an expensive rider. They were more popular now, especially after the Asian tsunami, but still pretty uncommon.
“Hey,” Brad said, “my big brother is the assistant director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. I had to get it.”
Kai smiled at that. At least there was one thing he could feel good about.
“The phones have been ringing nonstop,” Brad said, looking at notes he had written. “We’ve gotten calls from everyone.
“You mean they’re here?”
“They were filming some story over in Ewa and got over here as soon as the warning went out. They’ve been trying to get in to interview you. I told them you were too busy.”
“All the data analysis in the world won’t help if people don’t understand what’s going on. What do you think, Reggie?”
Reggie grudgingly nodded. “Why not? It might be better than a phone interview.”
“We’ll show them the video from Johnston Island. Maybe that will convince some people to move faster. Brad, open the gate and tell them that only the reporter and the cameraman can come into the building. Anyone else will have to wait outside. I don’t want a mass of people in here.”
In two minutes Brad ushered in a slender Asian woman in a blue blazer, followed by a bearded cameraman wearing jeans and a Detroit Tigers baseball cap.
“Dr. Tanaka, I’m Lara Pimalo,” the reporter said, shaking Kai’s hand firmly. She nodded toward the cameraman. “This is Roger Ames. Thank you for meeting with us. I know you must be extremely busy.”
“We are,” Kai said. He held up a finger. “My one condition on you being here: if I ask you to stop filming, you’ll do so immediately. Okay?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Good. The reason I’m letting you in here is because the evacuation is going poorly. We need to motivate more people to leave. Quickly. I believe I have something here that will help.”
“What is it?”
“Can you show video of something on a computer screen?”
“Sure. It won’t look great, but it should be recognizable. But, Doctor, graphs and such don’t make for great —”
“It’s not a graph. It’s video from Johnston Island this morning. It shows a massive tsunami obliterating it. I want you to broadcast it.”
She and Ames were stunned for a moment, but Pimalo couldn’t hide her excitement about getting such a great scoop. She frantically gestured to Ames to start filming.
“Just tell us what monitor it will be on,” he said, “and we’ll set up for the shot.”
As Ames got the camera ready, Pimalo said, “Why don’t you just e-mail the video to someone at the studio? Not that I mind the exclusive.”
“Can you make sure they broadcast this live?”
“Oh, we’re planning to.”
“With a live broadcast, I know the video will be seen.
If I e-mailed it, how do I know it wouldn’t just sit there, waiting for someone to open it?”
“Good point. I’ll let the station know to be ready for the broadcast.”
In another minute the camera was in position and they were rolling. As the video from Johnston ran, Kai narrated what was happening on screen.
As the tsunami approached the camera, Pimalo spoke to the anchorman through the microphone, “Are you seeing this, Phil?” Kai couldn’t hear the response, but her rapt attention told him it was getting through.
When the video went to black, Kai motioned for her to put the camera on him.
“Ms. Pimalo, I’d like to make another statement.”
“Of course, Dr. Tanaka. Those were incredible pictures.”
Kai thought to himself,
“My name is Kai Tanaka, and I am the assistant director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. About forty minutes ago, I issued a tsunami warning for the Hawaiian Islands. I cannot overemphasize how dangerous this situation is. To this point, we have not released the cause of this tsunami because we did not have the data to verify it. However, I am concerned that the evacuation is not moving fast enough because people don’t understand how unusual this tsunami is. At 8:41 a.m. this morning Hawaii time, we suspect that a meteorite struck the central Pacific Ocean. If this turns out to be true, we can expect a disaster of unprecedented scale for the Hawaiian Islands because meteor strikes can generate gigantic waves, much larger than those from earthquakes. As we speak, the southern tip of the Big Island should be experiencing the brunt of the first wave. In a little more than fifteen minutes, it should reach Kona and then Hilo. Fifteen minutes after that, Honolulu will be hit.”
One TV was set to a local station broadcasting the EAS and the other continued the feed from Waikiki. Neither of them showed video from the southern tip of Hawaii.
The phone rang yet again, and Brad picked it up.
“Excuse me, Dr. Tanaka,” said Pimalo, “but these are incredible assertions. What evidence do you have that a meteorite struck the Pacific this morning?”
This was the touchiest part of the interview. Kai knew that if he went into a lot of detail, he might lose the viewer. But he also knew that the audience needed something if they were to believe this crazy notion.
“We have very little time left, so I don’t want to go into all of the details. We don’t have any direct evidence to support—”
“You do now,” Brad broke in, putting his hand over the receiver. “Gail Wentworth from NOAA is on the line. You have eight images in your e-mail that they’re about to release to the news agencies. It’s a series of shots from Landsat-8 showing a massive explosion in the central Pacific. NASA is confirming that we were hit by an asteroid.”
TWENTY-SIX
In the cockpit of his Cessna, Matthew Perkins frowned. Nobody seemed to be listening to his warning, even though he was flying low enough to be easily heard. On one of his passes, he told the kayakers below to wave with both hands if they could hear him. They simply looked up as he flew past. Perkins opened the window of the plane, stuck the handset out of the window, and keyed it to on. The resulting feedback should have been loud enough to hear even over the roar of the engine. Nothing.
Damn! The loudspeaker wasn’t working, he realized. The past twenty-five minutes of warning passes hadn’t been heard by anyone. He radioed in to Civil Air Patrol headquarters to tell them about the problem and that no one off the Waikiki coast had yet been warned by the CAP.
As he set a course back to the airport to fix his loudspeaker, he was informed that another plane was on the way to Waikiki to take over.
“Wouldn’t NASA see an asteroid headed toward earth?” Pimalo asked as Kai went to his computer. “We should have heard about this days ago, maybe even months ago.”
Reggie scooped up one of the memos from his desk and pointed at the text.
“You see the period at the end of that sentence? Now imagine being two miles away from it. That’s what it’s like trying to find a five-hundred-meter-wide asteroid that’s five million miles away.”
