Алистер Маклин - Goodbye California

‘An unfortunate by-product. It will disperse. Besides, no land mass lies in its way. One assumes that the competent authorities, if there are any in this country, will warn shipping.’

The centre of interest had now clearly changed from the now-dispersing giant fan to the incoming tidal wave, because the camera had now locked on that.

‘Well, there she comes.’ There was just a hint of a tremor in the commentator’s voice. ‘It’s slowed down, but it’s still going faster than any express train I’ve ever seen. And it’s getting bigger. And bigger.’ He paused for a few seconds. ‘Apart from hoping that the police and army are a hundred per cent right in saying that the entire lower area of the city has been evacuated, I think I’ll shut up for a minute. I don’t have the words for this. Nobody could. Let the camera do the talking.’

He fell silent, and it was a reasonable assumption that hundreds of millions of people throughout the world did the same. Words could never convey to the mind the frightening immensity of that massive on-rushing wall of water: but the eyes could.

When the tidal wave was a mile away it had slowed down to not much more than fifty miles an hour, but was at least twenty feet in height. It was not a wave in the true sense, just an enormously smooth and unbroken swell, completely silent in its approach, a silence that served only to intensify the impression that here was an alien monster, evil, malevolent, bent upon a mindless destruction. Half a mile away it seemed to rear its head and white showed along the tip like a giant surf about to break, and it was at this point that the level of the still untroubled waters between the tidal wave and the shore perceptibly began to fall as if being sucked into the ravenous jaw of the monster, as indeed they were.

And now they could hear the sound of it, a deep and rumbling roar which intensified with the passing of every moment, rising to such a pitch that the volume controller had to turn down the sound. When it was fifty yards away, just as it was breaking, the waters by the foreshore drained away completely, leaving the ocean bed showing. And then, with the explosive sound of a giant thunder-clap directly overhead, the monster struck.

Momentarily that was all there was to it as all visual definition was lost in a sheet of water that rose a hundred vertical feet and spray that rose five times that height as the wave smashed with irresistible power into the buildings that lined the waterfront. The sheet of water was just beginning to fall, although the spray was still high enough to obliterate the view of the dispersing fan of the hydrogen explosion, when the tidal wave burst through the concealing curtain and laid its ravenous claws on the waiting city.

Great torrents of water, perhaps thirty to forty feet high, seething, bubbling, white like giant maelstroms, bearing along on their tortured surfaces an infinity of indescribable, unidentifiable debris, rushed along the east-west canyons of Los Angeles, sweeping along in their paths the hundreds of abandoned cars that lay in their paths. It seemed as if the city was to be inundated, drowned and remain no more than a memory, but, surprisingly, this was not to be so, largely, perhaps, because of the rigid building controls that had been imposed after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933. Every building lining the front had been destroyed: the city itself remained intact.

Gradually, with the rising lift of the land and the spending of its strength, the torrent slowed, its levels fell away, and finally, exhausted, began, with an almost obscene sucking sound, its appetite slaked, to return to the ocean whence it had come. As always with a tidal wave there was to be a secondary one, but although this too reached into the city it was on such a comparatively minor scale that it was hardly worth the remarking.

Morro, for once, bordered almost on the complacent. ‘Well, I think that possibly might give them something to think about.’

Burnett began to swear, with a fervour and singular lack of repetition that showed clearly that a considerable part of his education must have been spent in fields other than the purely academic, remembered belatedly that he was in the presence of ladies, reached for the Glenfiddich and fell silent.

Ryder stood in stoical silence as a doctor removed splinters of glass from his head: like many others he had been looking out through the windows when the blast had struck. Barrow, who had just suffered the attentions of the same doctors, was mopping blood from his face. He accepted a glass of some stimulant from an aide and said to Ryder: ‘Well, what did you think of that little lot?’

‘Something will have to be done about it, and that’s a fact. There’s only one thing to do with a mad dog and that is to put it down.’

‘The chances?’

‘Better than even.’

Barrow looked at him curiously. ‘It’s hard to tell. Do you look forward to gunning him down?’

‘Certainly not. You know what they call us – peace officers. However, if he even looks like batting an eyelid–’

‘I’m still unhappy about this.’ Brigadier-General Culver’s expression bore out his words. ‘I think this is most inadvisable. Most. Not that I doubt your capabilities, Sergeant. God knows, you’re a proven man. But you have to be emotionally involved. That is not a good thing. And your fiftieth birthday lies behind you. I’m being honest, you see. I have young, fit, highly trained – well, killers if you want. I think–’

‘General.’ Culver turned as Major Dunne touched his arm. Dunne said gently: ‘I’ll give you my personal affidavit that Sergeant Ryder is probably the most emotionally stable character in the State of California. As for those super-fit young assassins in your employ – why don’t you bring one of them in here and watch Ryder take him apart?’

‘Well. No. I still–’

‘General.’ It was Ryder, and still showing no emotion. ‘Speaking with my accustomed modesty I tracked Morro down. Jeff, here, devised the plan for tonight. My wife is up there, as is my daughter. Jeff and I have the motivation. None of your boys has. But, much more importantly, we have the right. Would you deny a man his rights?’

Culver looked at him for a long moment, then smiled and nodded acceptance. ‘It is perhaps a pity. I think, that you’re about a quarter century beyond the age for enlistment.’

As they were leaving the viewing room Susan Ryder said to Morro: ‘I understand that you are having visitors tonight?’

Morro smiled. As far as it was possible for him to form an attachment for anyone he had formed one for Susan. ‘We are being honoured.’

‘Would it – would it be possible to just see the President?’

Morro raised an eyebrow. ‘I would not have thought, Mrs Ryder–’

‘Me? If I were a man instead of the lady I pretend to be I would tell you what to do with the President. Any President. It’s for my daughter – she’ll talk about it for ever.’

‘Sorry. It’s out of the question.’

‘What harm would it do?’

‘None. One does not mix business with pleasure.’ He looked curiously at her. ‘After you’ve seen what I’ve just done – you still talk to me?’

She said calmly: ‘I don’t believe you intend to kill anyone.’

He looked at her in near-astonishment. ‘Then I’m a failure. The rest of the world does.’

‘The rest of the world hasn’t met you. Anyway, the President might ask to see us.’

‘Why should he?’ He smiled again. ‘I cannot believe that you and the President are in league.’

‘I wouldn’t like to be either. Remember what he said about you last night – an utterly ruthless criminal wholly devoid of even the slightest trace of humanitarian scruples. I don’t for a moment believe that you intend any harm to any of us, but the President might well ask to view the bodies as a preliminary to negotiations.’