THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  Swenson’s eyes began to focus. She looked at Decker, a quizzical expression on her face. She put a hand around her jaw and started to move it back and forth, opening her mouth. “What did you say? Ouch! That hurts.”

  Decker smiled. “You heard me.” Then he winced and said, “You did, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “You said you’d love to fuck me, right?” she answered with a grin. “Ouch! Don’t make me smile. It hurts.”

  He laughed and squeezed her in his arms. “Only if we live. Now get off your ass and drive this thing.”

  Swenson unfastened her seatbelt and dropped into the pilot’s seat. “Where are those wire cutters?” she asked, cinching the seatbelt tight around her waist.

  Decker spotted them on the deck. He handed them to her.

  “Strap yourself in,” she said. “I don’t want to lose you too.”

  Decker sat down and fastened his seatbelt as tight as it would go.

  Swenson lifted the red cover on the emergency battery panel, cut the safety wire, placed the switch to the ON position, and flipped the switch on the dump panel. The ship lurched suddenly to port as the starboard manipulator fell away. Decker glimpsed it through the view port even though the outside lights no longer functioned. He could feel the DSV begin to rise.

  Swenson flipped three other switches. The ship shuddered and the emergency lights went out. Decker was momentarily disorientated. Swenson turned on her flashlight. “The batteries,” she said. “Don’t worry. We don’t need the co2 scrubber anymore. There’s enough oxygen in here to get us to the surface. At least I hope so.”

  The ship began to ascend more rapidly. “It’s going to be close,” she said, pointing at the computer screen. “Just one more thing to do.”

  She unfastened her safety belt and got down on her hands and knees. There was a small metal plate in the deck. “Hand me that T-wrench,” she said. “It’s over there, in the science rack. Hurry.” Water sprayed across her face.

  Decker unfastened his belt and brought her the wrench. “What are you doing?”

  “Ever watch Star Trek?”

  He nodded.

  “You know how they sometimes separate the saucer from the thrusters? Same thing. I’m going to release the sphere from the forebody assembly. That’ll make us about three thousand pounds more buoyant.” She lifted the plate in the deck and removed the pin at the top of the release shaft. Then she replaced the plate and locked it in place with screws from the underside of the plate screw holes. When it was tightly secured, she inserted the T-wrench into the socket. “Okay,” she said, climbing to her feet. “We’re going to have to secure everything in the sphere. Once I release the forebody assembly, we’re going to shoot up like a bubble toward the surface.”

  They began to stow their gear. Decker assumed the grisly task of lashing Speers into a seat. He had stopped bleeding. Decker closed the dead pilot’s eyes and turned his head away. Then he and Swenson sat down and buckled up.

  “Are you ready?” she asked him, looking over. Swenson had reassumed the pilot’s chair. All her anxiety and fear seemed to have dissipated. Her face was flushed now, her eyes shiny and alert. “We have less than a minute before we hit the wall.”

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  She reached out and curled her hand around the T-wrench. “We may pass out,” she said, looking up at him. Then she smiled. “And by the way,” she added, “I love you too.”

  She pulled the T-wrench suddenly, without waiting for a response. A second later Decker heard a tearing noise as the forebody assembly tumbled free. Then the sphere shot upwards, gliding only seven meters above the new lip of the Continental Shelf.

  The speed of the ascent forced the air out of his lungs. He felt as though he were in a rocket, with a one-ton weight pressed down upon his chest. His eyes stretched open, his mouth pulled down involuntarily, and suddenly the flames surrounded him again. They licked up through the tan upholstery, melting the plastic lining, engulfing the Chevy Biscayne. He was still trapped in back. He was still trapped. He reached out for the door, and suddenly he was standing on the ground, unharmed, and he was watching as the fire gradually consumed the car, his mother’s face, his father’s hair and ears and nose, and they were gone, and there was nothing he could do, but watch.

  There was a mighty crash, an eerie high-pitched whistle as Decker’s ears popped and he slipped into unconsciousness, reclining into chaos.

  Chapter 47

  Friday, February 4 – 6:42 AM

  The Western Atlantic Ocean

  The ocean rolled across herself. Black waves arose and fell, arose to meet another falling to another, falling to another still. The whitecaps skated on the surface. They heaved and lifted up and, suddenly, a mound of water bubbled up and boiled across the surface of the cold Atlantic.

  A few miles off the Jersey coast, the landslide had begun. The moving mass cascaded downward, barely missing the ascending DSV. It shivered along the groaning Continental Shelf, and fell and fell and fell, ripping up sand and stone, down toward the bottomless abyss.

  The water bulged, displaced by the falling landmass, began to rise and spread, to thrust the surface of the ocean skyward, a hundred meters in the air.

