Category 7

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  The chaos intensified in the early, eerie darkness and the storm, when she hit, brought the darkness of midnight where the sunset should have been and reintroduced the howling winds of Hell to this subtle paradise. They blew in from the sea with all the force of the curving, swirling vortex behind them, tearing, shredding, uprooting, and unstoppable. Grains of powdery beach became minute missiles violating pristine surfaces, abrading flesh, stripping color and life from everything they encountered.

  Like a giant engine, the dark winds roared over the low-lying terrain, catching hold of rooflines; whether tile, slate, or tar, their secretly aerodynamic edges captured the storm’s thrust and they were catapulted into the air, some falling to smash on roadways or other rooftops, others somersaulting through the darkness, stopping only when they embedded themselves in whatever object blocked their way.

  In their freshly beheaded homes, people crouched under heavy furniture, in doorways, and in closets, fearing the rain pelting from above and the abrasive sludge surging under doors and through cracks in walls no longer stable. Crying for mercy and for help that would never arrive, they watched their belongings disintegrate and their existence shatter as the storm’s fury stole the future, replacing hoped-for tranquility with loss and violence, mud and tears.

  As if forced by a giant bellows, the winds gusted, lifting the sea. Airborne, the water smashed into obstacles, animate and inanimate. Crashing back to the earth, it surged over the land. The lucky residents were washed through doorways and remained battered but alive and afloat. Others died, entrapped where they had sought safety.

  Her fury unabated, Simone maintained her forward motion and sought new waters to tease her unslaking appetite.

  CHAPTER 27

  Wednesday, July 18, 7:30 A.M., McLean, Virginia

  Jake looked up at the sound of footsteps stopping near his cubicle. Curiosity fought surprise when he realized that his visitor was Tom Taylor.

  “Got a minute?” Tom looked like hell.

  “Sure,” Jake said uncertainly, and stood up to follow him across the Cube Highway into a conference room.

  “Do you have anything for me?” Tom asked flatly the minute Jake shut the door.

  “On Simone?”

  “On anything.”

  “No. I’m still looking for a common denominator for the other storms, but the Weather Service just classified Simone a Category 4.”

  “They what?” Tom stared at him. “When? It was only elevated to a 3 last night.”

  “About four minutes ago. It zigzagged through the lower Bahamas in twenty-four hours, making landfall five times, and then it stalled again to the west of them. It hasn’t changed position in any appreciable way in three hours.”

  “Is that normal?”

  “There really isn’t any ‘normal’ when you’re talking about weather. Hurricanes don’t stall often, but it happens.”

  Tom let out an annoyed breath that had something profane wrapped inside. “This bitch is getting big. I need to know if our friends have had anything more to do with the latest escalation,” he said, and walked out of the room.

  Thursday, July 19, 5:15 P.M., Financial District,

  New York City

  Davis Lee stared through his office window at the water and the skyline beyond it. Brooklyn was shimmering in the heat. There was a lot of sparkle on the water and a sort of dull sheen to the hazy brown air above it. The city needed a good drenching to clear the air, and Davis Lee needed some solid answers to sharpen the focus of his brain, which had been mulling over the e-mail he’d received from Elle just an hour ago.

  She was proving to be a hell of a researcher, which was both good and bad. Bad because if she could find things, so could other people. Uncovering a person’s deeply held secrets wasn’t much different from finding a lost civilization, or so it seemed to him. You could go for years speculating until one day you found the way in through a previously impenetrable forest. There might be a treasure trove of untouched, undiscovered information waiting there to be exploited, but the first one there always left an obvious trail. And in the case of the unsettling information Elle had already found out about Carter, that trail had to be covered up so Davis Lee could synthesize the revelations at his leisure and decide what to do about them. Everything these days had a dark side, even philanthropy, and Davis Lee had to make sure he owned the discussion and could direct the outcome. He wasn’t going to let anyone swift-boat Carter. Even Carter himself.

