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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON:
Alex stares out the window at the Cascade Mountain Range as his commercial jet swings around on final approach to Seattle/Tacoma International Airport. The glaciers on Mount Rainier and Mount Baker look much smaller, due to the greenhouse effect. He’s amazed when the pilot announces the temperature in Seattle is eighty-eight-degrees. It was a comfortable seventy-six in Montana. He tries to see the San Juan Islands and the damage to Victoria, but the elevation of the aircraft is too high to see any discernible features.
After landing, he rents a car and drives north on Interstate 5. An hour later, he takes the off ramp toward Mount Baker. The two-lane highway has a gradual grade up the side of the mountain, and crosses a large stone bridge over the Skagit River. On the other side of the bridge, the highway continues up over a long rocky ridgeline along the side of the mountain.
When he drives over the top, he looks down into a vast expanse of flat land called Sparrow Valley, once the bottom of a massive lake on the side of Mount Baker.
The State Park is another twenty-miles east of the valley, so Alex pulls over into a picnic area and enters Wesley’s number. “I’m here, Mister Patterson.”
“I live up past the State Park. There’s a little mom and pop grocery store just up the road from the park entrance. I’ll meet you there.”
“Yes, I remember. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Alex tosses his cellphone onto the passenger seat and drives down into the valley. The two-lane highway follows the left side of the Tempest River, which flows straight across the valley after leaving the reservoir the west side of Mount Baker.
When he drives past the only grocery store in the little town, he notices the large white sign on the side of the red brick wall. This year’s high school track and field championship games are against their number one rival, Darrington High School. The games will be hosted by Sparrow Valley High School this year, on Friday, at 4:00 PM.
He remembers how fierce the competition had been while he grew up in the valley. At least one-hundred visitors would drive up the mountain from Darrington just to see all the sports events, and the Sparrow Valley community went down the mountain when the games were in Darrington.
He drives onto the shoulder of the road, next to a forty-foot-long stone bridge over the river. On the other side of the bridge, the asphalt road continues for two-miles, before becoming a dirt road that ends at the Cave Appaloosa Ranch, his boyhood home.
Because of the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law, Ken and Doreen Cave, he would never consider going home again were it not for his nephew and niece, now living with his father Robert on the ranch.
Alex knows the strange circumstances of their deaths could have been his past catching up to him. While working for the CIA in Holland, the Russian mafia had tried to kill him and his wife, Sevi, but only succeeded in killing her. He remembers the loss of his true love drove him to madness and he had gone on a killing spree against those responsible.
That was three years ago, but the Russian mafia has never forgotten about him. Alex suspects they took their vengeance out on his family. The police reported it as an accident, but Robert knows about his past and suspects he’s the reason they were killed. Robert will never forgive him for their deaths, so he doesn’t even try to mend things between them.
Alex drives back onto the road, and twenty minutes later, he pulls into the parking area in front of the old grocery store. The two orange gas pumps and the neon signs in the windows are just as he remembers. The only other vehicle is a dark green Humvee. It has a tall suspension package and wide tires.
He climbs out of his car and enters the store. The pleasant aroma of bread, spices, and coffee has permeated the wood walls over the past sixty years. A big man standing next to the old wooden counter turns to look at him.
Wesley Patterson’s long, shaggy brown hair protrudes beneath a sweat-stained cowboy hat, just as he remembers from the seminar in Iceland. He can barely see Patterson’s grin behind the thick beard as he walks up and extends his hand. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Patterson.”
Patterson’s handshake is firm. “Wesley will do,” he says in a slow, deep voice.
A slender, silver-haired woman comes around the counter and looks up at Alex. “I haven’t seen you in twenty years.”
It takes a moment before he recognizes the store owner, then he smiles down at her. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Sorenson.”
Carry remembers the last time she saw Alex. He stopped at the store to buy a six-pack of beer on his way up to the reservoir to go fishing with his brother and father. He’s added a few new scars on his tanned, ruggedly handsome face since then, but his wavy black hair and thick dark eyebrows are what she remembers most. The difference is in his deep blue eyes. They express a sense of sorrow, unlike the sparkle of enthusiasm when he was a young man.
“Doing just fine, Alex. The last I heard, you live in Montana. What brings you out this way?”
“I came to see Wesley.”
Carry looks up at the big man. “I didn’t know you knew Alex.”
“We only met briefly three months ago when I went to Iceland. Let’s go to my place, Alex. There’s something I want to show you.”
“Is it very far? I still need to find a place to stay for the night.”
Carry stares up at Alex. “Aren’t you going to stay at your ranch?”
“Uh, no. I’m not welcome anymore. Not since my brother died.”
Carry nods her understanding. “We heard. I’m sorry, Alex.”
“I have a guest room you can stay in, if you like.” Wesley offers. “Once I show you what I’ve discovered, you won’t want to leave right away.”
“I accept.”
