After being shown to her quarters, a tiny room barely big enough to turn around in, with the smallest bathroom facilities she’d ever seen, she dropped her duffle and followed the men to one of a thousand doors they’d passed. Their tour guide left them at the door, after knocking and announcing them. They walked into a tightly organized conference room complete with flat-screen monitors on every wall and swivel chairs that were bolted to the floor.
“Welcome aboard.”
Kate’s head snapped up at the sound of a woman’s voice. It wasn’t so much that it was a female voice in such a male environment. She’d already passed a number of women in the corridors. It was the tone of the voice. It held a little bit of annoyance and a little bit of curiosity. What it didn’t hold was any welcoming warmth. Neither did the tall uniformed blonde’s bright blue eyes. They were cold.
She turned her head slightly to meet Kate’s eyes and extended her hand. “Captain Joanna Smith.”
“Hello. I’m Kate Sherman.”
Captain Smith turned to Jake and repeated her introduction, then motioned to the table. “Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, have a seat,” she said wryly. “Everyone else will be here in a minute.”
They sat down at the conference table, the captain taking the seat at the head of the table, where a sheaf of papers and an open laptop were waiting. Within a few minutes, the seats at the table were filled by a team of serious, almost grim-faced uniformed men and women. Kate’s first impression, as they came into the room, was that they were much too young to be doing what they were doing. More than half wore wedding bands. Too young, and otherwise committed.
What in God’s name are any of us doing here?
After the first few confusing introductions, Kate realized they were introducing themselves by their duties rather than their titles. Their names were on their breast pockets. Their ranks were on their sleeves. Their confidence was present in every move they made.
Captain Smith began the meeting without preamble, her voice calm and flat. “The crew has been briefed on our mission, which is to neutralize Hurricane Simone using whatever means are possible and necessary,” she said, looking first at Kate and then at Jake before glancing around the table.
The words sounded ominous and Kate fought a shudder. Jake just blinked.
“Our meteorologists are tracking the storm and we’ve identified a rendezvous point, which we’ll achieve at approximately twenty-three hundred hours. We’ll be positioned to the north-northwest of the storm, well within the outer rain bands, and approximately one hundred nautical miles from the eye if its track remains true. That means we’ll be facing one-hundred-sixty-mile-an-hour or higher winds and very heavy seas. I anticipate being at general quarters, if not battle stations, for the duration of the operation.”
She looked down at her computer. “I believe you discussed using the Peregrine.”
When no one answered, she looked directly at Jake. “You discussed using the Peregrine?” she repeated.
“Yes.”
The captain glanced at a young woman at the end of the table. She looked like she should be in the high-school gym discussing cheerleading jumps, not sitting several decks below an aircraft carrier’s flight deck discussing high-tech weaponry.
“It won’t survive the winds, ma’am. I think we have to go with the Condor. It’s heavier and still has the laser capability.”
The captain’s eyebrow rose slightly. “That’s still experimental.”
“We have orders to field-test it.”
“This would hardly be a field test,” the captain replied dryly, then turned to a man sitting to her right. “What do you think?”
“I think we have no choice but to use the Condor.”
The conversation quickly filled with technical jargon Kate couldn’t follow and acronyms she didn’t understand. Unobtrusively, she let her gaze wander around the room. Like on an airplane, there wasn’t an inch of wasted space, except that in this setting nobody had to appeal to comfort or fashion. The decorating scheme was definitely utilitarian. Blue—navy blue, she supposed—and gray predominated. The table surface was Formica and the chairs weren’t heavily padded. The lights were fluorescent. The floor vibrated.
She heard the storm being mentioned by name and brought her attention back to the captain, who was speaking to an officer who had gotten up to draw a diagram on a whiteboard that had descended to cover a screen. Just then the most ungodly roar resounded in the room and Kate looked around in panic.
“What in the name of God is that?” burst out of her mouth before she could stop it, and in an instant every pair of eyes in the room was on her. Some were amused, one or two were disgusted, and Jake’s were already rolling skyward.
