There was Dan Satalino, who’d once been under serious consideration for the space program, Vance Richards, ex-Navy, like Phil himself, and Mike Pooler. Phil had interviewed a couple of dozen men and decided on these three. They were good, solid pilots, and they had the look of men who wouldn’t back down when things got difficult. He was going to need that strength over the next few hours.
They were on a long, difficult flight. He wished, in retrospect, that he’d opted for slightly larger aircraft and co-pilots. Even a young or inexperienced second man might make the difference if things went to hell. For himself, though, he didn’t want the pressure. He remembered the look on Matt Schmidt’s face when the waterspout lashed out at them. He thought he could put himself back in danger like that, but he didn’t want to see that look on another man’s face again.
He was encouraged by the fact that, of the four planes that had flown that earlier mission, his was the only one that had met any form of danger. The waterspout had been a fluke—Mother Nature reaching out to slap him for his impudence. It wasn’t, he reflected, the first time he’d been slapped, or the first time he’d managed to duck.
The other three pilots, those in the cargo planes, were a bigger question mark. The charter company had hired them. He had been as selective as he could be on which company to go with, but there just weren’t that many companies willing to risk pilots and aircraft on such a “harebrained” project. He thought they’d seemed solid enough at the morning briefing, he just hoped they could follow orders. The timing was fairly critical if they didn’t want to risk their lives and waste their time all at once.
Andrea seemed to believe that the peanut oil, without the seeding, could be a dangerous thing, having an effect far different from the one they hoped for. Phil didn’t want something like that on his conscience. If the storm took a sudden jog toward the U.S., or even slashed out at Bermuda, he would never know for certain that he hadn’t caused it to happen by his lack of planning, or by being too quick, or too slow to react. If they timed it all correctly, then at least he could share the blame with those who’d formed the original plan.
In some ways, he knew, he had the easiest part in all of it. They were all waiting for the same thing, but at least he was up in the air, flying and actively doing something. Back at the complex, all they could do was watch radarscopes, listen to radio communications, and hope they were as smart as they believed they were. That was a weight Phil could live without.
The miles flashed away beneath him, measured in streaks of brilliant white clouds that reflected the bright sunlight. It was a gorgeous day, and it was very difficult to convince himself that not too many miles distant the largest storm he’d ever seen waited for him. The contrast between the two images lent a surreal air to the flight, and Phil flew in silence.
It felt like there should be a soundtrack in the background, something classical and heroic, but the only sound was the drone of his engines, and the only things to be seen for miles around were the blanket of clouds beneath him, and his three companions, who were holding a good, tight formation around his lead.
Eventually the clouds below darkened. He saw, even from above, that they were moving more quickly. He knew he was nearing the outer edge of the storm. His radar showed it raging below, a giant monster of a thing so large it engulfed the entire screen. There were no edges.
Phil checked his chart. They were about forty-five minutes off of their target position.
“This is Sierra Papa One. All units find position and hold. Time is minus forty-five and counting. Over.”
“Sierra Papa Two, Roger,” was the immediate response, followed by three and four.
Phil sent his plane into a slow bank out over the center of the storm. The intent was to get the four of them in a line over the eye, and then turn to face the leading edge. From there they would sweep down in an arc, drop their loads, and break off to the side, gaining altitude as quickly as possible and putting distance between themselves and the hurricane with all possible speed. Phil would be the last to come through. He wanted to be in position to hear the others break away safely before he completed his run. That way he would know, as he pulled out himself, that his men were safe and on their way home. He wouldn’t know for a long time after that what happened to the storm itself, but his immediate concern was to complete the mission, and then get back to North Carolina.
He switched channels on his radio and keyed the microphone again. “Oscar Sierra One, this is Sierra Papa One, over.”
There was a quick burst of static, and then—faintly—he heard the call back from the lead cargo plane. “Got you, Sierra Papa One, this is Oscar Sierra One, how copy?”
“Weak, but readable,” he replied. “We will be in position in,” he glanced at his chronometer, then continued “minus thirty-eight minutes. I say again, minus thirty-eight minutes. Do you copy? Over.”
“Sierra Papa One, this is Oscar Sierra One, understand in position in minus thirty-eight minutes.”
“Roger,” Phil answered. “We will begin our run in minus forty-five minutes. Do not drop your cargo until I give the call. Do you copy?”
“Roger,” the cargo pilot replied. “We’ll wait for your call, skipper. Good luck. Oscar Sierra One, out.”
The reply was slightly weaker, but Phil understood it. He hoped that once they were all in position, the radio would be strong enough to reach the cargo planes. If not, things could get dicey.
He leaned back and studied his instruments carefully. He had to estimate his course based on the radar, and Andrea’s estimates. He couldn’t be certain from his current position just how wide the storm might be. A Category five storm was huge, and the outlying edges could extend hundreds of miles, but all he wanted was the outer edge of the main storm wall. He wanted to start his run from the furthest edge, and he felt as if the chances of his signal reaching the cargo planes would be better if he was slightly offset from the main body of the storm.
