Ark Storm (41 page)

“What, you’re telling me some people think they can
make
an ARk Storm?” Riley whispered, her voice faint with disbelief and horror.

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. They have an army of drones all ready to go up and do just that. I’m gonna try and stop it, Riley, I might not manage it. I have a horrible feeling it’s too late.”

112

THE LAB, 9:45 A.M.

Gwen jumped up, went to see who had arrived. Or left. There was no sign of Mandy. And none of Messenger. She hurried round, checking the offices, the restrooms. Weiss and Barclay had left. Only Atalanta, Curt, and Jihoon Lee remained. They were working at the communal workstation, a long table jammed into one office.

She walked up to them. “Guys, you should leave. Get outta here. This storm’s only going to get worse.”

Curt shrugged. “Grew up in Tornado Alley. Reckon it can’t get as bad as that.”

Gwen bit her lip. “Please. Curt, now’s not the time. Please, just go. All of you. Drive to Reno.”

They laughed. “I don’t gamble,” said Jihoon.

“Jeez, you work in private equity, you gamble,” retorted Gwen. “But that’s not the point. What’s coming is going to be bad. People will die. I’d rather you grunts didn’t.”

They shifted and looked uncomfortable at that one. “OK,” declared Atalanta. “Soon as you go, we go. How about that?”

Gwen blew out a breath, saw it was all she was going to get. She just had one more thing to do and then she could leave, snag a lift from one of the grunts and get the hell out. “Deal.”

She walked back to her office, closed herself and Leo in again. She sat at her desk, feet up, forced her racing mind to slow, to analyze like an academic. She slowed her breathing, found reason.

No sign of Messenger; a huge storm brewing. Could this be what he was waiting for? Could he be trying to make an Ark Storm of it even now? Was it pure coincidence that today, of all days, he hadn’t come into the office, he couldn’t be contacted?

“I don’t fuckin’ think so,” murmured Gwen.

If an ARk Storm were coming, she would have to act now. The technology could be used to increase rainfall, or to decrease it. Falcon’s resources could help avert a disaster, marshaled in the right hands. She opened her desk drawer, took out the card, picked up her phone.

“Sheikh Ali? Gwen Boudain. I need to talk to you.”

There was what sounded like an intake of breath, followed by a long pause. Gwen wondered suddenly if the Sheikh had been sincere in giving her his card. Maybe she was breaking some undefined rule of etiquette by calling him.

“Dr. Gwen,” came his voice. “How nice to hear from you. It’s been a while.”

“It has,” said Gwen, offering nothing more. This was no time for small talk.

“How can I help?” asked the Sheikh. He sounded slightly less slick than normal, thought Gwen. She must have caught him at a bad time.

“There’s stuff I know. About Falcon. About Dr. Messenger. I need to talk to you about it.”

Another pause.

“I would be happy to talk to you. Please, allow me to send my helicopter.”

“I’d really rather not fly,” said Gwen. “If you don’t mind. The weather’s not exactly conducive to jumping in a helicopter.”

That wasn’t true, exactly. She knew choppers could fly in high winds. Rescue helicopters routinely flew at big surf competitions, in big winds, ready to spot surfers in distress and help pluck them from the waves. One of the rescue pilots who had bailed her out on a horrendous wipeout at Mavericks had told her that, unlike fixed-wing aircraft, high winds could even help the helicopter to fly as the wind increased the relative speed of the air over the blades giving the chopper more lift while using far less engine power.

“Oh, please don’t worry. My pilot is trained to fly in far more hazardous conditions than this,” replied Sheik Ali with the blithe confidence of the super rich.

“Even so. I’d actually like to get out of here and head way inland. I really don’t like the look of this storm,” continued Gwen. “Can’t we just talk on the phone?”

Another pause. Gwen could feel the cool calculations running on the other end of the line.

“Dr. Gwen, I do understand your reticence, rrrreallly,” murmured the Sheikh, sounding back to full charm with those wonderful rolling r’s.

“But please trust me,” he continued in his mellifluous voice. “My pilot can be with you in forty minutes. He’ll bring you to me, we’ll talk, then he can fly you anywhere you want, well, within reason. He can shortcut you straight to where you want to go, far inland if you really want.…”

Gwen glanced out of her window. The trees were bending sideways, small branches were beginning to snap off and fly through the air. She made up her mind.

