Page 93

Summit Cabin, Mauna Loa, Hawai‘i

Rebecca was at the front door of the cabin, staring at what looked like a gaping wound in the outside wall of the caldera.

When he saw her, Mac shouted, “Did you do this?”

She shouted right back at him, “Are you crazy, MacGregor? The volcano did this!”

She moved quickly to where Mac was standing and watched the flow of lava get closer. Nothing in their imaging had indicated the vents on this side of the caldera were in any danger of being breached when Mauna Loa erupted. The data was wrong.

They could feel the heat from the ground inside their boots. Before they came up here, Mac had thought about wearing thermal suits. But he’d rejected the idea.

The ground shook again.

There was even more fire in the sky above the summit. The summit cairn was just under two miles away from where they stood, but they were in far more danger from the caldera, which was morphing before their eyes.

Rebecca noticed the helipad, a hundred or so yards away from the cabin, completely engulfed by smoking lava, part of a rising river of it.

Moving directly toward them, like the tide.

Rebecca Cruz said, “What do we do? The helicopter can’t come back here now, and the observatory is miles down the mountain.”

“We move as fast as we can to stay ahead of the lava,” Mac said.

He watched as the lava made a slight turn on its way toward the trail behind them, as if diverting itself without any need for explosives or help from them.

There was another blast from the caldera, and another vent blew open.

More lava coming at them now.

Mac and Rebecca ran.

Anyone who’d ever hiked up here, and Mac had, had been warned against running on this trail, even when heading back down the mountain; a careless movement could easily break an ankle.

They ran anyway.