  It was widely known that Carter wasn’t a man to keep his opinions to himself, and one of the things he opined about ad nauseam was the environment. True, he was on the boards of many of the major tree-, water-, and cloud-hugging organizations, but this morning Elle had discovered that Carter was a man who not only talked that talk and walked that walk in public, but he walked that walk in private, too.

  Quietly, in central Africa.

  About fifteen years ago, Carter had apparently established a foundation that had as its goal turning parts of the Sahara and the Sahel back into arable farmland, if not into rain forest. It was a noble goal; Davis Lee couldn’t fault the man’s intentions, but it seemed an odd choice. There was plenty of environmental damage he could undo closer to home.

  Given the amount of money Carter had been pouring into the foundation since its inception, he’d have been able to take on a lot of local issues, which could be used as serious currency in a presidential campaign. Carter would understand that, and why he’d chosen to ignore it in favor of an unpublicized cause that was so distant, literally and figuratively, from his daily existence didn’t sit well in Davis Lee’s brain.

  If news about the existence of the foundation came out, and it would, it would be a hard sell to convince voters that it was a good thing that a man living in rural Iowa, who had more money than he knew what to do with, cared so deeply about reclaiming a desert half a world away. The thugs on Benson’s campaign staff would have a field day with it, using it to place Carter squarely on the wrong side of every issue from the fate of the UN to the ethical advancement of science.

  Image wasn’t quite everything, though, and the two inevitable questions Davis Lee didn’t want anyone asking were the ones looming largest in his own head: Why the hell would Carter want to do something that ambitious—crazy, even—and why would he keep it so quiet?

  The question that Davis Lee wasn’t even sure he wanted to know the answer to was what, if anything, did the foundation’s mission have to do with Carter’s former obsession, weather manipulation?

  He turned at the sound of a light tap on his door, followed by a quiet, “Got a minute?”

  Kate stood in the doorway, looking as tired as he felt, which made him feel that much better. She ought to be tired. He’d given her a shitload of new responsibilities in the last few days to see how she held up. So far, so good, and the data she was providing was up to her usual standards. It was also paying off.

  For months he’d been trying to talk Carter into expanding the investment house to include the energy markets—to no avail. Until last week. The minute the president had announced the formation of the energy coalition, Carter had changed his mind and Davis Lee had had to swing into high gear. The extra work it would create for him and everyone else was a non-issue. Anything that allowed them to position the company better for the long term and have a better place at a bigger table was just dandy.

  He rubbed a hand over his face. “I might have a minute. You gonna tell me this damned sunshine is about to stop?”

  “I’m not that good a liar. But we should have some heavier weather soon.”

  “How soon?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow. Simone is kicking up some storms on the coast and that Gulf low looks like it’s taking the express train north.”

  He shook his head. “Damn. You can taste the air out there.”

  “This is New York. People have been tasting the air here for two hundred years. Get over it.”

  With a laugh, he leaned back in his
chair and motioned for her to come in. “How are you doing?”

  “Rising to the challenge.” She sat down in the chair across from his desk.

  “Good. That’s what I thought you’d do. When are you going to have those reports I asked for?”

  “Next week.”

  “Can you put them on the fast track?”

  “That is the fast track.”

  Tough girl. He smiled as he reached for the tumbler of icy San Pellegrino he’d poured a few minutes ago. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m leaving to head to D.C. in an hour for that conference.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, encouraging her to expand on her statement. She laughed and glanced out the window for a second, making him wonder what the hell was going on.

  “Did you ever read my paper? The one about the storms.”

  Not this shit again. “I glanced at the abstract. You’re not going to give me a pop quiz, are you?” he drawled over the rim of his glass.

  “No. I just wanted to let you know that the final version contains some last-minute revisions.” She hesitated for a split second, then met his eyes with something like defiance in her own. “I e-mailed Carter a copy of it, and copied you.”

