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When he received the e-mail from across the room Eric typed in the coordinates. “Coming up now,” he said and hit Enter.
The icon for the Sidra bounced back a couple of inches on the screen then tracked forward. It looked as if the eye was forming along her course rather than her running along its edge.
“What the hell?” Juan muttered.
“I was right!” Eric cried.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a genius,” Mark said, then turned to face Cabrillo. “He and I were back in my cabin brainstorming. Well, we also did a little hacking into Merrick/Singer’s mainframe. Susan Donleavy didn’t keep notes on the computer. She either had a stand alone or just wrote stuff out longhand. Anyway, all we found about her project was her original proposal and even that was pretty thin. Her idea was to create an organic flocculent.”
“A what?”
“It’s a compound that causes soils and other solids suspended in water to form into clumps,” Eric answered. “It’s used in sewage treatment plants, for example, to settle out the waste.”
“She wanted to find a way to bind the organic material found in seawater in order to turn water into a gel.”
“What for?” Max asked bluntly.
“Didn’t say,” Mark replied, “and apparently no one on the peer review committee cared because she got the go-ahead without explaining the need for something like this.”
Stone continued, “We know from your talk with Merrick that the reaction is exothermic and, from what I can guess, it probably isn’t sustainable. The heat will eventually kill off the organics and the gel will dissolve back into ordinary seawater.”
“I’m following you,” Juan said, “but I don’t see a point to all this.”
“If Singer lays down a line of flocculent it will spread for a while and then just fizzle out.” Mark blew a raspberry to emphasize his point. “The hurricane would absorb some of its heat as it passes over it but not really enough to make any major changes to its severity or direction.”
Eric butted in, “My idea is that if he spreads it in a circle just as the hurricane begins to revolve he will be able to dictate where and when the eye will form—and most important, how big it will be.”
“And the tighter the eye, the faster the wind can whip around it,” Max added.
“Andrew’s was eleven miles across when he came ashore in Miami,” Murph said. “Natural processes limit how small it can be, but Singer can push that so the hurricane goes above five on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. He might also be able to control where the storm tracks as it heads across the Atlantic, in essence pointing it like a gun at whatever coastal region he chooses.”
Cabrillo studied at the monitor again. It looked as though the Gulf of Sidra was doing exactly what Eric and Murph predicted. She was in the beginning of a spiraling turn, using the heat generated by Susan Donleavy’s gel, which she was doubtlessly discharging as fast as her pumps could go, to tease the storm tighter and tighter. Singer would make the eye smaller and thus the hurricane more powerful than anything nature was able to create.
“If he finishes that turn there won’t be a damned thing we can do,” Eric concluded. “The eye will be formed and no force on earth will be able to stop it.”
“Any idea where he’s sending it?”
“If it were me I’d take out New Orleans again,” Murph said, “but I don’t know if he’ll have that level of control. Safest bet would be to slam it into Florida where the warm coastal waters won’t weaken it. Miami or Jacksonville are the highest profile cities. Andrew caused something like nine billion in damages and that was Category Four. Hit either city with a Category Six and it’ll topple skyscrapers.”
“Max,” Juan said without looking at him, “what’s our speed?”
“Just a tick under thirty-five knots.”
“Helm, take us to forty.”
“The doc ain’t gonna like that,” Max chided.
“I’m already in Dutch for making her wake Merrick,” Juan said humorlessly.
Eric followed the order, ramping up the magnetohydrodynamics to eke more electricity from the sea to feed into the pump jets. The Oregon began to ride even rougher as she cut across the waves. An external camera showed her bow almost being swamped as she slammed into the swells. Water sheeted across the deck in a three-foot-deep surge when she lifted free.
Cabrillo tapped at his communications console to dial up the hangar. A technician answered and went to get George Adams per Juan’s request. “I don’t like that you’re calling me,” Adams said by way of greeting.
“Can you do it, George?”
“It’ll be a nightmare,” the pilot replied, “but yeah I think I can as long as the rains don’t hit. And I don’t want to hear any grief if I damage the Robinson’s landing struts.”
“I won’t say a word. Place yourself on ten-minute standby and wait to hear from me.”
