Category 7

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  “Not quite,” Angela responded with a laugh. “My diving days are over for this year. I get to be the boat tender. How have you been?”

  “Fine. Busy.”

  Angela moved gingerly across the deck to one of the benches in the stern and sat down. “I hated getting put on desk duty, but now I know why it’s a requirement. Forget all the hormonal nonsense. My balance is completely shot. I trip over nothing these days. And I’m not even at the waddling stage yet.”

  “Well, just stay there and don’t move around.”

  “The good news is that if I fell overboard, I think I’d bob like a buoy. No need for a life vest. Just give me a flare gun.”

  “What, so you can take out half the marina? I’ll get you a seat belt instead,” her husband said. He pulled a big, girly sun hat out of their duffle and clapped it on her head as he walked past her.

  Angela flashed Kate a grin. “So what’s keeping you so busy? There haven’t been any storms.”

  “Well, that’s actually part of it. We’re all trying to figure out what was up with the jet stream, but now we’ve got Simone to worry about.”

  Brad, who had just emerged from belowdeck, greeted them, then glanced at Kate. “Did you see what it did to the Bahamas? Looks like freaking Baghdad with water damage. And it just keeps starting, stopping, and then getting bigger. What’s up with that? Is this the big one that we’ve been hearing about ever since Katrina? The one that’s going to take out the East Coast?”

  “Brad, if I knew the answer to questions like those, I’d be diving off a bigger boat.”

  “Come on, I thought that’s what you get paid to do: predict the weather. Your boss must want to know what this storm is going to do. After all, if it hits us, he’s got to get his bulldozers out of the Gulf Coast and up here in time to clean up the mess.”

  Kate rolled her eyes and looked back at Angela. “What did you ask me?”

  “I asked you what was keeping you so busy. We missed you last time.”

  She took another sip of her rapidly cooling latte. “Just work. They changed the corporate structure and now I’m not only managing three other meteorologists, but I have to produce all these forecast reports covering ridiculous time frames. Either Davis Lee thinks I have a crystal ball in my office or he wants to get rid of me.” The words came out of Kate’s mouth on a laugh, but hearing them surprised even her.

  Doug and Angela were staring at her, surprise registering on their faces.

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  She forced a laugh. “No. Of course not. It was a joke. I’m as safe and secure as one can be on Wall Street.”

  “Which isn’t saying much,” Brad added lightly, glancing at his watch. “Figures that Tony is the last to show. Why the hell does he make such a big thing about checking his watch against the atomic clock four times a day if he can’t manage to get anywhere on time?”

  “He’s a theoretical physicist, that’s why. Give him a break,” Doug replied. “He’s been that way for as long as we’ve known him.”

  “I’m tired of giving him a break. He lives in Stony Brook, for Christ’s sake, and he’s late every time. You live in Manhattan and you’re usually early,” Brad snapped.

  “So, does Simone have you as worked up as it does Doug?” Angela asked, smoothly changing the subject as Kate sat down next to her.

  “As of when I went to bed last night it had stalled again, off the coast of Florida this time. Around Melbourne. I haven’t heard anything about it since then, though. I was listening to CDs on the drive out.” She looked at Doug. “What’s up?”

  “It started moving again.”

  “How fast?”

  “It’s still holding at a Category 4, but it’s moving up the coast at three miles an hour. Strangest damned thing I’ve ever seen. The leading edge is like a rototiller, chewing up everything for five miles inland.” He shook his head. “All of coastal Georgia is under mandatory evacuation. The Carolinas are still under voluntary evac, but that will probably change pretty soon. If this thing picks up some speed, it’s going to be ugly.”

  “Well, we’re overdue. Last year was a nice break,” Kate said lightly, in direct contradiction to the distinct clench in her stomach his words had inspired.

  Brad shook his head. “You guys gotta get your stories straight. This has been the best summer I can remember. That thing’s not going anywhere. It will fizzle out.”

  “It’s huge,” Kate pointed out. “If it fizzles, it will take days.”

