The Tsunami Countdown

FORTY-SEVEN

12:08 p.m.

4 Minutes to Third Wave

Jerry made it to the twenty-first floor before the women carrying him were too fatigued to continue. Even for three of them, Jerry’s deadweight was too much. They were spent. “What are we going to do now?” Jerry’s sister, Sheila, said, her voice strained from fatigue and worry. “We can’t just leave him.”

“He’s too heavy. We need some help. We’ll have to wait for Wyatt to get back.”

“What’s taking him so long?” Paige said. “He should have been back by now. I shouldn’t have let him go. I should have trusted my instincts. I’m going to look for him.”

Despite her exhaustion, Paige forced herself up the stairs, but before she could get to the next landing, a door slammed and the sound of light feet drifted toward them. She stopped.

“Wyatt?”

“Yeah?” Wyatt replied. They could hear him crying as he came down.

“Are you all right?”

“No!”

Paige quickened her pace upward, and Rachel followed. They met him on the twenty-third-floor landing. His eyes were red, his cheeks stained with tears.

“What’s the matter, honey?” Paige ran her hands over him, looking for injuries. “Are you hurt?”

Wyatt shook his head.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I couldn’t find anyone,” Wyatt said between sobs.

“No one anywhere?” Rachel said.

“I swear, I looked all over. They’re all gone.”

He took out the walkie-talkie that Rachel had given him before the incident at the elevator.

“I even tried this. I couldn’t find anyone. I’m sorry!” He wailed, the experience too much for him. “I’m sorry! I tried!”

Paige held him to her. “It’s okay, sweetie. You did great.”

“They must have found a helicopter,” Rachel said.

“Why didn’t they wait for us?” Paige said, her voice pleading.

“I don’t know. Maybe they thought we didn’t make it.”

“So now we’re stranded?”

Paige was on the brink of hysterics. Rachel tried to soothe her.

“If they found one, we can too. We just have to let them know we’re here. Who knows? Maybe they’re planning on coming back.”

“So what do we do? We can’t carry Jerry.”

“We’ll have to go up there and try to flag a helicopter down. There’s nothing else we can do.”

A faint voice called from the walkie-talkie still in Wyatt’s hand.

“Rachel! Rachel! It’s Kai, are you there?”

Kai had stopped at the lobby of the boat building so that he could get at the dry pack. He lowered Lani and let her walk on her own. While Kai climbed the stairs of the apartment complex, he opened the bag to retrieve the walkie-talkie.

When he got it out, the walkie-talkie felt moist to the touch. He inspected the bag and found a tiny tear in the seam. It must have happened when he was battered by the wave. The bag wasn’t soaked inside, but it was damp. He didn’t bother looking at the photo album, the only thing he’d saved from his house. It was either intact or it wasn’t, and now wasn’t the time to see. The most important thing was the electronics. Kai opened the cell phone. The LCD display was cracked, another victim of debris impact. He tried calling 911, but there was no sound. It was useless.

Kai keyed the Talk button on the walkie-talkie.

“Rachel! Come in!”

He didn’t know if he was getting through because he couldn’t hear more than a crackling hiss. The voice that they had heard before sounded like a kid, so Kai wasn’t even sure whether they were getting the signal from Rachel or from someone else.

“Rachel! Rachel! It’s Kai, are you there?”

He listened carefully, trying to hold his breath as he climbed. The volume was turned up all the way. Then, loud and clear, Kai heard her voice.

“Kai, it’s me. Are you all right? How’s Lani?”

“We had a close shave, but she’s fine. Teresa, Mia, and Brad are okay too. But Jake, the boy you saw at the Grand Hawaiian? He didn’t make it.”

“Oh my God!”

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m better now that I hear you,” she said, the relief in her voice palpable. “It’s been a little rough. I’m just glad you two are all right. When the other tower collapsed, I couldn’t—”

“What? The tower collapsed? You’re still at the hotel? I thought you would have caught a helicopter by now.”

“There were some people in trouble. It’s been crazy. We’re heading to the roof now. Where are you? Did you get out of Waikiki?”

