PRESIDENT NATHAN ROSS HAD FELT THE tremor as he sat reading in a wing chair on the second floor of the White House. He was trying to slog through a CIA report on Cuba, something he’d put off for days. It was hard going, dense with statistics and pro-and-con recommendations on resuming diplomatic relations with Castro. Ross was starting to drift off to sleep. A sudden strong shaking snapped him awake. The windows in the doors that opened onto the Truman Balcony rattled in their frames. Alarms and warning bells started going off throughout the White House.
Ross had been in an earthquake once before during a trip to San Francisco when he’d been governor of Illinois. This was much stronger. It seemed incredible, the second quake in three days. That very morning, he’d read a preliminary Federal Emergency Management Agency report on the earthquake that had damaged Memphis.
He was already moving toward the door when the Secret Service agent posted outside rapped on it sharply.
“It may be an earthquake, Mister President. We’re not sure yet.” The agent had his gun out, a black, short-barreled Uzi. Two other agents ran down the hallway of the presidential living quarters, weapons drawn. The doors to the building were being sealed off.
Ross headed for the stairway. He never waited for the elevator if he could avoid it. The thing took forever.
“We confirm an earthquake. A big one somewhere in the Midwest. We’re just starting to get some reports,” another Secret Service agent called out from the bottom of the long, curving staircase. He had a cell phone in his right hand, a weapon in the left.
“Have the NSA’s duty officer meet me in the Oval Office,” Ross said as the agent, a young man in a sharply creased gray suit, trotted along behind him.
Ross had never liked the stiff formality of the Oval Office, its Architectural Digest sterility and overwhelming sense of history. He hurried through the president’s study into the small office, which was dominated by the ornately carved mahogany desk owned by Teddy Roosevelt when he was police commissioner of New York City. It was a god-awful piece of furniture that Ross had never gotten around to getting rid of.
He buzzed the switchboard.
“Get me Steve Draper,” he said. Draper was his national science adviser. Ross anticipated he was going to need some technical help. He knew instinctively that if he could feel the shaking in Washington, the country had just been rocked by one hell of a strong earthquake. Much bigger than the one that had hit near Memphis. He needed the best scientific minds he could gather.
There was a knock on the open door.
“Mister President, we’ve got some information from the National Earthquake Center in Boulder.”
Ross motioned in Betty Lou Davis, a newly minted Harvard Ph.D. from DeKalb, Georgia, who was an aide to the national security adviser. She’d drawn the graveyard shift and was out of breath from hurrying over from her office in the West Wing’s basement with two assistants, who stood behind her, yellow legal pads at the ready.
“The earthquake registered a magnitude 8.4, Mister President. Its epicenter is somewhere in eastern Arkansas. Roughly the same area that experienced that magnitude 7 quake a few days ago. This one really hammered them. It’s been felt over a huge area. Upstate New York, the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario.” She hesitated a moment. “Your home state of Illinois has taken a pounding.”
“What about casualties?” Ross asked.
“We don’t know yet, sir,” Davis said. “We’re having trouble getting through to Memphis, Little Rock, and St. Louis. Communications are completely knocked out.”
“We intercepted a cockpit transmission from the pilot of a TWA 747 who was on his approach into St. Louis,” one of her assistants said. “He aborted the landing when he lost all contact with the ground. The runway lights went out. All of them.”
Ross sensed that Davis was worried.
“What else, Betty?” he prodded.
“The pilot stayed in radio contact with the people in the control tower,” she said. “We’ve got it on tape. Mister President. The tower was shaking. You can hear them screaming.”