  “The Atlantic storm season is typically slow early on and picks up around late July. Which is now,” Doug added. “And I agree with Kate. Even if it starts to destabilize soon, we’ll feel something. Maybe just heavy winds and rain, but it will still pack a wallop.”

  “Hey, guys, am I late?” Tony Figueroa shouted from the shore as he jogged onto the dock.

  Rolling his eyes, Brad said nothing as he walked to the cockpit and fired up the first engine. Both engines were humming with power held in check by the time Tony finally stowed his gear and threw off the lines. The big, V-hulled cruiser pulled away slowly, following the channel markers and gradually increasing speed as they headed away from the marina.

  An hour and a half later the boat was drifting lazily at anchor, well away from the two charter boats that had beaten them to the wreck by a few minutes.

  “It’s like bathwater. I’m so jealous,” Angela said, trailing her hands in the water.

  “Get over it. That crazy woo-woo childbirth consultant your sister insisted we meet may have talked about underwater births, but the North Atlantic is not what she meant,” Doug said as he pulled up the thermometer he’d tossed overboard as they’d come to a stop. He glanced at Kate. “Eighty-one.”

  She looked at him in shocked silence for a moment. “No way. It can’t be. It’s only the middle of July.”

  “Lighten up, Kate, it’s the upside to global warming,” Brad cracked as he hauled the air tanks up from below-decks. “I kinda like the idea of palm trees going native on Long Island. Going subtropical would add about three months a year to my business cycle, not to mention more beer and bikini time all around.”

  “How do you like the idea of that beautiful beachfront house of yours becoming an artificial reef?” Kate muttered as she took the instrument from Doug’s outstretched hand and checked it herself, then looked up at him again.

  “A reef? Katie, Katie, Katie, we’ll never get there,” Brad replied in a tone that held cocky amusement. “You just watch. Vermont will never have a coastline. The Finns won’t let naked snow rolling disappear without a fight and the Norwegians aren’t about to turn their cross-country skis into water skis any time soon. Mark my words. Either governments will go up to the North Pole with some serious snow-making equipment and bitch-slap Mother Nature into shape in the next few years or that guy who wrapped some island in pink Saran Wrap a few years ago will volunteer to go up there and wrap Santa Land in white. Presto change-o. No more problem.”

  “Instant albedo.” Kate smacked her palm against her forehead. “My God, Brad, that’s brilliant. Of course! We’ll just shrink-wrap the poles. Then all the thousands of scientists who’ve been researching global warming for the last thirty years can turn their attention to something really important.” She turned to Doug, who was laughing. “Imagine that, Doug. A guy who plants flowers for a living just solved the crisis of the millennium. How come you never thought of doing that?”

  “Because I’m obviously not sucking enough nitrogen. You should watch that mix, Brad.”

  “Yeah, yeah. And thanks for turning me from a landscape architect into a day laborer, Kate.” Brad brushed off the good-natured teasing with a laugh. “Just watch. The Saran Man will get an NEA grant to do it, too. Then we’ll be cursing him for putting us into a new ice age. So, anybody ready for some diving?”

  “I’m definitely making it into the boiler room this time,” Kate replied, opening her duffle and pulling out her gear. “I feel the need to scavenge
some contraband as a souvenir.”

  “Not with Captain Courageous in the neighborhood.” Brad jerked his head toward the larger of the two charter boats anchored a few dozen yards away. “He acts like he owns the damn thing.”

  Despite the unusually high water temperature, Kate was glad she’d opted to wear a thermal suit as she backrolled off the boat a few minutes later. The North Atlantic would never truly be warm. Not cold was about the best a diver could hope for below the surface, and that’s what it was today. She bobbed at the surface for a few minutes to fix her mask, adjust her mouthpiece and regulator, and make sure her underwater iPod was set to keep a steady flow of Enya coming at her. Then she sank beneath the water, trading the harsh sparkle of the surface for the hypnotic green translucence of everything below it.