“No,” Kai said. “It’s been crazy for us too. We’re about a mile from you. Of course, the tsunami has obliterated all the street signs, so I don’t know exactly where we are, but it’s a white thirty-story apartment complex. There’s a big boat sticking out of it, if that helps.”

“Okay. We’re on the roof now. I’m not sure if I see your building. I don’t see a boat sticking out.”

“You may not be able to from your angle. When we get to the top, I’ll see if we can wave to you.”

“Everyone else is gone on this building. They must have found a helicopter.”

“Can you see one to flag down?”

“I see a few,” Rachel said, “but they’re not close enough to see us.”

“We’re going to have the same problem. Listen, is anyone with you?”

“Yes, there are eight of us in all, including three children.”

“Eight? Jesus. Does anyone with you have a cell phone? I lost mine and Brad’s got smashed.”

A pause, and then: “Yes, Paige has a cell phone. We’ve tried 911 and can’t get anything.”

“Reggie left me a message earlier. You can try him.”

“What’s his number?”

It was in Brad’s now-smashed cell phone. Kai had a pretty good memory for numbers, but he couldn’t quite nail down the sequence Reggie had left in his message. He gave Rachel three variations he thought were close.

“Try all of those. It’s got to be one of them. See if he can find a free chopper.”

“Okay. I’ll call Reggie.”

“And, Rachel, the next one may be at least two hundred feet tall. Stay on the roof. Get a helicopter as soon as you can. If one tower has already fallen—”

“I know,” she said. “We all watched it collapse. None of us wants to stay here longer than we have to.”

“I’m so glad to hear your voice, honey.”

“Me too. I’ll radio back after I get Reggie.”

Kai had fallen behind the others as he talked to Rachel, so he sped up until he caught up to them on the twentieth floor. He filled them in as they continued trudging up the stairs.

When Kai opened the door to the roof, he expected to see another empty expanse of concrete, devoid of people. Instead, a couple stood at the edge of the roof, looking up at the sky. When the door banged into the wall, they turned. The woman, dressed in a stylish gray jogging suit, looked like someone in her forties who hoped that cosmetic surgery would keep her in her thirties. Her oversized breasts strained against her top, and her forehead showed the unmistakable rigidity of frequent Botox injections.

The man with her wore a shiny silk shirt and Italian slacks, more expensive than tasteful. His curly hair was too jet-black for his age, and he had the wiry build of a fitness buff. He strode over to Kai, pulling a rolling carryon suitcase behind him.

Kai smiled and said, “We’re glad to see that we’re not the only ones—”

The man interrupted him. “We were here first.”

Kai’s smile faltered. “What?”

“Are you deaf? I said, we were here first.”

Brad stopped next to Kai. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Brad said.

“It means that any helicopter that lands here is ours. You can ride along if there’s room.”

“Are you serious?” Teresa said. “Don’t even think about getting on a helicopter before these girls do.”

“They have kids, for God’s sake,” the woman said. “Be human for once.”

The man looked at Mia and Lani and then grudgingly said, “The girls can go first. Then us.”

Brad jabbed his thumb at the man. “Who is this guy?” he said to Kai.

“Chuck is my soon-to-be ex-husband,” the woman said with venom. “We were out shopping when we heard about the tsunami warning. Genius here thought we had all the time in the world to come back to the apartment and get into his safe—”

“Denise,” Chuck said with a warning tone.

“—a safe I didn’t even know we had—”

“Don’t tell them about that.”

Brad pointed at the suitcase. “So, Chuck, what’s with the luggage?”

Chuck paused and narrowed his eyes at Denise. “It’s important papers,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I’ll tell you what’s in it,” Denise said, happy to sell Chuck out. “His collection of signed baseballs is in there. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle. Must be dozens of them. But that’s not all he had in that safe. When he was getting the baseballs out, he dropped some photos. Photos of him and his girlfriend.”

“I wish I was stuck here with her instead of you,” Chuck spat at Denise. He pointed at Kai. “And remember, we were here first.”

