Or at least that was what was being said now. I wasn’t entirely convinced that this was the case.
“Please, someone, anyone, tell me what the hell is going on here,” the mayor said.
The scientists at the table stared at each other until a tan, lean, white-haired man who reminded me a lot of the famous college basketball coach Bobby Knight stood up, along with a pretty woman with chin-length chestnut hair.
“Everyone, my name is Larry Duke, and this is Dr. Suzan Bower, and we’re the coheads of the American Geophysical Union,” he said.
“Tell me this is a joke, Mr. Duke,” said the mayor. “It’s a bluff, right? Dr. Evil, James Bond bullshit? It’s too implausible. There are no islands near New York City in the Atlantic. How is this even a threat?”
“Actually, ma’am,” Larry said, “off the west coast of Africa, there are dozens and dozens of volcanic islands.”
“Africa! That’s what? Three or four thousand miles away!” she screamed.
Dr. Bower smiled calmly as she raised her palm.
“Allow me to explain,” she said politely. “The potential destructive force of a truly massive landslide into a seabed is almost impossible to comprehend. In Lituya Bay in Alaska in the fifties, after an earthquake, a one-mile-by-half-mile chunk of rock slid off a coastal mountain into the water, causing a wave the size of a one-hundred-and-seventy-story building.
“Think about that. If a similar incident happened in the Atlantic basin, even from as far away as Africa, a tidal wave the size of the Indian Ocean tsunami would hit the Eastern Seaboard six hours later, just as the man on the tape said.”
“And nothing could stop it?” said the OEM head.
Larry shook his head sadly.
“Nothing,” he said. “For years, Suzan and I have been advising the government of exactly the problem here — that some of the West African islands are potential tsunami dangers from eruption-caused landslides.”
“But you said the landslide in Alaska was caused by an earthquake, an incredible geologic event,” said the mayor. “You can’t cause an earthquake or erupt a volcano with explosives, can you?”
“No, you can’t. But you can cause a landslide with explosives, especially if an area is already unstable, like many of the areas on some of these islands,” said Dr. Bower.
“Bullshit,” somebody said.
“I wish it was,” Larry said. “In 1903, there was a disaster called the Frank Slide in Canada. A segment of mountain about the same size as the one in the Lituya Bay incident fell and flattened a mining town. How did it happen? By miners blasting in one of the mines.”
“Exactly,” said Dr. Bower. “Today, demolition experts are so good with explosives, they can blow things up so buildings fall wherever they want. For example, demo guys took down a half-mile-long section of nine bridges in Ohio with only one hundred and thirty-eight pounds of plastic explosives. You get a geologist together with a demo expert and place the pow in the right place, and you just might be able to do it. You simply need to give it a push, and millions and millions of pounds of rock and gravity do the rest.”
“Shit,” I said to Emily. “Just like Twenty-Six Fed. A little bit of explosives placed perfectly took that building down pretty as you please. They know how to do it.”
“So you think it’s possible for these terrorists to actually use explosives to cause a landslide to create a tsunami?” said the mayor.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Larry said with a sad smile. “But the answer is yes.”
Part four
Please stand by
Chapter 78
Two hours later, we were sprawled out in a corner of the OEM building’s third-floor cafeteria. We sat at a new folding table — which still had a sticker with the Walmart bar code on it — washing down vending-machine candy with coffee. I had my feet on a chair by the window and was sharing glum looks with Doyle and Arturo and Emily.
“Gosh, it’s tiring to beat your head against the wall,” said Arturo.
He was right. We’d just gotten off the phone with Robertson and Brooklyn. They’d called to let us know that Dmitri Yevdokimov and Anatoly Gavrilov had lawyered up.
Not just with any lawyers, either. Two seven-hundred-dollar-an-hour mouthpieces from a white-shoe Wall Street firm had actually shown up at the precinct house raising hell until the precinct captain relented. The fact was we didn’t have enough on them to charge them with anything. Not yet, anyway. Like it or not, they’d been released, and our best leads just walked out the door.
To add insult to injury, we’d put surveillance on them, but they seemed to have shaken it. We’d also just received a forensics report from the FBI on the Russians’ credit cards and cell phones and Internet searches. There was nothing. They had no electronic trail of any kind. The two computer experts were Luddites, apparently.
I groaned as I looked out the window at the Hudson and Jersey on the other side. Then I looked south at the Statue of Liberty in the harbor and imagined a wave coming over her.
In the silence, Arturo got up and made himself another coffee.
“Look on the bright side, guys. They’ve got free K-Cups up here. Yummy. I love K-Cups,” he said sarcastically.
“Yeah. Nothing like a smooth, soothing K-Cup to while away the afternoon before the destruction of your city,” said Doyle, flicking a coffee stirrer at him.
I stared out the window down to the courtyard, where soldiers were setting up cots.
Were the cots for the soldiers? Were they expecting refugees? What the hell were cots going to do when the water came? Become flotation devices?
I only knew that we had to keep our heads about us in this whirling dervish of a mess. I sat up.
“Okay, let’s do this again. Theories,” I said to Emily.
“I almost can’t believe it’s a ransom,” she said as she swirled her coffee. “I was really leaning toward a Unabomber-style suspect. One man on a mad mission, like you said. This now? Three billion? This is a real curveball.”
“It’s the Russkies. Has to be,” said Doyle as he rolled out of his chair onto the floor and started doing push-ups. “Think about it. The fed forensic report shows they have no credit cards or computer records, yet they’re computer experts? They have stuff. They just know how to hide it. They’re in on this.”
Then the real chaos began.
Chief Fabretti came into the cafeteria talking on his phone.
“You’re kidding. Jeez. Wow, just like that. Okay, thanks.”
“What’s up, Chief?” said Doyle as he hopped to his feet.
“Turn on the TV,” Fabretti said, pointing to the set in the cafeteria’s corner. “This is unbelievable.”
Doyle ran over and clicked on the set. I stood up as I saw something there I hadn’t seen since I was a kid.
There was a blue screen with two words in yellow.
STAND BY.
Doyle changed the channel. It was on every one. A long and bright beep sounded out, followed by a squawk of radio feedback. Then it did it again.
“This is not a test,” said a calm, feminine voice. “I repeat, this is not a test of the Emergency Alert System. Please stand by. Please stand by.”
“What is this?”
“The mayor just came out of another meeting with the scientists. She’s doing it. She’s pulling the trigger.”
I listened to the beep repeat.
“This is not a test,” said the voice. “I repeat, this is not a test of the Emergency Alert System.”
“Pulling what trigger?” said Lopez. “You mean she’s going to give them the money?”
“No. She’s going to evacuate, right?” I said as I stared at the stand by on the screen.