Category 7 Read online

  Praise for Category 7

  “Take a healthy dose of the paranoid scenarios from 24 and governmental intrigues from The West Wing, then spike them liberally with the atmospheric minutiae that armchair meteorologists know and love. Fast-paced storytelling … Satisfying.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Kate Sherman, a plucky meteorologist, and Jake Baxter, a CIA weatherman, are the last line of defense between New York City and a Category 7 hurricane, which was created by a top-secret weather-control weapon. A fast-paced action-adventure that promises a rousing finale and delivers it.”

  —Booklist

  “What would happen if a massive superstorm hit New York City? And what if the storm’s ferocity were enhanced by human activity? In the authors’ apocalyptic scenario, much of New York would be destroyed. Buildings would topple, tunnels would flood, and the death toll would be enormous.”

  —Library Journal

  “A hurricane is not only possible in New York City, it’s happened before. But because no one alive today has been through that experience, people are not aware of the devastating potential. But Bill Evans knows New York, New York weather, and New York weather history.”

  —Bryan Norcross, CBS News hurricane analyst

  “A well-researched thriller whose building devastation will keep the reader ‘churning’ through the pages.”

  —Steve Alten, New York Times bestselling author

  “A most creative piece of fiction. Author Bill Evans certainly knows what he is talking about. Category 7 will have you thinking the next time you hear the pounding rains and the whipping of the wind. You might be more in awe of nature after reading this book.”

  —Shelf Life

  Category 7

  Kate Sherman is a brilliant young meteorologist who can’t understand how she recently missed predicting three major storms—storms that cut into the profits of her employer, Coriolis Industries. Afraid of being fired, Kate throws herself into an analysis of the strange storms—and headlong into the path of a secret plot that may cost her her life!

  Hurricane Simone is a Category 7—the biggest, strongest storm in recorded history—and she’s clawing her way up the East Coast. When she hits New York City, skyscrapers will fall. Subways and tunnels will flood. Lower Manhattan and much of Queens and Brooklyn will disappear under more than thirty feet of water. Thousands, if not millions, will die.

  Created by secret, cutting-edge weather science, Simone is not just an unnatural disaster—she’s a weapon. Kate and CIA weatherman Jake Baxter must figure out how to stop the storm before she flattens New York City … and identify Simone’s master before he has them both killed.

  CATEGORY 7

  BILL EVANS AND

  MARIANNA JAMESON

  A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

  NEW YORK

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the authors nor the publisher have received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.

  CATEGORY 7

  Copyright © 2007 by William H. Evans and Marianna Jameson

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-5671-0

  ISBN-10: 0-7653-5671-6

  First Edition: July 2007

  First Mass Market Edition: September 2008

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated with gratitude to the honorable,

  courageous members of America’s intelligence services,

  law-enforcement agencies, fire and rescue departments, and

  armed forces, who daily put themselves in harm’s way

  to safeguard the rest of us.

  And to my husband, for reasons that extend far beyond words.

  —Marianna Jameson

  For my children, Maggie, William, Julia, and Sarah,

  I love you with all my heart.

  —Dad

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I always felt that I had a great story to tell because those from whom I sought advice told me so! Not one person told me to give it up. But would you believe that a meteorologist like me, who tells the story of how the weather is going to be every day, had no clue as to how to go about getting this story told? It has taken me ten years to get this project completed, and I never could have done that without some great advice from some really wonderful people like Bob Miller at Hyperion, Rich Malloch and Renée Simkowitz at Hearst, and William Pecover (Sir William), the British publishing magnate. They were so kind and generous with their time, especially Sir William (over multiple bottles of red wine), and each was willing to introduce me to others who might further my project. I am so grateful to each of them for their support in sending me down this path despite my never having published a single word.

  I also want to thank all the people with whom I have spent so many years talking about this book for their great advice—Bryan Norcross, Dr. Max Mayfield, Dr. Bob Sheets, and Dr. Nicolas Koch. Thanks to the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Office of Emergency Management, especially Press Secretary Jarrod Bernstein and Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Troisi. Their input was immeasurable, especially when it came to figuring out how much flooding would occur in the event of a hurricane in New York City, who would need to be evacuated, and where they might go. It was reassuring to learn how well prepared these offices are for the hell on earth that the city might become in the event of a major hurricane. Thanks also to Ellen Schubert and the energy staff of UBS for giving us the run of that massive trading floor in Stamford, Connecticut, so we could learn how commodities are traded.

  I really want to thank Tom Doherty Associates for having the chutzpah to take on a first-time wanna-be novel writer. Melissa Ann Singer has been fabulous, and the staff and sales department have been very encouraging, which is wonderful for someone in my position.

