Page 65

U.S. Military Reserve, Hawai‘i

J. P. Brett and General Mark Rivers were in a small private dining room at the military base. Normally, Rivers took his meals in the commissary with his officers. But not today.

Brett was the one who had requested the meeting, a way of trying to get himself on familiar ground, even if he hadn’t put it that way to Rivers.

He was here to do some hard selling.

Of himself, mostly.

“I don’t have a lot of time” was Rivers’s greeting before Brett even sat down.

“Completely understand,” Brett said. “I appreciate you making time for me at all.” Brett thought: Nobody fakes sincerity better than I do.

He was here to do something he considered essential to the task at hand: cutting Dr. John MacGregor off at the knees.

There were several business principles to which J. P. Brett had adhered in the building of his brand and his empire. But there was one to which he clung more fiercely than he did to any of the others: Be the last man in the room whenever possible.

“I’m happy you didn’t find my little show objectionable,” Brett said.

“Hardly little, Mr. Brett.”

“I don’t do small very well, General,” Brett said. “I’m not wired that way and never have been. It’s the modern world, after all. The TikTok world, if you will, even if the Chinese hijacked that one. Presentation is everything. The truth is, it was like one of those old-fashioned infomercials, and it gave people a little taste of our might and even our will.”

“Well, mission accomplished, as somebody once said. So why are we here?”

“So I can state plainly that I believe the only two people with the vision and balls to carry out this particular mission and save this island from imminent destruction are the two of us,” Brett said.

“You have my attention, if not my agreement.”

“We need to eliminate the middlemen, sir,” Brett continued. “And the middlewoman. I’m not suggesting you freeze out MacGregor and my dear friends the Cutlers. But it has to come from you that going forward, you and I speak with one voice.”

“And what would you have us saying with that voice, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“That my plan is not only the most comprehensive but the only one we need and the only one that will work,” J. P. Brett said. “And the only one that can save this island.”

“You’ve made clear your feelings about Dr. MacGregor,” Rivers said. “But I was under the impression that you and the Cutlers were a team.”

Brett chuckled. “I’m the team,” he said.

“I have to say that MacGregor has impressed me, in a very short time, as being both smart and capable,” Rivers said, “even though he doesn’t appear to be much of a team player.”

“He is smart and capable, don’t misunderstand me,” Brett said. “But in the end, he’s a by-the-numbers, by-the-book guy. He can’t help that; he’s a scientist. Scientists take chances only as a last resort. I should know—I’ve dealt with enough of them. But by the time he and the Cruz woman finish setting their explosives in what they consider to be the absolute perfect spots, Hilo will be underneath a goddamn tidal wave of lava.”

Brett leaned forward and lowered his voice, even though it was just the two of them in the room. “General, we need to bomb the east side of Mauna Loa as soon as it’s feasible, bring the lava out in what I expect will be a biblical gush, then spray it with so much seawater it will be like we’re using the ocean to drown it.”

“MacGregor thinks that’s reckless, even if it results in only one errant bomb.”

“MacGregor is just covering his ass, General,” Brett said.

“In what way?”

“In every way. He’s holding back intel from the army and we both know it,” Brett said. “You need to order him to turn over all of his internals right now. All of his maps, all of his seismic imaging for both the south and east sides of the volcano. I’ve had my drones photographing the area and doing 3-D renderings; my image processors are interpreting the data. But that goes only so far. MacGregor has been studying the damn mountain a lot longer than we have. He’s been studying all of these mountains, has witnessed major eruptions. He’s holding back information because he’s threatened by me. Which is a pretty shitty reason, considering the stakes.” Brett shook his head. “I run into a lot of that.”

“Of what?”

“People being threatened by me.” Brett grinned. “Just ask my ex-wives.”

“I’ve made it clear that I don’t need a turf war here, Mr. Brett. Especially not with the turf we’re talking about and the consequences if we screw this up. Dissension like that doesn’t just breed distrust. It breeds chaos.”

Brett slapped the table, rattling their mugs. “Chaos is my specialty!” he said, no longer attempting to keep his voice down. “I’m the captain of chaos—it’s why I’m here, General Rivers. I’m not looking to cover my ass. I’m willing to put it on the line right next to yours.”

Brett paused.

“I’m just asking you, respectfully, to let me do me, sir,” he said. “And I can’t do that with John MacGregor in my way and constantly trying to convince you that his plan is the best one. Because it’s not, unless you want the lava getting as close to Hilo as it did back in ’84. And if that happens, the world will see it happening in real time and wonder why the U.S. Army couldn’t protect a city it just put under martial law.”

They stared at each other, each man waiting for the other to blink. Brett felt he had positioned Rivers as best as he could. But he still wasn’t sure Rivers would see it his way. The general’s face, as usual, told him nothing.

“I guess what I’m really asking is if you want to be the one to tell MacGregor to step aside or if I have your permission to handle this myself,” Brett said.

“I’ll need to consider this,” Rivers said. His cell phone, on the table, buzzed. Rivers checked the caller ID but didn’t answer it.

“I assumed you would need some time, sir. But as you know, we don’t have much of that.”

Brett didn’t tell General Mark Rivers that he was already well on his way to handling things.

On multiple fronts.