The Yellowstone Brief

by Larry LaVoie

  Merrill pursed his lips and forced himself not to interrupt. After Margaret was finished, he said, “Thank you, Margaret. I respect that you are convinced that nothing can be done to prevent this disaster, but a catastrophe of the magnitude described in this report will most certainly require the military to be involved at some point. Without their input, I cannot accept any of your findings as final. With that said, it is paramount that I have a mitigation plan on my desk two weeks from today. I will not accept a report that there is nothing we can do, and neither will our Western Allies. We cannot let an event like the one described in this report take down our nation!” He made eye contact with every person in the room, one by one. “If news of this meeting gets out to the public, someone’s head will roll. Understood? If it’s necessary to warn the American people it will come from me personally, not from an opportunistic leak.”

  “Mr. President,” the Army Chief of Staff, Three Star General Gene Miller, spoke up. “Are you directing the Army to participate in a plan of action lead by a civilian? No offense to Madam Secretary of Homeland Security, but that’s a sure recipe for disaster. She’s already made up her mind that nothing can be done to prevent the disaster. Frankly, I think there are some options she didn’t consider.”

  President Merrill had never served in the military; had never ascribed to the strict discipline and the structure of the branches of the military, and didn’t like the territorial boundaries between military and other departments of state. He also didn’t trust the military in matters of civilian defense and had promised, in his campaign, that he would not use military personnel to police civilian actions, such as those used during the riots in the Sixties and Seventies. Any use of the military would be overseen by his staff. In spite of his efforts to bring the various departments together and to share information, there was still a great deal of rivalry. He made eye contact with Leroy Crawford, Secretary of Defense, then with Margaret. “Leroy, I’m sure you and Margaret can work something out that includes any help the military can give. I don’t give a damn if all of your names are on the report! You will come up with a plan to avert this disaster and I need it on my desk in two weeks. No excuses.”

  Margaret looked down at her report. Arrogant son-of-a-bitch thinks he’s God Almighty. He’s asking for something that can’t be done.

  July 8th, The White House

  A top secret document titled The Yellowstone Brief was in the hands of President Merrill and his staff. It was not as thick as the original report. It was the mitigation plan the president had demanded. The brief outlined a plan for reducing the risk to the United States and the world, if Yellowstone were to erupt, but, more importantly, it included a plan to prevent an eruption altogether, if there was enough time to implement the plan. President Merrill skipped the mitigation portion of the report and fixed his eyes on prevention.

  The first step of the prevention plan was an elaborate tunneling operation to be carried out in Mexico’s Volcán de las Virgenes in Baja California Sur. It was to be conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers, in cooperation with the Mexican government, but was to be kept Top Secret. If that operation was a success, then the second phase would be started immediately, that being repeating the operation on a much larger scale, in Yellowstone; concurrently with the Mexican operation, equipment and personnel would be staged for the operation in Yellowstone. All of this without the news media finding out. It was a monumental task, but necessary under the circumstances.

  Many of the scientists who had authored the original report were not included in The Yellowstone Brief. There was widespread doubt within the scientific community that anything of the magnitude described by the Army Corps of Engineers could be successful. After all, for the country to bank its survival on tunneling into an active volcano to divert the ash cloud from reaching the ionosphere was completely ludicrous. It had never been tried before. Those scientists refusing to put their name on the report were put on 24-7 surveillance, their phones and electronic devices tapped as if they were traitors. The president could not chance word getting out about the impending disaster, or The Yellowstone Brief.

  In the hasty effort to come up with The Yellowstone Brief, only one of the authors had foreseen the attempt to control the eruption of a volcano as an environmental threat; after all, if the details outlined in the brief were successful, it would save millions of lives. Although he went along with the plan, he was completely overwhelmed with the enormity of the task. He panicked, but did not have the nerve to voice his objection to the powerful heads in the room. The newly appointed Director of Environmental Quality, Randy Cameron, voiced his environmental concerns internally when he received his copy of the report.

