Honest Critiques

With a Ph.D. in Earth Science and Astrophysics, Captain Barbara Hamilton can't understand why she has been reassigned to Hansen Air Force Base in Florida. [I can't understand why she can't understand it, because I don't know much about the Base or about her doctorate subject.] She was stationed there previously when she helped to implement the High Altitude Auroral Research Project (HAARP), but now the base is a Homeland Security unit. [OK, I sort of understand now, but it shouldn't have been difficult to understand in the first place.] Her first job is to investigate destructive weather and geological anomalies plaguing the United States.

Excitement at finding strange pulses emanating from the moon is quickly replaced by overwhelming fear as the lab is assaulted by an earthquake and swallowed by the San Andreas Fault. [Crikey!! But this is in Florida, isn't it? And the SA Fault is in California? Sorry, I'm not sure of my US geography.]

Meanwhile, back at Hansen, General Hershel McKay, worried about the confirmation he expects from Captain Hamilton, [confirmation of what?] is also being plagued [change the verb] by protesters against the upcoming shuttle launch. Irony lies in the fact that the shuttle doesn't need to carry the items being protested, but they are the only public reasons for sending up the shuttle. [I am confused. I don't know anything about shuttles or items at this point. I sort of understand the shape of the irony, but not the reasons for it - or if this situation is going to be important.]

As McKay waits for Barbara's return [but I thought she had been swallowed up in the San Andreas Fault?], the group of protesters and their leader, Jim Morton, are detained by Base MPs for disorderly conduct. Upon returning to the base, Barbara sees her former boyfriend, philanthropist Jim Morton. [Is this a different Jim Morton? Perhaps: "the group of protesters and their leader are detained ... Barbara discovers that their leader is Jim Morton, her former boyfriend."] For the first time in ten years, she realizes that she never quite got over him; the feelings are mutual with Jim, but they both try to hide it.

Barbara, after receiving a promotion [why?], finds out from McKay that the HAARP has a twin system operating on the moon as a "black project", and the system seems to be wreaking havoc on earth weather. Her feelings are fractured [not great] by trying to control her response to the dangerous HAARP project [I have no idea what the project is or why it is dangerous - is this the Tesla geoforce thing?], the emotional hardship of avoiding a relationship with Jim, and a mother who tries to convert her to Christianity by repeatedly exhorting [lecturing] on the nearness of the end times.

Barbara gets a reprieve from a relationship with Jim because he travels to New York for a conference. He runs into a friend from Israel, Jacob Ben-Meir, who is now working for Alexander Romanoff, the President of the United States of Europe [and we all thought it would be Peter Mandelson]. Romanoff, upon meeting Jim, offers him a temporary job in Israel setting up an agro-fishing project, which is Jim's specialty. Unbeknownst to anyone except his well-paid cohorts, Romanoff has commandeered control of the HAARP project on the moon, in a diabolical bid to destroy the United States and rule the world. [BLIMEY! That DOES sound like Mandelson. This is turning into a Clive Cussler novel.]

Tensions heighten as a tsunami roars through the Indian Ocean, and multiple volcanoes erupt around the globe. McKay sends Barbara to investigate steam vents at the former site of the seismology station that was swallowed by the San Andreas Fault in San Diego. She barely escapes with her life at the birth of a volcano.

Once Romanoff is exposed as the culprit [of what? Is he causing the natural disasters? How?], the CIA, with Barbara's help, recruits Jim Morton, because of his new position in Romanoff's organization. Romanoff recognizes Barbara as one of the original forces for the HAARP project and worries that her intervention will thwart his plan for the United States. When he realizes that she is also involved with Jim Morton, assassins are dispatched to kill Barbara and then Jim. An undercover agent in Romanoff's office foils the plot and supplies the location of the illicit HAARP control center, hidden in Russia [the secret agent seems rather convenient].

Special Ops commandos are dispatched to destroy the center. Opposing forces set the installation on self-destruct [?], setting off a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands, which spawns a deadly tsunami that inundates the entire East Coast of the United States.

Even though Barbara's USAF Base is a safe distance from the Florida coast, the tidal wave causes an earthquake, collapsing the underground Command structure. A falling beam strikes Barbara and she lays trapped as Jim and others try to free her. With delirium skewing her perceptions, Barbara thinks that her loved ones are being raptured away, leaving her behind because of her self-sufficient attitude toward God.

Barbara wakes up twenty-two days later, thankful that she has a whole new perspective and an opportunity for a relationship with the Lord. [Lawks. Suddenly it has become a 'religious' thriller; it's gone into a special interest category. At least, that's what booksellers will think. So as an editor or agent, my ability to sell the book has diminished alarmingly.]

