TSUNAMI STORM Read online

As they left the Officers’ Mess Hall Jacobs paused to look at the Administration Building where the Squadron 5 Commander’s office was located. He tried to imagine himself walking in and handing his retirement request to the Admiral. It didn’t feel real. When they reached the sub, Jacobs walked slowly around the control room. He touched the tactical display, the periscope, and checked the familiar gauges mounted all around him. He tried to imagine walking away from the sub and having a family with Lynn. The image of a baby and a toddler pushed their way back into his mind along with thoughts of leaving a living legacy behind. He wandered the compartments of the sub imagining what it would be like to never see them again. By noon he knew what he had to do.

  CHAPTER 6

  Falls Church, Virginia

  Vice Admiral James Billingsly, Deputy Director of Covert Operations at the Pentagon, and his beautiful wife, Jessica, hosted their monthly dinner party in their palatial estate in Falls Church Virginia. The 6,280 square foot mansion was centered in 28 acres of sprawling countryside with picturesque landscaping and manicured lawns. The paver brick driveway entered through two large stone and mortar pillars with a wrought iron gate, and swept into a large circle in front of the house. A spur led to a five-car garage, behind which was the office for the Vice Admiral’s security detail in the back, out of sight of the road. A wrought iron fence surrounded the entire 28 acres and was patrolled regularly by Navy Shore Patrol and guard dogs.

  Billingsly smiled and nodded politely through the social conversation during dinner. Damn waste of time, he thought. I can’t see why women want to go through the whole social ritual, but at least I can get some work done at the same time. He had carefully sought out and groomed the friendship with the two other men present at the dinner. The fact that they were top level bureaucrats in Washington excited his wife’s social sense, but it was their positions of power that interested him. Elected politicians lack the long-term experience of dealing with other countries, which makes them unreliable. Besides, how dependable is the word of a political hack who will be doing something else in four years. No. You have to depend on the people who do the real work, decade after decade, just under the political veneer.

  At the conclusion of the dinner, the three men retired to the study for cigars and Cognac. Billingsly slowly rolled the cigar in his mouth while he sucked the flame from the wood stick match into the flat end, igniting the tobacco. He had come up through the ranks of the Navy primarily through carefully planned political acumen. He had spent the minimum required time at sea, but his real strength was working people. He was 58 and in line for his fourth star, which would make him a full admiral and eligible for a position with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. He was five-ten, broad in the shoulders and carried his success in a moderate pot belly. The hair on the top of his head had long since thinned to the point where he generally kept all of his hair cut short. He wore thin wire-rimmed glasses and had blue eyes that sometimes appeared gray.

  Billingsly looked at the two men he had recruited. They had been quietly working together for years, helping to shape and steer America’s relationship with other countries. Billingsly was anxious to hear about China.

  “You told them, right?” Billingsly asked.

  “I told them exactly what you said,” Ralph Cummings replied. “But you know they don’t believe in God, right?” Ralph was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and spent most of his time flying to countries all over the globe, arranging for the sale of U.S Bonds and Treasury Notes. Cummings was thin and tall, just over six-four. His medium gray suit always seemed to be wrinkled, as if he slept in the only suit he had. At 37, he was near the height of his career in the Treasury Department. His experience and connections made him more of a permanent fixture at Treasury and less subject to replacement with the political change of the Secretary of the Treasury that often took place with the periodic change of the presidency.

  “So who’d you talk to in China?”

  “Minister Hu Gao Chen of the Ministry of Commerce,” Cummings said.

  “Well,” Billingsly said, taking another puff on his cigar and blowing it into a smoke ring above him, “maybe he believes now.”

  “Come on,” Ralph said. “It’s a different world out there now. The global economy is changing. Hell, with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa collaborating to create a new banking system, it’s no surprise the Chinese don’t want to buy more U.S. debt. Yeah, we pay them good interest, but the Chinese are committed to buying up as much gold as they can. That message was loud and clear when I was there. And telling them the God of America would punish them for refusing to buy U.S. debt was a joke – a bad joke. But I told ‘em, James, I told ‘em.”

