Errol took the bucket, then squinted at the overpowering deluge which continued unabated outside the door. “If I want a sample of water from the river, I’ll have to keep the lid, too. Hope you don’t need it.”
Dave shook his head and stumbled through the door with the spade in both hands, the smaller items stuffed in the Velcro-sealed pockets of his coverall.
At least I can find the door again, he thought as he drove the spade into the semi-liquefied soil at his feet and poured the sample into a container. Errol had vanished from sight two or three strides from the entrance.
Fighting his way back to the gaping hole, Dave struggled to his feet and checked the thermometer’s readout: 30°C, which was a hell of a lot warmer than he’d expected considering the rain. He pulled the barometer from the suit pouch and looked at it dubiously. He wasn’t sure if he needed to hold it over his head, shake it, tap the glass to see if the needles on the gauge reacted—he’d seen actors in films do this but had always doubted if this was actually necessary.
Mentally he shrugged. The needles were both firmly planted on ‘Rain’—surprise, surprise—and a value of just over 800 somethings on the number scale around the perimeter of the glass. All he could do was report what he’d seen once Errol found his way back. Should he risk going outside again and looking for him? Or would that result in them both being lost?
He placed the soil sample and the weather instruments a safe distance from the entrance and stepped outside with the spade in his hands.
He began to beat on the metal door, trying to maintain a regular rhythm as he screamed the musician’s name at the top of his voice.
“Err—ol. Err—ol.”
He wasn’t consciously counting how many times he called the name, striking the door with each syllable, but it wasn’t long before a shadow loomed at his shoulder.
Words were unnecessary and almost certainly impossible in the circumstances. They turned and supported each other to fight the short distance to the open door, then turned to secure it. The silence which fell as the door thumped into the ‘lock’ position was shocking. Even in the comparatively short time they’d been outside, exposed to the elements, they’d both become inured to the noise all around them.
“I didn’t realise we were soundproofed as well as everything else,” Errol remarked, tugging at his earlobe in discomfort.
“The door’s a good six inches thick, Errol. Joey did say it was designed to take a direct hit.”
“Bombs are a lot bigger now than they were in 1945. But I take your point, and I don’t suppose ol’ Ma Nature’s got that mean a streak in her.”
“We didn’t get around to sweeping this water out, but I don’t fancy opening the door again. D’you reckon we can let that slide?”
“Best make the effort, Dave.”
By the time they’d revisited the storeroom and found what they needed, most of the water must have seeped through invisible—to the naked eye—cracks and fissures in the concrete flooring, and some of the mud which had flowed in was beginning to stiffen, but they swept and mopped what they could off to the side walls where it would be less of a hazard. When they got back to the central command room with their samples, they were amazed to discover that the whole operation had taken less than an hour, and the results from around the country were only just beginning to trickle in.
Dave beckoned Joey to an empty table on one side of the room, where he laid out the samples for analysis. “I can’t give you hard figures or anything solid to munch on, but the weather conditions outside are off the scale. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He gave a simple account of the conditions they’d encountered while collecting the samples. “I don’t know if the CCTV scanners will show you how heavy the rain is, but it really was just like standing under a waterfall.”
“We can take a look.” Joey went over to one of the terminals and clicked a few keys. A window opened on-screen, showing nothing but white noise. Joey fiddled with a couple of dials, and the image became slightly less fuzzy but remained obstinately grey and grainy. After a moment, he slapped his forehead.
“Of course! Idiot that I am. That’s the sharpest image we’re going to get. It’s not grainy at all. It’s a high-resolution shot of the rain in close-up.”
As soon as he knew what he was looking at, the picture resolved in Dave’s eyes, like one of those sketches you could never guess what it was going to be until the artist adds the final brushstroke.
“The air temperature’s a lot higher than I expected, Joey. How significant is that?”
Joey looked at the digital thermometer and frowned.
“Thirty degrees—in this muck? I’d have said impossible. That’s more like tropical monsoon conditions. Heavy rain in the UK, you’re lucky if the air temp reaches double figures at this time of year.” He sighed and looked at the pot containing the soil sample. “I think I’ll take a look at Errol’s bucket of river water first. That should be easier to analyse, and it might tell us something of what’s happening upstream. Remember the high spike in the acidity of that sample we collected yesterday? I can use that for a comparison.”
The phone lines were buzzing with increasing frequency, and Brenda was busy routing them to the desks.
“North East. Reports of a major landslip, A5 closed in both directions north of Huddersfield.”
“South West. More cliff damage reported, south coast near Taunton”
“Mid-Cheshire/Flint area. River Alyn has burst banks.” This call came to Eddie’s desk and included a photograph. His hand immediately shot in the air, urgently flapping for Brenda’s attention. “I recognise this. It’s the bridge on the A494 where I stopped on my way home and rang you, near-as-dammit on the England/Wales border. The river was certainly high at the time, but I’ve never seen it this high before.”
Joey came across to study the photo. The central span of the stone-built bridge had been swept away. Two cars, probably from the car park of the pub in the background, were on their sides, jammed against the remnants of the safety walls on the Welsh side of the river.
