The Tsunami Countdown (20 page)

“Oh my God, Daddy!” Lani said, pointing at his leg. “You’re bleeding.”

Kai looked at his pants. A five-inch gash ran laterally across his thigh. Blood dripped from the wound, but it wasn’t deep.
The shrapnel had just grazed the skin. A few inches to the left, and it would have gone right through his leg, tearing through
the femoral artery.

“I’m fine. It’s nothing to worry about.” Once the adrenaline was gone, Kai knew the pain would come, but it didn’t look like
he’d bleed to death, so he ignored it. “Are you okay?” he repeated.

“Yes,” Lani said. “But where are the others?”

“I think they were in the other apartment.”

They ran back into the hall, and the sight that greeted them was appalling. Part of the hallway wall on the north side had
disintegrated, spilling bits of plaster and drywall all over the floor. Through the doorway of the facing condo, they could
see that the entire northern exterior wall had been shattered. Visible out of that gaping hole, the
remains of the high-rise burned, covered with what was left of the liquefied propane. One half of the high-rise simply wasn’t
there anymore. A jagged wound was carved out of the other half, but it wouldn’t last long. As Lani and Kai watched, the remaining
steel and concrete buckled in what seemed like slow motion, and in a hail of dust and a low rumble, the building collapsed
into the water below.

It was like seeing their fate played out in front of them. The building they were standing in was stronger than the one that
had collapsed, but Kai was worried now that it also had sustained significant structural damage.

He and Lani began yelling for the others.

“Brad! Teresa! Mia! Jake! Tom!”

Kai heard coughing from the stairwell and ran over to it. The fire door was off its hinges, but the building had shielded
the main stairwell from significant damage. The stairs to the roof were a mangled mess of twisted railings and pulverized
concrete.

He looked down to see Tom peering from the doorway on the eighth floor. Tom’s face was contorted in a rictus of confusion
and agony. With his right hand he held his left arm, which hung at a grotesque angle at his side. His complexion was ashen.

“Tom!” Kai said. “Where’s Jake?”

Tom nodded toward the hallway. “In there. I think he’s dead!”

Kai wanted to comfort him, but they didn’t have time. There were only fifteen minutes left before the next tsunami.

“Are you sure?” Kai said.

Tom shook his head. “No, but he’s not moving.”

A yell came from the other end of the hallway.

“Kai! Help!”

It was Teresa.

“Teresa! We’re out here.”

Teresa poked her head out of the condo Brad had been in. The look of alarm on her face was enough to tell Kai something terrible
had happened.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“It’s Brad and Mia. The wall fell down. They’re trapped.”

11:34 a.m.
13 Minutes to Second Wave

T
he 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.

11:37 a.m.
10 Minutes to Second Wave

T
he conditions at Wheeler Army Airfield were spar-tan, but Reggie Pona had power for his laptop and an Internet connection,
thanks to the Air Force’s backup electrical system. As soon as power had been lost from the island’s main plants, the base’s
own generators had taken over. Reggie had been able to outrun the first wave and had finally gotten in contact with Renfro
at Hawaii State Civil Defense, which sent one of the trucks evacuating from Pearl to Wheeler to pick him up. In the chaos,
HSCD had gone thirty minutes before realizing that they weren’t getting updates from the PTWC anymore. When they finally called
the Alaska warning center, Palmer immediately took over updating the Pacific nations about further tsunami readings, including
the
Miller Freeman
’s DART buoy. While Reggie was en route, the DART buoy had registered a third wave at the height that they had
projected an hour before. It would be two hundred feet high when it hit Honolulu.

Wheeler sprawled across the midsection of Oahu, at least five miles from the nearest shoreline. Already, the air base’s taxiways
were jammed with Boeings and Airbuses from seventeen different airlines.

Reggie shared space with countless other displaced government agencies, including other NOAA officials, the National Weather
Service, FEMA, even the FBI, all of whose offices were located in the heart of downtown Honolulu. Most of those buildings
had already been inundated, and the rest would be underwater in the next hour.

The only working landline telephones were reserved for the U.S. military, and they were in short supply. The cell phone tower
that Reggie’s service linked to was still operating, and his cell phone had provided his best news of the day so far.

Reggie had listened to the message from Kai three times to make sure he had the correct information. He tried calling Brad’s
cell phone back repeatedly, with no success. He had no way of knowing if the subsequent messages he left had been received,
but it didn’t matter: unless he could get a helicopter to them, all the messages in the world wouldn’t save them.

The number of helicopters available was not what it could have been. The sightseeing helicopters were ready to
fly because they had been fully booked for the holiday, but many of the armed forces’ helicopters were overseas, lacked pilots,
or had been destroyed by the first wave.

The choppers that were left zipped over all the islands, not just Oahu. With thousands of square miles of shoreline and ocean
to cover, even the combined forces of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, civilian, and tourist helicopters were stretched
thin.

