Chapter 94

Mac was sure that he had reached for Rebecca seconds too late.

Her arms had flailed wildly as she searched for something to hold on to, then she'd pitched forward, toward lava that was just twenty yards below her.

Somehow Mac had managed to grab hold of her left arm and shove her away from the hole.

But that wasn't what had saved her.

Lava did.

Her boot was caught in a crevice.

Mac had shoved her to the left, but her left foot and ankle were firmly locked in place.

Rebecca screamed in pain.

"Pretty sure I just broke my ankle," she said.

She was on the ground, but she hadn't fallen through the skylight. She could plainly see the bright glare of the lava below, feel the rising heat of it.

"Holy hell."She gasped.

Mac got on his hands and knees and told her to brace a hand on his back. He slowly unlaced her boot and gently pulled her foot out of it. He heard a sharp intake of breath from her as he did.

Even with the heat they were both feeling now, her face was the color of ice.

"I'm so sorry," he said.

She nodded at the approaching lava.

"I'm not," she said.

He carried her down the mountain toward the Mauna Loa Observatory under a sky completely darkened by the spreading cloud of vog—volcanic ash and dust.

There was no other way.

Sometimes Mac carried her in his arms, sometimes over his shoulder like a soldier carrying a wounded comrade across a battlefield.

Every hundred yards or so, he stopped and put her down to rest. Then he picked her up and they would set out again. It had been more than an hour since they'd seen the F-22 Raptors in the air to the east, heard the first bombs in the distance.

The cloud of ash and gas kept getting darker and more ominous, turning day into night.

At one point when they were resting, she told him to leave her there, go to the base, and have someone come back for her.

"No," he said.

"You know that makes the most sense."

He gave her a long look. "Not to me, it doesn't."

He put her back over his shoulder.

They heard a plane and saw a fixed-wing turboprop appear suddenly out of the dark cloud and head south. Mac recognized it as an EO-5C, an army reconnaissance plane.

In the next moment, it was as if the sound had been turned off. They could no longer hear the engine.

The propellers were no longer spinning.

Mac and Rebecca watched in horror as the EO-5C descended too quickly toward the observatory.