The wall of water falling from the sky was only matched in its eeriness by the strongest wind I’d ever felt, the darkest blackness I’d ever seen, and the massive amounts of mud flying through the air. The wind was shredding the tree house. Six of us were crowded under the large granite island in the kitchen as the ceiling was turned to Swiss cheese over us.
And then everything seemed to die down in a hurry. It was suddenly silent. Then it was worse.
We knew we were in the eye of the storm, but we still couldn’t see anything. I could barely make out Ryan’s dad crouched ten feet from us—flashlight in hand—as he slowly crawled towards the railing for a quick look around. One second he was directly under our only light. And then I heard a sound I had never heard before—the loudest imaginable pop followed by a whoosh and then an explosion. I was next to Ryan. And then I wasn’t. His arms had been wrapped around me, and he’d whispered something like, “I’ve got you” or “I love you”—I could barely hear him—and then he was gone. I can’t adequately describe that awful sequence—especially the eardrum-stunning explosion. All I know is the entire tree house disintegrated around us as a wall of water smashed into it and scattered us like a farmer tosses seed. It was quite possibly the last thing we were expecting at that moment—ninety feet above the ocean.
It had been Grandpa Dan’s idea to tether us to the tree in the center of the kitchen. He had detached four of the tethers from the zip line upstairs, and the four of us girls anchored ourselves to the tree with them. “Just as a precaution,” he’d said. He’d done it for the wind. It worked for the water. For Kate and I anyway—it saved our lives.
But Ryan didn’t have a tether, and Jenna’s tether didn’t hold. Neither did Kaci’s. The wall of water swept the three of them and Grandpa Dan out of the tree house. After the wave passed, I was hanging over the edge of a piece of floor that was still connected to that giant tree. Kate was hanging beside me, unconscious—bleeding from the head. I pulled myself up onto the small platform and strained to pull Kate up beside me. It took all the strength I had to get her next to me, and then I wrapped my arms around her and just cried.
I could feel her heartbeat and hear her breathing as I put my ear next to her mouth. The gash on her head wasn’t terrible—it had just knocked her out. I moved my hands across her body, searching for other wounds and finding none. But knowing how hard I’d been slammed against the floor and tree, I was certain she’d been through the same. My first thought was of her baby. My second thought was of my own little girl. That wall of water was on its way to Kauai.
And then I heard a cry for help.
Then I thought of Ollie.
FIFTY-ONE – Drawing Water
The meteotsunami surge that hit Ni’ihau was only forty-five feet high at impact, but—as Damien had predicted—it used the west to east slope of Ni’ihau to ramp up and slam Redemption. The surge may have been slowed a little from the nearly two hundred miles an hour it was when it hit Ni’ihau, but the destructive wake was still unimaginable.
Ni’ihau and Redemption did little to slow the rest of the surge as it rolled toward Kauai, and with all systems down at the Hexagon, the Pack had no advanced warning. The storm surge rolled onto Kauai’s shores at nearly thirty feet in height and almost ninety miles an hour—and that wall of water tumbled inland, smothering trees and sweeping away everything in its path.
The four members of the Pack had just entered the tunnel in the garage when the storm surge hit the property. Deacon was the last man in and a strange sound made him pause on the top step. A second later the distant distraction had become a roar—so loud and so close. Deacon ducked and dove into the tunnel just as the water removed the garage above him. The tunnel flooded and caved in on the Pack, which likely saved their lives—though the downforce of the surge pinned them for a full minute as the wall of water rushed up the hill east of the property. The basement of the house began to flood through the tunnel, but the prisoners were still alive. The same could not be said for the captors who had been sleeping upstairs. They were killed in seconds—slammed repeatedly against the steel and brick walls—like lightning bugs in a jar in the hands of an angry child.
As the water retreated, it pulled most of the collapsed tunnel’s ceiling back off the Pack members, allowing them to break free and eventually swim. Twix was the strongest swimmer, and when he pushed through to the surface of the tunnel debris, he pulled Trigger up beside him. Together they plowed through the water to the flooded basement.
They arrived with Deacon and Royce not far behind, and as Twix shouted instructions they all followed his orders immediately. Each man ripped open his pack and pulled out his diving masks and tanks. They dove into the deeper water of the basement and swam until they found the cell where the girls were trapped. Water was still pouring in and was almost up to the ceiling at this point. The prisoners were grouped together, taking their last gasps of air at the surface. Twix popped up mere inches from Reagan.
His sudden appearance startled her. “It’s okay—you’re going to be okay.” Twix reached through the bars and took her hand.
“Thank God,” Reagan gasped. “I thought no one was coming. I thought we were—” She began sobbing.
“Hey, hey… Reagan.” Twix squeezed her hand. “Reagan, stay with me—do you know where they keep the key? Do they keep one down here?”
“No.” Her lip quivered. “No, they don’t.”
“Shhh… Reagan, listen… that’s okay.” Twix grabbed the bars of the door to their cell and pulled on them hard a couple times. They didn’t budge. With the water level quickly approaching the ceiling the prisoners were stuck. Twix knew he and the other Pack members had to give them their oxygen tanks. “Reagan, this is what I need you to do. We’ve got four sets of scuba gear here—one for each of you.”
Reagan shook her head. “No. Four is not enough. There are five of us.”
“Five?” Deacon asked.
“Sam is here too.” Reagan nodded back toward them. Sure enough, Sam and the governor’s wife were both behind her with Emily and Abbey.
There wasn’t time for more questions. In seconds there would be no air space left in the room. But the fifth person caused a huge problem. Once the sixty-minute oxygen tanks were activated, you couldn’t take the mouthpiece off underwater without letting the water in. They’d have to stay on whoever wore them. There was no way to share the air.
Deacon handed his tank through the bars. “Emily. Put this mask on… and put this in your mouth.” She did, and Deacon turned the valve on the side of the tank for her. “Do not, under any circumstances, take this off. You have an hour if you keep them on. Just keep swimming—like fish—but stay next to the bars, okay?”
Twix gave his gear to Abbey with the same instructions.
“Give the other two to them,” Reagan said as Trigger and Royce handed their gear to Twix.
“Sorry.” Twix shook his head. “No can do. One of these two is for you.”
“And the other is for him,” the governor’s wife gasped, pointing to Sam.
“No way,” Sam disagreed. “Never going to happen.”
“Look,” Twix shouted. “There’s no time to roll dice or draw straws. If you don’t get these masks on in the next twenty seconds, you’re all dead. Reagan, damn it, you put yours on right damn now!”
She did as she was told—albeit reluctantly.
“Give me a gun,” Sam said through clenched teeth.