“I know,” she said. “We all watched it collapse. None of us wants to stay here longer than we have to.”
“I’m so glad to hear your voice, honey.”
“Me too. I’ll radio back after I get Reggie.”
Kai had fallen behind the others as he talked to Rachel, so he sped up until he caught up to them on the twentieth floor. He filled them in as they continued trudging up the stairs.
When Kai opened the door to the roof, he expected to see another empty expanse of concrete, devoid of people. Instead, a couple stood at the edge of the roof, looking up at the sky. When the door banged into the wall, they turned. The woman, dressed in a stylish gray jogging suit, looked like someone in her forties who hoped that cosmetic surgery would keep her in her thirties. Her oversized breasts strained against her top, and her forehead showed the unmistakable rigidity of frequent Botox injections.
The man with her wore a shiny silk shirt and Italian slacks, more expensive than tasteful. His curly hair was too jet-black for his age, and he had the wiry build of a fitness buff. He strode over to Kai, pulling a rolling carryon suitcase behind him.
Kai smiled and said, “We’re glad to see that we’re not the only ones—”
The man interrupted him. “We were here first.”
Kai’s smile faltered. “What?”
“Are you deaf? I said, we were here first.”
Brad stopped next to Kai. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Brad said.
“It means that any helicopter that lands here is ours. You can ride along if there’s room.”
“Are you serious?” Teresa said. “Don’t even think about getting on a helicopter before these girls do.”
“They have kids, for God’s sake,” the woman said. “Be human for once.”
The man looked at Mia and Lani and then grudgingly said, “The girls can go first. Then us.”
Brad jabbed his thumb at the man. “Who is this guy?” he said to Kai.
“Chuck is my soon-to-be ex-husband,” the woman said with venom. “We were out shopping when we heard about the tsunami warning. Genius here thought we had all the time in the world to come back to the apartment and get into his safe—”
“Denise,” Chuck said with a warning tone.
“—a safe I didn’t even know we had—”
“Don’t tell them about that.”
Brad pointed at the suitcase. “So, Chuck, what’s with the luggage?”
Chuck paused and narrowed his eyes at Denise. “It’s important papers,” he said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll tell you what’s in it,” Denise said, happy to sell Chuck out. “His collection of signed baseballs is in there. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle. Must be dozens of them. But that’s not all he had in that safe. When he was getting the baseballs out, he dropped some photos. Photos of him and his girlfriend.”
“I wish I was stuck here with her instead of you,” Chuck spat at Denise. He pointed at Kai. “And remember, we were here first.”
Kai had heard enough. He showed the walkie-talkie to Chuck.
“Guess what, Chuck,” he said. “I have a radio. If we get a helicopter, you are welcome to come along with us if there is room. Now excuse me while I try to get our butts rescued.”
Kai nodded to the others to follow him and walked to the edge of the roof to get as far from Chuck as he could. He pressed the walkie-talkie’s Talk button.
“To anyone who can hear this, we are trapped on the roof of a building in Waikiki …”
Reggie Pona had already tried calling Brad’s cell phone nine times, with no success. He left several messages to call, but he didn’t really think that they were still alive to get them. The helicopter—the same one he had sent for Kai the first time—had done a fly-by thirty minutes later and reported that the building had completely collapsed. There was no chance that anyone inside had survived.
The devastation across the Hawaiian Islands so far had been unbelievable, even to those like Reggie who had seen the effects of the Asian tsunami firsthand. He had taken a trip to Thailand and Indonesia two weeks after the tsunami to help document the destruction, so that the PTWC would know what to expect if it ever happened in Hawaii.
The construction in South Asia was not up to the standards in the United States. Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, had been wiped off the map, and the majority of the deaths occurred in that area. The only building still standing after the tsunami was a sturdy white stone mosque. Previously it had stood among hundreds of shops, businesses, and homes; after the tsunami, it rose alone from a plain of mud and fractured wood.