  The appointment of Cameron by President Merrill was a payment of sorts for the financial support of the far left wing of the party. The most controversial part of The Yellowstone Brief Cameron objected to, was a stipulation that, for the duration of the project, Yellowstone Park administration would transfer from the Department of the Interior, to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. With the Army in control, he would have no say in what would be done. It grated on him until he decided to take action. He could not sit on the sidelines and watch as the Corps of Engineers messed with one of the largest volcanoes on earth. He felt it his duty to leak the report, and he knew just the person to send it to.

  Chapter 4

  August 9th, Unalaska, Alaska

  After his first few weeks, Richard Magic, known as Trick to his friends and a few enemies, began to hate the Alaskan wilderness nearly as much as his ex-wife, Elisabeth. She had taken him to the cleaners after only three years of marriage. Distraught and ready to give up female companionship forever, the job set in a remote island off the Alaskan mainland seemed ideal to him at the time. But the endless days, chronic cold, and blistering storms attacked him with the ferocity of a new strain of flu. After a hellish winter spent living in a glorified hurricane tent, 20 miles from the base of Mt. Tanaga, he earned his first leave from the uninhabited island of Tanaga, and decided a trip to the nearest city of any size was well overdue.

  Tanaga Island, approximately 900 miles due west of Ketchikan, was dominated by the volcano that had formed the remote island. In the summer the temperature rarely approached 60˚ F. Winters had an average temperature near zero, and many days were well below zero. There was little to do on the uninhabited island, other than monitor and maintain the three remote seismic stations located around the base of the mountain, which reached 5,197 feet and was continously surrounded by clouds. Remote volcanoes such as Tanaga were usually monitored by satellite, but with no population within a hundred miles, maintenance of the satellite monitoring was difficult and required a USGS scientist on site. If it hadn’t been for the island’s checkered past, Trick would not have had to spend a winter fighting the frigid temperatures. Tanaga was rising from the caldera formed by a massive collapse of the volcano during the Pleistocene epoch, approximately 10,000 years ago. If such a collapse should happen today a massive tsunami would wipe out coastal areas all along Western Canada and the United States. The likelihood of anyone on the island surviving such an event would be slim at best, which was why the assignment was purely voluntary. Trick had volunteered, on impulse, after his failed marriage. It didn’t take him long to see the folly of his impulsiveness.

  The trip by plane to Unalaska was his first chance to blow off steam since setting foot in the remote area of the Aleutian Islands. His first stop was in the local bar.

  “You want to hear it again?” Trick asked, raising a can of Bud. “Only cost you a beer.”

  The old man at the bar rubbed a calloused hand on his bearded face and pounded his shot glass on the huge timber slab that had been made into a bar. “Fran, another Bud for my new friend. He recites Robert Service better than the man himself. Of course Service has been dead for over fifty years.” He let out a guttural laugh.

  “Yeah, you were around back then,” Fran quipped, “sitting on that same stool, I’ll bet.�
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  Trick downed the remainder of his beer and added the can to the pyramid in front of him. He grabbed the next beer and took a long pull, before launching into the poem, The Cremation of Sam McGee was perhaps the most famous work of the early 20th Century poet, Robert Service.

  Months earlier, upon arriving in Alaska, Trick had come across a book on the poems of Robert Service while stocking up on reading material for the long winter ahead. Hundreds of miles from civilization, he soon ran out of reading material. He whiled away the endless nights by memorizing the poems. The Cremation of Sam McGee was his favorite. He could relate to the character in the poem. Sam McGee came up from Tennessee during the Yukon Gold Rush. McGee was never able to warm up in the harsh Arctic winter and made his friend promise to cremate him when he died so he would be warm for eternity. With all the relish of the half-inebriated performer he was, Trick stood up and started reciting the opening line of the Service poem for the sixth time that evening. “There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.”

