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  Very special thanks are due my father, who served this country as an officer on several U.S. Navy supply ships in the Pacific. I grew up hearing stories of his often hilarious, always thrilling adventures at sea, and I especially loved the ones about how ships sailed around and occasionally through typhoons. One story resurfaced full force as I worked on this book, one in which the ship he was on was heading into a typhoon. The high winds and heavy seas caused part of the deck and support structure to crack. As damage-control officer, the situation was his problem. He wasted no time in stripping the ship of every iron handrail, ladder, and bunk, and anything else he could find to use to patch the fault, and drafting every available person on the ship to begin welding it back together around the clock. Those who didn’t know an acetylene torch from an anchor chain (I’m paraphrasing—he was a sailor after all) became accomplished welders in a hurry. The ship was saved with no loss of life or cargo and limped into port, astonishing those who later saw the full extent of the damage.

  In my early twenties, I thought that story was likely a minor incident he’d embroidered to get unruly children to settle down; I rolled my eyes at its next retelling. A few days later, I was quietly handed a copy of the commendation from the Department of the Navy that detailed in language less colorful but no less stirring than his own the precise story he had told. I was humbled and awed and, not for the first time, immensely proud to be his daughter. It’s a pity he’s not here to read this book. I think he would have enjoyed it.

  Thanks, too, to my friends and family, who not only still love me but are still speaking to me after I went into occasional electronic exile while I worked on this book. Particular thanks to Deb Dufel, Amy Hymans, Nancy Mitchell, and Melanie Cochran for their understanding and support.

  Special thanks is due Kevin Przypek (“Super K”), who was the high bidder for the opportunity to have a character named after him in this book. Kevin’s generous donation to the Newfield School Playground Fund was a great boost for a great cause. Mike O’Connor gets an honorable mention, too, because he kept upping the ante by strategically bidding against Kevin. Thanks, too, to their wives, Angela and Tara, respectively, for encouraging their husbands’ spending habits.

  Finally, endless gratitude to my husband and children. You’re my oxygen.

  Marianna Jameson

  Summer 2007

  Friends who set forth at our side,

  Falter. are lost in the storm.

  We, we only, are left.

  —Matthew Arnold, “Rugby Chapel”

  CHAPTER 1

  Rain lashed through the hellishly hot Saharan sky, hurling itself groundward with chaotic fury only to evaporate before it made contact with the dying earth. The newly dry air was sucked up again into the wet layer to repeat its journey until the storm subsided.

  An hour later the edge of the desert was as it had been days, months, and years before, revealing no signs of having been changed by the storm. Heat shimmered over still-parched, endlessly shifting sands, sending eddies of fine dust into a sky brilliant with unrelenting light. The very air seemed to glitter as sunlight sparked away from the myriad minute planes of mica and silica particles the earth sacrificed to the sky in convective obedience.

  Some of the grains of sand and minerals, the spores and bacteria, had already traveled untold distances. Abandoned by winds long since vanquished, they had lain here for days or decades ready to be lifted once again to the sky. Some particles came from the beds of ancient seas and primeval jungles; others were more recent, formed only a few millennia ago when the earth writhed, heaving rock and ash into chaotic skies as it gave birth to the African lands, the implacable massifs and the dusty plains encircling them.

  Smaller than dust and immeasurably light, the particles were swept upward and overland, floating westward on the hot winds, taking with them the harsh and timeless lessons of the desert. Without will, without desire, they hovered over dunes as the airstream steadied. Silent travelers, they dipped to the earth and rose above it, blinding eddies in a river of wind, and swept over scoured plains that kept untold secrets, that hid the treasures and the miseries of civilizations long dead.

  As they entered the dense, sticky air above the city, the microscopic particles of dirt and minerals, of pollen, fungi, and bacteria, of long-dead plants and creatures, began to cluster. Unavoidably, they collided with the irresistible, heavy carbonaceous particulates that humankind hurled into the sky. Since humans had discovered fire, they’d mimicked the actions of the earth itself, sending ash and smoke heavenward with abandon, dulling the atmosphere, dirtying it.

