The president turned to his secretary of state.

"Rivers tells me that the fastest-moving lava ever measured in Hawai‘i was on Mauna Loa and it traveled sixty miles per hour," the president said. "At that speed, the flows could get from the summit to the coast in one and a half to two hours."

The secretary of state asked, "How far away is the Ice Tube from the summit?"

"Twenty miles," the president said. He had his eyes fixed on the volcano again, unable to look away.

He kept thinking of Truman.

Imagining a new and more deadly mushroom cloud, one that might be about to cover everyone and everything.