Saving Cascadia

by John J. Nance

  “Have a great time, Doctor.”

  “Thanks,” he said, deciding there was no point in puzzling her with a diatribe about how there should be nothing but seabirds where they were sitting.

  Doug pulled off the headset and climbed out, concentrating on the very disturbing realization that he was already impressed by what he’d seen of Mick Walker’s creation.

  Chapter 17

  CASCADIA ISLAND FERRY DOCK 4:30 P.M.

  The sun was barely visible through the distant storm clouds, appearing just long enough to confirm its descent into the murky western horizon.

  The winds were rising steadily out of the southwest and threatening to blow the sheet music away from the brass band that had begun playing the MV Quaalatch into the dock as it approached. The band members were too busy trying to stay on rhythm to notice the pitched battle the ferry crew was having with the current and the winds, and Mick Walker himself had turned toward land, concentrating only on a phone call.

  On the third attempt, accompanied by several groaning impacts with the breakwater, the captain finally shoved the boat’s steel prow into the right position alongside the leeward pilings. With the powerful engines churning forward, the craft slowly squealed her way along the rubber bumpers and creosote timbers to move into position, close enough for the ropes to be secured and the covered ramp to be mated with the side door.

  On the bridge, Reilly Shelton heaved a sigh of relief and set the throttles to maintain forward pressure against the dock. He gave the radio signal to tie her fast and open the doors, then sat heavily, not even caring that his young first officer was looking at him with something less than glowing admiration.

  On the dock below it was showtime, and Mick was ready.

  As the watertight door on the ship end of the passenger bridge opened, the promoter-developer was waiting with an expansive greeting for Governor Frank O’Brien and his wife. He took Lindy O’Brien’s hand as well, trying not to notice the provocative outfit being flaunted by the first daughter, or the fact that she purposefully bent forward to tease him with her well-displayed cleavage.

  Mick quickly ushered the three of them, along with the mayor of Seattle and his wife, into a plush minibus and climbed in himself, gesturing the driver into motion as he picked up the PA microphone and began a glowing chronicle of the new Cascadia Resort complex. They moved around the tiny island counter-clockwise, beginning with the soaring architecture of the main casino, a stressed-concrete structure covered with copper tiles and wooden trim to achieve a wild blend of rustic and space-age ambience. He explained the difficulty Jack Nicklaus and his company had encountered building the 9-hole golf course on such a small island, and took them past the heliport and state-of-the-art convention center to the western end of the island where the pounding Pacific surf had been forced by concrete and engineering to forgo its erosive nature and put on a spectacular twenty-four-hour show instead, each wave hitting a massive concrete diversion barrier specially shaped to cause massive vertical sprays of seawater, the rumble and vibrations of wave impact distributed along a 150-foot structure. The governor and mayor stood outside the bus for a few seconds with their host, profoundly impressed with the deep, low-throated sounds made by the barrier. Even Lindy O’Brien lowered her cell phone to appear momentarily interested.

  The entrance to the expansive courtyard of the two-hundred-room hotel was the pièce de résistance, and Mick had set up a grand welcome with a string quartet and the majority of the staff arrayed at attention.

  “This building was the part I spent the most time working on,” Mick was saying as he ushered them to the buttressed, seaside edge of the structure that perched on the southern point of the tiny island.

  “I stayed in a hotel in Acapulco once that intrigued me,” he continued grandly. “I think it was called the La Palapa. Each room had a balcony engineered so beautifully as to be completely private. If your neighbor on any side, above or below, tried to peer around at your balcony, he’d fall to his death. You and anyone with you could enjoy the balmy air any way you wanted, without clothes or loss of privacy, and I’ve reproduced the same thing here. Only a voyeur in a helicopter could see in, and we’ve got precautions against that happening.”

  “Mick, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings,” the governor began, “but it’s not very often described as balmy up here.”

