The Tsunami Countdown (18 page)

11:23 a.m.
24 Minutes to Second Wave

R
achel had watched in horror as Kai and Lani fled the wave and lost sight of them when they got to Kalakaua Avenue, the buildings
obstructing her view. She immediately tried to call Kai’s cell phone to see if they were all right, but all she got was a
fast busy signal, indicating all lines were jammed. She tried Max’s walkietalkie with no success. When she couldn’t see them
anymore, she turned her attention back to the tsunami coming in. From her vantage point on the twenty-eighth floor, she was
far above the maximum height of this tsunami, but as the wave grew, it looked like it would never stop.

“Will you look at the size of that thing?” said Max.

The boats that had been left stranded were picked up by the wave. The smaller boats capsized immediately or were borne by
the wave as it rammed into the shoreline and
buildings, smashing them into unrecognizable pieces. The people who had been running from the water were simply swallowed
up.

The tsunami crashed into the white luxury yacht’s bow, driving it backward, but most of the wave’s force went around the yacht,
and it floated on top of the water only a short distance from where it had been resting, its propellers churning at full speed
to keep it from coming ashore.

The dredging barge that had been attempting to leave the inlet to the Ala Wai Canal was not so fortunate.

The barge was part of a project to dredge the accumulated sludge at the entrance of the canal. The captain had tried to get
the barge and its equipment out to sea before the tsunami hit. However, the barge lacked quick maneuverability, and in the
chaos during its escape, it had drifted too close to shore. The receding water left it stranded broadside to the wave, helpless.
When the tsunami reached it, the wave picked up the three-hundredfoot-long vessel like a toy and threw it back toward the
hotels lining the beach, on a direct collision course with the Grand Hawaiian.

“It’s coming right at us!” Rachel said. “Hold on, everyone!”

Many of the guests had crowded up to the window to see the wave come in, but most of them ran to the back of the room when
they realized what was happening.
Screams and yells filled the restaurant. Max and Rachel stayed at the window, transfixed by the ease with which the tsunami
tossed the massive barge.

As the water rumbled toward them, the building shook as if a minor earthquake had jolted it. The glass vibrated in sympathy
with the motion.

When the wave reached the original shoreline, the barge rotated so that its bow pointed straight inland. As the wave was about
to smash into the Grand Hawaiian, the barge rotated just enough so that it cleared the building they were standing in, but
now it headed for the second of the Grand Hawaiian’s twin towers.

The barge’s bow plunged into the Akamai tower with immense force. The sound of pulverized steel, glass, and concrete was audible
twenty-eight stories up in the Moana tower. The top of the barge crashed through the sixth-floor balcony and came to a stop
after fifty feet of the ship had disappeared into the interior. The tsunami kept up the pressure as it climbed higher and
inundated the barge, sweeping the jumble of dredging equipment on its deck into the building. The stern half of the barge,
buoyed by the water, rose up and snapped off, leaving the bow firmly wedged in the building. Detached from the rest of the
barge, the stern glanced off the building and floated around the Akamai tower and out of view.

Vast amounts of debris choked the water. Cars, boats,
pieces of buildings, trees, all combined into a morass of detritus flowing inland. Rachel knew that bodies must be mixed in
with the wreckage, but thankfully she was too far up to make out those details clearly. For as far as she could see on either
side of the hotel, water seven stories high filled the streets of Honolulu. Anyone caught in that would have needed a miracle
to survive.

Rachel mentally reviewed her options. Evacuating the guests by going back downstairs would be futile. Even assuming the wave
would retreat enough to let them out onto the streets, there wouldn’t be enough time before the next wave for them to reach
safety. Their only hope was to be saved by air.

She gestured toward the helicopters, both military and civilian, buzzing around the city. Her best hope was to follow Kai’s
suggestion.

“We have to try to get one of them,” she said to Max.

As she opened her cell phone to dial 911, the only way she could think of to get help, she happened to glance across at the
Akamai tower. With a gasp, she pointed to a window about three floors below them where a man with a goatee leaned against
it, a cell phone in his hand, peering down at the barge sticking out of the lower stories. The sun reflected off his bald
spot, and his flowered shirt rippled in the breeze. Even from this distance, the desperation on his face was apparent.