  “Good,” Billingsly replied. “I think you will find them more cooperative on your next visit.”

  “Look,” Ralph said, “I get the American Gung Ho thing, I really do. But you have to understand; the Chinese aren’t some dumb backward country anymore. They’re savvy, shrewd business people. They aren’t thinking about today, or tomorrow, or next year. They’re looking a hundred years down the road, and you know what they see? They see China where the U.S. is today, the single super power in the world. Do you know what the Chinese character for China is?”

  “I can hardly wait,” Billingsly replied taking another puff of his cigar.

  “It’s a rectangle with a line drawn down through the middle of it. It means the center. That’s how they see China, the center of the world, the only center and the only power that will prevail over everything. God, or no God, they intend to rule the world.”

  Billingsly smiled. “They don’t know what real power is. You can’t become what you don’t understand. We wield the real power in this world. Just you remember that on your next trip to China. You’ll see. They’re smart enough to know who holds the power and who doesn’t. They’ll be happy to buy all the Bonds and Treasury Notes you offer them. Trust me, it’s a done deal.”

  Billingsly looked over at Clive Bentonhouse, an Under Secretary in the Department of State. “So who’s not cooperating with you?” Bentonhouse was a career bureaucrat at State. He wore an immaculate dark-toned suit with a light gray shirt and a gold tie. He was 48, hair graying around the temples, well groomed, and at six feet tall with a medium build, he mixed well with diplomats from the Middle East. He spoke the local languages fluently, having grown up in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. His father was British and his mother American. The two had met during assignments in the Middle East and gradually arranged their placements to coincide with each other.

  “The usual suspect,” Clive replied, “Iran has walked away from negotiations on limiting their nuclear ambitions, again.”

  “When’s your next meeting with them?” Billingsly asked.

  “Next week.”

  “Send them a message,” Billingsly said. “Privately.” He checked the calendar on his phone and smiled. “Tell them that we will be sending them a warning on the thirteenth, at noon, their time.”

  “What kind of warning?” Bentonhouse asked.

  “Just leave it at that,” Billingsly replied. “They’ll figure it out.”

  “Okay,” Bentonhouse replied, “the thirteenth at noon. You sure it’s okay to do things this way?”

  “Which way is that?” Billingsly asked rhetorically. “Tell me, what did your Secretary of State know about foreign relations when he became your boss?”

  “Nothing, really,” Bentonhouse replied.

  “And how much experience do you have in foreign relations?”

  “Twenty four years.”

  “Look,” Billingsly said. “These political appointees will come and go. They can’t be trusted or depended on for anything approaching serious transactions. That requires our experience and collective wisdom. We serve a higher purpose than whatever political wind is blowing this week in Washington. We act in the interest of the world’s only superpower, to maintain and increase that superpower status and respect throughout the world.
An elected politician can’t be expected to maintain that vision, always needing to be re-elected, that’s why we have to work beneath the surface, to continue the legacy that made us the one superpower of the world. That’s our purpose and our function. We make the politicians look good, and they never know the nitty-gritty details of how things are made to happen. That’s our job, and we do it well. Just remember, they may take the credit, but we are the ones who make things happen.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Beijing, China

  Guang Xi was awakened by the doctor and a team of nurses.

  “Wha – What are you doing?” Guang Xi asked.

  “Your bandages have to be changed,” the nurse stated.

  For the first time Guang Xi realized that there were bandages on his face, hands and chest. “Why do I have all of these bandages?” he asked.

  “You were severely burned,” the doctor replied.

  “But there’s no pain,” Guang Xi said. “Burns cause pain, and I don’t have any pain in my face and hands.”

  “Severe burns, like you have, kill the nerves, so there is no pain,” the doctor said.

  “Severe burns?” Guang Xi said. “How severe?”

