Ark Storm (47 page)

Sheikh Ali glanced at the roof of the control room as if seeking an answer in the sky. Then he looked back at the captain.

“Do what you have to.”

The captain nodded, turned, and hurried to the door, anxious to return to his post on the foredeck.

“What caused the burnout anyway, if I can call it that?” asked the Sheikh.

The captain paused, swiveled, shook his head. “Beats me. Never seen anything like it.”

Ten miles away, the Chinook was flying with their answer back to its Nellis Air Force Base landing pad.

141

The Squadron of F-22 Raptors scrambled from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada waited out of range. Only when they got word that the directional energy pulse had gone out, had wiped out any communications between the drones and their controllers, did they go in.

The jets flew on the express orders of the President of the United States. Two Squadrons had been scrambled. Squadron A was armed with AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. The AMRAAMs, commonly known in the Air Force as Slammers, were all-weather, beyond-visual-range guided missiles with a top speed of Mach 4 and a range in excess of thirty miles. The chances of escape from an AMRAAM were minimal.

At close range, the pilot could fire the missile and its own radar tracking system would acquire the target without further input from the pilot. They were known as Fire and Forget. Though none of the pilots operating that day would ever forget their targets. Squadron Alpha was tasked with destroying the drones. Squadron Bravo was tasked with obliterating the yacht
Zephyr.
They had flown out to sea and were busy quartering the ocean in their search for the fugitive yacht.

Squadron B was armed with ship-killing missiles known as Harpoons. Once launched, the Harpoons homed in on their targets with active radar. They could fly low-level, skimming the sea, making them almost undetectable until impact, when the warhead containing 215 pounds of high explosive would explode.

Each Squadron split into hunter packs of two. There were few other aircraft in the sky. Some of Squadron A passed a Helicopter, a Bell, which should have known better than to be out in these conditions, but it wasn’t their call. Their mission was to find the drones.

Along the coastal valleys of California, those still stuck in their cars, or stubbornly cowering in their homes, heard above the roar of the storm the scream of jets and the sonic boom as the sound barrier was broken. Glass windows shattered, shards flew into walls, into flesh. The Raptors flew on. The pilots found the drones on radar. The Slammers acquired their targets. The pilots fired. One by one, in a streak of fire, the drones were blasted from the sky.

142

SAN LUIS OBISPO, 4:30 P.M.

A voice, hands, a face. Gwen struggled to focus. “Dan!” She smiled. “You came.”

He smiled back. “I came. Now we’re going on a trip.” He pulled her to him.

She yelped. “Shoulder. Dislocated.”

He nodded. “Want me to put it back in?”

“If you pour half a bottle of whisky down my throat.”

Dan smiled. “That would be good for hypothermia.”

“Done it before?”

“Several times. And I am a trained paramedic, for what it’s worth.”

Gwen gave a wan smiled. “Do it.”

Dan pulled off the ski jacket, then he braced himself against Gwen.

“You ready?”

“Yeah.” She gritted her teeth, clenched her right fist, let out a scream as Dan yanked the joint down, pushed it back in.

Gwen felt a wave of nausea, fought it down as the blood pulsed through to the wound like fire.

Dan helped her back into the ski jacket.

“Time to go, Boudy.”

“Where?”

“Out of the path of this storm. It’s officially ARk Storm 1000, Boudy. Hazards called it! Due to make landfall in ninety minutes, they reckon.”

“Shiiiit,” murmured Gwen.

Dan carried her to the helicopter. He could see Holdstone struggling to keep the skids on the ground. He crouched, ran, with one hand opened the door, got Gwen inside, jumped in.

Gwen staggered into a seat, strapped herself in, the pain screaming through her shoulder.

Dan strapped himself in. Holdstone pulled on the joystick and the copter soared. It was hit by gusts, by the wind roaring in from the sea. It lurched groundward. Holdstone muscled it back up. Dan could see the stress now. The veins in Holdstone’s temple were standing out. She eased the copter higher, above the battered tree line, up and into the full force of the winds. It lurched again as the winds pushed it faster, and then it seemed almost to surf on the winds, accelerating, racing away from the coast. Dan could only hope they would outrun the incoming ARk Storm. If it hit them, it would drown the chopper like a paper plane.