“Fine. Let’s do that. I’ll be here waiting.”

“Excellent. See you soon, my dear Dr. Gwen.”

She said good-bye, hung up.

Her phone rang almost immediately. She checked the number. Dan. She ignored it, walked from her office. There was nothing he could say she wanted to hear.

113

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 9:50 A.M.

Riley walked up to Hendrix’s office, knocked on his door and opened it simultaneously. He was keying instructions, his fingers flying over his keyboard, his face turned to the satellite images on his screen. He glanced at Riley, continued typing. Riley waited, impatience simmering. She counted to ten. On eleven, at boil point, she opened her mouth just as Hendrix turned to her.

“Bridget. Ten minutes on. What’s changed?”

Riley blew out a breath. “Everything. Listen up. Don’t interrupt.” Verbatim, she told him everything Gwen had told her.

Hendrix listened in silence. Halfway through he picked up a pen and twirled it like a baton. His face went from displeasure to disbelief to fury. He pointed the pen at Riley.

“You just don’t quit, do you, Bridget? You don’t get anywhere with the science so you bring me this fantasy scenario, some whacko science I’ve never heard of. You have target fixation. You’re seeing what you want to see. You’re in your manic phase and everything’s magnified.”

Riley slammed her palms on Hendrix’s desk. She angled toward him, voice quivering with rage.

“Don’t you dare use that against me you bastard! I’m a damn good scientist and you know it!”

“We all know it,” Hendrix retorted. “It’s why you’re here. The bipolar’s why I’m here. To keep you grounded.”

A scientific straightjacket
, thought Riley. She closed her eyes. Behind her lids she saw the images of her nightmares. The rain falling in torrents, the people and homes washed away, the waves crashing into coastal homes, the landslides drowning everyone and everything in their path in a river of mud. She opened her eyes, blew out a breath. She would not give up.

“You think I made this up?”

“No, I think you consort with whack jobs.”

“Yeah, a meteorologist. Just as well qualified as you. And because you’ve never heard of this science it cannot be real, is that it? Not invented here? Christ, this is all about your ego, not my target fixation. You think I want to see a monster come and eat up California? You’re out of your mind.”

Hendrix exhaled slowly. His face was several shades redder. His control on his own legendary temper was tenuous.

“No, I do not think you
consciously
want to see ARk 1000 hit us. But maybe subconsciously, from scientific curiosity, you do. Like the pyromaniac firemen who start fires so they get to fight them. You seem to me to be suffering from a kind of scientific Munchausen by proxy syndrome. That and your condition have put you on a hair trigger. We cannot jump at every bump in the night. The state of California is close to bankrupt. You know that. The cost and the disruption of declaring this ARk 1000, both in terms of dollars and potentially of lives, is too big to undertake on your obsession and some lunatic’s tale.”

Riley found the urge to step forward and strike the man almost unendurable. She knew the only chance she had to convince him was to maintain an icy calm.

“It’s not a lunatic’s tale,” she said, forcing her voice down the register, slowing her words. “I only wish it were. And it’s not an obsession, Jon. It’s called dedication. Stop hurling my
condition,
as you so squeamishly call it, at me. Everyone’s got
something
! Haven’t you learned that by now? There
is
no normal. And stop playing the politician here.”

“Someone has to!”

“There are
lives
at stake, thousands of lives! You
know
what’s at stake if this is ARk 1000.”

“Of course I fuckin’ know what’s at stake!” thundered Hendrix. “We’re scientists, or we’re supposed to be! We analyze the data, we make the call! We don’t have this data! Just the word of someone who thinks another someone is gonna ramp this storm, send up an army of drones, God help us. For fuck’s sake!” The genie was out of the bottle; Hendrix’s temper was running free.

Still Riley did not give up. Art had sauntered up casually and now stood outside the office, rolling his shoulders, as if waiting for a word.

“Jon, listen. Please,” urged Riley. “Knowing what I know, I think we have no choice but to push the button, call this an ARk 1000, get FEMA and CalEMA to issue the evac orders. Jeez, if this thing is ramped up either by these people or by nature itself what’re we gonna do? Wait until the rain’s so heavy that FEMA orders people to stay in their homes saying driving’s a hazard? Just how do you think you are gonna organize the evac of one and half million people?”

