by Larry LaVoie
From the helicopter circling above the rocky cliffs of Lake Butte, Jason could see thirty-foot diameter holes in the cliff wall stretched out like a giant string of black pearls. He knew from the plan they were spaced one hundred yards apart. He stopped counting at twenty-eight but knew there were at least two more, according to the plan. He saw General Montgomery’s helicopter on the ground. Giant pieces of earth-moving machinery moved like a swarm of ants heading in every direction. It was amazing what they had accomplished in only a few days. He signaled for the pilot to land. The tiny Hughes 500 settled like a mosquito. As he made his way toward the construction headquarters Jason wrinkled his nose at the odor of sulfur in the air. Men with gas masks were scurrying about. Not a good sign, he thought. It could only slow things down. He continued his hike to the trailer that served as a makeshift office. It was positioned on a high piece of ground adjacent to a grove of aspen.
Jason opened the door and saw Montgomery and his staff, Major Bradford and Colonels Harding and Lansing, gathered around a folding table.
“Dr. Trask,” the general said seemingly delighted to see him. The office was a box that resembled a shipping container, just enough protection to provide the leaders with shelter from the construction noise and the weather. A small kitchen area and the table they were seated around were the only furnishings.
Jason raised his hand in a greeting then took an empty chair next to Major Bradford. Bradford was an engineer and seemed to understand his language better than Lansing or Harding, or the general for that matter. Jason had taken a liking to her direct manner. Of those in the room, you knew where you stood with Bradford.
“What do you think of the operation so far?” Montgomery asked, obviously proud of the progress they’d made.
Jason knew it didn’t matter what he thought. “I noticed men with gas masks?”
“Acidic underground springs,” Lansing said. “Put thirteen of our men in the infirmary. When the water hits the molten rock the steam explosions give off toxic fumes. We’ve suited the workers in CBR gear for protection.”
“CBR?” Jason asked.
“Chemical, biological and radiological protective clothing.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Jason said. “I’m afraid my report isn’t going to be any more pleasant.” Jason poured a glass of water. He’d decided to let the general know about the dissension within his team, but first he wanted to give his own assessment.
When he finished Harding said, “So you think we’ve bought some time.”
Jason sipped the water, stalling long enough to gather his thoughts. It was obvious they didn’t fully understand the situation. Best to be blunt. “I think this thing might go nonlinear and blow without notice. My team disagrees. They think the volcano has gone back to sleep and will stay that way for the next hundred years.”
“Which is it, Trask?” Montgomery pushed back from the table and stood towering over Jason. “The problem with you civilians is your opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. I need to deal in certainties. You got that?”
“I told you what I think. I’m raising the alert to Level Three.”
Montgomery crooked his eyebrows into a bushy V and glared at Jason. “Level Three, you want to speak English?”
“An eruption is imminent. Less than two weeks. Everyone within the Red Zone should be evacuated.”
“Two hundred miles?” the general asked.
“At least,” Jason said. “I wish I could be more precise.”
The general shook his head. “I can’t accept that. I’ve got over a thousand men in harm’s way. You’re going to have to get your team together on this.”
Jason bristled. “We don’t have to get together on anything. I’m calling a Level Three Alert and you promised if I would go along with your plan and keep my mouth shut you would evacuate if it became necessary. I want you to evacuate everyone within the Red Zone.”
The general glanced around the room. “Okay, we’ll get on it,” he said acidly, “but my men are going to keep working. I need six hours notice to get them out. Can you at least give me that?”
“We’re sitting right on top of this thing. I can’t promise we’ll have any warning,” Jason said.
“You think it could go any minute and your team thinks it will never happen. If we made decisions in war like that we’d lose every time.” The general threw his hands up. “Go on, get out of here!”
Jason stood to leave. “General, if the mountain stays quiet for another week I’ll throw my vote in with the rest of my team, until then I still need that evacuation.”
“I said I’d get on it.” Montgomery said. “Now, you get me some answers.”
On his way back to the helicopter Jason stopped at the entrance to one of the giant tunnels. The walls were a dark gray looking like glossy velvet. A string of lights illuminated the interior fading in a gentle arc downward until they disappeared.
Walking toward him was a man in uniform with captain’s bars.
“Are you in charge?” Jason asked.
“Yes sir.”
Jason read the name, Miller, J.
“Captain Miller,” Jason said holding out his hand. “I’m Jason Trask, chief scientist on the project. How’s progress?”
The captain pumped Jason’s hand. “We were doing fine until we ran into an acid spring last night. Other than that the subterrenes are performing flawlessly. We’re running maxed out at five hundred feet per day again.” He paused a moment then smiled and said, “We’re pushing these babies to the limit.”
“Can you take me in?” Jason asked. He wanted desperately to see what an atomic tunneling machine, referred to as a subterrene, looked like in action. Surely the technology had progressed from the Seventies when they were first patented.
“Sorry sir, it’s too dangerous.”
