On this particular phone call, though, there would be no joy or frivolity.
“Hannah, do not mention my name or let on that you know who I am. I have to see you immediately, but I cannot say why. I’ll explain when we meet, but I need for you to trust me on this.”
Hannah was equal parts intrigued and frightened. Not for herself, but for her dear friend. For there seemed to be terror in her voice. She was genuinely afraid.
“Just tell me when and where. I’ll be there.”
“Do you remember where we had dinner the night of your birthday last year? Don’t mention the name of the place. Just tell me whether you remember it.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Do you think you can find it again?”
“Yes. I believe so.”
“Can you be there on Tuesday at eight?”
Hannah winced. She had a mandatory training session on Tuesday morning. One she’d weaseled out of the first time it was scheduled. And one which Brent had told her she’d better not miss the second time around.
“I’ll be there, no problem.”
She had no clue what she’d tell Brent, but it didn’t matter much. Pleasing Brent was very low on her list of priorities when a good friend was in trouble.
“Thank you dear. See you then.”
Hannah intentionally waited until mid-afternoon to pay Brent a visit. She’d learned from past experience that his mid-morning irritability usually disappeared in the afternoon, after he’d gorged himself at the Italian restaurant down the street.
She picked up her Denver Broncos coffee mug. The one Brent had given her when someone told him she was a fan of the team. In reality, she hated the Broncos. Hated football, in fact. But Brent himself was a big time fan of the team, so she’d played along.
One could never tell when such a thing could play well in currying favor with the boss.
Broncos cup in hand, she rapped on the jamb of his open office door.
“Hey boss, you busy?”
Brent looked up and saw the coffee mug in her hand, then smiled.
“Hey, how about them Broncos, huh? They’re going all the way again this year.”
“Yep. They sure are. All they gotta do is keep on scoring all those home runs.”
Brent laughed uproariously, thinking Hannah was making a joke.
The truth was Hannah didn’t know beans about football. Just that the men had muscles and wore tight pants. She figured that was all she really needed to know.
“Sorry I never came back to the meeting, boss. I got kind of sidetracked. Company business, of course.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I know it was a snoozer. I almost put myself to sleep. But when the board sends me a message saying everybody needs to be trained on fiscal responsibility I gotta do what they say. I’d have slipped out too, except it would have been kind of awkward, since it was my meeting and all.”
He was in a good mood now that his stomach was full of cannelloni.
That would make the next part of the conversation much easier.
“Brent, I need a couple of days off for personal reasons.”
“Why?”
“See, that’s the whole reason for the personal thing.”
“When?”
“Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.”
“You understand this is Friday, right?”
“Yes, sir. That didn’t slip past me.”
“And you need three days off, with absolutely no notice and no good reason?”
“I have a good reason, Brent. Really, I do. It’s just that I can’t share it with you. It’s… well, it’s extremely personal.”
His face turned from one of annoyance to one of great sympathy.
“Oh, my… you didn’t lose the baby, did you?”
“No. The baby is fine.”
“Good. Wouldn’t want to lose another little Broncos fan.”
She held her tongue for a split second, then replied, “No, sir. Wouldn’t want that.”
“Don’t you have computer refresher training on Tuesday?”
“Yes, sir. But you know I already know everything they’re going to teach. I’ve been through that class so many times I could teach it myself.”
“I know, Hannah. But it’s an annual requirement. You know that.”
“I know. And every year I spend half a day going to that worthless class, then the rest of the week trying to catch up from the half day I’ve lost.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “Okay. I’ll cover for you. But it’s a good thing you love the Broncos as much as I do. I wouldn’t do this for just anybody, you know.”
“I know, Brent. And I’d kiss you except for that whole boss-employee policy thingy. Thank you very much.”
On her way out the door she pumped her fist and said, “Go Broncos!”
She had no idea why. But she’d seen Brent do it a number of times and thought it might make him happy.
Chapter 15
Tuesday night at ten of eight, Hannah sat alone at a table for two at Taqueria Guadalajara, outside one of Phoenix’s best malls.
She saw Gwen walk through the doorway in a droopy red hat.
She had to stifle a smile, for she’d never seen Gwen wear a hat before.
Droopy or otherwise.
The light moment was short-lived. As she stood to hug her friend, Gwendoline instead stopped short of her and asked, “You haven’t ordered anything yet, have you?”
“Um… no. Just this glass of wine. Why?”
Gwen pulled a twenty dollar bill from her purse, tossed it on the table, and took Hannah’s hand.
Without a word she pulled her friend through the restaurant and out the door.
She spoke not a word for several minutes, until they were on Interstate 10 heading away from the center of the city.
Hannah finally got the courage to ask, “Gwen, what on earth is going on?”
Her friend took a deep breath. Hannah got the sense she was getting ready to relieve herself of a great burden.
