02 Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel (14 page)
“You talk about power?
I’ll
tell you about power.”
Dr. Robert Hamilton stood at the front of the lecture hall. He had momentarily forgotten about the phone call he’d received before class — from his oncologist. Instead, he was now in the happy oblivion of his favorite class: introduction to geology.
The students gazed numbly into the distance or doodled in their notebooks. Dr. Hamilton paced around the podium, his eyes glued to the floor, as if he were lecturing to no one but himself.
“And I’m not referring to nuclear fission. The physicists can tell you about that. I’m talking about something else altogether.” He clicked a button on the video control. The big screen lit up behind him and showed a photo of Mount St. Helens exploding. “Look at that volcanic plume,” he said, “that column of ash, gas, and pumice fragments reaching high into the atmosphere!”
After gazing at it for a moment, Hamilton wheeled around and continued, “The volcano in Iceland in 2010 paralyzed air travel around the world. And now consider this year’s record number of eruptions, more than any time in recorded human history. I was at the Saudi Arabian site recently, just after an eruption at Harrat-Ithnayn out in the western desert, which reminds me …”
He pulled out a sheet of paper and scanned it. “What number is that … the map … oh, yes, here it is.” He pushed that number on his control. A world map appeared on the screen. Small colored circles dotted parts of Asia, India, and the Middle East. “Look at the circles — areas where it is estimated that the most volcanic activity, with the highest fatalities, is predicted to occur. Some of this data is from the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Now, here’s something interesting …” Hamilton took his laser pointer and put a red dot on the circles in the Middle East, running from Turkey in the north, through Syria,
through Israel, and down to Cairo. “Look at this … this is ground zero for the most massive volcanic activity … right here.”
He stopped and looked out at the class as if suddenly remembering where he was. “But I was talking about power, wasn’t I?” His gaze was met by a sea of vacant stares, but something else caught his eye … an unfamiliar face, someone out of place. In the very last row sat a middle-aged man in a short-sleeve white shirt and a tie, which was loose at the neck.
Hamilton refocused on his lecture. “Power. Yes. Volcanoes and earthquakes are intimately related. They can cause tsunamis at sea …” He noticed a hand go up from a student. At last, he thought, someone was awake; Hamilton nodded for him to ask his question.
“Can a tsunami swallow up a ship out in the sea, like an ocean liner or something like that?”
“The simple answer is no,” Hamilton replied. “Because of the geophysics of the tsunami wave. In open ocean the depth of the seafloor keeps the wave down to a short height but spreading it over a huge distance in its length so it’s hardly noticeable. But when the surge of water hits a shallow sea floor, as you have when you approach the shallows of a harbor, that’s when the top of the wave mounds up over the bottom part, and you have
wave shoaling.
Creating a wall of water. In fact, the word
tsumani
is a Japanese word, meaning ‘harbor wave.’ ”
Another student’s hand shot up. “The textbook showed pictures from the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami back in 2011. The waves didn’t seem that tall.”
Hamilton smiled at the sudden interest. “They didn’t have to be, yet they created widespread damage. On the other hand, geological events can create colossal tidal waves. Volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes. And those in turn can cause monster walls of water. In 1958 in Lituya Bay in Alaska a landslide created a tidal wave that was seventeen hundred feet high.”
The classroom exploded with a chorus of disbelief. Professor Hamilton was energized.
“Students, that’s what I am talking about when I talk about the raw
power of physical events in the earth. The 9.0 earthquake in Japan actually accelerated the earth’s rotation slightly. Take another comparison. Take a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. The bombs tested in the Nevada desert in the 1950s sent mushroom clouds about seven miles into the sky. Compare that with Mount St. Helens, whose plume reached fifteen miles high.
“Volcanoes can spit out pyroclastic flows at fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit, full of rock, hot ash, and gas. The movement of these flows has been clocked at a hundred and fifty miles per hour, mudslides at forty miles per hour, searing hot lava flows at thirty miles per hour. The effects of a volcano can cover up to eight hundred thousand square miles, like the one at Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883. And a volcano can fire off natural bombs called
tephra
— huge pieces of rock propelled outward in a diameter of up to fifty miles. Can you imagine one-ton boulders being flung into the air for miles? Then there are the other effects: disruption of electronic transmissions, clogging the jet engines of aircraft, jammed radio and television signals. When you’re in the middle of one of these, it’s the closest thing imaginable to the end of the world. That’s what the survivors of the ancient eruption at Vesuvius must have thought. They must have wept and declared that their gods had betrayed them.”
