Dead Reckoning

by Tom Wright

  6:30 PM – EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER (EOC), KWAJALEIN

  When I entered the EOC, the crisis management team was already assembled.

  In contrast to the sleek, high-tech missile control center on the range, the EOC on Kwaj looked like an afterthought, which probably was not too far from the truth, since that room was rarely ever used. It had a communications console, a short-wave radio set-up, a small external weather station with wind and temperature information, a few computers, and a single, small window which was above the eye level of most people and contained the distinctive crisscrossed wire of reinforced glass. The conference table was nothing more than four brown, fold-up tables, like you might find at a church potluck, pushed together. The chairs around the tables were all the leftovers from the range—some with torn cushions, others leaning badly, and still others with missing parts—the chairs that nobody wanted to sit in on a daily basis but that the range did not want to throw out. A small alcove off one side held a coffee maker, microwave oven, and sink.

  “Well, let’s get this started,” said LTC Polian. He introduced me, and I relayed what I knew to the team:

  “Tropical depression 01-W formed earlier this afternoon approximately 300 miles east-southeast of Kwaj. It is already well on its way to becoming Tropical Storm ‘Ele.’ The storms we are already seeing today are likely the beginnings of a feeder band which indicates the storm is quickly gathering strength. It will likely reach T.S. strength within the next 12 hours, and within 24 hours, Ele will be near Typhoon strength.

  “Isn’t May a little early for this sort of thing?” asked one of the other contractors on the island.

  “Yes, but it is not unheard of. The El Nino we’ve had going on for the last year has kept the very warm water parked over the central Pacific, and it is just an unfortunate set of meteorological circumstances that came together in the wrong place. Best guess movement right now is west at 5 knots. Steering flow is not very strong, but her general movement will be west-northwest around a sub-tropical ridge positioned between Johnston and Hawaii.”

  “So, it’s going to go right over us?” asked Sam.

  “Forecasting the exact track of tropical storms in the first 24-48 hours after development is very difficult….”

  “Cut the bullshit,” ordered Range Commander Blaine. “It sounds like we have less than 24 hours to ready this installation for a typhoon. Now is not the time for waffling. You know what happened on Wake!”

  He was referring to Super Typhoon Ioke, which struck Wake Atoll, just 500 miles due north of Kwajalein Atoll. Ioke devastated Wake Atoll, and if not for a very fortuitous jog to the north just before landfall, the atoll likely would have been turned into a sand bar.

  “Of course I do, sir. But the good news is that all the buildings are still standing. People could have survived there.”

  He looked at me skeptically over the top of his glasses.

  “They had time to evacuate, and you and I both know that they were lucky, Matt. That was a hell of a forecast by the JTWC which gave them five days to get everything ready and then bug out. We don’t have that luxury. Give us your no-bullshit best answer.”

  It was rare for anyone to contradict Colonel Blaine, primarily because he was the Commander, but also because he was a large, black man and quite imposing despite his pronounced limp. His clean-shaven head, crooked nose, penetrating eyes, and deep voice only added to his bad-ass image. He played football at the United States Military Academy at West Point—linebacker. The rumor was that he blew out his knee in the first quarter of the first game of his junior year, and the team didn’t find out about it until half time. He made two tackles and one interception in the second quarter with a blown knee. Because of his knee, he never started another game for Army, but he was already legendary. I knew him casually but never dared ask if the rumor was true. The fact that it was within his power to throw anyone off the island for no good reason, didn’t put people at ease around him either. But I knew my business.

  “Sir. I’m not bullshitting you. I just don’t want to give you an inflated sense of the confidence I have in the going forecast. Obviously, we didn’t see this coming, and it really is very difficult to predict the exact motion of developing storms. It is hard enough to determine the exact strength and position of a storm at this stage, much less forecast the movement of a storm that is hardly moving at the moment. My best estimate is that it will go very near Kwajalein and that we should prepare as if a direct hit is imminent, because it might be.”

  It felt as if the air had gone out of the room. I noticed the ticking of the wall clock as we stared at the commander.

  “My apologies. I was out of order,” he said.

  I noticed a few surprised looks around the table.

  “Timing?” he questioned, apparently unfazed by the turn of events.

  “As I was saying before, steering flow is weak, but I expect it to pick up as the subtropical ridge strengthens and moves further west. Twenty-four to thirty-six hours.”

  “You sure we don’t have more time to prepare? That would be helpful,” he asked.

  “Actually, we don’t want that, sir.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “The longer it takes to get here, the more time it will have to strengthen. There is little to inhibit its development at this point. The faster it gets here, the better.”

  “What should we expect?”

  With the momentum on my side, I launched into the specifics. “Best estimate: winds: 70 gusting to 85 knots; seas: 20-30 feet; overwash with severe flooding likely north of the storm track. Much worse if it takes longer.”

  I heard a few murmured swear words around the table.