“Plenty of mountains for it all to come down from—the flat Cheshire plains are going to be swamped.” He was already reaching for the red phone on his desk when it shrilled at him.
“Brigadier, I was just about to ring you with a sitrep.”
“It may save time if I tell you what I already know from other posts.”
Groth sounded calm, dispassionate. Joey wondered how many times the brigadier had been in similar circumstances, coping with a potential catastrophe. He decided he didn’t want to know. When it concerned knowing how close to disaster they might have been—and how frequently—perhaps ignorance really was bliss. He picked up a pencil and prepared to make notes.
Groth reeled off reports from many of the outposts which had also reported to Bidston Hill. Nothing which had happened in Scotland, North England as far as Birmingham, or along the South Coast seemed to be missing, but there was very little from Wales or the North West.
“We’ve managed to collect some samples for analysis, which should give us an accurate assessment of local conditions. I can have some preliminary results with you in half an hour or so. We’ve been a bit stretched receiving reports from all regions. I haven’t had time to analyse them yet, but there is one report from Wales that’s of interest. One of my team is familiar with the location and tells me the water levels are much higher than usual. My calculations based on his estimates suggest the River Dee will burst the flood damage barriers within the next hour or so—may have done so already.”
“Acknowledged, Doctor Hart. I’ll mobilise extra troops to assist in strengthening the defences there. Continue to monitor all regions. For your information, all civilian traffic will cease at 1800 today, until further notice. A curfew will be imposed between 2100 and 0700. If you can spare a screen to cover a live feed from a static camera in Liverpool city centre, that would be useful.”
Without waiting for a reply,
Groth reverted to form and ended the transmission.
Dave was immediately suspicious. From the very beginning, he’d regarded Groth’s abrupt, cavalier manner with phone calls as rudeness. There had been times when he’d wondered if there might be some ulterior, not quite honourable motive behind his apparent lack of courtesy.
The incoming phone calls had eased off somewhat, allowing one of the squaddies—Dave was reasonably sure it was Tom—the opportunity to leave his desk. He began to populate a large-scale wall map with red flags, showing where each report had come from. He paused with a flag in his hand and glanced from the printout to the map and back again.
“Dick, can you confirm the coordinates for log thirty-five? The figures I have place it a good distance from any roads.”
Dick found and read back a six-figure reference, which tallied with the figures Tom had in front of him.
“They didn’t come from a road post. I got them from the British Waterways office,” Dick added. “There’s been a breach in the walls on the Trent and Mersey Canal. It’s flooded a local farmer’s fields.”
Tom nodded and placed a flag on the map. “That’s going to cause problems. It’s miles away from any road link, so we won’t be able to get any heavy machines on site to repair that. Inform HQ. They’ll need to mobilise something in a hurry.”
Brenda reached for her phone on the central switchboard. “Joey, carry on with your number-crunching. I’m perfectly capable of making a phone call.
“Brigadier, this is Bidst…sorry, Juliet Bravo. We may have a problem. These are the coordinates.”
“Stand by.”
Brenda glanced at Dave, who shook his head, his annoyance showing on his face and in the stiffness of his shoulders. Within a minute, Groth was back on the line.
“Juliet Bravo, there’s a REME platoon barracked in Crewe. They’ve sent a couple of men on scrambler bikes to have a look at the damage. They should be able to get there along the canal towpath. Doctor Hart? Are you listening?”
“Yes, Sir,” Joey responded but continued to stare at his latest set of calculations with a deep frown on his forehead. “There isn’t much we can do from here until we know the extent of the damage to the canal walls. And there’s something about this latest set of figures.”
He scribbled another set of hieroglyphics which only he could have read, let alone interpreted. “Remember what I said about water slopping around in a glass and developing into a wave moving with the Earth’s spin?”
Dave nodded, but Joey seemed to be talking to himself, thinking aloud, so he didn’t interrupt.
“The sheer weight of that unimaginable volume of water would be enough to affect the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Sudden extremes of weather would be a natural result. We’ve just recorded an air temperature almost double what we’d expect in the UK at this time of year. The seas are turning acid, and the Arctic ice sheet has lost two hundred gigatonnes of mass in a decade—that’s a heartbeat in world history.”
“It’s also a lot more water to slop around, as you put it,” Errol remarked.
“My point exactly. We can only hope the explosion we engineered to seal the trench wasn’t so strong we managed to destroy the world and every living thing on it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Scouts report the Trent and Mersey Canal wall is breached about a mile and a half north of Northwich.” Joey lifted the account from which he was reading as Dave deposited three more on the desk. “Several tons of rubble and mud blocking the waterway, farmland west of the canal totally flooded. The site can only be approached on foot, using the canal towpath.”
The brigadier didn’t miss a beat. “I’m committing a full platoon from the REME in Crewe, and as many scrambler/off-road bikes as can be commandeered. Those who can’t get there on two wheels will have to approach on foot. All I can ask of you, Doctor Hart, is to monitor them and keep me informed of progress.”
“I don’t have anyone here who can, Sir.”