In Hawaii, buildings near the ocean were primarily hotels and other structures made of concrete and steel. Many of them withstood the first and second tsunamis, a testament to the solidity of their designs. But a great number had already been swept away or fallen when their foundations were undermined by the water, and any buildings made of flimsier materials no longer existed. Pictures and video from Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai now unspooling on the major networks showed miles and miles of shoreline blasted free of the monuments of man, as if God’s own eraser had rubbed them out.
Hilo, on the Big Island, had endured two tsunamis in the twentieth century, events that sparked the creation of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The awful pictures from those earlier disasters looked quaint compared to what Reggie saw now. Little was left of that small city, despite being located on the east side of the island, out of the direct path of the tsunami. The wave had wrapped around Hawaii, capturing the island in a deadly embrace.
Lahaina was the Maui beach town best known as the place to see the humpback whales that came to breed each year. The pictures from a helicopter were labeled lahaina, but Reggie couldn’t make out anything familiar, and he had been there at least seven times on vacation. The only things left to signify that there might have actually been a town were the outlines of concrete foundations poking out of the scoured sand.
And then there was Oahu, home to 80 percent of the state’s population. The current CBS feed from a helicopter hovering near Waikiki showed the devastation in stark clarity. Reggie could barely recognize some parts of the city. Honolulu was the most crowded part of the island; combining residents and tourists, some areas of Waikiki had a population density rivaling that of Hong Kong and Manhattan. Over the years, the suburbs had stretched around the shoreline in both directions, so that there was virtually no uninhabited land along the southern coast.
Hundreds of thousands had heeded the warnings and evacuated to high land all along the coast. Frightened masses hunkered on the sides of Diamond Head and inside the protected crater itself. The mountains were lined with people. So many had retreated to the confines of the Punchbowl National Cemetery that no room was left for helicopters to unload the people they rescued from skyscrapers, remote beaches, and overturned sea vessels.
Tripler Army Medical Center was filled to the brim with evacuees from other hospitals on lower ground. It received one helicopter after another dropping off the injured, a makeshift triage station set up on the grass next to the parking lot.
With little safe flat ground left, most of those rescued by helicopter were taken to Wheeler Field, a ten-minute round trip from Waikiki, not including the time it took to get people loaded and unloaded. It was possible Kai and the others had been picked up by another chopper and been deposited there. Possible, Reggie knew, but not likely. He had practically given up when he heard about the collapsed building.
Reggie’s cell phone rang. He forced his eyes away from the TV and looked at the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number; it had a California area code. He flipped the phone open.
“Hello?”
He was shocked to hear the voice on the line.
“Reggie, it’s Rachel.”
“Rachel!” he shouted. When he saw others in the office staring, he brought his voice back to normal. “Thank God you’re all right. Kai was …” Reggie hesitated, not knowing how to tell her.
“I’m not sure, but—”
“Kai’s fine.”
“He is? I mean, that’s fantastic—”
“We’re all in trouble. We’re still in Waikiki.”
“You’re together? Where?”
“No. I’m on the roof of the Grand Hawaiian. He’s on the roof of a white building about a mile northeast of me. I can reach him by walkie-talkie. We need a helicopter. We don’t have time to run away on foot, and both buildings are shaky. I don’t know if they’ll stand up to the next tsunami.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get something to you. What’s the name of the building Kai’s in?”
“He doesn’t know what the cross streets are or what the building is called, but he said there’s a boat sticking out of the tenth floor.”
“God, I saw that on some news footage a few minutes ago. I’ll find out where it is.”
“Please hurry. We’ve only got a few minutes until the last tsunami, right?”
“I’ll hurry. But Rachel, the next tsunami isn’t the last one.”
“What?”
“I got word from Alaska about twenty minutes ago. Tell Kai the last tsunami will arrive at 12:37, and it’s going to be three hundred feet high.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Rachel? Are you there?”