  “How high will the storm surge be north of the track? I’ve heard it can be 10-15 feet. ”

  “We won’t see anything like that here. The bathymetry of the atoll isn’t conducive to large storm surge. The oceanside parts of the atoll essentially go straight down into the abyss. There is no sloping undersea floor for the surge to build up on. It’s essentially the same reason that we don’t worry much about tsunamis here. Our surge, if any, will be almost entirely from wind loading.”

  “So how high?”

  “I think we will probably just see some of the larger waves washing onto the island. Maybe a foot at most and that will be north of the track. Even Wake wasn’t substantially over-washed with Ioke. But even this amount of water will cause significant flooding.”

  “Any idea where it will cross the atoll—you know, which assets might be at most risk?”

  “Sir, like I….”

  “Never mind, I know,” he said waving me off.

  The commander stared at his hands for a few moments, a noticeable tremor developing in his left.

  “Very well then. This base is officially in warning status,” said the Commander.

  Typhoon warning status was the Range’s equivalent to TCCOR 2 and set in motion the entire range to prepare for the onset of damaging winds within 24 hours. A few minutes after this meeting, hundreds of people’s quiet weekend would come to an abrupt end.

  Commander Blaine looked at LTC Polian.

  “Secure assets a.s.a.p. and begin personnel evacuation preparations immediately. And inform SMDC.”

  SMDC stood for Space and Missile Defense Command, the next agency in the chain of command. SMDC answered to the Department of the Army who reported to the Department of Defense who reported to the President—all of whom had some interest when one of their “assets” was threatened.

  Commander Blaine turned to the Public Affairs Officer.

  “Prepare a statement for the roller highlighting the need to begin personal preparations immediately. Now I know word travels fast on this rock, but let’s sound the sirens, just to get people off the beach and let them know something is going on.”

  “We will meet here again at midnight. I want a report on the status of preparations from each operational area. Let’s get to work.”

  Myriad conve
rsations broke out around the room. As I rose to leave, Commander Blaine put his hand on my shoulder.

  “You have my direct number. Call me if anything changes. This really worries me. I keep thinking about Wake. We’re no more above sea level than they were.”

  “I will be sure to let you know the minute I know anything, sir.”

  “You just couldn’t hold this off until after the change of command in July, huh?” he asked, smiling. “I’d be hunting and fishing back in Missouri by then.”

  7:15 PM – BASE HOUSING, KWAJALEIN

  I decided to check on my quarters before heading back out to the weather station to pull what would likely be an all-nighter. The sun had set, and the showers and thunderstorms had moved on, but just as I rounded the bend onto the road toward home, the siren cut through the air like a knife—three short bursts followed by a long burst. The siren normally sounded the “all clear,” which consisted of one long blast, every day at six p.m., except Sundays. Other than the all clear signals, the siren had been silent for our entire stay on the island up to that point. Given the unusual signal, hundreds of people were likely scrambling to find the section of their telephone books that would remind them what it meant.

  The thought reminded me of Kate. She had a photographic memory and certainly would have known what the siren meant without having to look it up. To most people, her memory was just a novelty—people loved testing her with trivial questions—but it also was a big part of her success as a lawyer. She could recite any case she had ever read, remember every legal technicality, and she never forgot a name, face, or a statement anybody made. In addition, she was also a great debater—a nearly insurmountable combination in a courtroom. But just because you are good at something, doesn’t mean you enjoy it.

  I met Kate on a dare in a bar two weeks before I graduated from college. My friends knew she was out of my league and bet me that I couldn’t get her number. With little money, no job, and no prospects, I marched over to her table in order to get it over with—so we could all have a good laugh about how pathetic I was and get back to drinking. My plan to win the bet was simple: I just told her about it. She told me that she admired honesty most, and that she’d play along and give me her number if I promised to actually call her. I realized at that moment that I had stumbled onto a great pickup strategy, but I never needed it again—I kept my end of the bargain by calling her, and we’ve been together ever since. And I won the bet.

  We dated for two years as I worked as a weekend meteorologist on a small local television station. On a whim, I applied for a job at RTS and got it. It was twice the money I was making on TV, and it was a chance to live in paradise. On another whim I proposed to Kate and asked her to come with me. Had she said no to either question, I would have refused the job offer—I already knew what I had in her.

  I nearly fell over when she said yes to both questions.

  I may be the only man in the history of the world who followed up an accepted marriage proposal from the woman of his dreams with the question: why? She made plenty of money, had lots of friends, was destined to be a superstar in her law firm, and I had never heard her utter a single complaint about her job. In retrospect, it was selfish of me to ask her to leave all that.

  But she answered me with only four words: “I hate my job.” She retired from law at the ripe old age of twenty-seven and has been happily married to me and raising our children ever since.

  I walked in the door and the first thing I did was call Kate. It went to voicemail, but it was after midnight on the west coast, so her not answering didn’t worry me. I didn’t leave a message; she’d see that I called and call me back in the morning.

  As I wandered around our quarters, I marveled at the immaculate condition in which Kate kept it. I realized there was little I could do to protect anything. Either the storm was going to destroy our quarters, or it wasn’t. I raised some of the more expensive electronics a little farther off the floor and then turned and walked out.