  The wind kept the particles aloft, leading them on an endless, nomadic flight, its mission inexorable, its duration eternal. They’d blown through refugee camps and over embattled lands, embracing the death and desperation that rose in the unholy heat on the fetid air. They swept across wasted fields and villages, depositing remnants of times both better and worse and lifting into their midst both the hope and the destruction that lay beneath them.

  Mountains rose before the particulates, precipitating many to the earth, sending others ever higher. Lakes and rivers beckoned, swelling the air with moisture unknown to many of the particles for countless ages.

  Some fell. Some remained aloft, continuing their traversal of savanna and desert, plantation and city.

  Eventually, the particle plume reached the sea. In a startled tumult it dispersed, broadening its sweep, extending its reach, no longer limited by the boundaries of a landmass beneath it. Like a heat-dazed serpent uncoiling under sudden shade, the pale gold shimmer of dust unfurled a lacy haze above the deep blue waters of Africa’s western coastline. Its elegant leading edge undulating toward the lush distant lands of the Caribbean and the Americas, the golden filigree of ancient dust was visible from space. Thousands of unseen eyes began to watch it, waiting and wondering what effect it might have on distant shores and distant lives.

  CHAPTER 2

  May 31, 4:57 P.M., eastern coast of Barbados

  “Did you cut every one of my classes?” Richard Carlisle—senior meteorologist for a major TV network, professor emeritus of the meteorology department at Cornell, and generally mild-mannered Southerner on the receding edge of middle age—stared at his former student with undisguised disbelief. He might have laughed if his safety weren’t at stake.

  Barely sparing it a glance, Richard pointed, straight armed, to the breadth of paned glass behind him. The window framed the limitless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean from the steep, rugged cliffs dropping below him to a horizon nearly obscured by an encroaching, churning late-afternoon sky. Thick layers of cumulonimbus mamma clouds resembled sinister, undulating bubble wrap as they stretched across the water.

  “In case you were asleep at the wheel that semester, Denny, what’s brewing out there is called a tropical storm. The sustained wind speed is fifty-five miles an hour and gusts are hitting seventy-five. Does that mean anything to you, son?” He paused. “Let me refresh your memory. A person can’t remain vertical against anything stronger than that. And you want me to go out there—on a rooftop terrace—and do my stand-up? Are you plumb crazy?”

  He would have preferred to say something stronger, but there were too many between-shift waitstaffers bustling through the rooftop dining room of one of Barbados’s most luxurious oceanfront hotels on the eve of hurricane season. The island, the easternmost in the Caribbean and arguably the first that would feel the effects of the season’s weather, was facing the upcoming storm season in typical Caribbean style, with a languid shrug.

  Twenty-four-year-old Denny Buxton, Richard’s former student and current assistant producer, grinned with the unique idiocy of someone who has seen just enough of life not to realize he hasn’t seen nearly enough. “Dude, c’mon. The Weather Channel guys do it. Hell, Jim Cantore is somewhere on a beach right now getting his ass sandblasted six ways ‘til Sunday.” Denny paused. “Okay, how’s this? We’ll tie you down. I saw some of those loop things in the floor t
hat they use to tie down tents.”

  Richard continued to stare at him, dumbfounded. The kid was a fool. Unfortunately, he was also right. Viewership spiked during bad weather, but doing something crazy never hurt.

  Denny’s idiot grin never faded. In fact, it grew broader. “You want to do it. Holy shit, man, I can’t believe it. You’re gonna do it.” Laughing, Denny exchanged an exuberant high five with the cameraman, who was not much older and no more sensible.

  Richard looked over his shoulder at the wall of windows and the dark, glowering bank of cumulonimbus clouds beyond it. The smooth, caplike pileus cloud had stabilized, as the last radar report had indicated it would, and the storm hovered over the ocean, threatening to come ashore at any moment in a rush of wind and hot rain.

