by Peter Tonkin
‘That’s just one stream, though it’s the best known. But there are others, much lower in the atmosphere. And they are effectively rivers of air that is so humid it is just on the point of precipitating. Unlike the jet stream, these atmospheric rivers can be hundreds of miles wide, but just like the jet stream they can be thousands of miles long. And also like the jet stream, they tend to move from west to east because of the way the Earth turns on its axis. And under certain circumstances they can blow in off the Pacific right over the West Coast here. Once every couple of centuries, in fact, on average.
‘Then all it takes is the elevation of something like the Sierra Nevada to push this incredibly humid air upwards and make the rain start pouring down along a storm front that can be as wide as the entire Californian coast. And it won’t stop coming down until the whole of that atmospheric river has gone over the top of us and dumped every last drop of moisture it contains on to our businesses, homes, families and loved ones.
‘Like I said, the stats show that we can expect one every couple of centuries. And it’s well past one hundred and fifty years since the last one, which means, by definition, that the odds are narrowing. And also because, like I said, our weather sats, TRIMM and GPM, are beginning to pick up what looks like an atmospheric river coming our way. Because we at the USGS and NOAA think there may be an ARkStorm due to hit us within the next seventy-two hours and stay right above us, raining fit to burst, for forty days after that,’ said Dr Jones. ‘Just like in the Bible. And that movie with Russell Crowe.’
FOUR
‘Is that what you were looking at, Richard?’ demanded Robin, shouting over the roaring of the Bell’s rotors, too impatient to wait for everyone to fit their headsets on. ‘When you were looking away to the west? An ARkStorm on the way in?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Richard more quietly, his headset in place. ‘There was just something … But Doctor Jones said it was seventy-two hours out … Nic, can you ask your pilot to take us up as high as possible? We’re heading south-west back to the Long Beach docks anyway, and the higher we go the further I’ll be able to see out over the Pacific.’
‘Like you’re going to see more than one of the USGS satellites,’ said Nic, unsure whether to be incredulous or impressed. ‘That’s not forecasting, that’s witchcraft.’ But he shrugged and went forward to talk to the pilot. At once the chopper began to gain altitude and, as it did so, the vista all around it widened. Richard pressed the slightly broken aquiline jut of his nose against the starboard window, straining to see above the haze that cloaked the grey city blocks away out past the cost and over the sullen grey-green of the ocean. His mind began to fill with the rest of what Dr Jones had told the Chamber of Commerce. The governor, slipping into the decisive mode of a couple of his more dramatic predecessors, Regan and Schwarzenegger, had already called in the National Guard. And the USGS had backed him forcefully enough to alarm the president and the power brokers up on Capitol Hill. Containers full of medical supplies, emergency rations, heating and clothing were on the way, apparently. Everything from chemical toilets to mobile hospitals, all packed in containers and loaded into – or on to – every form of transport available. Preparing for the worst without panicking the populace.
There was an evacuation plan that would slip into place when the rain began to fall – but not until then. This wasn’t going to be like an earthquake – total destruction in a couple of minutes, then aftershocks, fires and so forth. A city and its infrastructure wasn’t going to be reduced to rubble in little more than a heartbeat. It wasn’t going to be Mount St Helen’s – or Pompeii and Herculaneum. Folks would get wet as they moved. Soaked and shaken – especially if the storm fronts were powerful. He remembered how it had been in the south of England in February 2014 with hurricane-force winds in the Western Approaches, along the south coast and up through St George’s Channel and over the Isle of Anglesey. But if push came to shove the vast majority of Californians would have days, possibly weeks before things became impossible.
The only exceptions would be the unfortunate people living along the western, coast-facing slopes of the Sierra Nevada, for those steep surfaces would begin to wash away in the first few hours, taking everything and everyone with them. He closed his eyes for a moment, summoning up a sketchy map from the depths of his near-photographic memory. There would be more towns than Wishon inundated by Bass Lake and the offspring it would all too swiftly spawn. North Fork would be among the first, he supposed, washed down towards Yosemite, lock, stock and barrel …
But at this point in his darkening thoughts, Richard’s concentration was disturbed. ‘Oh my God,’ Robin said to Nic. ‘What in heaven’s name is that? It looks like something out of Mars Attacks!’
