Rain of Fire

by Linda Jacobs

  “How many passengers can you carry?” “Six, but I’m not waiting around here on anybody.” Her heart sank. “What if I told you a volcanologist from the United States Geological Survey is on the mountain? I’m Dr. Kyle Stone, and Ranger Wyatt Ellison and I have lost communication with Nick Darden from Park Service Headquarters here in Mammoth.” She threw a desperate look at Wyatt, wishing he could come up with the magic words she needed.

  To her surprise, the mention of Nick being on the mountain was the key. Deering said, “I’ll land in front of Headquarters in half an hour.” He paused. “Weather permitting.”

  As Kyle hung up, she cast a worried glance out the window at the swirling flakes. “We’re on,” she told Wyatt, who had subsided back into his seat. “Chris Deering will fly us.”

  “No kidding?” He pushed up. “Deering was the one who picked up David …”

  “Weather permitting,” she advised.

  Wyatt frowned. “This is one bitch of an arctic front. Wind chill on the mountain’s going to be well below zero.”

  Kyle looked at her lightweight, hoodless down jacket lying crushed on the seat. “The pilot said he’d be here in thirty minutes.”

  “Then let’s get some winter gear from my place.”

  She slung on her coat while he put on his heaviest uniform jacket.

  “Wait,” he said. “We forgot to call Teri.”

  But when he called the guardhouse at the north entrance, there was no answer.

  “She probably took off when she heard the eruption.” Kyle gathered her coat and headed into the hall.

  Pausing to turn off the coffeepot in the employee lounge and scatter the ashes on the lobby hearth, Wyatt led the way through the arctic entry. As he opened the door, a gust caught it and slammed the portal back against the clapboard outer wall. The front had most definitely arrived.

  Kyle followed him out, struggling to see as the driven snowflakes battered her eyelashes. Sure enough, this wind cut through her clothing as though she wore nothing. By the time they reached Wyatt’s Bronco, her cheeks and nose hurt from the frigid gusts.

  When he turned onto the road to his house, the snow let up a bit, allowing Kyle a hazy view of the long shoulder of Mount Everts across the Gardner River. She could only imagine the distant eruption cloud.

  Three minutes later, Wyatt parked in front of his duplex. Once more, Kyle followed his slightly longer-legged stride through the blowing chill. When she was halfway across the lawn, an earth tremor rolled through.

  Wyatt put his key to the lock as another, sharper shock triggered. “I swear I didn’t do it,” he joked.

  She tried to smile.

  Inside, he flicked the hall light switch. Nothing happened. He moved swiftly to the kitchen. Kyle heard snapping and saw no illumination.

  “I’m surprised the power stayed on as long as it did,” she said.

  Wyatt came back into the dimness of the hall. She expected him to head with alacrity toward wherever he stored his winter gear, but instead he came to her. “Ten deep breaths.” He held out his arms and smiled beneath his dark moustache that she now knew was silky and soft.

  “Got time for three.” She stepped forward until they were chest to chest; layers of down compressed against his wool coat. Though one of his buttons dug into her breastbone, she pressed closer.

  Wyatt slipped his hands up under her jacket and spread them over her back. She felt him inhale deeply and did the same, finding out how quick and shallow her respirations had been.

  “We’ll find Nick,” Wyatt said. “He’ll be all right.”

  She wished that were possible.

  They held each other in silence, while gray light slanted through the small glass pane in the front door and filtered in from the kitchen. In the midst of chaos, the feel of Wyatt and the even rise and fall of his chest reassured her.

  Though their embrace probably lasted less than a minute, when they broke apart she believed she could face the mountain.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  OCTOBER 1

  Wyatt waited with Kyle on the porch of the locked Headquarters Building. He shoved at his bulky coat sleeve and checked his watch’s LED readout. “Two fifty-seven.” Cold from the stone rail seeped through long underwear, fleece pants, and an outer “windproof” layer, so he eased back to his feet.

  “Coming up on two hours since we last heard from Nick,” Kyle observed. Looking a little like a tire company ad, she was swathed from neck to thighs in his thickest roly-poly parka. A pair of his ski pants bunched above her boots.