“Just get someone here now, Reggie.”
She hung up.
Reggie left the office to find Colonel Johnson. He was on his cell phone in the next room. He snapped it shut as Reggie approached.
“Colonel, I need your helicopter again.”
“Mr. Pona,” Johnson said, coming around his desk and putting on his jacket as if he were getting ready to leave. “I’m sorry about your friend, but the building is gone. There are other people to evacuate—”
“He’s alive. I just got word.”
Johnson stopped. “What? Where?”
“Waikiki.”
He shook his head. “Mr. Pona, I can’t—”
“Look, if it weren’t for him, none of us would be standing here right now. You, me, your family, for God’s sake. We’d all be dead.”
“It’s not that. That chopper is on the other side of Oahu. It’ll take at least fifteen minutes to get back to Wheeler and unload.”
“Damn!”
“Do you have that kind of time?”
“No. Don’t you have anything else?”
“Look, I’ll send out an alert, but I can’t promise anything. It’s absolute chaos out there. Most of the choppers are running low on gas, and Wheeler is overloaded trying to refuel them all.” When he saw the pleading look on Reggie’s face, Johnson said, “I’ll see what I can do. But you might want to find another option.”
“Thanks,” Reggie said, looking around for ideas. He wasn’t going to give up now that he actually had a chance to save them. Who besides the military would have access to a helicopter? Then he glanced through the office window and saw his solution. He ran outside.
Lara Pimalo, the CBS reporter who had broadcast from the PTWC, was just outside the building where Reggie had his temporary office. As thanks for evacuating him, Reggie had let Pimalo and her cameraman ride in the Humvee to Wheeler after they had abandoned the station’s truck.
She looked like she had just wrapped up a report and was holding her microphone lazily at her side, but when she saw Reggie she gestured to the cameraman to start rolling. Reggie put up his hands to stop her.
“I’m not here to be interviewed,” he said. “I need something.”
“You need something from me?”
“You have a CBS helicopter over Waikiki.”
“Well, we rented it from a sightseeing company. Cost a mint too.”
“Kai Tanaka is stranded on top of a building in Waikiki. Do you know the reporter in that helicopter?”
“There’s no reporter in it, just a camerawoman.”
“Kai found his wife and daughter.” Reggie had told her about Lani and Rachel on their ride to Wheeler.
“They’re all alive? That’s incredible.”
“But now they’re stranded, and the military won’t give me another helicopter.”
“I don’t know if I have that much pull.”
“He gave your station something no one else had. And now he has one of the best stories to tell the world about this disaster.”
Pimalo exchanged glances with her cameraman. Reggie saw the hesitation, but he knew the phrase that would push her buttons.
“Ms. Pimalo,” Reggie said, “how would your network like another exclusive?”
FORTY-EIGHT
12:12 p.m.
Third Wave
A few minutes after Rachel hung up with Reggie, a helicopter that had been flying along the coast angled over. “Your friend is fast,” Paige said to Rachel. Rachel was surprised and impressed at Reggie’s feat. The sightseeing chopper, one of the AStars popular with the tourists in her hotel, had Wailea Tours painted on the tail. It set down on the Grand Hawaiian roof, and Paige and Rachel ran over. Next to the pilot sat a fit woman who aimed a professional video camera at them. Rachel knew she looked bedraggled after her swim in the elevator shaft, but she didn’t care what the camerawoman shot as long as the helicopter took them off the building.
“Are we glad to see you!” Rachel said. “Reggie must have gotten through to you.”
“They did say something about a Reggie,” the pilot said. “The station that hired me called to tell me to pick you up. You’re lucky. I was about to head over to Portlock when we got the call about you. Hop in.”
“Wait. There’s more of us.”
“How many more?”
“Five, including three kids.” Rachel looked at the helicopter’s cramped interior. “One of the adults is pretty heavy.”
“That would make ten altogether.”
