CHAPTER 3
Jiro, Rina
JULY 1, 2043:–INDIAN OCEAN
SUNDA TRENCH: MAXIMUM DEPTH 25,440 FT.
Captain Jiro of the fishing boat, Toki, was a fourth-generation Sundanese angler who took pride in his family’s heritage. The Toki was named after his father, a humble man honored throughout the fishing community for his generosity and skill.
Today, the Sunda Trench was proving fertile. Already twenty thousand pounds of fish had been secured. His five men were working hard with the recent catch. He would be sure to give them good bonuses.
He raised his face and eyed the lookout perch thirty feet up on the sturdy mast supported by six fine steel cables. A stiff ocean breeze grazed the dark, weathered skin of his face, and he quickly inhaled the fresh air. The sea was where he found a peace surpassed only by the thought of his family. He took their picture from his tan shirt pocket. His wife and two small children were his most prized possessions, his reason for living.
“Captain!” yelled a frightened crewman, pointing to the east.
Less than a mile away, the water churned and bubbled as if something were coming up from below. Jiro quickly manned his binoculars and studied the phenomenon. Suddenly, a deafening explosion shook the Toki. The force slammed Jiro’s back into the mainmast. He watched thousands of smoldering boulders blast from the turbulent seas; meteors with tails of steam and water that rose so high they seemed to touch the clouds. His mouth gaped when the glow of ash and fire transformed the clear blue sky into a burnt-orange flame. Hundreds of fireballs were screeching down towards them like missiles.
“Take cover!” he shouted.
The crew scattered, looking for places to hide. A boulder the size of a basketball hit the mainmast, shattering it to pieces. The steel cables snapped and sliced through the air like knives, cutting three crewmen in half. Jiro dove towards the bridge, just missing the onslaught of wooden shards shooting into the deck. He heard the terrified shouts of his men and used the window rim of the bridge to pull himself up. What he saw stopped his breathing. The wall of the trench had risen, creating a huge waterfall as far as the eye could see. Millions of gallons of water ran into the open sea floor. Jiro’s knees began to knock. His body trembled. He stood in a puddle of urine. There was nowhere to run.
The trench wall dropped with a thunderous boom causing a tremendous vacuum, pulling the remaining men off the ship to their deaths. Jiro desperately held onto the broken window rim, his face pinched tight to the pain in his head, hoping his eardrums wouldn’t burst. When he opened his eyes, a three-hundred-foot tsunami was coming his way. He had maybe two minutes.
Jiro ran into the bridge and spun the wheel, steering the Toki into the wave. As he fought to hold the wheel in place, his thoughts turned to his men. All had perished, yet there was no time to mourn. The engines grumbled and choked as the propellers bobbed in and out of the raging sea. No matter how hard the bilge pumps worked, Jiro knew his ship was sinking.
The wave reached the Toki with a roar, sending the bow of the vessel surging upward. The engines whined and bucked, straining to climb the enormous wave. His gaze went up the towering black wall of water.
This is the devil, he thought.
The curl of the furious wave smothered the small boat, tumbling it over backwards. Water rushed into the bridge, bashing Jiro’s body against the rear wall. Within seconds, the bridge filled with water. Jiro held his breath, and his thoughts.
The Toki was foundering bottom side up; its bow slowly began tilting downward, toward the abyss. It squealed and moaned like a dying animal. Jiro peered into the dark water below and saw a fiery light. He was directly over the Sunda Trench. Another round of missiles was coming his way. There was no escape.
Plucked from his pocket, the photo of his wife and children drifted in front of him. He grabbed it and swam to the helm. With one arm hooked through the wheel, he palmed the picture. He would be with them forever. He tenderly kissed the photograph and put it to his chest. Then he closed his eyes and pushed the air from his lungs until there was no more.
OCEANIC SEISMIC RESEARCH INSTITUTE (OSRI)
INDIALANTIC, FLORIDA
“What the—” said Dr. Rina Young tapping the “Enter” key, wondering why her computer monitor just went black. Another glitch, she thought. She’d give it two minutes then restart.
She rested back in her brown leather chair and looked around the MCC, the Main Control Center of OSRI. The totally black room was cool, comfortable and lighted only by the four giant LED screens set into the far wall. Her station was on the bottom floor with the five other working terminals and next to the stairs leading up to the only exit. The room was empty except for her; most of the scientists were at lunch. Her father said she was a workaholic, but it wasn’t that at all. She just loved geology. This was her favorite place away from home and she spent many nights working here. Her gaze went around the room. They had power because the lights were still on.
Could the system have crashed? Possibly, she thought and tapped several keys, hoping to get a response. Nothing.
She remembered when the San Andreas fault erupted in 2039, nearly leveling the entire West Coast, including their headquarters. It was a mess. Broken seismographs, caved-in ceilings, and so many scattered papers it was weeks before they found the floor. She’d suggested to her father that with all the advancements in telecommunications, it wasn’t necessary for any main base to be within a seismic zone, so they’d moved to Florida, a virtually non-active area. OSRI was the first five-story building supposedly able to withstand a category 5 hurricane, incorporating a design similar to earthquake-resistant structures.
This recent 7.8 earthquake in the Pacific Ocean was south of Guam, and in the Mariana Trench. Carved within this dark crevasse lay the deepest crack in the planet, the Challenger Deep. At over thirty-five thousand feet deep, it rivaled Mt. Everest by a mile. She had to examine its dynamics. Depending on the kind of shift, the quake could generate tsunamis. Just before the computer blacked out, the USGS had sent her a message saying they had picked it up and would inform the necessary authorities if need be.
The four LED displays on the far wall blinked on, and different satellite views of the eastern side of the Indian Ocean appeared. She sat up straight.
The Sunda Trench?
The same picture came up on her computer monitor. The satellite imagery showed a tsunami overtake a small ship and continue forward without losing momentum.
“Tsunamis don’t happen over open water,” she said aloud, perplexed at the sight. “What is that?”
She leaned closer to the monitor. Visible above the area was a thick cloud of smoke. Could there be some type of military testing going on? Rows of data scrolled on the left side of the screen.
“11.8? A mega-quake?”
The reading had to be wrong. According to the theory of plate tectonics, the Earth’s crust was divided into slabs of rock called plates that floated over a thick river of plastic-like magma, and the Sunda Trench was a result of the Indo-Australian plate pushing itself under the Burma plate. However, in order for a quake this size to happen, a crack would have to surround the whole planet, and that didn’t exist.
This can’t be right, she thought.
The door at the top of the steps was flung open and her father, Justin, came running down the forty black-carpeted steps.
“What happened?” He was still breathing evenly, a true fitness freak.
“According to this,” said Rina, whisking back her long black hair, “the India plate rammed itself under the Burma plate like a bullet bursting from a gun. A vast amount of energy was released and the computer says there’s an eighty-three percent chance this shift will cause a reaction in the other plates.”
“That’s impossible,” he said, leaning over her. Her nose wrinkled as she caught a whiff of his Stetson cologne, her favorite.
“One subduction zone can’t do this,” he said. “The reading must be wrong.”
“I agree,
but that’s what the data is saying.” She took a deep breath and said the worst words her father could hear. “I need to get into a satellite.”
Justin shook his head. “Absolutely not. You know the repercussions.”
A few months ago, hacking into satellites and downloading the information she needed was simple, but now with the threat of jail time, she’d stopped. If it weren’t for Justin being the Administrator of OSRI and having friends in high circles, the Secretary of Defense, General Theodore Bauman, would have made sure she remained in a dark prison for the rest of her life.