  I offer great heartfelt thanks to my coauthor, Marianna Jameson. If not for her, this work would never have been set down on paper. When I first met with her, we talked about weather for days and days. We shared the same excitement for meteorology and the same sense of humor as well. When I saw what we talked about turned into words, I could not believe what I was reading. When you are a meteorologist like me, you look at weather data day and night and dream of putting those beautiful phenomena into compelling words. Marianna captured my vision, complete with raging hurricanes, devastating tornadoes, torrential rain, massive thunderstorms, whipping wind, blazing sun, and clear blue skies. She has written such powerful lines that I can feel the wind-whipped rain on my face. It is the weather in words—she does all that and tells a fantastic tale as well.

  In addition, I want to thank James Howard and Verna Evans, my grandparents, who raised me to grow up to be whatever I wanted to be. They also taught me to always remember to thank God each day for getting to live this life he planned for me and for the weather he created. And, I want to thank the most important people in my life, my family. I have a smart and beautiful wife and four wonderful children. My wife, Dana, has not only been such a great source of support, but she reads about 175 books a week, so she is a great resource!

  Bill Evans

  Stamford, Connecticut

  Summer
2007

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  People who become meteorologists often say that a single weather event that impacted their lives is the reason they came to the science, and I was no different. Growing up in Mississippi, my life was changed forever in 1969 by Hurricane Camille, which caused a tremendous loss of life and property to my homeland and changed the way I saw the world.

  When I moved to New York City in 1989, I looked at all the development along the coastline and morbidly thought, What a place for a hurricane to strike. And thus this project began.

  In 1997, while I was hosting The Bahamas Weather Conference, I saw a presentation by the great professor Dr. Nicholas Koch, a geology professor at the City University of New York. Dr. Koch gave a riveting presentation on the great hurricanes of the Northeast and what would happen if such a hurricane were to hit New York City today. Every seventy years a major hurricane has struck New York City with devastating results. Hog Island, which was situated south of Roosevelt Beach, southeast of Manhattan, was totally wiped off the face of the earth in the middle of the night during a hurricane. The last big hurricane to hit New York City was what was later called “The Long Island Express.” This storm destroyed a great portion of Long Island, Connecticut, and New England. That was in 1938—nearly seventy years ago—and now we find ourselves fast approaching that anniversary.

  Entire generations in the Northeast have come and gone without experiencing the devastation of a hurricane of any category. As I walked the streets of New York City, I realized that the people here had no clue as to what would happen if a hurricane were to make a direct hit on the city. When asked, the overwhelming majority of city residents responded that they would take shelter in the NYC subway in the event of a hurricane. The subway? Obviously people have trouble understanding what a hurricane could do to the city, let alone what they should do if one strikes, even after seeing the devastation caused by major hurricanes in the last few years.

  Plus, the New York City area is a much different animal than the U.S. Gulf Coast. The city lies at the point of a right angle formed by the New Jersey coast, running north-south, and Long Island, running east-west. Since a hurricane spirals counterclockwise, water would pile right into the five boroughs of New York City at an amazing rate, faster than in any other part of the country. Also, the land underneath the Atlantic Ocean in this area is bedrock, not sand as along the Gulf Coast—and it slopes upward toward New York. So in the Northeast, a Category 2 storm easily becomes a 3, a 3 becomes a 4, and so on. …

  To me, this information was so overwhelming that I wanted to write a book on the subject. I wanted to take this data and write what I expected would be a science book about a hurricane hitting New York City: what the losses might be, estimates of the damage and destruction. After all, it’s happened before and in weather, history repeats itself.

  I first took my research to my employer, WABC-TV, and I convinced them to do a half hour special on what it would be like if a hurricane of category 3 magnitude struck New York City. We now run that hurricane special and a series of other weather specials throughout the year.

  But I believed that the great story of a New York City hurricane needed to be told, so I kept pitching my idea of a science book to anyone who would listen. Fortunately, for me, the ears were there. As I sought advice from friends and acquaintances in the science, television, and publishing industries, my science book began to take on a different look. One day I was having lunch with Jeffrey Lyons, the great movie reviewer and a personal friend with whom I have played softball in Central Park for twenty years, when he asked me, “Why in the world would you want to write a science book when the story of a hurricane hitting New York City would make a great movie? Write the screenplay!” he said. So I compromised. I changed my idea from a science book to a novel—not a screenplay. Thanks for the advice, Jeff!

  Then, September 11th happened. That moment changed the world. I immediately shelved the book idea. Another disaster hitting New York City—no way! The story took a little nap until the spring of 2003 when I went back on the offensive, looking for someone to help write and publish this book. The hurricane seasons had been relatively quiet up until that point, but the sea surface temperatures were rising, and it looked more and more as if we were going to see an increase in storms—as the Hurricane Center termed it, “a multidecade period of higher than normal storm activity.” From this point on, every year the “big one” doesn’t hit New York City, is one more year that we are closer to it.

