THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller (42 page)

Inside the ship, Warhaftig pulled himself off Decker and struggled to his feet. “Are you alright?” he said. Seiden steadied him from behind.

Decker was still lying next to Swenson. He grabbed a nearby blanket and covered her again. Swenson sat up. She looked about. The Rangers were strapped in all around her. They were okay. She looked down, under the blanket, and began to strip away the magnesium tape still wrapped about her body. Everyone pretended not to watch.

“Excuse me,” Warhaftig shouted over the din. “I have to break the news to the Director.” He zigzagged forward toward the cockpit.

“And I must contact my superiors,” said Seiden, following in his wake.

Decker stared out through the open helicopter hatch. The island was disappearing from view. They were headed north-northwest, toward the Azores. He looked over at Swenson. “Can I help?” he said. She was picking off the remaining metal ribbon like strands of a cocoon.

Decker shimmied over to her. He reached his hands behind the blanket and began to pull the metal ribbon off her naked shoulders. It unraveled like dried snakeskin. “You look like a mummy in some new age horror flick,” he said.

“Does that mean I’m already dead?” She turned and looked at him and smiled. He was looking at her cleavage. “Why, John Decker, Junior! You are such a boy. I had no idea. You like my outfit, huh?” She lowered the towel a little more. “Look what was sitting on your coach two nights ago,” she said, “before you sent her to bed.”

“Before, when we were on our way to La Palma, you seemed to believe that there might be some way of stopping this. I mean, I know you said there wasn’t. But you kind of hesitated. Just for a moment. I thought . . . ” He tried to look away, tried to ignore the logical extension of his argument. Forty million souls, he thought, compared to one or two. “When you mentioned Newton, I thought . . . Maybe I’m wrong.”

She shook her head. Her back was to him and he couldn’t see her face. But he could feel the way she tightened up, the way she suddenly withdrew into herself. Then she leaned back into his arms. She lay her head on his chest. “No, you’re not wrong,” she said. “Maybe there is.” She looked into his eyes. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

“And for a wave?”

“A counter-wave,” she said. Then she smiled. “Remember I told you about my descent into those canyons off the Jersey coast? With E.J., my professor?”

He nodded.

“Well, I was thinking. What if someone, somehow were to descend into those tunnels along the Continental Shelf? What if they planted a nuclear device, like El Aqrab did in La Palma, and set it off?”

“What if they did?”

“Well, don’t you see? An explosion might precipitate eruptions of the gas trapped in the sediments beneath, initiate a massive underwater landslide. If someone were to trigger a mega-tsunami on the opposite side of the Atlantic, if we could propagate a counter-wave, traveling east – at least theoretically, and if everything worked perfectly – the two would meet and . . . ”

“ . . . cancel each other out. Is that it? Is that what you mean?”

“Something like that. Of course there would still be lots of damage, residual effects. But it wouldn’t kill tens of millions. On the other hand, it might just make things worse.”

“I doubt things could get a whole lot worse than a twenty-story wave crashing through the Eastern Seaboard. Not to mention the Caribbean, Venezuela and Brazil. Let’s face it, Emily, we can’t just sit here and watch the whole world go to hell. Someone will have to try.”

Swenson nodded, turned away. Decker felt the labyrinth of his argument unwind.

Warhaftig stumbled down the aisle. He looked completely stunned, as if someone has just punched him in the face. “That was the President,” he said. “He and his advisors all agree that there’s only so much we can do in only fifteen hours. We’ll do our best, of course. FEMA will supervise emergency evacuations of all the major cities on the coast. New York, thank God, is already virtually deserted. Members of Congress and the White House staff are being flown to safety as we speak. The Pentagon . . . ” He shook his head. “By dawn tomorrow, more than thirty-five million Americans will be dead. Tens of thousands will die just trying to get away. If only we had listened to you sooner, John, we might have–”

Warhaftig walked back toward the front of the helicopter and gathered up some headsets. Seiden was standing in the cockpit chatting with his superiors. “We have a plan,” Warhaftig said. He described it briefly.

“Wait a minute.” Seiden tapped his microphone. “Just a moment, sir, there’s been a change in strategy. I’ll have to call you back.”

Warhaftig carried the headsets astern. He handed them out, put one on himself, and showed them how to plug into the console.

Decker slipped his headset on. Now that it was gone, he suddenly realized how loud and irritating the noise from the blades and open hatch had been. He could hear Warhaftig’s voice clear as a bell.

First, they contacted the Azores and arranged for the fastest plane available to meet them in São Miguel, some commandeered Citation X. The Spanish millionaire who owned her threatened to call the Prime Minister of Spain, but then he heard about the looming wave and changed his tune. He’d be more than happy to assist the Americans, he said. At no expense.

Swenson knew a fair amount about the islands of the Azores, having traveled there for a conference three years earlier. She informed them they were the EU’s most secluded outpost, spread out across 600 kilometers of ocean, located roughly 1,500 kilometers or two hours' flying time from Lisbon. Running along a southeast to northwest axis, the islands were separated into three main clusters: the Eastern Group of São Miguel and Santa Maria; the Central Group of Terceira, Graciosa, São Jorge, Pico and Faial; and the Western Group of Flores and Corvo.

Like the Canaries, they had been formed by the eruption of volcanoes, and lay on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a fault line that zigzagged for some 16,000 kilometers from beneath the northern icecap southwards, turning east around the southern tip of Africa to meet with the Indian Ocean Ridge. Three plates collided underneath the ocean at the base of the Azores, or rather diverged, said Swenson, in a kind of T-shaped triple junction between Flores and Faial.

