THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller (45 page)

“It wasn’t linear, of course. The ship traveled back and forth over the study area in a pattern called ‘mowing the lawn.’ Then they built a grid of overlapping data sections to create a final image. Gas has a characteristic signal,” Swenson said, “that commonly shows up as a bright, high-amplitude reflection obscuring any deeper signals. The data showed that the entire area is charged with gas, and we suspect the cracks are a system of large depressions along the edge that were formed by gas erupting through the seafloor. These layers look like the remnants of an ancient delta that reached out far beyond the current coastline during the last ice age. Sea levels were much lower then than they are today. The samples the team recovered included silty clay, sand and gravel from the bottom, and these are consistent with deltaic settings. Where these deposits are absent, the gas simply percolates harmlessly to the surface.”

“Some scientists,” Swenson continued, ignoring him, “from both Columbia University and the Texas Institute for Geophysics speculate the rising gas might play a role in triggering collapses of the shelf. The Continental Shelf here is historically prone to landslides. An enormous slide occurred just to the south of here only sixteen to eighteen thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age.”

“So that’s the plan then,” Speers responded. “We plant this bomb inside one of the blowout depressions, trigger it before the other tsunami gets here, and hope it knocks a chunk off the Outer Continental Shelf. Is that it?”

“That’s it,” said Swenson.

“Sounds pretty straight-forward.”

“It won’t be. We can’t just drop the bomb on the bottom and hope for the best,” said Swenson. “To make sure the gas erupts – causing a landslide – and radiates a mega-tsunami in the appropriate direction, we’ll have to navigate the
Alvin
as deep inside one of the dormant tunnels within the blowouts as we can.”

Speers nodded. “I’ve made more than thirty dives in the
Alvin
over the last six years. I was on the mission when we recovered that hydrogen bomb some knucklehead dropped onto the bottom of the Mediterranean in ’98. I’ve surveyed the
Titanic
and helped explore those deep-sea hydrothermal vents covered in tube worms. But I’ve never taken this DSV into a tunnel. The Submerged Operating Limits guide specifically states that
Alvin
– and I quote – ‘will not be operated in such a fashion so as to pass under an object, either natural or manmade . . .
Alvin
will remain clear of wreckage, debris, or natural terrain features which have entanglement or entrapment potential.’ Unquote.”

“I know,” said Swenson.

“Of course,” continued Speers. “The manual also says, ‘
Alvin
will remain clear of any explosives devices which may be sighted.’” He laughed. “I guess this nuclear bomb on the prow kind of blows that one, huh?”

Decker smiled. He looked over at Swenson. She appeared pale and tense in the dim lights of the submarine. A thin sheen of perspiration glazed her forehead. He had never seen her look so nervous, not even in the arms of El Aqrab. This dive was taking its toll. “Well, to keep your certification clean, you could always navigate with a blindfold,” Decker said. He laughed thinly but Swenson simply turned away and began to stare out through the view port once again.

Speers grinned back. He had a gap between his two front teeth that made him appear much younger than he was. “Look, ma. No eyes,” he said.

Swenson suddenly turned and glared at them. “Why don’t you save the macho crap for afterwards? The testosterone level in here is making me nauseous.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Speers. Swenson looked back out through the view port. Speers glanced at Decker, rolled his eyes and shrugged. “We should be bottom-side in ten,” he said. “I’m getting a blowout, CTFM.”

“What’s that?” Decker inquired.

“Sunwest SS300 sonar. Medium range FM. It’s what we use to search and navigate the bottom. We can track negative db targets the size of a gallon gas can at six hundred feet, a zero db object like a small boulder at fifteen hundred feet, and a plus twenty-five db feature like a ridge or slope at ranges of three thousand feet or more.” He pointed to a fifteen-inch TFT flat panel. Five range rings were marked on the display. “State of the art,” he said. “We also use acoustic pingers from twenty to fifty kilohertz. If there’s a tunnel out there, we’ll see it.”

As he talked, he began to fiddle with the forward center panel. Decker watched him as he held a switch marked ENABLE in the down position. Then he pushed another switch for two more seconds. The DSV lurched forward momentarily.

“What was that?” asked Decker.

“Two of our ballast weights,” said Speers. “We’re almost on the bottom.”

Decker studied the pilot carefully. He seemed to exude confidence. He obviously knew his ship like the back of his hand. “Hey, Speers. How come you volunteered for this duty?”

Without looking up he said, “Enlisted as a SEAL ten years ago. Been in tougher spots than this one, believe me. More than twenty of us signed up for this mission. I was lucky.”

“Lucky?” said Swenson. “Is that what you call it?” She laughed bleakly.

Speers looked at her, his face absolutely serious for the first time. “I got a wife and little girl back in Virginia. I’d like to see them again, if you know what I mean.”

Swenson glanced back out through the view port. Decker nodded.

All of a sudden Swenson said, “There’s the bottom.” She seemed excited now. She pushed her face against the Plexiglas and breathed a deep sigh of relief. “The Young Canyons.” She turned toward Decker and Speers. “Listen,” she said. “About what I said before . . . ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Speers replied.

She smiled weakly. A little color seemed to be returning to her face. “I didn’t mean–”

“As Pilot-in-Command,” Speers interrupted, “I have the authority to terminate any dive by whatever means necessary at any time I feel a hazard to the submersible or personnel exists, without regard to mission success or completion. Unquote.” He winked at Swenson. “So unless you want to go back to the surface, just forget it.”

She nodded and stared back through the view port. “There,” she said. “Off the starboard beam.”

Speers glanced at the TFT. “I see it.”