‘The Graf Zeppelin meets the Starship Enterprise, perhaps,’ Nic allowed.
The mention of the Enterprise was too much for Richard, a card-carrying Trekkie. ‘What is it?’ he asked, blinking his eyes wide and looking away from the darkening distance westwards. Robin and Nic were on the inland side of the chopper, looking south-eastwards towards Anaheim – another of the west-slope areas that might find itself in the first firing line, he thought as he crossed to crouch beside them. And there, above the grey haze of morning, framed against the distant sage of the Santa Ana Mountains, was an airship. Looking like the Goodyear blimp crossed with something out of the Terminator movies, it gleamed silver in the clearer inland air, aptly enough seeming to be sailing just above the historic settlement of Silverado itself. Its frame was too flat for a cigar shape, and as it moved through the air with slow majesty its silhouette seemed to flatten further still, almost like a flying saucer. Richard could see what Robin meant about Mars Attacks!, not to mention The War of the Worlds and The Day The Earth Stood Still. Then it lengthened again and tall tail fins became apparent. Suddenly it looked more like a submarine. One of the sleek new Virginia-class boats – given a slightly flattened hull. ‘What sort of size is it?’ whispered Richard, awed.
‘Difficult to be sure,’ said Nic. ‘I’ll see if the pilot can tell us how far away it is, then we can guesstimate, at least.’ He unstrapped yet again and vanished into the cockpit once more.
‘What does she look like?’ asked Robin. ‘I mean, she reminds me of something so much … I just can’t put my finger on it …’
‘Thunderbird Two!’ said Richard. ‘She looks like Thunderbird Two!’
Nic returned after a few minutes, his head packed with information imparted by an enthusiastic, well-informed pilot. ‘The pilot gave me the whole skinny,’ he announced. ‘Apparently the thing’s got quite a rep among the local flyboys. Her name’s Dragon Dream. She’s two hundred and fifty feet long and a hundred feet wide, and she can lift the better part of thirty tons. She’s the half-scale prototype. There are plans afoot to build one twice as big, but this one is awesome enough to be going on with. Technically pretty advanced by all accounts. Works using helium rather than hydrogen like the old airships did, and controls lift by compressing and decompressing the gas rather than picking up and releasing ballast. The main propulsion units can generate vertical lift as well as horizontal thrust into the bargain. She moves at about a hundred and fifty knots in still air. They plan to use her for general transport, of course, but there’s apparently quite a sales pitch about her being perfect for disaster-relief work. Got the army sniffing around. And some of the NGOs. She can pick up and put down anything up to the size and weight of a fully-packed standard container. That’s a full-sized TEU – twenty-foot equivalent unit, I guess. No need for any on-ground infrastructure – landing strips and so forth. She can just hover at any given height and lower or pick up anything beneath her. Flame-proof aluminium skin. And helium doesn’t burn, of course. So she’s even fireproof – within certain limits. Broiling the pilots, melting the controls and so forth just doesn’t happen. And as long as she can sit still; as long as she doesn’t get blown all over the place like a kid’s balloon. Apparently she’s on the last of a series
of test flights over LA. In a day or so she’s off down to Mexico City. The guys who built her, Aeroscraft, have headquarters here in Tustin and offices down there too. Tustin to Mexico City will be her first big test run.’
FIVE
Long Island Docks were a mess. There was no other way to describe them. From Nic’s helicopter the sight was one of confusion, overcrowding and confrontation. The normally well-ordered expanse of waterfront was packed with conflicting armies of men, materiel and transport. From the air it was obvious the whole place was heading for gridlock pretty quickly, and by the time the Bell actually reached Sulu Queen’s berth the whole place was at a standstill.
It seemed clear to Richard that the governor’s call had resulted in not only truckloads of National Guard and ancillary vehicles choking the roadways and backing up along Interstates 710, 405 and 110, but trainloads of freight cars which were all running into the rail yards like cholesterol into the veins of a heart-attack patient. Shiploads of aid were doing the same to the berthing facilities which had looked from the air like an overcrowded marina, but with massive freighters and tankers instead of bustling little pleasure boats.
