Rogue Wave

by Boyd Morrison

  The camera panned away from the hikers and to the sea. Nothing unusual was visible, but the announcer's mood changed noticeably.

  "What's that? I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we are having some technical difficulties getting audio from the helicopter. We do have reports coming in that several airliners over the Pacific have reported seeing waves moving across the water in the direction of Hawaii at an incredibly high rate of speed, but none of those reports have been confirmed at this point."

  The camera panned back down to the cliff. The announcer continued his inane narration, but didn't add anything beyond what they could see. The water line had pulled back significantly from just a few seconds ago. The view shifted back out to the ocean again, and now they could see the first glimpse of white water far out to sea. It seemed to be moving slowly, but in just a few seconds it had moved much closer to shore. The camera continued to follow it, but Teresa couldn't get a good sense of the size of the wave because there was no frame of reference.

  Finally, the camera had panned far enough as it followed the wave so that the shore was in view, but without houses or other buildings for comparison, it still looked unimpressive. The two people on the cliff's edge must have thought so too since they didn't move.

  But when the wave broke against the rocks, Teresa realized that they weren't going to make it. She expected the wave to bounce against the rocks and reflect back into the ocean. Instead, it simply covered the rocks and continued to sweep up the cliff. Too late, the hikers realized the size of the wave and turned to run. Before they could get more than few steps, the wave washed over them, and they disappeared as if they were ants being washed down a drain.

  Teresa gasped, and the saleswoman started to cough uncontrollably.

  "Are you all right?" Teresa asked.

  "Swallowed…my…gum," the saleswoman said between coughs.

  Teresa ran out of the store, leaving the saleswoman to fumble with her keys, intent on locking the door to a store that would soon no longer exist.

  * * *

  Off the coast of Diamond Head, Lani and Mia continued paddling alongside their two new friends. The view from this far out was spectacular, and their conversation and laughs were disrupted only by a low-flying plane that passed over them several times before heading back in the direction of Honolulu.

  Chapter 24

  10:42 AM

  40 minutes to Wave Arrival Time

  The reason Gail Wentworth joined the Satellite Analysis Branch of the Operational Significant Event Imagery team was because they were the first to see images of every major environmental event in the world. Any time a volcano erupted or a cyclone blew across the ocean, the OSEI redirected its satellites to capture it. And Gail had a front row seat.

  But even with everything that she had seen in her five years at OSEI, the call from Hawaii Civil Defense had come as a shock. She was still having trouble believing that there really could have been a meteor impact. In her wildest dreams, she never thought she'd get a request to look for evidence of one. Her specialty was the use of satellite imagery for storm track projection, so her first instinct was to work with the satellite technology at her fingertips.

  Just as Gail Wentworth expected, clouds obscured the ocean in the area of the Palmyra Atoll, rendering the GOES-10 satellite images worthless. Both the 18:30 GMT and the 19:00 GMT photos showed a blank expanse of white that stretched for 200 miles in all directions around the supposed impact site. Not that she really knew what she was looking for. At that moment, she didn't savor the irony of having a PhD in meteorology but knowing virtually nothing about meteors.

  The equipment, like the GOES-10 that hovered in a geostationary orbit thousands of miles from Earth, was used primarily to map large weather systems, particularly hurricanes. It wasn't intended for impact detection. With a resolution of one pixel per mile, even a major impact might only be 10 pixels across. There was a tiny patch of slightly darker cloud cover in the vicinity of the latitude and longitude given to her by Dr. Tanaka, but that could have been anything. Without a higher resolution photo, she couldn't confirm an impact.

  The only other scientist in the operations center with her that day was Nathan Gentry. Gail was loathe to call on him for help. His satellite data analysis was top-notch, often detecting patterns that no one else saw, but he spoke in a nasal whine that Gail could take for only a few minutes, and his personal hygiene was spotty at best. He often wore the same clothes to work multiple days in a row; his current shirt was on day three. But he also had a hobby that was directly applicable to her crisis. Gentry was an amateur astronomer.

  Gentry leaned over Gail's desk, peering at the GOES satellite image on her computer. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, but Gentry was oblivious to her repulsion.

  "It would be so cool if there was an impact," he said, "but you'll never be able to see it on that."

  Gail knew that, but she didn't want to spend time defending her analysis.

  "Did you check the POES image?" she asked. POES was their polar orbiting satellite system. It circled only a few hundred miles above the Earth.

  "No image from that time of the day from any satellites. Besides, there's not enough resolution on them, either. We're not going to see it on anything we have."

  "What else is there? LANDSAT? IKONOS?" Both of those satellite systems were capable of high resolution photos from their low orbits, but it would be sheer luck if one of them had been over that region at the time of impact.

  "Those and military. A spy satellite would give a great view, but no one spies on the central Pacific as far as I know."

  Gail threw her hands up in frustration.

  "Then how are we going to find out if there was an impact?"

  "I called a guy I know at Goddard Space Flight Center. He works on LANDSAT. They sent a new satellite up last year with a much wider field of view than LANDSAT-7, one that takes photos every thirty seconds on a constant basis. Can you believe that?"

