“I understand,” said James. “I’ve consulted with my colleague, Etta Kim, on this subject. If you don’t know her, she is a genius in ocean engineering, I can assure you. She, we, feel that the weakest sections are the areas where the fault line is most vertical. However, we both feel these are the areas in which we need to concentrate the detonations.”
There was silence for a moment before Dr. Heimel began to speak again, “I see,” he said. “But, in doing that, won’t we risk upsetting the apple cart, so to speak?”
“Of course,” James answered, opening his presentation and turning his laptop so the President could see. “But we don’t see much of a choice.” On the screen, animated graphics showed a line of submarines spread along the fault line at regular intervals. Each fired a torpedo, succeeded by a second torpedo. The fault line shelf crumbled from one end to the other in a seemingly orderly fashion.
“The fault could fail at any moment,” James continued. “If we go with the alternative and detonate an area we believe to be the least likely to fail, what good are we doing? A blast in what we might even consider to be a safe area could cause a failure, and what would we have accomplished? We believe our best option is to chip away at the most vertical areas of the shelf. If it fails, we might accelerate the progress of the event. But, if it holds—even for a day or two, allowing removal of even a fraction of its mass—then we will have succeeded in reducing the mass, which will reduce the force. At least partially.”
“Hmm,” Dr. Hisamoto contemplated. “I see what you’re saying. But, I think I’d like to hear Ms. Kim’s thoughts as well. I’ve read her articles on ocean tectonics, and I would like to hear if she has considered alternatives.”
James looked at Dr. Pevnick and shook his head.
Pevnick had to agree. “I don’t think that will be possible,” he said. “If you’ve read her work, you might be familiar with her, eh, affliction, which prevents her from communicating in a group forum.”
There was silence in the room. It seemed everyone was uncomfortable with the choice of Pevnick’s word, affliction, particularly James.
“I…see,” said Hisamoto. “So, what’s our next step? Are we to make our decision based on the theory of one, er, uh…?”
“Savant?” James quipped.
“Well…” said Hisamoto, at a loss for words.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Cooper. “But, the final decision rests on me. I’ve heard enough to convince me we have to do something, and there are risks no matter which way we choose to proceed; nature does not lend any guarantees. A few days ago, I asked for solutions, and none were forthcoming. With almost every theory in science, there is another that opposes it. I’ve seen as much wrong born of indecision as I have from making the wrong decision. I listened to this young man’s proposal, watched him present it to the scientific community, and only then did I hear we might be able to do something.” He paused, waiting for a response—any response. None came.
“We all agree we have to do something,” the President went on. “If we learned just one thing from Katrina, it is that. Dr. Hisamoto and Dr. Heimel, I am going to ask you to stay in touch with Mr. Trammel. Work together, but keep this in mind: Mr. Trammel will be the lead on this team whose focus will be the science part of the project. You will all work with the Directors of Homeland Security and the Defense Department. Am I clear on this?”
“Yes, sir,” said Hisamoto.
“Of course,” said Heimel.
“Now,” Cooper stood and finished his delivering his orders, “I am going to keep this line open for you and James to continue this discussion. I’ll contact my Department Directors, and ask them to join in on the call. You gentlemen will be directing the Navy through them and our land-based Ops center. I’ll repeat,” he said, his eyes sweeping the room, “this is a team effort. Dr. Pevnick and I are going to discuss evacuation strategies. Then, I’m going to hold a press conference and tell the nation we have a plan before my detractors can cause any more widespread panic. I’ll ask all of you to keep our discussions confidential until I say it’s safe to do otherwise. Everyone understand?”
A general rumbling of affirmative responses concluded the conversation. The President signaled for Pevnick to follow him out of the room. They made their way toward the kitchen for coffee. Mrs. Brown had a small television set on and was watching the news with obvious concern on her face, her hands clasped below her chin as if in prayer.
The news showed a park ranger being interviewed. He reported that he’d noticed animals leaving their dens and headed for the mountains, and added, “They head for the high ground when they sense danger.” Another report showed clips of whales washing up on the beaches in staggering amounts. Each following report only added to the dread they were all feeling.
Pevnick turned off the set before pouring coffee for himself and Cooper. He reached over and took Mrs. Brown’s hands and rubbed the back of them with his fingers while he looked into her face. “Try not to worry about things we have no control over, okay?”
Mrs. Brown nodded, and her eyes became wet. “Please let me get that for you, gentlemen,” she said, rising to her feet. “Wasn’t it cream and sugar, Mr. President?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
From the air, the hidden bunker looked like a small rise in the ground; a hill surrounded by lush forest growth. Nothing to draw suspicion. Inside, the newest technology in communications lined the curved walls that ran the length of a football field and equaled anything that the Pentagon was using, primarily because most of the design of the bunker had come from the Pentagon, stolen by trusted members of the government.
General Haufman sat with almost one hundred of his closest “Generals,” most of whom were not real generals, at all, merely heads of various statewide militias and delegates from each of the state’s extreme political factions. They were listening to President Cooper’s discussion with several world-renowned scientists. It was supposed to be a confidential conversation. Haufman could barely disguise his enthusiasm as he made a call.