As he soared high above the cloud cover, Phil tried not to think about the huge, prowling beast of a storm beneath him. He knew he was near the eye and passing over. The first of the other planes would be almost in position by now, and the second and third not far behind. Once he was in place he would send out the word—the others would pass it down the line, just in case the broadcast came through garbled, and they would dive down toward the storm wall. Just a few minutes, ten more, and he’d be ready. He banked again and glanced down at the smooth, rippling floor of white clouds beneath him.
The time passed, and he dipped slightly, leveled off and pointed the nose of the plane toward the front of the storm. He intended to come down on a straight line with it and turn gently and slowly once he was beneath the clouds. He had a stretch of storm that was his to seed, and he wanted plenty of maneuvering room on his approach. It was likely to be rough down there, with little room for error.
He grabbed his microphone, took a deep breath, and made the call. “This is Sierra Papa One,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully. “In position and ready for approach. All units respond.”
“Sierra Papa One, this is Sierra Papa Two, copy.”
He also heard from Sierra Papa Three, but nothing from four. “Sierra Papa Four, do you copy, over?”
“Sierra Papa One, this is Sierra Papa Three. I’ve got him, skipper. All clear, over.”
Phil nodded, though there was no one to see. “Roger. I’ll see you boys on the other side of the storm. This is Sierra Papa One, out.”
He flipped channels. “Oscar Sierra One, this is Sierra Papa One, over.”
He waited a moment, and then repeated the call. Nothing. There was no answer, and beads of sweat formed instantly on his brow. He felt an odd prickle of fear run across his shoulders, but he held his voice steady and repeated his call. There was no more time to wait. He could only hope that his initial timing had been correct, and that the other pilots would make the right call.
Before he gave up, he sent a final call. “Oscar Sierra O
ne, this is Sierra Papa One. Have no response, I repeat, have no response from your end. Commencing seed run.”
There were a couple of pops, followed by a crackle of static. It might have been a response, but there was no way to know and in any case, there was no time left to worry over it. They would deliver their cargo, or they would abort. Either way, he was going in, and it was going to take all of his attention to pull off his own end of the bargain.
He dropped the nose and descended in a sweeping arc toward the clouds below, saying a quiet prayer under his breath.
~ * ~
James “Jamie” Bradshaw stared at his radio and counted the seconds. The allotted time had surely passed, though he couldn’t say for sure. Something was wrong with his watch. Of all times for the damned thing to go crazy on him, here it was. One moment it had seemed as if there was a good half an hour left, and now it said less than two minutes. Wicks’ last transmission had said thirty-eight minutes, and Jamie’s watch had matched Wicks’ at that time. Or had he not been concentrating? Wicks had also specified that he would call again, and that they should wait for his mark.
The thing was, conditions were not good. Out in front of the storm, which was where they would have to be to place the slick, the winds were stronger than anticipated. Rainsqualls had reached into that area, and it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain more than a few moments at that position before pulling out. Just enough time to open the cargo bay doors and drop load, and then get out. He also had the other two to think about. The other two pilots weren’t going to back out on him, but he didn’t think they were going to follow him to hell and back for the company, either.
He waited another minute. There was some static, but he couldn’t be sure if it had been a transmission, or if it was the storm. He glanced at his watch, then whispered “To hell with it,” under his breath.
“All units,” he called, “this is Oscar Sierra One. Ready to deliver on my mark.”
He knew they were spread out at intervals of about fifty miles. He would start delivering the huge balloons where he was, and they would deploy on timed drops across the first fifty-mile stretch. They hadn’t had a chance to test this, but he had delivered enough troops during the war and dropped enough supplies behind unfriendly lines to know that the theory behind it was sound. The balloons would roll out, one after the other; if they fell as anticipated, they would burst on impact, and the oil would spread, each load catching the outer edge of the slick left by the last. Jamie didn’t feel like betting any substantial amount of cash on the outcome, but he had a job to do, and he figured it was about time to make it happen, for good or ill.
“All units,” he repeated, “this is Oscar Sierra One, deliver. I repeat, deliver cargo. Let’s get this done and get out of here. Over.”
The others responded quickly, and Jamie dropped into a slow dive. He knew he had to get as low as possible, but when he hit four thousand feet, the turbulence kicked up, and he started to lose visibility. It didn’t take long to make up his mind. He studied the instruments, lined himself up as well as he could in front of the approaching wall of the storm, and hit the switch to open the hydraulic cargo bay doors. The balloons were strung on a sort of pulley; the weight of the first would pull them over, and each would fall a set amount of seconds behind the last.
The plane jerked slightly as the doors caught the wind, then he felt the thrumming vibration as the mechanism rolled, dragged the first balloon into place, and dropped it. He felt the weight shift and fought the controls doggedly, keeping his course in as straight a line as possible. He couldn’t see a thing below or behind him, so he had no way to know how successful the drop was. All he could do was to keep on course until he had crossed his fifty-mile stretch, then pull up and get the hell out.
