Boyd Morrison
Rogue Wave
Acknowledgements
I'd like to thank Dr. Chip McCreery and Dr. Stuart Weinstein at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center for listening to my wild stories and showing me around the facility. Thanks also to Delores Clark of NOAA for assisting in setting up the tour.
Much appreciation to Dr. David Kriebel, professor of ocean engineering at the Naval Academy, for information about the effects of tsunamis on structures.
Thanks to Ray Lovell at Hawaii Civil Defense for talking to me about HCD response procedures in emergencies.
Thanks to my good friend, Dr. Erik Van Eaton, for his medical expertise.
It's great to have a brother who was an Air Force pilot, and I'd like to thank him-retired Lt. Col. Martin Westerfield-for his help with all things military and airborne.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Randi, for going on this journey with me.
Any errors in science, organizations, or geography, whether intentional or not, are mine alone. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Captain Michael Robb opened his eyes and found himself lying on the cockpit floor. Heat washed over him, like the airliner had been plunged into a blast furnace, and multiple warning horns blared. Blood trickled from his brow and stung his eye. For a second, he lay there, dazed, wondering what had happened. Then he remembered. The impact.
He had just returned to the cockpit, swearing himself off coffee for the rest of the trip. The flight from Los Angeles to Sydney wasn't even halfway over, and it had been his third trip to the lavatory. His copilot, Wendy Jacobs, a good 20 years younger than he was, had turned to smirk at him but said nothing. He had been about to climb back into his seat when a streak of light flashed by the airliner's starboard wing.
Robb thought it was a lightning strike from a storm they were flying above, but then the plane was thrown sideways, as if batted away by a giant hand. A sonic boom blasted the plane, and the aircraft rocked from multiple strikes. He smacked into the bulkhead, his head and shoulder taking most of the blow, which knocked him to the floor.
He must have been out for only a few seconds. Though his mind was still fuzzy, his vision quickly came back into focus. Robb sat up and wiped the blood from his eye. The instrument panel was intact. Jacobs had disengaged the autopilot and grabbed the yoke, which she now fought for control. Robb pulled himself to his feet. He had no idea how badly he was injured, but he was moving. That was enough.
As Robb clambered into his seat, he glanced at the cabin differential pressure gauge. Its needle was pegged at zero. Explosive decompression.
Reflexively, he reached for the mask hanging to his left, years of training taking over. His shoulder protested the motion, and he winced in pain.
'Oxygen masks on, 100 percent!' he shouted.
Robb pulled the mask over his head, and Jacobs did the same. The masks in the passenger compartment had already dropped automatically. He mentally raced through the possibilities for the blast. A terrorist bomb? Missile attack? Fuel tank explosion? To depressurize that fast, some of the passenger windows must have blown out, maybe an entire door. The aircraft was still flying, though, so that meant the fuselage was intact.
With his attention focused on getting the airliner under control, there was no time for Robb to talk to the passengers. The flight attendants would have to deal with them. The best thing he could do for the passengers was to get the plane down to 10,000 feet where there was breathable air.
He pushed the yoke forward and silenced the decompression horn, but another one continued to wail. The lights for the starboard engines flashed red, meaning they were both on fire.
'Pull number three engine T-handle!' Robb barked out. He suppressed the panic he could feel edging into his voice.
Jacobs pulled the handle and pressed the button beneath it, extinguishing the fire.
'Number three T-handle pulled!' she replied. They repeated the same for engine four. After running through the required checklists, Jacobs glanced out the starboard window to make a visual check.
'Fire's out on number three engine! Number four engine is completely gone!'
'Gone?'
'Sheared off from the pylon.'
Robb cursed under his breath. His plane was a 747–400, a model with the latest in avionics, which was why he and Jacobs were the only flight crew. The need for a flight engineer had been eliminated in the upgrade, but now Robb yearned for the extra help. The airliner was certified to fly with only three engines, but with just the two port engines, they'd be lucky to stay in the air.
He turned to Jacobs. Her face was ashen, but otherwise professional.
'Issue the distress call,' Robb said.
Jacobs nodded, understanding the implications. Even if someone heard the radio call, it would make little difference. The best they could hope for was to report their position in case they had to ditch. She keyed the radio.
'Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is TransPac 823. We are going down. We are going down. We've lost both number three and number four engines. Our position is 75 miles bearing 245 from Palmyra VOR.'
No answer, just static.
'Activate the emergency transponder,' Robb said. He knew activating it was a useless procedure. They were beyond the range of any radar units.
'Setting transponder to 7700 in squawk emergency,' Jacobs replied.
As their rapid descent took the plane through 30,000 feet, an unearthly glow bloomed within the cloud cover ten miles to their right. At first the clouds softened it, but then the light pierced them, shooting toward the stratosphere, for a moment brighter than the sun.
'What the hell?' Jacobs said.
A fireball rolled upward in the distinctive mushroom shape Robb had seen in countless photos. He gaped, mesmerized by the sight. Atomic weapons testing in the Pacific had been outlawed for years, and there were no volcanoes in this region of the ocean. What else could have caused such a massive explosion?
Whatever it was, the explanation didn't matter.
'Roll left!' he yelled. Stabilizing the plane should have been his highest priority, but they had to get away from the blast zone.
'Rolling left,' came Jacobs' response after only a second's hesitation.
Robb just had to hope that he could ride out the shockwave and then figure out where he could put down. They had passed over the Palmyra Atoll only ten minutes before, but the runway built during World War II had been abandoned decades ago. Christmas Island had the closest operational runway, but it was 500 miles away. Still, it was their best shot. Even with all the damage it had sustained, the plane was still flying. They might make it.
'Come on, you bastard!' Robb grunted as he strained at the controls.
The nose of the enormous plane came around slowly. Too slowly.
The blast wave from the explosion caught up with them and slapped at the plane from behind, heaving its tail
