Boyd Morrison - The Tsunami Countdown

Teresa, followed by Mia and Lani, plunged into the throng of people crowding Kalakaua Avenue and crossed the road to Waikiki Beach. They passed a magnificent banyan tree and stepped onto the beach itself.

As Teresa searched for a spot big enough for the three of them, she heard people speaking Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and a few languages she couldn’t place. Like all beaches in Hawaii, Waikiki was open to the public, so a mishmash of all walks of life mingled with the guests of the expensive resorts.

Two boys, both about sixteen, walked past. Tan and lean, they looked like younger versions of Brad. They gave the girls an appraising look and the taller of the boys spoke to them as they went by.

“The surf’s a lot better by our condo.” He pointed his thumb in the direction of Diamond Head.

The girls laughed, and the shorter boy yanked his friend and kept walking. Despite what Teresa had said earlier, the boys’ attention to her daughter tickled her, but she hid her amusement.

They walked for a little while and stopped at an open patch near an impressive hotel called the Outrigger Waikiki. Teresa dropped her bag and started spreading out her towel. She had a clear view to the breakwaters on either side, and the waves coming in were good-sized, but still mild enough for safe boogie boarding.

“How’s this?”

Mia made a show of propping up her boogie board in the sand. “Mom, Lani and I want to walk down the beach.”

“We just got here. Don’t you even want to get in the water? Look how blue it is. It’s gorgeous.”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Mia said, stripping down to her bikini. “But I saw some great T-shirts back there, and I want to get some souvenirs while we’re here.”

Lani piped in, now down to her bikini as well. “Yeah, and we want to get new dresses for the luau tonight.”

Teresa wasn’t very concerned about letting the girls go off on their own. Mia had been babysitting for a year now, so walking around the beach, especially with someone else, wasn’t worrisome. Teresa looked at her watch. It was still a couple of hours until lunchtime.

“All right. But I don’t want you to come back with a piercing.”

Mia sighed. “I promise.”

“How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

The girls looked at each other and shrugged in unison.

“There’s a lot to see,” Mia said. “Maybe an hour or two.”

“You have some money?”

Mia waved her wallet. The babysitting money she wasn’t using to pay off her texting bill.

“Sunscreen?”

“We put it on at the house.”

“Okay. But be back by eleven thirty. After a morning in the sun, I’m going to be starving.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Mia said as she and Lani turned toward Diamond Head and began walking. “You’re the best.”

“Bye, Aunt Teresa,” said Lani.

Teresa gave them a wave. She was actually relieved to have a little uninterrupted time alone. After she liberally applied sunscreen, her plan was to immerse herself in a good mystery novel for a peaceful morning. As she spread out her towel, a beep caught her attention. She fished through her bag and saw that the display on her cell phone said, charge phone. She powered it down and tossed it back in her bag.

9:57 a.m .

It had been half an hour since the tide gauge reading from Christmas Island was supposed to be transmitted, and Kai was growing more worried by the minute. Reggie’s calls to Steve Bryant still went unanswered. “What the hell is going on down there?” Reggie said to no one in particular.

The phone rang, and Kai swept the receiver up in the hope that it was the operator with good news.

“Dr. Tanaka, this is Shirley Nagle, the operator you spoke with earlier.”

“You got through?” Kai asked hopefully.

“Well, no, I haven’t,” she said. Kai slumped in disappointment. “But I wanted to call you back, since you said it was so urgent. I asked another operator here, Chris, if he had any other ideas. He said that, in addition to the under-sea cable, there’s a backup satellite hookup on the island. But the funny thing is, I’m not getting through on that, either.”

“Why is that funny?”

“Chris swears up and down that the satellite transmitter has a backup generator in case of power loss, so I should be getting a connection, even if the main island power is down. But I’m getting nothing. No signal whatsoever. It’s like the island isn’t there anymore.”

“Jesus,” Kai said, the implications too terrible to grasp. It’s like the island isn’t there anymore .

“Excuse me?” Shirley said.

“Nothing. Can you please keep trying to reach them?”

“Sure. We’ve already got a couple of other people on it. I’ll let you know as soon as we get through.”

Her voice sounded upbeat, but Kai didn’t share her optimism. He had the terrible feeling that they’d never hear from anyone on the island again.

There were at least three thousand people on Christmas Island. Kai couldn’t accept the possibility that it had been wiped out by a tsunami on his watch. He felt the beginnings of a headache and popped a couple of aspirins from a bottle in his desk.

Reggie saw the look on Kai’s face. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Kai told him about the satellite transmitter.

“I think a tsunami hit Christmas Island,” he said. “A big one.”

“How is that possible?” Reggie said.

“I don’t know. Could it have been a landslide? Maybe the seamount has been building for a while and now a major eruption triggered a landslide down the face of it.”

“No way. There have been no major seismic disturbances in that region for the past ten years. I checked the database.” Reggie was already working on his bid to get credit for his discovery. “The seamount couldn’t be big enough to cause a major landslide at this point.”

“And the quake magnitude? Have we gotten confirmation back from NEIC yet?”

“I just checked again,” Reggie said. “NEIC estimates 6.9.”

The Southeast Asian tsunami resulted from a quake with a moment magnitude of 9.0, over one thousand times more powerful than this earthquake. An earthquake as small as 6.9 had never spawned an oceanwide tsunami. There just wasn’t enough energy or motion of the seafloor to generate large waves that could travel great distances.

The conditions didn’t add up. The earthquake shouldn’t have spawned a tsunami, and yet they couldn’t get any signal or communication from Christmas Island.

Kai picked up the sheet with the wave arrival times. Johnston Island would be next in about twenty minutes, then the Big Island twenty minutes after that, followed by Oahu an hour and twenty-five minutes from now. Johnston Island had a real-time tide gauge, so that would be their next chance to get data about a potential wave.

“When will we get the wave height data from the DART buoy?” Kai asked Reggie.

“The max wave height at the buoy will be about five minutes after it reaches Johnston. The captain on the Miller Freeman said they’ll have the satellite uplink ready in ten minutes, which will be just enough time. So it looks like the tide gauge at Johnston is our first chance to see if it’s really a tsunami.”

Up to this point, Brad had quietly been watching events unfold, content merely to spectate, but now he couldn’t resist interjecting.

“You mean, you’re willing to wait more than twenty minutes until you know for sure?” he said.

“What do you want us to do?” Reggie responded. “Evacuate a million people because of a downed power line?”

“Do you want to take the chance that they could be killed because you thought it was just a downed power line?”