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 theSidra 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 theGulf 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. TheOregon 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.”
“You got it.”
Juan killed the connection. “Wepps, what’s the status on our fish?”
On each side of theOregon ’s prow below her waterline was a tube capable of launching a Russian Test-71 torpedo. Each of the two-ton weapons were wire guided, with a range of nearly ten miles, a maximum speed of forty knots, and four hundred and fifty pounds of high explosives loaded into its nose.
When he’d designed theOregon Cabrillo had wanted American-made MK-48 ADCAP torpedoes, but no amount of sweet-talking would budge Langston’s refusal. As it was, the surplus Soviet torpedoes were powerful enough to sink any but the most heavily armored ships.
“You’re not considering torpedoing theSidra , are you?” Mark asked. “That’ll dump her entire load of gel in one concentrated spot. At this stage that much heat could have nearly the same effect as if the ship had completed her circle.”
“I’m just covering all my options,” Juan reassured him.
“Okay, good.” Mark called up a diagnostic on the torpedoes. “They were pulled from the tubes three days ago for routine inspection. A battery on the fish in Tube One was replaced. Both are showing full charge now.”
“So what’s your play?” Max asked Juan.
“Simplest solution is to chopper a team over there, take control of the tanker, and shut off her discharge pumps.”
“You know, Chairman,” Eric said, “if we sail her far enough away from the eye and start dumping the gel again, the heat should generate excess evaporation and create another powerful low pressure zone. It would disrupt the storm and literally tear it apart.”
“Oh, God!” Hali exclaimed suddenly. He hit a switch on his panel and a strident voice filled the control room.
“I repeat, this is Adonis Cassedine, master of the VLCCGulf of Sidra . A storm has cracked our hull.
We are under ballast so there is no oil spill but we must abandon ship if she breaks up any more.” He gave his coordinates. “I am declaring an emergency. Please, can anyone hear my signal? Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
“Under ballast, my eye,” Max grumbled. “What do you want to do?”
Cabrillo sat motionless, his hand cupped around his chin. “Let ’em sweat. He’ll keep making reports even if nobody answers him. Eric, what’s our ETA now?”
“Still looking at about three hours.”
“TheSidra won’t last that long in these seas with a cracked hull,” Max said. “Especially if her keel’s affected. Hell, she could break apart in three minutes.”
Juan couldn’t argue the point. They had to do something but his options were limited. Letting the tanker break up on her own was the worst of them and it seemed Eric’s idea of using her to defuse the storm was out. The best he could hope for was to put the ship on the bottom with the least amount of spilled gel. The Test-71 torpedoes could do the job, but it might take hours for the hull to finally disappear under the waves, which meant hours of her continuing to disgorge her cargo.
Inspiration came from his experience on theOr Death with Sloane, when the boat was hit by a missile fired from the yacht guarding the wave-powered generators. She’d sunk in an instant because her bow had been ripped