  Looking past the old man, Trick noticed a girl by herself at the end of the bar. She was only about an inch shorter than his five-nine height, had coal-black hair, eyes nearly as dark, and a smile that turned up the corners of her mouth. She smiled and Trick stopped reciting the poem and sauntered over to her. “Can I buy you a drink?”

  “You’re drunk,” the girl said, laughingly.

  “What if I am?” Trick said. “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” Trick lifted his beer as if toasting the girl.

  “Better back off, that’s Lone Wolf’s daughter,” the old man at the bar called down to Trick.

  Trick turned around to address the old man and stumbled. Before he could catch himself a pair of strong arms came from behind and held him steady. Trick turned his head and stared straight into the black eyes of a large Indian. Trick’s blue eyes turned to saucers as he backed away from the massive man. “Lone Wolf, I presume.”

  “My friends call me Andrew,” the Indian said. “Lone Wolf is a nickname given to me by these drunken bastards who don’t have anything better to do than come up with nick names for us Indians.”

  Trick held out his hand. “Good to meet you, Andrew. My name’s Richard Magic, but my friends call me Trick. Can I buy you a beer?”

  “Only if my daughter will join us.” He motioned for his daughter and pulled out a chair at a round wooden table away from the bar.

  The old man at the bar choked on his shot of whisky and called out, “You ain’t finished the poem yet.”

  “Keep your beer,” Trick said. “My friend Andrew and his daughter are going to join me for a pop.”

  The old man shook his head. “This is a mistake,” he said under his breath.

  Trick held out a chair for the girl. She held a tall glass in her hand and set it on the table as she reclined and let Trick help her adjust the chair. “Forgive my poor manners,” Trick said. “I’m Trick…Richard Magic. My friends call me Trick...you know magic...trick. My friend Dave Wayne gave me the nickname when we were kids in Junior High. It kind of stuck.”

  She thanked him for being a gentleman and smiled at him again. “Forgive me for thinking you were drunk. I haven’t heard anyone recite that poem since I was a kid.”

  Andrew cleared his throat. “Trick, my daughter is outspoken and impossible to control. You wouldn’t mind marrying her, would you?”

  “Daddy, if you don’t stop doing that, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “See what I mean,” Andrew said, lifting his glass to the bartender. “Fran, a round on my newfound friend.”

  Trick turned to the girl. “What should I call you? I mean, I don’t know your name.”

  “Tanya,” the girl said. “My friends call me Striking Eagle,” she said, not giving him the hint of a smile.

  “Really?” Trick’s eyes got bigger.

  She laughed. “You’re not from around here. You’re really gullible.”

  “Now you’ve hurt my feelings,” Trick said, grabbing his chest. “I just dug my way out of a snowdrift on Tanaga. I was trapped on that godforsaken hunk of ice for months.”

  Fran brought the drinks and set them on the table. She gave Andrew the evil eye. “I don’t want no trouble, Lone Wolf. Last time you were in here it took a week to repair the damage.”

  Andrew looked at Trick. “See what I mean. An Indian gets no respect in here. If it wasn’t the only bar within a hundred miles, I wouldn’t do business here.”

  “Don’t let him fool you. There are plenty of bars in town. We’re the only one that lets him back in.”

  “We won’t be any trouble,” Tanya said. “If they get out of hand, I’ll herd them out.”

  Andrew threw back his shot of bourbon and chased it with a draft beer.

  Trick was more interested in Tanya. “Sorry if I came on to you like an idiot.”

  “Apology accepted. What were you going to say before my father interrupted?”

  “Something corny like, what’s a beautiful girl like you doing in a dump like this?”

  “Oh, my god; you weren’t going to use that line on me?”

  “Cross my heart. I was so breathtaken by your infectious smile and stunning eyes that I couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say. I couldn’t finish the poem, for God’s sake.”

  “You don’t even know me, so why would you think a tired line like that would work.”

  Trick put his hand to his chest. “My dearest Princess, had I known you well, I would have been speechless.”