  She took it slow and easy as she followed the anchor chain down. Ordinarily, Kate would now be in her “zone,” the New Age music working in tandem with the filmy light and sense of weightlessness to clear her head of everything but the present. But she couldn’t shake a distant, uncomfortable sense of foreboding. She knew it had nothing to do with the dive and everything to do with the weather and her research on those storms—and Jake’s. She’d been trying to ignore it all, but the more she tried to work around it the more space it took up in her brain: There was something very strange going on with the weather, and that wasn’t just her opinion. The chatter on the blogs, from the ones populated by weather professionals to those populated by more diverse weather geeks, had been getting steadily more concerned.

  For most of the spring, American weather had been too good to be true, which made weather people nervous. Real weather—not that she’d figured out precisely what made these storms seem not real to her—was a system built on churn, and destruction was its natural and not uncommon outcome. When the sun shone too much, things burned up and died. When it rained too much, things drowned. Too much wind, too many clouds—everything had a natural and, from a human perspective, negative result. But lately, the weather hadn’t been causing anyone trouble. Until Simone had kicked up unexpectedly and begun knocking the hell out of the eastern Caribbean.

  For two months, a succession of high-pressure fronts had formed over the Plains and rolled across the Midwest toward the East Coast, disrupted only briefly by occasional Gulf lows that brought steady, gentle rains. Meanwhile parts of the West that had suffered from droughts for the past few years were getting plenty of Pacific rainfall. Not enough to cause damage but enough to replenish water tables and nourish crops. Even the hurricanes had stayed away from the U.S. coastline, inexplicably taking unusual turns toward equatorial waters and breaking up as they lost their spin, or stalling in the Caribbean and doing very little harm before dissipating.

  To Kate, it had started to get downright eerie, but as far as the general population of the U.S. was concerned, the summer had been pretty close to perfect. To the nation’s meteorologists and environmentalists, though, that only meant the coastal waters would continue to warm, leading to a busy and deadly second half of the hurricane season, which was exactly what was happening now.

  With a start, Kate realized she was over the huge gun barrels that stuck up out of the sand and followed the rest of the team into the gaping black hole that had ended the San Diego’s career.

  CHAPTER 33

  From her location fifteen miles off the prosperous and populated South Georgia coast, Simone was making her presence known. Screaming winds lashed the barrier islands, changing their shape, ripping out the carefully planted sea oats, flattening the nurtured dunes, demolishing the enormous seaside “cottages.” Tabby walls crumbled back to their humble origins, reduced to no more than piles of shattered oyster shells and sharp concrete. Driverless cars skidded down the flooded roadways. Furious waters shoved under doorways and buckled terraces, leaving them heaped with the twisted debris of uprooted gardens and human vanity.

  The only objects moving under their own power were vans sporting the brightly painted logos of news organizations. They patrolled the devastation, seeking not survivors but to feed the salacious appetites of residents of other, drier places. One stopped in front of a once-beautiful mansion, its storm shutters torn off and dangling sickeningly from the lightning rods ringing the fractured roofline.

  Gingerly, a young woman climbed out of the van, her bright yellow anorak sleeked against her body, her shoulders braced and head bowed before the wind. A few steps away from the van, she stopped and turned around, leaning against the warm-colored brick of a pillar that had once borne the gates to the house.

  At her signal, the van door slid open again and a similarly dressed figure clambered out, the heavy, shrouded camera on his shoulder diminishing his already-impaired stability. The small satellite dish on the roof of the van began turning slowly, its antenna cone seeking a signal. The cameraman leaned against the vehicle and pointed the lens at the reporter, and at his gesture the woman brought the microphone to her face, pushed back her hood, and began speaking, straining to be heard over the wind.