“Set up a link. I sent you three of my own, remember? They all have special skills. I could even set it up remotely from this end if I had to. I believe you’ve designated them Tom, Dick and Harry. If they’re comfortable with that, fine—but, gentlemen, if you decide to reveal your names, you won’t be subject to discipline.”
The three specials had accepted their nicknames with typical military gallows humour and had taken to wearing handwritten adhesive tags.
“We’ll stick to the names we’ve got, for now,” grinned Dick. “But I guess telecoms is my field. Sir, can you give me a short-wave radio link to the Sapper team?”
Telephone traffic was steady but not overwhelming for the following half hour, building a picture of the worst affected regions of the UK.
“Another earth tremor reported in Cumbria.”
“Road closure due to landslip, Dorset.”
“Fire service evacuating residents, sheltered accommodation in St. Helens.”
A constant stream of incidents were logged, and a smaller-scale map of the UK was pinned up next to the local map. Joey wasn’t directly involved and was able to concentrate on his notes and calculations. He was convinced there had to be some detail he was missing and leafed back through his earlier notes.
I need more time. That’s the crucial factor: the timeline of all these incidents, in the right order.
He shuffled the individual reports of the first few incidents, then re-sorted them according to the time of the incident as opposed to the time it was reported. This resulted in several documents changing place. He came to one which was on computer printout paper with serrated edges and noticeably thinner than standard duplicating paper. He paused and studied it closely. It had a military feel to it, with the legend ‘DTG:25081105a’ centred at the top edge. He frowned and looked up. Dick was still testing the link to the team the brigadier had dispatched and even had video, which was providing a decent picture on the main screen, but there seemed to be a problem with the sound feed. Joey caught Tom’s eye and beckoned him over.
“Is this a military term?” he asked, pointing to the mixture of letters and numbers which meant absolutely nothing to him.
Tom nodded. “Date and Time Group, 25th August at 1105a. The ‘a’ means British Summer Time—Alpha time—as opposed to Greenwich Mean Time, which is designated ‘z’, or Zulu. International ops are almost always recorded in ‘Zulu’ time. Not every country uses daylight saving measures, so it’s a bit unusual to have a document which includes a reference to Alpha time.”
“Thanks for that,” Joey said. The explanation of time zone designations was unnecessary, but he appreciated Tom’s efforts. “I can see why this is from a military source. Can you give me a hand? I need to find all the reports with a ‘DTG’ placing them, say, within the first half hour after detonation.”
Ten minutes of scrutiny turned up twelve documents. Eight were reports from Europe and North Africa; the remaining four were all from locations south of the Mariana Trench. Joey felt the hair on the nape of his neck stiffen. He picked up the red phone receiver, instructing Tom as he placed the call.
“Try taking this selection in chronological order. If they’re spreading at a constant speed from the same point of origin—the trench—we should be able to predict how long they’ll take to reach other points where the reports will come in much later.
“Brigadier, we may be on to something.”
For the first time, Joey felt he was arguing from a position of strength. He was, after all, the climatology and weather pattern expert.
“Thank you, Doctor, but I’d like a sitrep on the progress of the REME team first. Short-wave radio messages don’t really give me an accurate picture.”
“Understood. We have an excellent picture, and I believe audio is also patched in. Last headcount, there were approximately fifty, five-zero, men on site. It’s hard to judge exactly what they’re doing, but they’re standing in organised groups close to the breach in the canal wall. I can only assume they’re sh
oring up the walls to prevent further collapse. I can see hoses being unrolled downstream of the damaged section but no sign of any pumps yet.”
“Thank you, Doctor Hart. I’ve just been informed that the pumps have been driven as close as possible by road. They’ll be manhandled from there. Now, your news, please. I hope it’s positive?”
“Brigadier, I’ve taken the data I have to hand and tried something different. I’ve set it up as a ripple effect spreading outwards from the Mariana Trench. Now, because of the geographical location of the trench itself, the ripple spreads naturally in a northeast to southwest direction, so the combined vectors of speed and direction make it possible to predict where the effects are going to be felt. We may even be able to guess how strong they will be.”
“Does it give us any clues for countermeasures?”
“I’m starting to get some ideas, but nothing definite. I’m short of data from mainland Europe. The UK is well covered, as is Southern Hemisphere by the teams in Oz and New Zealand. If you can get me some data from Spain, Italy and France, it would be useful. I need to establish a timeline.
“I’m looking back at the earliest incidents—the ones which occurred on detonation day. At the time, I thought a directional surge or wave might develop. Given the mass and volume of water involved, it could have grown in strength as it gathered momentum. That’s how a tsunami forms.
“However, the reports of incidents after detonation day are far more significant. I’m convinced they’re the direct cause of the extreme weather conditions we’re experiencing north of the trench. The tidal surge which cut away large sections of the crumbly chalk cliffs along our southern coast is a case in point, and there’s also the question of how the winds in the upper atmosphere may have been affected. Don’t forget, it’s the prevailing winds that carry rain-bearing cloud and create areas of high and low pressure. The only question in my mind is, how long will these disturbances in weather patterns continue? And, following from that, if they persist, how do we adapt and cope with them?”
Taking the Heat Page 21