Category 7

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  As Elle threw her arm up to protect her eyes from the shattering terra-cotta pot from the penthouse terrace, she lost her balance and fell heavily against the fire escape’s railing. The impact of the huge potted tree had driven the body of the agent down through the grate. Mud spilled over a few large shards of pottery onto the macabre mass of clothing and body tissues that dangled for a moment before being torn away by the wind. They flew into the alley and the city beyond it. Elle vomited and turned away, dropping to her knees. The landing swayed beneath her.

  She snapped her head up and focused on the brick wall ahead of her, on the black iron bolts that were leaning away from their moorings.

  “Oh God. No. I’m not going to die here.” The words echoed in her head. She wasn’t sure if she’d actually uttered them as she inched closer to the top of the next staircase.

  Seven flights. I can do this.

  She descended the stairs as steadily and smoothly as she could, ignoring her pain, keeping her breathing measured, and concentrating on keeping her footing and her grip on the railing. As her foot touched the sixth-floor landing, the entire structure wobbled and she froze, holding her breath, her gaze fixed on a bolt that had come completely out of the brick.

  Hesitating won’t help. Keep moving.

  The wind ripped at her. She was getting colder; it was harder to control her trembling and even to move. Taking a steadying breath and gripping the hand rail tightly, she took a step forward. The agent’s shoes lay ahead of her, one still attached to a foot. Muddied, bloodied, and tangled impossibly into the grate lay the pulpy remains of his legs and other things less identifiable.

  Fighting the urge to vomit again, she moved on, careful to dodge what was dripping down from above and avoid stepping in what remained in front of her.

  She kept her head down against the storm, glancing up infrequently to gauge her progress. The rain, driven by the icy wind and laden with the city’s grit, sandblasted her already-raw skin, making each step more painful than the last, each step slower than it needed to be. Nearing the last step before the third-story landing, Elle raised her head slightly and stumbled at the sight of Win, standing alone in the alley below, almost up to his knees in water. There was actual concern on his face and he was shouting something at her that was obliterated by the thunder, the banshee screams of the wind, the metallic wallop of Dumpster lids flapping like manic sheets on a clothesline.

  The trembling in her knees, compounded by the lightness in her head and the growing surreality of what she was doing, brought her to a stop. She collapsed onto the metal stairs. The groaning and shuddering of the fire escape registered somewhere at the back of her mind as she rested her good arm on her knees and began to cry. Eventually a sound that she recognized penetrated the growing numbness in her brain and she raised her head.

  Win had moved farther into the alley, had come closer to her. He was standing directly beneath the fire escape in the swirling water. His suit coat, like the rest of his clothing, was plastered to his body.

  “Come down.” The words were faint against the howling wind.

  She shook her head slowly, tears still flowing. “I can’t,” she whispered, knowing she couldn’t go back up to the apartment, either. Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, she felt the fire escape shudder again and looked up in time to see the remains of another potted tree falling on to the grates above her.

  The sensation of falling didn’t last long. Mercifully, neither did the sensation of having the weight of the fire escape land on her back.

  CHAPTER 47

  Monday, July 23, 11:45 P.M., Atlantic Ocean, aboard

  the USS William J. Clinton

  As the night dragged on, the faces changed occasionally as people left the room and others came in, but the tension level never lessened and the muted conversations never rose in volume. Most eyes in the room were glued to the three flat screens dominating the longest wall. Kate blinked at the satellite radar view of the storm on the screen ahead of her. It was hypnotic in its sameness and slowness, probably because white obscured everything else that would ordinarily be visible on the map. The outline of the eastern U.S. and Canada, Bermuda, and much of the Caribbean seemed superimposed on the cloud cover.

  She’d always thought that the majesty of storms as they appeared on the radar screen held a twisted sort of magic. The white wisps at the far edges of the storm looked so delicate, belying the deadly force propelling them and the horrible damage they inflicted. The infrared satellite images, however, never downplayed a storm’s fury.

