Rain of Fire (47 page)

“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.

He leveled out over Saddle Valley, flying at around two hundred feet.

Kyle scanned the slope for the seismic station. There had been a brushfire, no doubt ignited by a glowing bomb. The charred area covered several hundred yards and had burned out upon reaching a line of trees. A hundred feet or so up a steep hill, blackened vegetation surrounded a copse of boulders, a landmark Kyle had used before to help locate the station while on horseback. With the normally pink rhyolite rock covered in soot, she almost didn’t recognize it.

A five-foot mast stood out from the blackened slope, its solar panels canted and smashed. The burned tarp lay on the ground. What had been the plastic storage chest formed a black and bubbly drape over the lump of batteries and recording gear.

Deering brought them into a hover over the ruined gear. Beside Kyle, Wyatt reached for her hand. In the same instant, she recognized the smashed casing of Nick’s satellite phone.

Carol spoke into her headset. “How could anybody have made it through this hell?”

C
ould he have taken shelter in those rocks?” Wyatt pointed to the copse.

“Maybe,” Kyle hoped.

Nevertheless, after several minutes of slow reconnaissance, Nick did not appear to hail them.

“What now?” Deering asked.

“I suppose we should see if Nick climbed back up the mountain,” Kyle said.

The pilot began to apply more throttle.

“Wait,” Carol said. “Let me and Larry out here.”

“What?” asked her cameraman. His medium weight rain gear was no more suitable for the weather than Carol’s denim jacket.

“Look at this view,” she advised. “A clear shot all the way to the summit. I’ll be able to get a signal and phone in the first eyewitness account before anybody else gets here.” She scanned the sky as though looking for other aircraft.

Having been hired for dual purposes, Deering diplomatically hovered.

Carol twisted in her seat toward Kyle and Wyatt. “Larry and I will look around for Dr. Darden here.”

“I can imagine the story if
Billings Live Eye
finds Nick,” Kyle challenged.

To her surprise, Carol shot her a direct look. “You have every right to dislike me, but, like you, I have a job to do.” Her voice softened and Kyle had to strain to hear it above the helicopter’s racket. “If we find Dr. Darden, and he consents to be interviewed, we’ll talk on camera. Otherwise … I promise no pictures.”

Carol acted sincere, but Kyle sent an inquiring glance at Wyatt.

“We can use all the eyes we can get,” he said.

The reporter’s alert gaze flicked down to their clasped hands, then she turned to Larry. “You in?”

He gave the eruption cloud a baleful glare. “Let’s do the story and get out of here before this whole place blows.”

Once Larry went out the rear door in a blast of cutting wind and Carol vacated the front seat, Kyle moved to take her place. Deering once more lifted off and flew up along the valley.

Wiping condensation from the windshield with her fist, she noted a promontory where the footing would be easier than in the valley. “Nick probably would have walked up that way.”

Deering guided the Bell above tree line. Wyatt spoke into his microphone. “Surely he wouldn’t have had time to get all the way up here.”

Kyle hoped he was right. Below, volcanic bombs dotted the barren surface. There was no sign of Nick’s bright parka or the moon suit. But if he’d been struck down, he might already have been buried by the rain of particles.

Turbulence hit once more and Kyle’s stomach lurched. As Deering banked, they bumped and tilted. Squinting out at the lowering visibility, he fought the controls. “This ash fall may put an end to our search window.”

Kyle rubbed her chest to ease the tightness and tried to believe Nick hadn’t been in the line of fire.

“What if he had some warning?” she hoped. “Something that caused him to get out of the exposed valley?”

Wyatt bent forward. “I’d have headed up to the spine. Hidden out in some rocks where I was safe from bombs and had enough elevation to avoid a
nuée ardente.”

Deering nodded and flew toward the great dike. On the way, they flew over the Nez Perce patrol cabin, nestled below the ridge. Several holes in the roof attested to falling missiles.

“Surprised it didn’t burn,” Kyle said.

They headed farther up the irregular backbone of dark rock. A past fire had burned the hillside, making way for young pines that bristled over the slope.

“If your friend hears us, he’ll come into the open and signal,” Deering suggested.

The ridge top was narrow, in places only a few feet wide. “Can we fly lower for a better look?” Kyle asked.

“The winds along the knife-edge are treacherous,” he replied. “I crash-landed up here during the ‘88 fires.”

Kyle sucked in her breath and stared at the rugged terrain.

“The visibility is going fast,” Deering said. “We need to pick up the others and get out of here.”

Ash continued to drift like gray snow. Yet, seen through filtered light, the column erupting from the cone seemed to be diminishing.

“See,” Wyatt observed. “It’s quieting.”

