The Filter Trap Read Online Free Page A

he was kidding about sandbag duty. Ain’t no sandbags gonna stop that,” Nana pined.
    “He’s evacuating civilians to the punchbowl,” Lee informed them. “He’ll get out.”
    “No time to worry about it,” LARS cautioned. “Looks like whatever took out the Moon did a pretty good job on the GPS satellites. I got nothing on my spec. SIMI?”
    “Nothing here either, so how are we going to find the president?”
    “You’ve got a compass don’t you?” Lee said. “Not to mention the entire Pacific fleet is laid out under us like a giant arrow.”
    They looked down with pity at their Navy comrades, hoping they’d surge far enough out to meet the waves before they were too high to break.
    “So, the rest of the squad that we’re relieving,” LARS asked, “where is JSOC sending them?”
    “I imagine they’ll circle west until the tsunami has passed, then try to land on a carrier,” SIMI answered.
    “If there still is a carrier,” Nana noted.
    “We’ve got a job to do, boys,” Lee reminded them, banking her Raptor northward and taking one long last look at the paradise in the Pacific she’d been lucky enough to call home for the last six years. “There’s a president waiting for us, that’s all we should worry about right now.”

Chapter 2
     
    Air Force One dipped far below cruising altitude as the presidential caravan flew over Honolulu. On the way they’d passed wreckage of gunboats and destroyers caught in the surging waves. Sailors dashed in the waters of the Pacific reached up in a vain plea for help from the commander they served. As the waves approached the island, landfall height estimates reached higher, though few would be around to validate them.
    The presidential albatross dipped even lower to watch over Pearl Harbor. An eerie radio silence fell as the waves approached the southwestern shore, home to the majority of the million inhabitants of the state.
    The ninety-minute tsunami warning did little to prepare Hawaii for this new class of disaster. As the impending doom ripped through stragglers from the Pacific Fleet, the Raptor pilots escorting Air Force One squinted to discern oblivious tourists still wandering the white sand beaches. The hapless vacationers followed the water as it retreated from the beach.
    An Air Force One staffer broke the silence onboard. “The number of estimated dead in Kauai approaching 50,000, sir. Bodies will be pulled out of tree tops and wash up on isolated shores for years to come. Not many folks left to do the counting, so we suspect the true number might be higher.”
    “What have we done for Honolulu?” the frustrated president asked.
    “Hickam is doing its best to get everyone to higher ground, sir. Being Christmas Eve, the base was understaffed for an emergency like this. It didn’t have much warning, and the civilians even less. Most people were asleep until the sirens went off. We’re expecting high six figures.”
    The President put his head in his hands, peeking through his fingers at the main island below.
    “Have we been in contact with the mainland?”
    “Yes, sir, though communication is difficult without our satellite links. Infrastructure is overloaded in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Areas farther out get their news mostly from larger markets. Cell phone networks are busted everywhere and cross-country call satellites obviously went dark with the rest.
    “As you may know, Hawaii has an evacuation app, but with the towers jammed many are unable to use it. Since TV and Internet are monopolies, they’re down at the same time too with no satellites to send the signals to the local market centers.”
    “Goddamned telecommunications deregulation!” the president bellowed. “Now they’re not just waiting for Facebook to load, people are going to have to die before Congress realizes access should be a right!”
    “Remember, sir, the difficulty is not in getting the warning out, but getting the people out. Infrastructure is lagging and