Rain of Fire (44 page)

Two hours later, he felt on top of the world. He stood on the mountaintop, frigid wind tearing at his parka and waterproof pants.

The weather ceiling did not obscure his view of the ranges surrounding Nez Perce. Over the shoulder of Mt. Chittenden to the southwest, he caught a glimpse of the Tetons nearly a hundred miles away. Thick clouds streamed into Jackson Hole, the winter front on its way.

Nick slid off his pack, brought out his water bottle, and took a pain pill for his throbbing head. He capped the bottle, sat, and rested on the ground littered with lightweight reddish cinders. When he’d run into the marble-sized material a few hundred yards down from the crest, he’d found it tougher walking than usual.

As he had done each time he climbed to the summit, he studied the shape of the mountain for clues as to what a new eruption might look like. There were several possibilities.

With magma beneath the peak, he thought the relatively soft material of the cinder cone might be ejected to form a small crater, as he’d told Kyle and Wyatt. Alternatively, if the molten rock located the zone of weakness along the Saddle Valley Fault, it could come rocketing to the surface along a long fissure, something he had not mentioned.

Or the whole mountain could blow. Nick was betting his life that didn’t happen.

He’d taken gravity readings all the way up, marking the positions with stone cairns. Data taken later in the same spot would reveal whether the cone was shrinking or swelling.

He drew out one of the silica tubes for a gas sample. The largest fumarole vented about thirty yards down from the mountain summit. Three days ago, when Nick had approached the three-inch opening it hissed like a kettle. Today a foot-wide aperture to hell roared like a furnace. Yellow crystals of sulfur rimmed the opening.

Nick donned leather gloves, knelt on the upwind side and turned his face away from the hydrogen chloride fumes. Feeling the heat, he wished for the moon suit he’d left at his camp. Next time he came up, he’d have to wear it.

After taking samples at two smaller fumaroles, he checked his watch. Already eleven, no way he could get back to call Kyle by noon. He’d considered lugging the four pound telephone up with him, but had wanted to collect samples.

Being up here alone was a two-sided proposition. He relished having a front row seat to watch a dormant volcano come to life, yet he wished Kyle were here to see it with him. It would even be nice to have Wyatt to joust with.

Nick started back down the mountain, stopping to take gravity readings in the same places as before. He searched for evidence the mountain continued to bulge.

“Come on, Nick,” Kyle said to the silent telephone in Wyatt’s office. The clock on the computer said it was almost one.

“Our boy is probably just caught up in the excitement,” Wyatt said.

“I wish we could call him, but Radford didn’t give us a number.”

“If he’s walking around, he’s not set up to take calls. The antenna must be aimed just right to pick up the satellite signal.”

“I can’t stand this.” Kyle fidgeted with a piece of glassy obsidian on the desk.

Wyatt studied her restless hands. “I suppose I should be pleased his being an adrenaline junkie came between you.”

“That isn’t really the problem.” She tossed the stone from hand to hand. “I would hate this waiting and wondering what danger he’s gotten into, but the bottom line is that he chooses his love affair with volcanoes over everything. It’s the only commitment he’s ever made.”

Wyatt sipped coffee he’d made from powdered instant. “I guess after Marie and the others you could say I’ve never made a lasting commitment.”

Kyle reached for his hand. “This thing with Nick has taught me that I don’t believe in miracles either. But, whether we knew it or not, Wyatt, you and I have been committed to each other for a long time.”

The telephone rang. She and Wyatt both started.

He passed the receiver across the desk to her.

“Nick?” Her mouth was dry.

“I’m on the mountain.” He sounded far away, as though more than miles separated them. “Set up a temporary camp at station four.”

“We saw Radford before he left with his family. He told us you’d gone.”

“Thanks for doing this.”

“Anything for you,” she said, with lightness she did not feel. “How’s your head?” An image of him, pale in a bloodstained bandage made her close her eyes.

“Only bothers me when the pills wear off.”

Anger broke through. “Nick, you shouldn’t be …”

“Save your breath, Kyle,” Wyatt stage-whispered

“What are you seeing from the seismic stations?” Nick evaded.

The focus of her pique shifted to Hollis. “Not a thing.” Across the desk, Wyatt was bringing up some of the older data, as it was all they had. Ruefully, she realized they had only themselves to blame for setting up the roadblock. “That weasel Delbert cut Wyatt’s security access. We can only get to the public data that’s forty-eight hours old.”

“That’s no good,” Nick grumbled. “This morning I made a gravity traverse to the peak and back. In the hour between readings, the mountain swelled rapidly.”

“How rapidly? We’ve already seen unprecedented rates of rise.”

“Up over a foot,” he related dispassionately.

“A foot an hour?” She clenched the receiver. “Nick, get out of there.”

“Call the chopper,” Wyatt said loudly. “Start walking down now.”

Kyle cast a worried look out the office window. Still no sign of the front, just cloudy bright. “If you don’t leave before the weather socks in, you may not be able to.”

As though she and Wyatt had said nothing, Nick went on, “It’s too bad you can’t look at the GPS data from all the stations. That would give us a picture of what’s bulging where.”

“If I can get that information, will you come down?” Kyle bargained. “We don’t need your gravity data if we can get to the changing elevations another way.”

“Any type of data will help us. What we learn here may save lives in some more populated volcanic area.” When she did not reply, he said in a lower tone, “Kyle … I don’t really have a death wish.”

She didn’t have an answer for that. “Stay by the phone, Nick. I’ll call you back as soon as I have something.”

“I want to go back up and take some more readings on the east side,” he said, “so I won’t be able to take incoming calls.”

“Nick.”

“I’ll keep the phone with me and call you every ten minutes,” he promised.

