The Cauldron (56 page)

Opening his office door, after taking an automatic from a drawer in his desk, he peered out. The corridor was deserted. Where could Brand have gone? With the automatic trembling in his right hand he ran along the route which would take him to the hangar. The moment he emerged into the cold night air he heard the beat-beat of the helicopter's rotors. It had come out of the hangar, was lifting off.

'Wait for me!' Ethan screamed.

Inside the passenger section Moloch looked down, saw Ethan waving his arms madly. He sighed as the machine gained height. He never wanted to see Ethan Benyon again. Mad as a hatter, he thought. Why did I ever not realize it earlier? All the signs were there. Because I didn't want to recognize it.

On the ground Ethan was beside himself with terror. He ran back inside the house, hurtled along the corridor to the front entrance where cars were parked. Arriving outside he saw Brand about to get behind the wheel of Moloch's Lincoln Continental.

'The swine,' Brand snarled.

'Who?' asked Ethan, hardly knowing what he was saying.

'VB. He slammed the door of the chopper in my face and it took off. Where the hell do you think you're going?'

Take me with you,' Ethan pleaded.

Brand rammed his elbow into Ethan's ribs as he attempted to open another door. Ethan staggered back, collapsed on the ground. By the time he stumbled to his feet the Lincoln was driving at top speed down the slope, headlights blazing as it passed through the open gates, turned right onto Highway One.

Brand drove at manic speed, roared past the drive leading up to The Apex. He never gave a thought to Mrs Benyon, intent only on reaching San Francisco in record time. By his side on the passenger seat was an automatic rifle. If he met a patrol car he'd gun down anyone who tried to stop him.

His huge muscular frame was tense. He felt the ground under the car shudder, pressed his foot down further. Then he heard the horrendous explosion. Glancing out to sea his eyes opened wide. The ocean seemed to be lifting. He saw the
Baja
tossed high into the air as though it were a rowboat. The Xenobium bomb beneath it had detonated. The vessel turned turtle in midair, plunged back downwards into the incredibly high mountain of water hurled up by the explosion. It disappeared but Brand kept his nerve as the highway climbed steeply, swinging round dangerous bends without slowing down.

He was passing Point Sur when the huge massif split in two, creating a canyon through which the ocean surged in a Niagara of water. The lighthouse toppled down inside the canyon, vanished under the water. The sea was now flooding across the highway but Brand didn't slow - he drove through, sending up great gushes of spray which blinded his windscreen. He turned the wipers full on, saw a bend just in time.

Ahead, along a straight stretch of highway, he saw that a crack was splitting open the road. It was only a few inches wide when he drove over it. In his rear-view mirror he glimpsed the crack widen to a crevasse. Under the Lincoln the ground was shuddering again. He kept the huge stretch limo moving. He was approaching the Bixby Bridge.

One of the wonders of American engineering, the most often photographed Bixby Bridge was opened for traffic after completion in November 1932. The central arch, over the creek running into the Pacific two hundred and fifty feet beneath it, was a span more than two hundred and fifty feet long. Driving over it cars went thump thump as they crossed the strips of material laid across it to slow down traffic.

So far Brand had seen no other cars from the moment he had left Black Ridge. Glancing up the mountainside to his right, he gazed in trepidation as a millionaire's modernistic house simply slid down the slope, breaking up as it continued to slide. Inside other fabulous properties the lights suddenly went out as powerlines were fractured. The moon was rising as Brand's teeth were bared in a rictus-like smile.

He took the bridge at full tilt, ignoring the slow-down strips. He was almost halfway across when the arch began to climb into the air. Gripping the wheel of the Lincoln Continental with all his strength, he drove up the mounting arch, reached the summit, saw a split appearing right across the arch. The Lincoln leapt over the gap, started descending the far side. In a trance of terror, Brand felt the entire structure heaving sideways and seawards. The Lincoln swivelled out of the right-hand lane into the left.

Brand threw up a useless arm across his head in horror as the whole bridge continued to tilt, then collapsed. He had no time to take his foot off the accelerator as the stretch limo shot over the rails, now at a much lower angle. The Lincoln was a rocket in flight. It hammered into the cliffs on the Carmel side like a shell from a gun, the petrol tank exploded, flames engulfed it from end to end. The relics fell into the boiling ocean below. Where the great Bixby Bridge had once stood there was only a wide gap, the broken structure swallowed up by the Pacific far beneath what had, for so many years, been a marvel of Highway One.

On the golf links near Spanish Bay, a short time before Ethan had pulled the levers, the Chinook, a large ugly helicopter with a box-like stern, landed on the green where Alvarez had signalled with his torch. Everyone was aboard except for Newman, who stood at the foot of the ladder, staring anxiously back at the hotel for a sight of Tweed.

'Can't wait much longer,' the co-pilot shouted down from above.

'You
are
waiting for a VIP,' Alvarez said, standing beside the co-pilot, flourishing his CIA credentials.

'A few minutes more. No longer...'

Outside the lobby in front of the hotel Tweed was enduring the most nerve-racking wait he could remember. Then he saw two men hurrying towards him from the direction of the club. Grenville with Maurice Prendergast.

'Some minor crisis?' Grenville enquired calmly. 'We saw your lot arriving, rushing about like frightened rabbits.'

'Some rabbits,' Tweed snapped. 'Both of you go out the back way by Roy's. Board the chopper you'll see waiting on the links. A major earthquake is due.'

'A major crisis, then,' Grenville responded.

He stubbed the cigar he had been smoking, followed Maurice who had already started running into the lobby. Tweed walked up and down, counting his paces to concentrate his mind. Then he stopped. An Audi, driven at high speed, jerked to a stop a few feet away from him. Vanity Richmond jumped out, holding a suitcase.