  Gail nodded in appreciation for the advance in technology. She wished for that kind of capability at OSEI. In a normal day, they were lucky to get 100 pictures from some of their satellites. Of course, they could take photos more frequently in an emergency, but they needed to set that up ahead of time. For events in the past, they were stuck with what was already photographed.

  In her opinion, she shouldn't have even gotten this request. A meteor impact that no one knows about? Gail thought NASA had dropped the ball on this one.

  "Wouldn't NASA see an asteroid headed toward Earth?" she asked. "We should have heard about this days ago, maybe even months ago."

  Gentry scooped up one of the memos from her desk and pointed at the text.

  "You see the period at the end of that sentence. Now imagine being two miles away from it. Think you could see it?"

  Gail glared at him. Another annoying habit of his was to talk down to her.

  "If I had a telescope, I might."

  "Right. You might. If you knew exactly where to look. Well, that's what it's like trying to find a 500-meter-wide asteroid that's five million miles away."

  "But as it gets closer to Earth, wouldn't it get easier to see?"

  "Asteroids move at 25,000 miles per hour. It would get here in less than ten days. And there aren't nearly enough telescopes around the world to find every chunk of rock flying around out there. I know, because I'm in Spaceguard."

  "Spaceguard?" She stifled a snicker. It sounded like an alien star fleet squadron. Gail wasn't surprised Gentry belonged to something like that.

  "It's a group of astronomers around the world who spend their time cataloguing all of the asteroids in the solar system. I've discovered two myself." He said it as if he'd invented electricity.

  "So if you're all looking," Gail said, "you should have seen one big enough to cause a tsunami."

  "Not necessarily. In 2002, an asteroid came within 75,000 miles of Earth, well within the orbit of the moon. The asteroid was 100 meters in diameter, big enough to destroy
a major city if it had collided with Earth." He paused for effect.

  "It missed," Gail finally said.

  "Right. Barely. But the date of closest approach was June 14. The asteroid was detected on June 17. Three days after it had gone by. It's completely believable that the first we would know about an asteroid was after an impact. In fact, it's lucky it hasn't happened up until now."

  "We don't know it has happened."

  "We will soon."

  As if to punctuate Gentry's remark, the phone rang. Gail expected it to be HCD calling to get an update, but it was a scientist from Goddard for Gentry. He took the phone from her and said "yes" a few times before scribbling on a pad and hanging up.

  "Come on," he said. "I've got an email."

  He left Gail's desk. She followed reluctantly.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "Something you'll want to see. Lucky for us, the new LANDSAT was in the right place at the right time."

  Gentry plopped himself at his computer and logged into his email.

  A series of images popped up. Gail drew in a sharp breath at each one, ignoring the odor wafting from Gentry.

  Until this moment, she hadn't really expected to find anything, but what she saw made her a convert. She was a believer.

  The implications of the photos flew through her mind. An airliner carrying hundreds of people had already been lost because of what she was looking at. Now she knew that was only the beginning.

  "Oh my God," she said, horrified at the thought of the destruction to come.

  "I know," Gentry said, grinning at the pictures on the screen. "Isn't it cool?"

  Chapter 25

  10:45 AM

  37 minutes to Wave Arrival Time

  As Reggie analyzed the data from the DART buoy, Kai had been keeping on eye on the evacuation on one of the cable channels that wasn't broadcasting the EAS and had been horrified by what he had seen. That's why he was now talking to the press.

  On most of the channels, the EAS broadcast was being repeated over and over. In the last few minutes, a new warning from the governor had been broadcast, perhaps to give the warning more weight, but the content wasn't significantly changed from the one Brian Renfro had so eloquently relayed.

  There was still no mention of a meteor impact, and that may have been one reason that so many people were either ignoring the warning or were confused about what to do.

  About ten minutes before, Kai had begun watching the TV more closely because he wanted to see how the evacuation was progressing. He tuned to the national MSNBC feed, which didn't broadcast the EAS warning because their main audience was the continental US. The network took advantage of one of their affiliate's local Honolulu camera crews.

  A reporter standing on Waikiki Beach motioned to the scene behind him. Some people ran in panic. Packed with cars, the road along the beach moved so slowly that the vehicles were almost idling. Many more cars could be seen trying to merge into the traffic from the garages of hotels lining the strip. Police attempted to direct the traffic at several of the intersections, but the sheer volume made it virtually impossible for the vehicles to make headway.

  Still other people strolled along the beach completely unperturbed by the evacuation. The reporter, his close-cropped hair rigidly resisting the wind swaying the trees behind him, stopped an obese man in swim trunks and a towel slung over his shoulder.

  "Sir," the reporter said, "you don't seem particularly concerned by the tsunami warning. Can I ask why?"

  The man shook his head dismissively.

  "It seems like we get these warnings once a year. I just wait until about fifteen minutes before the wave is supposed to get here, and then I head back to my condo."

  "Your condo?"

  "Yeah, it's right over there," the obese man said, pointing at a white building behind him. "Eight stories up with a great view of the beach, so I just watch from there. Usually there isn't much to see, but hey, maybe today will be different."

  "You sound like you consider it entertainment."