  The doctor looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m sorry. You have lost the skin on your face, the back of your hands and on your fore arms and chest. The damage has been extensive.”

  “But, how?” Guang Xi asked.

  “We don’t really know,” the doctor replied. “The army doctor that brought you in said he thought the burns were from very high levels of electromagnetic radiation, but we’ve never seen anything like your burns before. We’re really just guessing at this point.”

  Guang Xi looked down at his hands as the nurse removed the last bandage. His hands looked bright red, and somewhat shiny. “I can’t feel my hands,” Guang Xi said. “What have you done to me?”

  “During your surgery we replaced your burned skin with an artificial skin product. It will help your body regenerate skin tissue, but for now we have to keep it tight against the underlying tissue so it will bond.”

  “And my face?”

  The doctor glanced over at a nurse and nodded. She picked up a mirror and held it so Guang Xi could see. He quickly drew in a breath. This can’t be! His face was shiny bright red and boney in appearance. The artificial skin extended up over the top of his scalp. Where are my ears? His right ear was gone with only a small knobby protrusion remaining of his left ear. He felt nauseated by the sight of his own features. How is Meili going to react? He reached up and touched his face. He couldn’t feel the contact of his fingers, nor could he sense anything on his face.

  “I can’t feel anything,” Guang Xi stated anxiously.

  “I know,” the doctor replied. “You won’t have any nerves in the new skin that grows. Nerves won’t regenerate themselves.”

  “How am I going to live like this? This is horrible!”

  The doctor paused, breathed out slowly and continued, “We can start to rebuild the outer ears after six months to a year. You’re going to need a lot of medical care over the next two to three years, so we’re going to see a lot of each other. In order for this to work, we must base our communications on truth and trust. Rebuilding the damaged parts of your body is a long, slow ordeal. I’ve taken other severe burn patients through this same process. I will be completely honest with you during every step, but you have to trust me that in the end, you can have a reasonably normal life.”

  Guang Xi’s mind was racing; jumping from one thought to another at hyper-speed. He couldn’t focus. His breathing was fast and shallow. A nurse checked his pulse and blood pressure.

  She looked at the doctor. “High, but not dangerous.”

  The doctor reached over and took ahold of Guang Xi’s shoulder. “Breathe deeply. Slow down. You’re alive, and you’re going to recover.”

  Guang Xi took several deep breaths and tried to get his mind to focus. As he did so, his foot started to hurt. He looked down at the thin blanket that covered his body. He could see the pointed rise in the blanket where his left foot was, but on the right, the blanket fell flat to the bed below his knee. “What happened to my foot?”

  “Gangrene,” the doctor replied. “There was nothing else we could do.”

  Guang Xi fell back on the bed, tears flowing from his eyes, only he couldn’t feel them on his face. He realized he never would. He would never feel Meili’s gentle touch against his cheek, the feel of her against his chest or her stroking his arms. All of that was gone; gone forever.

  “Why?” Guang Xi screamed. “Why me?”

  The doctor and the nurses remained silent, staring at the floor instead of meeting his gaze. He looked frantically around the room, suddenly feeling as though he had become invisible.

  “Why me?” he screamed again, as he fell into uncontrollable weeping.

  The doctor immediately left the room, as did all but one nurse, who had to finish re-bandaging his face. Then, just as quietly, she left him as well. She returned within two minutes and injected something into his IV line. A few seconds later he felt warm and relaxed again.

  * * *

  “What happened at the fault?” Dr. Huang asked.

  “The earthquake?” Guang Xi asked.

  “Yes,” Dr. Huang replied. “What exactly did you see?”

  Guang Xi felt spacey, but his mind seemed to be somewhat lucid. “This curtain of light formed over the fault. It was afternoon and the sun was out, but this curtain of light was brighter than the sunlight.”

  “It was right over the fault?” Dr. Huang asked.

  “Yes,” Guang Xi confirmed. “It was directly over the fault.”

  “And it appeared before the earthquake?”

