Shannon sprang to her feet and then crouched to balance herself on the pitch of the roof while she waited for Donovan.
Donovan stood to his full height and took a second to scan the roof. The path they needed to take traversed multiple peaks that rose from the roof of the complex. From this height, he could see large clusters of flames devouring entire sections of Pacific Grove, and not far away, a full city block roared as it burned. Beyond, fires dotted the entire horizon, and on the other side of the initial flames was nothing but dense smoke. Standing on one of the remaining high spots on Cannery Row, Donovan had no idea how they were going to escape, let alone reach William. He looked out over the ocean and spotted the Buckley. The white-and-red ship vanished, which told him they were still fighting swells and that more surges were inbound.
“Which way?” Shannon asked.
“We’ll work our way to the smokestacks.” Donovan pointed in the direction he had in mind. “That will take us as far away from the beach as possible. Then we’ll have to think about getting down to ground level.”
“I’m right behind you,” Shannon said.
Donovan kept his eyes on his footing as he began to jog up one slope and then down the other side. They quickly reached the section where three smokestacks rose up from below. He climbed onto the next level of roofing, turned, and helped Shannon do the same, and then he moved quickly along the peak, using his outstretched arms for balance. Another small climb put them on their last leg across the roof of the aquarium.
“The tree next to the building. It’s perfect,” Shannon said as she stopped next to Donovan. “And look, I think the water is starting to recede.”
Donovan was counting on the fact that the terrain rose fairly fast in this section of Pacific Grove. Three blocks inland the inertia of the first wave had stopped, leaving a clearly defined boundary of debris to mark the maximum surge point before the water surrendered to gravity. What Shannon was seeing was the beginning of the flow back downhill into the ocean. Directly below them, brown water still swirled at or near the tops of the stalled and abandoned cars.
“How do we do this?” Shannon asked. “What if we use the roofs of the cars as a sidewalk of sorts? Look, we could get all the way to the next block before we had to swim.”
Donovan traced the route she’d described, but as he did, the retreating water dislodged one of the mostly submerged vehicles, which slammed it into another car and started a chain of minor collisions dissolving any plans of immediate escape. “We need to sit here a little longer and let the water level drop. If we try to make it up the hill to dry land right now, we’ll run into the same panicked mob as before.” Donovan could hear a distant combination of yelling, screaming, and car horns. The chaos was every bit as deadly as a tsunami.
“What if the next wave comes and we’re still up here? Can the building absorb a second pounding?”
“I don’t know, but I’d rather be up here than down there,” Donovan said, and realized it was a bit ironic that he was preaching the art of patience.
“What are the chances Janie shows up in the helicopter to rescue us?”
“Virtually zero,” Donovan said, keeping his eye on the diminishing water level. “The Gulfstream most certainly diverted out of this mess. With no way for Janie to know exactly where any of us are, it would have been too dangerous for her to fly into the heart of the meteor storm hoping to spot us. I’m sure she diverted somewhere safe as well.”
“So, no helicopter?”
“It’s just you and me.”
“Okay, Buck told me once you were pretty capable, for a civilian.”
“I hope he’s right. What else did he say?”
“That he wasn’t sure who was more impatient, you or me.”
“That’s not really a compliment to either one of us,” Donovan said.
“At least we won’t sit around wringing our hands.”
“Probably not,” Donovan said as he glanced at the water level again, startled by how quickly the street looked to be draining. “It’s time to go, but we need to be cautious. I can still hear some stragglers out there, but from what it sounds like, people are making their way toward downtown Monterey. We need to get to Pebble Beach, which is in the opposite direction, so it’ll be unlikely we have to deal with anyone at this point.”
Shannon was the first to step from the metal roof to a thick branch of the tree. From there she descended quickly until she was only a few feet above the dark water. Donovan eased himself down and stopped one branch above her and pushed away the leaves until he could see the trailing edge of the water rushing toward them. From wading in streams while fly fishing, he knew the power of moving water against a stationary object. He eyed a car he had a clean look at, and when the water finally dipped below the axle, he called out for Shannon to go. He climbed down after her into the cold water and slogged away from the tree.
Taking powerful strides, Donovan moved uphill through the torrent, with Shannon following, her hand gripping the back of his jacket. Using the surrounding buildings as breakwaters, they moved out of the fastest water and began to walk perpendicular to the flow until reaching a pedestrian walkway. They went up a flight of steps that acted like a miniature waterfall, and finally reached water’s edge. Donovan got his bearings, and they turned left and began to run toward the garage where they’d parked their car. The entrance was open, and as they rounded the corner onto the main level of the structure, they stopped.
“Oh dear God,” Shannon said.
Donovan, too, was shocked at the devastation. The tsunami had powered in through openings on the seaward side of the building and mangled cars into unrecognizable chunks of metal. He maneuvered toward the valet window and found the door and glass broken. The body of one of the uniformed attendants was facedown in the dirty water.
“What happened?” Shannon said as she waded toward the board where the valet hung the keys. “It’s almost empty, but there are still cars here.”
“My guess is people panicked before the wave hit. They grabbed keys and started pushing buttons; the first car that lit up, they took and fled.”
