Hurricane Fever (25 page)

“We found his body,” she said. “After he ran up the barrel to get away from you all, after you got the key, he just stood up there until a gust took him. In the end, too much of a coward to face us. His body’s down on the cliff. Someone will recover it later.”

Roo nodded. Winced again. He still wanted to tell her something else. Something that occurred to him while lying on his back in the mud. It felt like he’d had an eternity to mull things over there. “We still…” He was going to add, “… have work to do.” But he had to pause.

“Don’t talk right now,” she cut him off. “Whatever it is, it can wait. I’ll need to go lie low, if Rhodes will let me. When you recover, we’ll talk.”

She looked at Rhodes. “Least I can do,” he said.

Roo took a deep breath and turned his head back to look at the ceiling of the APV as it trundled to life in the eerie calmness around them.

27

A light drizzle from a summer rainstorm pattered against the side of the
Spitfire
as Roo sat at anchor. The white sands of Bridgetown beaches gleamed despite the gray skies. The work of reconstruction was going on across the water. Heavy equipment was still moving cars that had been thrown into inconvenient places, like walls and onto bridges. Several boats still lay scattered around town. But life bustled. Music blared from a park. People were out buying food, buses running on schedule again.

“Hey,” a voice called from the side.

Roo hopped out to the starboard scoop and looked over. Kit stood on the front of the dinghy, holding up a case of Red Stripe and a bag of groceries. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Always,” Roo said, and helped her up after tying off the painter to the dinghy.

Roo fried some plantains while the rice cooker steamed away. They sat in the cockpit and watched the sun ponderously settle toward the blue line on the horizon as boats sailed by.

“I hoped you’d come by,” Roo said, when he finished his beer and threw the remains of the rice overboard for the fish.

“When Rhodes told me you’d snuck out of the hospital and gone to Aves, I thought you’d left Barbados for good.”

Roo smiled. “I promised you a drink,” he said.

“It’s not really a drink if I deliver it, though, is it?”

“Then I’ll have to owe you another.” He laughed.

“Is that a promise?”

He nodded.

Kit looked over at the cockpit seat nearby. “So what’s all that?”

Roo pointed at the plastic backpack-like object. “That’s a rebreather for diving. Wet suit. And next to it, a speargun. You’ve seen one of those before.”

Kit’s smile faded. “You’re not going fishing. What’s really going on?”

“I said I was going to hunt down the people who killed my nephew. And Beauchamp is dead.” The motley assortment of Eastern European neo-Nazis he’d collected to be his bodyguards and do his dirty work had scattered to the winds. “But there is a small loose end.”

“What is that?”

Roo pointed to the three-hundred-foot mega-yacht in the harbor. “While Rhodes and his people are finishing their investigations, Charleton, the creator of the Verne Plus, was asked to stay on the island while things were cleaned up. He’s right over there.”

“You think he’s involved?” Kit asked.

“Well, he denies understanding what Beauchamp was up to. Says he just needed the money and partnership,” Roo said. “I’m dubious. I need someone to sit on deck and watch the boat while I go over. And if I don’t come back, to let Rhodes know what happened. At the very least, I’d like to have a discussion with Charleton.”

“That’s why you came back with your boat?”

“Yes.”

“And after that?”

Roo opened another beer and pointed at the sun. “You ever wonder where the sun goes after it sets?”

Kit looked out over the ocean. “Far, far away…”

“There’s always room on the
Spitfire
for you,” Roo said. “Even if all you want is an extra room in the other hull. I know you had someone you loved killed by your father, I know you need to grieve. On many fronts. I can’t say I’ll be comfortable to be around because I have my own cloud to get out from under. But, sometimes it’s easier with a friend.”

She raised an eyebrow and smiled. “It is.”

28

A ghost in a black wet suit, Roo removed an oversized, black window that he’d cut open and slipped into the master suite of the mega-yacht.

When Charleton came in Roo stepped out and blocked the door. “Make a sound, I’ll shoot you in the chest with this speargun. You won’t be able to scream for sure after that. Understand?”

The man jumped, startled. “Who are you?”

“That was an amazing speech you gave at the Hurricane Ball,” Roo said. “Destiny, the species, so on. And then that madman tried to use your space facility to launch a deadly plague.”

“I’ve already said, I had no idea. I’ve been struggling with investment in the program. Beauchamp promised, and delivered, help I needed.”

Roo nodded seriously. Then looked around the mega-yacht. “Struggling with investment.”

“Look…” Charleton started. “What’s your name?”

“Prudence Jones.”

Charleton nodded. “Yes. Okay…”

Roo interrupted. “I deal in information. Security. You know, after every disaster some conspiracy theorist always says that someone made Wall Street trades based on how it would have affected things. Think of it like, insider trading, but for terrorist attacks and disasters. Of course, it’s always some racist asshole claiming it was some minority who knew about it, and it’s part of some conspiracy of this or that. But as a freelance spy I always have to take this sort of thing seriously and follow up on it.

“Now, in your case, Charleton, you buried it pretty deeply behind false corporations, but you turn out to have made heavy investments in companies that would have benefited from our mutual friend’s plan to kill a chunk of the human race.”

