Treasure of Khan (7 page)

Far longer and lower pitched than a clap of thunder, the sound had an odd muffled quality to it. For nearly half a minute, the strange murmur echoed across the lake. All eyes on the boat scanned north in the direction of the noise, but no visible source was evident.

“Some sort of construction?” Theresa asked, searching for an answer.

“Maybe,” Roy replied. “It's a long ways off, though.”

Glancing at the sonar monitor, he noticed a brief spate of noise that minimally disrupted the image before a clean contour of the lake bed reappeared.

“Whatever it is,” Wofford grimaced, “I just wish it would stop messing with our equipment.”

T
EN MILES TO THE NORTH
, Rudi Gunn walked onto the bridge wing of the gray-hulled Russian research vessel
Vereshchagin
and looked up at the azure sky overhead. Removing a thick pair of horn-rimmed glasses, he carefully cleaned the lenses and then peered upward again. Shaking his head, he walked back onto the bridge and muttered, “Sounds like thunder, but there's hardly a cloud in the sky.”

A hearty laugh erupted at his words, flowing from a portly man with black hair and matching beard. Dr. Alexander Sarghov resembled a circus bear, his large frame softened by a jovial demeanor and warm ebony eyes that twinkled with life. The geophysicist from the Russian Academy of Sciences Limnological Institute enjoyed a good laugh, especially if it was at the expense of his newfound American friends.

“You Westerners are very amusing,” he chuckled in a heavily accented voice.

“Alexander, you'll have to excuse Rudi,” answered a warm, deep voice from the opposite side of the bridge. “He's never lived in an earthquake zone.”

The green opaline eyes of Dirk Pitt sparkled with mirth as he helped heckle his deputy. The head of the National Underwater and Marine Agency stood up from a bank of video monitors and stretched his six-foot-three frame, his palms scraping against the deckhead. Though more than two decades of undersea adventures had exacted a toll on his rugged body, he still had a lean and fit form. Just a few more wrinkles around the eyes and a growing tussle of gray at the temples indicated a wavering battle with age.

“An earthquake?” Gunn speculated. The brainy deputy director of NUMA, an Annapolis graduate and former Navy commander, stared out the bridge in wonder.

“I've only been in one or two, but those were felt and not heard.”

“Puny ones just rattle the dishes, but larger quakes can sound like a string of locomotives running by,” Pitt said.

“There is a great deal of tectonic activity under Lake Baikal,” Sarghov added. “Earthquakes occur frequently in this region.”

“Personally, I can do without them,” Gunn said sheepishly, retaining his seat by the monitor bank. “I hope they don't disrupt our data collection of the lake's currents.”

The
Vereshchagin
was engaged in a joint Russian-American scientific survey of Lake Baikal's uncharted current flows. Not one to stay confined in NUMA's Washington headquarters, Pitt was leading a small team from the government research agency in collaboration with local scientists from the Limnological Institute at Irkutsk. The Russians provided the ship and crew, while the Americans provided high-tech sonobuoys and monitoring equipment which would be used to paint a three-dimensional image of the lake and its currents. The great depth of Lake Baikal was known to create unique water-circulation patterns that often behaved unpredictably. Tales of swirling vortexes and fishing boats getting pulled underwater by their nets were common stories among the local lakeside communities.

Starting at the northern tip of the lake, the scientific team had deployed dozens of tiny sensors, packaged in orange colored pods that were ballasted to drift at varying depths. Constantly measuring temperature, pressure, and position, the pods relayed the data instantaneously to a series of large underwater transponders that were positioned in fixed locations. Computers onboard the
Vereshchagin
processed the data from the transponders, displaying the results in 3-D graphic images. Gunn glanced at a bank of the monitors in front of his seat, then focused on one in particular, which depicted the midsection of the lake. The image resembled a pack of orange marbles floating in a bowl of blue ice cream. Nearly in unison, a vertical string of the orange balls suddenly jumped rapidly toward the top edge of the screen.

“Whoa! Either one of our transponders is going tilt or there's a significant disturbance at the bottom of the lake,” he blurted.

Pitt and Sarghov turned and studied the monitor, watching as a flood of orange dots raced toward the surface.

