The Leviathan Effect (19 page)

“Really.”
Strange
. Mallory conjured an image of the attractive Homeland Security Secretary. He had met her only once.

“Why?”

“The Secretary provided no further information.”

“How does she know I’m here?”

“She doesn’t. As I say, she was using your old number. I told her I would probably be in touch with you, but that I could make no guarantees.” He cleared his throat. “She can meet as soon as the morning.”

“As in tomorrow morning?”

“Yes, that’s the one. What should I tell her?”

“Tell her yes.”

“All right. Eight o’clock, then. Be dressed to work out.”

A
T THE WESTERN
end of the National Mall, intricate webs of lightning silently lit up the sky behind the Greek temple-like Lincoln Memorial. It was a blustery evening with the smell of rain in the air. Only a handful of people were strolling nearby when the Memorial went dark at precisely 9:07
P.M.

A
T HIS MODEST
, sparsely furnished office in a three-building complex set behind thick brush and trees on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California, Morgan Garland reached for his encrypted BlackBerry. It was 6:09.

“Please hold for Mr. Zorn,” came the familiar female voice. Curt, inflectionless, almost as if it were machine-generated.

Always the same greeting. Never
Victor
Zorn. Always
Mr
. Zorn. And always a lengthy wait before Zorn’s voice actually came on the line.

It was okay. Morgan Garland accepted such quirks, because Mr. Zorn was easily the most interesting and charismatic client he had ever worked with. Garland had had face time with Zorn on just three
occasions, but each meeting had been more extraordinary than the one before. It wasn’t only that Victor Zorn had developed a product that Garland believed would change world markets, not to mention technology and science; it was also that he had managed to create a team and a strategic vision that would generate instant credibility for that product.

Garland was among the best-known and most successful venture capitalists in the country—one of the few so-called celebrity venture capitalists, who had famously backed several dark horse California start-ups that today were Internet icons. He was adept at forecasting trends, and at keeping pace with the sort of high-stakes games Mr. Zorn played.

Secrecy and eccentricity were not unusual among his clients, who had made fortunes in emerging technologies. “New business models,” he called them. But Mr. Zorn played at a higher level than any client he had known, revealing himself, and his endgame, a move at a time. His latest revelation—the woman and two men who would be traveling to Washington with them—had again taken Morgan Garland by surprise.

It was 6:21 before Garland actually heard Mr. Zorn’s voice in his ear.

“Morgan.”

“Mr. Zorn.”

“Okay, just to inform you: we’ve received a positive response. You will be joining us tomorrow?”

“I will.”

“A driver will come by your office to pick you up in the morning. Eight o’clock. All travel arrangements have been made. We’ll discuss presentation on the plane. It’s imperative, of course, that you not tell anyone where you’re going.”

“Understood.”

“Plan to be away for three nights.”

“Fine.”

“Thank you, Garland.”

“Thank you, Mr. Zorn.”

T
HE
L
OCKHEED
WP-3D O
RION
turbo-prop airplane lifted off from Amilcar Cabral International Airport on Sal Island in Cape Verde shortly after 2
A.M.
, climbing into the night sky at two thousand feet per minute. The plane, which belonged to the fleet of the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, was headed due west, toward Hurricane Alexander, which it was scheduled to penetrate and pass through four separate times—a quickly organized government mission to better understand this highly unusual Atlantic storm. The crew would measure the hurricane’s winds, temperatures, and air pressure; create atmospheric and thermodynamic profiles; and look for any visual cues that might help scientists make sense of the storm’s inner workings.

The plane’s pilot, David Quinn, had flown through almost three hundred hurricanes over the past twenty-six years, piloting Orion planes and the larger DC-8 NASA flying labs. Quinn’s co-pilot on this mission was a newbie named Kristen Landy, an energetic, blond-haired south Floridian who had trained as a Navy pilot before joining the NOAA Corps last year. This was only her third flight into a hurricane and she was eager to learn what they would experience inside “the bad boy,” as she called Alexander. Quinn found her invigorating; she reminded him of the daughter he never had.