  The storm would be fast and furious, probably gone within an hour. Not overly dangerous, it would wallop the coastline, annoy the residents, and scare the hell out of the tourists, dousing the hardiest, or foolhardiest, among them who remained outdoors. After the rain ended, the island would return to being steamy and still, the weather a suitably sultry backdrop for its summer season.

  “C’mon. Let’s mosey. We’re on in thirty.” Denny and the cameraman pushed through the door, and into the wind.

  Richard took a deep, resigned breath and followed them onto the roof.

  “We’ll just do the teaser out here. If it gets too bad, we’ll go back inside,” Denny yelled over the howling wind.

  “A decision only a moron could make,” Richard drawled under his breath.

  Denny squinted at him and mouthed, What?

  Richard smiled tightly. “I said, ‘Good idea.’”

  Denny nodded. “You stand there,” he shouted, pointing to an open area that afforded no protection from the elements. “That way if you get knocked over, you won’t fall over the edge.”

  Shaking his head, Richard moved to his marks and grimaced against the wind as Denny gave him the countdown with his fingers. As the producer’s last finger folded into his palm, Richard flashed his on-camera smile.

  “Hello, America, from the not-so-sunny Caribbean. On the day before the official start of the hurricane season, we’re already bracing for a close encounter with the second named storm of this year. In what is already shaping up to be a remarkable hurricane season, I’ll be providing you with a bird’s-eye view of Tropical Storm Barney from the coast of beautiful—” He stopped speaking as he saw Denny’s eyes widen and his jaw sag.

  Microphone in hand, Richard glanced over his shoulder. His gut clenched as he watched the bloated, menacing clouds exploding over the open ocean with the unholy force of a mid-air detonation. Furious plumes burst in all directions and the sea’s dark, choppy swells erupted into a frenzied expanse of boiling, churning whitecaps thundering a crazed ambush on the suddenly puny cliffs and the beach at their base, fifty feet below.

  Faster than his mind could register what was happening, the wall of wind hammered at Richard, knocking him to the floor and sending him skidding headfirst into the stone skirting wall that surrounded the roof. As unconsciousness rushed over him, Richard remembered the last time, the only time, he’d witnessed anything like those clouds.

  The South China Sea in 1971.

  Those storms hadn’t been pretty.

  They hadn’t been natural, either.

  CHAPTER 3

  Tuesday, July 10, 5:00 A.M., Campbelltown, Iowa

  Carter Thompson stood in front of the picture window in his cozy home office, staring through it without seeing the dawn break over Iowa’s broad, green horizon. His mind was two thousand miles away in the still-dark skies above the seared, arid wasteland skirting the edges of Death Valley in the Mojave Desert.

  The final test of his skill, his ingenuity, his intellect, was about to begin. He’d spent millions of dollars and thirty years waiting for this moment to arrive, and nothing was going to stop him from bringing his life’s work to its fruition. He was about to create rain. Not just bring it forth from clouds produced by Nature and seeded with man-made chemicals. That had been done for decades. No, he was about to create rain from clouds he’d brought into being where none should exist.

  Success would bring the means of salvation within reach for so many creatures, so many species and environments.

  Closer than that.

  It would make salvation imminent.

  Feeling his heart do a small, excited somersault in his chest, Carter frowned and closed his eyes, bracing himself for the slight, dizzying head rush that always followed the errant heartbeat. The sensation annoyed him, always seeming to strike when he felt the most powerful. It diminished his sense of being in control, as if Nature was reminding him that he was but one cog in a vast, complex mechanism. He kept his breathing evenly paced and waited for the return to normality. Fighting it was useless; he’d learned to keep his excitement in check to reduce the occurrences. But now—he opened his eyes and let go of the windowsill, straightening up as the sensation of free-falling was replaced once again by stalwart equilibrium—now there was no need to restrain his elation. He’d made his commitment to the earth, to humanity, decades ago, and now fulfillment rested in his hands. The knowledge that there could be no greater good to bestow upon mankind than what he was about to do resonated in his soul.

