The Tsunami Countdown (12 page)

10:38 a.m.
44 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

C
aptain Martin Wainwright peered through the cockpit window of his C-130E at the bright blue ocean below. The chatter coming
over the radio was like nothing he had ever heard in his eight years of flying for the 314th Airlift Wing. Reports were being
thrown around about an immense tsunami heading toward Hawaii, but from an altitude of thirty-one thousand feet, the sea looked
as calm and flat as a pond in his native Tennessee. The Air Force transport under his command had been flying for more than
three hours on a mission from San Diego to Hickam Air Force Base carrying three brand-new Humvees for delivery to the naval
base at Pearl Harbor. He was expecting the usual milk run for him and his four crewmates: land at Hickam, secure the aircraft,
get off base for a few hours of sightseeing at Waikiki, hit the barracks for some sack time, then ferry a
load of equipment back to the mainland the next day. Nothing that he hadn’t done a dozen times before. But the order he was
now being given by the Honolulu Air Traffic Control Center was extraordinary.

“This is Air Force 547,” Wainwright said. He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Say again, Honolulu control. You’re closing
Hickam?”

“Roger that, 547,” the controller said, his voice clipped and strained. “You are instructed to turn back immediately to the
mainland and make for the nearest possible landing site.”

“That’s a negative, Honolulu control. We’re past the point of no return.” The four-engine turboprop had already sucked up
over half the fuel in its tanks. They wouldn’t make it within three hundred miles of San Diego before they ran out of gas.
Hawaii was one of the most remote archipelagos in the world, which meant that there weren’t any other choices to land.

“Roger that, 547. You aren’t the only one. Continue on your current heading. We’ll try to make room at Wheeler for you.”

“Affirmative, Honolulu control.”

“And 547, be advised that we’ll be evacuating Honolulu control in thirty minutes. We’ll be turning control over to Wheeler
Field at that time.”

Wainwright glanced at his copilot in disbelief. To close
down the airport was one thing, but shutting down the control center was unprecedented. The troubled look on his copilot’s
face reflected his own. Their routine run to the islands had just become a nail-biter.

Teresa had been waiting for thirty minutes, and there was still no sign of Mia and Lani. The sirens kept wailing at regular
intervals, but without a radio, she didn’t know what was going on. Even though it was critically low on battery power, she
had turned her cell phone back on. She had to take the chance in case the girls called her.

The situation on the beach had changed dramatically in the last half hour. When the beachgoers finally realized that the warning
siren was not a test, many of them had quickly gathered their belongings and started heading out. But many others, much to
her surprise, kept on doing what they were doing. They seemed completely unconcerned about the fact that a monster wave could
be headed their way.

Even when the police had started to arrive about ten minutes after the first siren had gone off and blared their loudspeakers
at the beach, some people still did not heed the warning.

As he was making his way up the beach, one of the policemen had stopped when he reached Teresa.

“Ma’am, you need to leave the beach immediately. There is a tsunami coming.”

“I can’t. My daughter and her friend are somewhere on the beach, and they’re probably going to be coming back at any minute.
The radio said the tsunami would be here within the hour. Is that right?”

“We’re getting a lot of conflicting information. All I know is that we were told to get everyone off the beach as soon as
possible. But I’ve done these kinds of evacuations before. We’ve got a few hours to go. You should be okay.”

“Why isn’t everybody leaving?”

“We always get the nuts who want to come down and see the tsunami. They figure that they’ll head up to one of the hotels and
have a party when the tsunami gets here.”

“Even after the Asian tsunami?”

“Well, not as many nuts now, but a lot of kids think they’re invincible. I see it every time. We can’t force them to leave.
It’s still a free country. Even if that means they’re free to die. I’m sorry, ma’am. Good luck.”

He continued on at a deliberate pace. His comment about teens feeling invincible worried her.

Surely if Mia and Lani had heard the sirens, they would have had plenty of time to get back to her by now. She had been torn
about whether to leave her location and chance missing the girls if they returned to find her. But by this time, the waiting
had become agonizing. She just couldn’t sit there and hope they came back. She had to do something.

She rummaged through her bag until she found a Post-it pad and a pen. On the pad, she scribbled a note to the girls:

The Grand Hawaiian seemed like the best place to meet if they were able to rendezvous. She certainly didn’t want them waiting
around on the beach until she came back.