“He’s trapped,” Rachel said, “and he knows it.”

The dredging barge had been driven into the middle of the tower like an enormous spike, most likely crushing the stairwell
and any escape in that direction. The distinctive spire roof of the Akamai tower, in contrast to the flat roof of the Moana
tower, provided no place for a helicopter to land.

“My God!” Max said. “He’s not going to jump, is he?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel said, waving her arms and banging on the window, trying to get the man’s attention.

A woman, as dark as the man was fair, ran to the man and hugged him, followed by three children. The man didn’t seem to hear
Rachel, but the biggest of the children, a boy, caught sight of her in the restaurant and pointed. The man returned Rachel’s
wave and motioned with his hands, asking what they should do.

“What now?” Max said.

“I don’t know. But if we don’t get a helicopter, none of us is getting out of here alive.”

She had just started dialing again when shouts of alarm coursed through the room. Every light in the restaurant went dark,
and the air handling system fell silent. The power was out.

From the Hawaiian State Civil Defense’s bunker, Renfro had been monitoring Oahu’s major power stations with
growing apprehension. All three of them sat on the coast, the biggest in Nanakuli, the others at Barbers Point and Honolulu.
Of course, HSCD disaster planners had considered their proximity to the coast, but the most urgent concern was hurricanes,
which battered the Hawaiian Islands periodically. In those cases, the tidal surge was never higher than fifteen feet. Tsunamis
rarely reached more than thirty feet in height, and the power plants were above that level.

A mega-tsunami was unprecedented, so large that HSCD had not considered it a realistic possibility. The chances of it happening
were so remote that planning for it was not deemed economically prudent.

And so, when the eighty-foot-high tsunami struck the coast of Oahu, the wave submerged all three power plants to a depth of
thirty feet, shutting all of them down. The higher waves to come would destroy them completely.

Renfro shook his head as the reports came in. Not only were the power plants smashed, but the wave had washed away most of
the power lines and their towers. Where lines remained intact, the water caused short circuits in the system. The power substations
that weren’t submerged couldn’t handle the massive overloads, and the surviving circuit breakers were tripped.

The island of Oahu was in a blackout.

A few locations, however, still had power. Backup
generators and batteries continued to power HSCD, hospitals, and the air traffic control tower at Wheeler Army Airfield.

Renfro knew only one other major system continued to function: small backup generators or batteries were included in the design
of every cell phone tower.

On the tenth floor of the Seaside, next to the stairwell, a second set of stairs led up to the roof. Brad, Jake, and Tom had
reached the top of the stairs without getting injured by the flying shards of glass. With the rushing water just below them,
Kai ushered everyone up the last flight of stairs and onto the roof.

The flat expanse of faded and peeling white paint was broken up by a few large air-conditioning units and not much else. Kai
ran to the edge of the building and looked down. At that height, he would normally see multitudes of beachgoers thronging
the promenade far below. Instead, breathtakingly, the water was now only fifteen feet beneath them, the top floor dry by a
few inches. Water surged like a river around the corner of the building, taking all kinds of debris with it.

Kai was relieved that the building hadn’t collapsed with the first wave. But he had no idea if it would stand up to the next
one. Not that it would matter: the next wave was going to be another five stories high, completely covering this building.

He knelt by Lani.

“Are you all right, honey?” Kai said.

She nodded and gave him a tight hug. “I can’t believe you came to get us. How did you know where we were?”

“You were on TV. Then Jake led us to you when we got to the Grand Hawaiian. Was it your idea to send him there?”

She nodded again. She was a smart kid.

“Is Mom okay?”

“She was at the hotel. I’m sure she’s fine.” Although Kai tried to project a confident calm, he was in fact sick with worry
about Rachel. He knew this thing was far from over, and he didn’t think she’d be safe for long where she was. Neither would
they.