  “The chopper will be here soon,” he said.

  She rewarded his effort with a faint lip movement that might be a smile. “I hope the pilot can make it.”

  Though the snow had let up, the wind weaved it into sinuous snakes, undulating across the road. Wyatt had seen it like that a hundred times, an inauspicious omen of deeper accumulation.

  Feeling the wind chill on his hands, he reached into his pack. First, he encountered the topographic map he’d put in, thinking of sketching the changes to the land’s contour. Then he rummaged beneath the map for insulated gloves.

  A faint whump-whump came from above.

  Wyatt saw Kyle strain her neck to see, but there was nothing except clouds heavy with snow.

  The rotors’ chop grew louder, along with the engine’s whine. A dark speck emerged from the low ceiling over Cannon Hill’s rounded slope. Wyatt shielded his eyes against the white glare.

  Gradually, he made out the same royal blue helicopter he’d flown in the day David had died. Through the reflection on the windshield, he could see the helmeted pilot, concentration obvious in the set of his shoulders. In the left front seat sat a pale-faced woman who stared at Wyatt and Kyle then turned to speak to someone sitting behind her.

  The chopper lowered. Wyatt scooped up his pack and shouldered it. When Kyle was slow to follow, he paused. “You’re not afraid to fly?”

  “Hell, no.” Her jaw squared, and she grabbed her own pack off the rail. “I’m just a little leery of getting blown out of the air.”

  “Tell me about it.” He raised his voice to be heard over the rotors, watching the chopper’s propellers blow snow off grass and sagebrush. He had no fear of flying, but he suspected with this cold front they were going to get bounced all over the sky.

  The skids were down, the aircraft out of place in the road. He and Kyle ducked their heads against the frigid windstorm and ran toward their ride.

  The person in the rear seat opened the door and Wyatt recognized the ponytailed cameraman from Billings Live Eye. Seeing the video unit at the ready, Wyatt instinctively held up an arm to avoid being filmed. To his surprise, the man set it aside and extended an arm to help Kyle get in.

  As she clambered over the guy, who made it clear he was keeping the window seat on the pilot’s side, Wyatt glanced forward at Carol Leeds, in jeans and a light jacket, a few red curls escaping from a Peruvian style hat.

  Wyatt climbed into the helicopter, shoved past the guy with squatter’s rights to the window, and settled in the middle seat with Kyle on his left. Just the place you didn’t want to sit in case of trouble.

  He no sooner got seated than Carol turned with a predatory smile and shouted over the din, “Dr. Stone. And Ranger Ellison.”

  “That’s doctor,” Wyatt yelled automatically, then wished he hadn’t let her count the first coup. He was still angry over her editing of their interview, and didn’t intend to show up on Billings Live Eye again.

  Ignoring Carol Leeds’s mention of their names, he introduced himself and Kyle to the cameraman, who said he was Larry.

  The pilot, a leathery man in his fifties, whipcord thin, turned with a smile of recognition for Wyatt and spoke to Kyle. “Chris Deering. Tough about your buddy.”

  “We hope not,” Wyatt said.

  “Is the missing guy Nick Darden the volcanologist?” Carol asked.

  “The same.”

  Deering’s veined hands darted over the in
tricate instrument panel, flipping switches and adjusting dials. Wyatt recognized the altimeter reading around 7,000 feet, fuel tank comfortably near full, and artificial horizon showing the helicopter sitting flat.

  The pilot twisted the throttle on the end of the collective control between the seats and lifted the inclined bar slightly. As the engine ran up, the chopper began to shudder. His other hand feathered the stick between his knees, his feet poised on the foot pedals.

  With the noise level rising, Wyatt picked up the headset stuck in the seat pocket and put it on.

  A moment later, the helicopter left the ground, bumped back down, and bounced up again. It skittered sideways in the buffeting wind. Finally, as though Deering’s hand held his craft to earth, he lifted the collective and let the Bell surge into the sky.

  Kyle settled against the left rear bulkhead. Though her bare neck was at least six inches from the window, she felt chill air sheeting off the glass. Intense vibration and noise from the engine and rotors made her glad for the noise-dampening headphones.

