Ark Storm (44 page)

Hassan turned back to his laptop. He glanced up at the Sheikh. “Ready?”

The Sheikh angled his body forward. “Go!”

Hassan’s finger hovered over the command. Then he hit
ENTER
.

His program sent its instructions to the drones, which waited for his command, massed like a private army. Hassan pointed to the desktop. The quarter-screen image showed the massive door of the hangar, designed to look like a grain silo, slowly retracting back into its groove. Then when fully open, the next image showed drone after drone after drone come to life, engines whirring. Obeying the commands sent to the GPS each one carried, they moved slowly from the hangar, accelerated along the landing strip, then rose into the air.

A few didn’t make it. Hit by gusts of wind as they prepared to take off, they were hurled to the side and tipped over, but the resources of the Sheikh allowed for redundancy. Forty percent of the drones could crash and still the model would work, still the rain yield would be ramped up, maybe by as much as twenty-five percent.

Fifty drones could cover a massive area, perhaps ten thousand square miles. Up and off they went, aiming for their preordained orbits where in groupings of five they would fly round and round, gaining and losing altitude as programed. Ramping the storm.

The Sheikh watched the live feed, saw the drones nosing into the turbulent air. His own private army. His jihad.

“Live by the drone, die by the drone,” he murmured.

125

Gwen stood in the restroom. She braced her hands against the sink, blew out a long slow breath. She wanted to kill Peter Weiss, to take his head in her hands and snap his neck. Thanks to Dwayne’s training, she could do it too.

The scale of Weiss’s,
Hassan’s,
betrayal was beyond her understanding. But, more than murder and revenge, she wanted escape. She straightened, turned, looked for any kind of weapon. Nothing.
Think! Think!
The toilet paper dispenser, the metal inner tube! She pulled it free, loosened her shirt, stuck it into her waistband. She ducked into the next cubicle, grabbed another one. Rammed into someone’s eyes, they could do some damage. All she could do was go along with the charade, pretend she didn’t know. Still. Then what? Dive off the yacht, swim for it? The engines would suck her under, chew her up in seconds.

She heard the guard, Ali, rapping on the door, calling her.

She eyed herself briefly in the mirror. She saw fear. And fury.
I’m not ready to die,
she thought. She blew out a breath, cast her mind to the dojo, to Dwayne. To all the dirty fighting tricks she knew. Then she pushed open the door and walked out.

Randy Sieber was waiting for her. Gwen gasped, tried to recover.

“Randy! What a surprise! What are you doing here?”

“Sheikh had a threat issued against him. Needed some security advice,” he answered gruffly.

“Well, that explains why I was frisked then,” Gwen replied, mind racing, trying to maintain her mask of calm.

“Let’s go,” said Sieber. “We need to fly you outta here. Outta harm’s way.”

Gwen smiled. “I’m ready.”

*   *   *

The pilot was furious. “Flying in
this
?” he shouted at Sieber. “It’s beyond marginal, man,” he yelled, his South-African accent strengthening with his fury.

“Sheikh’s orders,” repeated Sieber. “Let’s go.”

They buckled up. Sieber sat next to the pilot. Gwen sat in the row behind.

The pilot handed Gwen a set of headphones. She wondered if he knew what was planned for her. She didn’t believe for a second that Sieber would fly her to dry land. She got the feeling that the pilot wasn’t in on the plan. She could use that.

They lifted off. Straightaway, before they had even gained twenty feet, they were almost slammed back on deck. Gwen could see the pilot muscling the joystick, fighting to get the chopper up again. Maybe the wind would do the Sheikh’s bidding. Crash the copter, kill them all. Takeoff and landings were always the most dangerous parts of the flight, but when a storm was raging the risks went up exponentially.

Gwen focused on her breathing: deep, smooth, calm. She wriggled her fingers and toes, imagined strength suffusing every inch of her.

The pilot won the first battle with the wind, got the chopper up, maybe a hundred feet above the waves.

“Where to?” Gwen heard the pilot ask.

“Head toward the shore,” replied Sieber. “And don’t argue. Just do it!” he yelled, as the pilot started to shout.

The pilot fell silent, set a course, flew with the wind behind him. It felt as if the helicopter were surfing the wind.

“Go higher,” Sieber told the pilot.

