Rogue Wave

by Boyd Morrison

"I'm fine. I dropped my phone!"

  "I've got one. Do you want me to stop so you can get it?" He started to slow down.

  Brad's telephone was virtually useless to Kai because he didn't know anyone's number from memory. Not the warning center in Palmer, not Hawaii Civil Defense, not even Reggie's. It was all in the cell phone address book, which was now destroyed.

  The only alternative was to turn back and find the TV van again to tell Reggie that he hadn't been able to complete the transition. It might be an hour before Reggie was able to get to Wheeler and establish contact with everyone, critical time when additional information from the DART buoy would not be getting to HCD or other Pacific island nations.

  But if they turned around now, it would add at least ten minutes to their ride to Waikiki. They'd never get there in time.

  Kai felt Brad downshift, and the bike slowed.

  "No!" Kai yelled. "We don't have time! Keep going!"

  Brad revved the engine, and soon they were up to 70.

  They approached an intersection where a policeman was directing traffic. He had the traffic on Fort Weaver Road stopped to let cars on from the cross street. Another policeman stood by his cruiser at the corner assisting with the traffic direction. He waved Kai and Brad down, and the tires squealed in protest as they stopped.

  "What do you think you're doing?" the cop said.

  "We need to get to Waikiki right now!" Kai yelled without taking his helmet off.

  "Everybody needs to get somewhere right now. Get off the shoulder! You're going to kill someone."

  Kai lowered his voice so that only Brad could hear him.

  "We don't have time for this. Just go."

  "I thought I'd never see it," Brad said. "My brother, the scofflaw."

  Brad saluted the officer and shot forward through a gap in the cross traffic.

  Kai turned to see if the officer was going to give chase. He saw the policeman move toward his car and then throw his hands toward them in disgust. Thankfully, he had too much to do to worry about them.

  In another minute they had reached the entrance ramp for the H1. It was clogged with cars and buses. But there was enough room for a motorcycle to get through on the shoulder, and this time they cruised along at 80.

  Chapter 29

  11:06 AM

  16 minutes to Wave Arrival Time

  After leaving the clothing store where she saw the first tsunami wave engulf the hikers on the Big Island, Teresa had returned to the spot on the beach where she'd left the note in her bag. To her dismay, the bag was still there with no sign from the girls.

  Her first thought had been to find another phone so that she could call someone for help. But without the phone book in her dead cell phone, she didn't know any numbers to call. Home numbers would be useless, and cell phone numbers weren't listed in any paper directories at the phone booths. When she had finally convinced an obliging tourist to let her use his cell phone, her calls to information had gone unanswered, as had her calls to the Grand Hawaiian. There was no way for her to contact anyone she knew.

  Teresa had tried enlisting the aid of a policeman assisting in the evacuation, but he was so busy that all he could do was attempt to convince her that the children had likely reached safety on their own. His reassurances were empty, though, and she continued the search by herself, shouting their names and showing her photo of Mia to anyone who passed.

  By this time, the evacuation had reached its peak. People walked and ran in all directions, some calm, others crying or screaming. Many of them were families, the children struggling to keep up with their parents. Teresa hadn't taken the time to get an update on the tsunami, but whatever people were seeing on TV was spurring them to get out fast. When she tried to stop passersby to show Mia's photo, most people brushed her aside, immersed in their own problems. Of the ones who did take the time to look at the picture carefully, none recognized Mia.

  Numerous possibilities for where Mia and Lani had gone fluttered through Teresa's mind. The most likely explanation was that they were in one of the hotels or condos lining the beach, either oblivious to the mass panic below or dismissive of the danger. Or they could have gotten a ride in someone's car. Teresa didn't think Mia would do something like that, but given her own state of dread, she wasn't ruling out anything.

  If the girls were in a vehicle or a hotel room, she'd never find them in time. Her only hope was that the girls would become aware of what was going on and come back to find her.

