Clive Cussler: Fire Ice

Some of the people who stood shivering in the cool air of morning shouted at him. Howes ignored their insults, got out of his cruiser and walked partway down the steep hill that led toward the harbor. Now that the adrenaline rush was over, he felt weak-kneed. Nothing. He checked his watch. Five minutes came and went. And so did his dreams of a peaceful retirement on a police pension. I'm dead, he thought, sweating despite the coolness.

Then he saw the sea rise above the horizon and heard what sounded like distant thunder. The townspeople stopped shouting. A darkness loomed out near the channel entrance and the harbor emptied out – he could actually see bottom – but the phenomenon lasted only a few seconds. The water roared back in with a noise like a 747 taking off, and ,the sea lifted the moored fishing boats as if they were toys. It was reinforced by two more waves, seconds apart, each, taller than the one before. They surged over the shore. When' they receded, the motel and the fish pier had vanished.

THE ROCKY POINT that Jenkins returned to was far different from the one he had left that morning. The boats moored in the harbor were jumbled together along the shore in a tangled heap of wood and fiberglass. Smaller craft had been thrown up onto Main Street. Shop windows were smashed as if by a gang of vandals. The water was littered with debris and seaweed, and a sulfuric smell of sea bottom mixed with the odor of dead fish. The motel had vanished. Only pilings remained of the fish pier, although the sturdy concrete bulkhead showed no sign of damage. Jenkins pointed his boat toward a figure waving his arms on the bulkhead. Chief Howes grabbed the mooring lines and tied them off, then he stepped aboard.

"Anybody hurt?" Jenkins said, his eyes sweeping the harbor and town.

"Jack Shrager was killed. He's the only one as far as we know. We got everyone else out of the motel."

"Thanks for believing me. Sorry I called you an old fool."

The chief puffed his cheeks out. "That's what I would have been if I'd sat on my ass and done nothing."

"Tell me what you saw," Jenkins said, the scientist re- asserting itself over the Samaritan.

Howes laid out the details. "We were standing at the top of Hill Street. Sounded and looked like a thunderstorm, then the harbor emptied out like a kid pulling the plug in a bathtub. I could actually see bottom. That only lasted a few seconds before the water roared in like a jet plane."

"That's an apt comparison. On the open ocean, a tsunami can go six hundred miles an hour."

"That's fast!" the chief said.

"Luckily, it slows down as it approaches land and hits shallower water. But the wave energy doesn't diminish with the speed."

"It wasn't like I pictured. You know, a wall of water fifty feet high. This was more like a wave surge. I counted three of them, each bigger than the last. Thirty feet, maybe. They whacked the motel and pier and flooded Main Street." He shrugged. "I know you're a professor, Roy, but how exactly did you know this was going to happen?"

"I've seen it before off New Guinea. We were doing some research when an undersea slide generated a tsunami thirty to sixty feet tall, and a series of waves lifted our boat off the water just like what I felt today. The people were warned and many made it to high ground when the waves hit, but even so, more than two thousand people were lost."

The chief gulped. "That's more than live in this town." He pondered the professor's words. "You think that an earthquake caused this mess? I thought that was something that happened in the Pacific."

"Normally, you'd be right." Jenkins furrowed his brow and stared out to sea. "This is absolutely incomprehensible."

"I'll tell you something else that's going to be hard to figure. How am I going to explain that I evacuated the motel for a bomb scare?"

"Do you think anyone will care at this point?"

Chief Howes surveyed the town and the crowds of people cautiously making their way down the hill to the harbor and shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't guess they will."

THE AEGEAN SEA

THE MINIATURE RESEARCH submarine NR-1 rocked gently in the waves off the coast of Turkey, almost invisible except for the bright tangerine color of the conning tower. Captain Joe Logan stood with his legs wide apart on the sea-washed deck, holding on to one of the horizontal wings that protruded from the sides of the conning tower. As was his custom before a dive, the captain was making a last minute visual check.

Logan let his eye range along the 145-foot length of the slender black hull whose deck was only inches above the surface of the water. Satisfied all was shipshape, he removed his navy baseball cap and waved at the cream-and-orange Carolyn Chouest a quarter of a mile away. The superstructure of the muscular support ship rose several levels, like the floors in an apartment house. A massive crane capable of lifting several tons jutted out at an angle from the port side.

The captain climbed to the top of the tower and squeezed through the thirty-one-inch-diameter opening. His flotation vest made for a tight fit and he had to wriggle to get through. He ran his fingers along the seal to make sure it was clean, then secured the hatch cover and descended into the confined control area. The space was made even more cramped by the dials, gauges and instruments that covered every square inch of the walls and overhead.

The captain was a man of unassuming appearance who could have passed for an Ivy League college professor. A nuclear engineer by training, Logan had commanded surface ships before being assigned as the officer in charge of the NR-1. He was of medium height and build, with thinning blond hair and a slight fleshiness around the jaw. The navy had long ago dispensed with the rawboned John Wayne type who ran a ship by the seat of his pants. With computerized firing controls, laser guidance and smart missiles, navy vessels were too complicated and expensive to entrust to cowboys. Logan had a sharp mind and the ability to make a lightning-quick analysis of the most complex technical problem.

His previous commands had been much bigger, yet none came close to the NR-1 in the sophistication of her electronics. Although the boat had been built in 1969, she was constantly upgraded. Despite her cutting edge technology, the sub still used some older but time-tested techniques. A thick twelve-hundred-foot towline ran from the support vessel's deck to a large metal ball clutched by metal jaws on the submarine's bow.

Logan gave the order to release the towrope, then he turned to a thickset bearded man in his fifties and said, "Welcome aboard the smallest nuclear submarine in the world, Dr. Pulaski. Sorry we don't have more elbowroom. The shielding for the nuclear reactor takes up most of the sub. My guess is that you'd prefer claustrophobia to radiation. I assume you've had a tour."

Pulaski smiled. "Yes, I've been checked out on the proper procedure for using the head." He spoke with a slight accent.

"You might have to stand in line, so I'd go easy on the coffee. We've got a ten-man crew, and our facilities can get busy."

"I understand you can stay submerged for up to days," Pulaski said. "I can't imagine what it must be like sitting on the bottom a half-mile down for that length of time."

"I'd be the first to admit that even the simplest task, such as taking a shower or cooking a meal, can be a challenge," Logan said. "Luckily for you, we'll only be down a few hours." He glanced at his watch. "We'll descend one hundred feet to make sure all systems are working. If everything checks out, we'll dive."

Logan stepped through a short passageway slightly wider than his shoulders and indicated a small padded platform behind the two chairs in the control station. "That's normally where I sit during operations. It's all yours today. I'll take the copilot's seat. You've met Dr. Pulaski," he said to the pilot. "He's a marine archaeologist from the University of North Carolina."