It was afternoon in the morning at Casablanca, Morocco. A large, bustling city, its reputation was made famous with the classic movie that bears its name. Nearby, in just one of the port city’s many shipyards, the mammoth Armenian freight tanker Hansa Armezic floated on the blue waters of the Atlantic. It was twenty-year old German vessel.
The oil lines were detached as the titanic ship finished refueling for its journey west to the port of Rio de Janeiro, with a short stop at the town of Praia, in the small tropical islands of Cape Verde. It would be smooth ride as usual, Knut Grafssohn reassured himself. Still, there was a slight tingle inside him that seemed to warn him of approaching danger. But it was absolutely ridiculous to think of danger at this time. The weather reports coming from Lisbon were all predicting a wonderful week. And being the ship’s radio assistant, he had not heard any forecasts of storms from the African and European stations.
He had nothing to worry about. The crew boarded the ship and the vessel gave a resonant, blowing hoot of its horn as it left port.
The Hansa Armezic sailed smoothly, slicing through the deep-blue waters of the ocean as it heaved itself south. It was a large tanker, and its radio transmitter Knut, a quiet Norwegian man, was taking a short break from radio duty, and had just been watching the remnants of the beautiful sunset to the west. He breathed the fresh, salty air of the ocean. Evening was setting in, and dark clouds gathered overhead. A few minutes later, the only trace of sunlight was far to the west, where a faint hint of purple and orange glowed in the distant clouds.
Knut, bored, walked back, and stepped into the mess hall, where some of the crew members where enjoying a drink.
“Hey, Knut! Why don’t you join us?” called one of them.
“Yeah, and you have got to hear about what I was telling him a second ago,” said the other, “we were arguing whether - ”
“That’s all right guys, I’m just going to fix myself a quick drink and get back to the radio compartment. By the way, do you guys feel like something is wrong? My inner instincts tell me something bad is about to happen,” interrupted Knut.
“Oh come on, we know your instincts. Remember the last time you had one of these? We ended up being delayed four hours from our arrival at Tangiers because of your sudden “intuition about a storm to the east. I mean, what could go wrong? A storm? Well, all the weather reports were calling it a fine day.. Now what? A hurricane? Tsunami? Earth - ”
The man was interrupted a second time a rumbling that grew from slow to furious. It was as if a monster growled beneath them. In the vigorous shaking, his beer glass swiftly crashed to the floor. The portly first mate, who was climbing down the narrow staircase, tumbled and landed sprawling on the floor. Two of the crew members fell heavily to the metal floor, and wine and beer bottles from the bar’s expensive beverage racks crashed down into a noxious pool of beige liquid. Knut managed to hold on to a table. The man, face covered in a mix of coffee and beer, now finished his sentence.
“ – quake…?”
“Oh, my god! See! I told you something was about to happen,” replied Knut, while the first mate, his nose bleeding, got up, moaning angrily.
“What the bloody…” started one.
“…was that?” finished another.
It was an earthquake all right. Something far bigger, mysterious, devastating, and awe-inspiring than anything anyone would have expected.

- - - - -

Keith Hedrick could not believe his ears. In his fifteen years experience of being a commercial pilot, he had seen and heard many strange things, but right now he thought he was hallucinating. Two and a half hours ago, his plane had taken off, destined for Mexico City. A while ago, he had just received the most incredible message from a freight tanker located slightly north of his position.
The radio transmit messenger was blabbering incessantly about what he first thought was complete gibberish. The messenger kept saying that there was a massive earthquake going on below the Atlantic Ocean or something, that monstrous waves were occurring, racing toward the east, that there was something very strange going on. Keith tossed the message away, assuring himself the radio messenger was definitely drunk. God knows how much beer he had, said Keith to himself. That was ten minutes ago.
A while later Keith began to feel different about the “drunken” radio messenger. That’s because just two minutes after that happened, he got a message from another ship that was exactly alike. Then another. By now, he had gotten exactly fifty-six messages. He and his copilot listened in awe as they kept getting the descriptions.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” he kept asking himself. But he could not lower the plane to see the catastrophe below. It would violate air traffic regulations.

