Kate Schwartz smiled for the first time in two hours. She had been a professional NOAA Hurricane Hunter for over five years now, but this was without doubt her roughest and most dangerous mission to date.
It was with an audible sigh of relief that she relaxed her grip on the controls and sat back in her seat. The instrument panels on the Lockheed WP-3D Orion told her and her co-pilot, Andrew Chung, that everything was okay and that for a few minutes at least, they could relax.
She knew she was mad: that this was probably the most dangerous job in the world. But someone had to do it, and since her very first flight into the eye of a hurricane six years ago, she had been addicted to the adrenaline rush it gave her. Satellites were great at many things, and had admittedly taken over a lot of what the Hurricane Hunters used to do, but satellites couldn't measure the spread of the internal barometric pressures of a hurricane or provide sufficient accuracy in measuring hurricane wind speeds. The only way that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could get that information was to pay crazy people like her to fly directly into the biggest storms on the planet, and take atmospheric and radar measurements from within the storm itself. Armed with the facts, NOAA could then predict how hurricanes would develop and behave, determining which would be a threat to American lives and industries.
Kate and Andrew were sitting silently, staring out of the cockpit windows at the eyewall of Hurricane Josephine. They had entered the hurricane over thirty minutes ago and only now had they emerged into the almost eerily calm world at the center of the hurricane itself. Above them there was clear star filled sky, and beneath them they could see the dark waters of the ocean below. Kate had flown through over two hundred hurricanes in her career so far, sometimes repeatedly traversing the same hurricane many times, but each and every time she passed through the center she always marveled at the experience.
It was like as if God had just reached down from Heaven with a round cookie cutter and sliced out the middle of the storm: one minute they would be flying through hell itself, with incredible noise, little visibility, turbulent and violent winds, snow, hail, lightning and thunder all around them, and then...a moment later...they would emerge from a wall of vertical clouds into a peaceful garden of tranquility and sunshine, or bright, starlit skies.
There were only a handful of people on the planet who had or would ever experience what she and Andrew were witnessing now, and that in itself, almost made the job worthwhile.
The peace would however, be short-lived. Already they were just about to enter the opposite wall of cloud on the other side of the epicenter.
"Here we go again," Kate shouted into her microphone, glancing at her instruments. "The hurricane's getting stronger by the minute. I think we should fly through to the other side, and then re-evaluate what we do next. I've never seen any storm like this one before, and I don't know if we should really risk flying back through it again once we're clear."
"Agreed." Andrew Cheng replied while getting ready to deploy and drop another series of dropsondes, expendable weather reconnaissance devices that contained sensors to measure barometric pressure, temperature and humidity as they fell down to the ocean surface. As the sonde fell it relayed the important information to computers on their aircraft, allowing the Hurricane Hunters to accurately measure and track the storm conditions in real time. "But...don't forget, something like this will probably not happen again for hundreds of years..."
Andrew never finished the sentence. He didn't need to.
The events that were taking place in the Atlantic Ocean that day were unparalleled in living or recorded memory. Four big superstorms, each a phenomenon in its own right, were heading towards each other with incredible power and speed. When they met and combined no one knew exactly what was going to happen. This was the first time that such an event was going to be seen, and both Andrew and Kate knew that they would do whatever they could to help the scientists make the necessary observations.
They carried on flying without further conversation, both focusing intently on the tasks they had to complete and lost in their own thoughts. It was Kate that finally broke the silence.
"I wonder how the 53rd and the others are doing?" she asked, referring to the other NOAA WP-3D, and the two Lockheed WC-130s from the United States Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron which had been teamed up with the NOAA aircraft to cover this incredible event. NOAA also had a fifth plane participating in the exercise, a G-IV Gulfstream, but the G-IV was a high-altitude jet flying above the storms at 41,000ft and would not be in any real danger.
"They'll be fine." Andrew replied, wondering the exact same question and trying to sound as positive as possible.
The fact was, on this job, no one knew just what to expect.
When they had left their base at the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center at MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Florida earlier that evening, they had been full of excitement. Together with the other two aircraft that would take off from Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, they would map and record all the meteorological characteristics of the four storms that were currently covering most of the north Atlantic Ocean, helping to determine their size, power and direction. Yet, they all knew they were heading into the unknown. This event was unprecedented in its scale.
They had been briefed the day before over a video link by a couple of professors from the rather secretive Bush Center for Geo-Electromagnetic Studies in New York state. The two professors, one of whom was a personal friend to Kate, had explained the theory of what could possibly happen, and although it seemed far-fetched, it did make some strange sort of sense. It certainly helped explain the mysterious events of three years before when two hurricanes of enormous strength and power had collided with each other just south of Jamaica: almost inconceivably, within minutes of the collision both hurricanes had fizzled out into nothing. Scientists the world over had witnessed the event, but none had understood it. Where had the power of the hurricanes gone to? What had happened to the incredible electromagnetic energy that was at the heart of each storm? Where had the kinetic energy of the powerful winds gone? Or the potential energy of the large amounts of water that had been lifted into the air against the force of gravity?