As soon as the line was disconnected, Kyle told Wyatt. “Start establishing a baseline from the GPS records in the public area. I’m going to get us back in.”

“How? Colin’s probably still on the plane from Tokyo.”

She began punching buttons on the phone. “I’m calling Hollis.”

Listening to the ringing, she considered how to play it. Butting chests wasn’t likely to be the best approach with him drunk on his imagined authority.

On the third ring, he answered. She envisioned him behind the desk he’d set up facing the door for intimidation.

“Hollis, this is Kyle. I’m in Wyatt Ellison’s office at Yellowstone.”

“What are you doing there? I thought the park was evacuated.”

She controlled her tone with an effort. “We’re trying to get some vital real time data for Nick Darden at USGS. He flew into the park this morning to measure gravity and discovered Nez Perce Peak is swelling at a foot an hour.”

“Good God.” Hollis’s imperial tone was replaced by uncertainty.

“The thing is,” she said evenly, “Wyatt is having some trouble logging in to the site. We need to give Nick the safest place to wait until he can be picked up by helicopter.”

Hollis was silent. She wondered whether he was suspicious of her story or realizing the magnitude of his mistake.

Wyatt reached his long arm across the desk and took the receiver out of her hand. “Get with the program, Hollis. You might try firing Kyle, but you can’t cut off the National Park Service without getting your ass into a serious sling.”

She heard Hollis sputtering as Wyatt kept talking. “Right now, no one knows except her and me that you cut off my security access. But if they find out what a childish stunt you pulled with Darden’s life at stake, you’re going to be looking for a job.” He handed the receiver back.

“If they find out?” she heard Hollis say faintly.

“Nobody has to know,” she told him. “Unless something happens to Nick.”

Five minutes later, they were in. Kyle pulled up the GPS elevation data and compared it to the information that was several days old. The mountain had come up three feet the day the quake killed the horses, twice that yesterday, and they confirmed that the rate was now a foot an hour and rising.

“Maybe Nick is still set up at station four.” Kyle spoke around a lump in her throat. “Let’s call and warn him.”

T
he first jolt of the quake knocked the satellite phone off the chest containing the seismic station equipment. The second sent Nick sprawling.

Lying on his side, he had a view down the Saddle Valley and up the north flank of Nez Perce Peak. He told himself there had been plenty of tremors, so many that he should be inured to them by now.

This was different.

There was a noise like an approaching plane, but he didn’t believe a military fighter would be in the vicinity. Rather, he suspected the frenzied rush of heated rocks and gases, hurtling up the final vent toward the surface. The din continued to grow.

He glanced at his watch. 1:12
PM.
Locating his camera, he figured there was no sense being the only one to see what happened next.

With hands that shook, he raised the Nikon and tried to focus. The quaking of the ground grew more violent and he lay on his stomach and planted his elbows.

He saw it first, of course, because of the great difference between the speed of light and sound. The peak in front of him seemed to shimmer as though seen through heat waves. Reddish cinders danced.

Then there was lift, almost in slow motion as the top quarter of the mountain peeled free. Seen through the telephoto, it looked as though Nick sat directly in the path of millions of tons of flying rock. He steeled himself not to flinch or stop taking pictures.

The concussion shoved his chest and he collapsed with his face in the dirt. Now, nothing was in slow motion. The explosion of sound first surrounded and then penetrated him. His bones vibrated. A sharp stab of nausea unsettled his internal organs and he feared losing control of his bowels. Pinned by the pressure wave, he lifted his hand and touched wetness on his cheek. His eardrums must be bleeding.

Here it was. What he’d desired, angled, and prayed for. In awe of Nature’s display, he felt completely insignificant. What happened in the next few seconds would decide his fate … or at least whether he was to survive this initial eruption. There was no telling how many or how large subsequent blasts might be. Whatever he might wish now, he was stuck with his decision.

And what he’d told Kyle about being killed by a volcano.

If the side of the crater had broken down, resulting in a lateral outburst, he’d be done for already. The fact that he was still alive meant this force was directed upward. Shoving his camera inside his parka, Nick managed to make it to his feet.

As the shock wave subsided, rocks thrown out of the volcano, known as bombs for obvious reasons, peppered the sky.

He’d heard about rock falls. The secret was to dodge the bombs, a dicey experience, while trying not to panic. Especially not to turn your back and flee, when every instinct screamed, “Run for your life.”

Nick’s feeling of being inconsequential rose. Even as he braced like a tennis player about to receive service, he knew one false move could mean a broken limb or being smashed in the chest or head.

Above the mountain, a dark column rose into the sky. Tongues of what looked like flame leaped from the mouth of a new crater where the relatively soft cinder cone had been. Fumes stung his nose and made his eyes water. Blinking, Nick struggled to focus on the incoming missiles.

There came a mean-looking one, an irregular, twisted bomb shaped like a piece of driftwood. He started to feint left, then watched its spiraling path and stood his ground. It landed a few feet away, finishing the job on the satellite phone.

“Son of a bitch.” Definitely no life flight now.

Here was another pitch, headed straight for the plate. He jumped right and watched it crash to earth. Adrenaline surged as another projectile landed in the middle of the solar panel for the station. Bits of silica and plastic flew.

More rocks fell, glowing crimson and ochre, and giving off steam as they landed. Nick darted this way and that with the sinking sensation that his opponent was running him all over the court. Several plum-sized pellets hit, one on his shoulder and the other on his foot. Both stung and he felt the heat through his clothing and boot.

He decided it would be better to seek cover than continue the deadly game of dodge ball. Gasping for breath, he snatched up his backpack and dove behind the storage chest.

With his pack as protection for his head and shoulders, he hunched down behind the barrier and looked toward the eruption’s source. Rocks the size of cars ejected from the crater to bounce and tumble down the flanks he’d surveyed not two hours ago.