Caldera

by Larry LaVoie

  He nodded and dropped the craft even closer to the ground until she felt as if the rotors would collide with the side of the mountain. “Not that close,” she yelled and the pilot immediately pulled up. She saw more magma.

  Suddenly a burst from the crater engulfed them in a dark cloud. Zero visibility. “My God, what happened?” She felt her heart trying to beat its way out of her chest. The pilot nosed the craft down and out of the cloud. A small landslide tumbled rocks down the north side of the cone. “That was close,” Carlene said, clinching her fists and feeling the dampness in her palms.

  “You need to see anything else?” the pilot asked. He was clearly agitated.

  Carlene shook her head. “Fly me back to Lake Village.”

  “Mind if I go home and change my underwear?” the pilot asked, pointing to magma that had splattered and scorched the Plexiglas canopy. On the way back she noticed the elk were gone. Their tracks abruptly turned into the shelter of the forest.

  Loaded down with instruments Carlene walked briskly across the parking lot toward the rear of the temporary headquarters at Lake Village. Her heart was still racing.

  “Carlene!”

  She saw Dr. Bainbridge coming toward her.

  “I tried to call you several times,” Bainbridge said lifting the portable mass spectrometer from her arms. She slipped her backpack from her shoulders and lifted the pager from her belt. Sure enough it had a message on it. “In all the excitement, I must not have felt it vibrating.”

  “Excitement?” Bainbridge asked. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  They entered her office. Carlene hung her pack on the back of a chair and turned to the doctor. She was shaking, nearly in tears. “I just about got us killed,” she cried.

  “Sit down and you can tell me about it. I brewed a fresh pot of coffee while I was waiting.” He poured a cup and handed it to her. “Take a deep breath, it can’t be that bad.”

  Carlene cupped her hands around the hot cup and recounted her experience. “I just wanted to check the tilt meter and get a gas sample,” she concluded. “We flew right into an eruption.”

  “We have to go back,” Bainbridge said.

  “What!” Carlene rose to her feet. “I’m not going back there.

  Bainbridge reached for the phone. “I need to see this for myself. I won’t blame you if you stay behind.”

  “I did get a gas sample,” Carlene said. “I can run the numbers and maybe we won’t have to go back.”

  A few minutes later she showed Bainbridge the results on her laptop. “Look at this.” The graph showed a reading that was high for that area, an outlier on her control chart.

  “No need to worry,” Bainbridge said in a calm voice. Too calm for what she had been through. He continued, “Periodic activity like you saw today doesn’t necessarily mean an eruption will occur. In 1959 a geyser exploded causing a safety concern for the tourists, but nothing else happened. You become accustomed to a little unusual activity if you spend enough time here. Remember the arsenic geyser? Nothing more than an isolated incident.”

  “I think magma on the surface is a little more threatening than a small steam explosion,” Carlene said. “Somehow I don’t feel any better.”

  Bainbridge shrugged. She watched him load data into his computer amazed at how unruffled he was.

  “We may need to go to a Level Two to get Peter Frank’s attention,” Bainbridge said glancing up from his laptop. “This kind of activity, while not serious in itself is a danger to the public. We need to clear the park or we’ll have some injured tourists on our hands.”

  She kept thinking she should feel relaxed. How did he do it? Was magma on the windshield of the helicopter just a part of the job? “What if it had hit the engine?” she said. “I told the pilot to go down so I could get a better look.”

  “You won’t make that mistake again,” Bainbridge said. His eyes twinkled like he was enjoying the banter.

  It was late afternoon when the helicopter returned. By then Carlene had changed her mind and decided to go along. She pointed out the charred spots on the canopy to Bainbridge as they loaded up their gear. He didn’t comment.

