by Jack Du Brul
“According to the computer modeling done a few years back, the wave will be one thousand feet tall and would have already traveled outward at least sixty miles in the first ten minutes after the landslide. It would cross the ocean at about five hundred miles per hour, radiating in all directions. North Africa would be hit first. The wave will have abated to three hundred fifty feet by then and fortunately that part of the continent is sparsely populated. Loss of life would be minimal. Next would be Spain, Portugal and then southern England. The wave crest at this time will top out at over a hundred feet, still carrying enough energy to ricochet and radiate through the English Channel and completely drown all of the Netherlands.”
The faces around the table paled with sickly fascination.
“Nine hours after the landslide,” Mercer continued, “the wave is still traveling at jetliner speeds. It will scour everything off the Bahamas and Bermuda and the archipelago islands stretching from Puerto Rico to Venezuela. Nothing would remain behind. No plants, no people, no evidence anything had ever called those places home.”
Jaws were beginning to slacken, but the men around the table were tasked with protecting the United States and someone, Mercer wasn’t sure who, asked, “What about us? What happens when it hits us?”
“The wave will hit Miami first. It’ll be eighty feet tall and be about forty feet thick at the base, a surge unlike anything ever seen. At five hundred miles per hour the kinetic energy is almost incalculable. Every structure, road, bridge, and building within fifteen miles of the coast will be destroyed. At twenty miles, there’s a chance a few of the more solid buildings will remain, though they will be completely gutted, first by the initial wave pulse and then again when the water drains back to the sea.
“This scenario will play out all along the East Coast from Florida to Maine. Jacksonville, Savannah, Norfolk, Washington, Philly, New York, Boston. All of them are wiped from the face of the earth. That’s roughly forty million dead. And these are just the figures for the United States. Add an equal amount of dead in the Caribbean, Africa and Europe.”
“And the number of injured?” Ira asked.
“It’ll be like the World Trade Center.”
The men understood. Like many around the nation, they’d donated blood to help the injured survivors only to discover that in such a tragedy there were none.
“If this is really going to happen, what about evacuating the eastern seaboard?”
Admiral Morrison took that question. After a lifetime in the military, he had the background in logistics. “You’re asking about relocating fully one-fifth of our population, Mr. President. It would take months just to coordinate where to put them all.”
“Do we have months?” the chief executive asked Mercer.
“The truth is, we don’t know, sir.” Mercer gathered his thoughts for a moment. He was standing on top of a precipice. The wrong word could send him over the edge. Or more accurately send Tisa over the edge.
“Over the past fifty years,” he started, “scientists have made strides in predicting cataclysmic events like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. There are certain signs we can look for to tell us what’s happening deep underground long before anything is visible on the surface. The presence of microshocks, tiny swarms of earthquakes, is one. New seismographs are hundreds of times more precise than ever before. From soil taken from core samples we can detect elevations in diffused gasses like CO2, a precursor event to an eruption.
“All of this gives us an idea that a volcano’s coming to life. This is the type of evidence the team Admiral Lasko sent to La Palma has found. But this isn’t a guarantee that a mountain’s about to erupt. Volcanoes give off signs all the time only to fall dormant once again.”
“You don’t believe the recent activity on La Palma will end soon, do you? You believe the island is going to erupt.”
“Yes, Mr. President, I do. And we all should.”
“Why?” Paul Barnes’s voice dripped acid.
“Ira mentioned I was cultivating a contact. That’s not entirely true. She approached me first.” With a quick glance around the table, Mercer realized that he had the lowest security clearance and needn’t keep anything back. He began his tale from the moment the two agents first arrived at his house and told it straight through. When he finished, it appeared that everyone had questions and was eager to parse his story.
The president staved off the onslaught with a wave. “Do you believe her?”
“I’ve never doubted the presence of her organization. I saw it in Vegas, the Pacific, and aboard the ferry. Her claim about predicting earthquakes I would have dismissed as fantasy except I saw the book and felt the Santorini quake myself. She knew when and where it was going to hit. That’s not a coincidence and judging by the size of the journal she carried, I believe her group’s had this ability for a long, long time.”
