Category 7

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  But not as much trouble as Raoul and his crew would be in if they didn’t make it out of the country. Today.

  CHAPTER 18

  Friday, July 13, 2:30 P.M., Financial District, New York City

  “Have a minute?”

  Kate looked up to see Elle in her office doorway, looking a little more frazzled than usual. “Sure. Come on in.” She lifted a stack of file folders from one of the chairs and set it on the floor.

  Elle walked in and closed the door, then sat down. “I finished reading your paper a little while ago.”

  “Thanks for taking a look at it. I didn’t mean to make it sound as though timing was critical,” Kate said, then grimaced. “So how is it?”

  “It’s good. Interesting.” Elle smiled and leaned back in the chair.

  Even slouching, she didn’t have any belly fat. It was reason enough to dislike her.

  “Is that the research equivalent of saying it has a good personality?” Kate asked drily.

  Elle laughed. “No. That means that I thought it was interesting, Kate. It was a nice change to read about something current. Most of what I’ve been working on is a few decades old.”

  “So do I end up sounding crazy?”

  “Define ‘crazy.’”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Great.”

  Elle brushed away the reply with a languid hand. “I’m joking. You don’t sound crazy. But since you brought it up, I take it you won’t be surprised if some people think you are after they read the paper?”

  “A friend of mine hinted at it,” Kate admitted. “More than hinted. I think he said I’d become the poster child of the Weird Weather Weenie Society once the paper gets posted online.” She sighed. “So the maybe-crazy factor aside, does the paper make sense?”

  “It definitely does make sense,” Elle confirmed. “I’m not a weather watcher, so I couldn’t completely follow all the equations. I don’t know what some of those variables are or what they mean, but your arguments seem pretty sound.” She paused. “Is your presentation going to focus on the science or the speculation?”

  Good question. “I’m not sure I can separate one from the other,” Kate replied with a shrug.

  “But you think that the storms were—what would you call it? Enhanced by technology?”

  Kate shifted in her chair, uneasy at the direct question. “They seem that way to me, but I think it’s too far-fetched a notion to bring up in front of an audience of serious scientists. Now, if I were speaking at a Star Trek convention—” She let the sentence drift with a grin.

  As tired as Elle seemed, the gaze she fixed on Kate was clear, focused, and intent. “But that’s what you’re really getting at in your paper, aren’t you? Do you really think that your audience will dismiss it if you present it clearly?”

  “They won’t dismiss it, but I can pretty much guarantee their response won’t include laughter. These are number-crunching weather geeks, Elle. And I know this may sound kind of odd to you, but weather is our baby. Whether we’re academics, in business, working for the government, or on TV, we all have a pretty proprietary sensibility about the weather. Messing with it is not a charge that will be taken lightly by too many of them.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to soft-pedal your—”

  Jesus. I feel like I’m on a Sunday morning talk show. Kate shook her head. “Of course not. I want to open a discussion, but I also need to maintain my credibility.” And my job.

  Elle thought for a moment. “It’s not like you’d be the first to suggest such a thing. There’s a reasonably strong history of attempts at weather manipulation and control that you could use to ground your suspicions. You don’t go into that at all in your paper, but it could help you in your presentation.”

  “Like cloud seeding for agricultural purposes, and what the Chinese intend to do to keep the rain away from the sites of the Beijing Olympics?” Kate asked with a grin. “That’s not only old news, it’s mild with respect to what I’m talking about. My storms show major escalations that defy explanation. If there’s any sort of weather manipulation going on, it would be more like the ‘mad scientist’ variety.” Her smile faded. “Cloud seeding has been done for decades. It’s very simple, very controlled, and it produces rainfall. It doesn’t cause clouds to explode into thunderheads that rise a few thousand feet in two or three minutes, and it sure as hell doesn’t cause unexpected flooding in the desert in the middle of the night.”

  “Are you going to let Mr. Thompson see your paper?”

  The urge to squirm in her seat was strong, but Kate remained still and met Elle’s eyes. “I wasn’t planning to. Davis Lee already approved it.”

  “Do you know if he’s read it?”

  “I presume he has. He should have by now, but it’s not really his thing. He thinks my interest in these storms is kind of silly. As is submitting a paper that doesn’t offer any conclusions.” Kate shrugged with a casualness that she didn’t quite feel and reached for the bottle of water on the cluttered windowsill. “Davis Lee’s interest in weather is pretty much limited to its effects on the company’s portfolio. And his social life.”

  “Which is busy, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” Kate said over the rim of the bottle, raising an eyebrow.

  Color rose in Elle’s face. “That didn’t come out right. I mean, I don’t really care about—”

  Kate shrugged. “Hey, relax. No harm, no foul. Even if you did care, you wouldn’t be the first woman who worked here who did. He’s rich, unmarried, decent looking, and charming in his own way.”

  “Yes, I suppose he is, but I don’t care,” Elle repeated emphatically.

  “Got it. So why did you ask me if I’m going to send it to Carter Thompson? Why would I? And how do you know so much about the history of weather manipulation, by the way?”

