“And if you try and stop them, I’ll approve it as a legal termination,” Conlin added flatly from behind them. “Frank, you’re a military man. You should know all about command politics. Now just stop and count the pieces on the board, look at their position and yours, and make a smart decision here.”
“I’m going Frank,” Seven said. “Take off in less than 16 hours at dusk. You can watch me depart from the Command Center or you can become fish food. Your choice.”
“No! We’re going in less than 16 hours,” Serea corrected him.
Seven turned loose of Spencer’s collar and swung around to face Serea. “No! I’m going. Alone. Solo. By myself. You’re going to be in charge here while I go fetch your father. Do you actually think I’d leave Pacifica in charge of the likes of Frank and Vance? No, Serea, you heard your father - you must stay.”
Serea’s face hardened in a way Seven had never seen before. “Do you really want to have this conversation in public?” she hissed.
“See, I told you… I knew this whole, ill-conceived plan was going to fall apart and people were going to die…” Spencer said, raising his finger at them.
“Frank!” Serea and Seven warned in unison.
Seven stared back at Serea for long seconds and saw something in her face that he had never seen before. It was a fusion of the deepest kind of pain and a resolution that would not be appeased by any level of reasoning. He reflexively used not his extraordinary brilliance, but simple advice from his father, to understand that this discussion was already over, so there was no need to have it and waste everyone’s time.
“It’ll be good to have the company,” Seven responded with a weak smile. “Besides, I wouldn’t want you to have to single-handedly snap two necks on the same day. Frank,” he said, looking back to the still ruffled Commodore, “you were all wrong about our plan being ill-conceived. As a point of fact, we don’t have a plan at all… yet. But I’m about to gin one up and it’s gonna be a damn good one. And you’re going to be in charge of making the local arrangements. If you encounter any problems, let Serea know so she can solve them for you.
“Edgar, you and Vance pull together everything you can find on a route between here and Seattle, including any shelter arrangements at our stop over at Dutch Harbor . Find out how McChord fared during the nuclear exchanges.
“Twink, you get the aircraft ready and brief me on everything I need to know about its little idiosyncrasies.
“Mr. Leigthouser, you’re in charge of creating a comprehensive weather analysis of our track over the next week. Ms. Dove, assemble lightweight rations for four people for a week. Don’t forget water. Hancock, you run down four of the most reliable side-arms you can find and prepare to brief us on their proper use…”
“Excuse me, Doctor Seven…” said a voice from behind them. “May I suggest an alternate approach?”
They turned and looked as a naval officer stepped toward them. Seven immediately recognized him as Bill Harper, the Commander of the nuclear submarine, Leviathan, permanently assigned to Pacifica .
“Certainly,” Seven responded.
“In the strongest possible terms,” Harper began, “I suggest you allow us to take you to Seattle onboard the Leviathan. Your safety can be virtually assured. Taking the small aircraft over such a distance given the adversity of the weather and the need to seek deep shelter during the day poses a nearly unacceptable level of risk to you and your party.”
“Permission denied!” Spencer cried. “Your assignment here is to protect this community. You can’t jeopardize us all…”
“Frank, I’m going to have you gagged and bagged if you don’t stop making such an interminable pain in the ass out of yourself!” Conlin said, pointing his finger into Spencer’s face.
“The day will come when you’ll regret making that threat,” Spencer spat.
Seven looked back at the sincere face of Harper. “No thank you, sir. While I fully appreciate your offer and your assurance of safety, it would take far too long. In this case, we deliberately exchange risk for time.”
Harper sighed deeply. “If that’s your decision, Dr. Seven. But if you find during your planning that you change your mind, the offer stands.” Then Harper looked to Spencer and gave him a long, hard stare. It was obvious he wanted to say something, but he held his tongue. He looked back to Seven. “Dr. Seven, I want you to carry my personal side arm on your expedition. It’s a .45 caliber Colt Combat Commander. I’d never make such an offer unless I fully anticipated to see it again. It’s a loan, and I expect you to return it,” he said with a barely discernable wink.