Teresa took her keys and wallet out of her purse, placed the notepad at the top of the purse, and wrapped it in her towel.
She could only hope that no one would steal the purse before the kids saw the note.

She then began jogging toward Diamond Head, the direction in which she saw the girls go, yelling their names as she went.

Within a minute, her phone rang. She looked at the number on the caller ID, hoping it was the girls. The number came up as
unknown. They could have been calling from a pay phone.

When she answered, it was a familiar voice, but one that surprised her.

“Teresa, it’s Brad. Thank God, I finally got through to you. The lines have been jammed. Did you get my text?”

“No. Have the girls called you?”

“What? Aren’t they with you?”

“They went shopping about forty minutes before the siren went off, and they haven’t come back. I’m looking for them now.”

“Jesus! Teresa, you have to get as far away from the beach as you can. The tsunami is going to be huge.”

“I can’t leave them here! What if they can’t hear the warning?

“With all those sirens going off? I’m inside a concrete building three hundred yards from the beach, and I can hear them.
Come on, they had to have heard it.”

“Then why didn’t they come back to me? Something’s wrong! I’m not leaving until I find them!”

“Okay! Calm down. We’ll figure out something. Where are you?”

“I’m on Waikiki. But my phone’s battery is drained.”

“I know. I got the message. If the kids call us, we’ll tell them to meet you and Rachel at the Grand Hawaiian, but you’ve
got to be there before—”

Teresa’s cell phone beeped, and Brad’s voice cut out. The display showed a blinking battery graphic and then went dead.

She closed the phone and began calling out Mia’s and Lani’s names again, angling up to Kalakaua Avenue so that she would have
both the shops on the streets and the
beach in view. She had only gotten a block when she saw a clothing store called Sweet that looked like it catered to teens.
She entered the store and looked toward the back. She yelled the girls’ names in a manner that would have raised eyebrows
on any other occasion.

Televisions mounted along the walls normally showed music videos in a store as hip as this, but they were now all turned to
various news stations. Most displayed the tsunami emergency broadcast warning. Others were tuned to national news networks
that didn’t carry the signal.

A young saleswoman who had been entranced by the broadcast whipped around when she heard Teresa call for the girls.

“Ma’am,’ she said, smacking gum as she talked, “we’re closing for the evacuation.”

Teresa took a photo of Mia from her wallet. It was a year old, but it was good enough.

“Have you seen this girl?”

The saleswoman looked at it and shook her head.

“She probably took off. I’m leaving in a minute myself. Can you believe what they’re saying?”

“I don’t live here, so this all new for me.” Teresa headed for the door to continue her search.

“Yeah, but two hundred feet high? It’s scary.”

That stopped Teresa in her tracks.

“Two hundred feet?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s how big they’re saying the tsunami is going to be. It’s got to be some kind of hoax, right?”

Teresa thought about what Brad had said. “Oh my God! When he said it was going to be huge, I thought—”

“What’s that?” The saleswoman pointed at one of the TVs.

On one of the national feeds, the view had changed to a camera in a helicopter. It focused on the rocky black coastline. Two
people could be seen waving to the camera from a cliff top high above the waves breaking on the rocks below. A graphic at
the bottom of the picture said
KA LAE, HAWAII, SOUTHERNMOST POINT IN THE US, LIVE
.

“Turn it up,” Teresa said.

The woman aimed the remote at the TV, and they could hear the announcer’s voice.

“… should not attempt what you see these people doing. Again, we are looking at a helicopter camera shot of the southern tip
of the Big Island of Hawaii, the first place where we are expecting the tsunami to make landfall. Our exclusive coverage comes
courtesy of KHAI, whose helicopter was over the volcano at Kilauea for another story today. Apparently, two intrepid hikers
have decided they wanted to be the first to see the tsunami and have chosen a cliff-side vantage point. They appear to be
at least fifty feet above the water, so we’ll have to hope they’ll be okay. They have not responded to repeated requests to
leave the area.”

The camera panned away from the hikers and to the sea. Nothing unusual was visible, but the announcer’s mood changed noticeably.

“What’s that? I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we are having some technical difficulties getting audio from the helicopter.
We do have reports coming in that several airliners over the Pacific have reported seeing waves moving across the water in
the direction of Hawaii at an incredibly high rate of speed, but none of those reports have been confirmed at this point.”