The crew on board included a navigator, flight engineer, aerial reconnaissance officer, two meteorologists, and two dropsonde operators. Dropsondes were fifteen-inch-long electronic cylinders that would be released from the belly of the plane once they were inside the hurricane’s eye; each contained a GPS receiver and an array of
other sensors that would deliver a steady stream of data to computer stations in the back of the plane and, via satellite, to the National Hurricane Center in Miami and other NOAA agencies. The satellite feed would also be transmitted to Dr. James Wu, who was monitoring the flight in real time from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the White House.

The first time an airplane intentionally flew into a hurricane was in July 1943, when an Army Air Corps two-seater penetrated what became known as the Surprise Hurricane near Galveston, Texas. Despite the evolution of sophisticated hurricane tracking technology since then, the government still routinely sent “hurricane hunter” planes into the hearts of monster storms to learn what radar and satellites couldn’t tell them.

“You ready for this?” Quinn said as the plane began to cut across a band of severe thunderstorms. His eyes darted to the color-enhanced radar screen, which was morphing from yellow—moderate rains—to red and magenta, heavy rains.

“Ten-four,” said his co-pilot. In a calm moment, she added, “Bring on the bad boy.”

David Quinn smiled to himself. “He’ll be a teddy bear once we get under his skin.”

At 6:27, the sky was beginning to lighten. But it was dark ahead as they flew at a steady 200 knots into Alexander’s “skin”—the hurricane’s eye wall, a protective ring of violent convective clouds that surrounded the center of the storm.

Quinn watched the monitor as the wind speeds ticked up: 43 knots … 67 … Suddenly the 116-foot plane was shaking violently, riding updrafts and downdrafts, rocking side to side. Then falling suddenly, causing a brief sensation of weightlessness. Mock screams came from the back of the plane. Landy let out several whoops and smiled once at the pilot. But David Quinn knew she was overcompensating.

“Ever been on the Cyclone at Coney Island?” he asked when it momentarily calmed down.

“What?”

He repeated himself.

“What, is that a roller coaster or something?”

“One of the best. It was named for one of those guys,” he said,
gesturing at the storm outside. “I have a feeling Alexander will be a much wilder ride.”

He glanced over and saw that she was grinning distractedly. But not for long. The turbulence continued for another hour—bumps, sudden drops, and slow, rough rises. It
was
a bit like being on a roller coaster. A roller coaster ride that never seemed to end.

But then, at last, it did. Wind speeds throttled down rapidly as they began to emerge from the eye wall, just as the winds had accelerated going in—66 knots, then 42, 31, 12. Then nothing. They pulled away from the convection-charged turbulence and everything changed. The air was suddenly perfectly calm. The sky was robin’s egg blue, the wind almost non-existent. Cottony clouds seemed to spread forever above them. It was as if they had flown into a perfect New England afternoon. A hundred miles of bliss lay ahead.

“I think we may have just entered heaven,” Landy said.

“Yeah. Something, isn’t it?” Quinn said, marveling at the calm skies outside the plane, as crew members prepared to release the electronic-packed dropsonde cylinders. The eye of a hurricane was a stunning oasis that still thrilled him even after all these missions. It felt as if they were floating through the sky, no longer propelled by engines. Only the distant surrounding black bands reminded him where they really were. Quinn looked up.
Beautiful. Perfect blue-white sky
.

Then he looked down. And what he saw wasn’t so beautiful.

“Oh my god,” he said.

For several minutes, the pilot and co-pilot didn’t speak. The eye of a hurricane had always seemed like a wonderland to Quinn, the reward for the long tedious flight to the storm, and the turbulent, Mr. Toad’s wild ride through the surrounding winds and eye wall. Calm, surrounded by chaos.

But this storm was clearly different; somehow the turbulence ahead looked far worse than what they had just come through.

Quinn glanced down again. The sea appeared to be a violent cauldron of giant, colliding waves, which suggested the spewing lava from an erupting volcano.

“Ever read Dante’s
Inferno
?” Quinn said to his co-pilot.

“I don’t think so,” Landy said. “Who’s it by?”

“Fellow named Dante.”

“No. Why?”

“If you want the
CliffsNotes
version, just look down.”

But Quinn no longer wanted to look himself. The sight was starting to spook him a little. He’d never seen anything like it before. The raging turbulence of the waves was only growing worse, the water reaching higher, as if each wave were trying to break free of the holds that bound it to the sea.
Weird
. Then, as they began to near the outer eye wall, a sudden downdraft shuddered the plane, tilting it on its side.