143

156 MILES FROM THE MEXICAN BORDER, 4:30 P.M.

Bravo Squadron of F-22s tracked the yacht. They stayed out of sight. They didn’t have to worry about the yacht’s radar. They had been informed that the radar and the GPS had been disabled. If the captain was any good, he would have kept a written log and would be plotting their course the old-fashioned way, with a map and a sextant to sight from landmarks on shore, but many captains, especially the younger ones, had neglected that skill.

The Secretary of the Air Force, SECAF, rang Canning.

“We have the target on radar.”

“Good job. What does POTUS say?”

“On my way to discuss that now. The Storm of the Century’s heading in and we’d like to do the dirty and get the hell out.”

“Let me call POTUS, see if I can expedite,” replied Canning, putting in the call.

Canning was put through immediately.

“Sir, I would like to know when you will give SECAF permission to take out the yacht
Zephyr.
This ARk Storm is coming in fast and hard, and he wants to do the deed and be gone. If it’s all the same to you.”

The president frowned at the phone. “It’s not all the same to me. We’re talking about the yacht
Zephyr
with a crew of thirty. We’re talking about the yacht
Zephyr
owned by a very rich and prominent Saudi. A major strategic ally.”

“All of that, sir. All of that,” replied Canning, a shot of acid stabbing his guts. “And he’s a Shia Saudi, sir, not a Sunni. I think you’ll find there’s quite a difference in how the death of one would be met to the death of the other.”

“Don’t lecture me on Middle-Eastern sectarianism, Canning. I’m well aware of the subtleties.”

“And so where does that leave us, sir?” Canning persisted. “And the squadron. With the ARk Storm bearing down on them.”

“I’ll ring you back,” declared the president. He hung up and made a call to Saudi Arabia. He mentioned the name, heard the slow machinations, the thought process. The man he spoke to was a Sunni. He made the decision expected by the president.

“We in the Kingdom wish to eliminate extremism wherever we find it,” said the man. “Do what you must. You have our support, though of course we shall have to make a bit of a fuss. In public.”

“Understood. Thank you.”

The president ended the call. He rang Canning.

“Hold off!” he ordered. “For the time being.
Zephyr
might sink. I’ve had briefings from SECNAV, from the Hazards people. Like you say, the storm’s a bitch. Save us from having to shoot a yacht with multi-jurisdictional citizens out of the water.”

At the price of the F-22s and their pilots, wondered Canning? “But we have a window,” he replied, struggling to keep his voice as bland as the president’s. “Sir. We’ll have to decide soon before
Zephyr
gets close to the Mexican border.”

“And we shall. But I live in hope that fate will intervene,” replied the president. “We have three hours, I believe.”

“Three hours at the current average speed of the yacht. But the further she runs from the storm, the faster she can go, so we have to assume we have less time. Perhaps two hours thirty or less.”

“Perhaps … But my point remains.… That’s the difference between us, General Canning. You get to play War. I get to play Politics. And War. The latter only if I have to.”

144

4:35 P.M.

The Bell helicopter fought its way through the storm. Holdstone didn’t speak. Gwen could see the pilot was fully focused. Gwen recognized her skill, the single-mindedness that meant, most likely, they wouldn’t die today. It would be ironic, she thought, to survive her battle with Sieber and the sea only to die in a crash.

Her shoulder hurt like hell, but slowly the warmth was returning to her body. She still felt beyond weak. It was all she could do to sit upright in her seat.

“How you doing?” Dan’s voice came through Gwen’s headphones.

“Warming up. And before you ask, I do not want to go to a hospital.”

“That’s where you should be. You need an intravenous. You’re in shock.”

Gwen shook her head violently, swore volubly as the motion wracked up the pain in her shoulder.

“I’m not in shock. Not now. I want to go to the ARk Ops Room,” she added. “We’ll be safe there and we can watch it all.”

“We don’t have many options. I’m getting warnings,” said Holdstone. “
Get out of the air.
This ARk Storm is right on our tail. The atmospheric river is scheduled to make landfall in approximately eighty minutes, and it’s steaming in at one hundred and twenty k’s per hour. We’ve got to get down and we’ve got to hole up somewhere safe once we do.”