Having exhausted his tangent, Hamilton returned to his prepared lesson, about the basics of tectonic plates.
Soon the bell rang, and Hamilton gathered up his notes. That’s when, in the quiet of the classroom, the phone call from the oncologist came rushing back into his mind. “Some spots lit up on your last scan,” the doctor had said. “We need you to come in so we can discuss some options. I’m sorry, Dr. Hamilton.”
As Hamilton was deep in thought, the man from the back of the room slowly sauntered down the aisle. He seemed to be timing his gait to give a few straggling students a chance to clear the room. When the lecture hall was empty, the man approached Dr. Hamilton. The middle-aged man had a tangle of uncombed hair and an intense look to him.
“Professor Hamilton,” the man said, looking around as if he were afraid of being overheard. “I’m Curtis Belltether. Remember me?”
Hamilton gave a vague shake of the head.
“I’m the blog journalist. I called you about your studies …”
“Oh, yes. Right. Were we supposed to meet?”
“Not really. I flew here on a bit of a whim. I thought we should talk face-to-face.”
“Tell me about yourself again, Mr. Belltether. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”
“I used to be a reporter for a couple of major print dailies. They went belly up, so I transferred over to some Internet publications. I kept a job, for a while. My specialty is investigative reporting, but with the changes in the electronic media, with foreign interests buying everything up, and then with the political controls that Washington has placed on the Internet, I found myself … oh, you might say, rubbing the cat’s fur the wrong way. I’m your all-purpose offender. So, finding myself out of work, I started my own Internet news source. My first site was called NewsJunk. That got shut down. Too controversial. Then I launched one called the Barn Door. That one apparently stepped on some toes as well. My Internet provider and the telecom company said my site was shut down because it had too many viruses. What a laugh. I had a cyber expert examine my site. Guess what? No viruses … Am I boring you?”
Hamilton’s expression brightened. “No, go on.”
“So now my blog site is called Leak-o-paedia. I expose secret conspiracies and government corruption based on information that people … like you … give me.”
“Like me?”
“Yeah. Just like you. Experts who’ve had some time in the belly of the beast and have a story to tell.”
“What beast?”
“How about the International Conference on Climate and Global Warming at the United Nations?”
“They rejected my credentials. I wasn’t allowed in.”
“My point exactly.”
“What is it you want, Mr. Belltether?”
“Your take on the recent spike in worldwide temperatures, the U.N. conference, and what you tried to tell Washington but what they didn’t want to hear … that sort of thing.”
Dr. Hamilton was smiling. For a brief moment that phone call from his doctor had just been tucked away in the out basket.
Amman, Jordan
The palms of his hands were cold and sweaty. He felt that empty, roller-coaster feeling in the pit of his stomach.
Inside his tiny nondescript apartment in Jordan’s capital city, Rafi could hear the last chanting echoes of the dwindling mob in the streets below. Thousands of Arab members of the Muslim Brotherhood had filled the streets, chanting and shouting,
“Mawt Israel! Mawt America!”
He’d heard it before. These displays were a regular occurrence in the streets of Amman. Calling for the death of those two nations was nothing new, but it seemed to Rafi that they came more frequently now.
As a member of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, Rafi was also accustomed to blending in, looking relaxed and natural in hostile surroundings. But today he wasn’t calm. He had to make a call on the customized sat-fone in his apartment. He didn’t have any doubts about it being a secure line or that the encryption was less than perfect. The
yahalomin,
the Mossad communications technician who had installed it, was one of the best. No, it was the message he had to transmit that made him uneasy.
He tapped in the code, then waited. Three beeps. He gave the voice command to the recognition software on the other end. After a few seconds, he heard a tone. Then an automated voice asked him for today’s password phrase.
He spoke it. “He caused the storm to be still.”
“You have been authorized. Please hold.”
Rafi waited. He glanced at the mini-cam monitor, which showed a view of the hallway outside of his apartment. It was clear.