  Teresa's search led her back to the east end of Waikiki beach where she came to a stop at the corner of Ohua and Kalakaua. While the midday sun blazed unimpeded by clouds, the ocean breeze kept the temperature to a comfortable 80 degrees. Nevertheless, sweat glistened on Teresa's arms and brow, more a result of her anxiety than the climate.

  She scanned the two blocks between her and the end of the developed part of Waikiki where the Kapi'olani Park began.

  "Mia!" she yelled. "Lani!"

  A few heads turned, but none of them belonged to her daughter. She was about to turn and head back in the other direction when a muffled sob caught her attention.

  Tucked in an alcove was a little boy no older than six. He was hunkered down against the wall, tears streaming down his pale face, the wind tousling his ash blond hair. The people hurrying by were so engrossed in the evacuation that he had escaped attention. If Teresa hadn't stopped there, she most likely wouldn't have seen him either.

  She knelt down in front of the boy, forgetting about her own lost child for a moment.

  "Hey there, kiddo. Are you lost?"

  He nodded glumly between sobs.

  "What's your name?"

  "David."

  "Hi David, I'm Teresa."

  He looked at her dubiously, as if he had already told her too much.

  "My mom said I shouldn't talk to strangers."

  "That's usually a good idea, David. Where is your mom?"

  He paused. Teresa could see that he was unsure whether to trust her.

  "David, I'm a doctor and doctors help people, right? And all I want to do is help you find your mom."

  "You don't look like a doctor."

  "What do doctors look like?"

  "Like my doctor, Dr. Rayburn. He's old, and he has a funny nose."

  Teresa smiled at that.

  "I swear I'm a doctor. Here, let me show you." She plucked her medical ID from her wallet. It showed her in her white lab coat. Apparently, that was enough for David, and the information poured out.

  "We're from California and we heard about the tsunami, so we were running out of our hotel with some other people and I let go of my mom's hand by accident and I couldn't see her or my dad so I followed the other people. But she wasn't there so I turned around to try and get back but I got lost and now I don't know where she is."

  The last statement set off another round of tears, and Teresa gave him a hug.

  "We'll find her, David. Do you know the name of your hotel?"

  "Hana."

  "The Hana Hotel? "

  "It's pink."

  "Your hotel is pink?"

  He nodded.

  This being Teresa's first trip to Honolulu, she had no idea where Hana Hotel was. She looked each way along Kalakaua Ave. but couldn't see any pink buildings lining the beachfront road.

  "Is your hotel right on the beach?" she asked, wanting to make sure she hadn't missed it.

  David shook his head. "We had to walk down a street to get to the beach."

  Since she was at Ohua Ave., Teresa thought that was as good a street as any to try. She led David by the hand and hurried along the sidewalk away from the beach, joining the other evacuees.

  "Tell me if you see your hotel," she said to David.

  The boy trotted at Teresa's side, occasionally tucking behind her to get out of the way of another fleeing tourist. She asked a few people if they knew where the Hana Hotel was, but none of them did. She spotted a phone booth across the street and angled toward it.

 
; "I don't see the hotel yet," David said.

  "I know. We're going to try to get the address."

  Teresa tried not to think about what would happen if she couldn't find David's parents. She certainly couldn't abandon the little boy, but his plight was derailing her search for Mia.

  A yellow page directory hung from the bottom of the phone booth, and she flipped it open to the hotel section. She scanned the H's until she came to the place where Hana should have been listed. It wasn't there.

  "David," she said, "are you sure it's called the Hana Hotel?"

  The boy screwed up his face in concentration.

  "I'm pretty sure."

  The hotel section of the yellow pages was huge, but she didn't think David would have invented that name on his own. She quickly scanned down the list until she got the W's. There it was. The Waikiki Hana on Koa Ave.

  The front of the phone book had a map of the Waikiki area. Koa Ave. didn't intersect with Ohua, so she would have missed it heading in this direction. She took David back down to Kalakaua and jogged the two blocks to a road that would intersect with Koa. In another minute, she spotted the pink facade of the Waikiki Hana.