“I’m not gonna go too high. System’s coming in at altitude. Don’t want to get caught in all the crap up there.”

Senses straining, Gwen sat, waiting, wondering when and how Sieber would make his move. She drifted her fingers up inside her shirt, felt the metal tubes, saw in her mind how she would use them. Below her she could see the swell building. The wind speed was high enough to blow the spume off the waves in trails of white, feathery spindrift.

“Go higher,” Sieber said again.

“What don’t you underst—” the pilot began to say. He paused abruptly. Gwen leaned forward to see why. Sieber had a pistol out, was pointing it at the pilot.

“What don’t
you
understand?” asked Sieber.

Gwen guessed the plan.
Breathe slow, build the oxygen in your blood, slow your pulse, stay calm.

She felt the chopper rise, felt it hit a buffer of wind, slew suddenly to the right.

“It’s too high. We need to come down,” shouted the pilot.

“OK. OK. Just a bit, take her down.”

The pilot brought them down. He brought them down a lot, unnoticed by Sieber, who was undoing his seat belt, getting up, moving back between the seats to her row.

Here we go, thought Gwen. She felt her pulse begin to race as adrenaline pumped her veins.

“Unbuckle. Get up,” Sieber ordered her, pointing his pistol at her. She looked in his eyes, tried to reconcile this man with the one she knew at Falcon, failed. There was no fellow feeling in his glance, just a void. Gwen unbuckled, got up. As Sieber fiddled with the door, glancing between her and it, she edged forward so that she was between Sieber and the pilot. Holding on to the side, Sieber threw open the door. The chopper lurched again. Christ, they were going to crash at this rate.

“What the fuck are you doing?” yelled the pilot. He slowed their flight, Gwen noticed. Quickly, he had brought the chopper to a near stationary hover. Gwen looked down at the waves, rising, falling, huge. But huge was better than flat. Flat meant concrete. Waves meant a chance of surviving the fall. Even if a small one. She grabbed one of the metal tubes, held it behind her as she grasped the seat back to hold steady.

The chopper was still tilting dizzily. Sieber was off balance. Gwen slammed forward, rammed the metal tube at Sieber’s throat. The lurching of the chopper meant she hit his chest. Sieber roared, lashed out at Gwen. She ducked, pivoted, grabbed him from behind, hauled backward. She had the advantage of surprise. He seemed to realize too late what she was doing. He roared out, hauled back, tried to get his arm behind his back, fired off two shots. The pilot screamed in rage or pain—Gwen couldn’t tell.

The helicopter listed wildly, losing altitude as it went into a death spin.
Get out, get out.
Still holding Sieber, Gwen jammed her feet against the seat, pushed off into space, arced into a dive, letting go of Sieber. Below her the waves loomed. How high was she? Two hundred feet. Maybe one-fifty. The water’d be like another element, almost a solid. Streamlined, body hard, she arrowed down into the sea.

126

Eight miles away,
Zephyr
pitched violently as a huge wave hit. In the control room, the Sheikh, Ali, and Hassan were watching The Weather Channel. The pitching yacht threw them against one another.

The door flew open and in strode the captain, Blain Shaffer. The South African balanced perfectly on his stocky sea legs, honed by over thirty years working at sea.

Captain Shaffer addressed the Sheikh. “Sir! Sheikh Ali, with the greatest respect, I insist we depart now. This storm is building. We are not invulnerable. If we stay here, I fear we shall be sunk.”

The Sheikh turned to him, contempt in his eyes. He despised fear—in himself, in others—but knowledge he respected and he knew his captain was correct.

“Even if we run now at full speed, I am not even sure we can evade the storm. We should have left hours ago,” the captain added.

For a second, the Sheikh wanted to snatch the Makarov pistol from Ali’s waistband, pull the trigger, end the captain’s impudence. Then through the haze, reason prevailed.

“Have more faith, Captain Shaffer.
Zephyr
can outrun this storm.” Al Baharna smiled then. “As soon as the helicopter has returned, from what is only a short journey, we leave. Full throttle.”

The captain nodded, feeling only partial relief. He did not share the Sheikh’s confidence that
Zephyr
could outrun the storm. The winds were accelerating. Storm warnings were being upgraded to severe/extreme by USGS. Their window of escape was narrowing.

