Squealing tires turned her attention from the planes to a Jeep that came to a halt in front of them. Dr. Waters — his hood completely removed — exited the car and approached.
"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but as you can imagine, today has been a busy day for me. However, it's getting rather late and we best be going."
"Thank you for the offer," Gant played the game, "but I think we will wait here."
"Trust me, you will appreciate my offer in …" Waters glanced at his watch, "… about twenty minutes. Come along," he said and waved to the guards. "Get them onboard my jet."
With no other apparent choice, Stacy followed Gant as he stood and allowed the armed men to escort them onboard the midsized twin-engine passenger plane that was something like a corporate jet. Inside they found a luxury-appointed cabin with pairs of facing seats draped in leather.
After a few seconds, Dr. Waters joined them. As he had already done, the men in his charge removed their hazmat suits, revealing black tunics of a military nature but with no icons, no markings, no denotation of rank.
Stacy glanced around at the group and saw men primarily of Asian ethnicity, except for Waters's assistant, who was clearly Anglo-Saxon, and of course Waters himself. The more she sat across from him on the plane, the more she thought she recognized him from somewhere.
Their host glanced at his watch and spoke to one of his men: "Remind the pilot we need to get into the air right away."
"Why the hurry, Dr. Waters?" Gant asked with a grin tugging at his lips.
She wondered if perhaps Gant suspected their sudden departure had to do with the approach of reinforcements. The last she had heard, Captain Campion was to pull together resources and hurry to the island. Perhaps he was closing in fast.
Waters did not answer Gant's question. Instead he turned his attention to a clipboard full of notes, tables, and other scribbles.
The plane's engines turned on, and after a few seconds of rolling, the jet took to the air. As they climbed, Stacy stared out the side window and saw a dozen plumes of smoke rising across the resort. No doubt these were from fires set by the intruders, just as they had burned the clinic to the ground.
Stacy felt her stomach sink until the jet leveled at low altitude, allowing her equilibrium to return. The sudden thud of landing gear retracting made her jump. A second later her stomach pulled sideways as they banked hard.
She glanced at Gant, who sat across the aisle, then back at Waters, who seemed engrossed by the data on the pages he examined. Anger shoved aside her worries for a moment; anger at Waters and his nonchalant disposition as they flew away from an island turned into a graveyard by the machinations of this man.
"Is that it, then?" Her voice surprised him as well as Gant. "You've finished your little experiment and now it's time to fly away? How many people died on that island, Dr. Waters?"
He glanced at her and, once again, she noted how watery his eyes appeared. In fact, now that he had fully removed his costume she saw flaking skin around the base of his neck and on the back of his hands.
Waters answered her, "We have accounted for 130 individuals, which represents approximately 93 percent of the people believed to be on the island. That is an amazingly efficient recovery effort, don't you think? Particularly given the nature of the experiment, as well as the island's terrain. Granted, Tioga covers only about eight square miles but that is, nonetheless, an impressive accomplishment."
"Efficient? Accomplishment? You are responsible for the murder of those people. Exactly how do you expect to get away with that? Sooner or later someone is going to land on Tioga and find evidence of what you did, no matter how many bodies you cleaned up."
"Evidence?" Waters glanced at his watch. "I think collecting evidence is going to be rather difficult, what with the eruption and all."
Stacy did not know what he meant … and then a loud boom chased the plane into the sky. She immediately turned to the side window as they banked over the island.
A series of clouds rose from the side of the small volcano on the northern end. The sheer volume of explosives that had to have been used caused her to gasp — she saw a sheet of rock and mud sliding hundreds of feet into the jungle below. But her shock at the sight quickly dissipated.
"Are you kidding me?" She nearly laughed at him. "I've seen a few eruptions in my time, and no matter how many tons of TNT you just lit off, it's like a candle compared to a real volcanic eruption. That won't fool anyone."
"And who does it need to fool?" Waters volleyed with a glint in his tear-filled eye. "The USGS is rather busy with issues closer to home. The nations of the Pacific Rim do not have the resources or the interest to fully investigate Tioga Island. Whatever laymen or curious parties finally make their way to the resort will find lava flows, burning buildings, and a handful of bodies killed by the lethal gas emissions from the volcano."
"Lava flows? A few explosions won't cause lava flows."
"No, but those explosions knocked down walls, my dear, opening up the heart of the magma chamber. With all the water we've been pumping in over the past few weeks, that magma is quite irritated, and nearly boiling over, eager to flow out and into troughs that have been mined into the mountain for nearly a year and perfectly matched to the terrain of Tioga. Perhaps the island's caretakers should have paid more attention to the mining company that leased so much land and equipment on their private getaway. Alas, bribes and kickbacks go a long way toward silencing curiosity. Point is, even as we speak, the flows are escaping the mountain and engulfing the heart of Mr. Fencer's property. If we are lucky, those flows will cross the entire resort. If not, it won't matter. The evidence will point to a natural disaster, and given the remote location and the lack of jurisdiction, any investigation will be minimal. In the end, no one will care."
Jupiter Wells regained his balance after the shock wave passed. In front of him, above the trees, he saw plumes of gray and black smoke rise into the air and form mushroom caps. Not nuclear, of course, but certainly a massive explosion — possibly more than one detonation, in fact.
To his left he saw the Pacific Ocean and the now-empty docks. The mystery ship had sailed off to the west, disappearing over the horizon just a few minutes ago. The men who had hauled truckloads of dead bodies to the pier had been gone for a while, apparently discarding their earth-moving equipment in favor of faster transportation. Wells drew a connection between their spirited exit and the explosion.
He had the distinct feeling of being alone; as if everyone who knew better had evacuated the island, leaving his sorry ass behind. He figured Sal would get a kick out of that if he knew.
With no better alternative apparent, he decided to move toward ground zero, walking first through the jungle out of an abundance of caution to remain hidden. However, after a mile of slinking through the brush he came to believe that his feeling of isolation was more fact than imagination. No one moved, he saw no bodies, and even the wildlife seemed to have thinned, no doubt scared off by the massive boom.
Therefore he took to the roads and moved at a quicker clip in a northerly direction, passing a restaurant full of overturned chairs and bloody tablecloths and a small ranch where he heard horses whinnying from a barn, and reached the last flag on a nine-hole golf course.
At that point he stopped, right there on the greens, and stared across a stretch of open, well-maintained grass that dipped down and then rose up toward the cone-shaped mountain standing sentry on the north side of Tioga island.
An orange and red stream like liquid fire oozed down the mountain and crossed the course, splitting into an easterly flow and a southwesterly one. With the lava came a wave of unbearable heat, roasting his skin and giving the air a thick, molasses-like weight that bore down on his shoulders and lungs.