Category 7

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  “In New York. I think I’m in FBI headquarters.”

  “What happened to you?”

  She looked down at her lap again. “I’d rather not get into it, Kate. I won’t be coming back to work. But I’ll be okay,” she said faintly. “Keep in touch.”

  A sick churn began in Kate’s stomach just as Wrap it up appeared on the white bar on-screen.

  “Elle, take care of yourself. If you need anything—”

  The screen went dark and Kate glared over the top of the monitor at Tom Taylor. “I’m not even allowed to say good-bye?”

  “You’ve got more important things to do,” he replied, and tapped a few keys. The screen behind him, which had been projecting a side view of Elle, changed to an image of the Atlantic Ocean. “Simone got bigger and picked up speed in the last hour. It’s two hundred fifty miles off the coast of Delaware and about six hundred miles southeast of New York City. According to the National Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service, it’s on a stable north-northwest trajectory. Its pressure has continued a slow and steady drop for the last twelve hours and it’s now at nine hundred and eighty-nine millibars. Tell me what that means.”

  “It means we’re in deep shit,” Jake replied.

  “She’s sitting on Bermuda,” Kate murmured.

  “Let’s fast forward, Kate. It’s going to hit New York, isn’t it?” Tom asked.

  Kate looked at him. “Unless she heads to Boston instead. In that case, it won’t get much worse than it is right now in the tri-state area. We’ll get the water and the wind, but not the storm. Not landfall.”

  “What are the odds of that happening?”

  Kate looked at Jake and shrugged. “Lower than fifty-fifty?”

  Jake nodded. “We have to wait and see. The next twenty-four hours—”

  “Are twenty-four hours we can’t afford to wait. We’ve confirmed the underwater seismic activity you mentioned, but if that second flash you saw was man-made, there will likely be other attempts. We’ve got additional satellite surveillance on the storm already to track any aircraft or sea-based vessels that get within a few hundred miles of it. I’ve got fighters on alert all along the coast in case we get uninvited company.” Tom stood up. “We’ll have people on the ground in Hyderabad in a few hours. The FBI is on its way now to bring Carter Thompson and Davis Lee Longstreet in for questioning.”

  “Why Davis Lee?” Kate blurted out.

  “Because he might know something,” Tom replied over his shoulder in a tone that couldn’t be more patronizing. “I have a meeting. In the meantime, why don’t you two figure out a way to stop this thing?”

  CHAPTER 42

  Monday, July 23, 9:10 A.M., a CIA safe house in rural

  Northern Virginia

  Jake set his mug down on the kitchen counter and the sound seemed to have a sort of finality to it. He looked at Kate, who was standing between the kitchen table and the refrigerator looking back at him awkwardly.

  “I can’t drink any more coffee. Want a Coke?”

  She smiled, looking as exhausted as he felt. “I’d love one.”

  Jake opened the fridge. By the time he’d turned around, Kate was sitting at the small breakfast bar.

  “Diet or Classic?”

  “Classic.”

  He slid a bottle and an opener across the counter and took a long pull from his own. The cool, sweetly acrid fizz woke him up and soothed him at the same time.

  “I don’t know about you, but I sort of wish I could wake up and this would all be just a really bad nightmare,” Kate said after swallowing a more ladylike sip.

  “It’s going to get worse.”

  “What’s going to stop that monster, Jake? She’s already devastated most of the East Coast. What more can happen? If Simone keeps tracking the way she is—” Kate stopped and took a breath, putting an artificially cheerful note into her voice. “Golly, all those doomsday predictions will come true.”

  There really was no response to that, so he just took another swallow of Coke.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Do you really think someone is behind all these storms we’ve been tracking?” she asked quietly.

  “I have no doubt, Kate. I’m absolutely positive that every one of those heat bursts was from an airborne laser.”

  “That’s insane. Who would do that? And why?”

  He shrugged. “Looks like it might be your man, Carter. I suppose it will depend on what they find out in Hyderabad when they get there, but things seem to be dropping into place.”