Kai had heard enough. He showed the walkie-talkie to Chuck.

“Guess what, Chuck,” he said. “I have a radio. If we get a helicopter, you are welcome to come along with us if there is room. Now excuse me while I try to get our butts rescued.”

Kai nodded to the others to follow him and walked to the edge of the roof to get as far from Chuck as he could. He pressed the walkie-talkie’s Talk button.

“To anyone who can hear this, we are trapped on the roof of a building in Waikiki …”

Reggie Pona had already tried calling Brad’s cell phone nine times, with no success. He left several messages to call, but he didn’t really think that they were still alive to get them. The helicopter—the same one he had sent for Kai the first time—had done a fly-by thirty minutes later and reported that the building had completely collapsed. There was no chance that anyone inside had survived.

The devastation across the Hawaiian Islands so far had been unbelievable, even to those like Reggie who had seen the effects of the Asian tsunami firsthand. He had taken a trip to Thailand and Indonesia two weeks after the tsunami to help document the destruction, so that the PTWC would know what to expect if it ever happened in Hawaii.

The construction in South Asia was not up to the standards in the United States. Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, had been wiped off the map, and the majority of the deaths occurred in that area. The only building still standing after the tsunami was a sturdy white stone mosque. Previously it had stood among hundreds of shops, businesses, and homes; after the tsunami, it rose alone from a plain of mud and fractured wood.

In Hawaii, buildings near the ocean were primarily hotels and other structures made of concrete and steel. Many of them withstood the first and second tsunamis, a testament to the solidity of their designs. But a great number had already been swept away or fallen when their foundations were undermined by the water, and any buildings made of flimsier materials no longer existed. Pictures and video from Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai now unspooling on the major networks showed miles and miles of shoreline blasted free of the monuments of man, as if God’s own eraser had rubbed them out.

Hilo, on the Big Island, had endured two tsunamis in the twentieth century, events that sparked the creation of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The awful pictures from those earlier disasters looked quaint compared to what Reggie saw now. Little was left of that small city, despite being located on the east side of the island, out of the direct path of the tsunami. The wave had wrapped around Hawaii, capturing the island in a deadly embrace.

Lahaina was the Maui beach town best known as the place to see the humpback whales that came to breed each year. The pictures from a helicopter were labeled lahaina, but Reggie couldn’t make out anything familiar, and he had been there at least seven times on vacation. The only things left to signify that there might have actually been a town were the outlines of concrete foundations poking out of the scoured sand.

And then there was Oahu, home to 80 percent of the state’s population. The current CBS feed from a helicopter hovering near Waikiki showed the devastation in stark clarity. Reggie could barely recognize some parts of the city. Honolulu was the most crowded part of the island; combining residents and tourists, some areas of Waikiki had a population density rivaling that of Hong Kong and Manhattan. Over the years, the suburbs had stretched around the shoreline in both directions, so that there was virtually no uninhabited land along the southern coast.

Hundreds of thousands had heeded the warnings and evacuated to high land all along the coast. Frightened masses hunkered on the sides of Diamond Head and inside the protected crater itself. The mountains were lined with people. So many had retreated to the confines of the Punchbowl National Cemetery that no room was left for helicopters to unload the people they rescued from skyscrapers, remote beaches, and overturned sea vessels.

Tripler Army Medical Center was filled to the brim with evacuees from other hospitals on lower ground. It received one helicopter after another dropping off the injured, a makeshift triage station set up on the grass next to the parking lot.

With little safe flat ground left, most of those rescued by helicopter were taken to Wheeler Field, a ten-minute round trip from Waikiki, not including the time it took to get people loaded and unloaded. It was possible Kai and the others had been picked up by another chopper and been deposited there. Possible, Reggie knew, but not likely. He had practically given up when he heard about the collapsed building.

Reggie’s cell phone rang. He forced his eyes away from the TV and looked at the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number; it had a California area code. He flipped the phone open.

“Hello?”

He was shocked to hear the voice on the line.

