Saving Cascadia

by John J. Nance

  Only this time it was disturbingly loud and sustained, and actually vibrating the entire boat.

  “What the hell is that?” Dennis asked, his voice rising with alarm. “Have we run aground?”

  Concentrate! Almost at the turn point, Reilly told himself, ignoring the cry of alarm and the disturbing vibrations as he counted down to the appropriate moment to turn the wheel to the right.

  “Skipper, I think we’re scraping the bottom!”

  “No we’re not! It’s an earthquake. Be quiet!”

  It was a tight maneuver only if it was delayed. All thoughts about the warnings the boatbuilder had included in the operations manual about the maximum vibrations various systems could take before knocking computerized controls offline had been read and forgotten.

  Ten seconds more.

  The shaking and banging reached a crescendo just as a loud buzzer sounded and a red light illuminated on the dash panel. No, he thought, it was two—no, three—alarms, and more red lights. He glanced down and back up again too quickly, not taking enough time to read which lights were involved and what they were trying to tell him. He didn’t have time. He was too busy getting ready to execute a tight maneuver.

  It was time. Reilly spun the wheel to the right sharply as he gathered the throttles in hand and pulled them to idle, preparing to reverse engines and power up.

  Nothing happened.

  The boat wasn’t turning, and the engines were continuing at high power in forward, and none of that made sense. It was like a veteran conductor giving a downbeat to his orchestra and hearing nothing in response.

  Reilly looked in disbelief, finally reading the words on one of the red lights: “Hydraulic Steering.”

  I’ve lost steering?

  The concrete buttress he’d aimed for was less than a hundred feet ahead of them now, the boat moving at twelve knots straight for it. The emergency steering system would take several seconds to engage, and he reached for that emergency panel while still turning the wheel further right, aware the boat was neither responding nor likely to.

  But it wasn’t just the steering.

  Damnit! The engines!

  Once again he tried to pull the throttles to idle, realizing with a sick feeling that even if they responded, it was too late. Somehow the huge diesels had disconnected from the electronic controls and were still propelling the boat forward, and he’d lost precious seconds in stopping them. He lunged for the emergency engine-stop buttons and came down hard on them simultaneously, feeling the engines suddenly wind down to zero, the propellers slowing and even providing a little drag. He could feel the boat begin to lose momentum.

  But it was going to be too little, too late.

  The rudder was still commanding straight ahead, and the concrete piling was only fifty feet away, dead on.

  The emergency rudder-control system suddenly came on line, a green light illuminating in front of him. He could feel the rudder’s sudden swing to the right, shoving the stern of the boat left.

  Slowly, the concrete piling began to move left in the bridge windows as they closed on it.

  There was a crash alarm on the bridge, a large red button that would sound an alarm no passenger had been briefed to interpret, and he smashed it down now with the palm of his hand as he kept turning the wheel to the right, watching the nightmare unfold as the steel hull closed on the concrete, catching the edge of it at the forward left quarter of the bow section, a spot never designed to touch a dock or anything else. Suddenly pieces of concrete and metal were flying through the sky; metal groaned and ripped as the amazing momentum of the vessel kept it moving forward. The buttress peeled away the steel skin of the ferry like a giant can opener, exposing watertight compartments to the sea, rending the left forward side of the ship from below the car deck up through the VIP level. The progress of the disintegration was cutting deeply into the side, far enough to reach the hull where it sloped inward down to the waterline.

  The first mate had tried to brace himself, but he was thrown forward into the dash panel while Reilly hung on to the wheel, the klaxon alarm blaring in the background. Reilly could see the frightened expressions on the faces of the dock crew as they watched helplessly in the distance, and when the boat’s forward momentum had been spent in the act of fatally splitting the left forward hull, he realized they were being swept eastward, away from the dock.

  The flood alarms were going off progressively on the left forward side of the boat as a pronounced list in the same direction confirmed they were taking on water at a frightening rate.

  “Oh, God! What happened?” the first mate wanted to know. “I don’t understand what happened!”

  Reilly looked to the right, expecting the drift of the stricken boat to be stopped against the outboard right row of pilings, but there was a backwash current pushing them outward from the island, and they were going to miss that barrier and be swept toward the open channel, where the current would take them northbound. The water was forty-six degrees Fahrenheit and the depth several hundred feet by the rocky coastline. Chances of survival for anyone not in a boat would be very poor.

  “We’re in danger of capsizing, skipper!” the first mate said, his voice shrill.

  “I know it.” Reilly began punching at the engine controls, trying to restart either of the two diesels, but they weren’t responding.

  “What are your orders?” the first mate was asking. “Tell me what you want me to do!”

  “Ah… we… ah… launch the… no, we call a mayday, and… ah… launch the lifeboats. Fast.”

  Reilly felt completely overwhelmed, drowning in the horror of the moment and all but paralyzed. The first mate was looking at him for wisdom and reassurance and salvation the same way he, Reilly, had always looked at the captains he’d sailed under.

  “Okay, go down to the main deck, get everyone in their life jackets, get the other hands and start launching the boats. I’ll call the mayday. Report back… ah, take the handheld. Keep me posted. I need a damage report.”

