Saving Cascadia
Page 32
The seismic report folder was next to it, exactly as it should be with the familiar red cover, and her eye ran over the printed title in passing: “Seismic Safety Report, Cascadia Project.”
She moved into the outer office and searched his secretary’s desk for a plastic sleeve, finally finding one and carefully inserting the certificate. She returned to the spilled file cabinet and reinserted the certificate where she’d found it, flipping open the seismic report folder before standing.
The cover of the report was identical to the one that had appeared on her desk in San Francisco. Beautifully printed on heavy, slick, red card stock, it was emblazoned with the gold Chadwick and Noble logo.
But this one contained her full dataset from Cascadia. She flipped quickly through the hundred or so pages of printed-out charts, graphs, and tables, verifying it was the full, damning presentation of the seismic story. It looked as untouched as the day it had been slipped into the filing cabinet.
Footsteps were echoing in the corridor, and she did not want to be caught snooping in Walker’s private files, overturned or not. Diane closed the report and slid it back in the folder, standing quickly as she caught a glimpse of another file with the same familiar red spine. There was no time to look more closely and she mentally filed the small detail away for later perusal and moved to the outer office, trying to look as casual as one could in the middle of an emergency as she rounded the corner to the corridor.
There was no one there.
Robert Nelms could be seen a hundred feet away opening the door to the stairwell. But there was no one else within view, despite the footsteps she’d heard. A creepy feeling began pushing her to hurry after Nelms.
To the National Guard crew aboard the Chinook helicopter hovering over the collapsed eastern wing, the sudden reappearance of a young woman in a flimsy blouse and a miniskirt was impossible to miss. The pilot and two crewmembers had watched earlier as she ducked into a hole leading to the ruined interior of the building just as they were preparing to pluck her off, but she was obviously searching for someone, and they were relieved when she reappeared to stand on a ruined section of roof and wave at them, pointing downward, holding two fingers aloft, and then giving a hurry sign.
Lindy O’Brien had grabbed up a heavy emergency battery lantern that had fallen from its perch along one of the corridors and hauled it with her into the collapsed remains of the Presidential Suite. Without that light, the search would have been hopeless, since the noise of the helicopter drowned out any hope of hearing a reply to her repeated calls for her parents.
The helicopter’s noise had faded slightly, but she still couldn’t hear a thing.
It seemed to take forever before she found her father, alive but unconscious in the middle of the room. She figured she had crawled right past him twice. Her mother was fifteen feet away and in severe pain, her leg badly broken and trapped beneath a desk by the eastern window. She was conscious but woozy, and Lindy left her to go back to her father. She checked his breathing. It was steady, but shallow, and she went to work to try to free him, finally succeeding.
“Dad? Can you hear me? Please be all right!”
She searched for a blanket and found a fallen tapestry. She pulled it over her father before she crawled back to try to help her mother.
“Mom, I’m going to get help up here. Hang on!”
“I’m really hurting, Honey! Is your father okay?”
“He’s unconscious, but breathing steadily, Mom. I think he’s okay.”
She could see her mother wincing against the pain as she lay on her stomach and tried to look at her daughter.
“Thank goodness you’re all right,” she said. “I’d just discovered your little ruse when the earthquake hit.”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“We’ll… talk about it later.”
“Yeah.”
Lindy patted her mother’s arm and slid backward until she could turn around again and regain the exit.
She climbed back onto the partially collapsed roof and began waving the helicopter in, watching as best she could against the glaring searchlight as the crew chief swung free of the Chinook and let his partner winch him down. He had barely reached the roof and disconnected when Lindy plastered her mouth to an earhole in his helmet and cupped her hands.
“Can you understand me?”
He nodded.
“I’m Lindy O’Brien. My mother is hurt and trapped. I can’t lift the stuff holding her. My dad—the governor—is unconscious. I pulled him free but he’s obviously hurt.” The tears were streaming down her face now. “I can’t do any more by myself!”
“We’ll take it from here.”
After the uncomfortable encounter with Doug, Jennifer had left the hotel lobby with Sven trotting to catch up. They had marched outside into the cold rain and wind before she turned to her father and confessed that she had no clue where she was going.
“I was wondering,” he said, still eyeing the area behind them in case Doug Lam came storming after them. “It was a good exit, though.”
She tried to laugh, the tears in her eyes blending with the rain trickling down her face and invalidating the attempt at nonchalance.
“Honey, I don’t know how many people are hurt in there, but we’d better call dispatch and scramble as many birds as we can get in the air. This is very serious, Jen. From what I saw back there, we’re going to have some terrible injuries.”
“But the winds—” she began.
“Are a bitch, I agree. But if they’re anywhere close to the limit, we’ll have to handle it, and if you’ve noticed, that Chinook is holding his own.”
She glanced involuntarily at the rescue operation in progress over the shattered east wing and nodded, her cell phone already open as she followed him back into an empty meeting room unlikely to be visited by Doug or anyone else she didn’t want to see.
Norm Bryarly was still manning the desk in Seattle and already ahead of her.