“Going to try to get us to a new altitude,” Quinn said, his voice sounding thin and unfamiliar to himself.

He pulled back on the yoke and the nose of the plane rose at a forty-degree angle, then leveled out. They flew uneventfully for another twenty minutes, before hitting the first strong bands of rain and convection.

The plane was jolted again as it entered the outer eye wall, and vibrated with a hard, steady side-to-side motion. Quinn watched the wind speed ratchet up again, from dead calm right back to hurricane strength. This wall was different, though. The air wasn’t just turbulent, it seemed charged, too, in all directions, with wild veins of kinetic electricity.

Quinn glanced at the radar, steering to avoid the magenta splotches. But the plane jerked downward, inexplicably, then to the right and to the other side. Quinn glanced out, saw what appeared to be a giant wave of ocean water wallop the left wing and engine of the plane. But, of course, it couldn’t have been water. It must have just been a heavy gust of wind and rain. They weren’t anywhere near the ocean surface. Were they? He gazed down again and saw angry waves seeming to rise up just beneath them, bathed now in a dark, eerie green light, what almost looked to be giant translucent tentacles reaching up. Then he felt the plane shaking and saw another glowing wave of water, this time crashing over the nose of the plane.

“What the hell’s happening?” Landy said, her voice shaking.

“Hold on.”

Another. And then a succession of waves—bursts of raging water, each crashing across the front of their plane, shaking the cockpit violently each time.
No
, Quinn thought.
This isn’t possible
. Were they really that close to the ocean surface?
We can’t be
. Quinn checked
the altimeter again, saw that they were below the set limit of one thousand feet, but still nowhere near the surface.
What in God’s name is happening?
Were the instruments malfunctioning?

He pulled back steeply on the yoke, but the force of the winds acted as a counter-balance, keeping the plane on a shuddering, slightly downward course. “Hold on,” he said again. Suddenly, a hive of lightning seemed to engulf the plane and Quinn saw sparks spitting from the right engine. The nose dipped sharply and began to plunge. The plane jerked side to side. He pulled back hard on the yoke. No change. One of the P-3’s four engines was suddenly coughing fire; Quinn tried vainly to pull them to higher altitude.

“What’s happening?” Landy screamed. “What the fuck’s happening?”

Quinn said nothing. He didn’t know. The plane was toppling and spinning, losing altitude, hammered by the winds, unresponsive to anything he tried to do in the cockpit.

It was morning, but they were lost in a pitch-dark sky, falling through a vicious band of vertical clouds lit by wildly ricocheting veins of lightning. Several times the explosions of light stunned his eyes, like giant, too-bright bulbs. Then, for a moment, Quinn was able to regain control and pull the aircraft up … for a moment … before losing it again … because something was pulling them down, toward the water, toppling them upside down … strange, clashing forces of wind and rain and ocean currents …

Quinn saw Kristen’s face in a burst of light and he didn’t recognize her.
It’s not her
. She was gone. The life had drained from her skin and she looked to him exactly like a corpse. A fury of new lightning burst over the front of the plane and then Quinn saw another face—out there, emerging from the webs of light. Then again. A giant bearded man, who appeared to be observing them through the glass. Quinn turned his eyes away, shaking his head. But each time the sky lit up, he saw it, saw the figure’s hand reaching toward them, its index finger touching the glass of the cockpit. Then he felt a whomp of water beating over the plane, slamming it downward again, toward the rising troughs of raging sea. The lightning was everywhere suddenly, a strobe light show, and right before he went blind, Quinn began to see other faces and figures and features—the water becoming hands, reaching up and grabbing the plane’s wings, shaking it like a toy. Preying vines of water coiling around the plane, bouncing it down
into the waves.
I’m hallucinating now
. He had to be. He glanced at the corpse in the co-pilot’s seat, then looked through the cockpit glass, his heart pounding—and saw the bearded man, walking on the water, stepping backwards now, moon-walking away from him; and a succession of enormous, undulating figures following him, women in a conga line. Then darkness again engulfed the plane, which was twisting and plummeting toward the sea.