  The news landed in his gut with a thud that he didn’t bother to analyze. He set the heavy glass back onto the coaster without taking a sip and stared at her. “You what? What in the hell did you do that for?”

  She shrugged. “You said he was watching me. So I—”

  “Wanted to remind him of your fuckups?” Davis Lee snapped. Our chief meteorologist dangling weather conspiracy theories in the CEO’s face is the last fucking thing I need.

  She recoiled at his tone and a glint of anger came into her eyes. “He has a doctorate in meteorology, Davis Lee. He’ll understand what the paper means. I think it’s important for my career that he understands that I’m not dropping the ball, that I know what I’m doing, that I take my job seriously and—”

  He smacked a fist onto the padded leather arm of his chair and shut her up with a look. “Oh, for pity’s sake, Kate, the man doesn’t need to be bothered with this shit. I’ve told you he only cares about results. You’re not paid to be some pointy-headed academic. You’re an analyst. You think he wants you to do some sort of due diligence? I’ve got news for you. He’s going to think you’re making mistakes because you’re fucking around on his time. Luckily, that’s only if he reads the damned thing, which for your sake I hope he doesn’t.”

  “He might be more into it than you think,” she shot back. “He’s written papers on similar subjects, and he not only might be interested, he might have some answers.”

  He froze. “Say what?”

  “He’s written papers on weather manipulation.” Her eyes were mutinous and her body was drawn up tight.

  God damn it. Either those damned papers aren’t that hard to find or Elle needs a refresher course on keeping her mouth shut.

  He forced the anger inside to stand down and dismissed her statement with an exasperated look. “Where are you getting this stuff, Kate?”

  “They were cited in books, Davis Lee, years ago.”

  Fuck. He took a deep breath. “Are you saying that you cited Carter in your paper?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  He stood up and rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. Carter would certainly read the God-damned thing, and then there would be an inquisition. That meant that he was going to have to read it first. “When are you coming back?”

  “Late tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Fine. We’ll talk Monday and you can tell me what the brain trust had to say about your ‘intellectualizing.’” He let out a heavy breath as the speakers on his monitor emitted a soft chime announcing the arrival of another e-mail. Glancing at the subject line, he muttered, “I have to take care of this.”

  Kate didn’t need a second invitation. She said good-bye and scuttled out of the room.

  Thursday, July 19, 5:10 P.M., Campbelltown, Iowa

  This is intolerable.

  Fury surged through Carter as he turned away from the computer monitor on his desk, stood up, and walked to the window overlooking the fields. They were lush and decadent in the late-afternoon sun, the evidence of a perfect summer.

  At the moment, that hardly mattered. What mattered was that someone had started connecting the dots. Someone on his payroll. Someone with a connection to his past.

  The author would like to thank Dr. Richard Carlisle for his assistance in the preparation of this paper.

  He took a deep breath and closed his eyes in an effort to rein in the anger.

  How dare Richard break the solemn oath he’d taken to safeguard the secrets of his country.

  Doing so was treason. Richard had broken faith on a personal level, too, by talking to Kate Sherman, of all people. And she’d begun stirring things up.

  That could not be forgiven.

  Taking another deep breath, Carter forced himself to acknowledge that the scales had tipped. He no longer had the luxury of time or privacy. The time had come for him to pick up the gauntlet the president had thrown down and make his point.

  He reached for one of the cell phones at the edge of his desk and punched in a number. Raoul picked up on the second ring.

  “Plans have changed,” Carter said, and announced a set of coordinates. “Deploy in the next twenty-four hours.”

  He didn’t wait for a response before disconnecting. Simone was about to get a place in U.S. history, and Richard Carlisle, Kate Sherman, and Winslow Benson were about to get what they deserved.

  Carter depressed the intercom button on his desk phone. “Betty, call all the girls and tell them I’d like them to come home this weekend. No arguments. Send the plane for them. And I’ll need to be in New York on Saturday, late afternoon. Let Jack know, will you?” he said easily and calmly, speaking of the company’s pilot.