  Elle was quiet for a moment before meeting Kate’s eyes. “I’ve been researching it a little bit. Mr. Thompson used to be into that sort of thing back when he was an undergraduate.”

  “Did he publish?”

  “Sort of. He was cited in some books.”

  Kate absorbed this for a minute, an unpleasant itch bothering the back of her brain. “I’ve been doing research on this for a few months and I’ve never come across his name. What kind of books cited him? And what kind of issues was he writing about?”

  “I wouldn’t call them science books,” Elle said bluntly. “Junk science, maybe. They were published in the middle to late fifties and they were fringe, even at the time. I mean, one of the authors also wrote books on how to build your own bomb shelter.”

  “But what did they say about weather manipulation?”

  “Mostly pretty nutty stuff. That towing icebergs to the equator would stop hurricanes from forming and that dropping bombs into hurricanes would stop them in their tracks. That the winter weather that helped defeat Hitler’s march through Russia was manufactured. That the great drought during the Depression was a communist experiment.” She rolled her eyes. “Talk about straining the limits of credibility.”

  “But they quoted Carter Thompson? He was writing that kind of stuff?”

  “Yes, they quoted him, but no, he wasn’t supporting their ideas. His papers seemed more to flirt with the idea of manipulation than come right out and declare it was happening. He was more or less pushing the notion that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, and that one day it would be a reality. He stopped short of saying how that would happen.” Elle crossed her long legs and rested her elbow on the arm of the chair and her chin on her palm. “Maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised, though. I suppose it went along with the era. You know, it seems like back then you were either into the whole Cold War mentality—Cuba, Russia, Reds hiding behind every American flag—or getting into the beatnik frame of mind. Peace, love, and flower power. And then there was the whole Buck Rogers thing, too.”

  Kate absorbed that for a moment, then shook her head. “It’s still weird. He was a gov
ernment scientist.”

  “Not when he wrote these papers,” Elle reminded her. “I’ve already returned the books, but I could give you the citation list if you want to track them down.”

  Kate held up a hand in surrender. “No thanks. My research quota for this year is done. What are you working on that you have to find all this stuff?”

  “A biography,” Elle replied. “It’s for private publication around his sixty-fifth birthday, which is in a month or so.”

  “One of the richest men in the world turns sixty-five and all he gets is a book about himself?” With a grin, Kate lifted the water bottle to her lips again. “I suppose it’s better than getting him a lap dance. Good Queen Iris wouldn’t like that at all. Whose idea was it?”

  “Davis Lee’s, I guess.”

  “He’s keeping you pretty busy?”

  Stifling a yawn, Elle gave her a wan, rueful smile. “I think that’s what he had in mind when he brought me up here. I don’t know many people, so I’m available all the time.” She pulled herself to her feet reluctantly. “Speaking of which, I should probably get back to the mines.”

  Kate set the water bottle back on the windowsill and let her chair return to the upright and business like position. “Don’t let him take up all your time. New York is a great city. Make sure you enjoy it.”

  “I like it here,” Elle conceded, her hand on the doorknob. “But it’s so big. It’s hard to know where to go and what to do. Sometimes there are too many choices, and other times I don’t feel like going places alone. That’s getting old,” she replied, looking away as her voice dropped to a murmur. It was an affecting gesture, which made Kate wonder if it was genuine or if she was angling for an invitation.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About a month.”

  “Have you been to any outdoor concerts? Practically every park in the city has something going on during the weekends.”

  Elle met her eyes and shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Well, if you’re interested, a few friends and I are heading out for some drinks and then over to Battery Park tonight. There’s some local jazz-reggae fusion festival.” She lifted her shoulders with a laugh. “Not my idea, but I’m going along with it. Why don’t you join us? It will be casual and even if the music is lousy, the people-watching should be interesting. I keep having this image of metro-sexuals sporting tie-dyed silk shirts and blond baby dreadlocks getting a totally civilized high by taking hits of designer pot with sterling silver, engraved roach clips.”

  Elle laughed but behind it looked genuinely surprised. “Kate, I wasn’t—”

  “I know.”

  Elle paused for a second, then smiled the first genuine smile Kate had seen cross her face. “Really? That’s awfully nice of you. You’re sure it would be okay with your friends?”

  “Of course. I’ll e-mail you about where and when we’re going to meet up. It will probably be around eight thirty or so. See ya later.”

  Friday, July 13, 3:45 P.M., the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  The first thing Jake noticed when he walked into the conference room was that of the dozen or so people in the room, he was one of only three who weren’t in uniform. Tom Taylor and Candy were the other two. Even as the meeting got started, Jake was still reeling a little from the high-speed briefing he’d received from Candy on the drive over from Langley. Stealth aircraft and weather manipulation equipment. Terrorists and wartime terminology.

  It wasn’t quite what he’d expected to be dealing with when he’d decided to go for a doctorate in climatology.

  Tom turned, fixing those mostly dead eyes on Jake’s. “What’s with this storm?”

  “At the moment, it’s stalled east-northeast of Puerto Rico after traveling at a fairly slow but steady clip for the last forty-eight hours.”