  “Damage report? We’re listing ten degrees left and bow down twelve. Can’t you see that? The board right here says we’ve breached and flooded three compartments. The other ones appear to be holding and tight, but—look at the damned deck angle!”

  “Yeah, damnit, I can see it.”

  “You aren’t ordering me to open the flooded compartments and go in, are you?”

  “No! Just… report back. Get moving!”

  Dennis grabbed a radio and disappeared down the circular stairway as Reilly reached with a badly shaking hand for the marine radio and punched up channel 16.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the Motor Vessel Quaalatch just southeast of Cascadia Island. We’ve collided with an object and are taking on water. All available vessels please respond. We have one hundred twenty souls on board, including crew. Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

  The automatic emergency GPS locator transmitter was on his left and he punched it on. He waited for a radio response from the mayday call, but it didn’t come until his third try, just as the first mate called back on his handheld.

  “Skipper, we’re getting everyone in life jackets. At least a few of the passengers were hurt when the lounge was ripped open. Badly. I don’t know how many, but there are at least a few terrible injuries…” Reilly could hear the first mate’s voice catch and hear screaming voices in the background. “I’m gonna launch lifeboats one and two on the starboard side first before it gets too high. Is anyone coming?”

  This is all my fault! Reilly thought, the words chilling him toward paralysis even more. He was hyperventilating, his legs shaking. The Coast Guard had called and were coming, weren’t they? He didn’t catch how far away. And the island had called. They had seen everything as he destroyed the dock and were trying to launch boats, or something. He couldn’t quite recall.

  He punched the radio button to reply to the first mate. “Yeah, someone’s coming,” he said, wondering how he had ever had the stupidity to think he was
qualified to be the master of such a vessel.

  CASCADIA ISLAND

  Nearly five minutes after another, stronger earthquake had rumbled through the island, three cars pulled up in front of the mostly empty convention center. One of them quickly disgorged just the man Doug Lam had been waiting for.

  Mick Walker was unmistakable even from the distance of the alcove where Doug had been taking shelter from the rain. The worried men he had talked to had told him the boss was on his way back.

  The rain was intermittent now, but chilling nonetheless as Doug walked back across the drive, his mind flashing to Jennifer. She had left several strangely terse messages on his cell phone, and he’d started to worry about her tone, but there was too much else in limbo to focus on what he assumed was a continuation of her campaign to press him on their relationship. He called back anyway, but she didn’t answer either her cell phone or room phone, and he left a message on her cell.

  Hi, Honey. I’m on the island, as you probably know. Walker invited me but I’m not here for the festivities, I’m here to speak with the governor. Please call me when you can. I know you and your dad are going to the opening dinner.

  But something continued to nag at him. Something in her voice he’d never heard before.

  Mick Walker was inside now with a very portly older man in a rumpled business suit and both were tracing the alarming split in the floor Doug had seen a few minutes earlier. Doug stopped momentarily at the curb, watching unseen as the two men exchanged animated conversation, pointing to the floor, then the wall. Walker was obviously upset, his face red and his gestures angry, and his portly companion appeared to be on the defensive.

  If that guy had anything to do with designing this place, he’s in deep trouble, Doug thought, the anonymous e-mail’s contents playing in his mind. The chilling evidence that the e-mailer was right was at their feet, although there could be a less catastrophic explanation. But the split Doug had seen went from wall to wall and across the floor in a brand-new building, and the cause could easily be a major surface fault. If so, the convention center was toast.

  And Walker still might not know.

  Or maybe he’d known all along.

  Doug wondered if the portly man was from the engineering firm, and whether he knew. He searched his own memory of the basic geology studies he’d seen before the construction had started, cursory summaries not based on actual seismic refraction data. It hadn’t been the possibility of faults running through the rock that had chilled him, it was the cold, certain fact that someday a monstruous tsunami was going to sweep everything away while the island itself sank five to seven feet into the sea. Whether the place was a trigger point or not, someday the subduction quake would generate a tsunami that would wash away anything built on its surface.

  Doug took a deep breath and pushed open the door, catching Mick Walker’s attention almost immediately. A skunk waddling in would have triggered approximately the same look.

  “Mick? Doug Lam,” he said as he walked toward them. He could see Mick Walker mumble something to himself and then paste on an artificial smile, and he noticed the big developer was suddenly looking at anything but the gap at his feet.

  “Well, Dr. Lam! I’m glad you took me up on the offer and came out.” He reached out to shake Doug’s hand, making no attempt to introduce the other man. “I’m quite busy at the moment. Why don’t you let my driver take you over to the hotel, and—”

  “Mick, I need to speak with you very, very urgently, and I need to speak to the governor, too.”

  Walker stopped, looking him in the eye and assessing the chances of getting rid of the interruption. They were obviously not good. He sighed and gave a quick nod. “Very well, let me introduce you to the master builder who designed this amazing complex,” Mick said, with a touch of sarcasm in his tone. He announced Robert Nelms and watched him shake the seismologist’s hand with the eagerness of a beaten dog taking a treat.