  “But why would someone do this? Especially Carter Thompson. He’s got everything anyone could want. I mean, I refuse to believe it’s just so he can make money—make a mess and clean it up. That’s crazy. So is it just to make some sort of a point? If Elle was right about him wanting to run for president, this is not a good campaign strategy. Millions of people could get hurt. Or killed,” she mumbled, then reached up to rub her eyes. “We live in a really messed-up world, Jake. A completely fucked-up world if somebody’s doing this,” she said, her voice having gone from tired to shaky.

  He stood on his side of the breakfast bar, not sure what he was supposed to do. Comforting her was a natural impulse, but it had the potential to get complicated, so he just said, “Yeah,” and lifted his Coke to his lips.

  To his surprise, she began to laugh. He stared at her until she slowed to an intermittent chuckle.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sorry. That ‘yeah’ was just so eloquent,” she said sarcastically.

  “Yeah, well. I’m a scientist. We don’t do emotion too well.”

  “No kidding.”

  He grinned and leaned on the counter. “So how the hell do we stop this thing?”

  “You and I both know there is no way. If there were, someone would have come up with it before now. You probably know better than I do how many people have tried over the years. That’s what you were really looking at when you were looking at the storms, right?”

  “No. I was looking at the storms, like I said. I just didn’t tell you why I was looking at the storms. There was that little thing called national security to consider.”

  “So now that I’m an insider we can talk about it?”

  He nearly choked on his drink. “You’re not an insider. You’re a fly caught on flypaper.”

  “I can never leave?”

  “I’m sure they’ll let you leave. They may degauss your brain first, though. Didn’t Candy give you the pep talk? You can’t ever talk about any of this.”

  “She was serious?” Kate asked, and he did a double take before seeing the corner of her mouth twitch. “So why didn’t Tom want Elle to know who he was?”

  “Three reasons. The first is that more people are scared of the IRS than they are of the CIA, and the second is that the CIA isn’t authorized to operate within the U.S., and the third is that everyone in the intelligence community lies. I wouldn’t take a bet that Tom Taylor is his real name, either.”

  “That makes me feel much better,” she said dryly, and lifted the bottle of soda to her mouth, finishing it. Putting it down on the counter, she stood up. “I hate to drink and run, but I need to be alone for a while before my brain melts down. I’ll be upstairs in the luxury master suite. Shout if you need me.”

  Jake nodded and watched her leave the room.

  Monday, July 23, 8:25 A.M., Campbelltown, Iowa

  “This is bloody daft.”

  Carter smiled at the pilot’s terse comment and didn’t reply as he watched the plane’s progress on his computer monitor. The steady beat of a light rain on the windows of his home office was welcome after so many weeks of placid weather.

  “We’re flying too low and too slow and too bloody close to American airspace. They’ve got recon planes out here in crap visibility and we’re not on their radar. If someone spots me, I’ll have F-18s giving me a Sidewinder enema before I can blink. That’s if we don’t collide first. This is madness. I’m going to abort a
nd get the hell out of here while it’s still an option. Over.”

  The plane immediately began to climb in a banking curve away from the storm, although it would be a while before it was completely out of range of the sweeping counter-clockwise winds. Carter tapped the key that controlled the microphone. “Negative. You’ll return to course and altitude and proceed as planned. Over.”

  “Wrong-o, mate. I’m signing off. Over.”

  Carter blinked as the communications icon went dark, then smiled wider.

  “You son of a bitch,” he murmured as he tapped a few keys and assumed remote control of the laser command module aboard the plane. “Let’s see what you think of this.”

  It was clear that the pilot had had no intention of executing the operation. Raoul hadn’t turned on all of the necessary equipment—an omission Carter quickly rectified by stepping through the remote sequences necessary to activate the fuel and power sources.

  The plane was already picking up both speed and altitude and had changed course toward the U.S. mainland.

  The communications icon lit up the instant the laser suite was online, which made Carter laugh quietly.

