Outside, the sky had suddenly vanished, replaced by a cloud of ash that burst from the center of Mount Winkleman with a great rumbling sound that was truly terrifying. Everything went dark as the evil black mass spread like a giant umbrella. Then came a more thunderous explosion that hurled thousands of tons of molten lava into the air.
Giordino felt as if his soul was being torn away. Finally, he nodded and turned his head, a curious understanding in his grieved eyes. “All right.” And then one last jest. “Since nobody around here wants me, I’ll go.”
Pitt gripped him by the hand. “Good-bye, old friend. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.”
“Be seeing you,” Giordino muttered brokenly, tears forming in his eyes. He looked like a very old man who was shrouded in solemn and heart-wrenching shock. He started to say something, choked on the words and then he snatched up Maeve’s children, one boy under each arm, and was gone.
Charles Bakewell and the experts at the volcanic observatory in Auckland could not look into the interior of the earth as they could the atmosphere and to a lesser degree, the sea. It was impossible for them to predict the exact events in sequence and magnitude once the acoustic wave traveling from Hawaii struck Gladiator Island. Unlike most eruptions and earthquakes, these gave no time to study precursory phenomena such as foreshocks, groundwater fluctuations and changes in the behavior of domestic and wild animals. The dynamics were chaotic. All the scientists were certain of was that a major disturbance was in the making, and the smoldering furnaces deep within the island were about to burst into life.
In the event, the resonance created by the energy from the sound wave would shake the already weakened volcanic cores, triggering the eruptions. Catastrophic events followed in quick succession. Reaching up from many miles beneath the island’s surface, the superheated rock expanded and liquified, immediately ascending through fissures opened by the tremors. Hesitating only to displace the cooler, enclosing rocks, the flow formed an underground reservoir of molten material known as a magma chamber, where it built up immense pressures.
The stimulus for volcanic gas is water vapor transformed into red-hot steam, which provides the surge that thrusts the magma to the surface. When water enters a gaseous state, its volume instantly mushrooms nearly a thousand times, creating the astronomical power needed to produce a volcanic eruption.
The expulsion of rock— fragments and ash by the rising column of gas provides the plume of smoke common to violent eruptions. Though no combustion actually takes place during eruption, it is the glow of an electrical discharge reflected from incandescent rock onto the water vapor that gives the impression of fire.
Inside the diamond mines, the workers and supervisors fled through the exit tunnels at the first ground shudder. The temperature inside the pits climbed with incredible rapidity. None of the guards made any attempt to turn back the stampede. In their panic they led the horde in a mad rush toward what they wrongly assumed was the safety of the sea. Those who ran toward the top of the saddle between the two volcanoes unwittingly gamed the best chance for survival.
Like sleeping giants, the island’s twin volcanoes reawakened from centuries of inactivity. Neither matched the other in their violent display. Mount Winkleman burst to life first with a series of fissures that opened along its base, unleashing long lines of magma fountains that welled up from the ruptures and spurted high in the air. The curtain of fire spread as vents formed along the fissures. Enormous quantities of molten lava poured down the slopes in a relentless river and spread like a fan as it devastated any vegetation that stood in its way.
The ferocity of the sudden storm of air pressure lashed the trees against each other before they were crushed flat and incinerated, their charred remains swept toward the shoreline. Any trees and undergrowth that escaped the rolling inferno were left standing blackened and dead. Already, the ground was littered with birds that dropped out of the sky, choked to death by the gases and fumes that Winkleman had discharged into the atmosphere.
As if guided by a heavenly hand, the ungodly ooze swept over the security compound but bypassed the Chinese laborers’ detention camp by a good half a kilometer, thereby saving the lives of three hundred miners. Horrendous in scope, its only redeeming quality was that it traveled no faster than the average human could run. The gushing magma from Mount Winkleman wreaked terrible damage, but caused little loss of life.
But then came Mount Scaggs’ turn.
