Claire Daniels and Rachel Jackson, co-directors of the Carter Foundation, a multi billion dollar, international organization that monitors metaphysical anomalies too large for single nations, must solve their greatest crisis yet.  Entire island chains are sinking, killing everyone on them.  With a trail that leads from New Hampshire to Chicago to England and then around the world to Easter Island the special agents form a band of specialists to stop a madman and his group from destroying the world and bringing about the second great flood.

            This is Claire Daniels at her best.  Fast cars, loud music, high fashion, and a backdrop of millions of years of war and imprisonment the book whisks the reader through a landscape filled with villains and heroes of the highest character.  Once you pick this one up you'll have to finish it.

PROLOG

1322 hours, 16 August 2002

Dry Tortugas State Park

Florida

            The sun shone brightly with no clouds in view as the Jensens, Margerie, her husband Brad, and their six year old son Jeffrey, snorkeled around the reef on the south side of the island.  The water was clear and blue with green tints and young Jeffrey watched as the parrotfish and small groupers swam about the sea weed in four feet of water. 

            This was their last few minutes in the water, the boat that shuttled them to the park leaving in an hour.  Above them loomed Fort Jefferson, the abandoned coastal defense facility that was never used or completed.  Now a refuge for divers the Jensons were just a few of millions that had enjoyed the calm waters and bright fish.  On signal Marge and Jeff stood up and waded over to Brad.  Picking up their gear they headed overland to the dock and a light lunch.

            Within moments the sky blackened and the sea began to boil.  Dark clouds moved in and lightning began to strike anything tall enough to attract it.  Through flying pieces of debris the Jensens and other tourists on the island sought shelter in the fort.  Marge and Brad, carrying Jeffrey, made it to the cell where Dr. Samuel A. Mudd was sentenced for setting the ankle of accused presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth.  From there they could see the entire island rise as if an earthquake was shaking the foundations.

            In eighteen minutes the sea subsided.  The fish swam in the deep water and sharks, rays, and groupers looked for food on the bottom.  Where the Dry Tortugas National Park had been was now open sea.  Over seven hundred tourists, guides and federal park service personnel were gone.  Later observations from the air would report that there was no trace of any of the small chain of islands that had made up the park.  The sea had claimed another piece of real estate.

0941 hours, 18 August 2002

Mt. Halla

Cheju Island, South Korea

            The light breeze blew through the trees on the side of the extinct volcano in the center of the island.  Staff Sergeant James Roberts, Eighth Army, Yongsan, and Jimmy Bob to his friends back in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, who was an avid ornithologist, studied the 25 cm long body of the white-backed woodpecker on a branch two hundred feet in front of him.  A member of the Picidae, the Dendrocopos leucotos was the last bird he needed to photograph on this trip to the island.  Throughout his tour in Korea he had spent every minutes he could watching, shooting pictures, and taking field notes of the local bird life.

            Jimmy Bobs girlfriend, Specialist Wendy McNally, Combined Field Army, Camp Red Cloud, sat on a rock waiting.  She had been promised exotic scenery, good food and great sex for the weekend.  Instead she had to endure curried silkworm larvae, kim chi, raw squid still squirming, and two nights on a rice mat in a hotel with no air conditioning or inside toilets.  Her feet hurt from the climb up the mountain and she did not look forward to the climb back down. 

            Jimmy steadied the camera and focused the bird in his lens.  The woodpecker was looking straight at him and this would be a cover photo if he could get anyone to look at his work.  Just as he was ready to click the shutter the bird flew off.  Swearing to himself he put the camera back in his bag and prepared to leave.  What had been a beautiful morning a few moments ago suddenly turned nasty.  The sky was black with storm clouds from the south and lightning was striking all around the two on the mountainside. 

            Running for cover Jimmy and Wendy felt the ground shake and roll.  Fearing the extinct volcano may be coming to life spurred the two faster down the stairs cut into the sides.  They were joined by a rush of other tourists also seeking shelter from the storm but to no avail.  Great stone statues of Jeju the ancient god of the island toppled onto paths and people.  Boulders rolled down the mountain to smash like great bowling balls against yellow and white busses in the parking lots.  For over an hour the winds howled above the island and the ground shook.  The almost three thousand square kilometers of earth fought the onslaught of nature but in the end failed.

            By eleven o'clock Korea Central Time the approximately 530,000 residents and guests of the island of Cheju were gone.  Nothing was left of the great land mass but some floating wood from a small boat that had been anchored two miles out.  A lone white-backed woodpecker circled the area for a few turns and then winged its way north to the mainland.

2200 hours, 20 August 2002

Wake Island Chain

Pacific Ocean

            Wake Island is actually the top of an extinct volcano that left three small atolls above sea level.  First annexed in 1899 as a cable communication station the island chain has been under the supervision of the United States Government for over one hundred years.  Now only a handful of civilian contractors and federal officers manned the main island where the airstrip was maintained.  The other two atolls were uninhabited aside from some marine life and nesting birds.

            The small yacht anchored off the most northern end of Peale Island and farthest from the small buildings on Wake Island.  Samuel Matua Hau, High Priest of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, lowered a heavy tied bundle over the side into his skiff.  With two others from his village, a young man and a middle-aged woman, the three rowed the skiff to the atoll, about forty feet away.  Beaching the small boat they dragged the bundle up to the level clearing on the beach.  Earlier in the day, masquerading as divers, they had landed and leveled the hard coral atoll into a makeshift alter.  Now placing the bundle on the ground they began to untie it.

            Inside was a woman.  She was naked, tied hand and foot with stout rope, and gagged.  Samuel had abducted her from her boat three days earlier when she had started diving around the area where they were now standing.  It was fortuitous that another woman had been found for this night.  He had deeply regretted the decision to sacrifice his wife, with his son looking on.  Now all was well.  No unnecessary family deaths would occur.

            The woman fought against her bonds.  Her short dark hair whipped across her face as she tried to free herself.  At one time the tied victim probably had been attractive, but now her waist was heavy and her breasts sagged against their own weight and the gravity of the ever-present planet.  There was fear in her gray eyes and she tried to scream against the gag.  None of this mattered to the three standing above her.

            Samuel removed his clothing and knelt at the side of the alter.  The other two waited a short distance away.  Taking a long, curved knife from the sheath at his side he closed his eyes and breathed slowly.  The bright stars began fading as a storm blew in from the West.  The waves crested in white caps and washed up onto the atoll.  First softly then louder as if fighting the wind around him, the priest chanted.  "Nah Te Nah Sog.  Nah Te Nah Sog.  Nah Te Nah Sog.  Nah Te Nah Sog."

            The three islands began to lift in the water, the lightning casting yellow shots across the black sky.  Just when he thought the wind would pick him up and throw him into the sea he gently cradled the womans head under his left hand and with a quick motion cut her throat.  The storm seemed to wait as if to see what was to happen next.  For a moment there were no waves.  The sky was black, but lightless.  The seas merely rolled.  Then as life ebbed from the body on the alter the sky cleared and the breeze blew softly from the South.