“I figured you’d be calling, Jennifer. The island’s command post just called begging for immediate help and we’re launching. With all the military helicopters going down to the Long Beach Peninsula, we’re the only other source of medevac help.”
“It’s still blowing hard out here, Norm. I’m not sure it’s not out of limits.”
“They say it’s just at the limit, Jennifer.”
“Who can we launch?”
He went down the list of available pilots and helicopters.
“We can send the Dauphin back, dispatch both of our BK-117s, and the EC-135, and then there’s the 412 you’re flying.”
“We may have to evacuate up to three hundred people, Norm.”
“What?”
She explained the loss of the ferry and the splitting island. “As soon as we get the stretcher cases out of here, we’d better be ready to start shuttling them to the mainland.”
“Well… I estimate… given our fleet… ah… about thirty-two to thirty-four people with each run of the fleet, with all the choppers at max capacity.”
“I was thinking we could shuttle them to the ferry parking area on the peninsula fairly rapidly. It’s less than two miles.”
“If so, and if the winds don’t go out or stay out of limits, we can probably airlift three hundred people out of there in five hours. But we’ll need jet fuel from somewhere to keep going at that rate.”
“They’ve got fuel here. I just don’t know if they’ve got the power to pump it.”
“I’ll get a fuel truck started in that direction. But it’ll take four hours to get him there, and that’s if the roads aren’t cut. Jennifer, may I ask a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“Are you okay? You sound really stressed.”
She chuckled as convincingly as she could, wondering if being so empathetically joined with your employees was always a good thing, especially when you were trying to hide personal upsets.
“Yeah. Just a bit tired and… you might say I’ve been
a little distracted. Do we have enough crew?”
Norm hesitated, deciding whether to press further. He’d known her long enough to spot a lie.
“Yes and no, Jennifer. We’ll man them, just don’t ask about crew duty time.”
“I know nothing. A flight nurse with each?”
“Three crewmembers per bird.”
“As soon as you can get them airborne, Norm. We’ll sort out the financial later.”
There was a hesitation on the other end. “A lot of money is involved here, Jennifer, and normally we’ve got a billable client.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get rolling. According to Doug…” she hesitated, something catching in her throat.
“Sorry?”
She cleared her throat, but not before Norm Bryarly understood what was troubling her. They’d permitted Doug Lam to hitch a ride to Cascadia Island, and whatever had happened since had shaken his boss.
“Just got a tickle in my throat. I was saying, Norm, that according to Doug Lam, we’re all standing in the shadow of a huge tsunami, so every second counts.”
Chapter 31
CASCADIA ISLAND HOTEL 11:35 P.M.
“What?”
The sharp, angry answer was anything but characteristic of Doug Lam’s normal telephone manners, and for a moment Terry Griswold thought he’d reached the wrong number.
“Doug?”
“Yes—who’s this?”
“Terry. Are you okay?”
“Yes. It’s just a hell of a mess here. What do you have?”
“Doug, at the risk of sounding like Chicken Little, the ground is, in fact, falling. Cascadia has now dropped 1.8 feet, most of it with that large shaker less than an hour ago. And if you can’t get those impacts stopped, it’s going to be all over in a matter of hours. Every hour the resonant answers from the Quiet Zone become more directly linked to those impacts. Have you talked to Walker?”
“We were on the way when it hit.” He quickly described the collapse of the hotel’s eastern wing, and the fact that the governor was missing in the wreckage.
“I hate to sound unsympathetic, but if O’Brien’s dead, the lieutenant governor has the power to make the evacuation decision, so we should talk to him. I agree with your earlier analysis. It’s too late to stop this disaster, but we might delay it.”
“Okay, I’ll look for Walker again.”
“Doug, I’m begging you, man, don’t take no for an answer. Get it stopped any way you can.”
“I never accept ‘no’ for an answer, but unfortunately I can’t make the damn world do my bidding every time.”
“Doug? I’ve been in touch with Menlo Park and they agree. They’ve issued the warning, so you’re okay there, but they’ve also seen my data and they agree those impacts have got to be stopped, whatever it takes.”
“It may be impossible, Terry. That barrier is a giant concrete dam, and even if he stops his electrical generator, it may not be enough.”
“Do what you can.”
“This can’t get more bizarre.”
“I’m going to call our senior senator,” Terry continued.
“You know her?”
“Yes, I know her well. Another story for another time. I’ll call you back.”
Terry disconnected and Doug folded his cell phone and headed for the parking lot where he’d last seen Mick Walker. Having a mission again was a relief. He could see the huge Chinook hovering over the eastern end of the building and recognized it as National Guard, and at first the thought that a hundred Army helicopters could rapidly pick the island clean of potential victims seemed a deliverance. But he found the idea was already being discussed, and dismissed, when he came up next to Walker, who was being briefed by a man Doug hadn’t seen before.
“At best they can spare one more helicopter, but not for an hour. All the rest of them are down in the Long Beach area. Half the peninsula’s cut off by water and there are a huge number of collapsed buildings between here and there. They say we’re far down the list.”