'I caught your signal when you stood in my doorway - smoothing down your hair. Got trapped behind a juggernaut crawling along the highway. Ages before I dared overtake.'

'You're here. That's the main thing. Come on.'

Taking her by one hand, he ran with her into the lobby and out of the door next to Roy's. From the terrace they could see the lights of the big Chinook. Grenville and Maurice were already mounting the ladder.

'Hurry up!' Newman shouted at them.

'What the hell do you think we're doing?' Vanity snapped back at him.

She flew up the ladder, followed by Tweed and Newman. The co-pilot hauled up the aluminium ladder, slammed the door shut.

Tweed stood at the doorway to the pilot's control area. The rotors were already whirling, faster and faster. He had to shout.

'What is happening at San Francisco International? A major earthquake is coming.'

'A special flight has been laid on. There have been shocks in San Francisco,' the pilot shouted back. 'Washington has arranged the flight. We have time to spare.'

Alvarez put his mouth close to Tweed's ear, kept his voice down.

'For Washington read Cord Dillon...'

The Chinook was lifting off, higher and higher, then it began its flight north, over the ocean. Entering the main cabin Tweed had the impression the Chinook had been furnished for top brass. Rows of comfortable double seats lined both port and starboard with a central aisle, occupied the fuselage. Vanity was sitting next to Newman, who waved cheerily. Tweed chose a seat by himself on the starboard side next to a window. It gave him a view of the coast.

They had passed Monterey and he estimated they must be close to Moss Landing when, looking down, he saw in the moonlight the
Kebir
, twin dredger with the
Baja
. As he watched, a tremendous explosion shook the Chinook. The helicopter bucked, but the pilot had it under control within seconds. Paula had moved forward, seated herself beside Tweed just before the explosion.

'What on earth was that?' she asked.

"The second Xenobium bomb detonating. Ethan's work. Look down.'

She leaned over him, stared. The
Kebir
had keeled over, was wallowing in a turmoil of surf and raging water. As she watched it sank, as though sucked down by some enormous force. A tidal wave appeared, more like a mountain than a wave. It drove forward to the coast, inundated it, continued inland across the flatlands until she could no longer see it. She sat down, let out her breath.

'It looks like a cauldron down there.'

'It is a cauldron. Lord knows what's happening to the south of us c'

The San Moreno earthquake, combined with the detonation of the Xenobium bombs, produced the colossal reaction Professor Weatherby had eventually feared. The tectonic plate off California was shifted under the coast. The results were catastrophic.

Starting just north of Los Angeles, a gigantic chasm opened up in the Earth's surface. In certain areas it ran inland, in others it destroyed the coast for ever. LA itself did not escape the devastation. Several buildings constructed of two wings at right angles to each other split apart. Shudderings from the ground travelled up the buildings, increased in ferocity as they reached the tops. The buildings broke in two, one wing going one way, the other in a different direction. Cars parked in the streets were flattened like sardine cans. Because they were office buildings and it was after working hours casualties were light.

Not so in homes on the edge of the sprawling city. People inside concrete structures were crushed. Further away pictures were shaken off walls, ornaments crashed off mantelpieces, doors broke loose from their hinges. All this was nothing compared with what happened when the chasm opened from Santa Barbara north to San Francisco.

After being knocked to the ground by Brand at Black Ridge, Ethan was terrified by what he had released. He ran round the back of the mansion, started to climb the hills looming above, despite the height at which the mansion stood. He had reason to be scared out of his wits - he knew what was coming.

The ocean gathered itself up into one of the most feared products of a major earthquake - a tsunami, the Japanese term for a mighty tidal wave. Scrambling up the slope, he paused for breath, looked back and screamed. A wave higher than Black Ridge, a monster in the moonlight, green with a curl of surf at its summit, rolled majestically forward. At that moment Ethan felt the ground trembling under his feet. Looking down, he saw a huge chasm ripping the slope asunder. The monster wave slammed against the hillslope, struck him in the back, toppled him into the chasm. Millions of tons of ocean flooded down into the chasm. Ethan was drowned.

When it eventually receded the wave took half the coast with it. A landslide shifted the Gothic mansion of Black Ridge, clawed it down the slope as it broke up into a thousand pieces. Other three-million-dollar houses were sliced off the slope, carrying their inhabitants down into the depths of the ocean. The whole landscape in the Big Sur area was transformed into a series of ugly island crags.

The chasm continued ripping north, devouring forests, hamlets, highways in the most terrible rampage in the history of man. Ethan had tampered with Nature, had paid the penalty - but so did many others. The earthquake registered 8.9 on the Richter scale. Later, casualties were estimated at 150,000.

Tweed realized they were in trouble as the Chinook began its descent on San Francisco International Airport. The pilot landed his machine close to a waiting Boeing 747. The plane was surrounded by State troopers holding guns.

'People are panicking trying to board our plane.' he warned Paula.

'Poor devils.'

'Let's just hope we can reach the aircraft.'

'You'll have to force your way through two files of troopers,' reported the co-pilot who had entered the cabin. 'Just keep shoving until you're inside the 747.'

'I must look after Mrs Benyon.' Tweed said.

'I'll help you,' Paula insisted. 'It's chaos out there.'

It was worse than that, Tweed thought, glancing out of the window. He stiffened. In the distance he saw the lights of a Lear jet moving down a runway. As it passed near an overhead glare light he read the huge letters painted on the fuselage. AMBECO. The jet took off, climbing rapidly as it gained height. Vincent Bernard Moloch was leaving America.