Kai took out the walkie-talkie and tried it first. After a few attempts he got through to his wife and breathed a sigh of
relief.

“Rachel, are you all right?”

“Kai! Thank God! Please tell me you got Lani.”

“I have her right here. She has an exciting story to tell you.”

Kai passed the walkie-talkie to Lani and walked over to Brad. He was taking pictures of the flooding with his cell phone,
which had been in the dry bag.

“What do we do now?” Brad said, snapping a photo of a boat floating past the eighth story of the building behind
them, the twenty-story building they would have been in if only they’d had another minute to run over to it. Kai took Brad
aside so that the kids wouldn’t hear them. Teresa joined them.

“We wait,” Kai said. “The water will recede. When it does, we need to make a run for higher ground. In the meantime, maybe
we can wave one of those helicopters down.”

“We’re not the only ones,” Teresa said. “Look.”

She gestured to the other buildings around Waikiki and Honolulu. As far as the eye could see, buildings were topped with people
leaning over the sides or waving to the skies. There had to be hundreds of them, if not thousands. Seeing that, it struck
Kai as strange that they were the only ones on the top of this building. He had the awful thought that perhaps The Seaside
held other people who hadn’t tried to evacuate their condos until the water was upon them.

To Kai’s surprise, Teresa grabbed both him and Brad in an embrace.

“I can’t ever thank you enough for saving Mia,” she sobbed. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.”

“Hey, it finally got Lame-o here on a motorcycle,” Brad joked. “Of course, my Harley is now rusting away under about eighty
feet of Pacific seawater. But it was a helluva last ride.”

Kai wanted to say it was going to be okay, that they were all safe now, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth.
They couldn’t stay, but at the moment they couldn’t go, either.

Kai borrowed Brad’s cell phone and dialed 911. The line was jammed and all he got was a busy signal. He tried again, with
the same result.

He was about to call Reggie when Kai realized that it wasn’t his own phone. His was in pieces on the side of Fort Stewart
Road, washed away by now. Reggie’s cell number, of course, wasn’t in Brad’s cell phone list, and Kai had become so reliant
on that feature that he had no idea what Reggie’s number was.

He resorted to calling his own number, knowing he would be routed to voice mail, since his phone wouldn’t answer. It rang
through, and Kai punched in the remote access code while his greeting played. He had one message. It had been received less
than five minutes ago.

“Kai, this is Reggie.” Kai heard Reggie wheezing. “I sure as hell hope you get this, because that means you survived. We’re
running up Fort Stewart Road right now. It is a madhouse. People everywhere. I haven’t been able to get in touch with Alaska.
I assume you got through to them or I would have heard from you, but I’ll keep trying. Once I get to Wheeler, we should have
some dedicated phone lines.”

Kai berated himself for leaving without making the transfer. He could only hope that HSCD was in contact with the warning
center in Palmer. For all he knew, they and the rest of the Pacific island nations were now ignorant of any new information
because he had abandoned his post without even making sure someone else would pick up his responsibilities. His stomach twisted
with guilt.

“I’ll keep my phone on,” Reggie continued. “The service has been spotty. I’m lucky I got through to your voice mail. If you’re
out there, give me a call and let me know you’re okay. I hope I hear from you, Kai.”

The message ended. Kai memorized the number rattled off by the voice mail’s caller ID and saved it in Brad’s phone’s list
before dialing it.

“Who are you calling?” Brad asked.

“Reggie,” Kai said. “Maybe he can send us a chopper.”

The call immediately went to voice mail.

“Quick,” Kai said to Brad, “what are the cross streets of this building?”

“It’s hard to tell with all the streets gone. I know we’re on Kalakaua.” He pointed in the direction of the mountains behind
them. “Lemon is that way. I think this might be Laka‘laina running perpendicular.”

Great
, Kai thought.
The only real estate developer in Honolulu who doesn’t know the streets
.

Lani came over, holding the walkie-talkie in front of her.

“Mom wants to talk to you.”

Kai motioned for Brad to take it. “Tell her what we’re doing and that we’re all right.” He didn’t have to add “For now.”