“Sir,” he said into the phone, “the bug our man planted is working well. We just listened to Cooper’s meeting with the scientists and that group at the nuthouse research facility. They have a plan that the President is going to present at a press conference as soon as they have their evacuation strategy finalized.”
On the other end of the line, Vice President Proger responded, “We anticipated this,” he said. “But right now he’s having a credibility problem. People are panicking already. Gas and water hoarding has begun. The interstates and turnpikes are filling with cars headed west. Grocery and hardware stores are quickly running out of supplies, and the police can’t keep up with the looting. No one is going to stop self-evacuating to listen to a president they believe misled them and imperiled their lives. Let’s proceed as planned. Begin placing the militias where we need them.”
Haufman nodded to his collected staff, silently clenching his fist and holding it up to them in a gesture of strength. They looked pleased and began to shake hands with each other.
“I’ve been talking with the Department of Defense staff,” Proger continued. “Other than the director, I think I have them listening to me and they’re convinced the President is frozen with indecision and gone into hiding. His silence right now is only confirming that. Even his allies are abandoning him. The generals tell me there is no way they’ll be able to get a sufficient number of troops back on U.S. soil in time to sustain a force and control a mass exodus of people fleeing the coastal regions.
“But,” he continued, “be advised they are mobilizing the National Guard and all stateside forces. And, we still have the Air Force to contend with, but I’m working on that.”
“Understand, sir, and I agree. There’s no way they can pull together an opposing force fast enough to be any threat to us.
“Then, as of now,” said Proger, “Operation New Dawn is under way, General.”
Haufman hung up the phone and gave on
e command: “Mobilize.”
***
Etta walked along the rim of a cliff overlooking the ocean. She had been so nervous, she’d begun stimming again, almost uncontrollably. Now, with the sea breeze pushing salt-scented, fresh air into her nostrils, she calmed down. She breathed deeply, feeling the air’s healing abilities and the tranquil peace it lent her.
Harvey and Jeremy bumped along the path behind her, trying to give her the time she needed to regain her calm. They glanced repeatedly back over their shoulders, up toward the house, where the President and his motorcade of Secret Service vehicles spread across the lawn like a flock of crows come to ground. Harvey noticed glints of sunlight beaming off several sets of binoculars trained on them as they took their walk.
“Son’s of…,” Harvey began.
“Eh, eh,” said Jeremy, surprisingly diplomatic. “Zee cussing, Harvey. By the way, it ees 7:15pm in Geneva.”
Harvey turned red with displaced anger. “Who gives a flying fu…fu…frog what time it is in France?” he blurted. “Buncha cheese-loving wino snobs.” Then, remembering Jeremy was from France, he cooled and added, “I was just going to say sons of beaches, anyway.”
Jeremy shrugged as they continued their stroll and caught up to Etta.
“Are you well, Mademoiselle? Well, Mademoiselle?” asked Jeremy, falling back into his pattern of repeating phrases. They were all stressed out, worrying about the plan they had offered, and like everyone else on the east coast, what might happen to them in the next few days.
Etta shook her head. In her tiny voice, she said, “It is all so big. We…don’t know if it will work.”
“Yes,” said Harvey, trying to put a positive spin on the conversation, “but we know what will happen if we don’t try something, right?” He moved up beside her and, for one of the few times in his life, felt the need to give another comfort and placed his arm over her shoulders.
Jeremy, watching the gesture, moved to her other side and did the same; his huge, muscled arm overlapping Harvey’s. Between the two of them, they were almost crushing her, but she stood erect and took their added weight. She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face.
“Thank you for being my friends,” she said.
“It is our pleasure,” said Harvey.
“Oui, oui, oui,” said Jeremy.
Then Harvey burst out laughing so hard he had to bend over and place his hands on his knees, audibly wheezing. Pointing at Jeremy, he said, “That…ha, ha…sounded like a pig! You know, like the little pig who ran all the way home, saying oui, oui, oui…”
Etta looked at Jeremy and frowned.
Jeremy let out a booming laugh of his own. Then, Etta began to laugh; her voice sounding brittle and delicate, like miniature bells.
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” said James. He had come up from the other side of the trail, surprising them all. He was wearing dark sunglasses with leather blinders along the sides of them, like polar explorers wear. They helped keep him from getting distracted. He was freshly bathed and wearing cologne he’d borrowed from Dr. Pevnick, something he’d never done before.
Etta turned and smiled at him, her cheeks flushing.
“I just remembered I have to finish reading a book on the aftermath of Mount Vesuvius,” said Harvey. “Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, but it’s a very well researched tome.” He looked at Jeremy and moved his eyebrows around, twitching his head not so discreetly to one side in an effort to urge Jeremy to follow.
Instead, Jeremy smiled at him in wonder.
“Ahem,” said Harvey, attempting a Plan B. “Didn’t you say you could fix my cell phone for me, Jeremy? The alarm function doesn’t seem to be working.”
“Oh…oui,” said Jeremy, finally getting it. “Of course, let us go feex your phone.”
