Category 7

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  He took them all back to the living room. Sitting on the expensive sofa a gorgeous interior designer had charmed him into buying, he began to wash them down a few at a time, as he watched the rain coutinue to fall.

  Monday, July 23, 11:45 A.M., Campbelltown, Iowa

  Carter had left his office early to return to the house where, as usual, he would have lunch with Iris on their deep, covered front porch. They were sitting in their favorite chairs, watching the grandchildren play a muddy game of tag on the broad front lawn. Several of their daughters stood in a cluster nearby, supervising.

  A movement to the far left of the lawn caught Carter’s eye, and a second later he saw his caretaker’s white pickup slowly appear around the final turn in the long drive. Three black SUVs with darkened windows followed it.

  An alien sense of dread floated in his gut as he set his coffee mug on the small table between his chair and Iris’s. Nelson hadn’t called from the gatehouse to say there were visitors even though that was the established protocol, and that was highly unusual. A retired Iowa state trooper, Nelson always followed protocol.

  “Carter, what’s wrong? Whose cars are those?” Iris asked, more than a little alarm in her voice.

  “I think you should get the girls and the children and go inside, Iris.”

  “No, I won’t. Carter—”

  He stood up as the two lead vehicles came to a stop in front of the house. The two other vehicles peeled away from the others and went in opposite directions around the house. The children had stopped playing and were watching with open curiosity. Three of his girls called the children to them. Meggy, the lawyer, headed straight for the porch.

  Nelson got out from behind the wheel of the pickup. A blond woman in a dark windbreaker climbed out of the passenger side. A badge hung on a lanyard around her neck. Four similarly clad men got out of the other vehicle and fanned out across the front of the house. One stopped Meg mid-stride.

  “Mr. Thompson, I’m Special Agent Susan Lemke with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the blond woman called out as she approached the porch. “We’d like to talk to you.”

  “This is a rather heavy-handed way of going about it, Agent Lemke,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “You could have made an appointment to meet me at my office like most other people do. This is my home. You can’t have any business here.”

  “Please keep your hands where I can see them, sir, and move away from the stairs.”

  He let his hands drop to his sides and looked beyond her to his caretaker and head of security for his residence. “Nelson, what’s going on?”

  “They have a search warrant, Mr. Thompson. I had to let them on the property, and they wouldn’t let me call you.” Nelson’s voice was cool and professional.

  Carter turned back to the agent who was now on the porch. Another agent had joined her and stood on the bottom step against the opposite handrail. Meg was watchful. Iris was sobbing quietly, having sunk back into her chair and covered her face with her hands.

  “What do you want, Susan?” he asked the agent with a smile.

  She didn’t react to the familiarity in his voice. Her stance on the top step was not aggressive, but she was ready to move as needed. Her eyes were as expressionless as her voice. “We have a warrant to search the premises, sir. And we’d like to question you with regard to your recent trip to New York as well as some other activities.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Carter,” Iris gasped, one hand dropping to cover her heart, the other sliding to cover her mouth.

  “No, sir, but if you would like to have your attorney present during our questioning, you have that right.”

  “That woman with the blond hair is my daughter and my attorney,” he said, gesturing to Meg, who was immediately allowed to join them on the porch.

  “Daddy, don’t say a thing.” She turned to the agent. “May I see the warrant, please?”

  He could hear movement in the house and orders being given and knew they had begun ripping apart his life as well as his home. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath against the growing pounding in his chest. Raoul, the flight crew, and the plane were gone, but the facility in India was still active and he couldn’t trust anyone there to protect his work, not once the money dried up. It wasn’t in Iris to lie. She would tell them everything she knew, which wasn’t much but would be enough to fill in gaps.

  He realized that the almost painful high he had experienced when those last tests had gone well and the small erratic episodes he felt under stress were nothing like a heart attack. That had been ecstasy, a combination of pleasure and pain. The sensation in his body now held no pleasure. The pain was shooting down his arms, the pressure crushing his chest wall, and yet he did nothing to stop it, nothing to reveal it. It was part of his pact with Nature. He’d agreed to let go when he was supposed to, and now he was supposed to. He’d fulfilled his role, met his destiny. The rest was to be written without him. The cloudiness in his head had to be Nature’s way of letting him go easily. Hopefully the pain would be over soon.

  He had no doubt they would find everything. It was all in his office. Beyond encrypting it, he hadn’t hidden it. There was no reason to.

  Their presence here was all about his success. He knew it in the depths of his failing heart. They were going to take away his dreams and demonize him for pursuing them, then secretly continue his work. This was Winslow Benson’s final insult. They’d take it all. His work, his dreams, his success.

  He couldn’t hide a grimace as the pain increased, couldn’t stop himself from gasping, from trying to grab the railing to maintain his balance. His arm wouldn’t work, though. It never left his side. And he began to fall.

  The agents caught him before he hit the wood, the broad planks of chestnut he’d cut himself.

  “Daddy? Are you all right?” The voice was distant and followed by a scream. It was Iris’s scream.

