Ark Storm Read online

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is for my late brother, Professor John Eric Davies. You lived so well, died too young.

  It’s also for his wonderful daughter, Eleanor Beaton.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are many people to whom I owe many thanks for this book.

  My husband, Rupert Wise, has supported me in every imaginable way. He has always believed in my writing and he knew that one day a big story would come along. Like a magician, he guides me to the stories and the stories to me. And he does so much more in helping me craft them. He is an insightful (and brave) critic. He is also an invaluable source of research information with his wide-ranging expertise.

  Our children have my eternal thanks for giving it all meaning.

  David Vigliano reached out through the ether, summoning my ideas and giving them the oxygen of his faith. The whole crew at Vigliano Associates—Matt Carlini, David Peak, Thomas Flannery, inter alios—have been wonderfully brilliant and supportive both on the business and on the creative side, giving me invaluable editorial input.

  My brother Roy, via the website he set up many years ago for me before I even knew that such a thing existed, was the conduit that put David in touch with me. He also is a source of diverse information.

  David took me to the fabulous Tor Books. Bob Gleason, editor and writer extraordinaire, you are a genius and I’m not saying that because you spotted me and my book! Tom Doherty, you have created a wonderful enterprise full of talent and energy and brightness. It is a pleasure to know you. Kelly Quinn, fellow Oxonian, you are always cheerful and upbeat, seamlessly professional and never wrong!

  Huge thanks to the entire Tor team across sales and marketing and general administration. Without you guys I wouldn’t be out there.

  I would also like to thank the lovely Hanca Leppink for all her support over the years. Thanks too to Marga de Boer and all the team at Luitingh-Sijthoff.

  Yilin Press in China—thanks, guys! My first Chinese translation.

  In the writing of this book, I have come across many brilliant and fascinating people who have helped me with research across a very wide range of subjects. I owe you all profound thanks.

  Some of you I cannot publicly acknowledge here: the man with the murderous animals—glad you are on the side of the angels! The traveler and his son: I would not wish to bump into either of you on a dark night but your knowledge is impeccable. Mr. Electronica, love the live insights …

  The scientists and their backers, thank you for sharing your brilliant creation.

  Those whom I can thank publicly:

  The U.S. Geological Survey, Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project—ARk Storm 1000 scenario, were extremely informative and helpful.

  Professor Mark Saunders of University College London gave generously of his time and expertise many years ago when I first explored the idea of writing a novel around the weather.

  The wonderful Rupert Allason is always forthcoming with his time and his extensive knowledge.

  My brother Kenneth gave me detailed input on Singapore—clubs, restaurants, traffic, and other wonderful local detail.

  Marcel Giacometti and Andrew Stuttaford were most helpful with all things financial. Marcel also gave freely of his considerable gastronomic and viticultural expertise.

  Dirk Wray was a wonderful source of surfing stories. You big wave surfers are mad!

  Doris, Jenie, Andrew, and Tony buy me time to write.

  And I thank you, dear reader, for picking up this book.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Chapter 136

  Chapter 137

  Chapter 138

  Chapter 139

  Chapter 140

  Chapter 141

  Chapter 142

  Chapter 143

  Chapter 144

  Chapter 145

  Chapter 146

  Chapter 147

  Chapter 148

  Chapter 149

  Chapter 150

  Chapter 151

  Chapter 152

  Chapter 153

  Chapter 154

  Epilogue

  Introductory and Explanatory Note

  Preview: Hostage

  Books by Linda Davies

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  What if you could control the weather?

  “What if one man could control the weather?”

  “Only Allah can control the weather.”

  “Not true.”

  Thousands of miles away, in Iran, the ayatollah snorted with derision.

  “You think you have the power of Allah, now? You think your billions of dollars make you God? This is heresy.”

  “Not heresy. Technology. I can make it rain. I can stop the rain. I can harness the power of the storm and I can magnify it. I can bring the Flood. I can wash away hillsides, destroy homes; I can take a swath of some of the most expensive real estate in the United States and I can rain down upon it the wrath of Allah at the infidel.”

  “You would wage jihad by weather?”

