THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller (46 page)

After a few seconds, the emergency battery-powered lights flashed on. Swenson moved over to assist Speers in the navigation of the ship. Decker felt completely helpless. “What can I do?” he said.

“Nothing,” said Speers, “unless you can replace these thrusters.” He slapped the console and looked up. “Three of them are fried.”

Swenson turned toward Speers and said, “They’re the ones mounted athwartships, in the stern, designed to turn the vessel sideways.”

“Plus forward and reverse,” Speers added bleakly.

“Yeah, but the thrusters amidships, the ones that enable vertical lift are still operational, right?”

“We barely have any power. Even if we could somehow generate more buoyancy, and miraculously miss the shelf, I doubt we’d have enough thrust left to make it to the surface.”

Speers laughed and checked the SERVICE RELEASE switch on the service bus to make sure it was in the up position. Then he released the remaining ballast weights by holding the ENABLE switches in the down position, and toggling them for two seconds. The vessel shuddered. The DSV began to climb, then stalled. The current was just too strong.

Suddenly, another noise, as loud as the explosion of the bomb, perhaps louder, echoed through the craft. Decker could feel it in his bones. The ship vibrated as though they were swimming through a kettledrum.

“The shelf-edge,” Swenson cried. “It’s beginning to collapse.”

A sound like two giant steel plates rubbing against each other reverberated through the ship. She was rocked by yet another blast. The DSV began to tumble, to freefall through the ocean depths.

Without waiting for an answer, he checked to make sure the ballast vents were shut. Then he reached toward the lower part of the port distribution panel and began to blow the aft and forward tanks. He continued to push the switches intermittently, shooting air into the tanks. Decker couldn’t feel a thing. “Nothing’s happening,” he shouted above the din.

Speers pointed at the computer console. “
Alvin
says it is,” he cried. “That’s a temperature-compensated quartz oscillator pressure transducer,” he added with a smile. “Try and say that fast three times! Look out your view port. You see that Bourdon dial embedded in the housing? No, over there,” he said and pointed. “That little tube on the right?”

The entire ship was vibrating. Decker glanced out of his view port and noticed an instrument just outside the Plexiglas. He had no idea how to read it, but he was comforted by the fact that it appeared to be moving. Very slowly.

Speers continued to push the VENT switch. “We’re ascending but it isn’t fast enough. I’ll have to jettison the manipulators and the batteries.”

“Don’t we need the batteries?” asked Decker.

“They won’t do us any good if we’re in a thousand pieces on the seafloor.” Speers began to fiddle with the red-bordered emergency release switches on the dump panel located at the top of the center console. First he de-energized the “A” main battery closest to
Alvin’s
center of gravity by pushing the 120-volt contactor switch. Then he unfastened his safety belt. He staggered aft and port, approaching the science rack.

“What are you doing?” Swenson cried. “Sit down, for Christ’s sake!”

Speers smiled. “Got to cut the safety wire.” He reached into the science rack and pulled out a pair of wire cutters.

The air seemed to explode. Decker felt himself pitch sideways as the DSV rolled over and over, and the emergency lights went out. He felt his stomach rise into his throat. Unmoored, Speers hurtled against the bulwark. He bounced like a ball inside a lottery cage as the ship tumbled out of control. Swenson screamed. It was a loud shrill sound that seemed to pierce his heart, followed by a sickening
thwack
.

The ship began to finally turn as the thrusters heaved against the torque. Decker felt a freezing liquid splash his face. The emergency lights flicked on. He looked over at Swenson. Her face was pale as snow. A thin mist of water was spraying from a hole in the hull. He looked at Speers who was curled up on the deck. His head flapped back and forth as the ship continued to right herself. His neck was clearly broken. His baby blue eyes stared blankly into space.

A moment later, the “heading hold” autopilot linked to the gyrocompass kicked in, and the vessel toggled upright. Decker looked out his view port. The DSV was descending once again.

Decker unfastened his seatbelt, reached out for her. He cradled her in his arms. “Are you alright?” he said. “Anything broken?” He began to pat her body.

Swenson didn’t answer. She didn’t respond at all. She had a nasty red welt on one cheek where Speers must have struck her as he bounced about the sphere. She was in shock.

“Oh, Emily,” he said. Decker pressed her against his chest. “Please, Emily, snap out of it.” He started to shake her but she barely seemed to respond. “Emily, wake up! I don’t know how to pilot this thing.”

“I told him,” she continued. Her voice was flat, robotic.

Decker continued to shake her. “We’re going to die, Emily, if you don’t help me. Do you hear me? I gave up my gun. For you, Emily, for you! I never thought I’d feel . . . ” The words caught in his throat.

She looked up at his face but her eyes remain unfocussed. They seemed to stare right through him. Then she said, “You never thought you’d what?”

“Don’t you get it?” His voice began to break. “I love you, Emily.” He started to laugh. “And I haven’t even kissed you yet,” he said. “Listen to me! I said I fucking love you.”

Swenson’s eyes began to focus. She looked at Decker, a quizzical expression on her face. She put a hand around her jaw and started to move it back and forth, opening her mouth. “What did you say? Ouch! That hurts.”

Swenson unfastened her seatbelt and dropped into the pilot’s seat. “Where are those wire cutters?” she asked, cinching the seatbelt tight around her waist.

Swenson lifted the red cover on the emergency battery panel, cut the safety wire, placed the switch to the ON position, and flipped the switch on the dump panel. The ship lurched suddenly to port as the starboard manipulator fell away. Decker glimpsed it through the view port even though the outside lights no longer functioned. He could feel the DSV begin to rise.

