THIRTY-NINE
Given all of the obstacles they had encountered up to this point, Kai had no reason to expect that their luck would improve. Even if they simply found a jack and managed to pry Brad and Mia out from under the steel beam, there wouldn’t be time to escape to a taller building. They would all be caught in the ten- story condominium when the next tsunami hit. But on seeing the scuba shop, he felt a rush of optimism. If he could find what he needed in the ruined shop, they might be able to buy themselves more time.
That depended, of course, on the condo building withstanding another tsunami impact. Kai had no illusions about their chances, but the only other option was to leave Brad and Mia to their fates, and he wouldn’t even contemplate that.
Lani, Teresa, and Tom went with Kai to search. He had considered sending Lani and Tom toward high ground on their own, but at this point the thought of Lani fending for herself was frightening. Kai wanted her with him where he could keep an eye on her. And sending Tom off by himself, injured, seemed like a poor idea. Besides, Kai needed their help to gather supplies. They would have to survive with whatever they could carry in one trip; they wouldn’t have time for a second.
When they got outside, Kai divided up the group, dispatching Teresa on a search for as many car jacks as she could find. At least two, maybe three, if she could carry them. Tom and Lani would accompany Kai to the scuba shop.
The street by the condo looked like Sarajevo during the worst years of the Balkan war. Pieces of wood, metal, concrete, vegetation, and, worst of all, human bodies littered the pavement and sidewalks. Cars and other vehicles had been thrown into every conceivable orientation, many of them smashed beyond recognition. One car, a Mini, defied gravity, hovering twenty feet above the ground, skewered like a kebob by a steel pole jutting out of the second story of a building.
Most surprisingly, several people wandered the streets unscathed. Kai supposed he shouldn’t have been amazed—if he had survived, others would have as well—but the utter devastation made it difficult to believe anyone else had lived through it.
An Asian woman babbling in a language Kai didn’t recognize led a boy of about ten toward a hotel and disappeared through the front door. Several teenagers emerged from another hotel and began running wildly in the direction of the mountains. Two people on a tenth-floor balcony about two hundred yards away waved to them.
A man, sopping wet and completely naked except for a pair of running shoes, darted up to them and said, “Where’s Emily?”
“Who?” Kai said, dumbfounded.
The naked man grabbed Kai’s shirt and yanked Kai toward him. “Emily. Have you seen her?”
Kai looked at the others, who were as shocked as he was. He shook his head, and without another word the man released him and kept going down the street, peering into every open doorway and window. Kai could only guess that he had been caught by the tsunami with his girlfriend or wife or daughter. The scope of the tragedy continued to grow in Kai’s mind.
“Don’t stop to talk to anyone else,” he said, and the rest of them understood what he meant.
They just didn’t have time to help others. It was now the law of the jungle: every man for himself. The thought that civilized behavior could degenerate so rapidly was sobering to Kai, but reasoning with panicked people or guiding them to safety would keep them from saving the people they loved. None of them was going to let that happen. No more needed to be said.
Leaving Teresa to rummage through the cars, Kai and the others sprinted to where he had seen the scuba shop. As they got closer, Kai could see more clearly the extensive damage to the building that housed the store. He wasn’t encouraged by its condition.
He ran through the door to find the interior completely gutted. None of the store’s original complement of supplies remained. Instead, it had been replaced by junk swept inside by the wave: chairs, garbage cans, and minor bits of scrap littered the floor. The only recognizable bit from the shop was a Professional Association of Diving Instructors plaque that had been nailed to the wall.
“No!” Kai cried in frustration. “There’s got to be something!”
He began to toss the refuse around, looking under it for the scuba tanks and other equipment that he had imagined would be their lifesavers. But with each piece he threw aside, his hope ebbed further.
Then Lani pointed at something Kai hadn’t noticed in his frenzied search.
“Dad. There’s another door.”
Along the back wall of the store, a large plywood sheet had been slammed against the wall, covering the door. Only a sliver of the door and the doorknob showed. Kai pulled the plywood, which had dug into the Sheetrock, and it clattered to the floor, revealing an undamaged handle. He pushed the door open, and his effort was rewarded.
The plywood had kept the back room of the shop from getting washed away. At the opposite end of the room stood a metal emergency door that was still intact. It opened outward, so the receding water hadn’t been able to push it open.
Nevertheless, the room was still wet from floor to ceiling, which explained why it had come through the tsunami relatively unscathed. If the room had been watertight, the pressure from the water outside would have been far greater than the air in the room, and the water would have blasted the doors inward, sweeping everything away. But something had equalized the pressure, and Kai saw the source: a rivulet of water drained through a three-foot-wide hole near the floor where the pole propping up the Mini had initially penetrated the building.
Kai had hit the jackpot he desperately wanted to find. The room was a tangled mess of air tanks, hoses, buoyancy compensators, weight belts, and everything else needed for diving. Kai stole a look at his watch. Five minutes.
“Okay. We’re going to be out of here in ninety seconds. We need three air tanks, three octopus air hoses, and some nylon rope. Make sure the hoses have two regulators on them. There are six of us.”
“You mean we’re going to scuba dive?” Lani said.
“Get to work,” Kai said, picking up the closest air tank and screwing a loose air hose onto it. “It’s Brad and Mia’s only chance. We can’t get them out and up to a safe height in another building in time. We’re going to have to ride out the next wave. That’s why we need the rope.”
Kai saw Tom following his lead, screwing a hose onto another tank.
“You’ve done this before?” Kai said.
“I’m certified. Logged twenty hours.”
“Good. Make sure it’s pressurized. We can’t come back if we find out the tank is empty.”
Lani returned with a yellow nylon rope. Given the number of loops, Kai guessed it was about a hundred feet of line.
“This is the only one I could find.”
It would take too long to tie one long piece of rope.
“See if you can find a dive knife and masks. And a flashlight or two would come in handy.”
While Lani searched, Kai took a third tank and attached the last hose, activating the pressure gauge. Empty. Damn!
He tossed it aside. Tom carried over another tank.
“It’s the last one,” he said. “The valves on all the others are snapped or bent.”
Kai screwed the hose on quickly, praying that the gauge wouldn’t be in the red.
The gauge read two thousand pounds per square inch. Full. Thank God.
“I got a knife!” Lani said with joy.
“What about masks?”
“They’re all smashed, but I did find a flashlight. It works.”