  “Does it not say in the holy Quran, we helped him against those who rejected him. They were surely a wicked people, so we drowned them all. Is it not a beautiful idea?”

  “When will
you do it?”

  “When the right storm comes. Then I shall magnify it. I will give California the ARk Storm of their nightmares.”

  1

  Late Summer

  HURRICANE POINT, CALIFORNIA, MONDAY, 6:00 A.M.

  The wave came silently, like a killer in the pellucid light of dawn. Huge and beautiful and murderous. Come and get me. C’mon, let’s see if you can. She could see the swell, bigger than those that had gone before. Maybe a twelve- to fourteen-footer, with a likely twenty-five-foot face. Massive. At the outer limits of a wave that she could surf without a Jet Ski tow-in. Her heart began to race as she lay down on her board, reached out long, powerful arms, and paddled hard She could see the wave in front explode in a frenzy of white water. She could no longer see the monster behind her, gaining on her, rising up behind her, opening its maw, but she could feel it. It raised her up, terrifyingly high. No backing out now. Paddle for your life, harder, faster.

  She grabbed the board, snapped to her feet as the wave took her, propelled her down its gnarly face. She balanced, knees bent low, arms outstretched, warrior pose, riding it, wild with glee, high on adrenaline. She skimmed down the face, muscling the board against the yank of hundreds of tons of water. She rode into the barrel, into the unearthly blue, into the moment when time stopped and the universe was just you and the barrel and the roaring in your ears. And then time started again and the barrel was closing, just one split second of escape remaining. She ducked right down, shot out of the barrel, flipped up over the back of the wave. Feet still planted on her board, she flew through air, over water, riding the two elements. Conquering them. This time. Her spirit sang and she yelled out loud. No one to hear her. She surfed alone, breaking the surfer’s code. Just the woman and the sea with the gulls screaming and soaring and bearing their wild witness.

  * * *

  The gulls watched her paddle round to the quiet water, where the waves did not form up to do battle. They watched her paddle in, walk from the water, sun-bleached hair falling down her back: golden skin, freckle-flecked over the patrician nose, which was a shade too long, saving her from mere prettiness. They watched her glance back at the sea, a look of reckoning, part gratitude, part triumph, part relief.

  Always the fear, underneath it all. Only the fool did not feel it. Gwen felt it dissipate as she ran up the beach, board under her arm. Death swam alongside the huge waves, every surfer knew that. It was part of the kick, risking your life. The euphoria of survival was her reward. She felt it sweep through her, filling up the empty parts, washing away the doubts. Now she was ready to take them on, to play the games of man. And win again.

  2

  HURRICANE POINT, CALIFORNIA, ONE WEEK EARLIER

  It had begun like a normal day, then the phone rang. Joaquin Losada in Peru.

  “Chica. You up?”

  “I am now,” replied Gwen, rubbing her eyes, squinting at her alarm clock: 7:00 A.M. She’d been up till three, hitting the tequila with her childhood friend Lucy and her Tae Kwon Do trainer Dwayne and a few of his fellow ex-Navy-SEAL buddies who were about to go off on a trip and were determined to send themselves off in style. The thought that they would soon be boarding a ship while she got to remain on dry, unpitching land made her feel marginally better.

  “Switch on your computer. Check the readings!” came Joaquin’s high-pitched voice. It was always high, in a deliciously camp way, but this morning it sounded like nails on a blackboard.

  Gwen cautiously swung her legs out of bed, pulled the alpaca blanket around her, walked through to the sitting room, and turned on her computer.

  “I’m checking,” she said, trying to focus on the flickering figures as the screen came to life. She twiddled the green jade and gold ring she wore on her middle finger, spinning it round and round in place as she read and then reread the figures.

  “Jeez! These temperature readings are off the scale for September. Are the sensors faulty?”

  “My first thought. Something’s been going on here with the readings for the past two weeks. I didn’t say anything before ’cause it was just too weird, wanted to give it time to revert.”

  “And?”

  “It didn’t revert. The temperatures just keep rising. So, either the sensors are faulty or the model has a glitch or we got one hell of a Niño building.”