  Stragglers still emerged from the hotel. She went into the hotel lobby, and even before she could ask David what his mother's name was, a woman screamed "David!" and swept the boy up in her arms, weeping with joy at holding her lost son. She turned to Teresa and clasped her shoulder.

  "Thank you for finding him," the woman said. "I don't know what happened. One second he was there, and the next he was gone."

  "You're welcome. Now you need to get out of here."

  "But my husband! He went out to find David. I don't know where he is."

  "I'm sorry. But…"

  "How will I find him?"

  Teresa saw the woman's desperation in trying to find her missing husband and realized that her own search for her daughter was futile. There was no way she would find Mia or Lani running around on the streets. She needed to go where they might go.

  "How will I find my husband?" the anguished woman repeated.

  "I'm sorry," Teresa said. "I don't know."

  She took one last look at the little boy and mother that she had reunited. Then Teresa sprinted out the front of the lobby and ran toward the Grand Hawaiian.

  Chapter 30

  11:10 AM

  12 minutes to Wave Arrival Time

  The lobby of the Grand Hawaiian seethed with scared and confused tourists. One couple from New York argued with a staff member about retrieving their luggage from their room. When they were told that no bellman would have time to get it for them, they became irate, demanding that they get, in writing, the promise of a full refund for their stay. Rachel told them personally that they could get their own damn luggage or leave and that they were not to talk to any of her staff again.

  Most of Rachel's employees were busy running from room to room, knocking on doors to make sure that no one was left behind. They were almost done. Only the top two floors were left, but Rachel knew time was running out. Luckily, those were the floors with suites, so there weren't many doors to knock on.

  The interpreter for the Russian tour group had never shown up. Rachel had tried to explain to the group that they had to leave, but when she shooed them out of the front of the hotel, they stoically stayed right there, as if they were waiting for further instructions.

  The Russians watched as Rachel had helped some of the disabled vets into one of the buses she had hastily arranged to pick them up. Only about half the buses she needed had shown up. When she realized the deficiency, she tried to triage so that the most disabled would go first. Many of the vets could walk well enough that she sent them with the crowds now making their way up Kalakaua Ave. That left her with about 75 vets and their wives who would need to be evacuated somehow. Bob Lateen, the chairman of the conference, was one of them.

  "Mrs. Tanaka," he said, "when is the next bus coming?"

  "We're working on that right now, Mr. Lateen."

  "But they said we only have a little more than ten minutes left to evacuate. You've got a lot of scared people here."

  Rachel used her most reassuring voice, but she couldn't help letting some testiness through. "I'm aware of that, Mr. Lateen. We're doing the best we can."

  She saw the concierge, Max Walsh, whose tailored gray suit and slick black hair looked as perfect as ever, despite the chaos. He hadn't even deigned to loosen his tie. Rachel's suit, on other hand, was already rumpled, and small sweat stains peeked out from under the arms of her jacket.

  "Excuse me," Rachel said to Lateen. "I'll be right back." Despite Lateen's protests, she left him and pulled Max into a quiet niche.

  "What about the hotel airport shuttle?" she said.

  "Just checked. It's still over at Honolulu International. It got caught there when the initial warning went out."

  "Maybe we could take them in our own cars."

  "We don't have enough drivers left. Besides, we wouldn't make it far in this traffic."

  "Well, do you have any suggestions?"

  "Yes," Max said. "I suggest we get ourselves the hell out of here."

  "You're not serious."

  "Rachel, what else can we do?"

  They had already seen many cars abandoned by their drivers, leaving the road a mess, littered with unattended vehicles. That was one of the reasons that the last bus had come and gone more than 20 minutes ago. The rest simply couldn't get to the hotel. In fact, one bus that had already left reported back that it had resorted to pushing abandoned cars aside just to get through.

