24
Fuck this,” Charlie Dean whispered. “I’m going down there.”
“Shit, man!” Akulinin said. “You trying to start a war?”
“No, but when we get the word to go, I want to be in position and
“I heard that, Charlie,” Marie Telach said. “I recommend that you stay put! We should be hearing from the boss soon.”
“Recommendation noted,” Dean said. He was already crawling forward, the tech-Ghillie stretched over his back, shifting with each movement of hand or foot.
The descent was a lot tougher than the slow crawl around the crater’s rim. He was moving head-down, and at times the ground was steep enough that he began sliding on loose gravel or cinders. Each time he did, he spread his arms and legs, bracing against whatever support he could find in the ground with his hands, and hung on until the slide stopped. Then he would freeze in place, holding himself absolutely motionless in case someone at the bottom of the pit noticed the slither of rock and cinder down the slope.
Then he would begin moving again. He didn’t have to worry about being quiet, at least. The drill was pounding away with a steady
Ilya had his back. Watching from the top of the gully through his sniperscope, he would be alert for signs that Dean’s crawl down the slope had been noticed, and take out any threat before the bad guy opened fire.
But the idea was to get all the way down without being seen.
Because once people started shooting, there was a real danger that the Tangos would set off their one- kiloton toys.
Rubens emerged from the conference room, bemused and gratified. The President had given the necessary approval. Operation Mountain Storm was now officially a go.
“So why’d you do it?” he asked Collins, who was walking out beside him.
“Do what?”
“Go to bat for me in there. Point out that this time the intel was good. He didn’t even ask for my resignation.”
“He will if this goes bad.”
“If this goes bad, he won’t have to ask.”
“We
“With all of the interagency politics, sometimes it’s hard to remember that.”
“You don’t have to play stupid, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“You deliberately planted information about the
“It wasn’t my team.”
“It was a Navy SEAL VBSS unit you ‘happened to have close by.’ ”
“Our ships and personnel are required by the law of the sea to respond to any distress call at sea.”
“Uh-huh. And you were setting up the same thing in La Palma.”
“Not the same thing at all. I just made sure that we had plenty of solid assets where they could be used when they were needed.”
“You already have an assault force on the island, don’t you?”
“Not exactly.”
“A reconnaissance force, then. Marines? Black CAT? I notice that you didn’t tell
“I didn’t want to complicate things.”
“I admire your balls, Bill.”
“You haven’t seen them in years.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
They reached the secure elevator that took them down to the underground visitors’ garage beneath the White House East Wing. Rubens pulled his cell phone from his pocket and examined the screen. He still wasn’t getting a signal — part of the White House’s security system.
Rubens and Collins parted company in the garage. “Bill?” She called after they’d gone a few steps. Her voice echoed off the bare concrete.
“Yeah?”
“Keep me in the loop.”
“Don’t worry, Debra,” he told her. “I’ll tell you if this works. You’ll know if it doesn’t.”
Still no signal on his phone. He got into his car, checked out past gate security, and pulled out onto East Executive Avenue Northwest. He was reaching for the phone again when it rang. He didn’t bother checking the caller ID.
“Rubens.”
“Bill? Katie.”
“Katie! Yes. What can I do for you?”
“I just wanted to let you know … after our conversation Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“Some of us here have been doing some digging. There
“Really? What did you get?”
“Those Dutch studies were looking at water displacement from a large amount of mass striking the ocean. You remember? I was telling you it all had to hit at the same time.”
“I remember.”
“Well, I got to thinking about other examples of landslips we know. There was one off of Sicily, Mount Etna, that caused a devastating tsunami all across the eastern Mediteranean eight thousand years ago. Some scientists think that might have been the source of the biblical flood myth. And there have been a number of landslips in the Hawaian Islands. Molokai and Oahu, especially. There’s evidence that those sent huge tidal waves all across the Pacific Rim something like a million and a half years ago.
“But those tidal waves weren’t caused by the impact of all of that rock in the ocean, but by something more subtle. Those island-sized masses of rock moved, and they moved fast, sliding for hundreds of kilometers across the sea floor before coming to rest. It was the movement that displaced the water, generating the waves, not the splash.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That there very well might be a danger to the U.S. East Coast if part of La Palma does break off and fall into the sea.”
“How certain are you of the data?”
“Not very.” He could hear the frustration in her voice. “The things are totally unpredictable. The size and strength of the wave would depend on the actual mass of the rock and on how fast it was moving. You might get a
