Rain of Fire (6 page)

Kyle parked and got out. From this high vantage point, the impact of what had happened took shape.

On the afternoon when she and her father had fished for trout, Sheep Mountain had formed the south wall of Madison Canyon, a pristine north-facing slope covered in dense forest.

Until the magnitude 7.5 quake tore it in half.

At over one hundred miles per hour, trees, earth, and solid rock had shot over a thousand feet down the canyon and up more than four hundred on the opposite side of a river thrown from its bed by the shock. The great scoop-shaped scar loomed above the visitor center.

Faced with the awesome sight, Kyle’s nerves frayed like a worn rope. She tried more deep breaths of the crisp fall air and saw the emotion on her face reflected when an approaching father drew a child closer and gave her a wide berth on the sidewalk.

In Rock Creek Campground, she had seen terror in her father’s gaze across the widening crevasse. Only now did she understand what he must have seen behind her.

When the landslide had crashed into the Madison River, it sent a thirty-foot wall of water racing upstream, breaking and toppling trees in its path. Before Kyle could turn away from her father’s stricken gaze toward the sound, a colossal force caught the Rambler. Shoved sideways across the clearing with her inside, the car broadsided against a pine. A great thud on the roof was another tree falling.

An ominous rush surrounded the station wagon and she leaped onto the open tailgate. Bark scraped her palms as she found a foothold on a branch and blindly dragged herself up. Below, the black tide rose almost as swiftly as she scrambled ahead of it. Higher in the tree, the limbs grew smaller and the trunk whipped back and forth.

A terrible roaring increased, as though mountains ground together.

If Dad would come, he’d swim her to safety, like when she jumped off the diving board. Mom would be waiting, ready to dry her with a thick towel and ruffle her hair.

Kyle strained to make out the Rambler in the gray shadows. The picnic table and her parents’ tent were gone … beneath this rising flood.

“Daddy!” she shrieked. “Mommy!”

Darkness and the shuddering earth mocked her.

Wyatt pulled his Park Service Bronco in at the Earthquake Lake Visitor Center. As always, the wound that had not yet begun to heal struck him. On both sides of the channel dug through the slide by the Corps, bare rock and earth lay dissected by great ravines. Only at the edges had reforestation begun, revealing small patches of what looked like Christmas trees.

Kyle sat on a bench with her back to him wearing well-fitting jeans and a red down vest over a plaid flannel shirt. Her hair was braided at the back of her head; turquoise and silver dangled from her earlobes. As he approached, she did not turn but seemed absorbed in looking toward the ruined site of Rock Creek Campground.

Wyatt came up behind her. “What hell it must have been for those poor bastards caught down there.”

Kyle started.

She turned on him, red-eyed, and he realized with a small shock that she was crying.

“Sorry I scared you.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned away. But though he studied the vista, he saw her face superimposed on the pale sky. Usually strikingly attractive, with prominent cheekbones, a high-bridged nose and clean line of jaw, today her features had twisted into a mask of tragedy. Awkward moments passed, while he wondered whether to say something or just give her time. The decision made through default, he leaned against a nearby rail and waited.

Finally, she said in an almost normal voice, “Let’s put out some equipment.”

With the sense he’d somehow failed her, Wyatt led the way back to their parked vehicles.

Together, they drove in caravan down over the huge landslide and turned south on Highway 287. The Old Madison Valley Fault parallel to the road was not believed to be as active as the Hebgen Lake and Red Canyon Faults farther east, but they wanted to check that theory.

Coming to a dirt road, Wyatt signaled a turn. In the Bronco’s rearview mirror, he saw Kyle follow him. Forest punctuated by patches of golden meadow unfolded on either side as they drove deeper into the wilderness. It was difficult to believe desolation lay just on the north side of the ridge.

When Kyle signaled him with a tap of her horn, he pulled up beside a thick pine.

Getting out, he agreed, “This looks like a good spot.” The scarp of another small fault ran along the right side of the track.

He got out one of the portable seismographs. In contrast to the older models that had weighed an unwieldy amount, the newer technology had created lightweight sensors of only a few pounds. Inside the metal casing was a pendulum that would remain steady while the rest of the instrument moved with the earth.

Kyle pointed out a relatively flat area a little distance from the road. Wyatt lifted the seismograph and carried it to the chosen spot. After digging a hole to ground the instrument and insulate it from wind or vehicle noise, they opened the solar panels that would power the battery for the detached drive.

“We’re going to need extra help to gather all this data,” Wyatt said.

“After I chair the Monday Consortium meeting, I’ll get Xi Hong to take my seminar so I can come back.”

“I can count on Helen Chou.”

Kyle plugged in her laptop and ran through some tests to be sure the seismograph functioned. As they prepared to leave, Wyatt patted the unit. “I hope we don’t need you, little fella.”

“I’ll have a stout,” Wyatt told the waitress, anticipating the rich, molasses-tasting brew. He and Kyle shared a booth in the Red Wolf Saloon in West Yellowstone, Montana. The small town located ten miles south of Hebgen Lake served as the western gateway community on the park boundary.

