Scimitar SL-2

flexibility. At this stage, his task orders were, of course, extremely narrow — sink the Barracuda, however, wherever, whenever, but soon.

Situated 20 miles to his east was the Ronald Reagan CVBG. The massive aircraft carrier was preparing to rendezvous with the Harry S. Truman, and essentially exchange its fixed-wing aircraft for ASW helicopters. The Battle Group arrived with two LA-class nuclear submarines, but Frank Doran was not anxious to use them in any kind of an underwater hunt.

Admiral Gillmore was aware of that, and both men felt the destruction of the Barracuda would be achieved by the ASW helicopters. The Truman was expected to arrive on Monday morning, and the exchange operation would begin immediately. As the sun came blazing out of the clear African skies to the east, there was still no sign of the second carrier, but they knew it was under 100 miles away. And the Elrod and the Taylor were already on their way to their inshore search areas.

By 0900, the Truman had made its Atlantic crossing and was 30 miles off the northwest coast of La Palma, steaming east towards the rendezvous with the Ronald Reagan. The sea was calm, and a brisk, warm southeast wind blew off the coast of Africa. In the next three hours, this was forecast to shift southwest and bring in a succession of rainsqualls throughout the afternoon. Which was not perfect for the large-scale carrier-to-carrier transfer of aircraft, scheduled to begin at 1400.

Shortly before 1030, Admiral Gillmore completed his deployment of ships for the offshore operation, and, led by USS Hawes, under Comdr. Derek DeCarlo, the six frigates set off for their respective search circles in the wide band of ocean between the islands of La Palma and Hierro and the 25-mile outer limit of their operations area.

The Kauffman and the Nicholas made their way into the inshore waters of La Palma and Hierro, where they would move slowly around the coastlines, mapping the ocean bottom and recording the appearance of sudden shoals of fish or the perfectly stationary sea ridges. Then they would move on to Gomera and Tenerife, always watching the computer screen, which would betray a creeping nuclear submarine.

0800, Monday, October 5

Mid-Atlantic, 27.30N 24.50W.

The Barracuda still ran slowly, at just under six knots, still 500 feet under the surface, transmitting nothing. Adm. Ben Badr checked their position and noted that they were 240 miles out from the most westerly Canary Islands, La Palma and Hierro, around 18.50W. They were on a due easterly course, which would take them 20 miles south of the seven volcanic islands that jutted up separately from the ocean bed.

So far, they had heard no searching submarines, no warships. They had twice ventured to periscope depth to make certain the GPS was in sound working order, and found no problems. They had two more days to run before they slid quietly into the area that Admiral Gillmore’s ships were currently combing.

As soon as the Barracuda slipped by its first landfall, the island of Hierro, it would be within 19 miles of the Nicholas, unless Capt. Eric Nielsen had already moved on to the southern coast of Tenerife, into the waters once scanned so thoroughly by the honeymooning Admiral Arnold Morgan.

If the Nicholas moved, the chances of the Barracuda remaining undetected were doubled, because even the south shore of Tenerife lay 25 miles farther north than Hierro. This would put the Barracuda 44 miles south of the nearest U.S. warship, but the day, and the game, were both still young.

Three and a half thousand miles away on the U.S. East Coast, the sun was battling its way out of the Atlantic into cloudy skies. And it was not just the big cities that were trying to empty themselves, but all along the seaboard, rural communities were frantically making their preparations to escape the wrath of the coming tidal wave.

It was cold on the rocky, tree-lined islands off the coast of Maine, and most of the summer people had stored their boats and vanished south to escape the notoriously chilly Maine fall. Inland, the cold was, if anything, worse. There’s usually snow in the outfield by the first week of November at the University of Maine baseball park, home of the Black Bears.

The islands were effectively left to the Maine lobstermen, one of the most intrepid breed of cold-water fishermen in the world. Yet there was not a single safe harbor along this coast.

It was essential to either haul the lobster boats and get them to higher ground or, more daringly, anchor them in the western lee of one of the 3,000 islands that guard the downeast coast. These rocky, spruce-darkened islands are mostly hilly — great granite rises from the ocean, which may not stop a tidal wave but would definitely give it a mild jolt. On the sheltered side it was just about possible that the tsunami might roll right by, perhaps leaving a high surge in its wake, but not dumping and smashing large boats on beaches 10 miles away.

The seamen of the Maine islands were accustomed, more than any other fishermen on the East Coast, to terrible weather. And for three days now, they had been moving the endlessly scattered fleet of lobster boats to anchorages out of harm’s way.

Boats from Monhegan, North Haven, Vinalhaven, Port Clyde, Tennants Harbor, Carver’s Harbor, Frenchboro, Isleboro, and Mount Desert headed inshore, their owners praying that if the giant wave came, the islands, with their huge granite ramparts, would somehow reduce the power of the waves.

Similar prayers on precisely the same subject were almost certainly being offered by somewhat less robust people — librarians, politicians, and accountants, 600 miles south in Washington, D.C. The Library of Congress was also made out of granite from the Mount Desert area. So was the House of Representatives and the Treasury Building.

Out in the deep water, 15 miles from the coast, the three great seaward guardians of Maine’s stern and mighty shoreline — the remote and lonely lighthouses of Matinicus Rock, Mount Desert Rock, and Machias Seal Island — were left to face the coming onslaught single-handedly. According to local scientists, the mega-tsunami would sweep more than 100 feet above them. Whether they would still be there when the water flattened out was anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, the fishermen and their families were being ferried on to the mainland, where relatives, friends, and volunteers were lined in packed parking lots, waiting to drive them to safety. Maine is a tight-knit, insular community off-season, with fewer than one million residents. At a time like this, they were all brothers and sisters.

In far, far greater danger was Provincetown, the outermost town on Cape Cod, 120 miles to the south across the Gulf of Maine. This small artistic community, set in the huge left-hand sweep of the Cape, is protected strictly by low sand dunes and grass. By that Monday afternoon, it was a ghost town. Those who could, towed their boats down the mid-Cape highway and onto the mainland. The rest just hit the road west and hoped their homes and boats would somehow survive. Lloyds of London was not hugely looking forward to future correspondence with regard to Cape Cod.

All along the narrow land, every resident had to leave. Massachusetts State Police were already supervising the evacuation. All roads leading from all the little cape towns to Route 6A were designated one-way systems — Wellfleet, Truro, Orleans, Chatham, Brewster, Denisport, Yarmouth, Hyannis, Osterville, Cotuit, and Falmouth. No one was to come back until the danger had cleared.

The evacuation, all the way down that historic coastline, was total. The whaling port of New Bedford was deserted by Monday evening, and the flat eastern lowlands of Rhode Island, a myriad of bay shores and islands, were going to be a write-off, if Admiral Badr’s missiles made it to the volcano.

In the shadow of the towering edifice of Newport Bridge, the little sailing town was on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown. Some of the most expensive yachts ever built were home here for the autumn, and many of them had not yet been hauled or had not yet departed for the Caribbean or Florida.

The New York Yacht Club’s headquarters, gazing out onto the harbor, would probably be the first to go if the tidal wave came rolling in past Brenton Point. Offshore, Block Island had been evacuated completely by Sunday night, and whether Newport Bridge itself could survive was touch-and-go.

Farther up the coast, there were obvious areas of impending disaster in the long, narrow New England state of Connecticut. The shoreline was beset by wealthy little seaports, the closer they were to New York, the more plutocratic. Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford, Darien, and Greenwich — Connecticut’s Golden Suburbs, all along the