It had been a long, bloody night. He and his unit had managed to haul their injured teammate out of the steaming valley, where a helicopter had evacuated the man to the nearest hospital—missing most of his right leg, dazed on morphine, blood seeping through the pressure bandage on his stump.
Ryan had tried to take a nap afterward, but every time he closed his eyes, he flashed to the ax blade as it bit deep into the man’s thigh . . . or he pictured Chin taking that severed limb and tossing it into the smoldering pit, as if throwing another log onto a bonfire. But Ryan understood. They couldn’t risk contamination.
Finally giving up, knowing he’d never sleep, he had climbed out of his tent and kept watch on the valley with the geologist. Over the course of the night, the scientist had set up a whole battery of equipment: video cameras, infrared scanners, seismographs, something he called a magnetometer, used for measuring the strength and direction of the magnetic field. He knew his own men were reporting a growing interference with radios and cell phones. In the past hour, compasses all pointed toward the chasm. But worst of all, the tremors and quakes were rattling the mountain and were escalating in both frequency and severity.
“Unit’s evacuated the area,” Ryan said, glancing back to the open-air Jeep parked nearby. “We’ve pulled back to a base two miles down the mountain. Is that far enough?”
“Should be,” Chin said, distracted. “Come look at this.”
The geologist knelt beside a video monitor. It displayed footage from a remote camera left beside the pit. Chin pointed to a hellish glow radiating from the center of the old blast site, illuminating a dark column of ashy smoke rising into the air.
“The geyser hasn’t blown in over forty minutes,” the geologist said. “I think all the water from the hot spring got boiled away.”
“So what’s coming out now?”
“An outgassing. Hydrogen, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide. Whatever process is going on here, it must have drilled beyond the spring and into the volcanic strata underpinning these mountains.”
As Ryan stared, a flash of fire shot through the dark column, then vanished. “What was that?”
Chin sat back, his face going pale.
“Doc?” Ryan pressed.
“I think . . . maybe a lava bomb . . .”
“What?” His voice rose to a girlish pitch. “Lava? Are you telling me that thing’s starting to erupt?”
As they watched, another two flashes streaked out of the column and struck the floor of the pit. A molten gobbet of rock rolled across the surface, leaving no doubt as to what was happening.
“Time to bug out of here,” Chin said, standing up. He ignored the equipment and began rapidly packing all the flash drives that held his data.
Ryan got in his face. After what had happened to Private Bellamy, he had questioned the geologist about this exact scenario. “I thought you said this wouldn’t happen. That even drilling into a volcano wouldn’t make it blow.”
“I said that usually doesn’t happen.” He spoke in a rush as he worked. “Occasionally deep-earth drilling has caused explosions when a borehole hits a superhot magma chamber, vaporizing drilling fluid and allowing lava to flow. Or take, for example, a case three years ago. In Indonesia, a drilling mishap gave birth to a massive mud volcano that continues to erupt today. So, no, it ordinarily doesn’t happen—but there’s nothing ordinary about what’s going on here.”
Ryan took a deep breath, remembering Bellamy’s leg. The geologist was right. What was going on here was off the map and into the weeds. He needed to get his team evacuated even farther back.
He lifted his radio but only got a squelch of static. He spun in a circle, got a brief snatch of words, then lifted the radio to his lips. “This is Major Ryan! Pull back! Pull back now! Get the hell off this mountain!”
A garbled response came through, but he didn’t know if it was acknowledgment or confusion. Did they hear me?
Chin straightened, snapping closed his metal briefcase. “Major, we must get clear of here. Now!”
Punctuating his words, the ground gave a violent shake. Ryan lost his footing and fell to one knee. They both turned to the video feed. On the chasm floor, the remote camera had been knocked over on its side, but the view remained on the pit.
The geyser had returned—but rather than steam and water, a jetting column of boiling mud and fiery rock now bubbled and splashed from the hole, heavily obscured by a churning cloud of smoke and ash.
Underfoot, the ground continued to shake, nonstop now, vibrating through the soles of Ryan’s boots.
“Move out!” Chin yelled.