“What?” said Decker, straining at the screen. Every inch of the sphere was covered with instrumentation: buttons and dials, lights and displays. It made the cockpit of a jet look simple. “See what?” he said.

“A tunnel,” Speers replied. “A little small but serviceable.”

Swenson turned toward Decker. “Better buckle up,” she said. “We’re going in.”

Speers piloted the DSV into the opening with uncanny skill and they began to inch their way along the tunnel. When they had gone about two hundred meters, the tunnel dropped out below them, and they followed it, descending another hundred meters into the shelf. Then the tunnel straightened out, running parallel to the surface for another two hundred meters or more before narrowing. Several times, the DSV bumped walls. At one point, the tunnel veered off in a jagged dogleg. Speers asked Swenson if this was far enough, but she shook her head. After a few minutes, they managed to squeeze through.

When they could go no further, Speers finally hit the switch and turned and said, “That’s it. We’re done. It’s just too narrow.”

Swenson scanned the instruments. “Ok,” she said. “It’ll have to do.”

For a while, none of them spoke. They knew what Speers was doing at the console – trying to plant the nuclear device in the wall. He moved the instruments with care. They watched it on the monitor. The modified Tomahawk warhead appeared much bigger than El Aqrab’s small briefcase bomb. It was shaped like an artillery shell. There was a tense moment as the release caught for a second, but Speers used one of the robotic arms to push the bomb away. It wobbled, started to fall, then finally settled on a shelf carved in the tunnel wall. Speers backed the ship up slightly before using the manipulator to arm the mechanism.

Then they began to back out down the tunnel. When they had gone about a hundred meters, as they were rounding the dogleg, the ship caught against the wall, and the vessel seemed to stall.

Friday, February 4 – 6:00 AM

The wave encroached upon the Caribbean. On a beautiful, manicured golf course on the island of Bermuda, Seamus Gallagher was enjoying an early-morning round at the Mid Atlantic Golf Club – ignoring every call from his office. He was only on the second hole, a grueling 471-yard par 5, and he was already in trouble. His ball had blown off to the side into the high rough overlooking the Atlantic. He scowled as he tried to get a good look at the pin. It was still pretty dark. He hated par 5s. His eyesight wasn’t what it had been, he recalled nostalgically. He couldn’t even see the fucking flag.

Gallagher settled into his stance, swiveled his hips and studied the ball.
Remember the wind
, he told himself. He looked back at the distant green. He wiggled his driver. Then he stared down at the ball again. As he began his swing, he was suddenly distracted by a thunderclap to the east. He sliced the ball.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He threw the club down on the ground. Then he stared up at the sky as the ball curved round and tumbled toward the sea, bouncing once on the rocks below before disappearing into the surf. He turned toward his caddy, an old black man with a lime green shirt, but – luckily – the caddy seemed distracted. He hadn’t seen him make a complete and utter fool of himself. The sound of thunder grew more intense.

Gallagher turned to follow the caddy’s gaze and, as he did so, he noticed the tide retreating from the flats at an alarming pace. Where his ball had disappeared – only a moment before, into the surf – was now dry land. “Hey, what the . . . ” he started to say when he finally noticed the wave.

It was a mile or two away. No, less. At first Gallagher thought he must be seeing things. The wave looked to be fifteen stories high. He picked up his driver. He held it against his chest. “Jesus Christ,” he said, completely stupefied. He looked up at the sky. The wave was already on him. It was already there. And for some reason, his whole life didn’t flash before his eyes, nor did he see his family and friends, the sacred places of his heart. All that he noticed was the divot at his feet, that patch of tattered grass. He bent down to replace it as the wave washed him away.

* * *

Speers continued to struggle with the switch panel, trying to leverage the six degrees of movement in the starboard manipulator arm: the shoulder pitch and yaw; the elbow pitch; the wrist pitch and rotation. He even tried to open and close the hand, but the
Alvin
wouldn’t budge. He cursed and reached for the position feedback master/slave mechanism that controlled the port manipulator. He began to extend the arm. Decker could see the hand outside his view port gradually reach out until it was practically touching the tunnel wall. Then it stopped.

Speers pushed the master and the wrist began to torque. “Fully extended,” the pilot continued, “the arm has a lift capacity of only one hundred and fifty pounds. But the wrist torque is rated at thirty feet over pounds, with a rotational speed of sixty-five rpm.”

At first Decker didn’t understand. Then he realized that Speers was trying to use the port manipulator arm to lever the starboard arm away. There was the sound of metal scraping stone. The tunnel wall began to crumble and the ship finally pulled free.

“That was fun,” said Speers, looking over with a grin.

“Yeah,” said Decker, smiling back. “Let’s stay and do it again.”

Speers whooped and laughed as they continued their ascent. Within fifteen minutes, they were back out in the open water of the blowout. But they were running out of time. If they were to detonate the bomb and intercept the mega-tsunami, they’d have to do it while still dangerously close. Without saying it, each of them knew exactly what this meant. The blast would probably kill them. It would hurl the small submersible against the Continental Shelf. Unless they could initiate a considerable amount of negative buoyancy, they’d be smashed to pieces.

“Are you ready?” Speers said, reaching for the console. He had rigged up a temporary firing switch. “We’re at the point of no return.” Decker looked at Swenson. She nodded and turned away.

“Go ahead,” said Decker.

“Fire in the hole,” said Speers and pushed the button.

At first nothing seemed to happen. Not a sound. Not a ripple. Then a huge explosion reverberated through the ship. The shock wave from the nuclear explosion hurled them roughly through the water column. The sound caught up. Decker felt as if his ears were bursting, and the power suddenly cut off. The ship was thrust into darkness.