The camera panned back down to the cliff. The announcer continued his inane narration but didn’t add anything beyond what
they could see. The waterline had pulled back significantly from just a few seconds ago. The view shifted back out to the
ocean again, and now they could see the first glimpse of white water far out to sea. It seemed to be moving slowly, but in
just a few seconds it had moved much closer to shore. The camera continued to follow it, but Teresa couldn’t get a good sense
of the size of the wave because there was no frame of reference.

Finally, the camera had panned far enough as it followed the wave so that the shore was in view, but without houses or other
buildings for comparison, it still looked
unimpressive. The two people on the cliff’s edge must have thought so, too, since they didn’t move.

But when the wave broke against the rocks, Teresa realized that they weren’t going to make it. She expected the wave to bounce
against the rocks and reflect back into the ocean. Instead, it simply covered the rocks and continued to sweep up the cliff.
Too late, the hikers realized the size of the wave and turned to run. Before they could get more than a few steps, the wave
washed over them, and they disappeared as if they were ants being washed down a drain.

Teresa gasped, and the saleswoman started to cough uncontrollably.

“Are you all right?” Teresa asked.

“Swallowed … my … gum,” the saleswoman said between coughs.

Teresa ran out of the store, leaving the saleswoman to fumble with her keys, intent on locking the door to a store that would
soon no longer exist.

10:41 a.m.
41 Minutes to Wave Arrival Time

T
he established procedure of the tsunami warning system included notifying the Civil Air Patrol, an auxiliary of the U.S. Air
Force that flew search-and-rescue missions and other operations that the military and government didn’t have the resources
to do on their own. In the event of a tsunami warning, their duty was simple. Offshore and in remote locations, it was likely
that surfers and boaters would not hear the sirens. Helicopters and planes that were equipped with loudspeakers would fly
over the coastlines, broadcasting the warning. Each aircraft was responsible for a particular section of the coastline.

During past tsunami warnings, the CAP had met with moderate success. In many cases, the surfers would heed the warnings and
paddle in to shore. But there were plenty of others who just waved at the aircraft,
obviously enjoying the chance to say they had surfed a tsunami.

One of the CAP volunteers, an eager nineteen-yearold pilot named Matthew Perkins, flew a Cessna outfitted with a loudspeaker
that he had installed himself. Although he had tested it extensively on the ground at Hickam, he hadn’t had an opportunity
to drill with it yet. The tsunami warning would be his first chance to try it in action.

He had made all the required preflight checks and then took off from the runway that Hickam Air Base shared with Honolulu
International. It only took him a few minutes to get to his designated patrol area along Waikiki Beach.

Off the coast of Diamond Head, Lani and Mia continued paddling alongside their two new friends. The view from this far out
was spectacular. Lani was having a great time, but Mia was struggling.

After having paddled all the way to Sans Souci Beach, Mia had gotten tired and asked the rest of them if they could turn back.
Although Lani was getting sore, she could have gone on awhile longer and was disappointed Mia had given up so soon.

The breeze had picked up, and the previously calm water now rocked their kayaks on undulating waves. At
the rate they were paddling, their tired arms would take another half hour at least to get them back to their starting point
on Waikiki.

Lani was surprised to see all kinds of aircraft buzzing around. Tourist, news, and military helicopters were everywhere—way
more than usual.

Then she heard a small plane approach. It was flying parallel to the beach, almost as if it were coming in for a landing,
but the runway was miles away.

“What is that guy doing?” Tom said.

“I don’t know,” Jake said.

“Is he going to crash?” Mia asked.

“No, look,” Lani said, “he’s just flying straight and level.”

“Then what’s he doing?”

As it got closer, Lani could hear words cutting in and out. She couldn’t understand what was being said. In between the words,
there was nothing but static.

“It’s probably just some kind of advertisement,” Tom said.

“Yeah,” Jake said, “but the doofus’s speaker is broken or something.”

Lani heard a word more distinctly.

“Did he say
onami
?” she said.

“See,” Tom said. “It’s probably
Konami
. That’s a video game company. It’s an ad.”

“Well, it’s not working,” Jake said.

The plane passed over them two more times, but they ignored the annoying whine of the engine and kept paddling lazily back
to Waikiki.