Peter Hernon - 8.4

The wind was screaming in his ears, and he was coming down a lot faster than he imagined.

He saw specks moving on the ground, clusters of people. He was too high to make out faces. He steered straight for them, figuring it would be a good idea to have someone around in case he botched the landing and got hurt. A lot of telephone and electrical lines were down there. He hadn’t thought about that.

He tugged on the right cords and heard a popping sound; it was distant, yet distinctive. He heard it again, more clearly this time, a series of sharp cracks. It sounded like firecrackers going off.

They were shooting at him!

He saw three or four men with raised guns; he could see the muzzle flashes.

Booker pulled hard on the left cords; his whole body tilted in that direction. About seven hundred feet in the air, he pulled away from the shooters, moving out of range. He eased up on his grip and straightened out his course again. The ground was very close.

He tried to remember what the instructor had told him about landing. Take the shock in the legs.

He glimpsed the river behind him; that meant he was facing east. Good. At least he was going in the right direction.

Power lines and trees were coming up. He was going to land in someone’s backyard. Or in a tree. Some people were running in his direction, pointing up at him, shouting. He wasn’t sure if they were the shooters. But he wasn’t going to stick around and find out.

Booker tugged hard on the cords with his right hand, moving away from a tall tree. He was drifting through the air sideways, his body almost horizontal to the ground. A sudden gust of wind blew him up about a hundred feet. He looked down again and found himself over a large park. He saw an opening in the trees and pulled left, steering for it. He tried to prepare for the impact and then he hit. His legs bucked and he pitched forward on his stomach. The chute, still open, dragged him along the grass before he remembered to tug the harness release.

He rolled over several times and lay on his back. He stared up at a blue sky streaked with dirty trails of smoke. He tested his arms and legs. Everything moved and seemed to work. He got his bearings and started walking east, toward the university.

WITHIN THIRTY MINUTES OF THE PRESIDENT’S departure, an Army UH-60 helicopter from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, landed at the University of Memphis’ earthquake center. The president had personally ordered the aircraft diverted from rescue operations. The seismologists could use it as long as necessary.

The first order of business was to try to get a better “picture” of the new fault. Their initial data showed it started just north of Caruthersville, Missouri, crossed the Mississippi and a sliver of Tennessee, and extended about 150 miles into Kentucky.

Atkins and Jacobs were particularly interested in the area in extreme southwestern Kentucky and northwestern Tennessee where that fault intersected with one of the major segments of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Due west of Kentucky Lake and the town of Mayfield, it was familiar ground for Atkins and Elizabeth Holleran.

A five-member team flew up there—Atkins, Elizabeth, Walt Jacobs, and two of Weston’s geologists—Stan Marshal and Mark Wren.

They’d brought two hundred pounds of water-gel explosives packed in plastic sticks. The electric blasting caps that detonated the charge were connected to a specially designed condenser. The explosion was set off by radio wave, using a 1,000-volt remote-control blasting machine.

They also had half a dozen portable seismographs and geophones, which would record the ground vibrations and convert them into electrical signals that could be captured on magnetic tape. The seismographs would measure the waves as they moved through the deep earth. Faults and other irregularities would cause the signals to slow down or speed up. This so-called “reflection” technique had been used since the 1920s to detect buried oil and gas formations.

The other equipment consisted of two German-made “vibrators,” big gas-powered devices that looked like jackhammers. The machines rapidly pounded a flat metal plate against the ground, producing seismic waves. The seismographs and geophones recorded them.

The idea was to use the varying wave patterns to map out, much like a CAT scan, what the fault looked like and how much fracturing of the rock had taken place. The data would project the fault’s length and breadth and help them determine how much strain energy remained in the ground; heavy fracturing and the degree to which the fractures had opened were dead giveaways that rocks were under severe strain.

The three-man Army crew, all heavily armed, served as a security detail.

When Atkins asked about the need for this, the pilot told them it was too dangerous to travel unarmed. “There’s been a lot of looting,” he said. “It’s going to take a while before we get things under control.”

There were also reports of wild dogs roaming the countryside in packs, he said.

Elizabeth felt a twinge of anxiety, remembering how close she’d come to being mauled in that creek bed near Blytheville, Arkansas. Like Atkins, she wished they had time to investigate whether the animals were reacting to something they detected in the ground. She wondered if the continued aftershocks had anything to do with their behavior.

Or did they sense another big quake was coming?

She put that troubling thought out of mind as the chopper flew right over Kentucky Lake. The water level had dropped a good thirty to forty feet, but water was still rushing through the smashed dam into the swollen Tennessee River.

It was her first good look at the dam since the earthquake. She couldn’t believe how totally it had given away. The huge structure—gates, concrete walls, power station—had vanished. Only the twisted remains of the boat lock remained.

She stared at the gray water, remembering how she’d almost drowned down there. The surface was still choppy with whitecaps. They were flying across the lake from east to west, against a strong wind.

Elizabeth figured something more than the wind was responsible for all that boiling water below them. The turbulence extended as far down the wide lake as she could see.

Atkins knew what she was thinking.

“The ground is still incredibly active,” he said. “The lake hasn’t had time to settle down.”

THE first stop was near Dexter, Kentucky, about forty miles west of the lake. Atkins remembered the countryside well. It was close to the coal mine he and Jacobs had descended to get seismic readings the morning before the earthquake.

How long ago had that been? Three days? Four? He’d lost count.

Working in teams, they operated the vibrators, moving them back and forth over sweep zones a hundred yards wide. They took readings at several sites. It was a cool day with the temperature in the mid-forties, but after ten minutes of trying to hang on to the bulky machines, Atkins and Jacobs were breathing heavily. The instrument packs they carried on their backs felt like they were filled with bricks. It was hard to take the pounding as the flat metal plate at the end of the vibrator, moving in a blur, struck the ground repeatedly. Every muscle began to ache—bones, jaws, teeth.

Elizabeth monitored the seismographs and geophones. The readings were clean and clear. After several hours, they flew to another site closer to the point where the new fault intersected with the old one in the extreme northwestern corner of Tennessee about 120 miles from Memphis.

The procedure was simple and not unduly hazardous. Using a posthole digger, they dug holes six feet deep and placed the sticks of explosive in them. The water-gel charge was as powerful as dynamite but much safer to handle.