“The current is uplifting, at a dramatic rate,” Sarghov said with a raised brow. “I find it difficult to believe the earthquake was severe enough to produce that kind of effect.”

“Perhaps not the earthquake itself,” Pitt said, “but a resulting side effect. A submarine landslide set off by a minor quake might create that sort of uplift.”

A hundred and thirty miles north of the
Vereshchagin
and two thousand feet beneath the surface, Pitt was exactly right. The rumblings that first echoed across the lake were the shock waves from a strong earthquake, measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale. Though seismologists would later determine that the quake's epicenter was near the lake's northern shore, it created a devastating effect midway down the western flank, near Olkhon Island. A large, dry, barren landmass, Olkhon sat near the center of the lake. Directly off the island's eastern shoreline, the lake floor dropped like an elevator down a steep slope that ran to the deepest part of the lake.

Seismic studies had revealed dozens of fault lines running beneath the lake floor, including a cut at Olkhon Island. Had an underwater geologist examined the fault line before and after the quake, he would have measured a movement of less than three millimeters. Yet those three millimeters was sufficient enough to create what the scientists call a “fault rupture with vertical displacement,” or an underwater landslide.

The unseen effects of the quake sheared off a mountain-sized hunk of alluvial sediments nearly twenty meters thick. The runaway chunk of loose sediments slid down a subterranean ravine like an avalanche, accumulating mass and building momentum as it went. The mountain of rock, silt, and mud fell a half mile, obliterating underwater hills and outcroppings in its path before colliding with the lake bottom at a depth of fifteen hundred meters.

In seconds, a million cubic meters of sediment was dumped on the lake floor in a dirty cloud of silt. The muffled rumble of the massive landslide quickly fell away, but the violent energy produced by the slide was just unleashed. The moving sediment displaced a massive wall of water, driving it first to the bottom ahead of the landslide and then squeezing it up toward the surface. The effect was like a cupped hand pushing under the surface of a bathtub. The force from millions of gallons of displaced water had to be redirected somewhere.

The submarine landslide had fallen in a southerly direction off Olkhon Island and that was the direction that the mounting swell of water began to move. To the north of the slide, the lake would remain relatively undisturbed, but to the south a rolling wave of destructive force was released. At sea, the moving force of water would be labeled a tsunami, but in the confines of a freshwater lake it was called a seiche wave.

An upsurge of water punched the surface in a ten-foot-high rolling wave that drove south along the lake's lower corridor. As the wave pushed into shallower depths, the upswell squeezed higher, increasing the size and speed of the surface wave. To those in its path, it would be a liquid wall of death.

On the bridge of the
Vereshchagin,
Pitt and Gunn tracked the development of the killer wave with growing alarm. An enlarged three-dimensional map of the lake south of Olkhon Island showed a swirl of orange dots jumping in rapid succession across an expanding line.

“Dial up the surface pods only, Rudi. Let's find out exactly what's going on up top,” Pitt requested.

Gunn typed a short command into the computer and a two-dimensional image suddenly appeared on the monitor, showing an array of surface pods bobbing over a five-mile stretch of the lake. All eyes on the bridge focused on the screen as one orange pod after another visibly jumped in a slow line of progression from north to south.

“It's a rolling wave, all right. The sensors are getting kicked up almost five meters as it passes,” Gunn reported. He double-checked his measurements, then nodded silently to Pitt and Sarghov with a grim look on his face.

“Of course, a landslide would produce such a wave,” Sarghov said, comprehending the electronic images. The Russian pointed to a map of the lake pinned to the bulkhead. “The wave will pass through the shallow delta of the Selenga River as it moves south. Perhaps that will dilute its force.”

Pitt shook his head. “As the wave moves into shallower water, it will likely have the opposite effect and increase its surface force,” he said. “How fast is she moving, Rudi?”

Gunn toggled the computer mouse and drew a line between two pods, measuring their distance apart. “Based on the spikes in the sensors, the wave looks to be traveling about one hundred twenty-five miles per hour.”