And perhaps to place it on Hannah’s shoulders instead.
“Hannah, I’m sorry to be so secretive. I’m in fear of my life.”
“What? Why? What happened?”
“You and your data happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“The data Ron brought back before his accident. My team and I went over it, just as every other data interpretation team has since back in the 1950s. We followed exactly the same protocol. We assembled the raw data and translated it into interpretive and comparative data. Then we compared it against all previous data, line item by line item, location by location.
“When we were finished we developed a detailed report. Just as protocol called for. Just as they’ve always done.
“I swore all my workers to the highest level of secrecy. I knew there was going to be some serious blowback. I just didn’t anticipate how much of it there was going to be.”
Hannah’s head was swimming.
“Gwen, what on earth are you trying to tell me? What was in the data, exactly?”
“Hannah, the Yellowstone Caldera has gone active.”
“Gwen, the caldera has always been active. That’s what generates the geysers. That’s what generates the earthquakes. We’ve always known it was active. That’s why we’ve done the monitoring for so long.”
“No, honey. You’ve got to listen to me. It’s heating up. It’s building pressure. Not thermal pressure. Molten pressure. It’s in the early stages of an eruption.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Yes. I’m totally convinced. The pressure is building. So’s the heat. It’s surpassed every one of the thresholds the Geo Survey established back in 1955. Every darned one of them. I brought all the data with me, so you can double check our work. I pray to God in heaven you can find something we got wrong. Something we misinterpreted. Something we messed up. Because as much as I’d hate to walk hat in hand into the director’s office and admit we blew it
, I’d much rather do that than sit back and watch twenty to thirty percent of the United States get blown away.”
Hannah was stunned.
If one of the clowns in her office had presented her with such news, she’d have assumed it was a prank and would have dumped a cup of coffee over his head.
But this was Gwen. Gwen wasn’t just a good friend; she was as competent a geologist as anyone Hannah had ever met. She was at the top of her field in geothermal and seismic analysis. A far better than average volcanologist.
By anybody’s standards, one of the top experts in her field.
Chapter 16
When she finally found her tongue again Hannah tried to distance herself from the gravity of the situation.
“You said Ron had an accident?”
“You didn’t know? I called Brent and asked him to let you know.”
“He never mentioned it. What kind of accident?”
“In his car. He went off the road and into a ravine. His car rolled several times and burned. The highway patrol found him the next day. That’s why I’m terrified.”
“Oh my God. But Gwen, you can’t get paranoid. Car accidents happen.”
“I tried to tell myself that. But two of my analysts have disappeared. One is a mother of two. She called her husband before she left work and told him to pick up some breadsticks on the way home. Said she was going to make him lasagna for dinner. Then she vanished from the face of the earth. Never picked up her kids from daycare. The police have been looking all over for her and can’t find her or her car anywhere.
“The other one, Stanley Holt, went out to pick up a pizza and never made it there. Never made it back home, either. His girlfriend went online and said his debit card was used at an ATM in Marietta, Georgia two days later. But he never used his cell phone after he called to order the pizza.”
“What about the other analysts?”
“They’ve been called into the director’s office, one by one. So was I. We were warned not to tell anyone of our findings. No one. We were threatened with jail time under the Patriot Act. A matter of national security, they said. We had to sign non-disclosure statements.
“I told them we had a duty to warn the public if they were in danger.
“They said they’d tell the public in due time, after they’d developed a disaster response plan. That telling the public too early would just cause panic and chaos. They said they wouldn’t let us leave the room until we signed. They kept me there for four hours, and wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom or get anything to drink. It was terrible. I never thought our own government would treat us in such a manner.”
“Who was it, Gwen? Was it the FBI?”
“I don’t know, dear. I kept asking for their ID, and told them I was going to report their behavior to their superiors. They said their superiors were the ones who sent them. And that their orders came down from the White House.
“They wouldn’t give me their names or anything. It was all one-sided. And one of them, the one who seemed to be in charge, told me something that made my skin crawl.
“He told me if I continued to be difficult that I might disappear like some of the others had. Then he asked if I was a safe driver. I told him I’ve never had an accident, or even a ticket.
“He said there’s a first time for everything.”
Hannah understood for the first time why her friend was so secretive. And why she was constantly checking her rear view mirror as she drove.
“Why me, Gwen? Why endanger your life to tell me about it?”
Gwen seemed at a loss for words. When she finally spoke again, after a full two minutes, she chose her words very carefully.
“Hannah, we’ve got to warn the public. I don’t trust the government, and neither should you. I want you to do two things for me. I want you to take the data and interpret it yourself. See if there was a mistake in our analysis. See if our means were flawed in any way. I pray we were just mistaken. If we were, I want you to find our errors.
“And there’s one more thing…”
“What is it?”