  “You demented bastard. Shut those things down.” The Brit was livid.

  “It’s my plane, Major Patterson, in case you’ve forgotten,” Carter replied with a smile in his voice. “I have an operation to complete and complete it I shall, with or without your help.”

  “I haven’t forgotten a thing. But you’ll wish I had. I’ve contacted Philadelphia Tower and requested emergency landing permission—”

  “You won’t be needing it. Just calm down.” Carter closed the communication link, completed the next remote sequence, and typed in the necessary coordinates. The location wasn’t ideal. The plane was too far away from the hurricane’s eye to do another pulse, but now he had the opportunity to test something he hadn’t tried since Ivan in 2004: targeting the ocean surface itself. Superheating the water in front of the storm wouldn’t be as effective as heating its core, but the additional warmth at and just below the surface would certainly fuel the storm.

  He set the pulse to last for fifteen seconds, many times longer than it was meant to last, and initiated the firing sequence. Seconds later, he watched as the small patch of sea surface changed from pale blue to green to yellow as the heat spread outward.

  When the time was up, the sensors on Carter’s monitor were flashing ominously. With a trace of regret, he activated the safety feature he’d had built into the plane in the event of just such a situation as this. He’d hoped never to use it, but now he had no choice.

  With a heavy heart, he typed in the last password and pressed Enter to activate the small explosive devices mounted inside the wing fuel tanks. He let out a heavy breath and brought his attention back to the storm on the other monitor. The patch of ocean had calmed and was already returning to a dark green while the storm itself had begun to swerve. And grow.

  “It will be all right,” he said to himself as he stood up and tightened the belt of his bathrobe. “It will be all right.”

  Monday, July 23, 9:45 A.M., a CIA safe house in rural

  Northern Virginia

  “Kate?”

  She jumped, pushing herself to a sitting position and trying to focus on the looming figure bending over her. She heard the crack of her head hitting Jake’s a split second before she felt the impact. The sensation sent her flat to her back, knocking her breathless for a second before the pain set in.

  He swore as she fought back involuntary tears.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she demanded. The room was still pitch-dark. The bed was still uncomfortable.

  He sat down on his bed holding his head in his hands. “Tom wants us both conscious and functional and downstairs.”

  “What time is it?”

  “You’ve only been asleep for a little while. Like half an hour.”

  She pulled herself to a sitting position against the wall as she rubbed the rising lump on her head gingerly. “Christ, you have a hard head.”

  “You, too. What did you do that for?”

  “Me? Why were you standing so close? I was asleep. What does he want, anyway?”

  “It’s Simone. She just escalated again.”

  Kate felt her eyes shut. Her lids had never been this heavy. “Damn.”

  “Worse than that. About fifteen minutes ago, a plane flying near the storm made contact with the Philadelphia control tower, asking about making an emergency landing. A few minutes later, it blew up. The plane was registered to Carter Thompson’s foundation.”

  Heavy lids and all, her eyes popped open. “What?”

  “There’s more. It didn’t show up on radar. It had some sort of stealth capability. The Coast Guard had picked it up visually. The Navy had already scrambled some jets to escort it in, but they didn’t get there in time. And before it blew, satellites picked up a high-energy laser beam directed from it into the water at the leading edge of the storm. It was the same signature as the others but it was no short burst. It lasted at least fifteen seconds. Two buoys recorded water temps of one hundred and twenty degrees at fifty feet. One surface buoy recorded one hundred and seventy before it fried.”

  She reached out and grabbed his arm. “Jake, are you kidding me? At the sea surface? For Christ’s sake, that’s nearly boiling.”

  “I’m not kidding.” He looked at her. “Something tells me it’s going to be a long day.”

