Half the country must have felt this punch, maybe more. And the eruption itself was only the first part of the combination the supervolcano would throw at civilization. Under those circumstances, urging calm on people might not be so bad. It wouldn’t hurt, and it might do a tiny bit of good.
Something rumbled outside, and went on rumbling. During the big war, the Germans on the Eastern Front must have heard noise like that when the Russians shelled them before sending in the tanks. Colin knew about naval gunnery, but it was never this continuous. For this, you’d have to line up guns of every caliber hub to hub, shoot them all off at once, and have enough ammo to keep shooting and shooting and shooting.
Or you’d have to have a supervolcano go off eight hundred miles away. This sound had been traveling for more than an hour, and it was still loud enough to shake the building almost as hard as the earthquake had. In another hour or hour and a half, the President would hear it in the Oval Office.
And, three or four hours after that, they might hear it in Europe. They’d heard Krakatoa a couple of thousand miles away, and this thing made Krakatoa look like Vanessa’s Pickles next to a sabertooth.
“Gabe!” Colin said through the rumble that wouldn’t quit.
“Waddaya need?” Sergeant Sanchez answered.
“C’mere a sec,” Colin said. Gabe got up from his own desk and ambled over. Colin went on, “We had better secure a supply of gasoline for the department, and I mean right now. This thing will screw transport like you wouldn’t believe.”
“So why are you telling me? Why aren’t you telling the chief, or else the mayor? Have we got the money in the budget to do anything like that? Can the city get it for us if we don’t?” Gabe was full of reasonable questions.
Or rather, he was full of questions that would have been reasonable a little more than an hour earlier. The chief and the mayor would be full of it, too. Colin had no doubts on that score. The difference was, he could-or he hoped he could-make Gabe see sense. His superiors wouldn’t want to listen… as if they ever did.
“This has to be unofficial,” Colin said. “No refineries in San Atanasio, but there are some over in El Segundo and down in Lomita. Talk to the managers there. Tell ’em we’re gonna have problems. Tell ’em the whole state’s gonna have problems. Do it now-get there ahead of their own cops. Show ’em we’re on the ball. See what you can do to get ’em to lend us a hand.”
“I got you,” Gabe said. “You want ’em to think we know more about what’s going on than their local people do.”
“Uh-huh.” Colin nodded. Thanks to Kelly, he did know more about what was liable to go on than most of the local competition. The problem with that was, the more you knew, the worse things looked. You could tell a refinery manager that California would have problems for a while. You couldn’t tell a guy like that that the world had just walked into a sucker punch. If he didn’t already know it for himself-and chances were he wouldn’t-he wouldn’t believe you.
“Okay. I’ll do it,” Sanchez said. “Better get moving, while those guys’re still shook up by the quake and the boom and shit.”
“Good plan,” Colin agreed. The refinery managers would be shaken-literally and otherwise. They might be more inclined to listen to bulky, imposing Sergeant Sanchez. Colin would have bet his last quarter that things would get worse, not better. But you didn’t want to tell civilians too much too soon. They couldn’t always handle bad news.
And he knew he was a cynical cop, ready to look on the gloomy side both by training and by temperament. He had to put that in the equation, too. Kelly might not understand supervolcanoes as well as she thought she did. It wasn’t as if geologists had ever had a live one to study.
So maybe this wasn’t a catastrophe after all, CNN. com notwithstanding. Maybe it was just a disaster. Colin laughed at himself. Only a cynical cop could have a thought like that and actually find consolation in it.
Bryce Miller had a window seat on the flight from O’Hare back to LAX. He couldn’t stand LAX. He didn’t know anyone who could. O’Hare was even busier. It seemed to run more smoothly, though.
Or maybe that was just his imagination. The conference on the Hellenistic world at the University of Chicago had gone as well as he’d dared hope. He hadn’t given a paper, but he’d critiqued one. He thought his remarks were to the point. The professors who’d listened to him seemed to think so, too.
Something might come of that. No guarantees-there were never any guarantees-but something might. If he could get his thesis done… Or why think small? They did hire people who’d done all but the dissertation. There was even a name for them: ABDs. They got paid less, of course, but after a TA’s money any real salary looked terrific.
The guy in the middle iggled. He wasn’t deliberately annoying, but he was there, right there. And the woman in front of Bryce had reclined her seat as far as it would go. She wasn’t trying to kneecap him, which didn’t mean she wasn’t doing it.
He got out the pastrami on rye and the big chocolate-chip cookie he’d bought in the airport. The bastards weren’t about to feed you. He counted himself lucky the flight attendants had doled out a Coke. Such extravagant generosity had to be bad for the bottom line.
Somebody somewhere in the plane was eating something smellier than airport pastrami. Bryce was forcibly reminded of the modern fable about the Stinky Cheese Man. You’d think whoever was chowing down would have more regard for everyone else trapped in the flying cigar with him. But no.
And even that minimal regard might be too much to hope for. Going with a cop’s daughter and getting to know the cop himself had made Bryce look at his fellow humans with a freshly jaundiced eye. Getting dumped by Vanessa hadn’t done anything to improve his attitude, either.
He took a bite from the sandwich in self-defense. While he chewed, he looked down out the window: about seven miles down. The landscape was flat and green and gold, and laid out in geometric patterns. The Midwest, from on high.
It wasn’t great pastrami. No way you’d find great pastrami at an airport sandwich shop. But it wasn’t lousy pastrami-all fat and peppercorns-either. And the cookie honest to God was pretty good. It made a better lunch than American would have given him once upon a time-but also a more expensive one.
Bryce slammed the tray into place again. Let the bitch who’d shoved her seat way back feel it. After one more look at the fields far below, he leaned against the bulkhead and tried to sleep.
He’d just dozed off when… “This is the captain speaking.” Bryce’s eyes jerked open. He was surprised he didn’t bleed out through them. The airline’s customer-prevention program was going full blast.
Or so he thought till he saw one of the flight attendants. She looked pale and stunned, like the gal he knew who’d flunked her orals.
“This is the captain,” the slightly Southern voice repeated. “We’ve just got word of… an emergency ahead. We are not going to be able to continue to Los Angeles. We will have to turn around and head back towards O’Hare. I am very sorry for the inconvenience, but this is unavoidable. I don’t know yet whether we’ll land in Chicago or somewhere between here and there. When I find out, be assured I will inform you pronto.”
The PA system crackled into silence at the same time as the cabin exploded into noise. An emergency ahead? What the hell was that supposed to mean? What would make them turn around and head for Chicago again? A replay of 9/11? That was the first thing Bryce thought of.
As the plane began to turn, the guy in the seat next to his fired up his iPhone. You weren’t supposed to do that in flight, but Bryce would have bet gold against gallstones his seatmate wasn’t the only one breaking the rules right now. People wanted to know what the hell was going on. If the pilot wouldn’t tell them, they’d find out for themselves.