The president was about to ask another question, but Mercer forestalled him. “Please don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t. What she showed me flies in the face of everything I’ve ever learned as a geologist and yet I can’t refute the evidence.”
Several seconds passed. They were waiting for the president.
Mercer glanced at Ira, who gave him a small shrug. His bald head was covered in sweat. Mercer had always assumed that Ira had become comfortable in the corridors of power. He’d retired from the navy with two stars, so dealing with the nation’s elite shouldn’t have been anything new. And yet this meeting made him sweat. He was on the line here, Mercer realized. By bringing him in, Ira was tacitly backing him. If the president dismissed the claims, Ira would be out of a job by morning.
Mercer shot him a wink filled with more bravado than he really felt.
The president laced his fingers and set them carefully on the table. “There’s been an interesting change to what is expected of this office over the past few years. The American people now count on their president to be omniscient. They expect us to know the motivation of every ally and enemy and divine the consequences of every action. Mistakes are no longer an option.
“I think this started during the Gulf War when people saw the precision of force projection. They began to believe that if we could slam a bomb through a designated window, we can damn well do anything. People now presume that this kind of precision should extend to the economy and foreign affairs. Put simply, people think that I have a crystal ball sitting on my desk in the Oval Office.
“Obviously I don’t. I have the authority to order the evacuation of fifty million people, but what if thousands are killed in a panic and nothing happens. Or I can order the evacuation and those that are saved will blame the government for not preventing the catastrophe in the first place. Another option is to do nothing, believing that this crisis has been concocted by a gullible scientist influenced by a fringe group and no one will be the wiser.”
Paul Barnes folded the leather-bound binder in front of him as if the meeting was over. “I think that’s the best course.”
The president didn’t appear like he was going to stop the CIA director.
It was now or never. “There’s one more option, sir,” Mercer said quickly.
The chief executive almost smiled. “I was hoping there was.”
“I believe Tisa Nguyen gave me enough time to do something to prevent this from becoming a disaster. We’re seeing the first signs of an eruption. That doesn’t mean the eruption is imminent. It might take six months. It might be six years.” Mercer paused. He wasn’t being dramatic; he was thinking about the aftermath if his next words were true. “Or it might be six weeks. She is the only person who knows for sure. We need to find her. With the information she can provide, we’re in a better position to understand what we’re up against.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Possibly, but I need help. I spent the day going over commercial satellite photographs looking for a telltale sign of where Rinpoche-La could be located. I have to admit the person helping me and I aren
’t photo interpreters and I kind of think it was a colossal waste of time.”
“Harry helped you?” Dick Henna asked incredulously.
Even Mercer had to admit asking a pair of eighty-year-old eyes to scan thousands of pictures was a long shot. However it was the only shot he had and he was desperate. He gave a little rueful smile. “Well, he was there and didn’t hinder me. That’s about all the help he could give.”
The president turned to his national security advisor. “John, what’s that group over in Maryland that does our photo work?”
“We’ve got the National Reconnaissance Office, but I think you’re talking about the National Imaging and Mapping Agency in Bethesda.”
“NIMA, that’s the one. Dr. Mercer, where exactly were you looking?”
“The northern slopes of the Himalayas.”
Paul Barnes rounded on Mercer, his eyes bulging. “China?”
Mercer maintained his composure. “I believe so, yes.”
The president turned to the CIA chief. “Can you get her out?”
“Mr. President, please,” Barnes entreated. “Even if we can find her town, which isn’t likely, it would take weeks to mount a rescue op. We have precious few assets in China. Most of them are in the cities and wouldn’t last five minutes in a rural area without authorization.”
“What about sending in some of our own people?”
“If this was the Cold War and the target was in Eastern Europe or Russia I’d say there’s a shot. In China, forget it. A Special Operations force would have to come in overland from Nepal or Pakistan, crossing one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world. They wouldn’t make it five miles before being picked up.”