The evacuation had happened so quickly that coordination was nonexistent at the outset. Only now was there some effort to
deploy the available aircraft with some sort of organization. Even so, many pilots simply flew around, looking for survivors
who were still in the path of the tsunamis.

While he had been trying to find a helicopter for Kai, Reggie had also been hard at work in the midst of all this chaos. Not
only did he have to keep the Hawaiian authorities informed of new tsunami activity, but he had to keep the rest of the Pacific
apprised of the danger. During the emergency, confusion had reigned. Some agencies hadn’t gotten the updates from the West
Coast/ Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, so Reggie had been serving as the local contact in Hawaii.

The PTWC was responsible for warning nations on half the earth’s surface about the coming waves. It still wasn’t over for
Hawaii, but it was just starting for twenty other
countries and the mainland United States. Reggie assisted Palmer in communicating with every major branch of the government,
preparing them for what was about to happen. And the person from the government who offered the best possibility for a helicopter
was standing right in front of him.

“What about islands like Wake?” asked Stuart Johnson, an Air National Guard colonel who was acting as the military liaison
to all of the American territories in the Pacific for the duration of the disaster. “We’ve got two hundred contractor personnel
stationed there.”

“Look,” Reggie said, “Wake is way too flat for people to find any ground high enough to survive. The only thing they can do
is get on a plane or a ship and get off the island.” He hoped that building whatever rapport he could with Colonel Johnson
would help pave the way for his request.

“We’re already doing that.”

“They’d better be fast. The first wave will get there in about forty minutes.”

“What about Guam?”

“They’ve got a few hours left. If it has land that’s over two hundred feet above sea level, they’ll probably be okay.”

“
Probably?
”

“Colonel, we’re talking about a Pacific-wide mega-tsunami.
It’s unprecedented in human history. This isn’t an exact science. We’re taking our best guesses with the data we have. But
we estimate that the wave will substantially decrease in size as it gets farther from the impact zone.”

“Why? I thought waves could cross the entire ocean without losing much of their energy. You said that on an old file tape
they showed on CNN twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh, man. If
you’re
confused, I can imagine what’s happening on the mainland right now. That’s for an earthquake-generated tsunami.” Reggie drew
a crude representation of a fault on his notepad, showing waves issuing from it. “It only goes in one direction, in a line.
It’s very focused. The waves from the meteor impact are in concentric circles, so the energy is spread out over the entire
circumference of that circle. As the circle gets bigger, the same energy is spread out over a larger area, and the wave gets
smaller.”

“So it’ll be a lot smaller when it reaches the naval base at San Diego?”

“I wouldn’t call a thirty-foot tsunami small. That’s still huge, but it’s nowhere near what we’re seeing on TV now. With the
amount of time they have to evacuate, everyone should be able to get to safety before it hits.”

“Dammit! What a mess.” The colonel shot Reggie a nasty look, as if this were all his fault. “I guess I have a lot of work
to do.” He turned on his heel to leave, but before
he got two steps toward the door, Reggie shoved his huge bulk in front of him.

“Colonel,” Reggie said, “I need a favor.”

“I don’t have time right now.”

“You’ll make time. My friend is stuck on a building in Waikiki. I need a helicopter.”

“Everybody needs a helicopter.”

“This isn’t just anybody! He’s the assistant director of the PTWC!”

“I’ve got orders from General Lambert at CINCPAC that says our highest priorities are the major population centers. Besides
that, I’ve got to warn every single base in the Pacific to evacuate.”

“But Waikiki
is
the biggest population center!”

“Then the helicopters will get to them eventually.”

“
Eventually?
”

“Look, Mr. Pona, I’m sorry about your friend, but I’ve got my orders and so do my helicopter pilots. Excuse me.” He went around
Reggie and into the next room, where he started talking with another officer.

Fuming about being brushed off, Reggie made another phone call, this one to the HSCD. After less than a minute of discussion,
he walked into the room with Colonel Johnson, interrupting his conversation.

“Pardon me, Colonel, but luckily I had another person who owed me a favor.”

“Look,” the colonel said, exasperated at Reggie’s persistence, “I already told you I can’t help you.”

“I really think you’d better take this phone call.” Reggie thrust the cell phone toward the officer. Colonel Johnson eyed
it suspiciously.

“Why? Who is it?”

“It’s the governor. She wants you to give me a helicopter.”

Teresa practically dragged Kai to where Mia was trapped. Instead of finding refuge in one of the ocean-side rooms, Brad, Mia,
and Teresa had hunkered down in the kitchen of condo 1004, on the north side of the building facing the explosion.

Kai was stunned by the sight of the ravaged condo. The entire exterior wall was in tatters, and bits of furniture and metal
had been propelled into every surface. Even though the kitchen had been shielded from the worst of the blast, it hadn’t come
through unscathed.