“Stanford,” declared Gwen. “Their secure Ops Room. If that works for you?”

Holdstone nodded. “That works. Don’t fancy my chances on the street.”

Gwen nodded then abruptly fell asleep. Dan watched over her, twisting in his seat, noting the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest under the metal foil blanket he’d dug out from the chopper’s emergency supplies. Holdstone ran a good ship.

Gwen slept through the entire flight, exhaustion trumping terror. She awoke just as they were descending to Stanford. It was 5:50.

“The ARk Storm is due to make landfall any minute now,” said Holdstone. “We’re two miles inshore. I have two minutes to get us down, then we’re going to have to run like hell.”

Gwen nodded. Dan looked around. The trees were blown double, like old men hunkering down from the storm. Branches were scything through the air. He’d been on enough helicopter sorties to know this landing would be at the far end of marginal.

He watched Holdstone, saw her eyes flicker over the controls, then out to the weather, tangible as an enemy force. It wasn’t just the speed of the wind, though that was problematic. It was the gusts slamming in from the ocean; unpredictable, deadly. Add to that, the poor visibility. Darkness was falling early, and the sheet rain was an almost impenetrable gray veil.

They were coming down fast. Dan saw the landing spot rushing up toward them. If Holdstone got it wrong, one gust would slam them down and the last thing they would know would be the ball of flame on impact. A gust came then, hit them, knocked them sideways forty feet. Holdstone gripped the joystick with both hands, yanked it right and down. With a crunch they landed. Holdstone kept the chopper going, kept the downward thrust on high.

“Get out!” she yelled. “Get out and run. I’ll follow.”

Dan knew what that might mean. He squeezed Holdstone’s arm, nodded, unstrapped himself. Gwen was already unstrapped and moving out of her seat. Dan muscled open the door, held it firm against the winds trying to slam it back in his face. He jumped out, crouched against the door, keeping it open for Gwen. She bent over, ran past. Dan let the door slam. He ran beyond the thrashing rotors, kept running, turned and saw the copter picked up by a gust, then slam down again. Then the scream of the blades slowed. The door opened, and the crouching figure of Holdstone appeared. She ran hard after them. The door was five meters away. Dan got to it, wrestled it open. Gwen staggered up and through. Holdstone sprinted closer. When she was ten meters away, a gust lifted the chopper straight into the air and propelled it toward them. Holdstone didn’t look back, just barreled toward Dan and the open door. He reached out a hand, grabbed her, yanked her in, slammed the door, sprinted for the stairs down to the underground rooms.

145

5:58 P.M., PACIFIC TIME ZONE

The atmospheric river made landfall at 5:58
P.M.
in the state of California. It traveled at one hundred and twenty kph. It was one hundred and thirty-five miles wide. It stretched from Watsonville to San Luis Obispo. The storm doors on this river were open. Rain poured down. No monsoon could compete with this. National Weather Service webcams showed what looked like walls of water slamming through the air, smashing away all in their path, masonry and steel, making of them weapons of destruction. The rain fell onto the slopes of the coastal range, then flooded back down in torrents. The rain of the forerunning winter storm had fallen for over twenty-two hours before the ARk Storm hit, bringing with it rain of an entirely different magnitude. Like a blizzard compared to snow flurries. The ground in the Salinas Valley was becoming waterlogged, could not absorb all the water, so the flooding began. In the Sierra Nevada, the snow began to fall in a blizzard so dense that all visibility was wiped out. Low-lying real estate lining the coast was deluged by waves.

The sound made by the storm was diabolical. The screeching, hurricane-force winds, the hammering rain. Both called up a chorus of car alarms and human screams. Wind and rain threatened to smash their way into homes and make off with live bodies. In many cases, they did. Roofs were blown off, sheet rain scoured homes. Pets drowned. Humans drowned. Livestock drowned. And this was just the beginning. The streets ran with water. Storm drains overflowed. The air was rich with the smell of soaked foliage and ozone. The rain and the winds, gusting up to one hundred and fifty-six kph in places, equivalent to Hurricane Force Two, ripped off roofs, uprooted trees, swept them down streets like rough-hewn boats seeking the ocean.