  “After that sudden build-up, why is it stalled?”

  Jake shrugged. “It happens sometimes. No one really knows why. In 1998, Mitch stalled for thirty-nine hours off the coast of Honduras.”

  “And then died.”

  “After blasting the hell out of Honduras, eastern Mexico, and a whole bunch of Caribbean islands, it died a very slow and highly destructive death,” Jake corrected.

  “So is this one going to die soon?”

  “There’s no way to tell for sure. Its barometric pressure is still dropping, and its wind speeds are staying steady. It’s still a Category 2, so it’s not a big concern right now, especially if it stays at sea.” He shrugged. “It could start moving at any time, or it could dissipate.”

  Tom looked bored. “Jake, are we looking at fifty-fifty odds?”

  “I doubt it. My gut is telling me that it’s not going to disappear any time soon. The sea surface temperature down there is just too hospitable.”

  “Anything we can do to change that?” Tom asked.

  All around the table, heads shook silently.

  He frowned. “Well, let’s start thinking about that. I have a bad feeling that this storm is not going away. Not until we find out who’s behind it.” Abruptly he stopped talking and pulled his Blackberry from the clip hanging from his belt, looked at the screen, then stood up. “I have to cut this short. My apologies.”

  And he left.

  Friday, July 13, 4:30 P.M., the White House, Washington, D.C.

  Tom Taylor followed the intern down bustling corridors and through a labyrinth of offices to one of the few closed doors. She tapped lightly, smiling at the man who opened it.

  “Mr. Taylor is here, Mr. Benson.”

  “Thanks.” Win Benson, the president’s son and one of his unofficial advisors, pulled the door open farther and gestured, unsmiling, for Tom to enter the office.

  It was as large and comfortably decorated as your basic executive suite. Nice furniture, deep carpets, original art. And two additional grim-faced people whose faces were familiar from Sunday morning television: the White House press secretary and a national security advisor.

  With tight, bland smiles, they introduced themselves and shook Tom’s hand. The press secretary got right to the point.

  “Mr. Taylor, the owners and crew of a small pleasure boat that capsized in the eastern Caribbean were on TV a little while ago reporting that after they were rescued by a Navy ship, they were debriefed by Navy officials about the sudden build-up of Hurricane Simone. Their stories are clearly incredible, and therefore the media can’t get enough of them. They’re lined up to be on with Matthews, Hannity, and Larry King, and that’s just tonight. They’re making it sound like there’s a mad scientist at large, and implying government-backed experimentation. Reporters are crawling all over this. May I ask what’s going on?”

  Just what he needed. Publicity. “Ma’am, we believe that the hurricane may have been artificially enhanced through technological means.”

  “You think someone’s manipulating the weather?” she asked, more than a little incredulity in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Who? And how? Does the president know about this?” She turned to the national security advisor. “Was this in the PDB?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Tom interrupted. “This is an emerging issue and I believe it has not reached the point at which it would be included in the Presidential Daily Briefing. There are still too many questions we’re trying to answer, including the ones you just asked.”

  “Do you have any more information on who you think is behind this?”

  He met the security advisor’s eyes. “No, sir.”

  “Who’s ‘we,’ Mr. Taylor?” The president’s son moved into the center of the room as he asked the question.

  Tom turned to face him. “I’m running a task force at the request of the DNI. It’s inter-agency, and there’s broad involvement. CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, all branches of the military. A few others. Some civilians.”

  “And you don’t know anything yet?”

  He turned back to the press secretary and kept his irritation off his face. “W
e know plenty, ma’am, but we don’t know everything. Yet. We’re still coming up with a big picture.”

  “Well, it’s sharing time, Mr. Taylor. Tell us what you know,” she said in a low, sarcastic voice completely at odds with the cultured diplomacy she was renowned for. “Little pictures will do just fine.”

  Her pretty, telegenic face was hard. He’d seen more warmth on the faces of interrogators at Gitmo.

  “We know that a person or persons have the ability to successfully manipulate weather systems. We know they have recently begun working within the borders of the United States and that they’re well organized, well funded, and extremely elusive. We know that there are no reputable researchers taking part in such activities. We’re considering it a terrorist threat and have people working twenty-four-seven to find out who it is and what their next move will be. And we’re pretty damned sure that they have built Simone into the storm she is by deploying their technology.”

  “Anything else?”

  Isn’t that enough? “Not at the moment.”

  “We want to be kept informed, Mr. Taylor.”

  Realizing he was being dismissed, he nodded at Steel Balls Barbie and her buddies and turned toward the door.

  “Do you consider the U.S. to be under a threat from Simone? Weather-wise, I mean?”

  He turned back to face the president’s son. “I think it’s a good possibility, Mr. Benson, but at the moment we can only say for sure that we’re at the same level of risk as we are whenever there’s a hurricane in the Caribbean. If you’re heading to Florida in the next week, I’d cancel the beachfront room.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded at the group and left the room.

  CHAPTER 19

  Friday, July 13, 6:57 P.M., Upper East Side, New York City