The more Decker listened to Emily, the more entranced he became – and the more uncertain. As a Midwesterner, he had never experienced earthquakes or seismic activity of any kind. The earth had always seemed a permanent place to him; indeed, uncompromising. But it wasn’t fixed. Nothing was fixed. The ground swirled over molten rock, the earth twirled round the sun, the sun whirled silently around the galaxy in space.

“I can hear you,” someone said. “Hello, Dr. Swenson. Are you there?” The voice sounded tinny and distant, and yet Decker knew it was the President. He sounded just like on TV, with the same Texas twang and nasal overtone.

“Agent Warhaftig has briefed us on the situation. I’m going to hand the phone over to one of my advisors so you can tell her exactly what we need to do. Is Special Agent Decker there?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I can hear you, Mr. President.”

Swenson grabbed Decker by the sleeve and drew him close. Their heads were almost touching.

“I just wanted to thank you two for everything you’ve done. Secretary Dale has been keeping me abreast of your activities, every hour, on the hour, all day long. No matter what happens, whether this plan of yours succeeds or not, you two are heroes in my book. You’ve both risked your lives for your country, and that’s something that none of us will ever forget. That goes for you too, Chief Seiden. I understand that without your help, Special Agent Decker and Ms. Swenson wouldn’t be here to accept my gratitude. This will only strengthen the alliance between our two great nations. I wish you all good luck. And God speed,” he said. “Now, let me put Allegra on. Tell her exactly what she needs to do and we’ll make it happen.”

“OK,” they heard a voice say. “Hello, Ms. Swenson, Agent Decker. This is National Security Advisor, Allegra Wheatley.”

“Nice to meet you,” Swenson stuttered, immediately rolling her eyes.

“Nice to meet you too, Emily. Are you okay? Don’t be nervous. Just tell me what you need. We have a Navy attack-class submarine already stationed off New York.”

Decker could hear Swenson sigh. He felt her hand slip into his, and squeeze. “That’s not going to work,” she said. “A nuclear sub’s too big. The canyon passages are really narrow and unless you want the wave to end up on the coast, you’ll have to plant it deep inside a fissure on the eastern flank. We’re going to need a Deep Submergence Vehicle. A DSV. The nearest one’s probably at WHOI. I mean the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, in Massachusetts. She’s called the
Alvin
.”

They could hear Wheatley cover up the phone and chat briefly with someone else. “That’s fine, Emily,” she continued. “How much does it weigh?”

“Weigh? I don’t know. Ten to fifteen metric tons, I guess. In the air? Maybe more. I don’t know,” said Swenson nervously. “Why?”

“It will take too long for the
Alvin’s
mother ship to steam down from Woods Hole. We’ll have to transport it by Chinook. That’s a helicopter.” She was interrupted once again. Someone else seemed to be listening at the other end. “OK,” she continued. “I’ve been told that an MH-47E Chinook can only hoist around 27,000 pounds. We’re going to have to call our friends in Cuba and ask to borrow an Mi-26. It’s got the hauling capacity of a Hercules.”

“Are you sure the Cubans will comply?” Warhaftig said.

Wheatley did not hesitate. “Once this tsunami hits, they’re going to need an awful lot of aid. Frankly, we’ll be their only hope, no matter what they feel politically.”

“Cuba’s a long way away.”

“The Mi-26 cruises at around two hundred miles per hour,” said Wheatley. “If La Palma doesn’t collapse for another nine or ten hours – which none of us thinks is likely – and if it then takes the wave another six plus hours to reach us, we should have enough time to fly her up to Woods Hole and hoist the
Alvin
back. Where would you like us to bring it, honey?”

“Approximately two hundred kilometers east-southeast of Atlantic City. But don’t forget: we’re going to need at least an hour to get down to the proper depths. And what about our cruise plan?”

Wheatley laughed. “I think they’ll let it slide this time. It may be operated by WHOI, but the
Alvin
’s Navy-owned. We’ll have her rendezvous with a Navy frigate. The
USS Stanfield
is off New York. And she’s armed with a suitable nuclear device. The
Alvin
, Emily; is she equipped with some kind of sample tray or bucket?”

“OK. Let’s not worry about it now. We’ll have a team of engineers rig something up in Massachusetts while they’re waiting for the Mi-26. Where exactly are these blowouts on the Continental Shelf? Can you give me the coordinates?”

“Thirty-six degrees, forty-five north. Seventy-four degrees, fifty west. The Young Canyons are where we’ve seen the most recent faults.”

As Swenson continued to relay her instructions to the President’s National Security Advisor, Decker turned and looked out through the porthole at the sea below. Everything seemed completely surreal. The Atlantic was absolutely calm here. It was hard to imagine the giant wave that would soon be on their tail at the speed of a commercial jet. So much adrenaline was pumping through his veins that Decker felt giddy, almost light-headed. Swenson continued to talk with the casual tone of someone ordering up a pizza. And then the pilot suddenly cut in.

“The Azores,” he said. “We’ll be landing in just a few minutes. Fasten your seatbelts please.”

Decker could see the islands in the distance. They rose out of the sea, mountainous and wild, ringed by white waves. He tried not to think of what they’d look like by nightfall.

Friday, February 4 – 12:16 AM

La Palma
, The Canary Islands