The Tsunami Countdown

EIGHTEEN

10:19 a.m.

1 Hour and 3 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

Two 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.