“Light beer,” Kyle added. Beneath the glow of a brass mine lamp, she traced the scars of myriad initials carved into the wooden table.

Wyatt watched the movement of her long, expressive fingers. Since leaving Utah, he’d missed their working late and adjourning for a brew … although they’d never been in quite this situation before, alone in the field and sitting in an intimate booth that would have been perfect had they been lovers. Tonight, she’d let her hair free from her habitual braid and let it flow in shining waves over her shoulders. It made her look younger and in his mind erased that she was somewhat older than he.

When the waitress brought their drinks, he raised a toast. “To Stanton.”

Kyle clanked her mug against his and took a long swallow.

“And to you getting the bucks for Yellowstone,” he finished.

They each drank again.

“I’d rather be lucky than smart at this Consortium.” Kyle drummed the tabletop. “I found out that even before Stanton collapsed, Hollis Delbert has been circling like a vulture.”

Wyatt raised an inquiring brow.

“Asked Stanton to put him in charge”—she mimed quotation marks in the air—”when he retired.”

“Like Stanton was ever going to quit.” Wyatt grimaced. “I’ve never liked that SOB Delbert.”

Kyle flashed a grin. “You’re just hacked off because he gave you a B in Tectonophysics.”

Wyatt laughed.

She pushed back a stray lock of hair and her oval face settled into serious lines. “What worries me is that Hollis is planning a frontal attack at the Consortium.”

“You mean his Salt Lake project deserves all the money because nobody lives in Yellowstone?”

She nodded. “You know, if Rockefeller hadn’t gotten the Grand Teton National Park started, there’d be a city like Denver or Salt Lake in Jackson Hole … folks driving to office buildings, trying to see the mountains through a smog inversion. Yellowstone would probably have ended up in Disney’s hands.”

“Since that didn’t happen, Hollis may get our funding.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Kyle said, “but what really worries me is something I don’t even want to think about.”

Wyatt studied her. “You mean what if Stanton doesn’t come back?”

She nodded again.

He considered the impact Stanton’s loss would have on both the Institute and the lives of people who cared for him. For his own part, Wyatt felt the older man was family. When he’d decided to start college, Stanton had been the catalyst to his choosing geology as his major.

Struggling through his first mineralogy exam, Wyatt had wondered what he’d been thinking when he signed up. Just then, Professor Stanton passed through the lab.

Wyatt fiddled with the bright yellow specimen he’d been examining. It looked like a piece of colored glass, but this was mineralogy.

The professor peered at him through tortoise shell reading glasses and barked, “Hardness?”

“Softer than the porcelain plate,” Wyatt said. “I’m not sure whether it’s harder or softer than glass.”

Wyatt detected a gleam in Stanton’s pale blue eyes.

He looked at the specimen one more time. “This really is a piece of manmade glass.”

As Stanton smiled conspiratorially, Wyatt decided a guy with a sense of humor would be a nice place to start for a major professor.

He’d never been disappointed.

“If he doesn’t make it back,” Wyatt told Kyle, “you’ll carry on as the new head of the Institute.” Even as he said it, he realized she’d never expressed a desire to run the place.

“It’s not up to Stanton,” she argued. “If he has to retire, he gets one vote as to who takes his place. That’s assuming he’s considered competent by the committee. Volcano Hazards or the National Park Service could come up with their own candidate.”

“Then on Monday, you’ll have to convince them you can pour from the proverbial boot more neatly and spill less than anybody.”

Kyle smiled. In the lamplight, her eyes reminded him of a tourmaline in a ring his mother had when he was young. A deep-green stone, but when you held it up and looked though the side of the long crystal you could see blue shining from its depths.

Memory he had repressed stirred. Of a time or two when he’d found himself considering Kyle as a woman and not just a friend. He reckoned that happened every now and then whenever a man and woman spent a lot of time together, especially colleagues with similar interests. They might be well suited for each other, except neither he nor Kyle seemed to be looking for a long-term relationship. Better they be friends and not spoil it.

Yet, the part of him that liked the color of her eyes and the way she brushed her hair back from her rounded brow… That part of him had hated to see her crying this afternoon.

“Want to tell me what you were upset about earlier?” he asked.

As Wyatt watched, her eyes changed from tourmaline to black onyx.

The first time the tree stopped shaking, six-year-old Kyle thought it was over.

Her wet clothes clung nastily. Below, in the blackness, water rushed and gurgled.

Within moments, aftershocks erupted, though as a child she had no name for them. Each time the slender trunk whipped from side to side, she screamed and knotted her arms and legs tighter until blood ran down them. Continued grumbling came from the surrounding mountains as avalanches rearranged the debris. The wind lifted and lightning spawned a jagged streak.

At home, Kyle and Max always waited out storms beneath the stairs. She’d press her face into his golden fur so she couldn’t see the flashes.