The Tsunami Countdown (9 page)

10:10 a.m
.
1 Hour and 12 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

R
eggie made contact with Dr. Niles Aspen, the lead scientist on Johnston Island. After Reggie explained the situation over
the satellite link, the scientists scrambled to get as many people into the supply plane as they could. But two would have
to stay behind, including Aspen. Kai just had to hope the biologist could find a building sturdy enough to withstand a potential
tsunami. Aspen would call back when he was at a safer location. Brad had no more success getting in touch with Teresa and
the kids, but the sirens would be impossible to ignore. Kai was confident that they’d follow the other tourists off the beach.
Still, he’d feel better when he knew Lani was safe. He tried not to let his worries distract him from his work.

“Let’s go over this again,” Kai said, turning his attention back to the problem at hand. “We’re still missing something.”

Reggie leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head as he thought out loud.

“Okay, let’s see. There is virtually no chance that an under-sea earthquake that small could cause any kind of sizable tsunami,
let alone one that could destroy Christmas Island.”

“Why not?” asked Brad. Kai started to tell Brad to butt out from habit but changed his mind when he realized Brad’s questions
might help them look at the situation in a new light.

“No quake that small has ever generated an ocean-wide tsunami,” Kai said, “unless the earthquake triggered a landslide.”

“Okay. So what about a landslide?”

Reggie and Kai looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Maybe,” Kai said.

“‘Maybe’?” Brad said. “All you have is ‘Maybe’?”

“Look, we just don’t have any reason to suspect that that region of the Pacific would be prone to landslides. Underwater landslides
usually occur near the edge of a continental shelf, but the region we’re talking about is nowhere near a continental shelf.”

Reggie threw up his hands. “So we have an earthquake that’s too small to generate a tsunami, no known landslide risks, no
sensor reading from Christmas Island, and no way to get in touch with anyone there.”

“And,” Kai said, “the earthquake was in a location where no quake has ever been recorded before.”

“So you’re saying the tsunami came out of nowhere?” Brad said.

At that moment, Kai happened to look up at one of the TVs. CNN was running the story of the missing TransPacific flight, the
TransPac logo prominent in the corner. Then the image shifted to a graphic of the Pacific Ocean. A line stretched from Los
Angeles and abruptly ended in the middle of the ocean due south of Hawaii.

“That’s funny,” Kai said. “It looks like the plane went down where the earthquake epicenter …”

And that’s when it hit him. It was incredible, but it was the only explanation they hadn’t considered.

“It can’t be,” he said.

“What?” Reggie said.

“We’ve completely ignored one possibility. It’s crazy, but everything fits. I hope to God I’m wrong—knock on wood.” Though
not normally superstitious, Kai rapped the frame of the cork bulletin board on the wall. But it didn’t matter: he knew he
was right.

“What are you talking about?” Reggie said.

“Okay,” Kai said, “here’s the deal. Remember that discussion we had about Crawford and Mader?”

Reggie furrowed his brow for a second, then snapped
his fingers and smiled. “Right! Yeah, I said their research was fun, but it was a waste of time. You said—”

Reggie abruptly stopped, his smile vanishing. He looked at Kai incredulously, and Kai could tell he’d struck a nerve. Kai
nodded toward the TV, which still showed the map. For a moment Reggie looked at the television, baffled at the connection.
Then his expression changed to horror.

In that instant, he knew too.

Reggie launched himself out of his chair. “You’re not serious!”

“We have to consider it.”

“No! No, no, no, no, no!” Reggie said with a look of stunned disbelief. “I just finished remodeling my house last month. Took
me close to two years.”

Brad, who had been watching this exchange in confused silence, couldn’t take it any longer. “Not serious about what? Who are
Crawford and Mader? What’s going on?”

“You don’t want to know,” Reggie said.

“Yes I do! What the hell does this have to do with Reggie’s house?”

“In about an hour,” Kai said, “Reggie’s house won’t be there anymore.”

10:15 a.m
.
1 Hour and 7 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

S
ince Renfro’s call with Kai, the Hawaii State Civil Defense staffer and his two colleagues on the holiday skeleton crew, Michelle
Rankin and Ronald Deakins, had been on the phone nonstop. Renfro had the governor and the mayor of Honolulu on conference
call. Both were on their way downtown to their offices.

“What’s your ETA, Governor?” Renfro said.

“I’ll be back at the Capitol in a few minutes. The holiday traffic was already bad, and more people are getting on the road
every minute. My cabinet is spread out all over the city. We’ve been trying to get in touch with them since we left the hotel.”

“And you, Mayor?”

The smooth, patrician voice of Mayor Carl Rutledge came over the line. “I was over at Pearl, so it’s looking
more like fifteen minutes if the traffic doesn’t get worse, even with the police escort.”

“Who’s in charge there?” the governor asked.

“Well, I am, Ma’am,” said Renfro. “Vice Director Dennis is on Kauai, and there’s no way he can get back in time.”

