Terminal Justice (48 page)

“You sound very confident about your prediction,” Bob Connick said.

“Call it scientific intuition,” Oz answered. A moment later he said, “It’s not confidence you hear … it’s fear.”

David stood. “Okay, folks, that’s it. I would like to see brief summaries about your departments’ readiness in two hours. Let’s get to work.” Turning to Osborn, David said, “Thanks, Oz, you made everything clear.”

“I hope so, David. I have a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling.”

Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh
7:47
A.M.
local time
.

Akram Kazi felt the loose sand under his feet give way with each step. Grains slipped between his bare feet and the sandals he wore. Pressing his chin down on the tall stack of newly washed white towels he carried, he struggled to make certain he didn’t spill his load. It was his job to carry towels from the resort’s laundry to the small white shack in the middle of the beach where tourists and traveling business executives freely retrieved them after a swim in the ocean. It was just one of the many services the Holiday Resort offered its guests.

Akram, nineteen, hustled along the sandy beach that ran in front of the hotel. The August heat would soon have the guests lining the shore, sitting under umbrellas to protect them from the fierce tropical sun. Akram hurried. He had many things yet to do, including wiping off the tables of the outdoor café. Already, guests were being seated and eating breakfast. Akram was running late.

Thirty hastily taken steps later, Akram was at the ten-by-fifteen-foot shed.
“Assalaa-mualaikum,”
he said, wishing peace on his coworker.

“Wallaikum assalaam.”
Zahid Hussein, an employee who tended the shed, returned the traditional greeting, but it was clear he was upset. “It is about time, Akram. I have no towels to give, and already people are asking for them.”

“It is not my fault, Zahid,” Akram protested. “The laundry was not done with them. I could not bring you wet towels, could I?”

“No excuses. You have made me look bad before our guests. I will not tolerate that.”

“The towels were not ready …”

“Enough,” Zahid interrupted. “Do you see that man over there? The one with the big belly?”

“Yes.” The man, portly with fish-white skin, reclined on a lounge chair.

“He wants a towel. Take him one, and apologize for your actions.”

“But I have tables to …”

“Take him a towel, and do it quickly.”

Akram acquiesced. Zahid was older and had seniority. Everyone had seniority over him. But that didn’t matter. In just two months he would move to Dhaka, the nation’s capital, to attend college. It was a fortunate opportunity from Allah, who had already blessed him many times. He could read, unlike 65 percent of other Bangladeshis, and he had a hunger for knowledge. So he worked, saving every taka and paisa, and looked forward to that day when he would study at the University of Dhaka. He longed to be a teacher, like his father before him. Education was the only way his tiny country could climb out of the pit of constant despair and depredation.

Approaching the white man with the big belly, Akram held out a clean white towel in his right hand. Since personal hygiene was done with the left, it would have been an insult to have used it with something so personal as a towel.

“Thank you, young man,” the middle-aged man said.

“I offer my apologies for not having your towel ready when you requested it.” Akram raised his right hand to his forehead, palm slightly cupped, offering a traditional salute.

“No problem, buddy,” the man said.

American
, Akram thought.
His accent is American
.

“It’s just a towel. Everything is okay.”

The man touched his index finger to his thumb to form a circle. Instinctively, Akram looked away. It was an obscene gesture, highly offensive. Of course the American didn’t know that. The gesture, Akram had learned, was common in the Western world and simply meant that things were all right. Still, the sign shocked him. Akram had had to learn many things about foreigners since
coming to work at the Holiday Resort two years ago. They were always doing something offensive: pointing with their index fingers, showing the bottoms of their feet, passing food with their left hands. It was simple ignorance on their part, and Akram had learned to endure it.

“Thank you for your kindness,” Akram said, his eyes diverted to show humility before the guest. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

“Nope. Nothing at …” The American’s voice trailed off. “What … what’s going on?” he asked.

“Sir?”

“Out there, boy, look!” The man pointed out to the ocean. The offensive gesture was lost on Akram when he turned to see the ocean rapidly retreating from shore. “Don’t tell me that’s normal.” The man lumbered to his feet.

“I have never seen such a thing,” Akram said, his eyes wide. “The ocean is leaving.”

Slowly he and the American began to walk toward the tide line. Looking up and down the beach, Akram could see that other guests and employees were doing the same thing. Curiosity was a powerful force. The beach itself was unique, being the longest unbroken stretch on the planet, but this was something unseen before.

“Look at this, will ya’,” the man offered. “Fish and crab for the taking.”

Akram had noticed it too. The now-exposed ocean bottom was littered with crabs and other crustaceans. Fish flopped on the wet sand, slowly suffocating in a blanket of air.

“What do you suppose did this?” asked the pudgy man.

Akram shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe I should tell my manager …”

“Wait! Do you hear something?”

Tilting his head slightly as if to line up his ears for better reception, Akram closed his eyes and listened. “Yes, a roar, a rumble.”
He opened his eyes and looked at the guest. The man’s face was drained of all color, his mouth slack, his eyes wide. Again he pointed out to sea and then crossed himself.

“Hail Mary, full of grace …” the man began. He crossed himself again.

Akram turned to see what had so terrified the man. “Allah have mercy,” was all he could say.