  In early 2004 while I was playing in a charity celebrity golf outing at Innes Arden Country Club in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, I had the pleasure of meeting Jeff McGovern. Jeff, a great guy and a great golfer with a great “past,” took an interest in my book idea and in a roundabout way introduced me to Marianna Jameson, my coauthor.

  Now I know how the Wright brothers must have felt. After working tirelessly for so long and hard, my project has finally taken wing and is off and flying.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The chronology of my involvement with this project differs from Bill’s in part because it began with a conversation that took place without me. And without Bill, in fact. My good friend Brian Mitchell happened to run into an acquaintance of his named Jeff McGovern one evening as their train pulled out of Grand Central Station, and their conversation took a turn I can only call serendipitous. Jeff mentioned that he had an acquaintance who wanted to write a novel; Brian mentioned that he has a friend who is a novelist. Thus, my first thanks must be to these men, whose casual conversation begat the working partnership between Bill and myself.

  Our introduction took place over the phone. I’ll admit now that I was leery of working with a celebrity, but Bill’s warmth, down-to-earth personality, and easygoing approach to life were more than I had hoped to encounter. We hit it off at once, realizing that we had the same offbeat sense of humor. We also shared a fascination for the mechanics and mystery of weather, an interest in high technology, and a love of thriller novels. I offer my deepest thanks to Bill for bringing me onto this project, which has brought to fruition something that had been a dream of his for so long and which has been, quite frankly, a lot of fun for me.

  Determined that this project would work out, we forged on. Thanks to the creativity, support, encouragement, and steady, savvy business sense of our literary agent, Coleen O’Shea of the Allen O’Shea Literary Agency, we shaped and refined our story until it was ready to see daylight. It lay, wrapped and stamped, on Coleen’s desk the first week of August 2005 as we and the rest of the world watched Hurricane Katrina bring to life the worst fears of so many. We agreed without discussion to withhold the manuscript until the waters receded and some of the initial horror began to settle into the nation’s consciousness.

  A few months later, our manuscript landed on the desk of Linda Quinton, vice president and associate publisher at Tor, who loved it and passed it on to senior editor Melissa Singer. We could not have been luckier than to have our manuscript land in their hands. Linda’s enthusiasm gave our book life, and Melissa, a dream of an editor, helped us smooth out the story’s rough edges and provided spot-on editorial insight. This book would not be what it is without her help. The production, art, marketing, sales, and publicity departments at Tor found Linda and Melissa’s enthusiasm for our book to be contagious, and both Bill and I deeply appreciate that. Especial thanks must go to Jamie Stafford-Hill, the art director, for designing our fabulous cover.

  In the process of researching and writing this book with Bill, I called on many experts in many fields, all of whom were unfailingly patient and most generous with their time and information. First, I must again thank Bill, who gave me a crash course in heavy weather. Lori Bast, who handles public relations and outreach for NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center at MacDill Air Force Base, was tremendously helpful and put me in touch with hurricane-hunter pilot LCDR Carl Newman and Flight Director/Flight Meteorologist Paul Flaherty. Both men answered all of my ques
tions and provided wonderful information about what it’s like to fly into hurricanes when most other aviators try like the dickens to avoid them. Paul, in particular, proved to be a candid, engaging, and extremely patient correspondent whose enthusiasm for what he does came through in every answer to my many, many questions.

  Thanks, too, to three people at UBS in Stamford, Connecticut, who took time out of a very busy afternoon to tell us what we needed to know about working in a trading environment: Ellen Schubert, who brought Bill and me onto the trading floor at UBS and gave us a quick but comprehensive overview of what happens there; Elizabeth Maxwell, who was extremely generous with her time and provided candid information regarding what traders do and how and why they do it; and Gary Gray, who explained thoroughly, candidly, and with charming good humor the rather significant role meteorologists play on a trading floor. Thanks, too, to Bernd Pfrommer for helping me to understand weather derivatives. Jarrod Bernstein and Andrew Troisi provided tremendous information about New York City’s Emergency Management operations. The technical information imparted by all was received gratefully and used with the best of intentions; however, a few things had to be nudged to fit our story. All mistakes are my own.

  I owe many thanks personally, too, not the least to the BSC posse: Joanna Novins, Deirdre Martin, Karen Kendall, Alisa Kwitney, and Liz Maverick—wonderful writers, good friends, and deeply, darkly funny women. Dane McSpedon and Kathy G., the most avid, critically thinking thriller readers I know, who gave me great suggestions, which I duly co-opted. Joanna Novins deserves additional thanks for sharing the insights and experiences gained during a decade and a half spent serving the United States as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. You may throw a grenade like a girl, but you wield words like a master.