about the tsunami warning. Genius here thought we had all the time in the world to come back to the apartment and get into his safe—”
“Denise,” Chuck said with a warning tone.
“—a safe I didn’t even know we had—”
“Don’t tell them about that.”
Brad pointed at the suitcase. “So, Chuck, what’s with the luggage?”
Chuck paused and narrowed his eyes at Denise. “It’s important papers,” he said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll tell you what’s in it,” Denise said, happy to sell Chuck out. “His collection of signed baseballs is in there. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle. Must be dozens of them. But that’s not all he had in that safe. When he was getting the baseballs out, he dropped some photos. Photos of him and his girlfriend.”
“I wish I was stuck here with her instead of you,” Chuck spat at Denise. He pointed at Kai. “And remember, we were here first.”
Kai had heard enough. He showed the walkie-talkie to Chuck.
“Guess what, Chuck,” he said. “I have a radio. If
Kai nodded to the others to follow him and walked to the edge of the roof to get as far from Chuck as he could. He pressed the walkie-talkie’s Talk button.
“To anyone who can hear this, we are trapped on the roof of a building in Waikiki …”
Reggie Pona had already tried calling Brad’s cell phone nine times, with no success. He left several messages to call, but he didn’t really think that they were still alive to get them. The helicopter—the same one he had sent for Kai the first time—had done a fly-by thirty minutes later and reported that the building had completely collapsed. There was no chance that anyone inside had survived.
The devastation across the Hawaiian Islands so far had been unbelievable, even to those like Reggie who had seen the effects of the Asian tsunami firsthand. He had taken a trip to Thailand and Indonesia two weeks after the tsunami to help document the destruction, so that the PTWC would know what to expect if it ever happened in Hawaii.
The construction in South Asia was not up to the standards in the United States. Banda Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, had been wiped off the map, and the majority of the deaths occurred in that area. The only building still standing after the tsunami was a sturdy white stone mosque. Previously it had stood among hundreds of shops, businesses, and homes; after the tsunami, it rose alone from a plain of mud and fractured wood.
In Hawaii, buildings near the ocean were primarily hotels and other structures made of concrete and steel. Many of them withstood the first and second tsunamis, a testament to the solidity of their designs. But a great number had already been swept away or fallen when their foundations were undermined by the water, and any buildings made of flimsier materials no longer existed. Pictures and video from Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, and Kauai now unspooling on the major networks showed miles and miles of shoreline blasted free of the monuments of man, as if God’s own eraser had rubbed them out.
Hilo, on the Big Island, had endured two tsunamis in the twentieth century, events that sparked the creation of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The awful pictures from those earlier disasters looked quaint compared to what Reggie saw now. Little was left of that small city, despite being located on the east side of the island, out of the direct path of the tsunami. The wave had wrapped around Hawaii, capturing the island in a deadly embrace.
Lahaina was the Maui beach town best known as the place to see the humpback whales that came to breed each year. The pictures from a helicopter were labeled lahaina, but Reggie couldn’t make out anything familiar, and he had been there at least seven times on vacation. The only things left to signify that there might have actually been a town were the outlines of concrete foundations poking out of the scoured sand.
And then there was Oahu, home to 80 percent of the state’s population. The current CBS feed from a helicopter hovering near Waikiki showed the devastation in stark clarity. Reggie could barely recognize some parts of the city. Honolulu was the most crowded part of the island; combining residents and tourists, some areas of Waikiki had a population density rivaling that of Hong Kong and Manhattan. Over the years, the suburbs had stretched around the shoreline in both directions, so that there was virtually no uninhabited land along the southern coast.
Hundreds of thousands had heeded the warnings and evacuated to high land all along the coast. Frightened masses hunkered on the sides of Diamond Head and inside the protected crater itself. The mountains were lined with people. So many had retreated to the confines of the Punchbowl National Cemetery that no room was left for helicopters to unload the people they rescued from skyscrapers, remote beaches, and overturned sea vessels.
Tripler Army Medical Center was filled to the brim with evacuees from other hospitals on lower ground. It received one helicopter after another dropping off the injured, a makeshift triage station set up on the grass next to the parking lot.
With little safe flat ground left, most of those rescued by helicopter were taken to Wheeler Field, a ten- minute round trip from Waikiki, not including the time it took to get people loaded and unloaded. It was possible Kai and the others had been picked up by another chopper and been deposited there. Possible, Reggie knew, but not likely. He had practically given up when he heard about the collapsed building.
Reggie’s cell phone rang. He forced his eyes away from the TV and looked at the caller ID. He didn’t recognize the number; it had a California area code. He flipped the phone open.
“Hello?”
He was shocked to hear the voice on the line.
“Reggie, it’s Rachel.”
“Rachel!” he shouted. When he saw others in the office staring, he brought his voice back to normal. “Thank God you’re all right. Kai was …” Reggie hesitated, not knowing how to tell her. “I’m not sure, but—”
“Kai’s fine.”
“He is? I mean, that’s fantastic—”
“We’re all in trouble. We’re still in Waikiki.”
“You’re together? Where?”
“No. I’m on the roof of the Grand Hawaiian. He’s on the roof of a white building about a mile northeast of me. I can reach him by walkie-talkie. We need a helicopter. We don’t have time to run away on foot, and both buildings are shaky. I don’t know if they’ll stand up to the next tsunami.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get something to you. What’s the name of the building Kai’s in?”
“He doesn’t know what the cross streets are or what the building is called, but he said there’s a boat sticking out of the tenth floor.”
“God, I saw that on some news footage a few minutes ago. I’ll find out where it is.”
“Please hurry. We’ve only got a few minutes until the last tsunami, right?”
“I’ll hurry. But Rachel, the next tsunami isn’t the last one.”
“What?”
“I got word from Alaska about twenty minutes ago. Tell Kai the last tsunami will arrive at 12:37, and it’s going to be three hundred feet high.”
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“Rachel? Are you there?”
“Just get someone here now, Reggie.”
She hung up.
Reggie left the office to find Colonel Johnson. He was on his cell phone in the next room. He snapped it shut as Reggie approached.
“Colonel, I need your helicopter again.”
“Mr. Pona,” Johnson said, coming around his desk and putting on his jacket as if he were getting ready to leave. “I’m sorry about your friend, but the building is gone. There are other people to evacuate—”
“He’s alive. I just got word.”
Johnson stopped. “What? Where?”
“Waikiki.”
He shook his head. “Mr. Pona, I can’t—”