Deering shook his head. “Can’t take a chance on that lasting.”

Despite wanting nothing more than to be a thousand miles from this mountain, Kyle turned to the pilot. “Set me down. I’ll look for Nick on the ground.”

Wyatt’s hand gripped her shoulder through the thick parka he’d loaned her. “Set us down, she means.”

“You can’t cover any distance with that ankle.”

“I’ll have to.” But as he bent to touch the bandage, a twinge of pain passed over his face.

Deering looked at them both. “Anybody who gets out may have to stay behind while I fly away.”

“If it were someone dear to you down there …?” Kyle proposed.

Deering glanced at the photo taped to his dash. “Kendra … my girl’s learning to fly …” He gestured to the young woman with bright hair. “If she went down, I’d run through a forest fire to find her.” But with the next turbulent rut, he shook his head. “Be that as it may, I can’t land on the ridge.”

“Go higher, then.” She pointed. “Up where the slope

eases. Just let me out and I’ll start down, looking for Nick as I go.”

Deering studied the clearing visibility. “I guess I could do that.”

“I’m coming with you,” Wyatt said again.

“And I told you no. Somebody has to find Nick and you’ll just slow me down.”

He hesitated a moment more, fiddling with his boot. “All right, but we won’t go far.”

“And if you have to leave …” Kyle said.

Wyatt’s hand slid from her shoulder down to stroke her fingers. “If we leave, you’ll freeze to death in this wind chill.”

“I’ll get down to the cabin. Build a fire and eat the emergency rations. You need to go pick up those reporters before they get hypothermia.”

“You’ve got a goddamn answer for everything, don’t you?” He shook his head. “Nobody could say you were scared now.”

As Deering began to climb once more through bumpy air, she realized Wyatt was right.

Unfortunately, that ended as soon as her boots touched earth. The ground shuddered like a shivering dog. Wind knifed at her face, ears, and torso while she struggled to zip Wyatt’s parka and get on her gloves. The chill factor must be minus twenty, the risk of hypothermia real.

Kyle watched the helicopter take off and head down into the valley. Moments later, it lost elevation, hovered, and landed on a flat spot low on the ridge. Wyatt climbed out, waved Deering off, and began to limp up the summit trail.

She wanted to shout for him to go back down and meet her near the cabin. But despite her raised arms and wild gestures, he was a tiny figure far below who probably couldn’t see her signal.

Worse, there was no evidence of Nick amidst the strewn boulder field. Seething at the knowledge that if he lived he was no doubt thrilled with the mountain’s display, she was surprised to realize it was affecting her, too.

Perhaps it was the scientist in her, but there was something exhilarating about the charged air. Nez Perce’s change from peaceful, snowcapped mountain to angry, heated monster was both shocking and awe-inspiring. She’d only experienced such transformation once in her life, and as a terrified child, been unable to process it.

A gust of wind struck Kyle in the back and sent her sprawling uphill. As the gale drove back the plume and cleared the worst of the sulfurous fumes, she saw for the first time the jagged edge of the vent.

It was closer than she’d thought, less than a hundred yards. No more rocks ejected from the crater, and the ash column had faded from deep charcoal to a steamy gray.

That pale hue gave hope. If the eruption at 1:12
PM
had released the built-up pressure it might be weeks, months, or even years before any further activity. In the meantime, steam from the melted snow meeting hot rock would tend to form smaller phreatic explosions, like flinging water onto heated stones in a sauna.

Kyle stared up the hill, while the steady wind continued to hold the cloud back. From all over the world, volcanologists were no doubt en route to Nez Perce Peak in order to stand where she did.

She began to climb.

Her boots dug into the soft mix of cinders and ash. Two steps forward and one back, trudging around the twisted bombs that ranged in size from softballs to Suburbans. Foot by foot, she advanced toward the unknown, urged on by the ancient drive of a student of the earth, to be the one who made it to the top of every mountain.

Moments later, Kyle stood on the rim and stared into the fresh raw wound. The top of the mountain had been replaced by a bowl at least three hundred feet deep. Freshly broken rock littered the cindery surface as it did on the outside of the crater. At the bottom was a black hole around four feet across with yellow sulfur coating its lip. Inside the crater where the wind did not reach, steam billowed and ascended sinuously from the vent.

Gazing into hell’s gateway, Kyle realized that if Nick had crossed the line where she stood, he’d never be found.

Wyatt saw no sign of Nick as he toiled up the summit trail along the rocky spine. Sweating beneath his parka, he scanned the scree on the west side, checking to be sure Nick hadn’t fallen into a crevice between the large boulders. He also looked into each of the dense thickets on the eastern slope. His ankle, which had been better this morning than yesterday, was hurting again.