“Renfro, what are we looking at here?” the mayor asked. “Is this going to be another false alarm?”

“Sir, you know I can’t tell that for sure. What I do know is that we lost contact with Christmas Island, including the tide
sensor, and the PTWC issued a tsunami warning.”

“Better safe than sorry, Carl,” Governor Kalama said.

“I suppose,” the mayor said, “but dammit, we’re already looking at a budget deficit. We can’t have this happen every year.”

“Sir, we should know more in a few minutes when the wave is supposed to reach Johnston Island.”

On the other side of the room, Rankin was talking to Pearl Harbor’s military liaison, an aide to the commander of U.S. Pacific
Command. The leader of the USPACOM was responsible for all U.S. armed forces over half the world’s surface.

“Lieutenant, we do have procedures for this—” Rankin began.

“But the last drill was for a three-hour window. Now you’re telling me I have about an hour?”

“That’s right.”

“Ma’am, do you know what it takes for a Navy ship to set sail? It ain’t like hopping in your Sea Ray and shooting out of the
marina.”

“How long would it take if you started right now?”

“Two hours, minimum. The engines aren’t even hot.”

“Look, I’m just telling you how much time you have. You can protest all you want: it’s not going to change. Plus, you need
to get all of the aircraft out of the coastal air bases. We’re recommending moving them to Wheeler.”

“Well, you see, that’s another problem: most of our pilots are out on leave or at ceremonies away from the bases. We can try
to get them back to base, but the way the traffic is moving, we’ll be lucky to get a quarter of them up in the air.”

Rankin scribbled a note about the military aircraft and handed it to Deakins, who had the responsibility for coordinating
with the civilian airports and seaports. He was on the phone with the chief of operations at Honolulu International, which
shared runways with Hickam Air Force Base.

“That’s right, sir,” Deakins said. “You’ve got about an hour before the wave arrives.”

“And the all-clear? When will that be?”

“I can’t say for sure.”

“Well, I can’t keep the planes circling forever.”

“Believe me, sir, we will let you know as soon as the danger has passed.”

“Flights are going to be backed up all day because of this, you know.”

“I realize that, sir.”

“Do we need to evacuate the terminals?”

“Not at this time. They’re far enough from shore to be out of immediate danger. We’re only concerned about the runways at
this point. But we recommend that you take everyone off the planes just in case.”

“What a headache. You better hope you’re not making us do all this for nothing.”

“And you, sir, better hope we are.”

10:19 a.m
.
1 Hour and 3 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

T
wo minutes before the tsunami was expected to arrive at Johnston Island, Niles Aspen was on speaker phone in the ops center.
He and Brent Featherstone, the other scientist staying behind, were both biologists from the University of London. Kai had
wanted them on the line to describe the tsunami in case they lost the feed from the tide gauge, which was in real time. But
Aspen had a surprising source of information for them.

“Dr. Tanaka, to help educate our students, we have equipped ourselves with a video camera linked to the satellite network
to broadcast photos at sixty-second intervals. But we could change that to a real-time video broadcast.” He gave Reggie the
web address of the video feed.

Reggie typed it in and they saw a jittery picture of the Johnston Island runway. The twin-engine supply plane carrying their
five comrades was on its takeoff roll. In a
few seconds it lifted into the air and circled the island to wait until it was clear to land again.

“Can we record what we’re seeing?” asked Kai.

In a flurry of mouse clicks too fast for Kai to follow, Reggie started a recording application. “This will let us analyze
the data later,” he said.

Kai had already told Aspen about the loss of contact with Christmas Island. The British scientist seemed remarkably composed.

“Well,” came Aspen’s voice through the speaker, “we have Charlotte and the rest safely away. I have to say, Dr. Tanaka, this
is all quite exciting for us. Just what we needed to liven up our normal routine.” A muffled voice came through behind Aspen’s.
“And Brent reminds me that we even have a thermos of tea to help us weather the storm, as it were.”

“Believe me, Dr. Aspen,” Kai said, “I hope I’m wrong.”

“I don’t know what more we could do.”

“You’ll be our first confirmation as to whether we’re dealing with a true tsunami or not. You’re on a concrete structure,
correct?”

“It couldn’t be more solid. You Americans certainly don’t mind wasting construction material. This is the safest place we
can be within walking distance. It might be the strongest structure on the island, by the look of it. We didn’t bring any
vehicles, of course.”

“How high are you?”

“I would say we’re thirty feet above the ground.”

The camera panned around to show a wide, flat roof, and then the jaunty figure of Aspen in a wide-brimmed hat, T-shirt, and
shorts, holding a large phone to his ear as he waved to the camera. The voice came out slightly ahead of the image from the
camera, so it looked like a badly dubbed foreign film.

“We are now moving the camera to the edge of the roof facing the ocean. As you mentioned, the tsunami should arrive from the
southeast, so that is the direction that you will be looking.”

