John Schettler - Touchstone

For Ra’id and his two associates, this was truly a moment of destiny. For years now, ever since the Americans had come to the Holy Lands again, thirsty for oil, he had planned and plotted with his brothers for the revenge he knew he must surely have one day. He was a simple man, grandson of a wealthy merchant who gained prominence during the first days of the Arab rebellion in the Hejaz. How strange, he thought, that a Westerner should be the spark that ignited the rebellion worked by Feisal and the others, his grandfather among them. First it was to throw off the oppression of the Turks, who had dared set foot in Arabia at the behest of the German Kaiser in WWI. The Arabs joined with a small British officer, el Aurens or Lawrence by name, and fought to drive the Turks from their ancestral lands. It was Lawrence who made the first promise to them, all those years ago, that they would have freedom if they would but join the British cause in the war. Now it was another who brought promises of freedom to the Holy Lands, and the price grew ever higher.

Ra’id, and his brothers, determined what they must do. It came to him in the flush of a night vision, as though Allah himself had opened his eyes. He saw, in his dream, the family villa, crowned by a searing fire. The earth shook around him and he knew that the mountain, sleeping quietly since the second great war, was coming alive again, and belching its red wrath out into the dark waters of the sea.

The island of Palma was largely formed by a great volcanic seamount called Cumbre Vieja. Each time it erupted, the unstable flank of the island shifted ominously towards the possibility of total collapse. There was evidence, just off the western shore, of at least twelve such events in the geological history of the island. Now, as the years passed, long tubes, once filled with lava, were saturated with rainwater, and each time the island erupted the water would superheat, expanding with great explosive force—enough force to shake loose the entire western flank of the mountain where Ra’id’s villa now sat in the quiet spring morning.

When this happened the resulting landslide would cause an immense tsunami to surge westward, crossing the whole of the Atlantic in just eight hours. When Ra’id saw the devastation that even a small tsunami could cause after the Indonesian Banda Ache earthquake of December 2004, he knew that he had found the perfect weapon of justice, a mighty sword that he could bring upon the enemies of Islam. It was then that he changed his name to Husan al Din, the sword of the faith, and bent himself to the plan that he hoped would bear fruit this very night.

With him in the tunnel were Nassim, the Wind, and his younger brother. It had taken them many years to acquire the means, and many long hours digging the tunnel they were now leaving. It burrowed into the heart of the mountain itself, allowing them to carry the long sought after device, the abomination made in the West, to its resting place in the heart of the mountain. Nassim had set the timer, and now all was set in motion.

They reached the end of the tunnel and went up the narrow staircase that led to the villa. There would be time enough to clean themselves, and to pray, before the chartered helo would arrive to take them from the island. Ra’id would stay, and endure the fire in holy sacrifice, but his companions convinced him that he should live on to fight again, should anything go wrong.

He stepped out onto the veranda, feeling the cool ocean breeze on his face and looking down at the herd of puffy white clouds that seemed to circle the island, dappled with moonlight. The night blue waters of the sea were calm now, but soon, he knew, they would rise up in a torrent of retribution. His only regret was that this, his sanctuary for so many years, would be vaporized as the sword fell upon his enemies, the island itself devastated, and many friends, companions of long years, lost. Yet there was nothing to be done now. The night was upon them, the time was at hand. Even the mountain itself seemed to stir awake, as if it sensed the impending catastrophe that was now only minutes away.

Soon he heard the distant thrum of the helo, flying high up, but descending rapidly as was planned.

“Come Nassim,” he called. “It is time…”

Things have a way of reaching their perfect end, he thought. Did the Americans think they could rape our lands, plunder our wealth, occupy the soil of Islam without consequence? Bush the elder had been brazen, his son even moreso, and foolish. Now the West would pay for their misdeeds. It had taken him many years of waiting and prayer to accomplish his task. But as the Arabs were fond of saying, ‘A’athreh ib dafra,’ with a stumble and a kick, he would achieve his great aim at last. A night of fire, a night of wind and water and earth, all conspiring together to work the retribution, ere the sun rises. It was not his doing, of course, but the will of Allah that he worked with this moment. He was already composing the words of the announcement that he would make to the shocked world when the true magnitude of his plan would finally become apparent.

‘…We are patient, forgiving. We are seekers only of peace, but as Allah chooses, then the command is given for the seas to rise and pound the shore. We are but an instrument, to that power. As the oceans are made up of an uncountable number of individual drops of serene waters, when Allah commands, those drops come together to form the most powerful force on earth, the ocean of Believers, who’s waves of faith become the hammer upon which justice is delivered to all followers of Satan.’

Whenthe fifteen kiloton nuclear device they had buried in Cumbre Vieja exploded just over an hour later, that certainty became a reality. The mountain, rudely jarred by the abomination in its gut, exploded with a fury that was unsurpassed. And just as Steven Ward, Simon Day and a handful of other Western scientists had warned for so many years, the unstable flank gave way, sending well over 500 cubic kilometers of rock into the sea in a mad surging avalanche. The resulting wave set was enormous, and it fanned out from the island, rolling west in dark swells of ocean at the speed of some 600 km per hour. In just under three hours it had swamped the Azores. Three more would find its angry waves upon the shore of Newfoundland. After that, the entire Eastern Seaboard of the United States would be engulfed by the sea. It would be four a.m. in the Canary Islands when the mountain would explode, midnight for the Americans, four hours behind. They would not hear of the disaster for over an hour, those that remained awake, but soon the sirens would blare out a warning. The 24 hour news stations would ignite the fire of panic as the orders to evacuate the entirety of the eastern coast of the United States were finally given an hour later. That would leave only five hours, perhaps six, to try and move over a hundred million people to the safety of some inland refuge. Most, sleeping in the dark of the night, would never even hear the warning, in spite of the rising commotion.

It was just by chance that Kelly heard it that evening, as he peered through the squeaking windshield wipers of his midnight blue Subaru. He had just finished listening to a custom CD collection of Frank Zappa guitar solos, and when the disk popped out the he caught a snatch of the news that was rapidly becoming the story of the decade all across America that night. He caught the word tsunami, adjusted the volume, and tuned in the station to hear better.

A few moments later he was utterly aghast at what was happening, and the odd sensation that something was terribly amiss seized him. He had been musing over the numbers in his laptop, and wondering if all the calculations he had run for tomorrow’s mission were in order. They had planned to see a Shakespeare play, the Tempest , but now, it was clearly all around them, rising in headlong degrees with each passing moment. As the realization of the catastrophe settled over him, he vocalized his first reaction. “Damn… looks like we aren’t going to see the play tomorrow. How could we? We’ve got to do something about this—do something to prevent it!” But he could not think of anything they could achieve, even with the power of Time travel at their disposal, if the project worked at all.