Boyd Morrison - The Tsunami Countdown

Still crying uncontrollably, Paige swept Ashley up in her arms and dashed into the stairwell.

The view from Wheeler Army Airfield was far removed from the action, but Reggie had a front-row seat, courtesy of a TV hastily set up at the front of the crowded office. He was talking with Frank Manetti, his contact at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, on his cell phone.

“You seeing this?” Reggie said, absently patting Bilbo, who panted beside him. When Reggie had snagged his ride during the evacuation, his only condition had been that Bilbo would be allowed to come with him. Lying obediently at Reggie’s feet, the dog never took his eager brown eyes off the commotion around him.

The TV showed a helicopter view of the second tsunami coming in. The TV stations, which weren’t going to let a little thing like complete destruction of their facilities get in the way of covering one of the biggest disasters in history, had quickly moved their satellite uplink vans to high ground. Any cameras still operating in the islands were now broadcasting via those vans.

When Manetti didn’t respond, Reggie said, “Frank, you still there?”

“Yes. I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

“Believe it. Kai’s still somewhere out in that.” I hope , Reggie thought. The news from the Black Hawk that Colonel Johnson had sent wasn’t encouraging.

“You found him?” Manetti said.

“Not yet. I haven’t heard from him since his last message. The helicopter didn’t find anyone on the rooftop. The building next to it was blown to hell. Maybe they got out in time and made a run for it.”

“If they did, they’ve got a bigger problem headed their way.”

“I know,” Reggie said. “The third tsunami.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“What could be a bigger problem than a two-hundred-foot tsunami?”

“There’s a fourth wave.”

“A fourth wave!” Reggie blurted out. “Are you sure?”

“We just got the reading from the DART buoy a minute ago. But the really bad news is its size. The wave is going to be over three hundred feet high.”

“Dear God!”

As Reggie said that, the second wave slammed into the buildings lining Waikiki.

Kai closed his eyes as the seawater bashed in the front windows and engulfed the condo. The noise bombarded his eardrums, and it got even worse as the water found them. It crashed into the hallway from multiple directions, converging on their position, where it smacked into them with tremendous force.

Anyone who has ever ridden one of those water slides that plunges hundreds of feet in seconds has experienced the discomfort and indignity of having their bathing suit ride up during the deceleration from sixty miles per hour to zero at the end of the ride. Although tsunamis only travel at forty miles per hour on land, the effect from the current is similar. The shoes of people caught in tsunamis are the article of clothing most easily ripped from their bodies, but they are lucky if they aren’t stripped completely naked by the water, as the man Kai had seen earlier had been.

Because they were inside the building, the current did not flow steadily past them. Instead, it was a turbulent mess that would rush in one direction one second, then reverse itself. The effect whipped them around like they were in a washing machine.

Pieces of debris pummeled Kai. Most were small, but a sharp piece of glass stung his cheek as it tore by. He heard a bang as something large hurtled past over his head and struck a hard surface. Somehow it had missed him. Many deaths in a tsunami are not the result of drowning but from being crushed by large objects. The respirators that Kai and the others were relying on wouldn’t protect them from that.

Kai braced his feet against the girder in the hope that he could keep his shoes on. He would definitely need them to clamber over the debris in their escape from the building, if they made it that far.

His ears popped several times as the water above them got higher and higher. Every thirty-three feet under the water equaled one atmosphere of pressure, and they had been submerged to twice that depth in a matter of seconds. Kai just hoped none of them suffered punctured eardrums. They didn’t need to add to their problems.

Kai opened his eyes and shut them again immediately, the filthy water stinging them. After what seemed like forever, the worst of the current eased, although it continued in the general direction away from the ocean. To Kai’s relief, the building had been able to sustain the initial impact, but that didn’t mean much. It could still collapse at any moment, undermined by the ebb and flow of the wave.

He tried opening his eyes again, and although the water was still foul, it didn’t scratch his eyes as much as before. According to the dim glow of his dive watch, little more than thirty seconds had passed. As the water continued to rise above them, the light from the sun became more and more indistinct until the gloom was virtually complete.

Kai felt for the dive light that he had lashed to his wrist. It was still there. He turned it on.

The murk of the silt did not obstruct as much of the view as he had expected, but the visibility was still minimal. The fuzzy outline of the light played over a scene that seemed unfamiliar to him, even though he had seen it in broad daylight not a minute before.

He searched for Lani. Kai’s chest tightened for a moment when he didn’t see her face where he had been expecting it. He rotated the light over a larger area until he saw her floating above him. Her eyes were screwed shut, but Kai could see that her mouth was still tightly clamped around the regulator. Then a string of bubbles emerged from the mouthpiece, and he knew she had made it through the worst of it.

Kai gripped her arm to let her know that he was still there. Her eyes fluttered open for a second, and Kai gave her the okay sign, which she returned.

On the other side, Brad and Mia seemed to be all right, although Brad still had a look of terror on his face. Teresa and Tom were discernible at the edges of the dive light, but Kai couldn’t make out their condition.

He focused the light on the air tank he and Lani shared to make sure it was still intact. It was in one piece, but Kai found the source of the impact sound that he had heard.

Just to the right of the air tank, the car jack that he had strapped to the girder dangled from its rope. Some unseen object had crushed it. The jack was now completely useless.

They had no way to free Mia and Brad.

“Hello!” Rachel yelled through the closed elevator door. “Are you all right?”

“Thank God!” A man’s voice replied. “Yes. I’m fine. I’m on top of the elevator cab roof.”

The building shuddered from the tsunami impact.

“Oh my God!” the man said, his voice rising an octave. “What was that?”

“It’s another tsunami. Are there others with you?”

“My sister and my mother are still in the elevator. I climbed out through the hatch to see if I could reach the outer door, but I can’t get it open. The elevator shaft is pitch-black. I can’t see a thing.”

“Hold on. I’ll get something to pry the door open.”

A fire ax hung just around the corner from the elevator. Rachel broke the glass and wrenched it out.

She put the ax head into the space between the doors and used the leverage to separate them. When they were six feet apart, she wedged the ax under one door to hold them open.

About three feet below her stood a bald man of about forty-five. He was gangly and holding a metal cane. The man squinted and blinked at the first light he’d seen in twenty minutes.

“Thank God you came. I couldn’t get the doors open from here. Without any light, I couldn’t tell what to do.”