Alex and Wesley leave the grocery store, climb into their vehicles, and Alex follows the Hummer up a dirt road behind the store. The single lane road winds its way up the mountain through a thick forest of evergreens, and Alex takes a deep breath of pine-scented air through the open window. Twenty minutes later, Alex follows Wesley into a large green meadow with a small lake. A modest cabin covered with cedar shakes siding is a short distance from the edge of the lake, and they park in a graveled area between the cabin and a matching workshop.
Wesley climbs out of his Hummer and tosses his hat through the open window onto the seat, and waits while Alex climbs out of his rental car and looks around.
Alex sees tall fir trees shading three sides of the meadow, leaving a gap through which he sees the Pacific Ocean. The temperature is much cooler up here at forty-three-hundred-feet, and it reminds him of Montana. If he had a choice, he’d move back to the ranch and teach at the local college.
“What I want to show you is in the workshop.” Wesley says to get Alex’s attention.
Alex walks beside Wesley to the rear side of the building and waits while he unlocks the door. When he follows him inside, he abruptly stops and looks around. Straight ahead, an array of modern electronic equipment is mounted in a metal frame six-inches from the rear wall. Behind the rack of electronics, a bundle of cables goes up to the open wood beams across the ceiling where four satellite dishes are aimed in different directions through a section of clear glass panels in the roof.
In the large open space on his left is a two-wheeled, galvanized trailer holding a fourteen-foot aluminum boat with a gas outboard motor. However, what draws his attention is the two-person yellow snow cat with black rubber tracks sitting on a four-wheeled galvanized tilt trailer.
Wesley grins at Alex’s reaction to the snow cat. He continues over to the beat up desk and sits in a brown leather swivel chair while Alex sits on a wooden chair at the end of the desk.
Wesley enters several commands on a computer keyboard and the picture on the television is from a video camera focused on a seismographic sensor arm drawing a black line from top to bottom on the screen. A digital clock is displayed on the upper left corner of the screen next to a straight black line indicating no abnormal seismic activity.
“You’ll find this interesting, Alex. I’m going to rewind back to when the first event happened earlier today.” Wesley enters a command and the time on the digital clock stops thirty seconds before the time when the seismic event occurred. “Watch what happens.”
Alex stares at the TV and waits as the clock ticks past the time of the event.
Wesley hits pause. “Notice anything unusual?”
Alex studies the readout. “No, it looks like nothing happened.”
“That’s right. Now watch this.”
Wesley moves the mouse pointer to a small area just past the seismometer needle and zooms in. Now magnified, Alex sees a gap in the line. He looks over at Wesley. “What the hell happened?”
Wesley leans back in his chair and frowns at Alex. “It didn’t vibrate like an earthquake. The damn needle jumped off the paper for an instant.”
Alex leans forward in his chair, surprised by the magnitude of what he just saw. “Any idea what could have caused the needle to jump?”
Wesley slowly shakes his head no. “Nothing I can prove, but I have a theory. If part of the North American tectonic plate rose up temporarily, that would allow the Pacific plate to move underneath it at the Cascadia fault line. The movement would not have been a jarring motion, like an earthquake when the pressure is released. More like suddenly sliding a thin spatula under a large rock. It wouldn’t cause a major earthquake, but it could change the elevation and shake things up pretty good.”
“It shook things up, all right. Even so, it would take an enormous amount of energy to force a fault line to expand.”
“I agree. Something might have occurred beneath the mantel. My idea about what could have caused it to rise like that is a possibility, but it’s only a theory.”
They feel a small thud in the concrete floor and stare at the television when they hear a quiet beeping tone. Wesley quickly types another command into the computer. The television picture now shows two different seismograph pictures side by side, each with a wavy black line above the seismic needles.
“What’s going on, Wesley?”
“The one on the left is from my mountain, Baker, and the one on the right is from Mount Rainier. These are readings from my own sensors. They’re more sensitive than the ones the government uses. I can activate them remotely when I need to, so I don’t drain the batteries. I turned them on after that first seismic event in Victoria. The problem is those smaller events should not have affected my volcanos. That’s the basis for my theory.”
“How can you tell the difference?”
“Because that’s what my sensors do best. Back in 1980, the one I had at Mount Saint Helens indicated the eruption would happen in three days. I told those damn USGS people, and they wouldn’t listen to me. I was right, so to hell with them. I do my own research now.”
“Are you saying we’re going to have an eruption?”
“No. At least, not right away. If they continue, it will definitely increase the possibility. Especially if they begin getting greater in magnitude. Whatever is causing this has to be sub-tectonic and there isn’t much we can do about it. I’ll keep an eye on the activity. Hopefully, there won’t be another seismic event.”
“We have to figure out why this is happening, Wesley. If it only happened one time, I’d say it was odd at best. Two times is a different matter. That indicates it could happen again.”
Wesley swings his chair around and gets up. “Not much more we can do right now. I set the alarm to beep at the cabin if anything happens, so let’s go inside and you can fix us some dinner.”
“Sounds good. Don’t you cook?”
“Not if someone else can do it.”
They walk out of the workshop and Alex stops long enough to grab his bag from the trunk, then follows Wesley into the cabin.