Swenson flipped three other switches. The ship shuddered and the emergency lights went out. Decker was momentarily disorientated. Swenson turned on her flashlight. “The batteries,” she said. “Don’t worry. We don’t need the co
²
scrubber anymore. There’s enough oxygen in here to get us to the surface. At least I hope so.”

The ship began to ascend more rapidly. “It’s going to be close,” she said, pointing at the computer screen. “Just one more thing to do.”

She unfastened her safety belt and got down on her hands and knees. There was a small metal plate in the deck. “Hand me that T-wrench,” she said. “It’s over there, in the science rack. Hurry.” Water sprayed across her face.

Decker unfastened his belt and brought her the wrench. “What are you doing?”

“Ever watch
Star Trek
?”

He nodded.

“You know how they sometimes separate the saucer from the thrusters? Same thing. I’m going to release the sphere from the forebody assembly. That’ll make us about three thousand pounds more buoyant.” She lifted the plate in the deck and removed the pin at the top of the release shaft. Then she replaced the plate and locked it in place with screws from the underside of the plate screw holes. When it was tightly secured, she inserted the T-wrench into the socket. “Okay,” she said, climbing to her feet. “We’re going to have to secure everything in the sphere. Once I release the forebody assembly, we’re going to shoot up like a bubble toward the surface.”

They began to stow their gear. Decker assumed the grisly task of lashing Speers into a seat. He had stopped bleeding. Decker closed the dead pilot’s eyes and turned his head away. Then he and Swenson sat down and buckled up.

“Are you ready?” she asked him, looking over. Swenson had reassumed the pilot’s chair. All her anxiety and fear seemed to have dissipated. Her face was flushed now, her eyes shiny and alert. “We have less than a minute before we hit the wall.”

“I’m ready,” he said.

She reached out and curled her hand around the T-wrench. “We may pass out,” she said, looking up at him. Then she smiled. “And by the way,” she added, “I love you too.”

She pulled the T-wrench suddenly, without waiting for a response. A second later Decker heard a tearing noise as the forebody assembly tumbled free. Then the sphere shot upwards, gliding only seven meters above the new lip of the Continental Shelf.

The speed of the ascent forced the air out of his lungs. He felt as though he were in a rocket, with a one-ton weight pressed down upon his chest. His eyes stretched open, his mouth pulled down involuntarily, and suddenly the flames surrounded him again. They licked up through the tan upholstery, melting the plastic lining, engulfing the Chevy Biscayne. He was still trapped in back. He was still trapped. He reached out for the door, and suddenly he was standing on the ground, unharmed, and he was watching as the fire gradually consumed the car, his mother’s face, his father’s hair and ears and nose, and they were gone, and there was nothing he could do, but watch.

There was a mighty crash, an eerie high-pitched whistle as Decker’s ears popped and he slipped into unconsciousness, reclining into chaos.

Friday, February 4 – 6:42 AM

The ocean rolled across herself. Black waves arose and fell, arose to meet another falling to another, falling to another still. The whitecaps skated on the surface. They heaved and lifted up and, suddenly, a mound of water bubbled up and boiled across the surface of the cold Atlantic.

A few miles off the Jersey coast, the landslide had begun. The moving mass cascaded downward, barely missing the ascending DSV. It shivered along the groaning Continental Shelf, and fell and fell and fell, ripping up sand and stone, down toward the bottomless abyss.

The water bulged, displaced by the falling landmass, began to rise and spread, to thrust the surface of the ocean skyward, a hundred meters in the air.

The mega-tsunami rolled across the sea, due east across the vast expanse. And sliding west, still rushing from La Palma, the other wave drew near.

They came together in a mighty splash that lifted spray into the clouds, a quarter of a mile above the surface of the sea. The walls of water flattened out against each other, blended and roiled into a liquid copulation, a reliquification, then bellowed with expended energy. They were one. The great wave crowned, and fell, tired of traveling. Spent. The water spread across the surface of the ocean, tickled by whitecaps. It coursed across the sea, shedding yet more kinetic energy. Then it reverberated westward once again.

The wave descended on the
Stanfield
as she turned her bow into the wall of water, as she bounced and heaved and rose up through the turbulence, and sluiced ahead unharmed. The wave passed by.

It ran ashore in Canada, then northern Maine. Almost immediately, the Boston harbor drained, then filled again, as the wave collided with the coast. It coursed along the rocky shore, rolled south-southwest, eating up trees and houses, tearing up river mouths, demolishing roads and bridges, entire seaside towns. The skeptical who had remained behind, ignoring the orders of the National Guard, were pulverized, dismembered as they tried to flee.

Within a half hour, the waters began to recede from Fire Island and the entire eastern shoreline of Long Island. It was as if someone has pulled a giant stopper from the bottom of the sea. Then the wave came into view – two stories high.

It washed across the lowlands of Long Island. It cut a swath across both Queens and Brooklyn, swept up the Verrazano Narrows, past Staten Island, past Governor’s Island and up onto the Battery. Lower Manhattan was inundated as the wave diverged along the East and Hudson Rivers. Cars bounced like corks along the empty streets of the Financial District, up Broadway past Grace Church, past Midtown, Central Park, to Harlem and beyond.

A few small buildings fell apart. Ellis Island vanished. So too the Statue of Liberty, from the legs down. Her torso, head and torch remained above the sea. As the wave finally struck the Jersey coast and drove across the land, as it funneled up the Hudson River, the Statue reappeared completely.