“If something happens to me, or if I disappear, I want you to promise me you’ll get the word out. Do it smartly. Anonymously. Don’t use your real identity, or they’ll come after you too. And don’t use the normal channels. Stay away from the TV networks and newspapers. The government has spies at every single one of them and will shut them down before they can share the information.
“Use other ways. Social media. Twitter. Facebook. Set up fake accounts and tell the people. They have a right to know. Just because the government may find it inconvenient to tell them doesn’t make it right to withhold the information from them.”
Hannah’s eyes welled up. She didn’t want to lose her friend. But she had no choice but to make the promise.
“I will, Gwen. I’ll do all that. But only if you agree not to mention this to anyone else ever again. You’ve put yourself in grave danger by telling me about it. Don’t go out on that limb any farther.”
“Agreed.”
Gwen dropped her off at her car in the restaurant parking lot, but popped her trunk first and gave Hannah two file boxes full of paperwork and several computer disks. She wished her friend good luck, hugged her and left.
Hannah noticed a car in the back of the parking lot turn on its lights and pull out shortly after she did, going the same direction. She almost called Gwen to notify her, then stopped when she saw the car turn left at the traffic light on the corner. Gwen had turned right.
“Oh, great,” she muttered to herself. “Now I’m getting paranoid. I may have to start wearing a tin hat and watching the skies for black helicopters.”
Hannah had told Tony she’d probably be too tired to catch the redeye, and had made a reservation at a local motel.
Now she started to wonder whether it was wise to have made it in her own name.
A block away from the motel was a strip mall which contained a store which sold what Hannah had always called “disposable phones.” She used to frequent Checker Wireless because she had a bad habit of killing her cell phones. Four times in a year she murdered them. One by dropping it into a public toilet while out barhopping with her friends. Another by leaving it in her pocket and running her jeans through a washing machine. Another she left on the top of her car when she was loading groceries. She forgot to remove it and drove off, later finding it smashed into tiny pieces in the parking lot.
The fourth phone she dropped at just the right angle. It landed on the sidewalk and shattered the face, and never worked quite right after that.
Tony started calling her a serial phone killer.
She’d gotten better in the previous year, but still remembered where to go to purchase low quality but dirt cheap phones which were untraceable.
She walked into Checker Wireless ten minutes before they closed and bought two identical flip phones.
She hated flip phones, but they were half the price of the better ones. And they were only temporary. She paid cash for two activation cards, each containing five hundred minutes of data and fifty text messages.
She didn’t call Tony for another hour. She wasn’t sure how she wanted to word the conversation.
Actually, the real reason she was hesitant was because she wasn’t sure she wanted to bring Tony into the mix. If Gwen was right, she could be endangering her husband.
At a bit before eleven she could wait no longer, for surely Tony was wondering why she hadn’t called yet.
She dialed his number, still not completely sure what she wanted to say.
“Hi, baby.”
“Hi, Tony. I want you to be quiet and listen to me. You may think I’m playing some silly prank on you, but I’m really not. Okay?”
He hesitated for a moment and almost laughed. But something in her voice told him she was deadly serious.
“Okay. Go ahead.”
Chapter 17
“Okay, baby. You’ll have to trust me on this. Do you remember last
year when we took that vacation to Branson and our car broke down on the way back? Don’t mention the place, just tell me if you remember it.”
“Yes, of course.”
“I want you to get in your car and go there. Tonight, if possible. If you’re too tired to drive tonight then go tomorrow. If you beat me there, check into the same motel we stayed at while our car was being fixed. Do you think you can find it?”
“Honey, are you in any danger?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I want to be extra cautious until we know for sure.”
“Hannah, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry, baby. I really am. I’ll explain everything to you when I see you again, okay? I’ll be there to meet you sometime tomorrow.”
“Okay. What else?”
“I want you to being both your computers and a printer.”
“What for?”
“I can’t tell you now. I’ll explain everything tomorrow, and then you’ll understand my secrecy.”
“Okay. I won’t be able to sleep anyway, so I might as well head out tonight.”
“Tony, there’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“I need for you to turn off your cell phone after we hang up. Leave it off until we meet up. If it’s on they can track you.”
“Who can track me and why? Hannah, baby, you’re really starting to worry me now. Just what have you gotten yourself into?”
“Just promise me, Tony. Promise me you’ll turn it off and leave it off until we see each other tomorrow. If you love me and our baby, you’ll do this for me.”
“Okay. I will. Be careful.”
“You too, baby. Goodbye.”
Tony was right. Even if he’d gone to bed that night he wouldn’t have slept a wink. He’d have tossed and turned and worried.
So he did the next best thing. He packed a small bag with three days worth of clothing, left a message on the answering machine at work telling his boss there was a family emergency to attend to and that he’d be back to work in a few days. Then he put several hundred miles beneath the wheels of his Honda.
The Yellowstone Event: Book 1: Fire in the Sky Page 5