“What is a mega-tsunami?” asked the Joint Chiefs chairman.
“Though commonly called tidal waves, a tsunami has nothing to do with tides. Generally they’re caused by undersea earthquakes and their size is limited by the amount of crustal displacement, which is fortunate because rock can only take so much strain before it snaps. That’s why we’ll never experience an earthquake much above eight-point-six. Most geologic faults slip long before they contain enough energy to cause a quake of even magnitude seven. Therefore an undersea earthquake will cause a tsunami of corresponding size. If a fault drops twenty feet, the wave will top out around twenty feet.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” This came from the caustic director of the CIA, Paul Barnes.
Mercer rounded on him, not bothering to keep the anger from his voice. “Tell that to the three thousand residents of Papua, New Guinea, who were killed by such a wave in 1998.” He turned his attention back to Morrison but kept an eye on the president. “In contrast, a mega-tsunami is caused by a rockslide, and the only limit to the size of the wave is the amount of debris that hits the water. Petroleum geologists working in Alaska in the 1950s found evidence of such a wave in Letuya Bay. Ringing the bay was a line where the old-growth forests inexplicably ended. It was as if some force had ripped out every tree up to about five hundred fifty feet above sea level.”
“Five hundred fifty feet?”
“That’s the height of the wave created when a huge chunk of granite sheered away from a cliff and hit the bay.”
“That’s impossible,” Barnes opined.
Mercer shifted his gaze to the president. “Three years later a group of fishermen were caught in a tsunami more than a hundred feet tall in the same area. Only a handful survived.”
The president looked grave. “And you’re saying that another eruption in the Canaries will cause such a mega-tsunami?”
Mercer shook his head. “The chunk of granite that created the wave in Alaska weighed a couple thousand tons. If La Palma lets go we’re talking half a trillion tons of rock. That’s an energy pulse equal to the total U.S. power consumption over six months.” That fact had come from a research team in Switzerland with verification from several computer modelers.
The men around the table paused, reflected on the enormity of what Mercer described.
Dick Henna cut the silence by clearing his throat and asking, “You said that two things make La Palma particularly dangerous. One was how steep the island is. What’s the other?”
Mercer wasn’t surprised it was Henna who’d picked up on that. Unlike the president, Paul Barnes or Ira’s boss, John Kleinschmidt, Dick had worked his way through the ranks to his current job. He was an investigator at heart, not a politician.
“Dikes,” Mercer said.
“Excuse me?” the president and Henna said simultaneously, shooting each other quizzical glances.
“La Palma is comprised of volcanic rock that is very permeable to water. The island absorbs rain like a sponge. However, there are formations, called dikes, of very dense basalt that cut along the spine of the island like a picket fence. These dikes act like dams that trap the rainwater, forming tall columns of supersaturated soil. It’s believed that the dikes are solid enough that they wouldn’t be affected by the seismic shocks associated with an eruption.”
“So where’s the danger?”
“An eruption begins with magma filling chambers deep under the island. The heat from an influx of molten rock will begin to boil the water trapped in these columns. As we all know from high school physics, water expands as it heats, but it cannot be compressed. This would put incredible pressure on the dikes. The failure of one or many of them is inevitable.”
The president leaned forward. “And this would trigger the landslide and cause the mega-tsunami?” Mercer nodded and the president asked the obvious follow-up. “What kind of damage are we talking about and what can we do to minimize it?”
“According to the computer modeling done a few years back, the wave will be one thousand feet tall and would have already traveled outward at least sixty miles in the first ten minutes after the landslide. It would cross the ocean at about five hundred miles per hour, radiating in all directions. North Africa would be hit first. The wave will have abated to three hundred fifty feet by then and fortunately that part of the continent is sparsely populated. Loss of life would be minimal. Next would be Spain, Portugal and then southern England. The wave crest at this time will top out at over a hundred feet, still carrying enough energy to ricochet and radiate through the English Channel and completely drown all of the Netherlands.”
The faces around the table paled with sickly fascination.
“Nine hours after the landslide,” Mercer continued, “the wave is still traveling at jetliner speeds. It will scour everything off the Bahamas and Bermuda and the archipelago islands stretching from Puerto Rico to Venezuela. Nothing would remain behind. No plants, no people, no evidence anything had ever called those places home.”
Jaws were beginning to slacken, but the men around the table were tasked with protecting the United States and someone, Mercer wasn’t sure who, asked, “What about us? What happens when it hits us?”
“The wave will hit Miami first. It’ll be eighty feet tall and be about forty feet thick at the base, a surge unlike anything ever seen. At five hundred miles per hour the kinetic energy is almost incalculable. Every structure, road, bridge, and building within fifteen miles of the coast will be destroyed. At twenty miles, there’s a chance a few of the more solid buildings will remain, though they will be completely gutted, first by the initial wave pulse and then again when the water drains back to the sea.
“This scenario will play out all along the East Coast from Florida to Maine. Jacksonville, Savannah, Norfolk, Washington, Philly, New York, Boston. All of them are wiped from the face of the earth. That’s roughly forty million dead. And these are just the figures for the United States. Add an equal amount of dead in the Caribbean, Africa and Europe.”
“And the number of injured?” Ira asked.
“It’ll be like the World Trade Center.”
The men understood. Like many around the nation, they’d donated blood to help the injured survivors only to discover that in such a tragedy there were none.
“If this is really going to happen, what about evacuating the eastern seaboard?”
Admiral Morrison took that question. After a lifetime in the military, he had the background in logistics. “You’re asking about relocating fully one-fifth of our population, Mr. President. It would take months just to coordinate where to put them all.”
“Do we have months?” the chief executive asked Mercer.
“The truth is, we don’t know, sir.” Mercer gathered his thoughts for a moment. He was standing on top of a precipice. The wrong word could send him over the edge. Or more accurately send Tisa over the edge.
“Over the past fifty years,” he started, “scientists have made strides in predicting cataclysmic events like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. There are certain signs we can look for to tell us what’s happening deep underground long before anything is visible on the surface. The presence of microshocks, tiny swarms of earthquakes, is one. New seismographs are hundreds of times more precise than ever before. From soil taken from core samples we can detect elevations in diffused gasses like CO2, a precursor event to an eruption.
“All of this gives us an idea that a volcano’s coming to life. This is the type of evidence the team Admiral Lasko sent to La Palma has found. But this isn’t a guarantee that a mountain’s about to erupt. Volcanoes give off signs all the time only to fall dormant once again.”
“You don’t believe the recent activity on La Palma will end soon, do you? You believe the island is going to erupt.”
“Yes, Mr. President, I do. And we all should.”
“Why?” Paul Barnes’s voice dripped acid.
“Ira mentioned I was cultivating a contact. That’s not entirely true. She approached me first.” With a quick glance around the table, Mercer realized that he had the lowest security clearance and needn’t keep anything back. He began his tale from the moment the two agents first arrived at his house and told it straight through. When he finished, it appeared that everyone had questions and was eager to parse his story.
The president staved off the onslaught with a wave. “Do you believe her?”
“I’ve never doubted the presence of her organization. I saw it in Vegas, the Pacific, and aboard the ferry. Her
