Chapter 91

U.S. Military Reserve, Hawai‘i

General Mark Rivers's war had officially begun.

People had already died, including some of his own. It's what happened in war.

And he knew this was only the beginning. Mauna Loa had finally erupted a couple of hours ago with a force and a volume of lava that had shocked not only him but the scientists, including Brett's Italians, who had announced they were going to watch the eruption from the Mauna Loa Observatory. Rivers had objected, but the Italians hadn't listened to him any more than J. P. Brett had.

Everything happened at once.

Brett, who hadn't listened to the end, and the Cutlers and their pilot had crashed into the summit moments after the eruption.

He'd gotten a call from a hysterical and almost incoherent Henry Takayama, the head of Civil Defense in Hilo, that the burned bodies of his son and nine other boys, rowers, had washed up on the beach at South Point Park.

Ten kids at a beach on the southern tip of the island.

Word was that a town there, Nā‘ālehu, was about to be flooded by lava, what the chief of police there described as a tidal wave of it coming straight for them.

"Is there anything you can do for us?" the chief said.

"Pray," Rivers said.

Rivers kept hearing the sirens even after they'd gone silent.

There was a rap on the door and Colonel Briggs entered.

"Please give me some good news," Rivers said.

"Sorry, sir," Briggs said. "The kid sergeant who snuck out to the bar?"

"Mahoe."

"He died just now in quarantine, sir." Briggs paused. "Died looking like the others over there at the cabin. It just took longer with him."

"Was anybody at the hospital infected?"

"Not that we know of."

"Did you find his girlfriend yet?" Rivers asked.

"Yes, sir, we did. I got the call on her right before the one about Sergeant Mahoe. They found her body with the bodies of her grandparents at their little farmhouse near Saddle Road."

"In the same condition as the others?"

Briggs nodded.

So add the black-death toll to the one from the eruption.

As much as they'd done to defend the island against the lava, they were finding out they needed to do more.

Needed a new battle plan.

That's what you did in war when the old plan wasn't working.

It was time to put the planes in the air and to begin detonating Rebecca Cruz's explosives without her.

"I can't wait any longer to hear from MacGregor and Ms. Cruz," Rivers said to Briggs. "When we think it's safe from that goddamn cloud… what do you call it?"

"Vog, sir," he said. "Gas and steam and even glass particles. It forms around volcanic vents."

"When conditions are safe, I'm going to send an EO-5C to look for them," Rivers said.

But that aerial reconnaissance was for later. For now, General Mark Rivers was ready to attack. Wanted to attack.

He picked up his phone, called his marshaller at Hilo International, Lieutenant Carson, told him to give the three F-22 Raptor fighters waiting there a thumbs-up. When the bombs started to drop, David Cruz—in an office down the hall—would begin to detonate in coordination with them.

"Go time, son," Rivers said to the marshaller.

He watched on another monitor as the first jet taxied up the runway. But even as he watched, Rivers kept thinking about John MacGregor and Rebecca Cruz, wondering if the volcano had already added them to the morning's rising death toll.

But if they are somehow still alive, where are they?