And it appeared that the stevedores and longshoremen – whose huge machines for lifting and laying the twenty-foot equivalent units of the containers had been utterly overwhelmed – were on the point of walking out into the bargain. Certainly, there was no evidence at all of the usual well-ordered bustle that told of them being efficiently on-task. There was no movement at all, in fact. The whole place was frozen. Petrified.
And being on ground level, or deck level several metres higher, simply made the situation clearer, thought Richard half an hour later, looking down on the half-laden length of Sulu Queen and at the jetties beside her packed with stalled trucks and piled containers, with groups of angry and frustrated men dwarfed by massive immobile cranes and gantries.
Nic’s helicopter had just managed to find space and permission to touch down on the dockside. It dropped Richard as close to Sulu Queen’s gangway as possible then powered up to lift off as he leaped out and ran, doubled over beneath the rotors, towards his mighty vessel. After half-a-dozen steps, Richard was tempted to run back through the mayhem and jump aboard before the chopper could swoop up and away towards the distant golf ball of Maxima’s radar equipment, with the upended black composite jumbo-jet wing of Katapult8’s mainsail immediately behind it, her next destination the relative quiet of Maxima’s helipad. But duty called. And he had promised to be on Sulu Queen by the time the afternoon watch was called. A glance at his Rolex warned him he had better hurry up or he would be late going aboard.
‘See you later,’ he bellowed after Robin, and she raised a distracted hand in reply as the helicopter jumped into the air. It was a miracle she had heard him – even though he had bellowed in his massive quarterdeck voice. She could hardly be expected to have understood him. Never mind, he thought grimly, turning towards the gangplank and the crewman waiting there to hand over his hard hat and safety gear, he’d call her on her cell phone later. Then, hard hat safely secured and security vest flapping wide over his dark blue suit jacket, he hurried along the three-metre-level pathway after the officer who had welcomed him aboard.
On Richard’s right was a low gunwale and the security rail standing above it, then the packed and cluttered dockside he had just run along. On his left there was a narrow metal track, like the rail for a small-gauge railway. It was along this that Sulu Queen’s own on-board container-handling equipment ran. It was a big, square gantry, standing back against the bridge house now, as wide as the vessel’s loading area and as tall as the bottom of the command bridge windows. It could not pick up or lower containers from or to the dockside, but it could lift and lay them anywhere aboard. Beyond the rail track there was a vacancy some three metres deep which also had a safety rail running along its edge, albeit a temporary one. A glance away to the left showed him that the vacancy was as wide as the massive ship herself. And another glance, as he paused outside the bulkhead door into the bridge’s A-deck, showed him that the vacancy was not just as wide as the ship’s hull – it was as long as the vessel into the bargain. As long as the foredeck, at least. The noise was overwhelming, even though Sulu Queen’s cargo was not being unloaded for the moment, and Richard wondered whether he should demand earmuffs – or a headset like the one he had worn in the Bell. When he called Robin, he thought as he stepped over the raised section at the doorway’s bottom and into the bridge itself, he’d better find somewhere quiet as well as somewhere private.
Now it was a good half hour later and Richard still hadn’t called. Nor had he found anywhere quiet. He towered at the shoulder of the incandescent Captain Sin, trying to work out how best to proceed. The bustle on the bridge was calm enough; however, the man at its centre was anything but. Nor was he particularly quiet. ‘I send clew to runch,’ snarled Sin, his rotund figure bouncing unsettlingly as he rose and fell on the balls of his feet, his normally impeccable English buckling beneath the strain of his outrage. ‘I waste all mo’ning watch, then ha’f of fo’enoon watch with Import Specialist Team 733, going through iron and steel import regulations, like we didn’t do this a’ready! Then after them come Homeland Security in case we working for al-Qaeda! Then customs and port officials in case we’re carrying poppy juice instead of pig iron … Waste of broody time! Then halfway through unloading, every’t’ing stop! Wo’kers just stop wo’k and wa’k away! I talk to Po’t Autholity myse’f on ship to sho’ and all they say is “Solly. Solly. Gleat big mix-up.” Had we been twelve hou’s early everyt’ing would be fine … I say we were twelve hou’s early but their stupid gwailo officials gum up the wo’ks … They say, “No can he’p … No can do! Now National Guaad have plio’ity. Eme’gency Se’vices have pli’oity.” Every gwailo too zai zi in Rong Bitch have plio’ity! No chance we get cargo ashow through this … This …’ His gesture took in the static pandemonium ashore and afloat. And his indignation robbed him of words.
