Trempealeau by John T. Umhoefer

Author:John T. Umhoefer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Umhoefer
Published: 2024-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

37

April 16, 2003, Wednesday evening, near Elk Creek

Rain was pouring into the hatchery building, slapping against the surface of the pond for the first time in sixty years. Professor Lawrence Marten stood beneath one of the remaining patches of intact roof with a tall, bearded man he knew as SOC 1, Commander Hutchinson. Nearly thirty years ago, this man held the moniker SOA 2 and had shot and killed Lieutenant Robert Ross not twenty feet from where they stood. Marten felt paralyzed in the frigid, damp air. Tonight, perhaps for the first time, he felt every one of his eighty-six years.

“This dump won’t take another jolt like Monday’s quake. You know that.”

Marten didn’t answer. Lightning sparked in the clouds like a short circuit. The pond was a graveyard of bobbing black debris, and above it the arched roof winked in and out of view, its supporting ribs like a corpse picked clean. In a thousand years, how many had died beside this water? he wondered.

“Professor, when did you say the next quake will hit?” Hutchinson hung a small automatic firearm at his side. His gray-and-white beard had grown unruly in his two weeks in Wisconsin, and his black clothing was stained with mud from the last twenty-four hours.

“Just before ten tomorrow morning by my estimate, and yes, this structure is unsound, Commander.” The only weapon Marten brought to bear against this assassin was knowledge. This would be the eighth quake in the series the professor had discovered, teasing the earliest of these from seismograph records at the university. Frank Ross had returned from Ta Hie just hours after the March 30 quake and confirmed that he and the Chot’ka clan had felt this tremor and lesser shakings earlier. Lawrence had already found evidence of minor activity on March 9 and January 27 earlier this year, and back to November 5 and May 23 of last year. On March 30, Frank Ross bolted for Washington, and Lawrence took it upon himself to revive some of his old connections there as well. That quake confirmed an astonishing conjecture: the earthquakes conformed to a pattern, and he found he could predict the next tremor, both in time and magnitude. He had expected this news, delivered to the National Science Foundation, would bring an airliner filled with scientists. It brought only the Special Ops thugs holding him prisoner at the epicenter.

My prediction was confirmed, of course, Marten thought. On April 9 at 3:34 p.m., Commander Hutchinson joined Tess and Marten to witness a predicted earthquake. Right on time, the seismograph scratched out the tremor at his facility at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. It was an outcome worthy of rich study, but Hutchinson was sent to make sure exactly zero “unclassifieds” learned of this finding. The epicenter, which others could only approximate due to a lack of triangulating monitors, was here—these waters. Before the Army had abandoned this site, they knew of its importance and its unique gravitational signature. Marten wanted new gravitational readings. He wanted a seismological station on site.

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