  Guests continued to stream out of the hotel, but anyone doing less than a jog was not going to make it to high ground in time since the first wave might well reach more than a mile inland in some places.

  "You have to help me get these guests up to a higher floor."

  Max's jaw fell open.

  "What? But you said the building wasn't safe! It might collapse."

  "Keep your voice down!" Rachel said. "Look at these people." Many of the vets left in the lobby were on walkers or in wheelchairs. Some had their wives with them because the women wouldn't leave their husbands. "They wouldn't make it to the Ala Wai Canal before the wave hit, let alone to a safe distance."

  "But there are more waves coming. The TV said they are 25 minutes apart. That's not enough time to get to safety before the next wave comes in, is it?"

  "I don't know," Rachel said, neglecting to mention Kai had told her the same thing. "But we only have ten minutes left now. Unless we do something, they're going to be sitting in the lobby when the wave comes in."

  Rachel's walkie-talkie squawked. It was Adrian Mendel, one of the front desk clerks she had conscripted to warn the guests still in their rooms.

  "Rachel, we've just finished the sweep of the hotel. Every room's been notified."

  "Is everyone leaving?"

  "No. There are 12 rooms where the guests said they wanted to stay here."

  "Dammit! You couldn't get them to leave?"

  "For whatever reason, they thought they were safer staying in their rooms. You want me to try again?"

  "No, we can't make them go. You've done enough. I want you to get everyone down here and leave the hotel immediately. And I mean run. You don't have much time left."

  "What about you?" Adrian said, his breaths coming across clearly over the walkie-talkie as he dashed back to the elevator.

  "We've got a bunch of people down here who can't leave. We're going to take them upstairs."

  "We'll help."

  "Thanks, but we need you to lead everyone who can get out to safety. They may get lost."

  A few moments later, the elevator opened and Adrian stepped out with two other staff members. Two more came running from the elevators in the other tower.

  "I'm staying to help," Adrian said. "Melissa can take the others out."

  Rachel smiled. "OK, you and Max start taking the vets up to Starlight." Starlight was the restaurant on top of the Mo
ana tower.

  "All of them?" Max said. "That'll take longer with just the express elevator. What about the Akamai tower?"

  "No, we should stick together. Divide them up between you and use the service elevators. They're bigger and faster. Shouldn't take you more than five minutes to get them all up there."

  "Then what? What happens when the next wave comes?"

  "I don't know, all right!" Rachel said, exasperated at his bickering. "We'll deal with that when the time comes. All I know is that they are not going to make it if they try to walk."

  "But how do you know? How can you be sure?"

  "Because if my husband says that the wave is going to be 80 feet high, I believe him. And if it's that high, they won't make it to safety in time. Now just do it, OK?"

  Max reluctantly started gathering up the guests.

  Rachel looked outside and saw the Russians still milling around. Melissa Clark, one of her staffers who had been on the elevator with Adrian, was futilely trying to answer questions from a couple of the disabled vets' wives.

  "Melissa," she said to the tall cashier. "Come with me. I need you to help me."

  One of the Russian men, probably the leader, immediately started barking Russian at Rachel and gesticulating wildly.

  She put up her hands to quiet them down. Speaking to them would be useless. She tried the one word she thought they might understand.

  "Tsunami. Tsunami?"

  They stared at her with blank expressions. She curled her arm over the other in a motion that she hoped would convey a wave crashing while making a "Boooosh!" sound. Then a small woman in the back with an equally small voice said "tsunami."

  Rachel seized on that and repeated the word. The petite Russian woman spoke rapidly to the others, with the word "tsunami" sprinkled through it.

  After a moment, the entire tour group realized that they were in danger and surrounded Rachel, screeching at her in panic. Rachel motioned them toward Melissa, who waved for them to come with her. Thankfully, that calmed them, and they followed her.

  "Good luck," Rachel said. "And Melissa?"

  Melissa turned back to see the deadly serious look on Rachel's face.