If the scientists at the Bush Center were correct, then perhaps at last a potential explanation had been found. Yet to most of the Hurricane Hunters at NOAA it still seemed inconceivable to believe that the four storms that were being tracked and monitored by so many scientists around the world today, would potentially fizzle out into nothing within the next ninety minutes.
Yet, if they were right, all that energy had to go somewhere, and the Bush Center had warned all of the pilots very explicitly that it would be wise to be well clear of the area where the four hurricanes eventually collided together.
That meant they had one hour left. Time enough, perhaps to just make one more trip and head for home back through the storm, before the event of the century reached its climax. After that it would be up to the satellites and the high-altitude Gulfstream to record exactly what would happen in the hurricanes below.
"Andrew...take a look at the electrostatic readings." Kate said. "They're going crazy..."
Andrew pushed a button dropping the second of the dropsondes, watching for a moment longer to check that the green light on his display went active, indicating that the slow-descent parachute had been successfully deployed, and then he twisted around and bent towards Kate, scanning the printout trace which was slowly spewing out of the electrostatic meter. The trace was going up and up and up, indicating that electrostatic energy in the air outside the airplane was rising dramatically.
Andrew pressed a few buttons on the meter, switching scales so that the recording would stay on the chart. He had never seen it so high before.
"Check this out..." Kate said, and Andrew looked up and through the cockpit window. Outside hundreds of tiny lightning bolts were sparking and arcing across the windshield, starting on the body of the plane a
nd jumping to other parts of the plane chassis. There were so many that a curtain of light was beginning to build up around the airplane. Not to be mistaken with lightning, the corona discharge that Kate and Andrew were watching now was caused by the highly charged gases around the airplane beginning to ionize and freely conduct electricity, rather like the plasma lighting in a neon tube. The first time Kate had seen it was on her third flight through a thunder storm, and it had fascinated her. Except that was nothing like as intense as what they were witnessing now.
"Wow...that's the most ferocious St. Elmo's fire I've ever seen!" Andrew exclaimed as he watched the eerie display."
"We are at 70,000 Volts per inch of space now. And building..." Andrew said, looking at the electrostatic readout again."
"I've never been in anything higher than 100,000 Volts per inch. If it gets any higher than 110,000, I think we should think about bugging out."
"That won't happen. Don't worry." Andrew tried to sound reassuring.
They carried on flying in silence for another twenty minutes, the glow from the static discharge outside the plane increasing all the time, and the winds that buffeted the plane becoming more violent by the second.
A few minutes later, Andrew dropped the third sonde in the series.
Neither Kate nor Andrew said anything. Kate was beginning to feel distinctly nervous.
"We should be coming to the edge of the storm soon..." Andrew said eventually, looking at the radar and also noticing that the St. Elmo's Fire effect was beginning to decrease in intensity outside the plane.
No sooner had he spoken than the Control Tower at the Aircraft Operations Center raised him on the radio, the voice crackling in the static and only just discernible.
"Andrew, Come in. Do you read me?"
"Roger, Control. Everything's fine here. We're just coming out the other side now...expect to be in clearer skies in about ten, over."
"Andrew, it's Doug here. We're looking at the satellite images we're getting back from Skybird and it's not looking good. Hurricanes Hanna and Isaias are speeding up and heading towards you faster than we expected. Hurricane Kyle has also turned and is moving towards you from the south east. The estimated time of collision of all four hurricanes is now only thirty minutes away. What's your safest and fastest route home?"
"I was kind of hoping you'd tell us that..." Andrew replied, looking over at Kate who was listening in.
"We think it's straight back through Josephine. The way you came. Is that feasible? Over."
Kate looked at Andrew.
"Is there any other option? Over."
"Actually, not really. Kyle is twice as large as Josephine. If you head south, it will be like going from the frying pan into the fire. Alternatively, we think you could just avoid Isaias if you head north east, but then you will risk running out of fuel for the flight back, depending on what happens during or after the collision. Over."
Andrew looked back at Kate. Technically, she was the superior officer and on paper it was her call. The rest of the eleven crew on the flight all trusted her decision and no one would question her.
Kate was busy scanning some of the reports coming back from the dropsondes.
She was worried.
"Doug, Kate here. Give us a moment, please. We'll call you straight back. Over."
"Roger that." Doug replied, signing off.
"Andrew, what do you reckon?"Kate asked. "I think we should just head straight home by the shortest path and take our chances. I'm worried about the fuel. I think that Control is right. We could head north east and avoid the hurricanes, ...but only just. However, if they don't blow out just as the professors think they will, we will have to fly back through them anyway, and if the winds are still so strong, we will be desperately short of fuel. On top of that, the readings from the last dropsondes showed that near the surface of the sea the energy was building up to over 130,000 Volts per inch of space."
