“Then where the hell is it?” Chaney yells. “Something that size just can’t disappear.”

“Must still be in the sea,” the general says. “Have the choppers double back to the last reported site. Send the jets up and down the coastline. We need to cut that alien off before it moves inland.”

Ten long minutes pass.

From her vantage, Dominique watches the tsunami’s tidal surge retreat back to the sea, the churning river of water dragging uprooted palm trees, debris, and livestock with it. “Mr.President, we’re wasting time—”

Chaney turns around to face her. “The E.T.’s still out there somewhere.”

“And what if it’s not? What if it’s on its way to Chichén Itza like Mick said?”

General Fecondo turns. “We’ve got thirty choppers circling the Yucatan coastline. The moment that thing shows its face—”

“Wait! Mick said the geology of the peninsula’s like a giant sponge. There’s a whole labyrinth of subterranean caves that connect to the sea. The alien’s not hiding, it’s traveling underground!”

Sanibel Island

Edie pounds on the door of her friend’s home. “Sue, open up!”

Sue Reuben opens the front door, still half-asleep. “Edie, what’s—”

Edith grabs her by the wrist and drags her to the car.

“Edie, for God’s sake, I’m in my pajamas—”

“Just get in. There’s a tsunami coming!” Harvey guns the engine as the two elderly women climb in, accelerating the car wildly through residential areas, then back toward the main road.

“A tsunami? How big? What about the rest of the island?”

“Coast Guard choppers are hitting the beach areas and streets. Radio and television announcements have been broadcasting for ten minutes. Didn’t you hear the sirens?”

“I don’t sleep with my hearing aid.”

Harvey slams on the brakes as they approach the four-way intersection leading to the causeway. The only bridge off Sanibel Island is bumper-to-bumper with traffic.

“Looks like word is out,” Harvey says, yelling above the din of blaring horns.

Edie checks her watch. “This is no good. We have to get out.”

“On foot?” Sue shakes her head. “Edie, the tollbooth’s more than a mile away. I’m wearing slippers—”

Edith opens the door, dragging her friend from the backseat. Harvey takes his aunt’s free hand and leads the two through the line of cars toward the other side of the bridge.

For the next several minutes, the trio rushes in and out of traffic, hurrying across the bridge to the distant tollbooth.

Edie looks up as several teenagers zoom by on motorized roller blades, shielding her eyes against the glare coming off the bay waters that loop around Sanibel Island to the Gulf of Mexico.

Maneuvering slowly down the coastline is a red-and-black oil tanker.

Beyond the tanker, three miles offshore, an unfathomable wall of water is rising straight out of the sea.