Eruption

Chapter 107

Colonel James Briggs had correctly predicted that, working around the clock, it would take four weeks to pack and remove the 642 canisters from the cave.

One less than when they had started their mission.

Throughout the process, no one had said the words Agent Black. No one dared.

Not even now that its lethal threat, having gotten out on the island, was once again contained.

The soldiers who had begun the original cleanup inside the Ice Tube had been transferred stateside. That left a small emergency crew in hazmat suits working the crane on one of the army’s fleet of specially cushioned Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks.

The last load of canisters would be transported the way the others had, via the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George Washington, currently docked off the Port of Hilo. The ship from the U.S. Seventh Fleet had left Japan and was headed to a scheduled docking in Bremerton, Washington, providing the perfect military cover story: the George Washington had stopped here for repairs before continuing its journey to the mainland.

Even the sailors in the warship’s hazardous material division did not know what chemicals they were transporting across the Pacific.

General Mark Rivers and Mac watched from down the hill as the last of Rivers’s soldiers made their way out of the cave. They had just completed one final blasting with flamethrowers. Every inch of the lava tube had been scrubbed down and tested for radiation.

“You’re really not going to tell me where those canisters will be stored?” Mac asked Rivers.

Rivers squinted into the morning sun, then grinned. “What canisters?” he said.

Mac turned and shook Rivers’s hand.

“It was an honor serving with you, sir,” Mac said, surprised at how emotional he felt.

In the end, it was as if they’d been through a war together.

Rivers continued to smile. “The honor was mine, Dr. MacGregor.”

Rivers got into his jeep and drove away, following the transport vehicle. Before Mac got into his own jeep, he took one last, long look up the hill. Then he reached into his wallet and pulled out two pieces of folded-up paper.

The notations General Arthur Bennett had made in his hospital room that night in Honolulu were now in Mac’s possession, thanks to Colonel Briggs.

Mac examined the one with Bennett’s drawing on it: a lopsided circle surrounded by a series of shaky, arc-shaped lines.

Then he looked at the other one. Some of the letters were still hard to make out: I-C-E-T-U-B-B.