Charleton sat down at a tiny desk and sighed. “Beauchamp was a zealot of the worst order. In the strictest sense of the word. And here’s the thing, there are lots of zealots out there. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Beauchamp, or someone else, it’s going to happen. Some idiot in a garage somewhere will build a virus that looks for a certain kind of DNA.”

“If anyone pulls that trigger, it’s going to unleash a worldwide epidemic of groups all releasing bioweapons to kill each other,” Roo said. “It’s Pandora’s Box. Worse than nukes.”

“But someone’s going to do it first,” Charleton repeated. “People like Beauchamp have been dreaming about a weapon like this since Mengele in World War Two.”

“So you thought: why not know who it is? Why not profit off the information?” Roo asked. And saw Charleton smile slightly in agreement. He was reaching for something under the desk, hoping Roo didn’t notice.

Roo tracked the movement.

“Now you understand why I think it’s
imperative
that humanity not remain only on the surface of Earth,” Charleton said mildly.

“You know, my grandmother was very religious,” Roo said. “Always said, love of money was the root of much evil. And Charleton, you love money very, very much. I see that you’re reaching for something; I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

“Well…” Charleton said. And, very unwisely, pulled the gun out from under his desk.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe a debt to the many readers of
Arctic Rising,
the book prior to this one. Many of you wrote me letters asking to see more Prudence Jones. I’d been hoping that it would make sense to make
Hurricane Fever
a book with Roo’s point of view, so it was a real treat to get that encouragement. Thanks also to those who forward me news clippings or climate change stories that they think I may be interested in. It’s all grist for the mill.

I couldn’t have written this without the patience and support of my family, so thanks go to my wife, Emily, as always, as well as my twin daughters, Calli and Thalia, who often have to show up at my elbow and let me know it’s time to knock off work for the day.

This book had two editors, a first for me. Many cynics today wonder whether editors are still in there getting their hands dirty. Trust me, this book would have been far more hobbled were it not for the help of Paul Stevens at Tor Books and Michael Rowley at Del Rey UK.

I also have to thank Sarah Goslee for help with an early read of the book. Any of the science that I got right is thanks to her. All mistakes are my own. I will note I decided in draft to exclude some of the details about a race-targeted virus and how the mechanics of it would work. The idea of some future Mengele reading the book and taking notes squicked me out.

One of the stranger side notes of the history of alternate space access is the HARP gun project, an attempt to actually straight-up shoot small projectiles into outer space. They didn’t quite make it before the project was canceled, alas. Somewhere there’s an alternate history where Barbados is a major space launch facility, and I decided to revive that possibility.

I have to thank a few people who took the time to help me visit the remains of the HARP gun project, which was an amazing day of research:

My thanks to Karen Lord (another champion of Roo), her friend Fatima Patel, and Robert Sandiford for helping me visit the HARP gun grounds. My thanks also to the Barbadian Defense Forces for allowing me access to this unique piece of Barbadian and alternate space access history. Being escorted out to see the ruins of the giant guns set up to launch micro-satellites was truly useful in helping get the last section of the novel set up.

I also would like to thank the organizers of AnimeKon Expo in Barbados (particularly Omar Kennedy and Mel Young). As a kid growing up just next door in Grenada, I would never have guessed I’d be back down just forty or so miles from where I was born to celebrate science fiction, games, cosplay, and movies, as well as meet so many cool readers who are both islanders and lovers of science fiction. Being a guest at this unique event allowed me to research the HARP gun and decide that Roo had to get involved with it for this book. If you are interested in science fiction, pop culture, comics, and the Caribbean, you should make the time to visit Barbados for it.

Lastly, thank you to everyone at bookstores who promoted
Arctic Rising
and readers who passed the word around, thus allowing
Hurricane Fever
to become real. This wouldn’t have happened without your support.

TOR BOOKS BY TOBIAS S. BUCKELL

Crystal Rain

Ragamuffin

Sly Mongoose

Halo
®
: The Cole Protocol

Halo
®
: Evolutions

Arctic Rising

Hurricane Fever

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

T
OBIAS
S.
B
UCKELL
is a
New York Times
bestselling author whose books and fifty-plus short stories have been translated around the world. Buckell hails from the Caribbean, where as a child he lived on boats in Grenada and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands. When he was a teenager, a series of hurricanes destroyed the boat his family was living on, and they moved to Ohio, where he still lives today with his wife and daughters.

Visit him at
www.tobiasbuckell.com
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

HURRICANE FEVER

Copyright © 2014 by Tobias S. Buckell

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Base Art, Co.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Buckell, Tobias S.

Hurricane fever / Tobias S. Buckell.

    p.  cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 978-0-7653-1922-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-4928-6 (e-book)

1.  Hurricanes—Fiction.   2.  Espionage—Fiction.   3.  Technology—Fiction.   4.  Weapons—Fiction.   I.  Title.

   PS3602.U2635H87 2014

   813'.6—dc23

2014014654

e-ISBN 9781429949286

First Edition: July 2014