  “Yes, about ten seconds before the quake erupted.”

  Dr. Huang leaned back in his chair. “That’s exactly what the instruments showed. I expected something in the electromagnetic spectrum, but this was too high to measure. Every electromagnetic sensor was at maximum intensity. The signals went from zero to maximum, stayed there for exactly ninety seconds, and then dropped suddenly back to zero. The quake started, as you noted, ten seconds after the electromagnetic sensors hit maximum, and continued for eighty seconds, after which the quake began to diminish. By the time the quake had spread out and traveled through the rock strata, the total time of the quake was around two minutes.”

  “What magnitude?” Guang Xi asked, the clinical portion of his mind taking over.

  “Initial analysis indicates a 7.9, but it looks more like an 8.0 to me.”

  Guang Xi breathed out quickly. “That’s massive. How extensive was the damage?”

  “Still gathering data, but from the aerial survey, it looks like we’re in the range of 12 million buildings damaged or destroyed. The army has been working to clear landslides from the roads 24 hours a day, but with all of the damage to the roads and infrastructure, we’re two to three weeks from reaching the outer sections of the provinces.”

  “How many dead?” Guang Xi asked.

  Dr. Huang lowered his head and paused. “We don’t know. Based on what we have found so far, we’re guessing at 50,000 to 100,000 dead, 200,000 to 400,000 injured.”

  “I’m lucky to be alive.”

  “Yes, you are,” Dr. Huang replied. “And that’s exactly what I want you to concentrate on. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Meili?”

  “I have spoken to her. She was visiting her family in Yantai. She will be here tomorrow.”

  Guang Xi stared off into the corner of the room, his mind drifting deeper into the dream state.

  “You need to rest,” Dr. Huang said. “I’ll be back to visit later.”

  Guang Xi closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  The next day Guang Xi saw Dr. Huang waiting as the nurses removed the bandages from his face and arms. Once all of the bandages were gone the attending doctor bent forward and examined Guang Xi intently.

  “So
far, so good,” the doctor said. “No sign of infection.”

  Guang Xi looked up. Meili stood in the doorway staring at him. Shock and horror firmly etched in her face.

  “Meili?” Guang Xi said.

  She turned and bolted down the hall.

  “Meili,” he shouted. “Meili, come back! Meili!”

  Dr. Huang immediately got up and ran after Meili. Ten minutes later he returned – alone. The look on Dr. Huang’s face told Guang Xi everything he needed to know. Meili was gone, and she wouldn’t be coming back. Guang Xi stared down at the bed and his missing right leg.

  “Look,” Dr. Huang said quietly. “This was a great shock for her. She’s going to need time to adjust. Right now the artificial skin doesn’t look very good, but in a year, it’ll look just like normal skin. You’ll see. Your life will get better, much better. Then she may reconsider.”

  Guang Xi looked at him and shook his head. “No, she won’t. She’s very social. She can’t be seen with someone like I am now. A year or two years will not change what she wants. It’s over. She’s gone, just like the rest of my life.” He returned to staring at his missing right leg.

  “You’re a very smart and very valuable person, Guang Xi. Your position at the University is secure. Your life will be good again, I promise.” Guang Xi didn’t look at anything other than his missing leg. After half an hour of Guang Xi’s continued silence and lack of eye contact, Dr. Huang stood up. “Perhaps tomorrow will be better,” he said from the doorway, and then he left.

  * * *

  The nurse gently shook Guang Xi awake.

  “You have visitors,” she said quietly.

  Guang Xi saw Dr. Huang and two other men standing in his room. The first man wore the typical University attire, matching shirt and slacks. He was short and squat in stature with a bald head and a chubby face. He wore thin wire-rimmed glasses over intense dark eyes.

  “Guang Xi,” Dr. Huang said. “This is Dr. Zheng from the University Department of Experimental Physics.

  The other man wore an Army uniform with a number of medals on his chest. The applet on his shoulder bore one gold star.