Page 98 of Eruption

Rebecca picked up her pace, as if this were some kind of crazy race, not stumbling at all now, not running for her life, just running for whoever had fallen from the sky.

“We have to go back for him!”Leah Cutler said to Jake Rogers.

“Wecan’t,” he said. “The ash is sticking to the blades—I canfeel it! I need to get us back to the airport before we end up like Morgan.”

Brett got out of his seat and crouched down next to Rogers.

“Turn around,” Brett said.

Rogers, eyes fixed on the summit to their left, said in a low voice that only Brett could hear, “There’s no point, Mr. Brett. I’m sorry, but we both know he’s dead.”

“Go back,” Brett said, “and find a place to get us on the ground.”

“Mr.Brett,” Rogers said, “that eruption just now might have been only an appetizer.”

“It wasn’t a request,” Brett said.

“Dude,listen to me,” Rogers said. “It’s not just the blades not working the way they should. Listen to the freaking engine. There’s something wrong with it too.” He shook his head. “I’m telling you, it’s time to cut our losses.”

“Turn around and go backnow,” Brett said. “Or get out of that seat and I’ll fly it myself. Because I can.”

Jake Rogers hesitated, reviewing his options. He realized that the rich man taking the controls would be the worst one.

So he banked the Airbus H225M hard to the east.

For now, the activity and the light show at the summit had stopped. He didn’t know how long that would last, though. None of them did, including Brett. The sudden quiet probably meant that the water that had caused the brief but violent eruption had cooled or begun to evaporate or both.

He was hoping the quakes would stop long enough for him to put J. P. Brett’s bird safely on the ground near the locus of the eruption, since that was clearly the plan now; there was nothing he could do to change Brett’s mind.

Rogers had a general idea of where they’d been in the sky when they lost Morgan, but he didn’t know the precise location, partly because so much of the terrain looked the same—likeMars, some pilots said—and partly because he’d been occupied trying to keep the helicopter in the air.

Morgan is even crazier than I am,Jake Rogers thought.Or he was.

Rogers flew to a crater lake on this side of the volcano. Above the lake was a containment pond the army must have built in the past couple of days; he could see it was already filling with lava.

Leah Cutler, looking out her window on that side of the helicopter, was the first to spot Morgan.

She started screaming again.

CHAPTER 71

Rebecca and David Cruz stared down into the containment pond that was perhaps a hundred yards south of the crater lake. It looked deeper somehow as it began to fill with lava.

They had made it here just as the body of the man from the helicopter came floating along on the orange and red stream of lava emptying into the pond, exactly as the Army Corps of Engineers had intended, although they hadn’t known it would be needed this soon.

It was as if the man from the copter had come down a giant slide. Or were riding a wave the color of fire.

She knew why the man, whoever he was, had not disappeared below the surface of the lava. Mac had explained to her that lava didn’t behave like other liquids, that it could be two or three times denser than water.

“He fell out of a helicopter. How did he not sink?” David asked, both of them staring helplessly at the man, his eyes lifeless, on his back below them in the pit.

“You float on lava,” Rebecca said quietly.

Somehow, as much as she wanted to, she could not avert hereyes from the terrible scene. She watched as the man’s face and hands started to become the color of the lava underneath him.

Steam began to rise up off his body.

“His lungs burned up already,” Rebecca said. “He was probably gone within a minute. Maybe two.” She could hear Mac’s voice in her head explaining the science of his world. “Even if he’d survived the fall somehow, he immediately began burning from the inside out.”

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