  “Which is why each balcony is heated with a combination of state-of-the-art infrared and a blanket of warm air so effective you can spend a twenty-degree night lying in your beach chair.”

  “Without clothes,” O’Brien prompted.

  “Easily.”

  “I’m beginning to detect a nudist theme here, Walker,” the governor quipped as Mick continued unfazed. The mayor laughed.

  “Each suite also has a specially designed fireplace. It’s gas-fired, no wood, but it sends tiny amounts of fragrant wood smoke into each room to complete the illusion.”

  “Really?” O’Brien asked. “Who designed that?”

  “I did. I own the patent. I can’t stand having a fire without the aroma. And it’s perfectly safe.”

  They walked into the main lobby beneath a soaring, cantilevered entryway and Mick raised his voice slightly to cover the shudder of yet another earth tremor, one which rumbled on for what seemed an embarrassing eternity.

  “Sorry about the vibrations,” he said, rolling his eyes as if the construction crews were impossibly stupid. “We’ve still got some heavy machinery operating on the last-minute stuff we couldn’t get done in time.”

  “That felt like an earthquake, Mick,” the governor said.

  “Ah, I doubt it. I mean I know we’ve been having some, but I’m pretty sure that’s our machinery.”

  “What, a pile driver?”

  “Yes, that and some drilling.”

  Over their heads was a six-ton structure made of hammered brass over steel, and Mick forced himself not to look up at it as he casually ushered the group away and over toward the elevators. The hotel manager appeared behind a large smile and handed the governor a packet of key cards, and a second packet to the mayor.

  “Jim will show you to your suites, and I’ll see all of you to dinner at 7, if that’s satisfactory. I’ll come to your rooms.”

  The sound of an arriving helicopter straying from its normal approach path washed out the good-byes momentarily, as Mick excused himself and headed for the front drive, where the minibus and two of his key employees were waiting, both with ashen expressions.

  Mick smiled at a group of passing guests and climbed in, shutting the door, his eyes on Ron Garcia, his operations manager.

  “What’s wrong, Ron?”

  “First, Captain Shelton is on the mainland side and loading up and he’s begging for permission to make this his last run.”

  “What?”

  “I know, I know. I told him there was no way we could leave half the guests back there, and he told me he wasn’t moving until I spoke to you.”

  “What’s his problem?”

  “He says the winds are approaching out-of-limit stage and the waves and current are too dangerous for safe landings.”

  “Bullshit! Did I hire a bloody coward instead of a captain?”

  “Mick, I don’t know, but it is getting very rough out there, and he did have trouble landing when the governor came in. I mean, maybe he isn’t up to this, but we probably shouldn’t just dismiss his worries, you know, for safety reasons.”

  “There are no safety reasons, okay? I paid a princely sum for that stupid boat. It’s got all the bells and whistles on it, including a bow thruster, and we paid millions for the slips. You could nose a damn battleship into one of those slips and not damage anything! You tell that bastard he’ll make every one of his runs as scheduled or he can get off and let the first officer take over.”

  “That… would not be a good idea. The kid’s licensed, but he’s pretty green.”

  “Then threaten him, insult him, blackmail him, whatever. Every
single run as scheduled, got it?”

  “Yes, Mick. I’ll tell him.”

  “What else? Something simple?”

  “I… don’t know. Hopefully. But, we’ve got a strange split in the floor of the convention hall’s main entrance.”

  “What do you mean, ‘split’?”

  “Ah… I mean there’s a crack in the floor, and it appeared to be widening even as we were watching it.”

  “The floor?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What, a foot long?”

  “No, Mick. At least sixty feet long. The entire expanse of the entrance. Right through the marble.”

  Mick glanced at the driver. “Get over there. Now, please.”

  The bus began to pick up speed as Mick turned back to Garcia. “Can we patch it quickly?”

  “If it doesn’t get any bigger, but what’s worrying me is, I can see some pressure lines in the walls on either end corresponding to the crack. Right at the bottom.”

