The Tsunami Countdown

THIRTY-SIX

11:34 a.m.

13 Minutes to Second Wave

The stairs leading to the roof of the flat-topped Moana tower in the Grand Hawaiian were steep but wide. Normally, the access was strictly limited to hotel employees who needed to maintain the rooftop air-conditioning units, but Max was forced to herd the guests up the steps. The only good news was that they had just one floor to climb. Max conferred with Bob Lateen before deciding that, one at a time, Max and Adrian would carry each of the eight disabled veterans remaining in the restaurant. Some of the wives—none of them under seventy—volunteered to help, but Max was afraid one of them would fall, and he didn’t need any more problems than he had already.

In the meantime, Max asked all of those with cell phones to try calling the police, fire department, or anyone else who could send a helicopter to rescue them. Of course, he could go up to the roof and try to flag one down, but that would delay the movement of the disabled guests. He asked three of the ladies to leave their husbands to signal for help by waving a tablecloth.

It took two minutes to get the first wheelchair-bound guest up and situated comfortably on the roof—much more time than Max had expected. At that rate, it would take over fifteen minutes to get them all up, so he decided to send the elderly who could walk up the stairs first.

While Adrian finished helping those guests up the stairs, Max went to the window to look at the devastation below.

The streets were unrecognizable. A steady stream of water flowed back toward the ocean, dragging all kinds of flotsam with it. It would be only a matter of minutes before the land was completely drained.

He could clearly see the skybridge now. A huge gash in the roof exposed part of the walkway to the bright sunlight. Max couldn’t see the piece of debris responsible, but it must have been something big. Anything large enough to leave that mark could have easily torn the sky-bridge from its moorings. As it was, the bridge appeared to be hanging by the thinnest of threads. Anyone willing to cross that would have to be pretty desperate, he thought as he made his way back to the stairwell.

Rachel reached the sixth-floor conference center. The sky-bridge in front of her looked like it had been blasted by a truck bomb. Every shard of glass had been torn out of the windows, exposing the walkway to the ocean breeze from floor to ceiling. The skybridge itself was tilted at an extreme angle, with the beach side higher, as if the wave had pushed up one edge but couldn’t wrest it from its steel cables.

The midday sun poured through the hole in the sky-bridge roof, illuminating the sorry state of the floor itself. Like every other surface the tsunami had touched, a fine layer of soupy silt coated the decking. In many places, holes had been punched through the floor as well as the ceiling. Fifty feet below, the outflow of water was now only ten feet deep. They were lucky the skybridge was still there at all. It certainly wouldn’t stand up to another onslaught of water.

As Rachel approached the bridge, the family appeared on the other end of the sixty-foot walkway. They heaved visibly from the exertion of racing down twenty flights of stairs. The father carried a small girl, while an eleven-year-old boy and another girl several years younger than the boy leaned on their mother. All three kids had their mother’s black hair and lean figure, but their light-mocha skin was obviously a combination of their parents’ complexions. The man, slightly jowly, towered over them. His shirt draped over a beer gut past its infancy.

The family hadn’t started across the skybridge yet; they were terrified by the creaking structure. The railing along the beach side of the slanted walkway had been ripped off and rested atop the railing on the other side.

Rachel yelled down the hall, “I’m the hotel manager! My name is Rachel Tanaka! Are you all right?”

“Yes,” the father said.

“What are your names?” In her line of work, Rachel found that it always made things go more smoothly if she knew the names of the people she was dealing with.

“I’m Bill Rogers,” the father of the three children said. “My wife is Paige, and my kids are Wyatt, Hannah, and the little one is Ashley.”

“Is it safe to cross?” Paige asked.

“I don’t know,” Rachel said. “The incline is going to make it difficult to get across. Bill, can you get down the stairs in your tower?”

“No,” Bill said. “I checked. It’s totally blocked by that barge.”

“Then you don’t have a choice. You’ll have to come over here.”

“Maybe we should just stay here. That bridge looks rickety.”

“We’re trying to get a helicopter to come to our rooftop—”

“Then we can do the same thing in this tower.”

“That won’t work,” Rachel said. “There’s nowhere for a helicopter to land on your roof.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Wyatt said. “Remember that big spike on the top of the building?”

“Then we’ll just go back up to the top floor and wait until this is over.”

“Look,” Rachel said, “I don’t want to frighten you more than you already are, but there are more waves coming, and they’re going to be much bigger than the last one. Maybe even taller than this building. We need to get out of here.”

They still hesitated.

“Come on! We don’t have much time left!”

“But how do we get the kids across?” Paige said with a slight accent suggesting a Caribbean Island origin. “I’m not letting any of them cross on their own.”

“And it’s too shaky for you to all come at once,” Rachel said.

“I’ll come back and get them,” Bill said.

“That will take too long. You see that water going out? That means another wave is coming soon. We have ten minutes at most.”

“We don’t even know if the bridge is strong enough,” Paige said.

Rachel looked at the slick floor of the skybridge and realized she’d have to go out there if she was going to save those children. Her maternal instinct overrode the fear she felt.

“How about if I come and meet Wyatt halfway and bring him back with me?”

Without waiting for an answer, she kicked off her shoes and stepped onto the bridge. Her arm span was wide enough that she could keep hold of one pillar while she inched along to grab the next one. She made her way carefully, keeping her toes along the edge for more grip.

“See,” she said. “It’s still sturdy enough. Come on, Wyatt. Come to me.”

Bill and Paige exchanged looks and nodded.

Paige held Wyatt’s shoulders. “Can you do this, Wyatt?”

Wyatt looked scared, but he nodded.

Paige hugged him. “Okay, but if it’s too hard, you come right back.”

Wyatt grabbed one of the floor-to-ceiling pillars and pulled himself toward Rachel.

“Come on, honey,” Rachel said as she continued edging across. “You can do it.”

Wyatt gingerly pulled himself along. When he was almost to Rachel, the skybridge creaked ominously. He stopped, and they all held their breath. The creaking subsided, and Wyatt continued to make his way until Rachel took his hand.

“Great job, Wyatt,” she said. “Now hold on to me.”

Wyatt nodded again. Rachel had Wyatt hold on to one pillar, and when she had safely grabbed the next, she pulled him with her. They paused when they heard another shriek of grinding metal. Paige covered her mouth in terror, but there was nothing she could do to help them without endangering them further.

The grinding stopped, but it was another reminder of how precarious the walkway was.

As they proceeded across, Rachel and Wyatt got into a steady rhythm. They had reached the last pillar when Wyatt suddenly slipped on the muck as he was moving from one pillar to another. Both his feet flew out from under him and he went down, pulling Rachel down as well.

Shouts of “No!” came from the other end of the walkway.

With one hand, Rachel clung to the bottom of the pillar with a fierce grip. If she let go, nothing would keep them from sliding to the opposite side of the skybridge. Only the pillars on the other side would stand between them and a six-story fall to the water below.