Jason stood by the tunnel entrance and rubbed his hand on the cold wall. It was as smooth as obsidian, having the appearance of a lava tube. “How deep are they now?” Jason asked.
“This one’s a third of a mile. The deepest is over a mile. They progress at their own pace depending on the type of material they encounter.”
Jason wondered if the tunneling crew had any idea of the danger they were in. If one were to hit the magma pool it would be all over too quick to react. The plan called for them to weaken the area around the magma pool not bore into it. “Keep up the good work,” Jason said, trying not to show his concern. He headed toward his helicopter waving his arm in a circle for the pilot to crank it up.
The flight back gave him time to think about the short meeting he’d had with the general and his staff. It had been a tough call to raise the alert level when the mountain was quiet, but he felt he had no choice. If the mountain erupted without notice then too many lives would be lost. At least his call would force an evacuation of the towns in highest risk. He had no idea how he was going to provide six-hour notice of an eruption for the general to evacuate the tunneling crew. To do that the mountain would have to start behaving like a normal volcano, giving increasing frequency and magnitude of events prior to erupting. Yellowstone was anything but normal.
The craft abruptly banked and Jason was tossed against the side of the helicopter. The pilot had reacted to a massive avalanche. Snow, rocks, and trees raged down the side of a steep slope. Trees swayed as if they were in the middle of a hurricane. It took a minute for it to register with Jason. An earthquake was a strange sight from the air. He felt nothing and heard nothing except the whine of the turbine and the machine-gun staccato of the rotor blades, yet he could see the undulating earth and trees swaying for several miles in every direction. He called Carlene on his cell phone to get a reading on the size and depth.
“Hold on a minute,” Carlene’s excited voice said. “I’m crawling under a table, things are still falling.”
“I’m watching this from the air,” Jason said.
“I wish I was there with you,” she said.
“When you get a magnitude
and location let me know. You’re all right aren’t you?”
“Fine. My God, there goes another one! I can see the charts from here and they’re pegged.”
“I just raised the alert to a Level Three. They’re going to start evacuating the Red Zone.”
“I hope that includes us.”
Jason gazed out the window at a huge wall of black ash rising like the smoke from a giant fire. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed. “That’s in the direction of obsidian cliffs. Let’s have a look.”
“What?” Carlene asked.
“Sorry, I was talking to the pilot. We have a definite ash cloud around Obsidian Cliffs. I’m going to check it out.”
“Be careful,” she cautioned.
“I always am,” he said and hung up. He watched a black column of smoke and ash rise and drift in their direction. To the north he saw an airplane. “What the hell is that doing there,” he said.
“Must be going into Gardner,” the pilot said.
Somewhere over Wyoming
“It’s started,” Joseph Talant said glancing at Vladimir Mishenka in the co-pilot seat of the Cessna. The column of ash had risen to twice their altitude and mushroomed out when it hit the ceiling at about thirty thousand feet, Talant guessed. He motioned to Vladimir. “I’m putting down at Gardner.” he noted the prevailing wind was blowing the ash in a south-easterly direction. “We need to refuel. We’ll drive to the park.”
Yellowstone Park
Jason met with his team over a lunch of sandwiches that were brought from the Lake Hotel kitchen. They all agreed this was a significant event. The ground had been continuously shaking for the past three hours. “You still think she’s sleeping?” Jason asked Paul Preston.
Preston swallowed a bite of sandwich and peered at Jason over the top of half-frame reading glasses. There was humility in his voice. “Sorry, I missed this completely. I’d like to see what kind of gas readings Dr. Randolph gets.”
“How about it?” he asked Randolph. She was the eldest of the group, a dumpy woman who had lived on and around volcanoes most of her adult life. Her gray-streaked hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a small red ribbon holding it in place. Her cheeks were more ruddy than usual. “Gas levels were up significantly this morning; back to 2000 tons per day. The good news is this thing is venting again; the bad news, its sulfur dioxide.”
The scientists were well aware that significant levels of sulfur dioxide meant magma was moving within the system. The presence of the gas told them things were changing rapidly.
The heavy ash cloud threatened to block out the afternoon sun. Even in the daylight hours lightning flashed from the ever-present cloud. To make things worse a storm system was moving in. The forecast called for rain before morning.
The Army went about evacuating the remaining restaurant and hotel workers leaving Jason’s crew and a hundred other occupants of the hotel on their own. Jason had never seen the park so vacant, not even in the winter months when the best way to get around was by snowmobile. He looked in the direction of Carlene’s motor home and saw her headed in his direction. He stabbed a steak with a fork and flipped it over on the propane grill. Beside the steak some vegetables warmed in a small pan. “Smells good,” she said. “You sure we won’t have some uninvited guests show up?”
“You mean bears or the rest of the team? I haven’t heard of any bears in this vicinity lately.”
“Neither have I. I think they’re smarter than us. Packed up and left.”
Jason took her in his arms. He hated to admit it but he was falling for her, and it couldn’t be worse timing.