  “English, Ron. Speak English.”

  “I mean… damnit, it looks like one side is being pulled one way, and the other the other, like we built the building right across the San Andreas Fault. Except that fault moves slowly. This one is moving very quickly, and we’ve got the aesthetic problem if the guests see it, and the second problem, which is worse, is whether something awful is about to happen to our center. Like, is it about to be torn in half?”

  “Has everyone gone mad? This isn’t an earthquake thing, is it?”

  “Mick, hell, I don’t know. I’m just reporting what I’m dealing with. You’ll see for yourself in a minute.”

  The driver stopped quickly in front of the convention center entrance and they piled out and into the building. The crack in the expensive Italian marble floor was wall to wall, and at least a half inch in width, intersecting on each end with a corresponding vertical warp in the twenty-foot-high atrium walls, just as Garcia had described. Mick Walker moved quickly from one side to the other, peering at the rift as if his eyes alone could weld it back together. He could solve almost any problem, but with hours left before the hall was to be teeming with mightily impressed guests, this was bordering on a disaster.

  There were a few moments of additional shaking as more tremors coursed through the island, but this time the tremors were accompanied by a frighteningly loud crack which echoed through the entrance hall. Mick turned, watching in disbelief as the eastern wall—a two-story slab of marble-covered stressed concrete—split from floor to ceiling as the entire building shuddered. The crack on the floor had grown larger as well, and the jog made by the veins in the marble where they crossed the crack told the tale of the two sides being pulled laterally past each other by as much as an inch.

  “Bloody hell!” Mick worked to mask a sudden feeling of genuine fear. He turned to Garcia in a state of barely controlled agitation.

  “Ron? Jesus, man, get someone over to the hotel and grab Nelms. I don’t care if you have to pull him out of the shower, I need his read on this. We’ve got the banquet scheduled in here in two hours.”

  “Should we relocate, Mick? We can probably set up everything in time in the ballroom of the casino.”

  Mick thought about it for all of a second before nodding energetically. It was sensible recovery.

  “Yes. Yes, do it. God, I don’t believe this!”

  Garcia started to leave, then turned back. “One other thing. That Dr. Lam, the seismologist, just showed up on one of the helicopters and said you invited him by phone just this morning, and he needs to speak to you urgently.”

  Mick exhaled, shaking his head. “Christ. Yes, I did. Never thought he’d… okay, give him a great room, and a fruit basket, and keep him the hell away from me and from this convention hall until I tell you otherwise.”

  “Mick, he wants to see you and the governor. He says it’s a dire emergency.”

  “No! Absolutely not. Keep him away from O’Brien, too! Give him anything else within reason, but he is not to go bleeding all over the governor about these tremors.”

  “You got it.”

  Mick stood with his hands on his hips looking at the incredible rift in the expensive marble. He was feeling dizzy and flushed and he could feel his heart pounding as he hurried back to the van, determined to intercept Robert Nelms in person.

  UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON SEISMOLOGY LAB

  Sanjay Singh disconnected from the USGS conference call and immediately punched up Doug Lam’s cell phone, relieved that he answered almost immediately.

  “Yes?”

  “Doug, where are you?”

  “On the island, trying to find Walker and O’Brien. I think they’re hiding from me and I’m getting really ticked.”

  “That conference call you wanted? We had it. Nelson and Sellers in Menlo Park, three of us up here, a total of eight… and they had all seen the data.”

  “So, what’s the consensus, or is there one?”

  “You’re not going to believe this. They agreed that all this activity is completely unprecedented in recorded seismic history.”

  “That’s painfully obvious, but I’m glad they concur.”

  “The main thing, Doug, is that they all agree, even Dr. Nelson, that there’s such a significant localization of the hypocenters of these quakes, and the same steady acceleration of magnitude, that—let me read the exact words—quote, ‘it raises a valid question of whether we should depart from our normal cautions and issue what amounts to a prediction.’ He said this is the same position the Chinese found themselves in back in 1976 just before they saved a million lives by ordering people out into a freezing winter’s night.”