  The ragged saw blade of hot orange, with its red core and flaming yellow blades, spun counter-clockwise like an ominous Catherine wheel. Green covered much of the rest of that screen. From the Caribbean to Boston, from east of Bermuda to the Ohio Valley, the pixilated rain bands changed minutely as she watched. Kate knew it was a real-time feed, the best technology had to offer, but she still had the sense that she was watching slowed-down animation. She had the urge to speed it up and get to the natural conclusion. Except, in this case the natural conclusion was what they were trying to avoid. The natural conclusion was death for potentially hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, if the storm destroyed Indian Point.

  She slid her focus to the middle screen, a feed from a camera mounted in the belly of an Air Force P-3 Hurricane Hunter, which was circling several thousand feet above sea level in the storm’s eye. The sea’s surface was bright, a thrashing, foamy blue void slashed with white. The data coming in from the dropsondes, the small sensor-filled canisters the crew dropped into the storm, was grim.

  The numbers ticked over as the data from the last ‘sonde was received.

  “God damn it,” Jake said. He didn’t yell. His voice was pretty calm actually, but the silence in the room was so dense that it might as well have been a shout.

  “Oh my God,” Kate whispered, her throat reflexively closing as she felt fear’s grip.

  The barometric pressure was down to 883 millibars, one tick above the lowest sea-level pressure ever recorded, and the sustained wind speeds in the eye wall had reached 178 miles per hour. The water temperature beneath the eye was approaching 85°F. It was far too warm for the mid-Atlantic. Far too warm even for the Gulf Stream. It was fuel for an inferno already out of control.

  “Baxter. Sherman.” The captain’s voice was emotionless and all the more authoritative for it. They turned toward her. She stood next to one of the consoles, her face grim but impassive. “It’s time to rock and roll.”

  She began issuing orders in that eerily calm voice, and the energy level in the room punched up as personnel further down the hierarchy began issuing orders of their own and the men and women stationed at consoles and monitors around the room began calling out information.

  Kate stood transfixed as she watched the third screen. It was split into two nearly identical views. These were the views from the two UACVs, the combat-ready drones, which were armed and waiting in their firing tubes. She’d found out earlier that, although unmanned, they would be operated by “joystick jockeys” at a naval base in California.

  A command was given and Kate heard a dull roar as she watched the screen flash, then blur. After that, she saw nothing but sky. Dirty, gray, churning sky. A moment later, the images on the screen changed. The right pane was the view from the drone. The left screen was the infrared view from a military satellite. Kate felt someone move up beside her. A glance to her left revealed the captain.

  “It’s fired with a rocket,” the captain said. “The booster gets it up to just beyond its cruising altitude and speed, guides it for a while, then drops off.”

  “Then how—”

  Kate’s question was cut short as the satellite image of the rapidly moving streak on the screen began to change. She watched nearly one-third of the drone’s body mass fall away in a slow arc. Her eyes widened as she saw long, narrow wings sweep out slowly from the sides. Smaller blades emerged at the rear of the vehicle. A propeller slid o
ut from the end and, already spinning, unfolded.

  “It’s under its own power now.”

  Kate looked over at the captain, who flashed her a quick smile. “I think they call that poetry in motion. It’s nearly thirty feet long, with a wingspan of nearly fifty feet, and it’s carrying five hundred pounds of electronics, including the laser and its fuel and propagation equipment.” She shook her head. “I have no idea how someone made it work, but I sure as hell hope they knew what they’re doing,” she said, then walked back to one of the consoles.

  The split screen changed again, and Kate watched another launch.

  She had no idea how long she stood there. The turbulence shaking the cameras made her nauseous, but the images from the drones were breathtaking as they switched from cloud-penetrating radar view, to full-color high-definition, to infrared and then started the sequence over again. From eight thousand feet, the sea was churning foam, white with slashes of darkness that disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared. Though deployed more than 250 miles away from the eye, the drones quickly penetrated rain bands well into the storm.