  “Right away, Mr. Thompson. Is anything the matter?”

  “Not for long,” he said. He didn’t have to fake a smile.

  CHAPTER 28

  Crashing slowly through the lower islands of the Bahamas chain did nothing to diminish Simone’s intensity, and as soon as the eye passed back into deeper, warming waters the storm stalled again, becoming voracious as it lingered. The tropical warmth fueled Simone’s insatiable engine, tightening the vortex and creating more spin, which drove up the wind speed and drove down the barometric pressure.

  Building hillocks of water pushed through the surf, which shone in the pre-dawn darkness, obsidian striated with silver. Joining with the morning’s high tide and the pull of a waxing moon, the hard sea slammed onto overbuilt Floridian beaches, mauling the few hardy thrill-seeking fools in the starlit shallows. Boats built for industry and pleasure alike sailed upward and inland, coming to rest on unlikely berths from which they’d never depart intact. Rooflines opened hospitably before the wind, and unsecured windows shattered. Every surface that inhibited the movement of the sand-and-water-laden air soon bore the deep, dull scars of fruitless resistance.

  The causeway leading led north through the Keys to the mainland was clogged with newly panicked skeptics, their early, blustering courage having eroded with the weather. Too late they tried to flee to safety and were instead witness to the full and indiscriminate brutality of Nature. Hundreds of white-knuckled hands gripped steering wheels as once-stalwart drivers forged on through blinding rain and lateral winds, battling for stability. Despite their efforts and prayers, their cars slid and spun across traffic channels running improbably deep with rain and seawater. Hundreds of eyes widened in horror as vehicles in front, behind, and next to them were lifted and flipped, some onto other cars, some into guardrails, and some over them, slamming into the enormous, storm-hardened concrete pilings on their descent to the fractured, seething surface of the Florida Strait.

  Communities farther up the coastline were watching the growing spiral on their TV and computer screens, watching the red saw blade spin madly, knowing
the worst had not yet happened, praying they would not have the opportunity to experience it, but packing their cars with their belongings nonetheless.

  As winds and sea grew heavier and stronger, a capricious Simone turned ever so slightly away from the land that would diminish her. Assured now of continual care and feeding, she continued her destructive, leisurely crawl parallel to land in the deep near-shore waters, flirting with mankind as only a waiting disaster can, and destroying whatever dared to remain in her path.

  CHAPTER 29

  Friday, July 20, 8:26 A.M., Washington, D.C.

  Kate checked her watch. Only a minute had passed since the last time she’d done so.

  Damn it.

  She hadn’t counted on waiting ten minutes for an elevator. It was one of the reasons she always stayed below the tenth floor of a hotel. She knew she could handle ten flights of stairs. But in a suit and high heels? She was going to be nervous enough standing in front of the room giving a talk. She didn’t want to be out of breath and sweaty before she started.

  She checked her watch again. Another minute had passed, which meant there were now only five minutes before her talk was supposed to start. She’d wanted to be in the room by now, smiling serenely at the poor, lost souls who had nothing better to do than listen to her at eight thirty in the morning. With any luck, they’d be half-asleep and concentrating more on their coffee than on her and wouldn’t notice if her voice was shaking.

  Okay. Better to be sweaty and out of breath than God knows how late.

  Shifting her computer bag to her other hand, Kate turned toward the stairs. She hadn’t gone three steps before a chime sounded and a set of elevator doors slid open. Wasting no time, she launched herself into the empty car and pressed the button for the lobby and the Door Close button at the same time.

  Kate eased into the small meeting room and tried to keep her pace dignified as she walked up the center aisle. The moderator watched her from behind the podium, frowning over the top of bright red reading glasses. Of course, everyone else in the room had swung their heads at the sound of the door opening and they were watching her, too.