  Tanya’s high cheekbones reddened slightly and the corners of her mouth turned up again. “I met a lot of guys like you in school. All they wanted was to get into my panties.”

  “Where’d you go to school?” Trick looked at her. “I took you for the Miss Alaska type, not a scholar.

  “You don’t have to act so surprised. I have a degree in geology from Houston Tech. I work for Exxon in Prudhoe Bay.”

  Trick scooted his chair closer to Tanya. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Andrew downing another shot followed by another beer. “We’ve got a lot in common. I’m a geologist, U. of U. I’m monitoring seismic activity on Tanaga. Okay, I’m going to ask it. What’s a girl like you doing in here? We’re a long way from Prudhoe Bay.”

  Tanya’s face became serious. She tilted her head toward her father. “I’m taking him to rehab in the morning.”

  “Really?”

  Tanya pursed her lips and nodded. “Really.”

  Trick noticed Tanya hadn’t touched her drink. “Something wrong with your drink? I can get you another one?”

  “It has alcohol in it,” Tanya said. “Didn’t seem right to be drinking when my dad needs a designated driver.”

  Trick unconsciously pushed his can of beer away. “Anything I can do to help?”

  She looked at her father, whose head was nodding and nearly touching the table. “You can help me get him to the car.”

  “I’ll get the tab,” Trick said, getting up. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  The house where they took Tanya’s father overlooked Dutch Harbor. It wasn’t much different from the other houses that dotted the high ground around the town. About ten years overdue for a paint job, the clapboards were gray and worn. The rust-colored metal roof looked to be newer. Inside the two-bedroom cottage the wood stove still contained a fire, giving the room a toasty feeling.

  Once Andrew was in his room and Tanya had helped him into bed, she returned to the living room where Trick was stoking up the fire. “Thank you, Richard. Not many men would have done that.”

  Trick took notice that she called him Richard. “And not many call me Richard anymore. Does that mean we’re not friends?”

  “Sorry, you don’t look like a Trick to me. I’d rather think of you as Richard, it has a ring of royalty to it.”

  “King Richard. I like that.” Trick moved closer to her and took her hands. He gazed into her deep-brown eyes. “And
I’d rather think of you as Striking Eagle.”

  Tanya pushed him back. “Richard Magic, you are one of the strangest men I’ve ever met. One minute I think you are this complete gentleman and the next, you say something like that!”

  Trick raised his hands in defense, as if to ward off an attack. “If you knew my wife, you’d know why I have a hard time expressing myself.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Was; I should have said ex-wife.” He raised his left hand and wiggled his ring finger. “Been divorced six months, three days and,” he checked his watch, “twelve hours give or take for the time zones, but who’s counting?”

  “You want some tea? Sit, I’ll make us some.” Tanya went into the kitchen, not waiting for a response. Richard was a strange man, and she was attracted to him. She didn’t know why, but she was sure not going to let him get away until she found out more about him. Good men were a scarce commodity in the far north.

  Trick sat down on a worn brown leather couch. On the wall over a tiny window, a moose head stared back at him. It was so large its antlers were mere inches from the vaulted ceiling. Although the house was weathered on the outside, the inside was well kept. The walls were tongue-and-groove knotty pine, yellowed by the years of wood heat and stained by years of exposure to smoke from the wood stove. On the coffee table in front of him were copies of the latest Oil News. Below the coffee table Trick’s eye caught the edge of a book nearly hidden by several magazines. He reached for it and saw a picture of Tanya in a bathing suit on the front cover. The banner running diagonal across her front was emblazoned with the words, “MISS ALASKA 2009”. Trick was staring at the pages when Tanya returned with the tea. “I didn’t mean to snoop. You were Miss Alaska? I knew it!”

  “Guilty as charged” she said, placing a cup and saucer on the coffee table in front of him. “A convenient way of paying for my education. Dad’s drinking didn’t leave much for college. Enough about me. I want to know everything there is to know about Richard, Trick, Magic.”