80 kilometers SE of Bhubameshwar, India
Altitude 2,200 meters

The Cessna Skylane RG airplane bounced slightly as it passed through a thermal. The pilot, an East Indian named Rajiv Kapur, paid no attention to the bump—his mind was elsewhere. Below him the dark blue of the Bay of Bengal was turning a shade lighter as the plane flew over the shallow waters of the continental shelf. Above him the sky was a crystalline blue. It was a beautiful day for flying and even a more beautiful day to be home celebrating the birthday of his five-year-old daughter, Jaya. Normally, Rajiv would be happy to chart a leisurely course back to Bhubameshwar and then to his home outside the city, but not today. He wanted nothing more than to be with his family.

He checked his airspeed again: 156 knots—75 percent power, just what it should be. The craft was capable of over 160 knots, but that was pushing the engine harder than necessary, especially on a substantially long flight like the one he was taking from the Andaman Islands 735 miles behind him.

A devout family man, Rajiv was proud of the three boys his wife had given him, but Jaya had stolen his heart like countless daughters across the world had done to their fathers. It wasn’t that he loved his sons any less; it was that little girls knew the secret passages to a father’s soul. Jaya knew those passages well and could melt her normally stern father with a simple glance and a flash from
her obsidian eyes. She could manipulate her father like no other, and Rajiv loved it. As he flew, his mind filled with the image of his little girl: smooth, brown skin; coal black hair; bright eyes and a beaming smile. She could laugh in such a contagious way that a room full of adults would find themselves giggling like children with her.

Rajiv arched his back to stretch out the kinks of three and a half hours at the plane’s controls. He shifted in his seat and checked his navigation indicators. Not that he needed to. He had been making flights like this one for over ten years. He often bragged that he could fly blindfolded to the Andaman Islands, as well as any airport on the eastern coast of India. Still he was a cautious pilot. Caution mixed with courtesy had made him one of the busiest charter pilots in the area. Next year he hoped to add another plane to his “fleet” of one.

“What’s that?”

The voice dragged Rajiv from his revelry. He turned to his passenger, Mr. Julius Higgins of London, a jovial man with shiny white hair and a broad mouth. He and his wife, a woman with hair as dark as her husband’s was white, were both recently retired and were sightseeing in India. “I’m sorry, Mr. Higgins. What did you say?”

“That,” Higgins replied, nodding out his window. “Looks quite odd, don’t you think?”

Rajiv peered across the small cabin and out Higgins’s window but couldn’t see anything. Instinctively he looked out his own side window. What he saw made his heart stutter. Even from an altitude of over 2000 meters he could see the ocean being drawn back like a blanket off a bed, leaving long streaks in the mud and sand of the ocean floor.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” Higgins asked. “I mean, does that happen all the time?”

Rajiv could not speak; he just shook his head.

Higgins turned to his wife who was in the seat behind him in
the four-passenger plane. “Wake up, dear. You don’t want to miss this. Something unusual is happening.”

Groggily Mrs. Higgins opened her eyes. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Look out your window,” Higgins replied.

“Amazing,” she exclaimed. Then she smacked her husband on the back of the head. “Why aren’t you taping this, Julius? That’s why you have the video camera in your hand.”

“Oh, right,” Higgins said. A moment later he was pointing the Sony camera out the window. “Try and hold the plane steady, chum.”

Rajiv just stared out the window and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. In a few more minutes they would be over land with the ocean behind them and unable to see the drama below. Slowly, Rajiv turned the Cessna and took a course parallel with the shore. To his left was the heavily populated coast, to his right, open ocean.

A gasp came from the back. Rajiv turned to see Mrs. Higgins with a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide in fright. Another gasp, this time from Mr. Higgins.

“What? What is it?” Rajiv blurted.

No one answered. Both of his passengers sat stonelike in their seats, gazing out their windows. The terror in the cabin was palpable. Julius Higgins rigidly held the video camera to his eye. Instinctively, Rajiv leaned to the side to see the monster that had terrified his passengers. The terror of realization struck him hard, like a vicious punch to the stomach. His heart beat rapidly, pounding so hard that Rajiv thought it might burst from his chest any second.

A ribbon of white, sinuous like a snake, raced toward the coast. So long was the ribbon that Rajiv could not see its ends. The line of white tumbled and churned and grew. Without thought, Rajiv banked the plane hard and pushed on the yoke. The craft
responded without hesitation, and everyone was pressed back into their seats by the invisible hand of acceleration.

“What are you doing?” Higgins cried out.

“I must see,” Rajiv said.

Higgins glanced at the altimeter in the instrument panel. The white indicator arm spun as the Cessna plummeted down. “Are you trying to kill us?” he shouted above the now roaring engine. Rajiv did not respond.

Rajiv kept his eyes fixed on the surface of the glistening earth below and then, after an eternity of moments, pulled back on the yoke. Slowly the plane leveled in its flight. The craft cruised at 175 knots, 100 meters above the now barren ocean floor. Rajiv, consumed by the image before him, was only barely aware that Julius Higgins had resumed taping. He blinked, then blinked again, but it was still there and it appeared to be growing.

A wave. Rising. Building. Charging with locomotive speed. A wall of water. A cliff of ocean.

“Dear, Lord,” Higgins said. “It’s a bloody tidal wave.”