  The mega-tsunami rolled across the sea, due east across the vast expanse. And sliding west, still rushing from La Palma, the other wave drew near.

  They came together in a mighty splash that lifted spray into the clouds, a quarter of a mile above the surface of the sea. The walls of water flattened out against each other, blended and roiled into a liquid copulation, a reliquification, then bellowed with expended energy. They were one. The great wave crowned, and fell, tired of traveling. Spent. The water spread across the surface of the ocean, tickled by whitecaps. It coursed across the sea, shedding yet more kinetic energy. Then it reverberated westward once again.

  The wave descended on the Stanfield as she turned her bow into the wall of water, as she bounced and heaved and rose up through the turbulence, and sluiced ahead unharmed. The wave passed by.

  It ran ashore in Canada, then northern Maine. Almost immediately, the Boston harbor drained, then filled again, as the wave collided with the coast. It coursed along the rocky shore, rolled south-southwest, eating up trees and houses, tearing up river mouths, demolishing roads and bridges, entire seaside towns. The skeptical who had remained behind, ignoring the orders of the National Guard, were pulverized, dismembered as they tried to flee.

  Within a half hour, the waters began to recede from Fire Island and the entire eastern shoreline of Long Island. It was as if someone has pulled a giant stopper from the bottom of the sea. Then the wave came into view – two stories high.

  It washed across the lowlands of Long Island. It cut a swath across both Queens and Brooklyn, swept up the Verrazano Narrows, past Staten Island, past Governor’s Island and up onto the Battery. Lower Manhattan was inundated as the wave diverged along the East and Hudson Rivers. Cars bounced like corks along the empty streets of the Financial District, up Broadway past Grace Church, past Midtown, Central Park, to Harlem and beyond.

  A few small buildings fell apart. Ellis Island vanished. So too the Statue of Liberty, from the legs down. Her torso, head and torch remained above the sea. As the wave finally struck the Jersey coast and drove across the land, as it funneled up the Hudson River, the Statue reappeared completely.

  She shook, she seemed to stumble, but she did not fall.

  Chapter 48

  Friday, February 4 – 6:58 AM

  The Western Atlantic Ocean

  The Alvin bobbed to the surface some fifty kilometers off the coast in open water. It was dawn. The sun drifted on the pink horizon to the east. The vessel issued a groan for solace as she floated free.

  Inside the DSV, the VHF radio cawed. “Surface Controller to Alvin. Alvin, come in please. Alvin, come in.”

  The bodies did not stir. Speers, Decker and Swenson remained within their seats, completely motionless. Lifeless.

 
“Alvin, this is Surface Controller, do you read me?” Suddenly the voice changed as Warhaftig snatched the radio. “For God’s sake, Decker, are you there? Are you alright?”

  Decker began to stir. His head rolled to the side. He opened his eyes and shook himself to consciousness. He reached out for the radio. “This is Alvin,” he said groggily. “Go ahead, Surface Controller.”

  “Thank heavens. Is everything OK?”

  Decker looked around him. Swenson was beginning to awaken. Her eyes were fluttering. Her eyelashes moved like butterflies.

  “Speers didn’t make it,” Decker said. “But Emily and I are okay. What about the rest of the world?”

  “It worked, John! Some destruction, of course, but loss of life in the States was minimal – nothing like we feared. Thanks to you two. We’ve had hurricanes that caused more damage. The Caribbean islands took a hit though. So did Brazil. We’re about seven miles east of you. We’ll be there in a few minutes to pick you up. Sorry to hear about Speers.”

  Decker looked over at the dead pilot. “He saved our lives, Otto. We never would have made it without him.”

  “Listen, I have the President on the line. He wants to congratulate you personally. You and Emily are heroes. Once Manhattan drains, I’m sure they’re going to want to throw you a ticker tape parade. Can you hear me, John? John, I’m going to put the President through now. Just hold on and–”

  Decker turned the radio off. He unfastened his seatbelt and helped Emily to her feet. Then he climbed up the ladder and opened the hatch. The submersible was suddenly filled with cold air. It was salty and wet and delicious. He stared out at the tranquil sea, to the east, as the sun rolled on the shimmering horizon.

  The case was over, he thought. In all probability, El Aqrab was dead. The world was safe. At least for now. And suddenly he remembered what Hassan had told him with such uncanny prescience: One day – mark my words – if this quicksand isn’t filled, if we Americans don’t at least address the Palestinian problem even-handedly, the extremists throughout the Arab world will rise up like a great wave, and it will kill us all. It almost had.

  Swenson climbed up and stood beside him. He glanced down at her, smiled, and took her in his arms. The dawn glowed pink and lavender and bronze as intermittent light rays played upon the surface of the waves. “Red sky in the morning,” he began.