CHAPTER ONE--EARTHQUAKE

April 12

Captain Barbara Hamilton played with the ends of her chestnut brown hair that she had pulled back tight in a ponytail. While her legs dangled over the side of the stool, she stared with little hope, at pile upon pile of useless seismic data from the last few weeks. This time she had come up empty. She had no answers for General McKay.

The only satisfaction she'd gotten from this assignment, other than the work on her tan, had been wearing jeans and desert boots rather than her uniform. Civilian gear was much more conducive to traipsing around the San Andreas Fault than her military issue. Besides, the General threw in the perk to entice her into this assignment. That, plus the unlimited use of an Air Forces SR-73 test jet with her own pilot.

In frustration, she kicked the leg of the seismograph spool rack. A wide metal reel clattered to the floor, leaving a trail of paper in its wake.

Barbara rolled her eyes at the reel as though it had made a mess just to add to her annoyance. She hopped down from the stool, picked up the half-empty reel and sat back down to rewind it by hand. She flipped the reel over and glanced down the length of the tape. A startling discovery came to light.
The seismic pen had drawn a straight line for about fifteen seconds and then jumped a high spike. This repeated for as far as she could see down the length of unrolled tape.

"Hello....what do we have here?" Her stomach tightened.

The Earth appeared to have developed a heart beat.

The rumble came from deep within the bowels of the earth, working its way up, jerking and separating the strata layers as it rose. A shockwave broke through the surface, the still evening air exploded around the seismology station with a deafening roar. Inside the building, the evacuation sirens roared to life.

The ceramic floor tiles in the lab erupted, popping like machine gunfire as the floor twisted like a rope of licorice. Barbara's feet caught up to her brain. She hopscotched over heaved sections of floor tile as she sprinted for the front door. Her arms instinctively went up over her head to protect herself from the gritty plaster silt filtering down from the vibrating overhead beams.

Along with the churning rumble came a groan that expanded into a tremendous crunching crackle of splintering wood. The wall shelving jack hammered itself loose from the anchor bolts and hung precariously at a forty-five degree angle to the wall.

"Aughh! The disk!" Barbara skidded to a halt and darted back to her station. In the distance, personnel yelled for everyone to evacuate the building.

[...]

Barbara sprinted down the hallway coughing and wheezing, her lungs able to filter out only small wisps of oxygen from the enveloping cloud of dust. Blood pounded in her head and her heart threatened to rip through her chest.
It sounded like a train bearing down on her. Right before the outside door, she tripped over debris and lurched forward, arms spread out to cushion her fall. An airman running from the other direction caught her and guided her out of the crumbling building.

All of the Air Force personnel cleared the disintegrating building just seconds before it slipped into the gaping Rose Canyon Fault. At the same time, it seemed as if the earth had eaten its fill, and the tremor abruptly subsided.

Barbara inhaled great gulps of sweet fresh air as she bent over, hands on her knees, trying to get the blood to her brain and stop the dizziness.

Whew, Barb old girl, that was a close one! You must have nine lives. But you made it. You won! Thank you, God.

With no warning at all, the ferocious growl of Mother Nature changing positions again ripped through the night air. All seven people took off running but one by one they realized the ground had ceased shaking. They reassembled into a group as the fault yawned. A few creaks and a couple of groans and the episode ended.

"Wow, everything is just, gone!" The young Airman next to Barbara gasped.

"Not everything." Barbara continued to breathe hard. She looked down at the disk clutched in the dusty palm of her right hand. Like usual, she had solved it herself. "Is everyone accounted for, Airman?" She surveyed the group of rattled technicians.

The young Airman glanced at each member of his team. "Yes, Ma'am, they're all here."

It takes turning 50, to start wearing ponytails for the first time in your life, and finding that they actually look good on you! To look in the mirror and see a woman who you actually like, and can be proud of. To (finally!) know what you want to be when you grow up, and to realize that you are already there. To know that you are doing the best you can every day, and not be afraid of what you can't do.

It takes turning 50, to look around and realize that you have so many blessings -- regardless of the horrors you had to go through to get them.

It takes turning 50 to find yourself, and others. To love your sons, but let them go. To know that you have raised two fine young men - they still need you, but in different ways... and that it is ok!

It takes turning 50 to "find" yourself -- and to realize that you were never lost in the first place. You were just traveling the road before you, at the best speed you could manage each day. You might have deserved a speeding ticket or three, but life is like that.