  “Well, that is a breakthrough.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “How soon? If I can get a prediction in hand, I can force Walker and O’Brien to comply.”

  “They’re going to study it over the next twelve hours. I’ve set up a real-time hookup for all our data array.”

  “Sanjay, they do understand, don’t they, that we may not have twelve hours?”

  “Yes. I pushed that point as far as I could.”

  “Can I announce that a prediction is imminent?”

  “No, Doug. Not honestly. Only that they’re strongly considering the issuance of one. Nelson will crucify you if you overstate the case.”

  “I know it. I won’t. But has there been any big change in the pattern of the quakes?”

  “It’s like watching a slow obstetric delivery where the contractions are getting closer over a matter of days, not hours. The steady rhythm is there, but when it’s going to deliver is anyone’s guess.”

  “Wouldn’t it be something,” Doug asked absently, “if we could somehow find the safety pin and stick it back in the grenade in time?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. Wishful thinking.”

  “If… you said what I thought you said, remember that to reverse a process, you have to first have some idea what started that process, and…”

  “That’s okay, Sanjay. I was just muttering. Look, I’ll check back with you when I’ve gotten to Mick Walker and Governor O’Brien. Meantime, try to get hold of Terry at Lake Quinault Lodge; tell him to get hold of himself and get back out to his array. We need that data streaming real-time and it’s useless as long as he’s cowering twenty miles inland.”

  “I will, Doug. But I’m not going to accuse Terry of cowering. He’s got good reason to be scared.”

  NIGHTINGALE ONE, ON DESCENT INTO CASCADIA ISLAND HELIPORT

  Jennifer squinted at the heliport lights five miles ahead, trying to make the fuzziness disappear. It was probably the fatigue, she decided; that and the black-hole effect of having so many blazing lights in the middle of a completely dark patch of water.

  Thank God this is the last flight of the evening for me!

  She glanced over at her father in the left seat of the Bell 412, wondering what he was thinking. He had seen her shove the door of the operations office open an hour ago and walk out on the ramp
to decompress and shed some tears in private, but she hadn’t really wanted to admit that Doug was the cause—or more precisely, that his cajoling a ride to Cascadia Island on the very night she needed to be as far away from him as possible had prompted her outburst.

  As usual, Sven had tried to pry the details out of her, embarrassing her even more. A silly girl who got emotional over a semi-unfaithful lover shouldn’t be running a company or commanding an aircraft. Not that he’d ever said anything close to those words, but she knew inside how he felt, and the words were merely her own acknowledgment of the truth.

  It had taken Herculean effort to paste on a convincing smile and maintain that she’d been furious with Norm Bryarly for giving Doug the ride more than with anything Doug had done.

  And she’d left out the part about his cheating with his wife. She knew her father too well. He’d simply find that ironic and hilarious.

  She had looked forward to this evening, all but ignoring the seismic threats. Now she had to deal with Doug, or not. He would be there, somewhere, and she had to decide to find him and confront him or purposely ignore and avoid him, and either choice was going to be upsetting.

  “How’re you doing?” Sven asked over the headset.

  “I’m tired, Dad, but functioning. I wish I could invite you to fly this approach.” Even though he’d lost his FAA medical, she was an instructor and under certain circumstances could let him fly, and he was still the master.

  But the old airman was shaking his head. “Naw, thanks for the thought, Honey, but technically I’m supposed to be rusty and this is a windy, nighttime approach, and the fact is, I trust you more than I do me.”

  She turned and smiled at him. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really. I taught you well.”

  “You did that, Dad. Your instructional style was a bit on the side of Attila the Hun, but all in all you’re a master.” Her throat tightened.

  “Attila was a pilot?” he asked, pleased that she laughed in response.