“Reggie, it’s Rachel.”

“Rachel!” he shouted. When he saw others in the office staring, he brought his voice back to normal. “Thank God you’re all right. Kai was …” Reggie hesitated, not knowing how to tell her. “I’m not sure, but—”

“Kai’s fine.”

“He is? I mean, that’s fantastic—”

“We’re all in trouble. We’re still in Waikiki.”

“You’re together? Where?”

“No. I’m on the roof of the Grand Hawaiian. He’s on the roof of a white building about a mile northeast of me. I can reach him by walkie-talkie. We need a helicopter. We don’t have time to run away on foot, and both buildings are shaky. I don’t know if they’ll stand up to the next tsunami.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get something to you. What’s the name of the building Kai’s in?”

“He doesn’t know what the cross streets are or what the building is called, but he said there’s a boat sticking out of the tenth floor.”

“God, I saw that on some news footage a few minutes ago. I’ll find out where it is.”

“Please hurry. We’ve only got a few minutes until the last tsunami, right?”

“I’ll hurry. But Rachel, the next tsunami isn’t the last one.”

“What?”

“I got word from Alaska about twenty minutes ago. Tell Kai the last tsunami will arrive at 12:37, and it’s going to be three hundred feet high.”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Rachel? Are you there?”

“Just get someone here now, Reggie.”

She hung up.

Reggie left the office to find Colonel Johnson. He was on his cell phone in the next room. He snapped it shut as Reggie approached.

“Colonel, I need your helicopter again.”

“Mr. Pona,” Johnson said, coming around his desk and putting on his jacket as if he were getting ready to leave. “I’m sorry about your friend, but the building is gone. There are other people to evacuate—”

“He’s alive. I just got word.”

Johnson stopped. “What? Where?”

“Waikiki.”

He shook his head. “Mr. Pona, I can’t—”

“Look, if it weren’t for him, none of us would be standing here right now. You, me, your family, for God’s sake. We’d all be dead.”

“It’s not that. That chopper is on the other side of Oahu. It’ll take at least fifteen minutes to get back to Wheeler and unload.”

“Damn!”

“Do you have that kind of time?”

“No. Don’t you have anything else?”

“Look, I’ll send out an alert, but I can’t promise anything. It’s absolute chaos out there. Most of the choppers are running low on gas, and Wheeler is overloaded trying to refuel them all.” When he saw the pleading look on Reggie’s face, Johnson said, “I’ll see what I can do. But you might want to find another option.”

“Thanks,” Reggie said, looking around for ideas. He wasn’t going to give up now that he actually had a chance to save them. Who besides the military would have access to a helicopter? Then he glanced through the office window and saw his solution. He ran outside.

Lara Pimalo, the CBS reporter who had broadcast from the PTWC, was just outside the building where Reggie had his temporary office. As thanks for evacuating him, Reggie had let Pimalo and her cameraman ride in the Humvee to Wheeler after they had abandoned the station’s truck.

She looked like she had just wrapped up a report and was holding her microphone lazily at her side, but when she saw Reggie she gestured to the cameraman to start rolling. Reggie put up his hands to stop her.

“I’m not here to be interviewed,” he said. “I need something.”

“You need something from me?”

“You have a CBS helicopter over Waikiki.”

“Well, we rented it from a sightseeing company. Cost a mint too.”

“Kai Tanaka is stranded on top of a building in Waikiki. Do you know the reporter in that helicopter?”

“There’s no reporter in it, just a camerawoman.”

“Kai found his wife and daughter.” Reggie had told her about Lani and Rachel on their ride to Wheeler.

“They’re all alive? That’s incredible.”

“But now they’re stranded, and the military won’t give me another helicopter.”

“I don’t know if I have that much pull.”

“He gave your station something no one else had. And now he has one of the best stories to tell the world about this disaster.”

Pimalo exchanged glances with her cameraman. Reggie saw the hesitation, but he knew the phrase that would push her buttons.

“Ms. Pimalo,” Reggie said, “how would your network like another exclusive?”