  12:00 AM, MONDAY, MAY 28TH – EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTER (EOC), KWAJALEIN, MIDNIGHT BRIEFING

  “Tropical Storm Ele has picked up speed and is now approximately 250 miles east-southeast of Kwaj,” I began my part of the briefing.

  “At this rate, I believe typhoon conditions are imminent at Kwajalein Atoll, starting in approximately eighteen hours. While Ele is strengthening faster than expected, I am watching an upper level trough coming down from the northwest which will increase shear and should help to limit the growth of the storm, if it gets here in time. Onset of 35 knot winds now looks to be within 12 hours.”

  All departments provided their status in turn, and preparations were moving along as expected. My mind, however, was focused on the doubt that I always lived with as a meteorologist. We got kicked around a lot, but most people understand how hard it is to predict the weather. The worst case scenario was that I was wrong, and Ele would continue her rapid intensification and explode into a killer that not only destroyed our paradise, but killed many people I knew. After all, the average elevation of our island was only eight feet, and there were no good places to hide.

  I looked around the table and thought about the people sitting there. Some were my friends, but they all depended on my forecast that day, whether they knew it or not. One woman tapped a pencil on her notepad as if annoyed by the whole thing. Another guy appeared to be preoccupied with something in his coffee cup. Most listened intently but without a sense of urgency. I wondered whether people appreciated the danger.

  I had considered every piece of available data and provided the best forecast I could. And I tried to instill in people a sense of the worst case scenario. But there is always a fine line between covering your ass and crying wolf too often. I had been wrong before, and I could be wrong now.

  Sometimes I hated my profession because uncertainty was my constant companion. I doubted engineers worried much about whether the equations they used to build bridges were correct. X amount of concrete and Y amount of rebar will support Z amount of traffic, and everyone lives happily ever after. I never enjoyed such certitude in my job. The problem with my job was chaos theory. The saying goes that a butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and sets off a chain of unpredictable, chaotic events that leads to a typhoon in China two weeks later. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but it illustrates a point: the weather is subject to so many interactions that range from chemical reactions on the atomic level (that cannot be adequately measured over the globe, much less modeled) to the physical forces of fluid dynamics acting over hundreds or thousands of miles, that a meteorological forecast is most accurately defined as little more than an educated guess. While forecasting continually improves through better methods of estimating that which we cannot explicitly model (we call this parameterization), given the unimaginable complexity of the system, we can still state virtually nothing with certainty. You might say meteorologists suffer from occupational confidence envy!

  I noticed some movement on the far side of the room. It looked like a cockroach crawling backward up the wall. Curious, I squinted my eyes to better focus on the object. Ants were carrying a dead cockroach up a wall toward a hole at the top. I wondered if they sensed the impending weather better than I did.

  The cockroach was many times bigger than all the ants combined, so the fact that they could transport it up a wall was remarkable enough, but their organization was what truly impressed me.

  Most of the ants were common laborers, but a couple of leaders scurried about communicating with the heavy lifters. When they got to the top, they spent a few minutes trying to get the bug turned into the hole. The leaders frantically circled the work party, shooting in and out of the hole and planning out each move, and communicated the plan to the workers. What they could not see was that the roach was too big to be turned into the hole. It had to go in straight, which would have required it to float in midair, a feat that even they could not engineer.

  I was so fascinated by the spectacle that
I didn’t hear another word of the briefing. When the meeting ended, I stood and walked over to the wall. How had they carried the roach up the wall? It seemed to me like the equivalent of a football team carrying a school bus up the side of the Empire State Building.

  Guilt overcame me and I pushed the roach into the hole myself. The ants scurried about frantically and then stopped in unison—as if to pay tribute to the invisible, incomprehensible, and apparently benevolent force—and then carried on through the hole. I imagined the day that God reached out and helped them bring home the grand feast as going down in ant lore, the story retold many generations later around little ant campfires.

  7:00 AM, KWAJALEIN

  After years on the island, I had developed a number of ways to gauge the wind without instruments: the sound it made in the palm trees, the amount of work required to ride my bike into the office, the violence with which the flags over the memorials flapped as I passed. All my senses told me the wind had increased overnight, but when I rounded the turn at the southeast end of the island and found the wind sock standing erect, I knew; it took twenty-five knots of wind to fully inflate it. The uncharacteristically dark sky to the east threatened rain, and with the rising sun obscured behind a gray overcast, the normally turquoise ocean churned black.

  Before jumping into the frying pan that would almost certainly cook me until the conclusion of this disaster, I decided to stop and clear my mind at my favorite place on the island: a little turnout near the edge of the golf course at the east end of the runway.

  The crumbling, overgrown old landscape reminded me of an ancient ruin. The entrance to the turnout was overgrown with plumeria, pandanus, and breadfruit trees, which during the rainy season, flooded the area with a sweet fragrance. A rock wall gently curved from the entrance toward the back with dense plumeria completing the enclosure on the opposite side. Other than some scattered trash and a fire pit near the rock wall, there was hardly any indication that anyone ever visited the place.