Hendrix got to his feet, came round his desk toward Riley. He looked as if he were about to physically eject her. He stopped a foot from her. In her space. His face jutted toward her and his voice was artificially low.

“We cry wolf on this then when the real ARk 1000 comes rocking through no one’ll believe us. No one’ll go.”

“That’s what compulsory orders are designed to cover,” said Riley, holding her ground despite the urge to step back. “Are you really ready to bet that this one isn’t the Biggie? Shouldn’t we involve FEMA and CalEMA in those calls?”

“Not on this evidence, Riley. I will not put my name to it,” said Hendrix. “Therefore Hazards will not put our name to it. Now go. I have a storm to monitor.”

Mechanically placing one foot ahead of the other, moving like a marionette, Riley returned to her office. In her own sanctuary, she gazed out of her window into the gray world beyond, waiting for her breathing to slow. Trees stood. Buildings stood. The odd brave soul ran hunched through the rain, the wind grabbing at their clothes. If the storm hit, she and the Hazards team had a safe underground bunker from which to operate. Windproof, flood proof, earthquake proof. But the rest of California just had normal buildings. The storm would come with deadly intent and it would huff and it would puff and it would blow their homes down, or rather wash them away, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

114

THE SUPER-YACHT,
ZEPHYR
, 9:50 A.M.

The Sheikh turned to Ali. Of all his security team, he was closest to Ali. He saw the same fire in the younger man’s eyes, the same vision, the same yearning, the same disgust with the West and its incontinent excess, its neo-colonialist trampling over sacred lands. Ali was far more than mere brawn. He had a brain and a heart, and he had spirit. He had the
Hilmun yaruddu bihi jahl aljahil
of his desert-dwelling Bedu ancestors—a commanding forebearance and serenity in the face of ignorance and adversity.

“Life never ceases to surprise me,” murmured the Sheikh. “That, as you will have gathered, was Gwen Boudain. She wants to come here! To talk to me.”

“Or to kill you?” posed Ali with a delicate raising of one eyebrow.

“Here, on the yacht, with protection all around me?” countered the Sheikh.

“She, and/or Dan Jacobsen, killed four men, one of whom they killed with their bare hands,” replied Ali, his voice unnaturally calm.

The Sheikh looked away, not through delicacy or pity. In his eyes there was only calculation. He looked back.

“You go with the pilot to pick her up at Falcon. Frisk her before she gets on the copter.”

Ali nodded. He moved to go, paused as the Sheikh laid a hand on his arm.

“Then, when Gwen Boudain has told me whatever she has to tell me, if indeed she does have anything to say and this whole thing is not a ruse to come and attempt to kill me, we will kill her.”

Ali thought of his murdered friends.

Sheikh Ali eyed him, read his thoughts.

“You will be avenged, Ali. We will all be avenged in ways we cannot even begin to imagine. Nine-eleven succeeded way beyond all the greatest expectations of Sheikh Osama. They never thought the iron girders would melt. They never thought the towers would collapse. When we unleash ARk Storm there’ll be the death toll, but beyond that, who knows? The storm might just be the final blow for the bankrupt state of California. It is after all the eighth biggest economy in the world,” he added, as if debating some arcane point at an academic conference. “If it were devastated, it could tip the Great Satan into a depression.” He smiled. “And Gwen Boudain and the Zeus model will have helped!” He squeezed Ali’s arm. His dark eyes were hard.

“An eye for an eye. The justice of the desert will be ours.”

115

SEVENTEEN MILE DRIVE, 9:52 A.M.

Dan slammed his hands on the desk in frustration. Gwen
was
at Falcon. That metallic-voiced woman had said as much. He pulled on his leathers, grabbed his keys, Gwen’s pocketbook, and alarmed his house. He still wore his holstered weapons. The danger was in no way over. It was only just beginning, and Gwen had no fuckin’ idea.

He exited the back way at a run, scanning his garden for surveillance. The PIR alarms had not gone off, which told him that no one was in the inner perimeter, but he looked anyway; they could be hiding out beyond. He saw no sign but he still ran fast, zigzagging in a crouch.