“I never saw it happen, except in a cartoon, but I know what you mean. The answer is yes. When they use the vibrator in seismic exploration, they vary the pitch over a seven-second sweep.”
“They do?” Melanie was curious. “Why?”
“I don’t know, maybe it gives them a better reading on the geophones. Anyway, it didn’t seem the right thing for us, so I didn’t select that feature, but I can.”
“Let’s try it.”
“Okay — but we need to hurry. It’s already five after two.”
They jumped into the car. Oaktree drove fast, skidding across the dusty desert. Priest reset the controls of the vibrator for a sweep of gradually increasing pitch over a period of sixty seconds. As they raced back to their observation point, he checked his watch again. “Two-fifteen,” he said. “This is our last chance.”
“Don’t worry,” Melanie said. “I’m out of ideas. If this doesn’t work, I’m giving up.”
Oaktree stopped the car, and they got out again.
The thought of driving all the way back to Silver River with nothing to celebrate depressed Priest so profoundly that he felt he would want to crash the truck on the freeway and end it all. Maybe that was his way out. He wondered if Star would like to die with him.
“What are you waiting for?” said Melanie. “It’s two-twenty. Press the damn button!”
Priest pressed the button.
As before, the truck roared and the ground trembled and a cloud of dust rose from the earth around the pounding steel plate of the vibrator. This time the roar did not stay at the same moderate pitch but started at a profound bass rumble and began slowly to climb.
Then it happened.
The earth beneath Priest’s feet seemed to ripple like a choppy sea. Then he felt as if someone took him by the leg and threw him down. He landed flat on his back, hitting the ground hard. It knocked the wind out of him.
Star and Melanie screamed at the same time, Melanie with a high-pitched shriek and Star with a roar of shock and fright. Priest saw them both fall, Melanie next to him and Star a few steps away. Oaktree staggered, stayed on his feet, and fell last.
Priest was silently terrified.
There was a noise like an express train thundering past close by. Dust rose from the ground, small stones flew through the air, and boulders rolled every which way.
The ground continued to move as if someone had hold of the end of a rug and would not stop shaking it. The feeling was unbelievably disorienting, as if the world had suddenly become a completely strange place. It was terrifying.
Priest caught his breath and struggled to his knees. Then, as he got one foot flat on the ground, Melanie grabbed his arm and pulled him down again. He screamed at her: “Let me go, you dumb cunt!” But he could not hear his own words.
The ground heaved up and threw him downhill, away from the ’Cuda. Melanie fell on top of him. He thought the car might turn over and crush both of them, and he tried to roll out of its path. He could not see Star or Oaktree. A flying thornbush whipped his face, scratching him. Dust got into his eyes, and he was momentarily blinded. He lost all sense of direction. He curled up in a ball, covering his face with his arms, and waited for death.
The shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started. He had no idea whether it had lasted ten seconds or ten minutes.
A moment later the noise died away.
Priest rubbed the dust out of his eyes and stood up. His vision cleared slowly. He saw Melanie at his feet. He extended a hand and pulled her up. “Are you okay?” he said.
“I think so,” she replied shakily.
The dust in the air thinned, and he saw Oaktree getting to his feet unsteadily. Where was Star? Then he saw her a few steps away. She lay on her back with her eyes closed. His heart lurched.
She opened her eyes. “Jesus,” she said. “That was a blast!”
Priest grinned, fighting back tears of relief.
He helped Star to her feet. “We’re all alive,” he said.
The dust was settling fast. He looked across the valley and saw the truck. It was upright and seemed undamaged. A few yards from it there was a great gash in the ground that ran north and south in the middle of the valley as far as he could see.
“Well, I’ll be darned,” he said quietly. “Look at that.”
“It worked,” said Melanie.
“We did it,” Oaktree said. “Goddamn it, we caused a motherfucking earthquake!”
Priest grinned at them all. “That’s the truth,” he said.
He kissed Star, then Melanie; then Oaktree kissed them both; then Star kissed Melanie. They all laughed. Then Priest started to dance. He did a red Indian war hop, there in the middle of the broken valley, his boots kicking up the newly settled dust. Star joined in, then Melanie and Oaktree, and the four of them went round and round in a circle, shouting and whooping and laughing until the tears came to their eyes.
PART TWO
Seven Days
8
Judy Maddox was driving home on Friday at the end of the worst week in her FBI career.
She could not figure out what she had done to deserve this. Okay, she had yelled at her boss, but he had been hostile to her before she blew her cool, so there had to be another reason. She had gone to Sacramento yesterday with every intention of making the Bureau look efficient and competent, and somehow she had ended up giving an impression of muddle and impotence. She felt frustrated and depressed.
Nothing good had happened since her meeting with Al Honeymoon. She had been calling seismology professors and interviewing them by phone. She would ask whether the professor was working on locations of critically stressed points on fault lines. If so, who had access to their data? And did any of those people have connections with terrorist groups?
The seismologists had not been helpful. Most of today’s academics had been students in the sixties and seventies, when the FBI had paid every creep on campus to spy on the protest movement. It was a long time ago, but they had not forgotten. To them the Bureau was the enemy. Judy understood how they felt, but she wished they would not be passive-aggressive with agents who were working in the public interest.
The Hammer of Eden’s deadline ran out today, and there had been no earthquake. Judy was deeply relieved, even though it suggested she had been wrong to take the threat seriously. Maybe this would be the end of the whole thing. She told herself she should have a relaxing weekend. The weather was great, sunny and warm. Tonight she would make stir-fried chicken for Bo and open a bottle of wine. Tomorrow she would have to go to the supermarket, but on Sunday she could drive up the coast to Bodega Bay and sit on the beach reading a book like a normal person. On Monday she would probably be given a new assignment. Maybe she could make a fresh start.
She wondered whether to call her girlfriend Virginia and see if she wanted to go to the beach. Ginny was her oldest friend. Also the daughter of a cop, and the same age as Judy, she was sales director of a security firm. But,