James nodded to them, and idled up to Etta. “Hi.”
“Hello, James. You look…nice. And you smell nice, too.”
James gave a crooked smile. “You look lovely today, too, Etta.” He reached out his hand and took hers. She didn’t resist.
“Wanna walk some more?” James asked.
Etta nodded, looking up into his face. “It is a nice day for it.”
They walked quietly for a while, holding hands like an old couple who had been doing it for years. The path followed downhill and came to the edge of thick woods, filled with long since abandoned maples and wild blueberries and apple trees, survivors from a time when the land was used for farming. Their fresh, sweet scent was intoxicating and magical to two people whose senses were so enhanced.
Once under the canopy of the forest, James stopped and gently turned Etta toward him.
She looked up into his face, the shadows of the leaves were like silk-screened images on her skin, and he could not believe how incredibly beautiful she was…so exotically perfect. Her raven hair glinted in the sunlight, framing her face, her incredibly huge eyes drawing him in. The perfect symmetry of her face was particularly alluring to him, everything in exact mathematical proportion: small ears to small nose to small mouth, with full, impossibly pink lips that withdrew into her mouth and came back out shining wet. All exactly matched, except for those eyes, which were almost extraterrestrial in their enormous size. In the chocolate brown of the irises, James noted shards of amber bursting out from the pupils. He tried not to count them. Even her eyelashes were precisely balanced—and these he did count, he couldn’t help himself—and they were symmetrically balanced, with one hundred and two lashes on the upper lids, and forty-eight lashes on the bottom, on both sides. He’d never felt this way about another person before, and he felt a flutter in his stomach.
Detecting butterflies of her own, Etta was both nervous and near breathless with an excitement she had never experienced. At another time, she might have started the aggravating stimming that embarrassed her so. But, as James held her gaze, looking into her face, she could see the ocean in her peripheral vision. She could hear it, too, and—more importantly—she could feel the giant force of nature that tied into her body like plasma. Its presence soothed her as they drew in closer to each other.
“Etta,” James almost whispered, “have you ever kissed…”
Etta cut him off as she leaned up on her tip-toes, placed her small, delicate hands around the back of his neck, and, using her arms like a soft scarf to pull his lips to hers, gently kissed him.
James kissed her back, more urgently, and pulled her into his arms. Her touch felt electric and, for the first time in both their lives, they felt an emotion both believed would forever be foreign to them: Love.
As they kissed, visions filled their minds. Etta thought of the ocean with warm waves washing over her, enveloping her, lending her the comfort that a fetus must feel in its mother’s womb. James thought of patterns and mathematical designs and formations, like a flock of birds flying in an almost perfect isosceles triangle. While those figures gave him comfort, too, something emerged, or tried to emerge. And it was urgent. He struggled to put his finger on it, even as he enjoyed the first kiss of his life—perhaps it was the perfect geometry found in nature? But with the physicality of the embrace, the scent of the sun’s warmth on Etta’s hair and skin, the passion of the kiss…it was all too distracting for him to put together the arc of what the image was trying to tell him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
President Cooper and Dr. Pevnick wrapped up their business and phone calls—as much as a President can to allow himself a few minutes of solace—and took a walk outside at Pevnick’s suggestion. They noticed Etta and James walking back along a trail that overlooked the sea. They were holding hands.
“They’re good kids,” Cooper said. Then, contemplating his own words, changed that. “Good people, I guess I should say. Probably wouldn’t be in our best interests if I told the American people that I was relying on the advice of individuals just out of their teens to save them all.”
Pevnick nodded, but didn’t say anything. He was wise enough to know when people sim
ply needed to hear themselves talk. But, he made a mental note: were James and Etta learning something else besides solar powered cars and trying to save the world? Could they be developing feelings for each other? It was something he hadn’t even considered when he’d made the decision to bring them together for a project.
“It’s beautiful here,” said Cooper, looking out over the ocean.
“Yes, sir, it is,” said Pevnick.
“It’s begun. The submarines are moving into place along the fault line. God help us.”
Pevnick did not respond; he had nothing to add to that statement.
“Stephen, I’ve never been so…I’ve never had…”
“It’s understandable, Jack,” Pevnick awkwardly interrupted, still uneasy using the President’s first name. “We’re all pretty nervous right now. You have a lot on your shoulders. But, I think you’re making the best decisions based on the circumstances.”
“Time will tell.”
“Are you still planning on the press conference today?”
Cooper stopped walking, turned and looked into Pevnick’s face. “I’ve decided to wait until tomorrow. I want our mitigation efforts to be fully mobilized before I tell the world.”
“Understood,” said Pevnick, his face showing doubt.
“You think I should do it sooner, don’t you?”
Pevnick shrugged. “I can’t advise you on that. I just know that fear and the unknown breeds more fear and anxiety. People are already in a panic after the Vice President’s announcement. By tomorrow, there is no telling what may happen.”
Cooper nodded. “We might not even have a tomorrow, Stephen.” He paused. “I think the American people are stronger, braver than we sometimes give them credit for. I’m going to wait until I have something more positive to tell them.”
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