Caught between the easterly and westerly trade winds like a pebble between two contrarotating wheels, the massive tropical depression began to collapse upon itself… and to spin.
Amanda snapped completely awake, yet she could not name the reason why. Her phone had not rung, the alarms had not sounded, and no one had knocked at her door. Her quarters, dimly lit by the hint of dawn light filtering in past the blinds, were cool and quiet beyond the white-noise rumble of the air conditioner. And yet something was indefinably but definitely wrong.
Lifting her head off the pillow, Amanda pushed her senses out in all directions, like a mother reacting to some subliminal warning about her child. And then the realization struck her. The sea. Something wasn’t right with the sea.
Floater 1 was a vast and stable platform, well anchored to the ocean floor. Yet the complex of superbarges still rode the ocean’s waves, pitching and rolling minutely with the surface action.
The rhythm of that movement, second nature to Amanda after her months aboard, had changed. And that disruption was profoundly disturbing.
Rising from the cot, she pulled on shirt, shorts, and sandals and stepped out on deck.
Red sky at morning. / Sailor, take warning…
The old poem flashed into her mind.
The air was still and sticky, with little to breathe within it. A few of the hands on morning watch lingered uneasily at the rail, feeling the same sense of disquiet as Amanda. The sky to the east flamed a bloody scarlet, and from the south a series of heavy, oil-topped rollers flowed in toward Floater 1, taking the platform almost broadside-on.
There was something disturbingly organic about those waves, as if they were being generated by the pulsing of some vast heart far out beneath the ocean. Amanda lifted her eyes to the southern horizon and studied the wispy cloud front rising above it. A cloud front that arced across the sky in a smooth, near-perfect curve.
“Damn, damn, damn!” Amanda didn’t even realize she’d whispered the curse aloud. Hurrying back to her housing module, she had a look at the barometer mounted just inside the door. What she saw there made her run for the platform command tower.
Platform Commander Steven Gueletti was in the glass-walled observation deck atop the tower, and he wasn’t alone. Christine Rendino and the Platform’s enlisted meteorologist were there as well. Nobody looked as if they’d gotten any sleep.
“Good morning, Captain,” Gueletti said grimly. “I was just about to call you. We have a situation developing here.”
“So I noticed,” Amanda replied, coming up the ladderway. “What’s happening with our weather?”
“It’s that big damn storm front we’ve had hovering around to the south of us. It’s started to move, and it’s heading in our direction.”
“That doesn’t feel like just a storm front to me out there, Steve,” Amanda replied, crossing to the central chart table.
“It isn’t,” the Seabee replied. “Not anymore. The son of a bitch started to eye up on us last night. We’ve been sitting up with the weather sats, watching things develop.”
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
“There wasn’t any sense to it until we knew what we were facing, and it was time to make some judgment calls,” Christine interjected, joining them at the chart table. “And that time is upon us, boss ma’am. Welcome to the party.”
The satcom printer in the corner started to rasp and hiss. “New satellite download coming in, sir,” the meteorology rating announced.
“Let’s have a look at them, Clancy.”
The met rating returned from the printer and spread a sheaf of color hard-copy prints across the chart table.
“Damn, damn, damn!” This time it wasn’t a curse, it was an awed whisper.
An eye thirty miles across peered up from the print, an eye surrounded by a broad, spiraling mass of white and gray cloud that almost filled the Gulf of Guinea.
“Those don’t happen here,” Gueletti said flatly. “Tropical storms just don’t happen in these waters.”
“Oh yes they do,” Amanda replied. “Maybe only about twice a century, but they do. And it looks as if we’ve just hit the jackpot.” She glanced up at the meteorologist. “What’s the Beaufort projection on this thing?”
“The downloads we’re getting from the Ocean Meteorology Buoys indicate Force Ten at this time, ma’am,” the enlisted man replied. “Surface winds averaging fifty knots with twenty-five-foot waves. Heavy rain and spume. But she’s building fast. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Amanda nodded. “That stands to reason. Any tropical cyclonic in these longitudes would be a mean and unpredictable freak. This is probably more like a large-scale neutercane effect than a classic hurricane.”
“I concur, ma’am. She won’t have legs, but she’ll ramp up quick and tear the hell out of the immediate environment.”
Another printer activated, spewing out a new sheet of hard copy. Christine moved to collect it. “It’s an advisory from the National Hurricane Center,” she reported, reading the document. “Our baby has officially been dubbed tropical storm Ivan, and they already have it red-flagged. They’re projecting she’ll go over the line to full hurricane status sometime tonight.”
“Ivan the Terrible,” Gueletti grimaced. “I see somebody back there has a sense of humor.”
“Well, we know when. Now how about where?” Amanda inquired. “Do we have a projection on the point where she’s coming ashore?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The meteorologist moved some of the satellite photos aside to clear the chart displayed on the tabletop. “If Ivan maintains its current heading, the eye should come ashore just to the west of us, somewhere between our position and the Guinea border.”
Amanda’s brows lifted. “That puts us right dead on in the northeastern storm quadrant. That’s the dangerous quarter north of the equator. Any chance at all for a deviation?”
The met hand shook his head. “There are no factors apparent, ma’am.”
“How much time do we have?”
“The eye will come ashore about noon tomorrow. The leading edge will hit us about four hours before that. Call it 0800. We’ve got a little more than a day.”
Amanda met Commander Gueletti’s eyes. “Okay. Steve, this is the package. We have a dyed-in-the-wool hurricane bearing down on us and we are in the worst possible position to meet it. You know the capabilities of Floater 1 better than anyone else in the Navy. What options do we have?”
The Seabee officer looked grim as he replied. “Captain, the only option you ever have with a storm at sea is to get the hell out of its way. Since we can’t, we’re going to have to sit here and take it… right in the teeth.”
Amanda acknowledged the statement with a nod. “Understood. Carry on, Commander. Let’s do what we have to do.”
Gueletti lifted an interphone from its cradle on the edge of the chart table and punched up the 1-MC circuit. “Attention, this is Platform Command.”
Beyond the windows of the greenhouse, his voice boomed and rolled over Floater 1. “All hands on deck! All watches! All divisions! Lay to on the double! Set full emergency protocols. Batten down and rig for heavy weather. I say again, batten down and rig for heavy weather.”
Gueletti restored the phone to its cradle. “We’ve got some interesting times ahead, Captain.”
Amanda glanced out and across toward the Union coast. “We aren’t the only ones,” she replied.