As Kai had covered Lani during the explosion, Brad had done the same for Mia. When the blast caused a piece of the ceiling
to cave in, a steel girder slashed into the wall on one side and smashed the counter on the other, pinning Mia and Brad at
their midsections. Although Teresa had been only five feet away, the falling girder had missed her.

“Are you okay?” Kai said to Brad.

“Except for the fact that I can’t move, I’m fine. I think Mia might have a broken leg.”

“Let’s try pulling you.” Kai gripped Brad by both hands and pulled until his full weight was into it.

“Stop!” Brad cried. “It’s not working. You’re going to pull my arms off.”

Teresa bent over and caressed Mia’s hair.

“You’re going to be all right, honey.”

Kai quickly inspected the foot-wide girder. The situation looked grim. The wall between the kitchen and the condo hallway
had kept it from hitting the floor and crushing them, but that was about the only good news. Moving it was going to be a big
job, and they only had a few minutes.

“This thing must weigh a thousand pounds,” Brad said.

“And,” Kai said, “it looks like the girder is wedged into that wall pretty solidly.” To Mia he said, “You can’t move at all,
sweetie?”

Mia shook her head. “My leg hurts. Please don’t leave us here.”

“No one’s going to leave you,” Kai said. “We’re going to get you out.”

He led Teresa back to the hallway.

“I’ll be right back, Mia,” she said as they left.

“I need you to go down and check out Jake. Let us know what you find.”

“What about Mia?” Kai could see the desperation in her face.

“I’ll stay and try to figure out something.”

“How long do we have?”

“Not long. No more than ten minutes to the next wave. But that means we need to be out of here in five minutes so that we
can get down and find another building to climb.” Kai pulled the fire ax off the wall. It had survived the explosion, although
the protective glass was gone.

“What are you going to do with that?” Teresa said.

“I don’t know.”

Teresa whispered to Kai. “You’re not thinking of amputation, are you?”

“That’s not an option.”

“Good.”

“But we’ve got to figure out a way to get that girder off of them.”

“I didn’t come all this way to lose her now, Kai.”

Kai held her head in his hands. As gently as possible, he said, “I know. You are not going to lose her. But we need you to
keep it together, okay?”

She nodded. “You figure something out.”

“I will.” He hugged her, and she hurried down the stairs. Kai headed back to Brad and Mia, ax in hand.

*

Teresa met Tom on the eighth-floor landing and quickly assessed his awkwardly dangling arm.

“Jake was already into the hallway when I slipped on the stairs and fell,” he said. “Is it broken?”

“No, it’s dislocated. Where’s Jake?”

With his other arm, Tom pointed down the hall. It looked like a bomb had hit it, which was essentially what had happened.

Other than the dislocation, Tom seemed uninjured, but Jake had not been so lucky.

A jagged piece of metal about two feet in length had sliced through the wall like it was tissue. Jake sat against the opposite
wall, the metal protruding from his chest, his hair filthy from rubbing against the muck coating everything. Blood covered
the wall behind him and oozed from the wound. Teresa bent down to examine Jake. His breath was shallow, but it was there.

“Can you help him?” Tom asked plaintively. “Is he dead?”

Teresa was devastated at the sight of the injured boy. She had to make a decision, and her options were not good. It was a
no-win situation. If she did nothing, he would die in minutes. If she moved him, the shock might kill him. He’d already lost
a lot of blood, and any movement might cause further disruption of the wound. Ideally, paramedics would be brought in to stabilize
him before he
was taken away in an ambulance. But the likelihood of getting any kind of professional medics here in the next ten minutes
was nil.

That left her no choice. She had to try to get him out. But before she did that, she had to take care of Tom.

“Tom, I’m going to have to put that arm back in place because I need your help.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. But do it quick.”

“Lie down.”

Tom lay down on the floor on his back. Teresa positioned herself behind him. She put her left hand on his shoulder and her
right hand on his elbow.

“I’ll count to three, and then I’m going to push your arm back into the socket. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“One … two … three.” With a fast rotation, she snapped the arm back into place. Tom screamed and then relaxed, the pain greatly
reduced now that the arm was in its socket.

Teresa heard Kai yell from upstairs. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t worry about us!” she shouted, then turned her attention back to Tom. “Better?”

He nodded in relief.

“You did well, Tom.”

“What about Jake? Should we take that thing out?”

Teresa knelt down, shaking her head at the hopelessness of the situation. “If we do, he’ll bleed to death.”

As she said that, Jake’s eyes fluttered open. A hoarse whisper came out of his mouth.

“Where am I?” He was in shock. He felt no pain, probably wasn’t even aware that he had been through an explosion.

“You’re injured, Jake. We’re going to get you out of here.”

“I’m so tired.”

“I know, sweetie. But you need to stay awake.”

“So tired …”

Jake closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and slipped into unconsciousness.

“Jake!” Tom yelled. “Jake!” He grabbed Teresa’s shoulders. “Do something!”