From deep within its bowels, the volcano named after the captain of the Gladiator gave out a deep-throated roar like a hundred freight trains rolling through a tunnel. The crater hurled out a tremendous ash cloud, far greater than the one belched by Winkleman. It twisted and swirled into the sky, a black, evil mass. As ominous and frightening as it looked, the ash cloud was only an opening act for the drama yet to come.
Scaggs’ western slope could not resist the deep-rooted stress ascending from thousands of meters below. The liquified rocks, now a white-hot mass, hurtled toward the surface. With immeasurable pressure it ripped a jagged crack on the upper slope, releasing an inferno of boiling mud and steam that was accompanied by a single, thunderous explosion that scattered the magma into millions of fragments.
A gigantic frenzy of molten lava shot from the slope of the volcano like a cannon barrage. An enormous quantity of glowing magma was purged in a pyroclastic flow, a tumultuous compound of incandescent rock fragments and heated gas that travels over the ground like liquid molasses but at velocities exceeding 160 kilometers per hour. Gaining speed, it avalanched down the flank of the volcano with a continuous roar, disintegrating the slope and throwing a fearsome windstorm in front of it that reeked of sulphur.
The effect of the superheated steam of the pyroclastic flow as it relentlessly swept forward was devastating, enveloping everything in a torrent of raining fire and scalding mud. Glass was melted, stone buildings were flattened, any organic object was instantly reduced to ashes. The seething horror left nothing recognizable in its wake.
The horrifying flow outran the canopy of ash that still cast an eerie pall across the island. And then the fiery magma plunged into the heart of the lagoon, boiling the water and creating a mad turbulence of steam that sent white plumes billowing into the sky. The once beautiful lagoon quickly lay under an ugly layer of gray ash, dirty mud and shredded debris swept ahead of the catastrophic flow of death.
The island used by men and women for greed, an island that some believed deserved to die, had been annihilated. The curtain was coming down on its agony.
Giordino had lifted the sleek British-built Agusta Mark II helicopter from the deck of the yacht and reached a safe distance from Gladiator Island before the spray of blazing rock fell over the dock and the yacht. He could not see the full scope of the devastation. It was hidden by the immense ash cloud that had reached a height of three thousand meters above the island.
The incredible twin eruptions were not only a scene of hideous malevolence but of awesome beauty also. There was a sense of unreality about it. Giordino felt as if he were looking down from the brink of hell.
Hope flared when he observed the yacht suddenly come to life and charge across the waters of the lagoon toward the channel cut in the encircling reef. Badly wounded or not, Pitt had somehow managed to get the boat under way. However fast the yacht could fly over the sea, it was not fast enough to outrun the gaseous cloud of flaming ash that scorched everything in its path before plunging across the lagoon.
But then any hope vanished as Giordino watched the uneven race in growing horror. The inferno swept over the yacht’s churning wake, closing the gap until it smothered the craft and blotted it from all view of the Agusta Mark II. From a thousand feet in the air it appeared that no one could have lived for more than a few seconds in that hellish fire.
Giordino was overcome with anguish for being alive when the mother of the children strapped together in the copilot’s seat and a friend who was like a brother were dying in the holocaust of fire below. Cursing the eruption, cursing his helplessness, he turned from the horrendous sight. His face was drained white as he flew more on instinct than experience. His inner pain, he knew, would never fade. His old surefire cockiness had died with Gladiator Island. He and Pitt had traveled a long road, with one always there to save the other in times of peril. Pitt was not the type to die, Giordino had told himself on numerous occasions when it looked like his friend was in the grave. Pitt was indestructible.
A spark of faith began to build inside Giordino. He glanced at the fuel gauges. They registered full. After studying a chart clipped to a board hanging below the instrument panel, he decided on a westerly course toward Hobart, Tasmania, the closest and best place to land with the kids. Once the Fletcher twins were in the safe hands of the authorities, he would refuel and return to Gladiator Island, if for nothing else than to try to retrieve Pitt’s body