Seven laughed loudly and reached out to shake Harper’s hand. “I accept, Commander. And I certainly intend to return it in the same condition in which it was loaned.”
45
Three days after the arrival of Mel and Alex at Miller’s Cave, the survivors had just begun to recover from their brief encounter with the quantum storms. For the most part of the first day and a half, their bodies were convulsively wracked with nausea and diarrhea. But by the third day, while they were still greatly fatigued, they were able to move around in a nearly normal capacity. Warren had determined that although they had obviously not received a fatal dose, it was enough of a radiation soaking that they would probably feel significantly fatigued for the next two to three months until their blood chemistry could return to normal. He also calculated that they had just doubled their probability of a fatal cancer in whatever lifetimes they had remaining. The only good news was that the horrible smell of the cave began to diminish slowly day by day.
Miller’s cave population had significantly increased with the arrival of Mel and Alex. Warren hovered around the still comatose Alex like a frantic nanny, endlessly adjusting his intravenous drip and dutifully marking his vital signs on a chart every quarter hour. He noted that the young boy’s signs had significantly improved.
“Is he going to make it?” Wattenbarger whispered to Warren, looking down at the perfectly ordered and spotlessly clean pallet Warren had fashioned.
“Yep, it appears he will. I’m no physician, but his vital signs are stable and getting better. It all points to recovery. Children are weak when they’re attacked, but if they survive, they usually come back strong.”
Wattenbarger nodded his head and just stared down at Alex.
“What’s eating you?” Warren asked.
Wattenbarger just shrugged and said nothing.
“Go ahead; spit it out. You will sooner or later anyway.”
Wattenbarger sighed deeply and looked back at Warren. “While it’s great that we have this nice little community here, we’ve got to get moving on our rescue plan or we’re gonna be getting pretty hungry long before the original plan calls for involuntary starvation.”
Warren did not bother to suppress a full laugh. “Now look who’s obsessed with the big picture! Three days ago I was the villain for even bringing it up. Now you’re all worried. Go figure!”
“Look, Lew, we got the device working, just like we intended. But we haven’t been able to establish communications with any of the shelters. Your plan ‘A’ would’ve had us out of here about now. If we can’t get a ride outta here, we’re dead. It may take another three months before our rations run out, but they’re gonna run out, and it won’t matter whether we’re outside in the storm or sitting inside our nice little cave here. If we don’t get their attention and soon, we’re dead!”
“Okay, Dale, what do you suggest?” Warren asked with an uncommon tolerance. “We’ve attempted to contact them on every frequency we know and a few we made up. We work the plan 12 hours per day, every day – or at least we did before our little daytime hike. We’ve covered the known frequencies and have been actively scanning the band. What else can we do?”
Wattenbarger squinted his eyes closed with an intense expression and pursed his lips as though he were deep in thought. “What if we moved our antenna higher - all the way up to the top of the tower? Wouldn’t that help?
I mean, it couldn’t hurt and it might make a big difference!”
Warren laughed lightly. “Well, for one thing, nearly all of our contact attempts are made using shortwave. The mountain top is at 1000 feet and our main antenna is strung out at least 150 feet up the tower. We’re already in good shape with the antenna’s configuration. We’re well above any structure or any geological formation on this part of the globe. We may only be 1150 feet above sea level, but we are, after all, sitting on a plain and we have the earth’s curvature and this little mountain top to push us higher than any obstruction. As far as this little spot on earth is concerned, we’re at the top already.
“The dipole array is capitalized for max output; the balun and polarization are properly designed and we have maximized gain and directivity. If we go up there and move it up the tower another 800 feet to the top, we’ll have to readjust the system parameters by several trips to the top of the antenna at night. It’ll take days, maybe even more than a week, to get back what we already have and there’s no promise that we’ll improve anything at all.”