Which was possibly just as well, thought Richard. For if sailors’ language was normally considered salty, a Chinese sailor’s language could reach an entirely higher plane, as suited elevated exclusively Chinese inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom. The port authorities had already been described as foreign devils and the sons of rabbits – a peculiarly Chinese insult that he had never been able to understand – but things could only go downhill from there. Still, he thought, grasping at straws and looking for silver linings as always, at least the longshoremen had unloaded more than half the cargo. And what was left aboard effectively formed a flat, level deck – albeit one marked with black lines like the street plan of an American city – one container level below the gunwales. It was as though the main deck of one of his tankers had simply been pushed down by three metres. The tops of the containers formed a sort of gigantic, oblong Rubik’s cube that stretched from the port side to starboard, and from the foot of the rear-mounted bridge house to the square forecastle head. And every fifteen metres or so – two standard twenty-foot container lengths or one standard forty foot – stood a cell guide with a lashing bridge reaching up above it. The cell guides were effectively metre-wide walls reaching right across the ship, from the level of a notional main deck down to the bottom of the in-hull storage areas. These were designed to hold the containers securely in place while the ship was laden and safely at sea. There were walkways running along them from port to starboard at what would have been deck level – metre-wide passages running from side to side along the tops of the interior cell guides. Walkways deserted now, for there was nothing to be done until the docks started working properly again. Walkways which, when the ship was more fully laden, would anchor the metal lashing rods designed to reach across the ends of the container towers as they rose above deck level and hold them secure up to the top of their safe lading instructions, which was, of course, just below the square top of the vessel’s own container-handling gantry. But at the moment there was nothing piled there at all.
Like her cargo, Sulu Queen’s cook was from Guangzhou. His speciality, therefore, was Cantonese cuisine. As Richard and the fuming Captain Sin settled into their chairs, they were confronted with a range of steamed and lightly stir-fried delicacies. Richard chose steamed dim sum dumplings, sweet-and-sour pork and steamed spare ribs with pickled plum and soy bean paste, stir-fried rice, Chinese broccoli and Brussels sprouts. It was a cuisine familiar to him from his recent trips to Hong Kong. Subtle, sweet and substantial – very different from the spicy Szechuan food he had enjoyed up in Shanghai. But he noticed that his pork, like Captain Sin’s beef, had been stir-fried rather than deep-fried; the coating of the pork nuggets was soggy rather than crispy, though tasty nonetheless.
‘I banned all deep-frying in the galley,’ explained Sin curtly when Richard commented. Talking about something other than the overwhelmed port officials – together with the calming effect of lunch – allowed Sin’s accent to return to the urbane American-tinted English he usually spoke. He leaned towards Richard earnestly. As he did so, the sun, just beginning to wester in the early afternoon, struck through a port hole powerfully enough to frame his round shoulders and basket-ball head. It shone through his protuberant ears, making them glow like pink stained glass. The effect was droll but a little disturbing, almost as though his rage was sending steam out of them – the comic-book cliché apparently coming to life. His words, however, were not funny at all. ‘The weather was too unsettled. Indeed, it is only now that we are in port that I allow stir-fries. When we were at sea we only ate boiled or steamed food.’ He unbent slightly, his round face losing a little of its hectic flush. ‘I have eaten sufficient steamed chicken to last several lifetimes. But I thought we were likely to face quite enough challenges without having the galley awash with boiling oil – or, more likely, bursting into flames. I like my spare ribs broiled, not my chefs. I had promised the cook and the crew that I would reinstall the deep-fat fryer and perhaps even allow deep-fat frying in the big wok if all went well here.’ His face clouded into a frown once more. ‘That simply adds to the frustration we all feel that things are not, in fact, going well. I believe some of my officers and crew would trade almost anything for a dish of salt-and-pepper shrimp or twice-fried crispy sweet-and-sour pork like their mothers used to make.’ He leaned back out of the light and his ears stopped glowing. But, like the top sections of his plump cheeks, they remained a hectic red.