  Having the press along was a bad omen. She’d envisioned some photographer who wanted to make it into National Geographic, but she should have known. This Carol Leeds who’d distorted their words on the day of David Mowry’s memorial service was more interested in sensationalism than in being respectful. After Kyle and Wyatt’s appearance on America Today, a local TV personality like Leeds was probably salivating at the chance to view the volcano with the scientists who’d supposedly predicted it. Nick’s potential misfortune gave added spice to an already titillating story.

  Kyle looked out the side window. It seemed eerie to see Mammoth so empty. Where the skids and the rotors’ buffeting had not disturbed the snow, it formed an unbroken blanket over the highways. If she didn’t know better, it might seem a scene from a tranquil Sunday morning.

  “Ms. Stone … uh, Doctor.” Carol Leeds’s avaricious tone dispelled the peace. “I understand you were fired from the Utah Institute.”

  Wyatt nudged Kyle. She tried to ignore the bait.

  The ground turned indistinct then disappeared from view. As she’d expected with the gusty weather, the flight was like driving a rutted back road with frequent dips.

  “Ms. Stone?” Carol said again.

  Kyle’s teeth set.

  Wyatt put a hand on her arm. She suspected he meant to warn her off, but she was fortified by determination not to let Hollis win. “As Acting Director, Delbert’s position at the Institute is somewhat ambiguous. It remains to be seen whether he has the authority to let someone go over a professional difference of opinion.”

  Carol looked back at Kyle with sharp green eyes. “This seems more than a difference of opinion. Was there something personal between you and Dr. Delbert?”

  Wyatt chuckled. “Kyle and Mr. Comb-over?”

  She gave the reporter a hard glare. “Worrying about my job politics is ludicrous when we’ve got a live volcano in Yellowstone for the first time in thousands of years. Everybody within a hundred miles has fled while Wyatt and I have a friend out there …”

  Her words breaking, she faced the blank white window. Was Nick huddled down in a safe place, lying hurt, or worse?

  As they flew farther south, the air grew rougher. The helicopter lifted like a penthouse elevator, then headed abruptly for the basement. What redeemed the ride was that the ceiling began to lift behind the arctic front.

  As they flew out from under the low clouds, Kyle caught a glimpse of the long line of Specimen Ridge out the right side. Out her window, she saw the snowy bottom of Lamar Valley, the rocky riverbed marked by a line of cottonwoods.

  She pressed her nose to the glass to look straight down at a herd of several hundred animals. Though small specks, she could tell the difference between the round dark humps of buffalo and the paler brown elk. Thinking of their ancestors who had roamed the land during other times when ejecta columns billowed into the sky, she wondered how many had been too close and perished. How many died of starvation when they found their sturdy necks unequal to brushing aside ash the way they muscled through snow to graze?

  She tried not to think of Nick in the same context as other victims of Yellowstone’s violence … or of men and women in a Madison Canyon campground.

  With five aboard, it began to grow warm. Sweat flushed Kyle’s chest and sides, and she eased the zipper of Wyatt’s parka and put her forehead to the cold window. Rivulets of moisture rolled down the inside of the glass.

  In the front seat, Carol turned to Deering. “How much longer?”

  “Ten minutes at most.”

  Bending forward, Kyle looked out the windshield. As the cloud cover continued to break, an electrifying vista opened. Snowcapped peaks rose on the left, the fifty-million-year-old Absaroka Range where Stanton and his students had discovered an imposter in youthful, violent Nez Perce Peak.

  Deering banked to follow the valley south, the shrouded sun brightening over the right side of the aircraft. As they passed beyond the Thunderer’s jagged cliffs, the head of the long valley lay revealed, an impossible image of impenetrable smoke and churning ash.

  Kyle gasped.

  “Here we go,” said Wyatt. He scrabbled in the top of his pack and yanked out a topo of the terrain that used to be.

  Larry said, “We should never have taken off once we knew the thing was erupting.” But despite his words, he was already raising his camera.

  Carol grabbed Deering’s arm.

