She pulled the T-wrench suddenly, without waiting for a response. A second later Decker heard a tearing noise as the forebody assembly tumbled free. Then the sphere shot upwards, gliding only seven meters above the new lip of the Continental Shelf.
The speed of the ascent forced the air out of his lungs. He felt as though he were in a rocket, with a one-ton weight pressed down upon his chest. His eyes stretched open, his mouth pulled down involuntarily, and suddenly the flames surrounded him again. They licked up through the tan upholstery, melting the plastic lining, engulfing the Chevy Biscayne. He was still trapped in back. He was still trapped. He reached out for the door, and suddenly he was standing on the ground, unharmed, and he was watching as the fire gradually consumed the car, his mother’s face, his father’s hair and ears and nose, and they were gone, and there was nothing he could do, but watch.
There was a mighty crash, an eerie high-pitched whistle as Decker’s ears popped and he slipped into unconsciousness, reclining into chaos.
Chapter 47
The ocean rolled across herself. Black waves arose and fell, arose to meet another falling to another, falling to another still. The whitecaps skated on the surface. They heaved and lifted up and, suddenly, a mound of water bubbled up and boiled across the surface of the cold Atlantic.
A few miles off the Jersey coast, the landslide had begun. The moving mass cascaded downward, barely missing the ascending DSV. It shivered along the groaning Continental Shelf, and fell and fell and fell, ripping up sand and stone, down toward the bottomless abyss.
The water bulged, displaced by the falling landmass, began to rise and spread, to thrust the surface of the ocean skyward, a hundred meters in the air.
The mega-tsunami rolled across the sea, due east across the vast expanse. And sliding west, still rushing from La Palma, the other wave drew near.
They came together in a mighty splash that lifted spray into the clouds, a quarter of a mile above the surface of the sea. The walls of water flattened out against each other, blended and roiled into a liquid copulation, a reliquification, then bellowed with expended energy. They were one. The great wave crowned, and fell, tired of traveling. Spent. The water spread across the surface of the ocean, tickled by whitecaps. It coursed across the sea, shedding yet more kinetic energy. Then it reverberated westward once again.
The wave descended on the Stanfield as she turned her bow into the wall of water, as she bounced and heaved and rose up through the turbulence, and sluiced ahead unharmed. The wave passed by.
It ran ashore in Canada, then northern Maine. Almost immediately, the Boston harbor drained, then filled again, as the wave collided with the coast. It coursed along the rocky shore, rolled south-southwest, eating up trees and houses, tearing up river mouths, demolishing roads and bridges, entire seaside towns. The skeptical who had remained behind, ignoring the orders of the National Guard, were pulverized, dismembered as they tried to flee.
Within a half hour, the waters began to recede from Fire Island and the entire eastern shoreline of Long Island. It was as if someone has pulled a giant stopper from the bottom of the sea. Then the wave came into view — two stories high.
It washed across the lowlands of Long Island. It cut a swath across both Queens and Brooklyn, swept up the Verrazano Narrows, past Staten Island, past Governor’s Island and up onto the Battery. Lower Manhattan was inundated as the wave diverged along the East and Hudson Rivers. Cars bounced like corks along the empty streets of the Financial District, up Broadway past Grace Church, past Midtown, Central Park, to Harlem and beyond.
A few small buildings fell apart. Ellis Island vanished. So too the Statue of Liberty, from the legs down. Her torso, head and torch remained above the sea. As the wave finally struck the Jersey coast and drove across the land, as it funneled up the Hudson River, the Statue reappeared completely.
She shook, she seemed to stumble, but she did not fall.
Chapter 48
The Alvin bobbed to the surface some fifty kilometers off the coast in open water. It was dawn. The sun drifted on the pink horizon to the east. The vessel issued a groan for solace as she floated free.
Inside the DSV, the VHF radio cawed. “Surface Controller to Alvin. Alvin, come in please. Alvin, come in.”
The bodies did not stir. Speers, Decker and Swenson remained within their seats, completely motionless. Lifeless.
“Alvin, this is Surface Controller, do you read me?” Suddenly the voice changed as Warhaftig snatched the radio. “For God’s sake, Decker, are you there? Are you alright?”
Decker began to stir. His head rolled to the side. He opened his eyes and shook himself to consciousness. He reached out for the radio. “This is Alvin,” he said groggily. “Go ahead, Surface Controller.”
“Thank heavens. Is everything OK?”
Decker looked around him. Swenson was beginning to awaken. Her eyes were fluttering. Her eyelashes moved like butterflies.
“Speers didn’t make it,” Decker said. “But Emily and I are okay. What about the rest of the world?”
“It worked, John! Some destruction, of course, but loss of life in the States was minimal — nothing like we feared. Thanks to you two. We’ve had hurricanes that caused more damage. The Caribbean islands took a hit though. So did Brazil. We’re about seven miles east of you. We’ll be there in a few minutes to pick you up. Sorry to hear about Speers.”
Decker looked over at the dead pilot. “He saved our lives, Otto. We never would have made it without him.”
“Listen, I have the President on the line. He wants to congratulate you personally. You and Emily are heroes. Once Manhattan drains, I’m sure they’re going to want to throw you a ticker tape parade. Can you hear me, John? John, I’m going to put the President through now. Just hold on and—”
Decker turned the radio off. He unfastened his seatbelt and helped Emily to her feet. Then he climbed up the ladder and opened the hatch. The submersible was suddenly filled with cold air. It was salty and wet and delicious. He stared out at the tranquil sea, to the east, as the sun rolled on the shimmering horizon.
The case was over, he thought. In all probability, El Aqrab was dead. The world was safe. At least for now. And suddenly he remembered what Hassan had told him with such uncanny prescience: One day — mark my words — if this quicksand isn’t filled, if we Americans don’t at least address the Palestinian problem even-handedly, the extremists throughout the Arab world will rise up like a great wave, and it will kill us all. It almost had.
Swenson climbed up and stood beside him. He glanced down at her, smiled, and took her in his arms. The dawn glowed pink and lavender and bronze as intermittent light rays played upon the surface of the waves. “Red sky in the morning,” he began.
Swenson leaned a little closer. “Sailor, take warning,” she said, and they folded together in a kiss.
A Note About This Book
While THE WAVE may be a work of fiction, the science concerning mega-tsunamis presented in this novel is very much based in fact.
As Emily Swenson says about the inevitability of the fall of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma, “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Agent Decker. It’s not about likelihood. It’s a certainty. The only variable is time.”