  They flew around Pelican Cone and Bainbridge got his bird’s eye view of the new magma stringers. Carlene watched Bainbridge trying to read his face, but she was unable to detect any unease from his neutral expression. If he was concerned he was doing a good job hiding it. They continued across Mirror Plateau to Amethyst Mountain. The sensor there was intact and a steam vent near the peak gave off enough heat that they were able to land on a patch of perlite, decomposed ryolitic glass that looks like black sand. They disembarked and made their way over ice-crusted snow to the GPS station. The metal post that held the solar panel was clearly out of position. With a few twists of a small ratchet, Carlene loosened the stainless steel clamp and realigned it. “What do you suppose caused it to move?” Carlene asked.

  Bainbridge shrugged. “High wind, maybe. Let’s take ground temperature and a gas sample while we’re here?”

  Carlene pointed the tip of a laser thermometer at the ground and stored the temperature to be loaded on her computer later. She collected a sample of steam and checked the condensate for acidity using a hand-held PH meter. “Three point two,” she said. The sample was highly acidic, but she had seen these readings before.

  Their next destination was the GPS seismic station on Mallard Lake Dome where they’d made temporary repairs a week earlier. It hadn’t surprised her that the station had stopped sending data again. She’d figured one of the wires had come loose, or a persistent rodent had chewed through them again.

  “I can’t land on snow,” the pilot said.

  “It looks stable and is only a foot deep,” Bainbridge said. “We were up here last week.”

  Carlene wondered about Bainbridge’s comment. Had he forgot about the avalanche? The pilot shook his head and hovered around looking for a flat spot. He gently settled the craft on the packed snow.

  Outside the helicopter, Carlene examined the Invar rod that held the GPS unit. “I can’t believe this,” she said to Bainbridge. “It’s bent like a pretzel.”

  “Unusual,” was all Bainbridge said, but she could sense the wheels turning in his head.

  Invar was a special alloy that had no thermal expansion and was quite strong. It was specifically used to insure the GPS unit would stay in contact with the tracking satellites. Carlene grabbed the metal pole. The sensor was housed in a small glass dome which was leaning at an awkward angle. She noticed a swatch of hair caught in a fitting where the sending unit was attached. “You suppose Sasquatch did this,” she joked.

  “I’m betting on an aggressive bull elk,” Bainbridge said. “Don’t bother trying to fix it. It’ll have to be replaced.”

  “This has happened before?” Carlene asked.

  Bainbridge smiled. “Get used to it.”

  “We need to go,” the pilot yelled.

  They turned in his direction and saw the helicopter with its rotors nearly touching the snow on one side. One of the struts had sunk into the snow causing it the helicopter to list.

  “We’d better get a move on,” Bainbridge said. He waved at the pilot and they trudged in his direction.

  “You got a shovel?” the pilot asked.

  Carlene pointed to the slope. “Under the snow somewhere. We lost it in an avalanche last week.”

  Bainbridge nudged her. “Too much information,” he said.

  “I want you both on the high side of the craft when I crank it up. I hope the hell this works,” the pilot said.

  “And if it doesn’t?” Carlene asked.

  “We’re scrambled eggs,” the pilot said. He wasn’t kidding.

  Behind the pilot, Bainbridge, the heavier of the two, hugged the high side of the craft. Carlene looked out the other side. The rotor was barely a foot from the ground. She grabbed Bainbridge by the waist and pulled herself up to him. The pilot made the sign of the cross and cranked the engine.

 
“Have you done this before,” Carlene yelled. The engine was cranking to a high-pitched scream.

  The pilot shook his head. “Hang on!” He increased power engulfing the craft in a blizzard. Carlene grabbed a strut along the wall as she felt the craft lurch. Her weight suddenly shifted against Bainbridge as the helicopter broke free, then just as quickly she was tossed against the opposite wall. She looked out the front of the craft and saw nothing but white.

  They leveled out and the pilot yelled, “Get in your seats and fasten your belts. Now!”

  Carlene scrambled to get her seatbelt fastened looking over at Bainbridge who was doing the same. “Like being inside a snow ball,” she yelled.

  Bainbridge narrowed his bushy eyebrows. “Rule number one on a field trip, don’t piss off the pilot. I think he’s had enough excitement for the day.”

  When the chopper was in clear air, Bainbridge leaned over to Carlene. She had dropped the hood of her parka. “You think you can handle things for a few more days?” he asked.