  “I see you’ve got a serious foundation problem,” Doug said, noting a quick, angry glance from Walker to Nelms.

  Nelms nodded. Walker answered.

  “Apparently,” Mick said, trying unsuccessfully to sound unconcerned. “We’ve apparently had a construction insufficiency in the subfloor, which is what we were just discussing.”

  For a split second Doug considered revealing what he knew about the fault, but what did he know? At that point, very little, and ultimately Walker might be right. It might be just a subfloor issue—though the vertical rift in each wall all but ruled that out.

  No, Doug cautioned himself. Don’t let them know you know until we’re sure what’s going on.

  But ignoring the obviously silly explanation was beyond him.

  “That’s a lot more than a subfloor problem,” Doug said. “It’s anything from a sudden washout of the underpinning ground beneath the foundation, or you’ve found a small, hopefully localized fault that’s started moving with these earth tremors.”

  “Right,” Mick answered, glowering at him. “I didn’t realize you were also a soil engineer and an experienced builder, Dr. Lam, but I doubt you walked over here in the rain to analyze my construction problems.”

  “No,” Doug replied evenly, “I came over here to tell you the latest seismological facts and beg you—and I do mean beg—to reconsider evacuating this island, despite the expense. The USGS is probably only minutes away from issuing that alert you demanded, and I can fill you in on why they’re changing their minds.”

  There was a moment of silence between them in which Doug could almost sense the resistance in Mick Walker beginning to waver.

  “All right, Doctor. You’ve got three minutes.”

  A cell phone rang at the same instant and Mick motioned for him to wait as he flipped it open and acknowledged what was apparently one of his people on the other end. Doug could see the blood drain from Mick’s face as he straightened up slightly and swallowed, his eyes darting involuntarily in the direction of the hotel and the ferry landing.

  “When? How?”

  Robert Nelms moved closer to him, his curiosity piqued. “What is it?”

  Mick raised a hand to silence him. “Jesus, what are we doing to get to them?”

  Doug could hear the tense voice from the other end as it echoed into the deserted entry hall.

  Mick’s hand was over his eyes and rubbing his forehead. “Call the Coast Guard immediately, and get whatever rescue helicopters they have in the air.” He snapped the phone closed and stood with his eyes on nothing, calculating the next move.

  “What the hell was that, Mick?” Nelms insisted.

  “My ferry. With a hundred of our guests aboard.”

  “What about it?”

  “The bloody thing is sinking.”

  Mick turned and darted for the waiting car.

  CASCADIA ISLAND HOTEL

  Jennifer had been balancing on one leg and pulling on her pantyhose when an impressive tremor shook the hotel. She suppressed a momentary flurry of fear and grabbed at the bed for stability as she sat down, finishing the job of getting dressed after the shaking stopped. She was putting on the finishing touches when the room phone rang.

  The tremor was a distant priority. She expected to hear Doug’s voice on the other end, especially after leaving a dragnet of messages for him, and she felt her stomach tighten and her heart rate increase as she prepared to deal with him.

  Instead, a man from Cascadia Operations was in her ear.

  “Are you one of the helicopter pilots?”

  His voice was tense, and there was a blare of radios and telephones in the background. The possibility that something bad had happened to one of their helicopters flashed through her mind as she answered.

  “Yes… this is Jennifer Lindstrom, the president of Nightingale, the company that owns the two choppers on your helipad.”

  “We need you, now! Our ferry is sinking with over a hundred people on board, and they need help.”

  “What?”

  He r
epeated the chilling message and she was almost too stunned to remember that she had no medical crewmembers with her, although her other crew had the usual pilot and nurses. She’d copied down their room numbers on arrival just in case, and she hung up now to call them with no success. A call to her father’s room also went unanswered.

  She stood for a second, trying to decide whether to change clothes or run out the door in yet another cocktail dress.

  There was no time to change back. Jennifer grabbed her tote bag, stuffed her purse in, and pulled on her coat, bypassing the heels she’d planned to wear and slipping on the shoes she had worn in the cockpit. She cleared the door and ran down the corridor to the elevators, pulling out her cell phone and punching off the message alert she hadn’t noticed, to clear the line for an immediate call to Norm Bryarly back in Seattle. He needed to be tearing up the phone lines looking for the other crew and Sven.

  There was a limo at the front of the hotel waiting for someone else and she tumbled inside and commandeered the driver to take her to the heliport. The driver recognized her orders as too crisp and unyielding to brook an argument, and they were under way within seconds.

  The helipad was all but deserted. She was the only crewmember present, and there was only one ground crewman and two of the company’s helicopters, the Bell 412 and a 3-month-old AS 365 Dauphin. The Dauphin was the only one with an external hoist, and this would be a rescue. There was no time to refuel, but she calculated the Dauphin should have enough fuel for two hours in the air, although less if she had a lot of time at hover. The problem was the lack of a rescue crew to work the winch and take care of any injured. She had no idea what the ferry looked like, or whether there was room to safely set down on top of it, but she had to assume any rescue would be with a line and a basket, and she couldn’t do it alone.