“What if the team is made up of Chinese-Americans?”
“I don’t have that kind of manpower. All our Chinese-American agents are analysts or translators. None of them is trained for fieldwork.”
“A budget of three billion a year and you don’t have one Asian James Bond?” Dick said archly.
“Gentlemen,” the president cut in smoothly, “we’re going to concentrate on locating Rinpoche-La first and hammer out how to get her afterward.” Henna and Barnes mumbled an assent in unison. “Mercer, I would like you to draft a memo for the people at NIMA to tell them exactly what they’re looking for. Finding needles in haystacks is their specialty, but I’m sure they’d appreciate anything you can give them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then I’d like you to pack for La Palma.”
“No, sir.”
The chief executive wasn’t used to being defied. He looked more startled than upset. “Excuse me?”
“I said no, Mr. President. I trust the people Ira sent to the island are more than qualified to study the volcano. They’re specialists in that field. I am not. I’d be in the way. I think you’d be better served if I accompanied whoever is sent in to rescue Tisa.”
“Out of the question!” Barnes thundered. “I will not allow a civilian to join one of my teams. If you think you’d be in the way around volcano specialists on La Palma, just what do you think you can add to a contingent of CIA operatives?”
Mercer could have gloated. Lord knew, Barnes deserved it, but the director was just trying to protect his fiefdom. The CIA should have known about this case long before Mercer handed it to them on a platter. Barnes was humiliated, and needed to do some damage control to reestablish his authority. It wasn’t in his personality to work with Mercer so he was lashing out instead. “Mr. Barnes, you’re forgetting a very basic fact. None of your people have the slightest idea what Tisa looks like. In this situation, a composite sketch based on my impressions won’t do a rescue team much good.”
Making ready to reply, Barnes let his mouth close. There was nothing he would say. Although Barnes couldn’t see Dick Henna directly, the FBI director put his hand over his mouth so no one could see his smile.
“You have a point there, Doctor,” the president said. “I assume you know what you might be getting into?”
“Yes, I do. I wouldn’t consider it if I didn’t know it was so important.”
“Then if we do go in to get her, consider yourself on board.” The president stood and swept the assembled group with a stern look. “For now I don’t want this getting too far beyond this room. Make the inquiries you need but keep it quiet. If this eruption is as serious as we believe we have a small window of opportunity before the media get wind of it. We all know what’ll happen then. Dr. Mercer, on top of everything else, you are my special science advisor. I want options.”
“Options, sir?”
“To save our country. We may only have a couple of weeks or months. I think we all agree that evacuation is pretty much out of the question. Even if we could pull it off, the United States would cease to exist as the country it is now. The same goes for the sections of Europe that get hit too. There must be a way to prevent the eruption or stabilize the side of the volcano. Those are the options I want.”
“I understand,” Mercer replied, thinking that the president didn’t have a clue what he was asking.
RINPOCHE-LA, WESTERN TIBET
The western portion of Tibet had never had a substantial settled population. There was little pasturage for nomadic shepherds and few areas low enough in elevation to support farming. For this reason, the Chinese military, following their invasion in 1950, maintained a tight cordon and used the land for their own purposes. There were a few political prisons, but mostly the region was given to observation and radar installations securing the borders with Nepal and India. Tibet had been annexed as a buffer state and the Chinese kept their cushion rigid. Except in closely monitored tour groups, foreign travelers aren’t allowed much outside of the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, and the western reaches of the country are particularly restricted. Military patrols sweep the few roads on a regular basis and no one is ever granted overflight rights. The handful of drug smugglers who tested the air defenses soon found themselves painted by ground-based radar and in the sights of MiGs or Sukhoi fighter jets a short time later.
The country at the roof of the world has always been steeped in legend and mystery and no place was more unknown than the western borderlands.
