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10:44P.M.
Kowalski had never been one to settle an argument.
He usuallycausedthem.
He stood inside the geology lab with a cigar clamped between his back molars. The stogie remained unlit due to strict fire restrictions. Not that he would have smoked it anyway. Doctor’s orders. Still, he could appreciate the taste and smell of the dried Cuban leaves.
Before him, William Byrd browbeat the older geologist. Dr. Haru Kaneko sat before an array of monitors, all displaying graphs, charts, and seismic readings. Everyone in the room had felt the last temblor. Apparently, Haru believed it was some final straw, a harbinger of a greater geological event to come.
“I’ve run multiple projections,” Haru declared emphatically. “The entire region is destabilizing at an alarming rate. Faster than even my earlier models predicted.”
“But it could also settle just as quickly,” Byrd argued. “I’ve read the assessments from the seismologists at Stanford and MIT.”
“Those interpretations are outliers, and you know it. Many more agree with my projections—at least to variable degrees.”
“Those variable degrees range from an eventpossiblyhappening in the next few days to years from now.”
“Yet, the grimmest predictions came fromvolcanologists. Like myself. Volcanic eruptions pose the greatest threat. And few geologists have studied this region as in depth as I have, nor have they been involved with monitoring this trench over the past weeks. My modeling shows an eighty-three percent probability of a catastrophic event happening within the next twelve hours, maybe less than that.”
Byrd sighed dramatically and ceded ground. “Then let your team continue to monitor conditions overnight. If you’re still this worried in the morning, then we’ll begin evacuations when the sun is up.”
Both men turned to Kowalski, seeing if he was willing to chime in. He had only one recommendation. It was a philosophy he seldom lived by—but it sounded good now.
“Better safe than sorry,” he warned gruffly.
Haru nodded.
“We should get the hell out of here,” Kowalski recommended. “How long would it take to evacuate this place?”
Byrd calculated in his head and counted on his fingers. “With the contingent of personnel down here, and accounting for the number of submersibles, plus the transit times up and down—about three hours.”
Kowalski scowled. “That friggin’ long?”
“We’re two miles down,” the billionaire reminded him.
“Then why are we even arguing?” Kowalski said. “Get everyone packing.”
Byrd offered a lame excuse. “If we do, it will take us weeks to reestablish everything. It’ll cost us millions. Interrupt countless projects. And if we’re wrong, the press will have a field day about our needless panic.”
Kowalski pointed to the door. “Better some bad press than a hundred dead scientists.”
Byrd sagged under Kowalski’s glare. “That’s true, of course.”
Haru looked greatly relieved, as did the other geologists around the room. It was thedepthof their relief that worried Kowalski more than all their charts and graphs.
Byrd headed toward the door, but before he could exit, a tall dark-skinned man hurried into the lab, stepping briskly up to the billionaire. He stood as tall as Kowalski. His bulk strained his jumpsuit, which was charcoal gray, marking him part of the station’s security team. His only weapon was a collapsible steel baton at his waist. No one wanted to risk bringing a gun down here.
Well, almost nobody.
“Sir,” the security chief said.
“What is it, Jarrah?”
“Word fromUp,” he reported. “A large military ship is steaming toward us.”
“And?”
“They refuse to respond to our hails.”
