Presidents — the main Thomas Jefferson Building, lavishly decorated in Italian Renaissance style; the James Madison Memorial Building; and the John Adams Building, all located to the rear of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Into big packing cases, the troops and the permanent Library staff were bundling the first volumes of the most priceless sources of information in the entire country — the fountain of knowledge used by Congressmen, Senators, and selected researchers from all over the world.
To complicate the task still further, the U.S. Copyright Office, with its unique store of critical business data, is also located there. It would take twenty-four-hour shifts every day, until the ocean crushed the city, to move even half of the contents of the great buildings on Independence Avenue.
Over on Constitution Avenue, behind the giant stone columns of the National Archives, a more delicate operation was under way. Curators and troops were working in the midst of this ultimate repository for all U.S. Government documents, packing up documents beyond price — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights — all destined for Andrews Air Force Base, from where they would be flown to secure U.S. military establishments, and guarded night and day.
Up on 14th and C Streets there was a total evacuation from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where $35 million of U.S. Government banknotes were printed every day, just to replace the old ones. In here they also printed postage stamps, government bonds, licenses, and revenue stamps. There was a U.S. Marine guard of more than one hundred men forming a cordon around this building while the presses were being dismantled and crucial components carried out to the waiting trucks.
All along Washington’s imposing Mall, the story was the same. The evacuation was under way. Military trucks lined the avenues, parked two deep outside the Capitol itself, and similarly inside the grounds of the White House. Historic portraits, ornaments, furnishings, and furniture were being loaded by Marines along with Presidential papers and records.
Critical offices of government remained open, and inside the Oval Office, Admiral Morgan and Admiral Frank Doran wrestled with the problem of the United States Navy’s warships. They had to be removed, fast, from all dockyards on the East Coast, or else they would surely be smashed to rubble. And they could not be headed east to assist with the submarine operation around the Canaries, not into the jaws of the tsunami. They had to be sent into calmer waters, and the two Admirals pored over the charts. Not even the submarine jetties up in New London, Connecticut, were safe.
And certainly it was too great a risk to send several billion dollars worth of nuclear submarines into deep waters in the hopes that the huge waves of the tsunami would simply roll over them. No one knew the depth of the turbulence that might accompany such a wave, subsurface, and it was clear that the submarines would have to follow the same route as the East Coast — based frigates, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and the like, into a sheltered anchorage.
Frank Doran had considered the possibility of running the ships north, into the 30-mile-wide Bay of Fundy, which divides southern Nova Scotia from the Canadian mainland in New Brunswick.
“There’s no problems with ice up there at this time of year,” he said. “We could push the fleet north as far as Chignecto Bay…That’d put a hilly hunk of land 60 miles wide between the ships and the Atlantic. They’d be safe in there.”
But Arnold did not trust the surge of the waves from the southwest, and he was afraid the tsunami might curl around the headland of Fundy, and then roll up the bay, dumping ships on the beach. There would be no possibility of escape in the shallow, confined waters of the Chignecto, and generally speaking, Admiral Morgan preferred to send the fleet south.
“But the Caribbean may be under worse threat than anywhere,” said Frank. “This document we have here from the University of California says the tidal wave will hit the coast of Mexico, never mind Florida.”
“I know,” said Admiral Morgan. “But Florida’s a very big chunk of land. It’s more than 100 miles wide, even at its narrowest, and the scientists do not expect the tidal wave to last much more than 12 or 15 miles at most, once it hits land. I’m saying we should get the fleet south, around the Keys and then north into the Gulf of Mexico, maybe up as far as Pensacola…anywhere there’s deep water along that Gulf Coast…because there’s got to be shelter under the armpit of Florida…Are you with me?”
“I am,” said Admiral Doran. “And like all sailors, I’d rather go south than north.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” said Arnold Morgan, “except to your office in Norfolk. And you’ll be running the show till those missiles come bursting out of the ocean — that is, if your boys don’t nail him first. I just wish they were attacking from anywhere else on earth, rather than a nuclear submarine. Anywhere, anything. I’d rather they were attacking from outer space than from a nuclear boat, submerged-launch.”
“So would I,” replied Admiral Doran. “Meanwhile I’d better get back down to Norfolk. Every time I look at the place I think ‘tidal wave,’ and the havoc it would cause down there. That thing could pick up a 100,000-ton carrier, according to the scientific assessments. And if it didn’t do that, it would most likely crush the big ships against the jetties.
“I know that the cities are badly threatened, but a tsunami could just about wipe out the Navy on the East Coast. That thing comes in from the southwest, it’ll slam straight into Virginia Beach and then take out all three of those bridge/tunnels across the Hampton Roads. And the land’s so flat, just a maze of docks, dockyards, creeks, lakes, and rivers all the way in from the Atlantic.”
“Don’t remind me, Frank. And how about the shipyards, Newport News and Norship, all in the same darned complex. Christ! We got two aircraft carriers half finished in there…Couldn’t hardly move them if we tried — except with tugs…not to mention the West Coast of Florida.”
Frank Doran shook his head. “And we have to get Kings Bay, Georgia, evacuated. We got four Ohio boats in there, and God knows how many of those Trident C4 missiles. Probably enough to blow up most of the goddamned universe, and we’re prancing around trying to find a bunch of guys dressed in fucking sheets underwater.”
Admiral Morgan chuckled. He really liked Frank Doran and his unexpected humor. The task that faced them both was truly overwhelming, and they had to fight against letting it take over. They had a chance to nail the
Failing those three options, life would not be the same on the East Coast of the U.S.A. for a very long time.
“Okay, sir, I’m out of here. I’ll put the evacuation plan for the Gulf of Mexico into operation right away. If it floats and it steams, that’s where every ship is going. I think we better get those ICBMs to sea and headed south as quickly as possible. But we might have to commandeer a few commercial freighters to vacate the submarine support station. There’s a million tons of missiles and other material in there. And it’s absolutely vulnerable — right on the Atlantic coast, protected by nothing more than a couple of sandbanks.”
“Don’t tell me, Frank. I used to work there,” said Arnold, shaking his head. “Is this a goddamned nightmare or what?”
Admiral Doran walked to the door of the Oval Office. “You coming back tomorrow?” asked Arnold.
“Uh-uh. In the morning. We might have some better news by then.”
Ravi and Shakira were back in their home on Sharia Bab Touma. Adm. Mohammed Badr had decided that satellite signals between the Iranian Naval Base at Bandar Abbas and the
The Americans could intercept anything, with the National Security Agency’s Olympian ability to eavesdrop on anything, anywhere, anytime, and very little was transmitted from the Navy bases of potentially troublesome countries without Fort Meade knowing about it, chapter and verse.
So General and Mrs. Rashood had evacuated their lush guest quarters in Bandar Abbas and flown home to Damascus. And there, high up in the rambling house they had lived in when they first were married, was a state- of-the-art satellite transmitter, and a state-of-the-art receiver. But the path of the signals was Damascus-satellite- Tehran-satellite-Zhanjiang-satellite-
On the way back, it was precisely the same in reverse, all coded. Ravi made his way back down the stairs
