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ICELAND:
Hardin listens to the repeated evacuation announcements coming from the VHF radio. He’s in international waters, so he isn’t going to leave the area. Something big is about to happen, and he’s going to record it using his remaining drone. He contacts his fellow MUFON enthusiasts, and two of the pleasure boats agree to stay with him. When all the military vessels head out to sea at full speed, he wonders if he is pressing his luck. A moment later, he watches a helicopter and Huckabee’s airplane fly away.
His jaw drops when the ice sheet appears to explode, sending massive chunks of ice high into the air. He flinches when thunderous shattering sounds race across the water. The huge blocks appear to hang in the air for a moment, before tumbling down. One-hundred-foot pieces of thick ice slam into the ocean, creating a tsunami.
Hardin sees the twenty-foot wall of water rushing toward him and knows it’s too late to try to outrun it. He grabs the microphone and calls the other boaters. “Turn your boats into the wave!”
He grabs the handrail when the wall of water slams into the front of his boat, tossing it into the air. The wave passes beneath the hull, and his boat slams down onto the other side, knocking him off his feet.
He grabs the rail and pulls himself up, then spins around to check on the other boats. Both have overturned, and he shoves the throttle forward. Without survival suits, everyone will succumb to hypothermia and drown in a matter of minutes.
He reaches the first boat and the researchers drag three shivering people from the water. He steps outside the bridge. “Get them inside and out of those wet clothes.”
He heads for the other boat, now supporting two people on the overturned craft. One person is sitting up, the other face down.
Tim waits until the ship is alongside and helps a young woman onto the boat, but the other body doesn’t move. “Is he dead?”
“No,” she says through chattering teeth. “Just unconscious. I had to drag him out of the water.”
“Get inside and get undressed. Well grab him.”
Tim jumps off onto the other hull, then bends down and picks the man up in his arms. He struggles to get him up onto the ship, until two researchers drag the man from his arms and he climbs back on board his ship.
Hardin heads back to the location of the spaceship, carefully maneuvering around the chunks of ice bobbing on the surface. When he’s within twenty-feet of the ice sheet, he shuts down the engines and everything seems deathly quiet. He steps outside and looks down at Tim. “Get the drone out and fly it over the area. I want to see what happened.”
A few minutes later, high-pitched whining breaks the silence as the copter leaps into the air. He goes back inside and stares at the overhead monitor. The small craft is flying over the ice sheet and stops to hover over an eight-hundred-foot diameter hole in the ice. Damn! They blew it up.