  He shook her off and put a finger out to touch a photo clipped to the dash in front of him. Pictured was a plump redhead with her arm around a young woman with even brighter hair, both standing in front of his blue helicopter. “Keep the faith,” he told the women Kyle assumed to be his family. Or perhaps he spoke into his microphone to encourage her and Wyatt in their quest to find Nick.

  Wiping the pane once more, she peered toward the cloud of superheated gases, rock and ash. Blue-black like the lowering sky before a thunderstorm, it billowed and retreated unpredictably, unfurling in an endless stream. As she watched, an explosion of white surged into the sky.

  “Steam eruption,” said Wyatt.

  Seeing such awesome power unleashed, transforming green ridge and golden valley to shades of gray, was difficult to comprehend. She dared not dwell on what might happen if this first eruption merely cleared the vent’s throat.

  Kyle wanted to tell Deering to hurry, to find Nick and get them all out of here. Yet, at the same time, there was a sense of reluctance to rush toward an inevitable and terrible revelation.

  As they flew toward the peak on a direct line, the stench of sulfur penetrated the cabin. Already uncomfortable wearing too many clothes in the overheated space, the taste of rotten eggs sent a wave of nausea through Kyle. Taking deep breaths through her opened mouth, she noted the white paper top of an airsickness bag sticking out the top of the seat pocket.

  The already unsettled sky developed deeper potholes. At a teeth-jarring plunge with a sharp bottom, Kyle clutched the armrest and noted the bunched muscle at Wyatt’s jaw.

  “Jesus,” said Carol.

  Deering said, “That’s enough,” putting the craft into a turn away from the dark column. Gradually, the turbulence eased. With a glance over his shoulder at Kyle, smile lines crinkling at the corner of his eye, he spoke to Carol. “Thought you wanted to get up close and personal.”

  “Start filming, Larry,” she said, though he was already at work. “I’ll set up the satellite phone.” She ordered Deering, “I need you to fly a two-twenty degree heading to line up the signal.”

  Ignoring her, he turned back to Kyle. “Where do we start looking for Dr. Darden?”

  She studied the altered landscape. The top of the peak where the cinder cone had protruded was gone, but the three great spines of basalt still angled away from the crater. Snow on the peak had melted more than halfway down. Fresh landslide scars marked where frozen ground water had flash-melted to form mud slurry.

  “When we last spoke, Nick was
at our seismic station four,” Kyle said. Starting at the ruined crest for reference, she swept her eyes down the decapitated mountain. Jagged volcanic bombs littered the upper slopes. Seen at a distance of about a mile, those ejected boulders must be as big as Volkswagens. Above the tree line, where scrub brush and grasses had grown, the ground now lay as bare as the cinder cone had been. All but the tallest brush was buried in gray ash; the rest had either burned to bare sticks or was still aflame.

  “But Nick also said he was thinking of heading back up,” she managed.

  Wyatt looked startled and she realized he hadn’t heard Nick’s side of their last conversation. “If he started walking when you two hung up, he could have made it pretty far.”

  Kyle grimaced. If Nick had been that rash, there’d be little hope of even finding his body. “He said something about wanting gravity readings on the east side.”

  Wyatt nodded. “First let’s keep it simple and assume he stayed where we last talked to him. We’ll branch out from there.”

  “But where is station four?” She looked down at the terrain that looked unfamiliar both because she was in the air and due to the landscape’s colorless hue making everything look alike.

  Wyatt put a finger to his map. “You see the spine that heads north from the peak and ends above Saddle Valley?”

  “Got it.” The rugged dike separated a huge slope of boulder talus on the west and thick forest on the east. Unlike at Mount St. Helens, where a lateral blast had blown down miles of timber, Nez Perce’s eastern forest remaining standing, limbs bowed beneath a drab cover of ash.

  “Follow the ridge down to Saddle Valley,” Wyatt instructed, “then west down to station four.” He bent forward and showed the map to Deering.

  The pilot banked and put the chopper into a dive that made Kyle’s stomach lurch. Wyatt’s shoulder pressed her against the bulkhead as the G forces increased.

  “Hey,” Carol said. “I never did get a satellite signal.”

  “We’re doing search and rescue now,” Deering clipped.