Skeleton Coast

JUAN was in the living room of the guest cabin talking with Moses Ndebele. His men were resigned to their beds, nearly incapacitated by seasickness. He enjoyed Ndebele’s intellect and his ability to forgive considering how harshly he’d been treated by his government. Unlike some men, who when they gain power trample freedoms and impoverish their people in a quest for wealth and personal glory, Ndebele really did want what was best for Zimbabwe. He spoke of economic reforms, of getting the country’s once thriving agriculture sector back to its former capacity. He talked about power sharing among the tribes and an end to the nepotism that ruined many African nations.

More than anything else he wanted his people to no longer fear their own government.

Cabrillo was more convinced than ever that making his bargain with Moses had been the right call. They had the chance to restore what had once been a shining beacon in sub-Saharan Africa and make it again the envy of the continent. Of course, all it would take was to find a boat lost for a century that had sunk somewhere in about a thousand square miles of ocean.

He felt the ship suddenly veer. He judged the turn to be at least fifteen degrees and was getting to his feet when his phone chimed.

“Someone found her,” he said, knowing it was Max with the news they’d been waiting thirty hours to hear. He mouthed an apology to M oses as he strode from the room.

“She was detected by something called Mag-Star,” Hanley said. “Apparently it’s a new military satellite that can detect the distortion a large steel-hulled ship has on the earth’s magnetic field.”

Juan was familiar with the technology. “How far are we from her?”

“Another hundred and fifty miles and, to answer your next question, we’re still the closest of all the vessels vectoring in.”

Calculating speed and distances Juan said, “That’ll put us on her about sunset, not that we’ve seen the sun in a while.”

TheOregon had been steaming under a roiling veil of cloud cover since before dawn, while the seas had built to fifteen-foot waves that pounded her hull. The ship had no problem shouldering aside the swells; she was designed to absorb much worse and at speeds greater than she was making, but the wounded were taking a beating despite Hux’s best efforts. The wind hovered around thirty knots with gusts edging Force Eight on the Beaufort Scale. Although the rain hadn’t started yet, the forecasts predicted it would hit within a couple of hours.

“Taking down theGulf of Sidra in this storm’s going to be tough enough,” Max remarked. “Darkness is only going to make it worse.”

“Tell me about it,” Juan said. “I’ll be there in a second.”

Moments later he strode into the operations center. The regular watch standers were being replaced by the Corporation’s best team. It was difficult because the ship was pitching violently and the crew had to keep one hand continuously braced against a counter or bulkhead. Eric Stone was already at the helm; Mark Murphy, sporting a shirt that advocated nuking the whales, was sliding into the weapons station while Hali was jacking into the communications systems. Linda Ross arrived while Eddie and Linc stood against the back wall, as different as Mutt and Jeff in every aspect but competence.

Max came over from where he was monitoring his beloved engines as soon as Juan got into the center chair. On the main monitor was a satellite picture of the Atlantic. The clouds were begi

“Okay, where are we and where’s theSidra ?” Juan asked.

Stone tapped at his computer and two flashing icons appeared on the monitor. TheGulf of Sidra was positioned right at the edge of where the eye was growing, with theOregon driving in hard from the southeast.

They watched the screen for more than an hour as it was updated by the National Reco

“I’m getting some more information from Overholt,” Hali said, staring at his computer. “Says here the NRO has some additional data on the target. Checking back through their logs they’ve been able to re-create her course for the two hours before they ID’d her. Eric, I’m sending this over to you.”

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 ru

“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 begi

“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?”