Read it from the beginning: the Prologue from OMAR by @Craigt1
OMAR: A Novel
Brief Synopsis: A wave of worldwide terrorism, with far-reaching, cataclysmic effects, was set into motion in 1995 at 2077 fathoms aboard RMS Titanic. Woods Hole oceanographer, archaeologist and maritime law specialist at the Smithsonian Institute, Dr. Cary Parker, challenged the terrorists on his own turf, and what followed was an adventure of legendary proportions.
Review from Amazon
“Has a great plot.... Found it very captivating and hard to quit reading." Amazon Review By Goog, May 9, 2012. Format: Kindle Edition
A short excerpt from the suspense-thriller, OMAR: A Novel (A Cary Parker Thriller).
PROLOGUE
APRIL, 1910
TIRED from the weight of centuries, the gigantic monster could hold no longer. It reached the Western coastline of Greenland and three thousand years of snow accumulation, coupled with centuries of slow, creeping movement of the glacier, caused the immense iceberg to calve from its parent. It fell to the ocean with a tremendous roar and left behind an enormous glistening icefall on the sheer side of the glacier.
The furious, violent noise of its birth rumbled as an earthquake and echoed under the cloud cover throughout Jakobshavn Sound. Heard from Dundas in the north to Goldthab in the south, the loud report warned all—a berg of colossal proportions had taken up temporary residency in Baffin Bay.
Perhaps ten thousand tons or more, they thought.
The explosive birth sent shivers up and down the spines of knowing seamen. If measurements had been taken, it would have been charted as one of the largest icebergs of recent history—1100 yards long, 360 yards wide, 190 feet high, at sea-level, and 570 feet, or more, below the surface. Sailing somewhere out there, a berg towered over 19 stories above the waterline—higher than a Cutty Sark’s tallest mast. Hidden below was a mountain of ice, in reverse, descending nearly 100 fathoms into the bay.
Sinking from its weight like a capsized ship, the top-heavy berg nearly rolled completely over, uprighted itself, then slowly rocked back and forth, for hours, to find its center of gravity. Enormous waves frothed like mad dogs, as they spread out for miles and pushed back and forth between land masses.
Then, there was silence—until the next calving.
The winds and current helped the berg overcome inertia and gain momentum. Following the northwesters, the massive iceberg found a counter-clockwise drift in the currents, and presented a clear, potential danger for anything in its path. With power equal to the force of an ice breaker cutting its course, it sailed through open channels and aggressively blazed its own trail through Arctic floes.
Standing tall among its brothers, the berg sojourned out of Baffin Bay, across Davis Strait, through the Labrador Sea, then out into the open waters of the Atlantic. For nearly two years the leviathan roamed, calving small chucks of ice, along with glacial rocks and sediment—disintegrating bit by bit as it meandered.
APRIL, 1912
As silently as it had slipped into the North Atlantic shipping lanes and the warmer waters of the swift Gulf Stream, the iceberg reached the Grand Banks, nearly 500 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. Though melting at a much higher rate, it was still over 100 feet tall at the water line.
During two years of drifting, the sea had sculpted, molded and shaped a primitive battering ram—at first hidden underwater—as though cloaked for a dangerous mission. Though pack-ice had broken off large chunks of the iceberg, the ram had remained intact and, as the berg lost weight, it rose slowly above the waterline—its metamorphosis now complete.
It had wandered and waited. A windjammer with its sails fully set—still towering over 10 stories above water. Below, its cumulus-shaped body quickly deteriorated, as warmer waters exacted their toll.
In an act of defiance, while reflecting the clear starlit night in its towering sail of blackened ice, the berg found an opportunity to strike over the Great North Bank of the Atlantic Ocean, 11:40 p.m., April 14, 1912, at 41o46’N latitude, 50o14’W longitude.
In a deadly execution of might—drawn like a magnet—it rammed the starboard side of a ship, beheaded giant rivets, and split open the vessel with a crushing blow. It fractured and tore through cold, brittle steel plates, and small fissures raced as thunderbolts from one rent plate to the next.
Then, the iceberg silently turned and drifted back into the darkness.
And the R.M.S. Titanic, the greatest modern ship in the world, began taking on water. Most icebergs would have moved on to slowly disappear and die in the warmer waters of their secret North Atlantic graveyard. But the ram had dropped off, and the berg went into an inertial circle. Following the rotation of the earth, it began its disintegration over the wreckage of the Titanic as it scattered its glacial ashes on the seabed graveyard below.