“But what if we do it?” Wattenbarger persisted. “Wouldn’t it make some kinda difference? I mean moving the antenna another 800 feet up the tower; wouldn’t that give us some kind of advantage?”
Warren shook his head and sighed. “I suppose it may give us another ten percent, but is it worth it? This is gonna be one hell of an effort, it’s plenty dangerous, and it may even make things worse. Furthermore, we’ll be offline for at least a week moving it up and won’t even be able to make any contact attempts during the interim. If you remember, we spent a lot of time tuning this array.”
“So what else do we have to do, Lew? Mel gives us an extra hand and will make things go faster. As far as I’m concerned, a ten percent boost is well worth the effort. That ten percent may be all we need to make the connection. It could make the difference, Lew.”
Warren sighed again and shook his head slowly. “Okay, so you may have something.” He looked at his lifelong friend and smiled. “Okay then, who climbs the tower?”
“I do,” Wattenbarger responded without hesitation. “It was my big idea, so I go up.”
“Figures. You’re about as acrophobic as any man I’ve ever met. If you think I’m gonna risk my irreplaceable equipment with….”
Warren was interrupted by a rumbling and building vibration of the cave itself. He looked to Wattenbarger whose face was frozen in dread. “What the hell is that? Earthquake? In Oklahoma?”
The ground about them began to vibrate, but not shake. Then the vibration of the floor began to change into a pulsing throb. Warren looked at his feet and could see the particles of sand begin to dance and a film of dust begin to rise from the floor of the cave.
“What’s happening?” Charles screamed.
The vibration began to emit an intensely energetic hum, and a roaring noise rose above the white sound of the stream in the background. It was a deep, pulsating, resonate noise that soon became loud and penetrating. The noise and the vibration began to clatter items in the cave - a shelf fell and objects on the desk tops began to rattle and crash to the sand.
“This has to be an earthquake! God help us if the entrance collapses!”
Suddenly the lights in the cave went out as the power from the external solar panels was lost. They were surrounded by a curtain of absolute darkness.
Warren stumbled across the terrifying darkness over the building roar and the vibration of the cave, his fingers expertly searching for the main power panel. Each day as the sun set and the sunlight was lost, he would switch from direct solar power to battery power. But now it was a full hour and a half until sunset and he was not prepared for the power to be lost without warning. In but a few seconds, his finger touched the panel and the switch that connected the cave’s battery banks. Instantly, the lights returned.
Warren saw his friends standing in their places, their faces frozen in fear, and Mel was kneeling beside Alex, covering him with her body. With the illumination, they all turned to face him. Suddenly his ears were seized with a piercing pain – not from the noise but from a dramatic pressure drop. That was the moment that he realized – this was no earthquake.
“Tornado! Right over the top of us!” he screamed over the roar. He frantically attempted to equalize his ears but his head was being gripped by a giant, unseen hand that seemed to want to crush him. He could feel the air being sucked out of his lungs. He looked at the floor of the cave and could see the fine layer of dust flowing toward the entrance.
“It’s right on top of us!” he screamed.
Three seconds later, it stopped just as suddenly as it had begun. The cave was comparatively silent; the subliminal, relatively quiet noise of the stream below them resumed its dominance.
“What the holy, freakin’ hell was that?” Charles asked in a whisper.
“A super tornado. Passed right over the top of the cave, or damn close,” Warren responded.
“What’s a super tornado?” Charles asked.
“A huge, massive vortex, miles in diameter,” Wattenbarger responded, Mel now hanging onto his arm. “We’ve received shortwave reports of them in Texas and Ohio. They suck up everything in their paths, which are miles wide, right down to the dirt.”
“So the quantum storms aren’t enough? Now we’ve gotta have super tornadoes?” Charles whined.
“Oh my God,” Warren moaned, his eyes sweeping the top of the cave.
“Holy crap!” Wattenbarger responded, obviously catching Warren’s unspoken thought.