Shannon felt around on the floor and from under the dirty water pulled up several key rings. None of them belonged to the SUV Donovan had rented. “I guess we could try the same thing. Go up one level and see if we get lucky.”
Donovan cocked his head as a new sound rose above the noise from dripping water. It was a dull roar and it was getting louder. “Shannon, there’s another wave coming! Run!”
They burst out of the darkened garage, Donovan crossed the street, and moving as fast as they could, raced toward higher ground. A second wall of debris climbed the terrain behind them. Straight ahead was a two-story brick building and on the side was a metal fire escape. Donovan kept his legs pumping, though his lungs burned, as he leaped onto the trunk of a parked car. He stopped for a moment to make sure Shannon made the jump as well, and then he took two steps, leaped into space, and seized the bottom rung of the ladder. It didn’t budge. Hanging by the crook of his arm, he turned and motioned Shannon to follow. She took one step backward, then charged forward and flung herself toward him. Donovan caught her and pulled her into him just as the car beneath them was swept away by the thunderous surge.
CHAPTER FIVE
JANIE FLEW NORTHWARD and navigated inland, away from the coast and the carnage created by the tsunami. Lauren opened her eyes at the turn, silently thanked Janie, then lowered her head again. The scope of events seemed beyond comprehension. The scientific part of her brain fully understood that planetary bodies have been impacting and shaping the Earth for millions of years. Now here she was, at ground zero of perhaps the biggest Earth-altering event in centuries. All around her, people were hurt and dying. Her horror and revulsion began to grow—as did her fear. She placed her hand on Rick’s wrist and tried to rein in her thoughts and narrow her focus by concentrating on his pulse, one beat at a time, willing the young man to survive.
The fact th
at she didn’t know Donovan’s location nearly gutted her. Was he at the aquarium, the hotel, with William, or any one of a hundred places in between? Days earlier, as he’d explained his itinerary to her, she’d been half-listening as she helped Abigail pack for Grandma’s house. As the founder of Eco-Watch, Donovan had flown out early with William, who was the chairman of the board, to tend to the details for the Buckley handover ceremony. William was going to meet with an Eco-Watch donor, and at some point, Buck’s former girlfriend Shannon was to arrive, and after everything was set for the reception, they were all going to meet at the airport. The reality that she didn’t even know where to begin searching for her husband made her nauseous. Lauren’s anxiety increased when she realized it was early enough on the East Coast for Abigail to be aware of what was happening in Monterey. Lauren would call as soon as possible, though at the moment, she had no idea what she’d tell their daughter.
Lauren felt someone touch her arm. She opened her eyes and realized that her thoughts of Donovan and Abigail had drawn tears. Montero had reached out to comfort her.
“Are you okay?” Montero asked.
Lauren nodded that she was, though she knew she was far from it, but there was nothing Montero, or anyone else, could do for her right now. She was touched by Montero’s gesture. After Buck’s death, Donovan had hired former FBI agent Montero to take his place as Director of Security. While Montero wasn’t the highly trained soldier Buck had been, on more than one occasion, Lauren had seen Montero take the advantage because no one expects the biggest threat in a situation to be the attractive woman suddenly holding a Glock. Montero was exceedingly attractive yet downplayed her looks. She’d dyed her blond hair black, and rarely smiled in an effort not to stand out while she was working. Lauren had wondered if this weekend, with the emphasis on Buck, would be difficult for Montero.
“Due to other inbound medevac flights, we’re being instructed to fly to the Stanford Medical Center,” Janie reported. “ETA is six minutes. We’ll be met at the helipad, but we’ll have to vacate immediately, as they expect other medevac choppers.”
“Michael, you need to get off here with Rick,” Montero said. “Get looked at by a doctor.”
“Janie,” Lauren said. “Can we drop Rick and Michael, and then fly straight back to the Monterey airport? Maybe Donovan and the others are there by now.”
“I’ve already tried to get permission. Air Traffic Control shut me down. As of a few minutes ago, everything west of the Mississippi River is a no-fly zone. All aircraft are grounded, except recognized emergency response flights, Cal Fire aircraft, or certified medevac helicopters. We don’t fall into any of those categories. They gave us two options: We can land at an airport in the Bay Area until the situation changes, or if we want, they’ll give us a special clearance out to the Buckley.”
“That’s crazy.” Michael sounded both angry and upset. “We’ve got a perfectly good helicopter and are willing to help, and they ground us? I say we do whatever we want. We’ll say we’re sorry later.”
Lauren silently commended Michael’s outburst. “I suggest we go to the San Jose airport and regroup. I need to talk to Calvin at the Defense Intelligence Agency and get a grip on the scope of what’s happening. Maybe I can pull some strings through Washington, DC, channels and get us permission to fly.”
“What do you mean happening?” Montero asked Lauren. “Hasn’t it all happened?”
“I doubt it.” Lauren shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about what I saw earlier from the Gulfstream. There were all these different objects entering the Earth’s atmosphere at different angles. There’s a theory called the Kessler Effect that deals with the sheer numbers of satellites and other pieces of space junk in low Earth orbit. I think the meteor collided with man-made objects, which in turn broke up the meteor, and introduced wild variations in the reentry profiles of every object involved. We’ve seen the worst, but debris is still up there with deteriorating orbits.”
