Tarnished Image Read Online Free PDF

courtesy had made him one of the busiest charter pilots in the area. Next year he hoped to add another plane to his “fleet” of one.
    “What’s that?”
    The voice dragged Rajiv from his revelry. He turned to his passenger, Mr. Julius Higgins of London, a jovial man with shiny white hair and a broad mouth. He and his wife, a woman with hair as dark as her husband’s was white, were recently retired and were sightseeing in India. “I’m sorry, Mr. Higgins. What did you say?”
    “That,” Higgins replied nodding out his window. “Looks quite odd, don’t you think?”
    Rajiv peered across the small cabin and out Higgins’swindow, but couldn’t see anything. Instinctively he looked out his own side window. What he saw made his heart stutter. Even from an altitude of over two thousand meters he could see the ocean being drawn back like a blanket off a bed, leaving long streaks in the mud and sand of the ocean floor.
    “Have you ever seen anything like that before?” Higgins asked. “I mean, does that happen all the time?”
    Rajiv could not speak; he just shook his head.
    Higgins turned to his wife who was in the seat behind him in the four-passenger plane. “Wake up, dear. You don’t want to miss this. Something unusual is happening.”
    Groggily, Mrs. Higgins opened her eyes. “What? What’s wrong?”
    “Look out your window,” Higgins replied.
    “Amazing,” she exclaimed, then she smacked her husband on the back of the head. “Why aren’t you taping this, Julius? That’s why you have the video camera in your hand.”
    “Oh, right,” Higgins said. A moment later he was pointing the video camera out the window. “Try to hold the plane steady, chum.”
    Rajiv just stared out the window and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. In a few more minutes they would be over land with the ocean behind them and unable to see the drama below. Slowly, Rajiv turned the Cessna and took a course parallel with the shore. To his left was the heavily populated coast; to his right, open ocean.
    A gasp came from the back. Rajiv turned to see Mrs. Higgins with a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide in fright. Another gasp, this time from Mr. Higgins.
    “What? What is it?” Rajiv blurted.
    No one answered. His clients sat stonelike in their seats, gazing watchfully out their windows. The terror in the cabin was palpable. Julius Higgins rigidly held the video camera to his eye. Instinctively, Rajiv leaned to the side to see the monster that had horrified his passengers. The sight struck him hard, like a vicious punch to the stomach. His heart beat rapidly, pounding so hard that Rajiv thought it might burst from his chest.
    A ribbon of white, sinuous as a snake, raced toward the coast. So long was the ribbon that Rajiv could not see its ends. The line of water tumbled and churned and grew. Without thought, Rajiv banked the plane hard and pushed on the yoke. The craft responded without hesitation, and the invisible hand of acceleration pressed everyone back into their seats.
    “What are you doing?” Higgins cried out.
    “I must see,” Rajiv said.
    Higgins glanced at the altimeter in the instrument panel. The white indicator arm spun as the Cessna plummeted. “Are you trying to kill us?” he shouted above the now roaring engine. Rajiv did not respond.
    Rajiv kept his eyes fixed on the surface of the glistening earth below and then, after an eternity of moments, pulled back on the yoke. Slowly the plane leveled in its flight. The craft cruised at 175 knots, one hundred meters above the newly barren ocean floor. Rajiv, consumed by the image before him, was only barely aware that Julius Higgins had resumed taping. He blinked, then blinked again, but it was still there and it appeared to be growing.
    A wave. Rising. Building. Charging with locomotive speed. A wall of water. A cliff of ocean.
    “Dear Lord,” Higgins said. “It’s a tidal wave.”
    “It’s huge,” his wife added.
    “I’ll say. That thing has got