  Deeply satisfied with himself, Carter smiled. Over the years, he’d accepted every risk, every cost, with a scientist’s pragmatism and patience. He prided himself on it. Even the latest inexplicable atmospheric quirk, which had kept the jet stream unusually far to the south, bringing remarkably mild weather to much of the U.S. for the last month, had been accepted with equanimity, even though it had put his final field trials in jeopardy and his program at risk of discovery. It was difficult enough to build or modify a storm when large swaths of the country showed up green on Doppler radar screens, but he’d overcome that challenge several years ago by using those storms as camouflage for his own. Building storms when the skies and the radar screens were clear and showed virtually no signs of precipitation, leaving him with nothing to mask his tests, was the last obstacle to success. And he would overcome it.

  Today he would build a rainstorm in the clear skies over the desert. He would prove himself to be more than a mere cog in the universe. Today he would receive Nature’s benediction.

  He would become Nature’s equal.

  The speakers attached to one of the computer monitors on his desk emitted the soft click he was waiting for. Carter walked with a measured stride back to his chair and seated himself within the white-blue halo of light from the screen. A light tap on the mouse brought up the windows displaying live satellite radar and infrared feeds, as well as live streaming video. The data came from a leased transponder on one of the many satellites in geosynchronous orbit twenty-two thousand miles above the equator.

  He’d had no trouble getting the transponder through his quiet, well-funded research program, blandly titled the Environmental Replenishment Foundation. Getting the right encryption software had proven a little more difficult, given the laws barring the import or export of encryption algorithms that the U.S. government can’t break. Moving the operations offshore had taken care of that problem and a host of others. Paying big salaries to talented physicists, atmospheric scientists, engineers, and software developers in a cross section of poor countries went a long way toward ensuring the foundation’s work progressed as quickly and as inconspicuously as it needed to. Generous consulting fees paid to local politicians had neutralized the messy issue of regulatory oversight, which only served to slow down the advancement of science.

  The images on the screens before him brought a smile to Carter’s face. The sky at the edge of the desert was perfectly clear except for a small cluster of cumulus fractus clouds centered on each screen. His clouds.

  He tapped the on-screen control for the microphone. “Go ahead.”

  The clipped, smoke-roughened voice of the foundation’s chief pilot, Raoul Patterson, Maj., RAF (Ret.), came through th
e speakers as clearly as if he were in the room. “Earth-Four. We’re on approach.”

  “Copy Earth-Four,” Carter replied quietly as he zoomed in on the small cluster of clouds that had been painstakingly created less than half an hour ago. Pulling back slightly to gain a broader view of the area from the streaming video, Carter saw the speck that was his plane. But the modified, stealth-enhanced Lockheed P-3 was absent from the radar screen. Nor would it show up on any military or aviation radar that might be doing routine sweeps of the area. His smile widened as he acknowledged, not for the first time, that sometimes his inventiveness and his resourcefulness surprised even him.

  The pilot’s voice broke into his thoughts. “All systems are go and on standby. Awaiting orders. Over.”

  “Drop on approach to the target as planned.”

  “Copy. We’re on approach. Over.”

  The plane wasn’t traveling particularly fast and, holding his breath, Carter watched the timer run down to twenty seconds.

  “Drop the sensor on eight and initiate on one, Earth-Four, then depart the area. Over.” Carter said the words softly and a sudden, harsh tightness in his chest made him suck in a hard breath. The sensation—hovering on pain, short of ecstasy—was so different from the free-falling sensation of a moment ago that he wondered if he were having a heart attack.

  Surely not. God would not take from me this moment.

  “The sensor is in the chute and ready for release.” As ever, Raoul’s voice was bland and expressionless. Carter didn’t care. Gasping against the chest-crushing vise holding him in rigid stillness, he fought against normal, irrational fear and struggled to remain focused on the test that was about to commence.