Terminal Justice (49 page)

“It’s huge,” his wife added.

“I’ll say. That thing’s got to be around twenty-five meters.”

Twenty-five meters or better
, Rajiv thought. And it was growing.

Again Rajiv banked the plane and raced for shore. This time he maintained his altitude. Urgently he snatched the microphone from his radio set and raised it to his mouth. He keyed the device and began to speak rapidly in Hindi. “Mayday, mayday, 55W with emergency traffic.”

“N20355W this is Bhubameshwar tower. State your emergency.”

“Wave. Tsunami headed your way.” Rajiv’s voice was breathy as he struggled to keep his emotions controlled.

“What?” came the response of the air traffic controller.

“I’m forty kilometers southeast of Puri. I see a large wave …” Just then the monster of water raced underneath them. Rajiv checked his air speed: 165 knots.

“How fast are we going?” Higgins asked.

Rajiv ignored him and spoke into his radio again. “It’s moving at about 300 kilometers per hour! Take emergency action!”

Higgins shook his head. “Three hundred kilometers per hour, and that thing is pulling away. It’ll hit the shore in less than five minutes.”

Five minutes
, Rajiv thought. Five minutes wasn’t enough time to do anything. Not enough time to get into a car and drive to safety. Not enough time to seek shelter. Just enough time to pray.

Rajiv watched as the wave raced away from them, outdistancing them with each passing second. The wall of water was rising and racing toward the coast, toward Puri, toward his home. And there was nothing he could do about it.

But he would try.

Pushing the throttle to the stops, Rajiv made a vain attempt to catch the watery behemoth. The engine roared, then screamed in protest. Rajiv did everything to speed the Cessna along—trimming the propeller, easing all flaps—but it did no good. Only a jet could catch the wave of destruction ahead of him. At the moment, the wave was the fastest thing on or above the ocean. Rajiv would arrive moments after the wave struck shore.

Squeezing the yoke tight until his knuckles turned white, Rajiv attempted to will the plane to fly faster. He even pointed the nose down to make full use of gravity. His air speed rose to nearly 200 knots, but it was not enough. He could not descend forever. Soon he would have to level off or die. But maybe that wasn’t so bad.

If only he could be there with his family—with his wife and sons and his beautiful Jaya—then maybe he could help or at least hug them one last time. He knew it was a foolish thought, but men were allowed foolish thoughts when their families were in danger.

As the wave approached the shore, Rajiv saw it crest. A second later a spray of white rose high in the air and then quickly rained down. The plane arrived a minute or two after the impact. Below it, rubble bobbed around on the churning caldron of cold seawater.
What had once been houses were now little more than fragments, kindling. As quickly as the wave had arrived, its destructive tide receded, taking with it the debris of buildings, cars, boats, and bodies.

Rajiv was now flying a mere thirty meters above his hometown of Puri—close enough to see detail that would forever be branded in his mind. Next to him Higgins continued to tape. At first Rajiv felt a nearly overwhelming sense of anger at the man for being so unmoved by what had just happened, but that dissolved when he saw a single tear stream down the Englishman’s cheek.

Below was utter carnage. The streets were littered with debris as though an atom bomb had been unleashed. The wave had not cared if it destroyed the wood huts of the poor or the fine homes of the rich. Little was left. Bodies of men, women, and children were strewn about; some of them lay naked, the wave having viciously ripped the clothing from their bodies.

Two minutes later Rajiv began circling the plane over a decimated stretch of ground. A missile attack would have left more structures intact. Homes, offices, schools, people had been turned into the flotsam of fate.

“Why are we circling?” Higgins asked softly.

Rajiv did not answer. He stared out the side window.

Higgins sighed. “Is that where you lived?” he asked kindly.

Rajiv nodded slowly and continued to gaze at the wreckage of what had been his middle-class home. Gone was the white stucco house, the courtyard, his family. This was where he had lived. Now gone. All gone.

Below he could see a small yellow tricycle implanted next to a fractured stone wall—the birthday gift he had purchased for Jaya.

Tears came unhindered.