Ark Storm (45 page)

“Fly to Tijuana, Mexico. Await me there.”

“It’s, er, getting kinda rough here, Sheikh Ali. Not sure we’ll be allowed to take off,” the pilot replied after an awkward pause.

“I don’t think you can have heard me,” shouted the Sheikh above the roar of the winds. “Be in Tijuana. Contact me when you are in the air.”

He didn’t wait to hear the pilot’s reply, just rang off, Googled the distance. 338 miles. 541 kilometers. At 60 knots, nearly 70 mph, he would get to Tijuana in just under five hours. But
Zephyr
couldn’t hit that speed in these seas, so more likely he would be there in five and a half hours. The storm wasn’t forecast to hit as hard there and he should be able to take off, fly straight to Saudi, watch the havoc unfold from the safety and the sanctity of the Kingdom.

He buzzed the intercom.

“Captain Shaffer.”

The captain bustled in moments later. He planted himself, eyed the Sheikh expectantly.

“We leave now, for Tijuana,” dictated the Sheikh.

The captain exhaled with relief.

“The helicopter?” he asked warily.

“They went to shore,” answered the Sheikh.

The captain saw the lie, merely nodded. He was paid to ignore lies.

He gave a half salute, turned and hurried back to the foredeck. The storm was roaring in, making even his seasoned crew sick as
Zephyr,
moored like a sitting duck, took the full impact of the waves. He set the coordinates, marked their course on his paper map, as he always did, then he programed the yacht, fired up the engines, accelerated forward. Running was always better. He just hoped they could run fast enough.

129

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, 1:00 P.M.

Dan arrived at Stanford, parked up the Ducati in the lee of the building, out of the worst gusts of wind. He rang Riley. Her assistant, Art, butch in tight t-shirt and jeans, met him and led him into the underground facility.

He checked his cell. Three missed calls. All from the same number. He rang it. He saw Riley barreling toward him as the call went through. He leaned forward, kissed her cheek, held up a hand, mouthed “wait up!”

His call was answered.

“Dan?”

“Admiral.”

“Old friend. What’s up?”

Dan felt the flood of memories wash over him. SOCOM. That voice, surprisingly soft; it conjured sand, flies, snow-capped mountains, blood and camaraderie.

Moving out of earshot, talking softly, Dan reported what he knew, omitting to mention the dead bodies. All evidence would be washed away by the storm; always a silver lining, he thought ruefully.

SOCOM, Jack Meade, listened, blew out a breath as Dan finished.

“You’re a lightning conductor, Dan. Always were. A magnet for trouble.”

“Yeah, and not for babes sadly.”

“And a bullshit artist! You’ll have a plan. What is it?”

“Plan A, capture the bastards. My guess is that they’ll be on this super-yacht my source mentioned. Don’t know its name. Owned by Sheikh Ali Al Baharna. Get on board, get the computer, shut down the operation. Plan B, get the Air Force in and shoot down the drones. Shoot the yacht to hell.”

“Nice. I’ll make some calls.”

“Oh, and I might have a favor to ask. I’m here at ARk Storm Central in Stanford. Might have to convince one of the coheads that I’m not a certified lunatic. Think you can do that for me?”

“You’re mad as a coon, Dan,” laughed the man, adding, “put me onto the bastard right now.”

130

Hendrix was bent over his set of terminals, head swiveling like an owl between the monitors. Riley tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, Hendrix. Got someone here who has a story for you.”

Hendrix swiveled round on his chair.

“Kinda busy now, Riley.” Then his eyes tracked up to Dan, standing in his leathers, six foot four of muscle, eyes hard.

“Who the hell are you?” Hendrix asked, going for bluster. And failing. Involuntarily, his body moved back tight against the seat back.

“A messenger,” replied Dan, with an amused smile. “I’ve got someone on the line, wants to speak to you. SOCOM, that’s SEAL Command.…”

Riley watched as Hendrix took the call. She saw his eyes widen, watched him blink, then eye Dan with extreme circumspection. He said little, just a few
ers
and
yeahs
, then he handed the phone back to Dan.

Dan took the cell, listened, smile still playing on his lips. “Thank you, sir. Will do.”

He clicked off the call, pulled out a chair, straddled it, turned to Hendrix.

“Ready to listen, now?”

