The lift began, but the rope hit a snag and wouldn’t budge. The hoist started to smoke from the friction.
“Shut it down!” the crew chief shouted to the operator.
After pulling Elizabeth up about ten feet, the rope had stuck on something.
“I’m hung up,” Elizabeth said.
A shower of dirt and clay had fallen on her. Her shoulder throbbed where one of the larger pieces had struck her. She tried to see in the choking dust, covering her mouth and nose with a handkerchief. It was like groping in fog. She couldn’t see her hands in front of her face.
The ground lurched again, rocking her harness. A block of sediment broke away from the wall of the fissure somewhere below her and smashed into the bottom, throwing up more thick dust. From the sound it made, it was a big, heavy chunk of earth.
Elizabeth figured she was down about 150 feet. Keeping one hand on the harness, she reached up with the other and felt something overhead. The rope was twisted around it.
The next jolt was even stronger. The upper walls of the crevice seemed to move closer together. But maybe that was just her imagination.
Elizabeth smelled something coming up from the depths. Sulfur.
As the dirt settled, she saw what had fouled her rope—the root system of a tree. Long buried and completely carbonized, part of the trunk had broken through the wall during the last tremor. The rope was caught between several gnarled roots, each as thick as a man’s arm.
“I’ve got a problem here,” she said. “Give me a little slack.” Pulling herself up in her seat, she was able to clear the tangle, using her feet for leverage, pushing out against the wall.
“I’m free. Get me out.”
The hoist started pulling her toward the surface again. Grit and clay kept pouring down on her from the sides of the crevasse. A couple of pieces grazed her helmet. In minutes she was back at the surface.
Someone estimated that the fissure had closed about a foot. There was no telling how long it would remain open.
“How are you doing?” Atkins asked Elizabeth after he helped pull her out of the trench. Her face and hands were covered with mud.
Elizabeth managed a smile. “I’ve got a whole sackful of samples,” she said. “The fissure is like a road map. There’ve been a lot of quakes here. They’ve left marks everywhere. I counted at least fourteen of them.” She looked at Atkins. “They’re big, and they come in clusters.”
MEMPHIS
JANUARY 16
6:45 P.M.
WHEN THEY RETURNED TO MEMPHIS, ATKINS AND Elizabeth were exhausted. Nursing a headache, Elizabeth took some aspirin and went to lie down. Meanwhile, the earthquake command center was rolling in high gear. Another round of GPS data was due by satellite transmission within an hour. And Guy Thompson’s people were running computer simulations of the latest aftershock activity along the greatly expanded seismic zone. Each pass helped them scope out in sharper, ever clearer detail the length and breadth of the new fault.
Using Elizabeth’s samples from the fissure, a team of scientists at the University of Illinois at Champaign- Urbana were already working on the radiocarbon analysis. The results weren’t expected for another five hours.
Elizabeth unrolled a sleeping bag in one of the equipment rooms in the library annex. A long worktable was piled with spare parts for seismographs—starters, timing circuits, pendulums. The room was poorly heated but had the luxury of privacy. The men slept between the stacks on the floor of the library, grabbing a few hours whenever they could. Elizabeth rated her own space.
She’d just slipped into her sleeping bag when someone rapped lightly on the door. It was John Atkins. He’d scrounged a cup of milk, which he’d heated on a butane stove.
“This might help you sleep,” he said. “It works with me—especially when I mix in a good shot of bourbon. Unfortunately, we’re fresh out of bourbon.” He grinned. “You’d think something like that would be illegal in Tennessee.”
Elizabeth took a few sips, holding the warm cup with both hands. “That’s nice,” she said, smiling. “Sit with me for a few minutes. I’d like the company.”
Atkins sat next to her, his back against the wall. She curled into the crook of his arm. She felt sleep coming.
“Thank you for today,” she said, looking up at him.
He kissed her, gently. Then she put her hand against the side of his face, and they embraced.
“Hold me,” she said.
“Go to sleep,” he said softly. All the old emotions were rushing back, the wonderful sensation of just being close to a woman. And he did care for Elizabeth Holleran. He’d known that since their wild trip across the Mississippi. She was cool under pressure, caring, and incredibly bright. She’d shown nothing but courage and conviction since she’d arrived in Memphis.
There was something else, too. He loved to look at her. She was a beautiful woman.
Snuggling closer to him, she said, “I’ll be awake the next time. Promise you’ll be there when I wake up.”
He kissed her on the lips. Then she was quiet. He felt her go to sleep in his arms and must have dozed off himself, sliding down next to her on the warm sleeping bag.
He hadn’t planned on that. It happened so quickly he was asleep before he knew it. Awakened, he had no idea how long he’d been out. Elizabeth was sitting next to him. She was slowly, gently unbuttoning his shirt.
He touched her and felt her breasts against his chest. She’d already opened her shirt and slipped off her bra. He glimpsed the long, wonderful legs as she straddled him. He twisted slightly so that he could unbuckle his trousers. Elizabeth pulled the sleeping bag over them and lay on top of him, touching him ever lower with her hands as they embraced.
He started to say something, to tell her that he loved her. There was so much to say, and he was still groggy with sleep. He hadn’t said enough the last time he loved someone. This was a second chance. A gift. He wanted Elizabeth to know how much he cared for her.
“I love you,” he said.
She touched his lips. “Keep saying that. I won’t ever get tired of hearing it.”
He kissed her deeply, clasping his hands around her waist, afraid even then of losing her. He’d take her as far as she wanted. As far as she’d let him.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
JANUARY 17
7:00 P.M.
PRESIDENT ROSS HAD CALLED THE EVENING meeting in the national security adviser’s conference room in the basement of the White House’s West Wing. He’d flown in a handful of scientists from the Memphis earthquake center and the USGS. They’d taken an Army helicopter to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where Air Force One picked them up for the one-hour flight to Dulles.
Ross had deliberately kept the group small. In addition to the seismologists, he’d limited attendance to Margaret Greenland, his national security adviser; the speaker of the House and Senate majority leader; and his science adviser, Steve Draper.
The president had already been warned that the news was bad, but he hadn’t realized its true gravity until Elizabeth Holleran began to speak. As she described the carbon-14 dating tests and their implications, he struggled to keep his composure.
In a concise, factual delivery, Holleran laid out the key point: the radiocarbon dating of fossil chips she’d