He generally didn’t give much thought to the pass-phrase, but he wondered who had picked the one for today. Rafi had gone to Yeshiva, and in his studies he had come across that verse from Psalm 107:
He caused the storm to be still.
So that the waves of the sea were hushed.
A voice came over the line. Rafi recognized it. It was General Shapiro, head of the IDF special operations.
“Number 8, good day.”
“And to you, sir.”
“News?”
“Yes.”
Rafi had to give it in code.
Prince
meant Iran, and
king
meant Jordan. Nuclear weapons were referred to as
arrows,
and nonnuclear conventional missiles were
sticks.
A ground invasion was called
surfing,
and a terror attack
a game of badminton.
“Sir, the Olympics are approaching.”
“Sounds competitive.”
“It will be.”
“Tell me, what’s the game exactly?”
“Archery, sir.”
There was a pause. When he spoke next, General Shapiro’s voice was punctuated, each word painfully clear and crisp. “How many arrows?”
Rafi replied, but as he did, he caught something on the monitor next to him. “Three arrows …”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s playing?”
“The prince.”
“Your source?”
“Friends close to the king. The king has been warned, assured by
the prince of no harm to his land. Also so that they can prepare. Because the king and his people live next to the Olympic stadium.”
“You are sure of this?”
“I am sure. One second, sir …”
In the fish-eyed lens of the monitor, Rafi could see two men, one in a short-sleeve shirt and the other in a suit with no tie. Both had beards. They were walking toward his door.
“One second, sir — ”
“Timeline? We must have the timeline — ”
“Soon — ”
“How soon?”
The men were at his door.
“Have to sign off.”
The two men in the hallway pulled out their ZOAF 9mm handguns.
Rafi disconnected. He grouped the monitor and the sat-fone together on the table and then reached into a briefcase on the floor. He pulled out a block of plastic explosives, the size of a small brick, with a detonator already in place. He clicked on the Allfone wired to it. Then he sprinted to the window.
The door to his apartment burst open, the men rushed in, quickly scanned the room, and then started shooting. They emptied their magazines at the open window where they had just glimpsed Rafi’s form jumping out.
Rafi landed twenty feet below on a metal awning. He hit his right shoulder and hand in the leap. The shoulder felt dislocated, and his hand was probably broken. With his left hand, he painfully opened his other Allfone and tried to hit the speed dial. His right arm wasn’t moving well.
He looked up. The Iranian gunmen were bending out the window. They spotted him. As they tried to draw a bead on him with their weapons, Rafi clumsily hit the speed dial button again. The upstairs apartment roared with the blast of fire and smoke that shot out the window. The two gunmen were blown out of the apartment in a hail of debris and sent sailing across the narrow street where they slammed into a building opposite and dropped onto the sidewalk in a heap.
Rafi rolled off the awning and dumped himself in a pained heap
on the street. People streamed out of the nearby shops and apartment buildings to see what had happened. Rafi ran and ducked into a nearby alley. He’d have to make it to the next safe house in Amman before the mob — or the police or more Iranian agents — caught up with him.
At Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, General Shapiro, who had just finished his call with Rafi, looked at the six men around the table.
“When is the meeting scheduled with the American colonel?”
“Soon, but it hasn’t been finalized.”
“We need him here immediately. How about the NATO protocols? Any problems there?”
One of the men said, “All set.”
“How about the U.S. Department of Defense?”
“We’ve got the sign-off from the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. We’re ready to go.”
General Shapiro knew the answer to his next question but asked it anyway. “We’re looking at the question of notifying the Department of Defense before we actually hit the On button for our RTS systems. But there’s a bigger problem: do we tell the Corland administration directly what we now know about an impending attack against our nation?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “Probably not. There are those close to the president who will jam a wrench into this thing. We’ll end up waiting for support that will never come, and Israel will be bombed into a patch of scorched sand.” Then he added. “Get Joshua Jordan over here.
Now.
We need the best eyes there are on this RTS antimissile system. It’s his design. Let’s get his eyes.”
But the director of Mossad had another question. It would have seemed absurd if it were not so ominous: “What exactly do we tell him? Do we warn him? Do we say, by the way, Colonel Jordan, we thought you ought to know … we’re having a nuclear war over here, and you’re invited.”