  Swenson leaned a little closer. “Sailor, take warning,” she said, and they folded together in a kiss.

  THE END

  A Note About This Book

  While THE WAVE may be a work of fiction, the science concerning mega-tsunamis presented in this novel is very much based in fact.

  As Emily Swenson says about the inevitability of the fall of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma, “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Agent Decker. It’s not about likelihood. It’s a certainty. The only variable is time.”

  At some point in the future, the island will come apart and a mega-tsunami will stream across the Atlantic at the speed of a jet plane, obliterating the entire Easter Seaboard of the United States, killing more than forty million people, thirteen percent of the U.S. population. And hundreds of millions will be injured, one out of every three Americans. It will cause trillions of dollars in damage. The entire U.S. economy will be disrupted for years, if not permanently crippled.

  This is not speculation. This is a fact, made more horrible when you consider these estimates are based on today’s population figures and currency evaluations. It may happen in one thousand years, or it may happen tomorrow . . . but it will occur.

  As our natural world is increasingly influenced by Man – through global warming, pollution and overpopulation – it is not inconceivable that someone, at some point, will intentionally disrupt our planet on a monumental scale. Indeed, one could claim global warming is a form of eco-terrorism, since most scientists are well aware of the consequences of co2 emissions, and yet we continue to burn fossil fuels with abandon.

  THE WAVE may be a work of fiction. But it is not beyond the realm of possibility.

  J.G. Sandom

  About the Author

  Born in Chicago, raised and educated throughout Europe, and a graduate of Amherst College (where he won the Academy of American Poets Prize), J.G. Sandom founded the nation’s first digital ad agency (Einstein and Sandom Interactive – EASI) in 1984, before launching an award-wining writing career.

  The author has written six thrillers and mysteries including The God Machine, Gospel Truths, and The Hunting Club, plus three young adult novels under the pseudonym T.K. Welsh, including The Unresolved and Resurrection Men. He is currently working on a sequel to THE WAVE called THE PLAGUE.

  Visit the author at www.jgsandom.com.

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  COMING SOON!

  An excerpt from . . .

  THE PLAGUE

  A John Decker Thriller

  Prologue

  Friday, December 13

  I am what I dream, what I’ve done, what I’ve seen, what I choose to remember. What I choose to forget. I choose. I . . . came home early that afternoon, around 4:00 PM, after a hard day at the office. The day that I realized. Traffic was light going north from the Farm, for a change, and I made all the lights on Dorado. Another perfect sunset, I thought, I remember, as I rolled down the window. Breathing sagebrush, I thought that the sky looked a lot like a national flag, striped with purple and orange and pink. It was hot for December.

  I left the car in the driveway because my three year old daughter had built some kind of castle from boxes and blankets inside the garage. I could see her now. She was playing in the sprinkler at the edge of the yard, dressed in a neon-lime bathing suit. She laughed and looked up at me, waving. I waved back. That, I remember. I had my briefcase in one hand, with all of its secrets, and I lifted the other, and waved.

  My wife was waiting for me in the kitchen. She was wearing that apron with the pair of bosc pears on the front, baking cookies or bread, but she turned toward me anyway and gave me a peck on the cheek. “How was your day?” she said, twisting back to the stove.

  I told her about the Indian house cr
ickets I’d heard chirping in the stand of Huisache trees down the street. When she didn’t say anything, I went down the hall to our bedroom. I took off my jacket and tie, and I wept.

  All that I’d come to believe, all that I was, and still am, came apart in my hands then – like my tie. All simply unraveled. I put my jacket back on. I needed the jacket to hide it.

  I hurried outside, to the back yard, to breathe. Mr. Billings was mowing his lawn down the street. He mows it every three days, no matter what time of year. It didn’t seem right for him to be mowing his lawn with all of those holiday decorations behind him. The blow-up reindeer and sled. The Santa tied to the chimney. He had bound up each bush in his garden with Christmas lights. He would have wrapped up the tumbleweeds too if he could have caught them.

  I’d just reclined on a sling garden lounge chair when my wife came outside with a tray of iced tea. Under her apron, she was wearing a pair of tan stirrup pants, and a dark indigo shirt, no – iron blue, like her eyes. Her eyes.

  She stood over me, smiled, and gave me a glass. I could hear the sprinkler splash-splashing, and my daughter laughing nearby. I could hear those damned Indian house crickets. I could hear Mr. Billings still mowing his lawn. Still mowing, but something was wrong. I could feel it.

  I took a sip of my tea. I looked up at my wife, at her honey blond hair, her waxed eyebrows, her nose, and her perfect pink lips. I looked into her eyes. Everything was wrong.