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to be around twenty-five meters.”
    Twenty-five meters
, Rajiv thought.
Twenty-five meters or better, and it’s growing.
    Again, Rajiv banked the plane and raced for shore. This time he maintained his altitude. Urgently he snatched the microphone from his radio set and raised it to his mouth. He keyed the device and began to speak rapidly in Hindi. “Mayday, Mayday, N20355W with emergency traffic.”
    “This is Bhubaneswar tower, 355W. State your emergency.”
    “Wave. Tsunami headed your way.” Rajiv’s voice was breathy as he struggled to keep his emotions controlled.
    “What?” came the surprised response of the air traffic controller.
    “I’m forty kilometers southeast of Puri. I see a large wave—” Just then the watery monster raced beneath them. Rajiv checked his airspeed.
    “How fast are we going?” Higgins asked.
    “We’re going 165 knots,” Rajiv replied, “about three hundred kilometers per hour.”
    Higgins shook his head. “Three hundred kilometers per hour and that thing is pulling away. It’ll hit the shore in less than five minutes.”
    “Say again, 355W, please.” The air traffic controller’s voice was tense.
    Five minutes
, Rajiv thought.
Five minutes wasn’t enough time to do anything. Not enough time to get into a car and drive to safety. Not enough time to seek shelter. Barely enough time to pray.
    “Please repeat, 355W.”
    Rajiv did not respond. What could the controller do? Instead he watched as the wave raced away from them, outdistancing them with each passing second. The wall of water was rising and racing toward the coast, toward Puri, toward his home. And there was nothing he could do about it.
    But he would try.
    Pushing the throttle to the stops, Rajiv made a vain attempt to catch the fluid behemoth. The engine roared, then screamed in protest. Rajiv did everything to speed the Cessna along—trimmed the propeller, eased all—but it did no good. Only a jet could catch the wave of destruction ahead of him. At the moment, the wave was the fastest thing on or above the ocean. Rajiv would arrive moments after the wave struck shore.
    Squeezing the yoke until his knuckles turned white, Rajiv attempted to will the plane to fly faster. He even pointed the nose down to make full use of gravity. His airspeed rose to nearly 200 knots, but it was not enough. He could not descend forever. Soon he would have to level off or die. Maybe dying would not be so bad.
    If only he could be there with his family, with his wife and his beautiful Jaya, then maybe he could help or at least hug them one last time. It was a foolish thought, but men are allowed foolish thoughts when their loved ones are in danger.
    As the wave approached the shore, Rajiv saw it crest. A second later a spray of white rose high in the air and then quickly rained down. The plane flew over the shoreline a minute or two after the wave broke. Rubble bobbed around on the churning cauldron of cold seawater. What had once been houses were now little more than fragments, kindling. As quickly as the wave had arrived, its destructive tide receded, taking with it the debris of buildings, cars, boats, and bodies.
    Rajiv was now flying a mere thirty meters above his hometown of Puri—close enough to see detail that would forever be branded in his mind. Next to him Higgins continued to tape. Rajiv felt an overwhelming sense of anger at the man for being so unmoved by what had just happened, but that dissolved when he saw a single tear stream down the Englishman’s cheek.
    Below was utter carnage. The streets were littered with debris as though an atom bomb had been unleashed. The wave had not cared if it destroyed the wood huts of the poor or the fine homes of the rich. Little was left. Bodies of men, women, and children were strewn about; some of them lay naked, the wave having viciously ripped the clothing from their bodies.
    Two minutes later, Rajiv circled a decimated stretch of ground. A missile attack would have left more