The captain raised an elegant eyebrow and turned to the officer to her right. “Perhaps you could explain.”
Youngish, sunburned, and trying to keep a straight face, the guy looked at her. “That’s a Hornet taking off, Ms. Sherman,” he said easily. “The Navy’s newest fighter jet. Our pilots are patrolling the perimeter of the storm to make sure no more planes with storm-enhancing capabilities get anywhere near it. Takeoffs and landings are sounds you’ll be hearing a lot while you’re aboard. I’m sure you’ll have the opportunity to watch them topside.”
“Thank you,” she replied sheepishly. “Please pardon the interruption.”
A knock at the door was followed by a sailor walking in. “Officer on deck.”
Everyone in the room immediately stood up as a short, fit Asian man beginning the slide out of middle age walked into the room. Everyone except Jake saluted, so Kate kept her hands at her sides.
“As you were,” he said before the door had even closed, and everyone relaxed but didn’t sit down. He walked to the head of the table. Kate noticed that the captain had vacated the seat at the end and had stepped in front of the chair to her left, which had been left empty. The newcomer gestured for her to return to her place. “Captain.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The man sat in the chair to the captain’s left and then she and everyone else sat down. A motion caught Kate’s eye and she looked down. Jake’s pen was pointing to the corner of his legal pad. Rear Admiral Takamura. Big shot was written there in small letters. She looked away, feeling the weight on her brain increase.
“As soon as we’re in position, we’ll begin deploying Condors,” the captain said, glancing at him.
“How many do you have aboard?”
“Ten,” the weapons officer replied from the far end of the table. “We were discussing configuration when you arrived, sir.”
“Carry on.”
The discussion of wavelengths and burst durations, altitude wind speeds, vectors, and vortex forces spun up again. A few minutes later, Kate tuned back in when Jake moved to the whiteboard.
“What do you think, Ms. Sherman?” asked Captain Smith.
Shit. Kate met the captain’s gaze. “Quite honestly, Captain, this discussion is beyond my area of expertise. I don’t know anything about weapons. I know about weather.”
The captain didn’t blink. “Do you have any questions that haven’t already been asked and answered?”
Another pop quiz. She glanced at Jake, then back at the captain. “Well, how far do the beams go? If they’re clearing the atmosphere as they move through it, do they degrade? Are they going to destroy things?”
“They do attenuate and light doesn’t bend, Ms. Sherman, so the beams won’t go below the horizon. As a precaution, though, the shipping channels to the south-southeast of the storm are being cleared to the thirty-second parallel,” someone from the other side of the table replied.
“Thank you,” Kate said quietly, and indicated to the captain that she had no other questions. She might as well have put a dunce cap on. She was far out of her depth.
CHAPTER 46
Monday, July 23, 6:05 P.M., Upper East Side,
New York City
Elle breathed a sigh of blessed relief. Sh
e was finally alone.
Special Agents Laurel and Hardy had insisted that she had to go to a storm shelter, but she had just as adamantly refused. God only knows what that would have been like. She would rather take her chances in her apartment, not that she believed a hurricane was really going to hit New York. But if it did, she’d be fine. The building was pre-war and built like a bank vault, and it stood on high ground on the Upper East Side.
The agents had relented only when she’d been able to track down Lisa Baynes and convince her to come stay with her. It was a good idea—both for the company and because Elle couldn’t do much for herself with the bandages on her hands. The intrepid Lisa had made it to Elle’s building despite conditions in the streets and was wowed into uncharacteristic silence at the sight of seven spacious rooms furnished mostly with antiques. Lisa had been a real help, despite all the questions she started asking the minute the agents left them. Thanks to her, Elle was clean and dressed in clean clothes and sitting on fresh sheets in her own bedroom, exhausted and contemplating her options.