  “We did think it was going to be big.” Gwen got up, crossed into her kitchen, filled a mug with water, downed it. Drips ran down her lips to her chest, dampening her white vest top.

  “Gwen, there is big and there is truly humongous. All sorts of weird shit is going on here. We’ve had blasting sun, high summer sun, and we’re just into Spring down here. We’ve had torrential rain, and freakish waves. We’ve lost fifteen sensors in the past fortnight.”

  “Shoot! And you think waves have smashed them? They’re meant to withstand extreme waves.”

  “Try telling them that. They’re at the bottom of the ocean, my guess, smashed to bits. I’ve been out in the boat looking for them. No trace. And let me tell you, I didn’t want to linger out there, but I forced myself to search. Sea has a weird feeling. Strange color, darker than normal, and there’s almost an electric feel to it. Hot as hell.”

  “I know it, like before a hurricane hits.” Gwen paused, asked the question that she never wanted to ask, but which hovered between them, always, unspoken, a nightmare subjugated. “Joaquin, it is the waves, isn’t it? It’s not, well, you know…?” Her voice trailed off.

  “Sabotage? Persuasion? The Narco Shitfaces? Chica, I hope not. I really hope not, but I don’t think so. I’m on the lookout. I’m always on the lookout, but I’ve seen nothing. No one. They don’t know about us. Far as everyone in Punta Sal is concerned, I’m just another dolphin freak cameraman who likes fishing. I go out in my fishing boat, no one gives a shit.”

  “Keep looking out, Joaquin. I brought you into this.”

  “Hey, I’m a big boy, and I will look out before you nag the cojones off me, but Gwen, chica, listen up. What’s here in my face scaring the shit out of me is the freakin’ weather. Something serious is brewing and this is our big chance, Oracle’s big chance to predict it.” Joaquin’s voice had risen what sounded like a full octave.

  “Okay. I’m there.” Gwen sat down at her desk, looked at the figures again. Numbers don’t lie. Logic said it was waves destroying the buoys. She blew out a breath. “So what do we need?”

  “More sensors, the toughened ones. More buoys, ditto.”

  “The expensive ones,” observed Gwen, knuckling her pounding temples. “How many do we need?”

  “Forty.”

  “Forty!” exclaimed Gwen, mind furiously calculating the cost. “Jeez, Joaquin, that’ll cost nearly half a million dollars. I don’t have that kind of money. Fact is, I have almost nothing.”

  “Then chica, it’s time to quit hiding. You gotta get out there, sell a share in Oracle, raise some serious plata, and fast.”

  3

  HURRICANE POINT HOUSE, ONE WEEK LATER, MONDAY MORNING, 8:00 A.M.

  Gwen slid into her Mustang. She turned the key in the ignition, smiled. Thirty years old, the car still roared like a big cat.

  She drove slowly down the dirt track, turned onto Highway 1, and snaked along, following the line of the precipitous cliffs. God, she loved this view: the endless blue of the ocean, the serried lines of hump-backed waves, the distant profile of the Big Sur lighthouse, the towering majesty of the Bixby Bridge spanning the canyon below, the parade of cypress trees at Soberanes Point. It was home, had been for a long time, but she had the treasured knack of seeing it with a stranger’s eyes and gasping at it.

  After about thirty-five minutes she turned inland along the Carmel Valley Road. The sun grew stronger, making her squint, and she nearly missed the turnoff to Laureless Ranch. “Drive past the ranch house,” the Big Shot’s PA had said, “and keep going for four hundred yards. You can’t miss us.”

  She saw what the woman had meant. The square boxlike two-story granite and glass building looked like an alien spaceship had plucked it from Silicon Valley and deposited it randomly in Carmel Valley.

  How the hell did they get zoning, she wondered, stepping from the Mustang. She smoothed down the wrinkles on her black linen trousers, pulled the black tank top down to cover her bare skin, blew out a slow breath. No turning back now. Too much at stake to fail.

  She strode up to the locked doors, spoke into an intercom. Aware that she was being monitored by discreet CCTV, she gazed back coolly.

  “Gwen Boudain for Dr. Messenger.” Her voice was slow, easy, all California surfer girl drawl.