To keep their valley’s secret, the Order had a strict protocol for reaching Rinpoche-La. The trek from the Nepalese frontier never followed the same route twice and never took less than two weeks, and even this pushed the threat of detection. That time frame didn’t include the days spent in Katmandu evading the Chinese informants that infested Nepal’s capital city, each eager to make a few yuan by reporting suspicious parties.
Moving hard and ignoring the safety protocols, Luc Nguyen forced the group carrying his sister from Nepal to Rinpoche-La in a mere eight days. They risked using trucks on open roads and took minimum shelter when specially modified helicopters that could fly in the rarified atmosphere of the Himalayas thundered through mountain passes. The choppers often patrolled the area searching for people trying to flee the worker’s paradise that the Chinese had imposed on the people of Tibet.
At twelve thousand feet, the wind was a constant presence. Whether a soft summer zephyr or the shrieking gales of winter, the wind never stopped moving through the valley, funneled by peaks that rose a further eight thousand feet above the valley floor. The mountains were jagged and barren, scoured clean of snow and soil except in protected pockets and veins. While much of Tibet is renowned for its rugged beauty, the land around Rinpoche-La was particularly harsh and ugly. Isolated in an isolated country, the nearest town was sixty miles east and there were no connecting roads, just a barely marked footpath that only the heartiest could attempt.
Construction on the monastery at Rinpoche-La began in 1052 under the guidance of the Indian scholar Atisha and was added on to in fits and starts until its abandonment in 1254 to protest how Godan Khan, Ghenghis’s grandson, had made the Lama of the Sakya Buddhists regent of all Tibet. Because Rinpoche-La was at the outskirts of the Tibetan kingdom, it remained c
ompletely forgotten save for the handful of self-sufficient villagers who eked out a living in the shadow of the huge building. That was until Zhu Zhanji, the Confucian who defied the emperor, cached the knowledge of Admiral Zheng He’s historic sea voyages. There were no records in the Order’s archive describing how Zhu Zhanji knew of the valley’s existence. It remained one more of the legends that surround Rinpoche-La.
The nearly six hundred years since saw countless invasions of Tibet from the south and the east and the north, culminating in the totalitarian occupation by the Chinese. Even as they slaughtered an estimated one million Tibetans and doubled the country’s population by the forced migration of ethnic Han Chinese, Rinpoche-La remained nestled in its valley, unknown beyond rumors and the whispered tales of nomads who rarely ventured close to the intimidating mountains. Beyond its geography, the valley was further isolated by a river that was barely negotiable in winter and seemingly impossible to cross in summer.
The monastery dominated the end of the valley, a five-story central structure surrounded by various out-buildings and a thirty-foot-tall, ten-foot-thick wall of mortared stone. Behind the hermitage, the valley dropped away in a sheer hundred-foot cliff, hemmed on each side by towering stone ramparts. The village lay at the monastery’s feet, clutches of stone buildings that seemed to grow out of the living rock. Because the valley was little more than an ax stroke cut into the mountains, little light filtered to the floor and this was diffused by the steam escaping through countless geothermal fissures.
It was the steam that provided the village shelter and also its means of survival. The microbes that flourished in the scalding waters of the hot springs were the basis of a bizarre food chain similar to that found in the deep-sea thermal vents called black smokers. In the absence of sunlight, creatures depended on chemosynthesis, the transformation of chemical, rather than light, energy into life. Around the black smokers, microbes fed off the exotic plumes of chemicals belched from the earth’s interior and in turn fed a myriad of odd creatures: tube worms that grew to six feet or more, mussels and crab species found nowhere else and fish able to withstand the tremendous heat. The difference at Rinpoche-La was at the top of this food chain were goats and yaks that ate nutrient-rich aquatic weeds and provided meat and wool and milk for the villagers. A further advantage to those living amid the geothermal vents was that heat was provided for them. There was no need to gather wood to warm their homes or cook their meals, a time-consuming necessity that handicapped the rest of Tibet’s rural population. Over the generations, the valley had become its own self-contained, self-sustaining ecosystem.