  Monday, July 23, 12:00 P.M., East Village,

  New York City

  The moans and screech of the wind were the only sounds Davis Lee could hear as he sat in his living room, staring out the window of his third-story flat. The sound had reached an intensity that was eerie and hypnotic. Sitting motionless in the murky darkness, he felt alternately mesmerized and alarmed at what he’d seen happening on the street below. He’d been there for hours, possibly since before dawn—except dawn hadn’t occurred today. In that time he’d seen small trees ripped out of the ground, trash barrels flying through second-story windows, and an orange VW Beetle sliding sideways down the street until it smashed into the corner of a brick building. The car was nearly sliced in half, as was the driver. The passenger had climbed out in a daze and started screaming. When no one came out to help after ten minutes, she stopped screaming and stumbled down the street. Davis Lee hadn’t seen her again.

  That had been a few hours ago. Now, the streets were empty of people. Even the few looters he’d seen skulking around were gone. The water was running at least a foot deep in the streets, sloshing over the lower steps of those buildings that sported them. Twisted frames, denuded of their awnings, were flung wildly in all directions until they were finally wrenched loose and aloft.

  His apartment was starting to get stuffy. Opening the windows wasn’t an option. The power and phone service had gone out long ago. His cell phone still had some juice left in it, but there was no signal. The water was still running, but there wasn’t any real food in the place.

  At some point it had occurred to him that he might die. Not bravely, not nobly. Possibly quite horribly or painfully or in some way accompanied by humiliation. The thought had never crossed his mind before.

  For generations, his family had considered honor an obligation and good luck a part of their heritage, but the battle Davis Lee faced wasn’t one in which bullets could be dodged. This was Nature. And he was very sure that Man wasn’t blameless. One man, anyway.

  After Carter had left his office yesterday morning, Davis Lee had sat down and read Kate’s paper and the papers Elle had found, and then he’d gotten online and done some digging of his own. Kate was probably right; the storms were odd. News reports had all noted their unusual origins and then dismissed them because of their lack of additional newsworthiness. And Coriolis Engineering had been first in line to clean up the messes. Strange, destructive weather in the Sahara had been noted by the locals as well but disregarded by the rest of the world because it was in Africa. What was one
more disaster over there? Devastating out-of-season flooding was dismissed with a shrug and ascribed to global warming or desertification or some other climatological catastrophe in the making. And Coriolis Engineering had always stepped in almost before the governments could ask for help. Frequently, the Coriolis teams arrived bearing news of an extra helping of Carter’s personal philanthropy.

  The bastard had to be behind it all. There could be no other explanation. He was clever enough and rich enough to do it, and too vain to cover his tracks.

  But trying to figure out what Carter thought he might stand to gain by trashing the East Coast when he wanted to be president was—Davis Lee stopped breathing.

  President.

  That was the whole point. Carter didn’t just want to be president. He wanted to replace Winslow Benson. No, not simply replace him—bury him. Make his name synonymous with death and devastation.

  And how better to do it than to destroy one of the most potent symbols of the nation: New York City.

  The last story Davis Lee had seen on the news before the power went out last night was about the security of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant and how it was built to withstand 170-mile-an-hour winds, an upper limit no one had ever thought would be challenged.

  Carter knew that. And had apparently decided to test it.

  Davis Lee looked at his hands. By the end of this, they’d be stained with the indelible blood of thousands of lives. He’d been so adroit at finessing the company, or so he’d foolishly thought. All he’d really done in the last ten years was bring this moment to bear a little sooner than Carter might have on his own. Imagining and then building the investment side of the house had been ingenious, he’d thought. Carter, however, had realized from the start that what Davis Lee had suggested would be a cash cow; it would be Coriolis Engineering’s insurance when things went wrong and its bonus structure when things went right, as they so frequently did.

  I’ve brought this on myself.

  He sat at the window for a few minutes longer, then stood up and went to the small nook in his kitchen. A few stiff fingers of his favorite Elijah Craig buoyed him as he continued into the bathroom. The array of prescription bottles on the shelf was a testament to the good life: sleeping pills for those trans-Pacific business-class flights, painkillers from ligaments torn on the tennis court and knees trashed on snowy mountains, anti-depressants for the days when he had watched Enron die and Worldcom begin to thrash.