131

NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER

Andrew Canning’s PA, Coop, took the call, buzzed his boss.

“SOCOM on the line, sir. Admiral Jack Meade.”

Intrigued, Canning took the call.

“SOCOM.”

“Chief.”

The men had met, had already undergone the obligatory dog sniff that so often went with their territory.

“You familiar with an individual named Ali Al Baharna?”

Canning sucked in a breath. “We are.”

“Information has just come to me that he is planning to ramp up the storm currently hitting California into a major ARk Storm. My source claims he has the technology to do it. Ionizers, sent into the clouds on UAV’s. Makes it rain harder.
Much
harder. They’re in the air now. In California somewhere. The source, and we concur, recommends we call in the Air Force, shoot down the drones, track and blow up Ali’s super-yacht.”

Canning stared out of the window. He sat entirely motionless, save the rising and falling of his chest.

“Your source,” said Canning. “Dan Jacobsen.”

“How the hell you know that?”

“Educated guess, and a long story. In brief.…”

Canning told Meade what they knew of Jacobsen, and ARk Storm, and the hit squad sent in to kidnap Jacobsen.

Meade swore. “Nice. And you didn’t let us know.”

“Couldn’t. Sorry.”

“Well, I’m relieved to say he’s alive and well as of five minutes ago.”

“Where is he?”

“Why?”

“If it’s California, I have a man there. I’d like to hook them up.”

“Stanford. Secure ops room.”

“Great. Can I call him?”

There was a short silence. “I’ll ask him to call you.”

Canning smiled. SOCOM protecting his own. He’d expected nothing less.

“Thank you. For everything.”

132

STANFORD SECURE OPS ROOM, 1:22 P.M.

Two minutes later, Dan called Chief Canning, told him what he knew.

“I have a man outside your home,” Canning responded. “I’ll get him to you soonest. Frank Del Russo.”

“Fine. Do me a favor, call Jon Hendrix, here’s the number,” Dan reeled it off. “He’s the cohead of Hazards here. He is having some trouble believing the story of the ionizers and the drones. We need him to declare an emergency and he won’t because the science wasn’t invented here and all that bullshit.”

“Let me call Del Russo, then I’ll call Hendrix.” There was a smile in Canning’s voice. He enjoyed a battle, especially one he would win.

*   *   *

Dan turned to Riley. “Come with me. Say nothing. Just watch.”

In two minutes, good to his word, Canning put in the call.

Art answered, called out to his boss.

“Hey, Dr. Hendrix, I’ve got someone called Andrew Canning here. He’s er, he’s the Chief of the Counterterrorism Center.”

Hendrix jumped to his feet, looked at Art as if the man had lobbed him a grenade. Dan could read the man’s mind:
First SOCOM, now this
.

“Put him through,” Hendrix said stiffly.

Stifling smiles, Dan and Riley watched as Hendrix listened. They saw him stiffen, then slump.

“Yes, sir. I agree. A credible threat. Yes, I see. New information changes everything. Thank you. I will do that immediately.”

He hung up, got up, turned to Riley and Dan. He blew out a breath. “OK, Riley. You win.”

133

Riley was not magnanimous in victory.

“Yeah, Counterterrorism Center, Navy SEALs, freaks and whackos, figments of my
condition
!”

“Let’s just do this, shall we?” barked Hendrix.

“Let’s just,” agreed Riley. “Let’s try and save a few lives.…”

Hendrix studied the satellite images, rebriefing himself. He gathered Art and fourteen other colleagues. He stood beside Riley. Dan sat on the edge of a desk in the background. He was glad for Riley, and for all the people she would save. But he couldn’t relax or rejoice with Gwen out there, unaccounted for.

Riley let Hendrix speak, let it be his.

“So here we have it, people. The AR is due to make landfall at around six p.m. Pacific Time Zone, that’s somewhat earlier than we anticipated. As we can see it’s already raining. We’re seeing flooding already. The wind speeds of the incoming storm are high, around 120 kph, not as high as in ARk 1000 but still hurricane force.” Hendrix cleared his throat, fought with an imaginary tie. “Er, we have other collateral data suggesting this rain will continue and that from the Total Precipitable Water loads we might expect exceptionally heavy precipitation.” Hendrix paused. “And there are other factors which I am not at liberty to share with you that suggest the rain yield will be significantly higher than our models might predict.” He paused again, gave a small cough.