“Can you get us all in?”
“This is only a seven-person chopper, including me. I might be able to squeeze more than that in, but one or two of you will have to stay behind.”
Rachel didn’t like the sound of that, but she guessed that he was being conservative. They’d deal with that when they were all on the roof.
“Fine,” she said.
The pilot looked around the empty rooftop. “Where are they?”
“We need you to come with us.”
“What? Where?”
“A man is injured. We can’t carry him up on our own.”
“Are you kidding?”
“What do you think?” Rachel said, wringing out the tail of her coat for effect.
“I can’t leave the helicopter here.”
“What about you?” Rachel said, pointing at the sinewy camerawoman. “He’s too heavy for three of us to lift. He’s unconscious. With four of us, it’ll only take a few minutes.”
Up to this point, the camerawoman had been silent.
“Hey, I’m not a medic,” she said. “I’m supposed to be filming.”
“We just need help carrying him.”
The camerawoman turned to the pilot. “Nobody said anything about leaving the chopper when we got the call.”
“Please,” Rachel said. “He’ll die.”
“Do you know how many people have died already today?”
“Do you want there to be one more?” Rachel pointed at the ocean, already receding from shore. “We don’t have much time.”
The camerawoman paused, and then sighed and put the camera down on the seat.
“I better get some good shots out of this. Where is he?”
“Thank you. He’s this way.”
Rachel led her down the stairs.
As they walked, she called Kai back to tell him what Reggie had said about the three-hundred-foot wave that was heading their way and that he had sent a helicopter for them.
“Are you boarding the chopper?” Kai said.
“No, we’ve got an injured man here. I asked someone to help us get him to the roof.”
“Who are you talking to?” the camerawo
man asked.
“My husband. He’s on top of another building.”
“We don’t have room to take all of you, let alone another group.”
“I know. Are there more choppers coming?”
The camerawoman shook her head. “We’re it. Can you dial up other frequencies with that thing?” She nodded at the walkie-talkie.
“I don’t know. They preprogram it for me.” She keyed the button. “Hold on, Kai.” She handed it to the camerawoman, who examined it for a moment and then returned it.
“Looks like you can. Just twist that knob on the side. You should be able to get the frequency the pilot’s using. You might be able to reach someone who can get them.”
“Kai,” Rachel said, “there’s not enough room on this helicopter for you guys, so you’ll have to call another one.” She relayed the frequency to him.
They arrived at the twenty-first floor, where Jerry still lay unconscious.
“Kai, we’ve got to start carrying Jerry now. I’ll call you back on the new frequency.”
“Okay. Rachel?” Kai said.
“What?”
“I see it. The tsunami. Get out of there as fast as you can.”
“I will. And you get Lani out of there.” She replaced the walkie-talkie on her belt.
The camerawoman took one of Jerry’s arms, Rachel the other, and Paige and Sheila each took a leg. The climb was still awkward but proceeded much more rapidly.
When they reached the twenty-fourth floor, the tower shuddered as if it had been hit with a giant sledgehammer. For a moment they all staggered, thrown off balance.
“Jesus!” yelled the camerawoman. “Was that what I think it was?”
Rachel nodded grimly, now familiar with the sensation.
“Hurry,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”
For the third time that day, Kai watched a giant tsunami tear into Honolulu. Only this time, he had a spectacular 360-degree view from their perch three hundred feet above the ground.
The wave’s size was something only a handful of people in recorded history had ever seen. In 1958, a landslide at Lituya Bay, Alaska, unleashed a wall of water that climbed a quarter mile up the side of a cliff directly opposite of it. A smaller but still huge wave charged down the length of the bay. A father and son, fishing in their boat only a mile from the landslide that day, were borne by the wave over the tops of trees more than two hundred feet high and settled back in the bay upon the receding water. Two other people fishing the bay were not so lucky. Their bodies were never found.
The Tsunami Countdown Page 27