  “You’re going back on vacation?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she saw it wasn’t the look of someone going on vacation. He was clearly apprehensive.

  “Sanders’ office,” Bainbridge said. “I forwarded a report to him before we left, but I think I’m going to have to visit him in person.”

  “You don’t think he’s going to buy an Alert Level Two, do you?”

  “Unlikely,” Bainbridge said. His lips turned into a wry smile. “I plan on twisting his arm a bit.”

  Chapter 5

  Sumatra, Indonesia

  “Damn cell phones should have never been invented,” Jason Trask said as he retrieved the tiny device from a holster on his belt.

  He flipped it open. “Speak.”

  “What the hell do you mean refusing interviews with reporters?” It was Sandy Sanders. “Don’t you understand as an employee of USGS you’re a goodwill ambassador of the United States?”

  “Good evening, Sandy, or is it morning in California?”

  In fact it was 4 a.m. in California and Sanders was having trouble sleeping.

  “Are you drinking?”

  “Give me a break, it’s seven p.m. here and I’m about to have dinner.”

  “You need to keep in touch. I haven’t heard from you in two days.”

  “The reporters are on me like piranhas. They’re eating me alive.”

  “If you’d answered your phone when I first tried to reach you this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “You’re going to leave me in this hell hole, aren’t you?” Jason held the phone away from his ear.

  “We’ll talk about that when the activity dies down. In the meantime—”

  “I know, kiss the press on their rosy red ass.” Jason hung up. He should have expected Sanders reaction. He had moved from the Jakarta Sands Hotel to get away from the flesh eaters, now his boss wanted him to cuddle up to them. Sanders could fire him if he wanted, he wasn’t going to give the media another shot at accusing him of manslaughter. There was a limit to what one could take from the press, goodwill ambassador or not.

  He donned a pair of dark glasses and left his room to look for an out-of-the-way bar. It had rained that afternoon and the evening air felt like a steam bath. His clothes stuck to him like wet rags. How much longer am I going to be stuck in this godforsaken place? He wondered.

  USGS Headquarters, Menlo Park, California

  Sandy Sanders was staring out his office window at the morning traffic along Middlefield Road.

  “You have a call, Dr. Sanders,” his secretary said over the speaker phone.

  Sanders picked up, expecting it to be Milton Bainbridge complaining about the lack of USGS support for his request to close Yellowstone Park. He’d been up most of the night fretting about it. Bainbridge had a respected track record and when he asked for something it wasn’t without merit, yet this request to put Yellowstone on alert was absurd. Everyone knew that the volcano had vented itself harmlessly for thousands of years. Bainbridge may be a bit senile, he was thinking.

  Instead of Bainbridge on the line, the voice had a distinct Russian accent.

  “Dr. Sanders,” the voice said, “your wife and daughter are safe as long as you follow my instructions explicitly.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Shut up and listen. We have your wife and daughter and will not harm them as long as you do as I say.”

  “Is this some kind of a joke? I’m calling the police.”

  “That wouldn’t be wise. Not if you want them to live.”

  “How do I know you have them?”

  The next voice he heard was that of his ten-year-old daughter. He could hear the fear in her voice.

  “Daddy!”

  “You see, Dr. Sanders, there is not reason to panic. They are both alive for now.”

  Sandy Sanders dabbed at beads of sweat on his brow. “What do you want? I’m not wealthy.”

  “Please, Dr. Sanders, I assure you I am not a common criminal. You have something far more valuable to us than money.”

  Sanders slowly sat down. This couldn’t be happening. What possibly could he have that anyone wanted? “Don’t harm them. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  “You are not to authorize an evacuation of Yellowstone Park under any circumstances, nor are you to support the evacuation of any area around the park.”

  “I wasn’t planning on an evacuation. What gave you that idea?”

  “Then we understand each other, no?” The phone went dead.

  Sanders’ first thought was to contact the police. Wait, no. Maybe if he did what they asked. He was planning on waiting for more data anyway. Bainbridge was getting old. His hand still grasped the phone. He turned and looked at the receiver then put it down quietly. Why would anyone want to prevent the evacuation of a national park? It was a strange request. How long would they hold his wife and child hostage? Who were they?