“People, I think we have no choice but to declare this an emergency, to call this ARk 1000.”

Riley gave an abrupt, heartfelt bow. “I’ll ring CalEMA and FEMA, get the word out.”

Riley made the call, set the machinery in motion. Her mind turned to the coastal areas, seeing the storm, the atmospheric river as it smashed in at one hundred and twenty k’s an hour. The evac orders would go out in minutes. She could only pray it wasn’t already too late.

134

2:30 P.M.

She was cold, so cold, never been this cold. Never swum this far in seas and rain like this. She wiped the thoughts from her brain. She had survived three wave hold-downs, she had surfed a forty-foot wave, she had survived a fall from a helicopter. Not going to die now. She’d swum three and a half miles now, the extra half mile a result of the currents pushing her south. She’d made it this far. She thought of her parents, waiting for her, on the wrong side … she thought of Dan. Somewhere out there, on dry land. Good to see him again, to be in his arms, held warm and tight. All her training, all her belief, all her stubbornness and her rage for life combined to keep her going, arm over arm, stroke after stroke.

The sky had turned dark. The air around her screamed with sound: the howling of the wind, the crashing of the waves, the slamming of the rain that emptied upon her in a sheet, making it even harder to breathe. Through the maelstrom she saw the waves grow. She could feel them accelerating under her. She knew through the exhaustion what that meant. The seabed was rising, the sea was getting shallower, the waves were being forced up. She was getting closer to shore. She tried to raise herself in the water, to search for the shoreline, but all she could see was the rain sluicing down.

She checked her Garmin. A quarter mile to shore. She could do it! If she survived the waves that would be slamming into the shore, she could do it. No surfboard, no floatation vest, just her, hypothermic and beyond exhaustion. The odds were crap. But she’d never been cowed by odds before, always believed that by sheer act of will you could shift them in your favor.

She swam on. Her skin was blue. Through the unrelieved gray she thought she saw a glimpse of something shiny. She saw it again, moments later. Glass. A window. Buildings on the shore! She felt the surge of hope. She could make it, if she could get through the surf.

She swam on, closer and closer. She saw through the endless monotone, explosions of white. The waves breaking, slamming down on the shore. Thirty feet for sure. Gnarly as hell. She wouldn’t surf them on a board, let alone with her body. She’d be slammed to pieces. There had to be another way. So close. She fought down the despair that rose, threatening to engulf her. She peered, left and right, seeking a harbor, a breakwater, anything that might lessen the waves. Something, she saw something. She swam to her right, fighting the waves, which were bunching under her, pushing her closer to shore. If she weren’t careful she’d have no choice, she’d be pushed by the waves into the break zone.

It wasn’t a harbor, but a breakwater; a long, good sized one. If she could get round to the lee side, the waves would be smaller. She battled the current, the waves pushing her closer to shore on the wrong side. Desperately, she fought, angling round, a hundred meters, then another. The waves so nearly pushed her into their path, into the break zone. She could hear them exploding near the shore, the roar and thud of the sea’s artillery. She struggled on, got round the breakwater. The waves
were
smaller. But still a good ten feet. High, marginal by any standards, breaking suicidally close to shore. She would
never
choose to swim these waves, but this was her only chance. Her time and her options were almost up. Her vision was clouding. She could hardly move. Her face, fingers, and feet had long since gone numb. Hypothermia would claim her soon, and exhaustion.

She swam closer to the break zone then she turned, looked back out to sea, tried to spot a pattern in the waves racing in. Too tired, too tired, and the waves were too wild, too ragged. Time to go. She breathed, sucked in more oxygen. Her blood ran faster, she couldn’t stop it. The last shot of adrenaline. She kicked, pulled forward, felt the wave lift her up, up, rising, then it curled, fell on her, tumbling her round, pushing her on, and down.

135

Breath! Air! Air! Breathe. She fought up, fought the water, kept shut her mouth, fighting the fatal instinct. Do not breathe, not yet. Only training, and the memory of it, the ruthless drill kept it shut. Then she felt air, of a kind. Wet air, but still air. She opened, breathed, sucked it in before the next wave hit, slamming her down again.