“Which will put it upon us in about fifty minutes,” Pitt calculated. His mind was already racing in overdrive. The
Vereshchagin
was a stout and stable vessel, he knew, and stood a good chance of steaming through the wave with minimal damage. The greater harm would be to the lake's prevailing marine traffic, small fishing boats and transport vessels not designed to withstand the onslaught of a ten-foot wave. Then there were the shoreline inhabitants, who would be subject to an unexpected flooding of the low-lying areas around the lake.

“Dr. Sarghov, I suggest you have the captain issue an immediate emergency warning to all vessels on the lake. By the time anyone catches sight of the wave, it will be too late to get out of its way. We'll need to contact the authorities on shore to evacuate all residents at risk to flooding. There's no time to lose.”

Sarghov beat a path to the ship's radio and issued the warning himself. The radio hummed with chatter as a myriad of respondents called back to confirm the emergency. Though Pitt didn't speak Russian, he could tell by the tone of skepticism in the replying voices that at least some thought Sarghov was either drunk or crazy. Pitt could only smile when the normally jovial scientist turned red and spat a series of obvious obscenities into the microphone.

“Idiot fishermen! They're calling me a fool!” he cursed.

The warnings took heed when a fishing boat in the protected cove of Aya Bay barely survived capsizing as the fringe of the wave passed by and its captain hysterically reported the event. Pitt scanned the horizon with a pair of binoculars and could make out a half dozen black fishing boats motoring toward the safety of Listvyanka, in addition to a small freighter and a hydrofoil ferry.

“I guess you got their attention, Alex,” Pitt said.

“Yes,” Sarghov replied with some relief. “The Listvyanka Police Department has issued alerts to all stations around the lake and is going door-to-door to evacuate risky areas. We've done all we can do.”

“Perhaps you would be kind enough to have the captain apply full speed and move us toward Listvyanka and the western shore of the lake as quickly as possible,” Pitt said, smiling that Sarghov had neglected their own plight.

As the
Vereshchagin
turned toward Listvyanka and increased speed, Gunn eyed the map of Lake Baikal, rubbing his finger across the lower toe of the lake, which angled to the west.

“If the wave holds its southerly track, we should be positioned away from its primary force,” he remarked.

“That's what I'm banking on,” Pitt replied.

“We are eighteen miles from Listvyanka,” Sarghov said, peering out the bridge window toward the western shoreline. “We will be cutting it close, as you say.”

At Listvyanka, an old air-raid alarm was sounded as the panic-stricken residents pulled ashore their small boats, while larger vessels were secured tightly to the docks. Schoolchildren were sent home with warnings for their parents, while dockside shops were swiftly closed. En masse, the residents around the lake moved to high ground and waited for the mountain of water to wash through.

“It resembles the Irish Derby out here,” Sarghov said, peering out the bridge window with a humorless grin. Nearly a dozen vessels dotted the horizon ahead of them, driving toward Listvyanka at top speed as if pulled by a magnet. The
Vereshchagin
's captain, a quiet and steady man named Ian Kharitonov, gripped the ship's wheel tightly, silently urging his vessel to sail faster. Like the others on the bridge, he periodically took sneak peeks toward the northern section of the lake, looking for signs of the impending wave.

Pitt studied the ship's radar, noting a stationary object lying ten miles to the southeast of their position.

“Apparently, someone still didn't get the word,” he said to Sarghov, motioning toward the radar target.

“The fool probably has his radio turned off,” Sarghov muttered as he trained a pair of binoculars out the portside window. In the distance, he could just make out a faint black speck moving slowly across the lake to the east.

“Heading right for the middle of the tempest,” Sarghov said, grabbing the radio microphone again. Hailing the lone vessel several times brought only silence.

“Their ignorance will mean their death,” he said slowly, shaking his head as he hung up the microphone. His anguish was broken by the approach of a loud thumping noise that rattled the windows of the bridge.

Skimming low above the water, a small helicopter swooped directly toward the
Vereshchagin
's bridge before suddenly pulling up and hovering off the starboard wing. It was a Kamov Ka-26, an old Soviet civilian helicopter that saw its heyday in the 1960s as a utilitarian light transport craft. The chopper sported a faded coat of silver paint garnished with a seal from the Limnological Institute plastered prominently on the fuselage. The thirty-five-year-old helicopter dipped closer to the boat as its cigar-chomping pilot tossed a genial wave toward the men on the bridge.