Low-lying areas had been under evacuation advisories for the last few days, and wholesale evacuation orders had been issued yesterday morning. According to Lisa, the city was in an uproar, which was part of the reason Lisa had decided to stay. The mayor was demanding that people behave in a calm and rational manner; New Yorkers were responding, true to their character, by ignoring both the evacuation orders and the mayor. Reporters roaming the streets in search of precisely this sort of idiocy had found plenty of people whose emergency plans included seeking shelter in the subways. Which was fine, Elle thought, if you liked swimming with rats rather than sharks.
Now that she had fully regained her senses, Elle knew she had to leave this apartment, this city, this life. Every extra minute spent here was a moment wasted. Even knowing she wasn’t in any danger, she didn’t want to be here. Her bags had been packed since early afternoon and stood waiting by the front door for the first moment she could safely leave. Anywhere would be fine with her.
Win hadn’t called; the only calls had been from her parents. The call placed by Davis Lee had definitely happened, but Win was letting her dangle. At the moment, he was certainly safe and secure somewhere with his parents. No doubt the entire family was basking in the safety and comfort of their Montana ranch or their adobe palace in New Mexico, she thought bitterly. Not that she cared.
Right now, all she cared about was maximizing the damage control to her own life. She was counting on enough chaos after the storm passed to give her some cover as she headed to Washington to clear out her apartment. Despite the flooding, she was sure subletting it wouldn’t be a problem. It was half of a floor in a historic mansion perched above the city in Aurora Heights and thus very close to the Pentagon. She might even make something on the deal.
The weathercasters had run out of superlatives days ago, but glancing out the window, Elle thought again that this didn’t seem like the worst storm she’d ever seen. Lisa said that until the power went out, the TV talking heads had kept saying it was going to get much worse.
The backdrop of sky was composed of dark and darker shades of gray, and the clouds looked like they were boiling in some insane stew. The wind was driving the rain nearly horizontal between buildings. The constant flashes of lightning and deafening cracks of thunder reminded her of battle scenes in Saving Private Ryan, and the rain did its part, too, imitating the sound of muffled machine-gun fire as it hit the windows. There was a weird sort of solitude in the midst of such violence, though, and she didn’t mind it.
The harsh, unwelcome sound of the door buzzer broke into the rhythm of the rain against the windows. As Lisa’s wide-eyed face appeared in the bedroom doorway, Elle realized that the doorman hadn’t announced anyone. Just like last time.
Dread prickled the back of her neck. She didn’t know any of the other residents, and John would never let anyone into the building if they didn’t have approval. Or a badge.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. There are three guys out there. One had his head sort of down and I couldn’t see his face.”
With shaking hands, Elle reached for the bedside telephone console and depressed the code for the desk with a pencil. The bandages on her fingertips made dialing awkward if not impossible.
“John?” she said when he answered. “Someone’s at my door. Did you let someone up?”
“He told me it was a surprise, Ms. Baker. And I thought it would be all right. He said he was coming to take you away from the storm.”
“Who? Who told you?” she demanded, panic rising in her throat like bile.
“Mr. Benson. I’m sorry for ruining the surprise, Ms. Baker, but—”
She hung up the phone as the buzzer sounded again, longer this time, as if the person pressing it was impatient or annoyed.
Or ruthlessly angry.
Her heart thundering in her chest, she glanced at Lisa, who now looked thoroughly spooked.
“Don’t let them in.”
“Who are they?”
“It’s—he’s—” She stood up. “It’s Win Benson, the president’s son. Tell him I’m not here. Okay? Make up anything.”
“Who? Win Benson? I can’t lie to him. Why—”
“I can’t explain,” Elle said, her voice becoming nearly a shriek. “Just tell him I’m not here!”
She practically pushed Lisa out of the bedroom and shut the door. A moment later, she heard Lisa arguing with a man. Panicked, Elle spun around, vainly seeking an escape route.
“Elle.”
It was Win.