  He tried to call out, to tell Iris everything would be fine, but his voice remained in his head. Locked in his head, with all of his secrets. And they began tearing at his clothes, touching him, talking about him as if he weren’t there.

  CHAPTER 43

  Monday, July 23, 1:35 P.M., a CIA safe house in rural

  Northern Virginia

  The thunder and rain were so noisy that neither Kate nor Jake heard the helicopter until it was practically on the front lawn. When the sound registered, they walked together toward the dining room, which was serving as the command center.

  “Oh hell,” Kate whispered on the threshold.

  The same words ran through Jake’s mind. The room was filling with uniforms from every branch. They were shaking off the rain and draping their wet jackets over the few hangers in the coat closet.

  There was very little conversation as people seated themselves at the table or stationed themselves along the walls. Tom went to the head of the table.

  “Thank you all for arriving on such short notice,” he said in his usual flat, condescending tone. “I know you’ve all been briefed about the stealth-enhanced P-3 that exploded minutes after making contact with the Philadelphia tower. We’ve confirmed that prior to the explosion it deployed a laser burst with a one-point-o-four-five-millimeter wavelength that lasted fifteen seconds and was directed to the ocean surface. We haven’t determined yet whether this was a misfire or a deliberate act, nor have we determined what the target was if it was a deliberate act. We do know that the plane was the so-called research aircraft owned by the Environmental Replenishment Foundation, which was run by Carter Thompson as a front for weather control research. Agents from the FBI contacted Thompson late this morning to execute a search warrant and question him. Minutes after they arrived, he suffered a heart attack and a massive stroke. He’s still alive and apparently cognizant, but suffered severe motor impairment and is unable to speak. He’s at the regional trauma center and the agents are monitoring him as closely as the doctors are. Davis Lee Longstreet, who ran one
of Carter’s companies and who may have known about the foundation’s work, was found in his New York apartment a short time ago. He apparently committed suicide by taking an overdose of prescription medication.”

  A horrified cry escaped seconds before Kate clapped a hand over her mouth. Tom paused and looked at her. “My condolences, Ms. Sherman.” He scanned the room. “That leaves us with a Category 5 hurricane less than two hundred miles from the U.S. coastline.”

  No one spoke as he glanced down at his notes.

  “We’re reasonably certain that there has been external, man-made interference with the storm on at least two occasions less than ninety-six hours apart. These also consisted of one-point-o-four-five-millimeter-wavelength laser bursts directed at the eye of the storm. Each incident preceded the storm’s escalation.” He sat back in his chair then and looked around the room casually. “Carter Thompson worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a weather researcher, as did Richard Carlisle, who was murdered approximately forty-eight hours ago. The project on which they worked dealt with creating and exacerbating cyclonic storms, and they successfully created or escalated eight typhoons in the Pacific during the summer of 1971, including two that exceeded the lower limits of a Category 5 designation.

  “After that success, a congressional committee rewarded them by cutting the project’s funding and Carter was out of a job. One of the members of that committee was Winslow Benson. Recent intelligence indicates that Carter Thompson had both an obsession with the president and presidential ambitions of his own. Based on that and other intelligence, we’ve determined with a fairly high assurance that Thompson is behind Simone’s escalation, and that the probable target of the storm is the Northeast, presumably New York City, where the president was scheduled to speak in three days’ time. At the moment, all indications are that this storm will continue to grow and will continue to track to the northwest, which means New York.”

  He reached up and rubbed his ear thoughtfully, which made Jake’s hands itch to throw a punch. The prick was playing it much too cool.

  “One problem is that we don’t have any intelligence on how many planes Thompson had. If there are other aircraft equipped to continue this operation, the storm could be escalated again. In addition, Carter’s companies have a small constellation of observation and communication satellites in low-earth orbit. For all we know, he could have the same technology mounted on one or more of them. We won’t know until we talk to the people in Hyderabad, where his sandbox was.”

  “What’s the situation there?”

  “We’re trying to move under the radar. The last thing we want is the Indians getting their hands on anything before we get there.” Tom moved his gaze around the room again, taking in everyone. “The DNI wants to take the offense on this, which means that we have to anticipate another escalation. I think we all know how much better it would be to avoid one. Even if this hurricane remains a Category 5, if it makes it up to New York, the impact of Katrina would look like a day at an amusement park.”

  “There is nothing higher than a Category 5,” Kate blurted.

  Tom barely glanced at her. “There is now. Which is why I’d like to hear some alternative scenarios.”

  The room remained silent.

  “Alternatives to what?” Kate asked finally.

  Tom looked at her again. “Alternatives to escalation, Ms. Sherman.” Then he turned to Jake.

  Great. Jake felt his mood head south.

  “Dr. Baxter, what will stop a storm like Simone?”

  “Nothing,” Jake replied flatly. “Nothing man-made, that is. People have made attempts in the past, like spreading vegetable oil on the sea surface or seeding the storms, but nothing has ever worked. Natural phenomena that can diminish a storm would be severe wind shear or a dramatic change in temperature. For instance, if it hit a pocket of cold air or cold water, it would likely diminish, but it would have to be a very large area of water. Otherwise it might just split the storm into smaller storms.”