  “Dropping altitude.” The God-like voice over the speaker held no emotion as it called out the new coordinates. Then Kate heard the order to fire the laser and a brilliant streak erupted on the screen showing the infrared view. The second drone fired a minute later and both screens were lit up with the fiery, pulsing beams of light that strobed the swirling bands of rain and bisected the eye of the storm.

  “Shit,” Jake muttered loud enough for Kate to hear, and she tore her eyes away from the drones’ images to the view from above, from the hurricane hunter, and the numbers ticking over next to it.

  “What’s wrong? The core isn’t heating up, is it?”

  “No. Nothing’s happening. Not a damn thing,” he replied tersely. “Everything is stable.”

  “Shit,” she agreed, a blur of dull panic settling into her already-queasy stomach. “Can we keep firing? It’s only been a few minutes. It has to work eventually.”

  Jake leveled his gaze at her. “No, Kate, it doesn’t. We’ve got two thin beams of heat passing through the core of a storm that’s nearly seven hundred miles wide. If this works it will be a miracle.”

  “But it’s got to work,” she said, not liking the desperate note creeping into her voice but unable to block it.

  “I’ll give you two more drones. After that, we’ll have to abort the mission and get out of Dodge.” The captain’s voice cut through their discussion like a scalpel and they both turned to look at her. “We can last about another twenty minutes, but if nothing has changed, we’re going to have to get out of its path.” She turned to the officer to her left and gave the orders to deploy two additional UACVs. On-screen, the airborne lasers kept pulsing through the murk.

  “Jake,” Kate whispered, trying to control her excitement as she watched the numbers superimposed on the P-3’s bird’s-eye view. “Jake, the variables are changing. Look. I think it’s starting.”

  It’s about God-damned time. Jake whipped his head around, his eyes boring into the screen. Sure enough, the relative humidity had dropped by.03. He looked at the captain. “How fast can you scramble those drones?”

  “They’re being loaded in the tubes now,” she said.

  “Great.” He brought his gaze back to the screens, not fully trusting what he saw.

  The numbers from the P-3 were stable and would remain that way until they dropped another ‘sonde, but the rougher figures from the drones’ less sensitive sensors showed a drop of a full percentage point of relative humidity as they passed through the areas the beams had just swept.

  As the unmanned vehicles approached Simone’s eye, the tension in the room rose like a storm tide. The turbulence was jarring and the images were blurred almost beyond recognition. The beams were arcing wildly as the pilots in California fought to maintain the drones’ course and altitude.

  “If one of those beams hits a drone, we’re screwed,” Jake muttered.

  About a second later, the deep drawl of the hurricane hunter pilot came over one of the speakers. “I don’t suppose you’d mind turning off those high beams while you’re in traffic?” he drawled.

  “Cease firing before we take out the boys upstairs,” the chief weapons officer said curtly. Almost instantly the drones’ beams disappeared from the screens.

  A terse thanks crackled from the desktop speaker.

  “What’s going on, Jake?” the captain demanded after a tense minute of silence as they all watched, and seemed to feel, the drones bounce like basketballs.

  “The eyewall, the wind bands immediately around the eye, are coming at one hundred and seventy-eight miles an hour sustained. The eyewalls are always the strongest winds in the hurricane,” Kate replied quickly. “They form the tightest circulation cell and are the most critical in keeping the storm alive. Once the drones cross them and get inside the eye, there will be an abrupt cessation of the violence. The wind speeds will probably drop by two-thirds. Then they’ll have to cross into the eyewall on the other side.”

  “Between the air pressure and the wind speed differentials, the drones will drop like stones.” Joanna’s voice had gone tight and low. “Or break up after passing through.”

