Sedulity 2: Aftershock (Sedulity Saga) by Forsyth David

Author:Forsyth, David [Forsyth, David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2014-12-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The monster wave bore down on the California coast from the southwest, breaking in a solid line up the coast of Baja. That sparsely populated coastline was mostly desert and the there wasn’t much for the waves to destroy until they hit Ensenada, which was not a large city, but on any other day its destruction would have risen to the level of a catastrophe. On this day it was simply an appetizer for the main course.

The Coast Guard C-130 that had paced the waves up the coast of Baja fed continuous video into the Military Command and Control network. Generals, admirals, and politicians, along with their subordinates, were privy to views of this wave of destruction barreling up the coastline. They watched, most of them speechless, as the water along the beaches first drew back rapidly, exposing half a mile or more of the seabed in places, only to be engulfed by colossal tsunami waves that wiped out the whole coast. These waves climbed mountains, or churned many miles inland, depending on topography, destroying everything in their path.

A few minutes after Ensenada was wiped out the waves obliterated Lobster Village in Puerto Nuevo and flattened high rise condos along Rosarito Beach before rolling over the densely populated slums of Tijuana and hitting the US border. International boundaries meant nothing to this indiscriminate force of nature. Hundreds of thousands of people stranded in San Diego had mere seconds to live.

The crew of the C-130 viewed the destruction spread with growing horror. Crossing over the US border they also discovered that the airspace was unusually congested. Aircraft of all types and sizes were taking off from over a dozen airports along the coast. Most of them turned inland immediately, seeking to put as much distance between themselves and the tsunami as possible. However, some of the smaller planes and numerous helicopters chose to circle over the city and coastline as the waves approached. A few of them were news helicopters, broadcasting the event live, most of the others were from the military and emergency services, but several were private pilots of small planes who remained out of morbid curiosity.

One such pilot was Tommy Mack, a medical supply salesman who had flown his trusty old single engine Cessna 172 down from Las Vegas for a convention that week. It had taken him hours to extricate himself from the partially collapsed San Diego Convention Center after the earthquake, and it took several more painful hours to limp from there to Lindbergh Field, gawking at all the earthquake damage along the waterfront. He was relieved to find his Cessna intact on the tarmac where he had tied it down, and happy that the ground crew had refueled it before disaster struck. Tommy was among the tiny percentage of people along the coast with a means of escape, but his curiosity got the better of him. He got the airplane started and, ignoring the line of larger planes full of refugees lined up for

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