Mick Walker was incredulous. “How about medevac?” We’ve got injured people all over the place!”
“They said we’d have to wait.”
“Okay, where’s Sven Lindstrom and his daughter? Find them, and get one of them over here.”
The man nodded and rushed off as Walker turned to Doug.
“You again?” he asked.
Doug sighed. “I’m too tired to spar with you, Mick. But I wanted to tell you two things. One, my people in Menlo Park have formally posted the earthquake warning, as I told the governor a while ago. And two, your WaveRam has got to be turned off now, or it’s highly likely the federal government will get involved.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“If they have to they’ll issue a court order. Maybe they’ll send the Navy in to blow it up. You’ve created a major public threat.”
“So what do we do for power?”
“We’ll do a lot better in the dark than washed away by a fifty-foot wall of water.”
“Now it’s a fifty feet?” Mick snorted. “Before, you predicted thirty.”
“Oh, Christ, Walker, who cares? We’re dead if it hits, okay? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin, anyway?”
“I can’t black out the island in the middle of a rescue.”
“Don’t you have portable generators?”
“One, yes. Only one.”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Damnit, Lam, why should I believe you? And don’t start with the convoluted scientific explanations.”
Doug sighed and met his eyes. “Okay, this is as simple as I can make it. There’s a trigger down there and your machine is pulling at it with every impact. How do we know? Because every impact that thing makes sends seismic waves down that are being amplified and echoed right back up. We can literally see the effect on our seismographs. That thing is progressively pulling the pin on the big one.”
“Not creating it?”
“No, the trigger was already there.”
“So, we’re just making it happen faster, which isn’t going to help with an island full of people I need to get to safety. The question is, how much faster?”
“We’ve seen unprecedented changes in the patterns in just the last hour. That probably means the big break will come before daybreak if we don’t stop pounding on the trigger, and maybe next week if we turn it off.”
“So, what happens if I turn it off and nothing changes?”
“Then your wave dam out there has to go. I heard you had barges blocking it before Thursday. Are they still available? Could you pull them back in place?”
Walker shook his head. “The tugs have gone. It would take six hours to get them back, maybe more.”
They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds as another small tremor shuddered beneath their feet, then stopped.
“It’s talking to you, Mick. It’s answering your call.”
“I detest anthropomorphic analogies, doctor, but I’ll… turn it off, if your man on the coast will watch his equipment and report whether it does any good.”
“Fair enough.”
Mick raised a radio to his lips and pressed the button, issuing orders to the command post to get the remaining generator to the hotel immediately, then turn off the WaveRam.
“But, it’s working better than we’d hoped, Mr. Walker,” the coordinator’s voice whined from the unseen command post.
“Do it anyway. We’ve proven our point. And save the records.” He lowered the radio. “Okay, Lam, I need a serious answer to this. You and Diane say the casino also straddles the fault line, but so far the building is still intact. I’m worried about the rest of the hotel staying up. Should I move everyone into the casino? Can I trust it structurally?”
“Do you have a big tent? Anything that can’t collapse?”
“A tent?”
“Like a small circus tent for outdoor functions.”
“Not with si
des, and not in this wind.” Mick had his hand up to stop the questions. “Wait! My first question should be, Are the hotel lobby and west wing safe?”
“Lord, Mick, I can’t tell you about the hotel. I’m not a structural engineer. But I can tell you the fault is going to split more, and the casino is right on top of it. I can’t imagine it not being torn apart or coming down.”
“Okay, answer this: are we likely to have more big surface quakes, as I think you called them?”
“Yes. Absolutely. At any moment.”
“Then the hotel isn’t safe?”
“Maybe Diane Lacombe can answer that.”
“Let me personalize this for you, Doctor. Would you want the love of your life to be standing in the lobby right now?”
Doug stopped cold, Jennifer’s image playing in his mind.
“Ah… the answer is, ‘Hell, no,’ and I’m afraid, now that I think about it, that that’s exactly where she is.”
Mick cocked his head slightly. “You mean, Diane?”
“No. No, someone else.”
Walker sighed. “All right, if you’re sure more shakers are coming, there is no choice but to evacuate.”
“How about the buses? They’ve got their own power and heat.”
Mick nodded. “Maybe. I’ve got three of them at forty-five passengers each. That’s a start.” He raised the radio again and gave the requisite orders for all the passenger vehicles they owned to assemble in front of the hotel.
“Mick, where do you keep them?”
“What, the buses?”
“Yes. That fault line is likely to split open wide enough to prevent driving over it. Once you get them loaded, you need to get them to the heliport, which is clearly on the southwest side of the fault.”
“Split open? You mean, like a chasm?”
“Yes. The island is sinking, Mick. It’s likely to split drastically and literally pull apart as well. I don’t mean by a hundred feet, but enough to be impassable.”
“You’re just a barrel of fun tonight, aren’t you Doctor?”
“I’m sorry. I wish they’d told you about that fault line long before you turned a shovel of dirt here. I wish I’d seen the data. But I’ve been trying for a long time to warn you and everyone how dangerous this place is. I just didn’t know about the fault.”