By 0100, there was no one asleep on the entire island. Indeed, almost everyone was awake on the north coast of Guadeloupe, the southwest coast of Antigua around the town of Falmouth, and Charlestown on the neighboring island of Nevis.
The lady who ran the Montserrat radio station was up and broadcasting within seven minutes of the first massive explosion on Gage’s Mountain. The transmitter was in a building adjacent to her home on the island’s safe area, north of the line that demarked the southern exclusion zone since 1997.
From the studio in the Central Hills, the news was hitting the airwaves by 0048. The giant volcano in the Soufriere Hills had erupted, without warning. In the modern observatory built by the international scientific studies group on a hillside near the western town of Salem, they recorded no pre-eruption activity whatsoever, on either the tiltmeters or the seismographs that constantly monitored the state of the petulant mountain of fire.
In fact the seismographs had given very early and very definite warning of the oncoming catastrophes in 1996–97, their needles almost shaking themselves off the rotating drums, as the onrushing magma rumbled and roared below the earth’s crust.
But this time there was absolutely nothing, not one of the observatory’s new computer screens registered even the faintest tremor. Nor did the state-of-the-art tiltmeters that the scientists in permanent residence had set to measure, constantly, any earth movement on the mountain slopes around the developing carbuncles, or, in scientific parlance, the domes.
The Montserrat Observatory was the most sought-after study area in the world. Students, professors, and specialist volcanologists traveled from five continents to experience, firsthand, the geophysical hazards of a brooding, threatening mountain, which had already destroyed half of its island.
The detection systems were second to none. Every subterranean shudder, every gout of steam or fire, every ton of escaping lava was meticulously recorded. It was said that the volcano in the Soufriere Hills was the most carefully observed square mile in the world, more so than even Wall Street.
And yet, on this moonlit September night, that volcano had blown out with an unprecedented explosion, without so much as a shudder or a ripple to forecast the cataclysmic eruption. The eruption had come from nowhere, and it would, at least temporarily, baffle volcanologists from the finest geohazard departments of the world’s most prestigious universities.
On this September night, the troubleshooters of Montserrat — the police, fire departments, and ambulances — were not even on high alert until the first convulsion of the mountain almost shook the place to pieces. And even then, there was little they could do, although members of the Royal Montserrat Police Force made instantly for the helicopter pads where they ran into scientists already assessing the dangers of flying into an area almost engulfed by smoke and burning ash. The Police Chief himself banned all takeoffs until the air cleared.
This time, there were no instances of farming people being swallowed up in their own fields by the onrushing lava. No one was incinerated in their own homes. This was a clinical no-killing fiery spectacle in the eastern Caribbean lighting up the Leeward Isles and threatening certain members of the United States Military to go into cardiac arrest.
Shortly before midnight EST, reports of the eruption on Montserrat were filtering through to the United States networks. The radio station in Antigua was the first to go on air, describing what could be seen. They managed to hook up with Radio Montserrat, and their signals were picked up by the eastern Caribbean network, which in turn was monitored by one of the U.S. network offices in Puerto Rico.
Moments later, the news was out in Miami, Florida, and three minutes later CNN was on the case in Atlanta. Television pictures from Falmouth, Antigua, were poor and slightly late after the initial blast, but there was truly spectacular footage taken by the scientists’ cameras in the Salem observatory.
These were instantly wired electronically to Antigua and Puerto Rico, under the contractual agreement that paid for much of the research undertaken at Salem.
By 12:05 A.M. (EST), thanks to CNN, Atlanta, the sensational pictures of a giant volcano in full cry were on television screens all over the world.
Lt. Comdr. Jimmy Ramshawe was sitting comfortably in an armchair in his parents’ pricey Watergate complex when the erupting volcano jumped onto the screen. His fiancée, the surf goddess Jane Peacock, was in bed reading, paying no attention to Jimmy’s grave forecast of a big event around midnight.
The first she knew of it was when Jimmy leapt to his feet, stark naked, pointing at the screen and shouting, “HOLY SHIT!! HE’S DONE IT…THAT MONGREL BASTARD WAS NOT JOKING!”
He grabbed the telephone and dialed Admiral George Morris at home in Fort Meade, as arranged. The Director of the National Security Agency had been to a Naval dinner, and was already snoring like a elephant bull. It took him a couple of minutes to hear the phone and answer, but he was visibly shaken by Jimmy’s news.
“How long ago, Jimmy?” he asked.
“I’d guess about half an hour,” replied his assistant. “What do we do?”
“Well, we can’t do much now. But we’d better schedule a very early start tomorrow. Say, 0600, in my office.”
“Okay, sir. You want me to call the Big Man? Or will you do it?”
Just then the Admiral’s other line rang angrily — General Scannell. George Morris told Jimmy to speak to Arnold Morgan while he dealt with the CJC and then Admiral Dickson.
Lieutenant Commander Ramshawe, still stark naked, dialed Admiral Morgan’s number in Chevy Chase, but Arnold had been watching CNN news.
“Well, sir, that’s taken a whole bloody lot of the guesswork out of this conundrum, right?”
“You can say that again, kid,” answered the Admiral. “Right now I’m planning to sit here and watch this thing develop…Maybe see if there was any warning. And I think that’s what we all should do. Then we better meet early…”
“Admiral Morris has scheduled a meeting in his office at 0600, which is where I’ll be. We can take a look at the CIA stuff, if any. Then I guess we better all meet up somewhere around 0900. My boss is on the line to General Scannell right now…Tell you what, sir, I’ll leave a message on your machine soon as I know where we’re meeting in the morning…I guess the Pentagon, but I’ll confirm.”
“Okay, Jimmy. Keep your eyes and ears open. This bastard’s serious. He just hit the fucking mountain with missiles, and that mega-tsunami’s getting closer by the minute, no doubt in my mind.”
“Nor mine, sir.”
“What’s happened? Will you please tell me what’s going on?” Jane Peacock had lost all interest in her magazine.
“Throw me that notebook, would you?” said Jimmy. “And that pen over there? Now, let me get some pajamas on. I’ve got to watch the news for at least the next couple of hours.”
The Barracuda was steaming swiftly away from the datum, 500 feet below the surface. They had been moving for three and a half hours, since the moment the last of the four Scimitars had been launched. They were headed east, making 15 knots through the dark water, a speed that Admiral Badr thought they could sustain for no more than two or three days longer, less because he feared the U.S. Navy hot on their trail than because Shakira had been uncertain where exactly the U.S. SOSUS system became more dense in the North Atlantic.
The men from Hamas were now 50 miles away from Admiral Badr’s strike zone, and a total of almost 400 miles from the stricken south coast of Montserrat. He planned to retain speed and keep running at moderate knots towards the disturbed and somewhat noisier waters over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where he would be very difficult to trace. Later, when he cut back to 6 or 7 knots, crossing from the Ridge to the Canary Islands in open water, he would be impossible to trace — anywhere in this vast ocean.