- - - - -

Something was definitely wrong. Knut walked out on to the deck. Another strong quake shook the whole ship and the whole ocean turned into melancholy of dark water. He should have trusted his instincts.
But then again, he asked himself, why are we feeling quakes beneath us? The ship was in a large ocean, so if there was an earthquake, they should have gotten large waves instead of shaking.
And that was when question was answered. Knut turned to walk back to the hindquarters of the ship, but as he turned, a thrilling sight transfixed him. A wave, almost twenty feet tall, was hurling toward the ship. Trusting only his conscience now, he sprinted for cover, but was almost too late. As the monster threw itself on the ship, he took cover behind a huge tank. The sky seemed to vanish when the wave pounced upon the ship. Two large crates were thrown a hundred feet into the sky Knut held onto the white pole with all his strength. He felt part of his shirt being ripped away by the force of the water. The ship lurched dangerously to the left and right.
Then just as quick as it came, it was gone. Or so he thought. The next few waves were just the same, tilting the ship until it almost capsized. Knut dashed into the forecastle where many other crewmen were huddled. He did not hesitate to look out the porthole window.
And what he saw would amaze him for the rest of his life. A wave that probably stretched for miles and miles was barreling at full speed toward the ship. It was like a large, very long log being rolled under a wide blue carpet.
Strangely the wave did not hit. Knut couldn’t think of the exact word for it, but it sort of rolled under the vessel. The ship was lifted high into the air by the behemoth. After the wave rolled under and away, the ship plunged back into the unforgiving sea. Water engulfed all sides, rushing in, and flooding the rooms. Knut and the rest tried desperately to swim, but they were being dragged back into the sea by the rushing water. At least six of them were thrown into Davy Jones’ Locker. Then almost five more of those waves came. By now, ship had been tossed until it fell upside down on the ocean. Knut and everyone else were thrown into the Atlantic. The unfortunate men could not even forsee what those waves would become once they reached land. They were tossed around like toy dolls, snatched by the waves, thrown to and fro by the gale-like force of the wind. Somehow miraculously, they did not drown, and managed to scramble up to the red, upside-down hull. They huddled together at a conveniently low spot. The wave had battered the hull, denting one side, bending metal.
And then, when they looked to the west, they saw the most incredible thing. Fire sprang up from beneath the Earth. A chunk, or rather a mountain, of rock shot up through the ocean, fire spewing at its edges. They were witnessing land rising from the ocean.

- - - - -

The activity in the building was not at a fever pitch. It was at a bullet’s speed. There were baffled scientists, stressed-out programmers, and tensed journalists everywhere. What had bewildered them was the seismograph.
The building was the United States Geological Survey Headquarters at Reston, Virginia. The building’s seismograph, since just twenty minutes ago, started recording reports of violent earthquakes in the Atlantic Ocean. Calls were pouring in from all around the world. Earthquakes measuring up to 9.2 in the Richter scale were being reported in the Atlantic. Calls and radio messages from ships were saying that rock and lava were being seen to rise out of the ocean. And a British Royal Air Force aircraft fleet had reported the exact same thing as well. Molten rock was spewing out of the ocean, land was rising out of sea. But worried the scientists even more was the fact that humongous waves were seen racing toward the eastern coasts of North America and South America, and toward the western coasts of Europe and North Africa. This one is going to be a killer, they all knew.
Within half an hour, every news channel in the United States was spewing out the breaking news. People in the Eastern and the Gulf coast were ordered to mandatory evacuation. As result, more than fifty million people took to the roads. The highways were completely gridlocked. Chaos reigned. In the melancholy and their frustration, people abandoned their cars and literally ran for their lives. Military helicopters picked up thousands of stranded motorists. Time was running out. The wave was drawing nearer.
The news was finally beginning to reach Europe, where the warning was just beginning to be conveyed to news channels and the media.
At least they had a warning. It took almost an hour for the news to reach the islands in the Carribean.