  Tom turned to one of the Navy officers. “Can we do that? Can we supercool part of the ocean?”

  The guy didn’t even blink. “No, sir.”

  Tom’s eyes narrowed. “Do you mean that you know we can’t, Commander, or your gut feeling is that we can’t? Has there ever been any attempt made or study commissioned?”

  “I don’t know of any studies or attempts, and it’s more than a gut feeling,” the commander responded, his jaw tighter than it had been a moment earlier. “Even if such an operation were a theoretical possibility, there are logistical problems. We don’t have a ship or crew to sacrifice by putting it in the path of that storm. If the operation didn’t work, and maybe even if it did, it would be a suicide mission for everyone on board. Beyond that, without any studies having been done, we don’t know what refrigerant would be appropriate. Once that issue was decided, we’d have to ensure there was enough of it readily available to carry out such an operation, and then we’d have to fabricate equipment to disperse it.”

  Tom turned back to Jake. “Would a bomb work? Could we blow apart the storm?”

  Jake shook his head. “The amount of energy produced by a Category 5 hurricane is immense. It could provide enough power to keep the East Coast lit up for a long time—if we could harness it. To counteract and disrupt that sort of energy would take an enormous nuclear bomb, bigger than anything ever produced, and even that probably wouldn’t work. Aside from the obvious environmental and health-related implications, that is.”

  The room fell silent, and after a few minutes Jake cleared his throat. Everyone’s eyes veered toward him and it was an effort for him not to back down.

  “Do you have something else to add to the discussion?” Tom asked.

  Here goes my career. Jake swallowed. “I have an idea that might be worth attempting.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Tom replied.

  “It’s an extreme long shot.”

  “No doubt.”

  Jake met his eyes. “For years, lasers have been used for warm fog dispersal for aircraft landings and takeoffs. It’s fallen out of favor recently because newer heads-up displays in cockpits have made it obsolete, but it’s a proven technology. Certain lasers can generate enough heat to evaporate warm fog, which is just water vapor, pretty much instantly. And water vapor is what is sucked up by the convection towers in a hurricane. If we could direct lasers into the eye walls laterally and at very low altitudes—close to sea level—we might be able to disrupt and weaken the convection cycle.” No one spoke after he stopped, and no one would make eye contact with him except Kate and Tom.

  “You’d need a lot of lasers,” came from farther down the table.

  “Or a few powerful ones,” Jake replied.

  Tom looked at him, frowning in confusion. “If lasers evaporate water, why did Thompson’s lasers escalate the storms?”

  “What he was doing was like dumping a can of gasoline on a bonfire,” Jake said. “He fired the lasers at the top of the storm cell, where all the latent heat in the column of water vapor is already being released as energy. The blast of heat from his laser sped up that release of energy, creating more of an upward pull on the column of air already rising in the eye. The convection cycle expanded dramatically, making the storm taller, wider, and faster. What I’m suggesting is that we try to cut off the circulation at the bottom of the air column long enough to destabilize the storm.”

  Tom squinted at him. “Are you thinking of lasers mounted on aircraft that would fly through it, or lasers mounted on ships?”

  “I hadn’t thought that far into it, the idea just occurred to me. But that decision is outside my expertise anyway.” Jake shrugged.

  Tom glanced over at a skeptical officer in Air Force blue. “What do you think, Major?”

  “You can’t fly a jet through a hurricane. You’d need props. We don’t have any of those mounted with lasers. Neither does the Navy.”

  “Do we have anything we
could deploy this way? UAVs?”

  The naval commander looked uncomfortable. “Well, sir, the Peregrine carries lasers, but it’s still experimental—”

  “It would have to be big enough and heavy enough to operate in a vortex,” Jake interrupted. “What kind of engine does it have?”

  The officer met his eyes briefly. “It has a rocket engine that gets it up to altitude and speed, then drops off. Props take over,” he said quietly, in a voice full of condescension.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kate flash a piece of paper at him.

  You want to evaporate a hurricane using LASERS???

  You read entirely too much science fiction. BTW,

  what’s a UAV?

  Unmanned aerial vehicle. Drone, he wrote, and slid it back to her.

  “What sort of lasers? What’s its range? How big is it?” Tom demanded.

  “Two hundred seventy-five pounds with a top cruising speed of six hundred miles an hour and a range of one thousand miles. It can stay in the air for three hours, but it doesn’t perform as well as others in turbulence.”

  “What does?”

  “The Predator, but that doesn’t have lasers.”

  “Then we don’t need to talk about it. What sort of laser does the Peregrine carry? Could it work in the way Dr. Baxter has described?”

  “Its lasers are infrared, in the same range of wavelength as the ones used to excite the storm. What’s been suggested might be within its operational capability,” the commander said stiffly. “The Peregrine conducts remote reconnaissance. Search and destroy missions.”

  “Don’t be coy, Commander,” Tom snapped. “Could the lasers take out this storm?”