Like their colleagues in Federal Government offices, the CIA were packing and dispatching computers, hard drives, documents, archive material, and other valuable records. Departmental staff were packing the stuff into military cases, all numbered and recorded, before making the journey under armed guard to Andrews Air Force Base over in Prince George’s County. From there they would be flown under guard in the giant C-17 transporters to carefully selected U.S. Air Bases beyond the reach of the floodwaters. Those cases would be stored in Air Force hangars, closely guarded around the clock by Federal troops with orders to shoot intruders on sight.
Over on Independence Avenue there was a major operation in the Library of Congress. Things had been relatively calm in there since they moved into their new building in 1897. But the Library was no stranger to catastrophe, having twice burned down when it was located in the Capitol in the first half of the nineteenth century. Today, the activity was close to frenzied, as troops from the Air Force Base joined the staff, trying to pack up more than 84 million items of information, in 470 languages.
This was the world’s largest library; its books, pamphlets, microfilm, folios of sheet music, and maps were all stored in three great stone centers of learning, each one named after three of the Founding Fathers who all were Presidents — the main Thomas Jefferson Building, lavishly decorated in Italian Renaissance style; the James Madison Memorial Building; and the John Adams Building, all located to the rear of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Into big packing cases, the troops and the permanent Library staff were bundling the first volumes of the most priceless sources of information in the entire country — the fountain of knowledge used by Congressmen, Senators, and selected researchers from all over the world.
To complicate the task still further, the U.S. Copyright Office, with its unique store of critical business data, is also located there. It would take twenty-four-hour shifts every day, until the ocean crushed the city, to move even half of the contents of the great buildings on Independence Avenue.
Over on Constitution Avenue, behind the giant stone columns of the National Archives, a more delicate operation was under way. Curators and troops were working in the midst of this ultimate repository for all U.S. Government documents, packing up documents beyond price — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights — all destined for Andrews Air Force Base, from where they would be flown to secure U.S. military establishments, and guarded night and day.
Up on 14th and C Streets there was a total evacuation from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where $35 million of U.S. Government banknotes were printed every day, just to replace the old ones. In here they also printed postage stamps, government bonds, licenses, and revenue stamps. There was a U.S. Marine guard of more than one hundred men forming a cordon around this building while the presses were being dismantled and crucial components carried out to the waiting trucks.
All along Washington’s imposing Mall, the story was the same. The evacuation was under way. Military trucks lined the avenues, parked two deep outside the Capitol itself, and similarly inside the grounds of the White House. Historic portraits, ornaments, furnishings, and furniture were being loaded by Marines along with Presidential papers and records.
Critical offices of government remained open, and inside the Oval Office, Admiral Morgan and Admiral Frank Doran wrestled with the problem of the United States Navy’s warships. They had to be removed, fast, from all dockyards on the East Coast, or else they would surely be smashed to rubble. And they could not be headed east to assist with the submarine operation around the Canaries, not into the jaws of the tsunami. They had to be sent into calmer waters, and the two Admirals pored over the charts. Not even the submarine jetties up in New London, Connecticut, were safe.
And certainly it was too great a risk to send several billion dollars worth of nuclear submarines into deep waters in the hopes that the huge waves of the tsunami would simply roll over them. No one knew the depth of the turbulence that might accompany such a wave, subsurface, and it was clear that the submarines would have to follow the same route as the East Coast — based frigates, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and the like, into a sheltered anchorage.
Frank Doran had considered the possibility of running the ships north, into the 30-mile-wide Bay of Fundy, which divides southern Nova Scotia from the Canadian mainland in New Brunswick.
“There’s no problems with ice up there at this time of year,” he said. “We could push the fleet north as far as Chignecto Bay…That’d put a hilly hunk of land 60 miles wide between the ships and the Atlantic. They’d be safe in there.”
But Arnold did not trust the surge of the waves from the southwest, and he was afraid the tsunami might curl around the headland of Fundy, and then roll up the bay, dumping ships on the beach. There would be no possibility of escape in the shallow, confined waters of the Chignecto, and generally speaking, Admiral Morgan preferred to send the fleet south.
“But the Caribbean may be under worse threat than anywhere,” said Frank. “This document we have here from the University of California says the tidal wave will hit the coast of Mexico, never mind Florida.”
“I know,” said Admiral Morgan. “But Florida’s a very big chunk of land. It’s more than 100 miles wide, even at its narrowest, and the scientists do not expect the tidal wave to last much more than 12 or 15 miles at most, once it hits land. I’m saying we should get the fleet south, around the Keys and then north into the Gulf of Mexico, maybe up as far as Pensacola…anywhere there’s deep water along that Gulf Coast…because there’s got to be shelter under the armpit of Florida…Are you with me?”
“I am,” said Admiral Doran. “And like all sailors, I’d rather go south than north.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” said Arnold Morgan, “except to your office in Norfolk. And you’ll be running the show till those missiles come bursting out of the ocean — that is, if your boys don’t nail him first. I just wish they were attacking from anywhere else on earth, rather than a nuclear submarine. Anywhere, anything. I’d rather they were attacking from outer space than from a nuclear boat, submerged-launch.”
“So would I,” replied Admiral Doran. “Meanwhile I’d better get back down to Norfolk. Every time I look at the place I think ‘tidal wave,’ and the havoc it would cause down there. That thing could pick up a 100,000-ton carrier, according to the scientific assessments. And if it didn’t do that, it would most likely crush the big ships against the jetties.
“I know that the cities are badly threatened, but a tsunami could just about wipe out the Navy on the East Coast. That thing comes in from the southwest, it’ll slam straight into Virginia Beach and then take out all three of those bridge/tunnels across the Hampton Roads. And the land’s so flat, just a maze of docks, dockyards, creeks, lakes, and rivers all the way in from the Atlantic.”
“Don’t remind me, Frank. And how about the shipyards, Newport News and Norship, all in the same darned complex. Christ! We got two aircraft carriers half finished in there…Couldn’t hardly move them if we tried — except with tugs…not to mention the West Coast of Florida.”
Frank Doran shook his head. “And we have to get Kings Bay, Georgia, evacuated. We got four Ohio boats in there, and God knows how many of those Trident C4 missiles. Probably enough to blow up most of the goddamned universe, and we’re prancing around trying to find a bunch of guys dressed in fucking sheets underwater.”