  It didn’t make sense. The seismic activity within the park was high, but the only one concerned about it was Milton Bainbridge. Had someone hacked into his computer and stolen his e-mails?

  An hour later, Bainbridge leaned his head through the door of Sanders’ office. “Sandy, you got a minute?”

  “Milton, I wasn’t expecting you?” He flashed a nervous grin barely perceptible through his full red beard.

  “You should have been. You ignored my e-mail.”

  Sanders frowned and buried his face in a folder. “I was just going over your data. Level Two? That’s pretty aggressive isn’t it?”

  “Why not take a trip to Yellowstone, you can see for yourself. I think we have a serious situation. Tourists could get hurt.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t been concerned,” Sanders said, “I called Peter Frank and he said you were making sounds like you wanted to evacuate the park.”

  “He may dismiss it as making sounds, but as far as I’m concerned we have a serious situation developing. He has to order an evacuation and won’t do it without your support.

  “Milton, we’ve been through this before. Yellowstone has been doing this sort of thing forever. If it hasn’t stopped in a week, I’ll take another look. Keep me informed.” He picked up the report and buried his face in it again.

  Bainbridge stood there with his mouth open. “We’ve got magma at the surface of Pelican Cone for God’s sake! You know calling an alert after Yellowstone explodes isn’t going to do any good. This isn’t El Salvador.”

  Sanders shoved his rotund body from the desk and exploded to his feet. Bainbridge instinctively stepped back.

  “You weren’t there!” Sanders’ face turned as red as his beard. “You didn’t have your life threatened by a pack of money-grubbing business owners. Goddamned bunch of idiots; all they were concerned about was making money. It would have served them right to have their asses buried in lava.”

  “So now you’re going to let things slide until it’s too late,” Bainbridge said.

  “Come around here,” Sanders sa
id his voice back under control. He adjusted the monitor of his computer so Bainbridge could get a better look. “What do you see?”

  They were looking at a chart of recent volcanic activity in the Yellowstone system.

  “I see the same thing I saw the day before Mount St. Helens erupted,” Bainbridge said.

  Sanders lips turned down and he shook his head. “Before Pinatubo, there were earthquakes off the scale, so many they couldn’t count them. The earthquake activity in Yellowstone by historical standards is declining.”

  “We’re not talking Pinatubo. Yellowstone is a caldera with thousands of people living inside it. No one was living inside the crater of Pinatubo.”

  “You get me some proof, something I can take to Peter and I’ll back you up. Until then stay out of my office.”

  Bainbridge stormed out of the building. The report he had e-mailed should have been proof enough. As he reached his rental car, he was still mulling over what Sanders had said. True the increase in seismic events had subsided, but that wasn’t that uncommon. Pinatubo seismic activity turned on and off sporadically before the eruption, so had St. Helens. The increase in gas, the rise in temperature of the various geysers, while not above the upper limits of what had been recorded before should have been enough to constitute a public safety risk. It was as clear as he could make it. Sanders has his head up his ass, he mused. Still, he knew he wouldn’t get any support for closing the park unless Sanders was on board. That looked impossible at this moment.

  On his way to the airport he called Carlene and gave her the bad news.

  “Don’t feel too bad. You didn’t expect Sanders to back you,” Carlene said.

  “You’re right, but I didn’t expect him to kick me out of his office, either. I’ll be a few days returning. I’m going to fly to Salt Lake and pick up some extra clothes at my house. Get ready for a long summer.”

  Joseph Talant had used laser listening devices before but was always amazed at how clearly they picked up distant voices with the new filtering software. The van had been parked on a side street with a clear view USGS Western Headquarters. He had heard and recorded the conversation between Bainbridge and Sanders. Sandy Sanders was not going to be a problem. Still they would hold on to his wife and child until this played out. Bainbridge? He could be trouble, he thought. He closed up shop and phoned in has report to Telska, his superior in Boston.