The bandages made her clumsy, but after a moment of fumbling, she opened the lock and wrenched open the window. She braced herself for the onslaught of the wind and rain before swinging a leg onto the black iron grate of the fire escape. The flat sole of her shoe slid beneath her weight, leaving her off balance, straddling the sill and hanging on to the wood of the window frame above her head. The rain felt like pebbles as it drove into the skin of her arms and the back of her head with a force that actually hurt. Her ears were popping, which made no sense since she was only on the eighth floor, and it was hard to breathe. She forced herself to take slower breaths, but it didn’t help.
She had to get to the street. She could wait out the storm somewhere and start over afterward. Ignoring the pain rifling up her arms, Elle gripped the frame tighter to counteract the increasing slickness of the wood beneath her bandaged fingertips and swung her other leg over the sill. Her dress, already sodden, clung to her thighs, hampering her efforts.
A cry of frustration ripped from her as she overbalanced and landed on the grated floor of the small landing. The wind sliced at her, wrapping her hair around her neck like a garrote and slamming bits of flying debris into her. Grasping the vertical supports on the railing, she pulled herself to a sitting position.
“Are you insane? What are you doing out there?”
The hoarse shout was close, and she looked up to see Win standing just inside the window, grimacing against the wind and flanked by his Secret Service detail.
“Leave me alone,” she screamed.
“Elle, you’re going to kill yourself. Come back in here. Grab my hand.” He reached for her, leaning halfway out the window before the agents hauled him back inside. One of the suits leaned out, telling her to inch forward and take his hand.
She looked away and down, seeking the top of the stairs but seeing instead the trash-filled alleyway behind the building. Beneath her swirled a river of upscale urban garbage, with wine bottles, milk cartons, and plastic grocery bags colliding in a filthy, tortured flow.
“Elle, give me your hand.” The voice—one of the agents’—seemed closer; she turned to see the man climbing out of the window.
“I can do this,” she muttered to herself, wondering when she’d started to cry. She pushed herself feet first toward the stairs. Her ass and thighs scraped along the rough iron as her dress refused to move with her.
“Elle, don’t,” Win shouted. “You won’t make it. Come inside, for Christ’s sake. What are you doing?”
There was panic in his voice, and that bolstered her courage.
“Leave me alone,” she shouted back, and felt her feet ease over the top of the stairs. Pushing herself harder, she moved her hands to the next segment of railing.
I’ll make it. This is easy. I just have to keep doing the same thing.
Hands grabbed her from behind, snaking under her arms and across her chest, pulling her up and back. She let go of the railing and clawed at the encircling arms with her raw fingertips, the bandages falling from her hands. Writhing, trying to get away, she felt the wet, rusty grate rip at the backs of her thighs.
“Let me go,” she screamed, wrenching her body away from the agent’s grip.
“Elle, stop—”
“Let me go!”
Lightning sliced through the darkness, striking something nearby. The crash, the shower of sparks that flared above the building in front of her, and the earth-shaking thunder that accompanied it disoriented her and, instinctively, she rolled toward the building. In the process, she dislodged the Secret Service agent. Realizing she was free, Elle flung herself down the stairs.
The searing impact of the edge of a step as it met her shoulder ripped a scream from her throat. Her vision clouded by tears and pain, she continued sliding down the steps, the heavy, industrial iron abrading every inch of flesh it met. She realized, as she tried to brace herself, that her left throbbing arm was limp, flopping unnaturally against her. Crashing into the enclosed landing, she felt a warm liquid trickle on her face and wiped it away, then looked up to see the agent, uninjured and intact, descending the stairs cautiously, but with a determined look on his face.
Using her good arm, Elle managed somehow to get to her feet. She leaned into the railing as she hobbled, barefoot, to the next turn in the staircase. Lightning struck again, closer, and the open staircase shook from the impact. As she turned to see how close the agent was, she saw a blur of dull orange and green, before the space above and around her exploded in a welter of mud and branches.
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