  The wind bit into her face, driving water into her eyes and grit and sand into her ears, nostrils, mouth, and skin. A lightning bolt made thunderous contact with the antenna, tossing the van onto its side—and onto the cameraman. The camera skidded to the woman’s feet, water running red behind it. Her screams went unheard in the dark morning and she ran to the van, which was now beginning to slide away with the force of the wind, leaving pulpy human smears on the puddled asphalt. The satellite dish snapped off and flew up and into the trees, coming to a precarious rest in a thicket of twisted branches.

  The passenger door, now facing the sky, opened, and a dazed, bareheaded young woman crawled out, looking around. An awkward, ungainly jump brought her into harsh contact with the street. The first woman helped her to her feet, and hand in hand they began running toward the relative shelter of the destroyed house. A few steps later, the bareheaded, T-shirted girl, the producer, broke away and ran back toward the wall. Stooping to pick up the battered camera, she made sure the red light was still glowing and scuttled back across the road to her colleague.

  As she approached, a heavy gust caught the edge of the reporter’s anorak and lifted it, filling it with wind and making it billow like a sail. Helpless to fight it or deflate it, the reporter stumbled as the gale forced her into motion. In the next moment, the woman was aloft, her terrified screams lost in the wind, her panicked face caught on tape.

  The van’s satellite mast, bent at a useless angle, stopped her before her body rose too far from the ground. Impaled, she went instantly silent. Her limp, lifeless arms and legs flailed at the mercy of the wind, twisting her body. Shaken, retching, the producer turned away, turned off the camera, and crossed the sodden yard to the house now open to the storm. Finding an interior staircase, she took shelter beneath it and sat and shook and prayed.

  CHAPTER 34

  Saturday, July 21, 2:00 P.M., McLean, Virginia

  Jake stood up and stretched. He’d spent most of the day hunched over the microfiche reader in a small, secure carrel in the Agency’s otherwise spacious library, and the experience hadn’t done anything for his back or his eyes. Visine had become his closest friend. But he was making progress. Right around noon, he’d finally eased out of the 1960s.

  That decade had been the heyday for both overt and covert weather research as far as he’d been able to tell. Of course, the sixties had been the heyday for the CIA in general. Everything had been less complicated then. Decisions were made and operations executed without, apparently, a whole lot of discussion or review, and certainly with no navel-gazing. Cuba and the Eastern Bloc had been the Agency’s enemies, and Central and South America had been its playground. The White House had been its defender, and the Senate had been its willing benefactor. The media had been unsuspecting allies. In short, the world had been the Agency’s oyster.

  Then came the 1970s. Budget cuts. Internal leaks and external exposures. Washington Post reporter Jack Anderson and Pre
sident Richard Nixon. Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Senator Claiborne Pell and the Senate hearings that eventually quashed Operation POPEYE. Jimmy Carter.

  That decade had been a hell of a comedown.

  After the unfortunately public acknowledgment and disbandment of POPEYE, funding for many—too many—other covert weather research operations had been cut as well. Most of them had been orderly, methodical scientific operations with clearly identified objectives like steering the jet stream or using a variety of electromagnetic frequencies to do a vast, weird assortment of things. But the workings of one group of weather specialists in particular had caught Jake’s eye.

  Running a highly classified project with a big budget and little to no oversight—much like the task force he was currently on—this group’s experimentation and research were significantly more advanced than anything he’d ever come across. Their goal hadn’t been benign and their work hadn’t been just theoretical. They had been successful—until their funding was cut off with a single blow from the Senate.

  The notes and descriptions of what they’d been working on could be extrapolated into a blueprint for what was going on right now. The creativity and detail were unsettling, and given the speed and abilities of the computers they’d had to work with, their calculations and predictions, not to mention their successes, were nothing short of amazing. He’d felt a similar awe when it had finally sunk in that Einstein had honed his theories using a slide rule and a pencil. It was practically unfathomable.

  The identities of the team members had been redacted from the microfiche, but the odds were good that some of those guys were still around. Somehow he was going to have to track them, even though gaining access to their names and concocting a cover story so he wouldn’t reveal to them what he was really working on would take longer than devising a work-around.

  Saturday, July 21, 7:50 P.M.,