  "Well, it'd be pretty amazing to see a real tsunami, don't you think? But I'm sure this is another false alarm."

  "Are you aware that the warning now says the wave could be 200 feet high?"

  "That's just crazy. What are the chances of that?"

  The man continued his walk, leaving the reporter to head over to a Lexus SUV, one of the cars making tortured progress along Kalakaua Avenue. In the background, along with a few individuals running in terror, crowds of people could be seen walking leisurely along the street, as if they were being herded in a particular direction by some unseen guide. Kai found the scene infuriating, but he knew that was typical behavior in an evacuation.

  Before the World Trade Center towers collapsed, some people took as long as ten minutes in their offices before deciding to leave. And even then, most of them set a slow pace going down the stairwells, taking at least twice the time that engineers anticipated when they designed the buildings. Another 135 people did not even have that presence of mind. They were so paralyzed by the situation that they made no attempt to escape and were still in their offices when the buildings collapsed. Now Kai was witnessing all of these behaviors in real time.

  The Lexus owner, a deeply tanned man in a tank top and a hideous comb-over, had his window down. His eyes kept darting in the direction of the ocean as he talked. At first, Kai thought he was concerned that the tsunami might come in while he was still in his car.

  "Sir," the reporter said, "do you think the traffic will let you get to a safe location in time?"

  "Oh, I'll be safe," the driver said, his eyes continuing to flick away from the camera. "I'm heading down to the Ala Wai marina to get my sailboat. I don't want to see it get sunk because of some stupid tsunami."

  "Are you planning to tow it back home?"

  "No, I don't have a trailer. I'm going to take it out to sea. I gotta protect my property."

  "What about your car?"

  "My car?" It looked like the first time the guy had considered what would happen to his car.

  "Yes, you'll have to leave it at the marina, right?"

  "Damn it!" he yelled, pounding on the steering wheel. "I knew I should have brought my son with me."

  The camera pulled back to the reporter, but Kai had seen enough. He turned to Reggie.

  "These people aren't getting it. We need to do something."

  "Like what? The inundation maps we have are worthless. Even if we could develop new ones in the next few minutes, we don't have enough time to distribute them. Besides, we don't even know for sure how big the biggest wave will be."

  Kai sighed at the futility of the situation. "All we can do is tell people to get as far inland as possible."

  The problem was that the inundation maps they already had were not made for this situation. The maps had been meticulously drawn up assuming an earthquake-generated tsunami of historical proportions. That meant about 30–40 feet in height. Every coastline of Hawaii had been topographically matched to this run-up height to determine the dangerous areas that needed to be evacuated. These maps were posted all around the state, including on the Hawaii Civil Defense web site, and the evacuation route signs on all the roads depended on their accuracy.

  Now those maps were woefully inadequate. They would lead the evacuees straight to supposedly safe locations that would be wiped out by the first 75-foot tsunami. Kai didn't want to think about what would happen when those areas were hit by a 200-foot monster.

  And it looked as if some people weren't following even the published instructions, let alone the new warning telling them that the current inundation maps were useless. In emergencies, some people didn't behave in a logical or rational manner, and it seemed like this one would be no different. They didn't understand the severity of the situation, and unless Kai did something fast, many of those people would be killed.

  Brad, who had been manning the phones, came back into the operations room. When he told Kai about his conversati
on with Teresa, Kai felt the blood drain from his face. His daughter was somewhere out there, and he had no idea whether she was safe or not. That was when the personal nature of the upcoming disaster fully hit him.

  "Isn't there something we can do to help her?" Brad said. "Call the police to find her?"

  "Are you kidding?" Reggie said. "Half the people on the island are probably calling the police right now."

  "Well, we've got to do something! What about the governor? She said we should call if she could do anything for us."

  "Oh, that'll look great!" Reggie said. "Using our connections for personal reasons while the rest of the people fend for themselves."

  Brad raced over to Reggie, who had a good four inches and a hundred pounds on Brad, and got within an inch of his face. "I don't give a shit how it looks! That's my niece."

  A snarl twisted Reggie's face, and Kai pushed himself between them before it got ugly.

  "Hey! Hey!" he said, pulling Brad back. "Ease up! I know it's getting tense in here, but let's just bring it down."

  Brad's idea was tempting, but even if Kai called the police or the governor, what could he tell them? That the girls were somewhere on Waikiki? Maybe? Kai didn't even know that for sure.

  "We're not calling them," he said, "The police are already doing what they should be doing. They have a duty, just like I do."

  All he could do was hope that Teresa would be able to find them in time or that they would call to tell Kai they were in a safe place, if they knew what that was.

  Reggie went back to the computer. Kai escorted Brad to the other side of the room so he could cool off for a minute.

  "And Brad," he said, "I want to thank you for all that you're doing today for me."

  "Lucky for you, I was free today. I don't have to warn my employees. They have the day off."

  Kai realized what he meant. Hopkins Realty had its corporate offices across from the Ala Moana shopping center, which was located only a few hundred feet from the beach in Waikiki. Outwardly, Brad might have seemed blasA(c) about the business, but Kai knew it meant a lot to him to run the company his father had started.