"Near the surface? ...but that's impossible...that means that higher up..."
"I know. No one will ever have flown through anything like it before. It will be a first..."
The words hung in the air. Kate's meaning was only too clear. First of all, it would be a challenge. This is what the Hurricane Hunters lived for. It was their raison d'etre, the reason why they faced this danger: the opportunity to see and understand how hurricanes worked and to experience and record firsthand the full natural, mighty power of Mother Nature in a way that that no one else ever could. If they went back, they would witness something no other human being ever had.
But secondly, Kate was stating the obvious. They might not make it back.
In the past twenty minutes, their flight had changed from a mission of research to a flight for survival.
Andrew smiled.
"You only live once. Let's go for it," he replied.
Kate nodded.
"Control, Kate here. Over," she said, switching the radio back on.
"Kate: What's your decision? Over."
"I'm turning the plane around, we're coming home by the shortest route. Put the beers in the fridge. I'm going to need one. Over."
"Roger that. And good luck."
---------------------
.
Back in the Control Tower of the AOC at MacDill, Doug West stepped onto the balcony and lit up his cigarette. He hadn't smoked in two years, but today was turning out to be more stressful than normal, to put it mildly.
He lifted up his hand, looking at the latest photograph that they just received back from their orbiting Skybird satellite.
Isaias had just started to collide with Hanna. The two hurricanes were beginning to brush against each other.
In his twenty years of working at the AOC, Doug West had never seen anything like it.
No one had.
---------------------
.
In the cockpit of the Lockheed WP-3D Orion, Andrew switched the overhead lighting off. It was no longer needed. The glow from the St. Elmo's fire outside the cabin was now so bright, it was as if they were flying during daytime. The meter said 137,000 Volts per inch.
Inside the plane the crew were beginning to feel sick. Two of them had fainted and were now relieved from duty and strapped down hard into their bunks and others were feeling dizzy, nauseous and light-headed. Andrew had thrown up once but had started to feel slightly better.
The plane was being buffeted by the strongest winds that the crew had ever experienced. Secretly Kate was beginning to worry about the superstructure of the plane. Twice the turbulence had been so bad that the plane had fallen several hundred feet before recovering.
Incredibly, Andrew had still managed to take recordings as they flew on, dropping five more dropsondes to capture and record the incredible phenomena they were fighting their way through.
Suddenly, almost without warning, the airplane punched its way through the cloud and emerged into the incredible calm of the eye of the hurricane, and almost instantaneously the violent shaking of the plane ceased. The difference between a minute ago and now could not have been more stark.
Both Kate and Andrew exhaled loudly. For the past ten minutes neither of them had spoken a word.
Kate leaned forward slightly, looking up at the stars.
She could just make out a few familiar constellations.
"Kate, look..." Andrew shouted loudly, his voice deafening in Kate's headphones.
Immediately Kate saw what Andrew was pointing at.
As they flew West, on their right and to the North, the round vertical wall of cloud that surrounded the eye of the hurricane had begun to crumble, the wall of cloud beginning to move inwards and towards them at great speed.
The Eye of the Hurricane was collapsing in on itself.
"Hanna and Isaias have arrived earlier than expected!" Andrew shouted, fear now easily discernible in his voice.
Kate stared in disbelief at what she was seeing, the north wall of the eye now only yards away.
The
force of the wind coming at them from their right side caught the plane and lifted it up on its edge.
Kate immediately compensated, turning the nose of the plane northwards and down, into the oncoming torrent, struggling to regain control.
Lightning began to flash outside the plane and lumps of ice almost as large as baseballs began to pound against the fuselage.
A wave of nausea swept over Andrew, and he vomited again, this time not making it into the company sick bag so kindly provided by NOAA. Instead it covered the instrument panel, blanketing the readout panel which now indicated that outside the electrostatic energy had now reached 490,000 Volts per inch.
Inside the cockpit the instrumentation panel began to spark with electricity, and the air itself began to glow and light up, the Lockheed WP-3D Orion quickly turning into the world's largest ever plasma tube.
The plane itself began to glow from one end to another, at first a little, and then a lot, the light it was emitting becoming increasingly incandescent, until suddenly it became as bright as the sun. For a few seconds the airplane glowed so brightly that in the G-IV Gulfstream flying 31,000 ft above them, they registered and recorded a pulse of light piercing its way through the center of the cataclysm occurring beneath.
Strangely, one minute the light was there. And then the next it was gone.
As was the Lockheed WP-3D Orion which suddenly simply vanished into thin air,-leaving no trace that it had ever been there at all.
Chapter 4
The Sea Dancer
Captain McGregor's Pirate Ship
1699
Sunday
8.30 p.m.