“What now?” Charles asked.
“The tower…!” Warren answered.
“The solar panels!” Wattenbarger added.
“Holy crap!” Charles echoed, his eyes now scanning the rock over their heads.
“Dale, check the incoming lines…” Warren ordered, but it was a wasted command. Wattenbarger was already at the main panel.
“Nothing, it’s all blank. No incoming power, no tower feeds, nothing!” he gasped.
“We’re dead,” Warren hissed. “Without that power, without the tower, we are dead. How long until we can go outside?”
“Eighty nine minutes ‘til dusk,” Wattenbarger replied, looking at his watch.
“Damn it to hell and back!” Warren cursed, wiping his right cheek with his hand. “This planet wants itself rid of us humans, and it wants us out of here real bad.”
“Well, it looks like it’s gonna get what it wants, and much faster than any of us thought,” Wattenbarger retorted, biting his bottom lip.
46
Preparations for the long and hazardous expedition from Pacifica to Seattle began in the Command Center and consumed the energy and concentration of the entire community. The plan was relatively straightforward. Seven and Serea would depart at twilight that evening and fly directly to Unalaska Island in one of Pacifica’s two, small, experimental VTOL jets. With a headwind, their fuel tanks would be nearly empty when they arrived, 1,576 miles later. If all went well, they would have less than an hour to refuel the plane and seek deep shelter right at sunrise. The next sunset they would depart for Seattle’s McChord Air Force Base, another 1,690 miles. At McChord, there would only be time to seek shelter and refueling would have to commence the subsequent twilight. The following night, they would reverse the route back to Unalaska Island and Pacifica.
There was absolutely no room for error, foul weather or delays. Any impediment at all would cost them their lives. The plan was unforgiving because the sun would wait on no man or flawed plan. If they encountered unexpected winds, storms or any mechanical problem at all, they would certainly die. Both Seven and Serea knew this and accepted it.
“Sir, do you realize how many uncertainties you’re dealing with here?” Twink asked his boss.
Seven was bent over a long, illuminated table studying the navigational plot to Unalaska. On the other end of the table, the runway on the tiny island of Dutch Harbor was displayed and his eyes flickered back and forth between th
e two.
“Twink, what kind of winds do we have projected for us when we arrive at Dutch Harbor ?” Seven asked.
“You’ll be coming in on runway 12, sir.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Seven said slowly, his eyes carefully scanning the plot.
“…er… if you are on runway 12 they will have to be around 120 degrees true.”
“Go find out for real,” Seven said, sensing Twink’s guess.
“Sir, do you know how many uncertainties – how many unknowns – you’re dealing with?” Twink asked again, insistently, absent mindedly biting the nail on his right thumb.
Seven willed himself to break concentration, closed his eyes, slowly twisted his head from side to side, opened his eyes and looked back at his aide. “Ok, tell me Twink,” he said with measured patience. “How many uncertainties am I dealing with?”
“We have had no contact whatsoever with Dutch Harbor ,” Twink began reading off his mental list in a frenetic, strained voice. “There may not be any fuel there. There may not be any shelter available there. The weather is iffy in both directions. The ability to predict global weather is pretty much nonexistent these days. Along your great circle route over the Aleutians, it’s always been nearly unpredictable, now it’s two times less than that. We can’t raise anyone at McChord and there’s even some indication they took a nuke strike. That means no fuel and no shelter and, if they took a direct strike, no place to land. When you get to Seattle , you’ll have no more than forty five freaking minutes to get on the ground and go deep…”
“Twink,” Seven interrupted.
“But sir, I’m not finished…”
“Twink,” Seven said again. “I need to know the probable wind direction at Dutch Harbor tomorrow morning at twilight. Go find out.”
“Yes sir,” Twink said, sighing deeply and walking away, barely hiding his frustration. Then he stopped and turned back again to look at Seven, bent over and carefully studying the plot.
Quantum Storms - Aaron Seven Page 37