After a few more seconds of nausea-inducing wobbles, the camera came to a stop atop a tripod, with Aspen now out of the picture.
A narrow road led away from the building, passing several structures before it petered out at the beach. In the distance,
breakers could be seen curling over the reef that encircled the island.

“To give you a sense of perspective,” Aspen said, “the two buildings you see directly in front of us are single-story wooden
structures roughly fifteen feet in height. I would estimate that the shoreline is about five hundred yards away. That is about
as far as we could get from the ocean and still find a strong building. I’d be quite surprised if the water got even this
far inland.”

Another indistinct mumbling in the background.

“Brent thought he spotted a wave on the horizon, but it was just another big breaker on the reef.”

“Dr. Aspen,” Kai said, “it’s likely that the first thing you’ll see is the water receding from the shore.”

“Right. We’ll keep on the lookout … Wait a minute. I think I see what you’re talking about.”

A second later Kai could see the ocean noticeably receding from the beach, visible even with the poor video. He had seen similar
video and pictures from other tsunamis, particularly the Asian tsunami, but seeing it in real time was literally breathtaking.

“It’s a spectacular sight, really,” Aspen said. “It’s like no ebb tide I’ve ever seen.”

Kai watched in wide-eyed wonder as the water went out. By the time it had withdrawn a couple hundred yards, he expected the
tide to start reversing and come back. But to his astonishment it kept going out.

“Sweet Jesus,” said Reggie. “It’s happening.”

Aspen continued to cheerfully report what he was observing.

“I’d guess the water has gone out one thousand yards by now. Is this the kind of phenomenon you were expecting, Dr. Tanaka?”

All Kai could say was, “No.” This was beyond his wildest nightmares. Until that point, he thought Aspen’s retreat to the rooftop
would provide all the protection he
needed. Now Kai clearly saw that the situation was dire, but he didn’t know what to tell Aspen. There was nowhere else for
the man to go.

“The water has stopped receding, I believe.”

The video confirmed his words. The extreme ebb tide bubbled out past the reef. With better camera resolution, Kai would have
expected to see thousands of fish flopping around on the newly exposed ocean bottom.

“My word, look at the birds.”

That got Kai’s attention. It seemed like an odd thing to say, considering everything else clamoring for attention. “Excuse
me, Dr. Aspen?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it, really. All the birds on the island seemed to have taken flight simultaneously. I hope
the pilot notices and steers clear of them.”

A yell in the background.

“Brent just noticed that the water is starting to come back. At an alarming pace, too, I’m afraid.”

In the distance, a frothy white line stretched across the horizon and out of the field of view of the camera. After a few
seconds the white froth had risen visibly and seemed to be racing for the camera.

“Dr. Aspen,” Kai said, “you need to find something to tie yourselves to. Anything permanently affixed to the structure.”

“We have no rope.”

“Use your belts, nylon from a backpack—anything.”

“I’m afraid the best we can do is to wrap our arms around a metal ladder bolted into the side of the building. Excuse me while
we do so.” Kai marveled that the man continued to use common courtesies in such a dire situation.

The wave now approached the beach. The froth looked to be thirty feet high and still rising. A growing roar threatened to
drown out Aspen’s voice.

“As you can hear,” he shouted, straining to make himself audible, “we are listening to what sounds like twenty approaching
freight trains. How big is this tsunami going to get, Dr. Tanaka?”

He deserved the truth. “I don’t know, Dr. Aspen. Maybe too big.”

A pause. He knew what Kai meant.

“Well, Dr. Tanaka,” Aspen yelled over the din, “it seems Brent and I may not get to enjoy that cup of tea after all.”

As he said that, a wall of water smashed into the palm trees closest to the beach, completely engulfing them, and the wave
finally showed signs of curling over. Kai could only watch in shock as the tsunami collapsed and drove itself into the first
building it encountered, shattering the wooden structure.

Whole trees and the debris from the building were driven forward by a wave that had to be at least one hundred feet high.
It engulfed everything in its path. No
building was even half the height of the wave. It was as if the world’s largest dam had burst.

The howl of crashing water coming from the phone now made it almost impossible to hear what Aspen was saying.

“My Lord! Hold on, Brent!” Then a scream from Brent in the background, and that was all Kai could make out before the phone
went dead.

At the same time, the tsunami commanded the entire area of the screen. It was like peering through the window of a washing
machine, water boiling and churning, with indistinct bits of detritus writhing around within it.

The camera pitched backward, probably from the force of air pushed in front of it by the wave. For a fraction of a second,
all Kai could see was blue sky. Then a shadow loomed over the lens, and the image was gone.

Kai, Brad, and Reggie all stood in stunned silence. Nobody could muster the words to comment on what they had just seen. But
they knew the implications. In less than an hour, Hawaii was going to experience a catastrophe of epic proportions.