The Sheikh watched his captain depart, then he walked to the windows, braced himself against the bulletproof glass, and gazed out at a mayhem of gray.

He took up his encrypted BlackBerry and he called the ayatollah. When he believed the encryption process was complete, he spoke.

“Assalam Aleikum. Prepare to watch the wrath of Allah raining down on the Infidel.”

127

THREE MILES OUT TO SEA, NEARLY 12:00 NOON

Gwen hit the water in a bone-screaming collision. She smashed through the froth of a breaking wave, then plummeted into the black. She went so deep she felt her ears would implode. And she kept going down. She was desperate to stop her descent, could do nothing but go with it. When at last she began to slow and stop. She jackknifed, arrowed up, desperate for the breath smashed out of her by the impact.

She came up to a heaving, desolate world. Fifty feet away the helicopter, rotors thrashing the waves, slowly sank. Of the pilot, there was no sign. Rising and falling with the waves about ten feet from her was Randy Sieber’s body. He lay face up. Eyes unmoving. Gwen looked at him without pity. He had fought. He had lost. He had got what he deserved. She turned away. She had another battle to fight.

What way was home? How far away were they? Which way to swim? Around her the waves were cresting, breaking on her. She worked her arms and legs, treading water, staying afloat, just. She was beyond lucky. Nothing broken, just hideous bruising. She pulled off her boots, struggled out of her jeans and shirt.

Her watch, her Garmin with its GPS system, was still strapped to her wrist. It was waterproof. But crash proof? It had survived enough surf wipeouts, but nothing like this. Gwen said a small prayer, flicked on the GPS. It worked! The shore was indicated by an arrow. It was three miles away. She’d swum that far before. Easily, but never in seas like this. And not after a slamming fall that had bruised every inch of her and had killed a man. What choice did she have? Stay here with Sieber’s body?

Shit! He moved.

“Help me,” he called, thrashing suddenly. “My legs … they’re broken.”

Gwen didn’t say a word. Just looked at him for a moment, checking there was no pistol in his floundering hands. There wasn’t. In water your body could cool twenty-five times as fast as in air. Unable to swim, to move to keep warm, Sieber wouldn’t last long before he succumbed to hypothermia. That was if he didn’t drown first. Justice for Al Freidland, for Elise Rochberger, and for whoever else Sieber might have killed.

Gwen turned and swam away. Sieber’s cries soon faded.

She fought through the water, doing a slow front crawl. She couldn’t look back, couldn’t stop to check over her shoulder for looming waves that might crash on her. All she could do was swim, and keep swimming.

Her body rose and fell with the waves. Water gushed in from all angles. The air was saturated with water, spume, and spray. The spindrift spooled like shredded white ribbons. It looked pretty, in pictures. It was deadly to swimmers.

Gwen breathed through clenched teeth, careful not to suck in water. When she did, she had to stop, cough, grab at a slice of calm, carry on.

The minutes passed; the waves grew bigger still. Up and down she went, riding the waves, propelled forward, but too often down, underwater. The wind screamed with an almost personal savagery. The rain sluiced down. Fighting to stay afloat, to move forward, Gwen felt her muscles begin to burn. Oxygen, she needed more oxygen. She sucked in more breath, told herself, over and over,
you can do it, you can do it.
She checked her Garmin to ensure she was swimming as straight a line for shore as she could. She had covered one mile. Two to go.

Hope flared. She imagined arriving at the shore. Somewhere near San Luis Obispo, if the currents didn’t push her north or south. She tried to see it in her mind, saw herself feeling sand under her feet, saw herself on dry land. The images of the truly enormous waves that would be breaking on the shore, should she even make it that far, she blanked from her mind. Arm over arm, leg kick, leg kick. On she went as the storm built and the sky darkened.

128

THE SUPER-YACHT,
ZEPHYR
, 1:00 P.M.

Sheikh Ali stared through the glass at the thrashing sea. The helicopter wasn’t coming back. He had to accept that now. It had been gone for an hour. Gwen Boudain had exacted her last measure of revenge. He was stuck aboard, stranded at the mercy of the storm.
Zephyr
’s top speed was approximately 60 knots, but the storm was coming in faster and on a broader front than they had all thought. He took out his iPad, consulted a map. Then he rang the pilot of his private jet, a Boeing 767, currently in Los Angeles.