“I’ve set a table with my best china,” Jason said showing her the folding table with a towel for a table cloth. They were behind the hotel opposite the lake. If there was any activity he could be in the monitoring room in a few seconds. He pushed a button on an electric lantern and the table was cast in a muted glow.
“How romantic. Paper plates, plastic utensils and real fluorescent light. You really know how to impress a woman.”
“I said I’d cook. You brought an appetite didn’t you? Medium on the steak, right?”
He filled a plate and handed it to her. A baked potato, green beans heated in the can and a salad from fresh watercress he’d found in the hotel kitchen. As he plopped down in a folding chair at the table he told her he was raising the alert to Level Four. He wanted to tell Carlene before the others. By tomorrow he might be the only one left in the Caldera.
The ground shuddered again and Carlene grabbed Jason’s arm. “Every time it does that I freak out. You’d think we’d get used to it.”
“None of us have been sleeping. I think the entire team is jittery. I’m going to radio Montgomery.”
“Do you mind if we go inside,” she said. “I feel safer there. It’s getting so I’m afraid to walk around outside.”
“No problem. The hotel?”
“The motor home,” she said and winked.
They passed the few remaining cars in the parking lot as they walked to Carlene’s place, their plates in their hands and a bottle of wine jutting from Jason’s jacket pocket.
“Ignore the mess,” Carlene said as they entered. She slid a lamp out of the way with her foot. “I can’t keep anything in place with all the quakes. I wonder if my insurance is going to cover the damage.”
Jason pulled the cork on the wine. “You mean you don’t have volcano insurance?”
“Or earthquake,” Carlene said setting her plate on the table. “I’ve got fire and theft. Maybe comprehensive will cover the damage from falling rocks.”
Jason handed her a glass of wine. “Better report it stolen, more believable.”
“What’s the bad news?” Carlene asked washing down a bite of steak with a sip of merlot.
“It shows does it?”
“You’ve been moping around for three days, making daily trips to the tunnels and pouring over the instruments like a mad scientist. You could have fixed dinner in the hotel kitchen with the others, but you wanted to get away.”
Jason stared at her, took a drink and finally said, “I want you to leave.”
“No way,” Carlene said. “I told you I’d stick with you either way and I meant it.”
“I’m raising the alert to Level Four.”
“You already said that.”
“I don’t think there will be time to evacuate the Red Zone. Have your folks been told yet?”
“They won’t leave until Billy shows up. They keep thinking he’ll call.”
Jason picked up her phone. “We’ve run out of time. Call them. Get them out of there.”
Chapter 26
The ground vibrated without stopping and was still shaking when the clock said it was time to get back to the monitoring room. The dishes in Carlene’s motor home had rattled incessantly making it another night without sleep for Carlene and Jason.
Jason forced his bloodshot eyes open and peered out the window. A heavy rain was falling and everything was covered with wet gray ash. What little he could see of the sky was as black as midnight on a starless night. Carlene appeared to be sleeping. He dressed and trudged across the parking lot with a newspaper covering his head. He’d spent a good part of the night trying to convince Carlene to leave with her parents, but with no news from her brother the best he’d been able to get her to agree to was leaving with the team. Damn, Carlene could be stubborn sometimes.
Well, now was the time. The team had done all they could. He guessed it wouldn’t be that difficult to convince them it was time. A few had voiced their willingness to leave the night before. There was no mistaking the signals. He would call a meeting, declare a Level Four and tell Montgomery to clear out his men as fast as he could. Yellowstone would have to be monitored from a safe distance at the University of Utah.
“Jason,” a voice called from the hotel as he approached. He could barely make out the spindly image of Dr. Jean Randolph holding an umbrella. She motioned for him to move faster.
>
“What’s the problem?” he asked realizing how stupid that must sound.
“General Montgomery is in the office with the rest of the team. Where’s Carlene?”
“Right behind me, I think. We had breakfast together,” he lied. Jason held back a grin. They had agreed to keep their relationship at arm’s length during business hours, but now that business was twenty-four hours a day, he suspected the crew knew they were sleeping together. He glanced behind him. The drab ash laden air was too dense for him to see her motor home. “She’ll be along soon.”
Randolph escorted him to the room hardly stopping to take a breath between her accounts of the prior night’s activity. The door to the monitoring room was open. Paul Preston was slouched in a chair with his finger pointed up at the general. Thomas Kelly was at his computer apparently trying to bring up some information. He was pounding the keyboard with such force it was clear he wasn’t having much luck. Montgomery turned as soon as Jason entered.
“General Montgomery,” Jason said. “I was going pay you a visit this morning. Guess you saved me a trip.”
“Preston tells me this thing is going to blow any second. Do I have time to get my men out?” As usual, the general’s gruff voice demanded answers.
Jason glanced at Preston who shrugged and looked away. He was glad Jean Randolph had clued him in. “We were about to have a meeting to decide. You’re welcome to sit in.” He offered the general a place at the table.