  “There will have to be some corrections,” Kate admitted as the first drone burst through the wall of wind and rain into sunshine so brilliant that several people in the room gasped. Though that might have been due to the instant, uncontrolled thousand-foot drop the drone experienced before being pulled up. It blasted through the far side of the eye just as the second vehicle entered the space.

  Seconds later, the second drone attempted to penetrate the far eyewall. Striking the winds at the wrong angle, it flipped and shattered, exploding more violently than a mid-sized bomb, thanks to the dangerously low pressure. Shrapnel and fuel were sucked into the eyewall and began spreading out and spiraling upward into a lethal helix. Even a small piece could slice into the metal body of an aircraft like a hot knife through butter.

  Uttering his thanks for the adventure, the P-3 pilot climbed as far and as fast as he could, dropping one last ‘sonde before exiting the eye.

  “Well, I think I can safely say we’re screwed,” Joanna said as the airwing commander gave the order for the un-deployed drones to stand down. Everyone in the room knew that from this point forward the only data they’d be getting would be from the satellites and whatever the deep-sea buoys transmitted. Recon by the Hurricane Hunters was over.

  The weapons officer gave the command to resume the beam as the first drone moved through the stronger, forward winds of the storm. Joanna looked at Kate. “Any chance we can bring that bird home?”

  “If it can be turned once it’s in the outer band, and be brought back in at a different altitude, we might be able to. The debris from the drone that exploded will rise and then be flung out the top of the storm, so going in at a lower altitude shouldn’t pose much risk in the immediate future. It will be more effective to have the beams working at a lower altitude, but the lower the altitude in a hurricane, the worse the turbulence.” Kate shrugged. “I don’t think anything can hurt at this point.”

  “What’s another eight-million-dollar drone, right?” came the dry reply as Captain Smith turned back to her officers.

  Jake turned his attention back to the satellite view and the enormous expanse of swirling white that covered the screen.

  Tuesday, July 24, 12:15 A.M., a CIA safe house in

  rural Northern Virginia

  The word from the carrier was not good. The atmosphere in the house was several degrees beyond oppressive—in more ways than one. The air-conditioning had been cut off twenty-four hours ago; the generator was being used exclusively for the computers and the comms at this point. The tension in the place was choking. Stepping into the storm for some fresh air and solitude, even though it could mean death, was preferable. And that’s exactly what Tom Taylor did.

  The door hadn’t even shut behind him
when he saw a match flare, piercing the darkness to his left.

  “Shit.”

  The woman’s voice echoed his own thoughts.

  Since Kate was on board the carrier and Candy was still inside, that meant his company was the blunt, uncharming Colonel Brannigan.

  “Greetings to you, too,” he said dryly.

  “Believe it or not, that wasn’t meant for you,” came the equally dry reply. “This is my last cigarette and a raindrop just landed in the middle of it.”

  “You shouldn’t smoke anyway.”

  Her pause was laden with potential that she refrained from utilizing. “I was off them for eight years and went back on them after meeting you. I’m pretty confident that if I die in the next few days it won’t be from these.”

  Another match flared, followed seconds later by the first whiff of burning tobacco and, seconds after that, by a soft sigh that was almost erotic against the dark night, the screaming wind, the driving rain.

  They stood there in an uncompanionable silence for a few moments.

  “How’s Carter?” she asked.

  “He stroked on us.”

  “I heard. Is he dead?”

  “No. He’s cognizant but not cooperating.”

  She let out an annoyed breath. “What does that mean?” The you prick was silent.

  He turned to look at her. “It means that when he was asked questions to determine his mental capacity, he answered appropriately by blinking, but when FBI agents started questioning him about the foundation, the plane, and the storms, he just closed his eyes.”

  “Maybe he fell asleep.”

  “He didn’t fall asleep. He’s refusing to cooperate,” Tom replied flatly.

  Silence stretched across several minutes as they stood uncomfortably close to each other under the small overhang at the back door.

  “You do realize, don’t you, that you carry at least as much blame as he does for what’s going on right now?”