“I don't understand.”

“The Southern Belle's designers incorporated the newer data on giant waves into their work. The Belle had a covered forecastle, a double hull and strengthening of the transverse bulkheads to prevent flooding.”

Austin stared at the scientist for a moment. Choosing his words carefully, he said, “That would mean that the ship may have encountered a wave larger than ninety feet.”

Adler gestured toward his computer screen. The image showed a series of wave lines and measurements.

“There were actually two giant waves, one hundred and one hundred twelve feet high, to be exact. We captured their pictures on satellite.”

Adler had expected his dramatic pronouncement to make an impression, but both men responded with expressions of intense interest rather than the gasps of disbelief that he had expected. Adler knew he had done well in coaxing a favor from Rudi Gunn when Austin turned to his friend and, without missing a beat, calmly announced:

“Looks like we should have brought our surfboards.”

NUMA 6 - Polar Shift

5

BIG MOUNTAIN, MONTANA

THE OLD MAN PUSHED off from the chairlift and skied with strong skating steps to the top of Black Diamond run. He paused at the brow of the hill, and his cobalt eyes took in the panoramic sweep of sky and mountain. From seven thousand feet, he had an eagle's-eye view of the Flathead Valley and Whitefish Lake. The snowy peaks of Glacier National Park glistened in the east. Stretching out to the north were the jagged teeth of the Canadian Rockies.

No fog shrouded the bald summit. Not a wisp of cloud marred the luminous blue sky. As the warm sunlight toasted his face, he reflected on the debt he owed the mountains. There was no doubt in his mind. Without the clarity offered by the brooding peaks, he would have gone insane.

When World War II ended, Europe began to pull itself back together, but his mind was a jungle full of dark murmurings. No matter that he had lent his deadly skills to the cause of the Resistance. He was still a robotic killer. Worse, he had a fatal defect— humanity. Like any fine-tuned machine with a flawed mechanism, in time he would have flown apart.

He had left the war-ravaged continent for New York, and pushed west until he was thousands of miles from the smoldering European slaughterhouse. He had built a simple log house, cutting and hewing each log with hand tools. The backbreaking labor and the pure air cleansed the shadowed recesses of his memory. The violent nightmares became less frequent. He could sleep without a gun under his pillow and a knife strapped to his thigh.

With the passage of years, he had evolved from a remorseless, polished killing machine into an aging ski bum. The close-cropped blond hair of his youth had turned to a pewter gray that now grew over his ears. A shaggy mustache matched his wild eyebrows. His pale features had become as weathered as buckskin.