The wind buffeted him roughly, and once or twice he thought one engine was about to stall on him. The load lightened bit by bit, and in what seemed only seconds, he had crossed the fifty-mile stretch, and with a sigh of relief, he flipped the switch that closed the cargo bay and drew back on the controls. The sturdy, boxy cargo plane was sluggish, but it responded. When he climbed up and away from the storm and slipped off to the west, his control became more certain. A moment later he broke through the clouds and rose above ten thousand feet. He leveled off and reached for his microphone.
“All units, this is Oscar Sierra One,” he said breathlessly. “Cargo delivered, do you copy? Over.”
“Oscar Sierra One, this is Oscar Sierra Two. I copy you five by five. What happened back there, Jamie? We still have fifteen minutes until the call. Did you get an update on orders? Over.”
Jamie’s heart sank. He glanced down at his watch. It had spun another thirty minutes. He frowned and shook his arm, but nothing changed. The second hand continued its smooth transition of the dial.
“Christ,” he said into the microphone without thinking. Then he caught himself. “This is Oscar Sierra One, that’s a negative. I seem to have a malfunction with my watch. The damned thing says we’re already twenty minutes late, but I know that isn’t right.”
“Oscar Sierra One, this is Oscar Sierra Three. Roger that. My watch is FUBAR. According to it, we shouldn’t even have started the trip. It was fine a while ago; what the hell happened? Over.”
Jamie shook his head in bewilderment. “Damned if I know,” he muttered to himself. “I don’t know,” he said out loud, keying the microphone. “Did you deliver?”
Both replies were affirmative. Jamie glanced back over his shoulder, but all he saw was the cloud cover. “I hope you’re okay back there, Phil,” he said under his breath. Into the microphone, he said, “This is Oscar Sierra One. Return to base, mission accomplished. Over, and out.”
The other two copied his message quickly, and they formed up, banking toward the U.S. coast and away from the approaching storm.
~ * ~
Several things happened more or less at once. The weather balloons of peanut oil struck and spread perfectly. The water was choppy, but the pressure from each balloon bursting on impact spread the contents until they joined and blended in either direction, and though the slick rolled up and down on the waves, it hung solid, forming a smooth, glistening wall on the water ahead of the storm wall. At least, along the central portion of the wall. The storm, larger than anticipated, stretched nearly three hundred and fifty miles. The slick managed to cover the path of the storm’s center, and with a roar like a diesel engine, the hurricane struck that spot.
At that moment, Phil Wicks and the other seed pilots were only just making their initial turn and preparing to drop through the clouds and strafe the storm wall. They had no idea that the water far below and a bit in front of them was already coated in slick, glimmering peanut oil, or that the storm was making its first attempt to slip up and over that point.
At first the slick had no affect whatsoever on the storm. It took another five minutes, just long enough for Phil to give the final okay to his men, and for them to begin their runs on the storm wall. Just long enough for Phil to fail to contact three pilots who had already flown out of range of their already weak communications link. Just long enough for Phil to drop the nose of his aircraft through the clouds.
The storm sped up. The action of the wind at the eye of the storm tried to draw on the water in front of it. Super cooled water and rushing winds worked to evaporate the surface moisture and failed. The harder the storm tried to evaporate the water in its path, the faster and tighter the eye wound, and still the slick held. The storm reached and stretched. Water rose to the left—the west—and in a long, sinuous roll that became the rush of a monstrous engine of destruction, the storm whipped to the side, bypassed and skipped around the oil and lunged toward the U.S. coast, just as Andrea had feared it might.
Phil didn’t see this at first; he was concentrating on aligning himself with the storm wall. He leveled off at five thousand feet and stared down at the wild whitecaps below and the dark mass of the storm. His plane shivered,
and he felt the strength of the storm in that touch. It wasn’t like the other one, the smaller storm. This one you felt through the plane, through your seat and the flight suit, right to the marrow of your bones. It was a monster, and where the smaller hurricane had seemed malevolent and aware of him, this one was worse.
He was so insignificant in the face of so much power that he couldn’t even credit that, if the storm were intelligent, it would pay him the slightest heed. Suddenly their balloons full of oil and their planes full of silver iodide seemed paltry—silly even. How in creation could they have believed, even for a moment that they could face off against such a behemoth?
He considered dropping the extra thousand feet, then decided against it. They weren’t trying to concentrate the crystals as they had the last time, but to spread them along the storm wall. He would be fine at five thousand feet, and he wasn’t certain the aircraft would hold up if he went any lower. He considered calling the others to check their altitude, but there was nothing any of them could do to adjust at this point. They had to release their loads and get out, and the longer he cruised along the wall with the full force of the storm bearing down on him like a giant wave of water and wind, the more important that last became to him.
An image of Andrea, smiling at him, was all it took to galvanize him into action. He leveled off and had his hand on the control, ready to drop the silver iodide, when the world shifted. The roaring of the wind increased so quickly, and so sharply, that his breath was stolen. The aircraft shuddered, and he tilted to the right. The wind was too strong; it had caused one of the engines to simply quit—sucked the oxygen from within. He compensated without thinking and pulled up. Mission forgotten, he pulled back on the controls. The plane fought his control sluggishly and he felt the weight of the air streaming around him. He saw the storm wall, seething, not drawing closer, but rushing along on a tangent.
Mote in Andrea's Eye Page 12