“So, there could be more space junk coming down?” Michael asked. “Stuff that hasn’t entered the atmosphere yet?”
“If I’m right, then yes,” Lauren said. “At last count, there were roughly twenty-three thousand objects in orbit. Some as small as two inches with very little weight, all the way up to the nine-hundred twenty-five-thousand-pound International Space Station. If any of the objects have their trajectories compromised, it’s only a matter of time before orbital decay brings them down.”
Janie descended and swung the helicopter around to face into the prevailing wind as she prepared to land. Lauren could see people on the ground waiting to whisk Rick inside. The second the skids touched, Michael slid open the door, and medical personnel swarmed around Rick and quickly transferred him to their gurney.
Michael hugged Lauren and said, “I’ll be in touch. Go find them.” Then he jumped out and closed the door.
Janie waited until everyone was clear before she lifted the helicopter into the sky, banked to the east, and set a course for the San Jose airport.
As Lauren looked off to her right, at the way they’d just come, she was stunned. The sun, moving lower toward the horizon, cast an eerie orange hue against an enormous curtain of smoke in the distance. She knew that Monterey was a little over fifty miles away, but all she could see in that direction was smoke. After all the damage she’d witnessed, there was only one agonizing question. Were her husband and any of the other people she cared about still alive?
Five minutes later, Janie slowed the helicopter and made a straight-in approach to the private aircraft area at the San Jose Airport. Janie followed the hand signals of the Pacific Jet Center ground personnel as she guided the 412 to a landing spot at the outer edge of the ramp.
Lauren felt the bump that told her they were on the ground. Montero opened the helicopter’s side door and jumped to the ground. Lauren fell in behind her as they ducked and headed toward the entrance of the Jet Center. All around them were dozens of parked corporate jets, yet the only noise or movement was from the Eco-Watch helicopter. She stopped and scanned the terminal. The gates were all full, and the outer portions of the ramp were stacked with stationary airliners. Everything had been grounded—no airplanes were taking off or landing. It reminded her of the hours after 9/11.
CHAPTER SIX
“DO YOU HAVE a good grip on the ladder?” Donovan called to Shannon as their feet dangled just above the rushing water.
“Yes! But I need to go higher.”
“Can you get around me?” Donovan said.
Shannon got a foot firmly on the bottom rung and climbed upward.
Donovan pulled himself up after her, his breathing coming in labored gasps, a sharp pain radiating in his side. Above him, Shannon crouched on a small second-floor landing, trying to open the window.
“Turn away,” Donovan said as he joined her. He pulled off his left shoe, and used the heel to shatter the glass. After clearing the shards from the frame, he slid his shoe back on and eased inside the opening. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he understood they’d broken into what looked like a storage room. He helped Shannon inside, and they walked across a creaking wood floor. Once through the door, there was a long hallway that led to a stairwell down to the main level. They descended halfway into what turned out to be a partially flooded tavern.
Shannon pointed toward the door that led outside. “It looks as if the water has already started to recede.”
“We’re further up the hill and there’s more slope, so the runoff would be quicker,” Donovan said. “I’m going to wade over to the bar and get close enough to the windows to see what’s happening outside.”
“I’m right behind you.” Shannon put her hand on his shoulder as they carefully moved down the remaining steps.
The cold water came up just short of his waist, an uncomfortable reminder that the Pacific Ocean temperature this time of year was somewhere in the mid-fifties. Donovan pushed away floating wooden chairs and headed toward the bar. When he reached
the sturdy structure, he flexed his knees, pushed off, and turned until he sat on the edge. Shannon did the same, and then quickly stood to get her legs out of the water. She stomped her feet to coax back the circulation.
Donovan stood as well and found there was just enough headroom to move around, though he had to navigate around the light fixtures. Walking on the bar toward the front of the establishment, they’d get a better view outside. Out the window, he saw water coursing back down the incline toward the sea. Across the street, several doors down, three buildings were on fire, flames licking out the windows and black smoke twisting and billowing into the sky.
“What now?” Shannon asked.
“We need to find a car and figure out a way to get to Pebble Beach. I need to make sure William made it out, because if he didn’t, he’s still there.”
“How far away are we talking?”
“On a normal day, no more than a twenty-minute drive. Today, who knows?”
“Then what?”
“We get someplace safe, wherever that might be, and eventually make contact with the outside world. At some point in the near future, we arrive on board the Buckley.”
“Wow, you sure made that sound easy,” Shannon said. “Are you kidding? Has it struck you as odd that there’s a major fire burning outside, and there’s not a single siren sounding in the distance other than that incessant tsunami warning? I mean, the tsunami has hit twice, I think they can turn the damn thing off now! Where are the police, the fire department, the National Guard? There are dead people floating in the street. Don’t you think there should be someone doing something about that? Have you seen a single cop since all of this started? Have you?”
“Feel better?” Donovan asked when she paused to take a breath. He knew all about the effects of stress and adrenaline. Shannon needed to vent, get it out, for her sake.
Speed the Dawn Page 4