The western sky was almost coal black, seeming to press down on to Long Beach with a terrible, physical weight. The bases of the huge dark clouds appeared to be writhing as though there were winds like the jet stream roaring through them at dreadful speeds. As Robin stood at Richard’s shoulder, a great bolt of lightning struck down out of the black belly of the distant monster, seemingly straight into the invisible ocean. And still there was no wind, as yet, down here on the cowering earth. No rain. Just the rumble of distant thunder echoing in over the docks.
‘I don’t like the look of that at all,’ she said.
‘Me neither,’ agreed Richard. ‘If mackerel skies and mares’ tails make tall ships wear short sails, as the saying goes, this lot would make any sane sailor run for safe haven with all the speed he can.’
‘We need to get off this ship and on to Maxima as fast as humanly possible. It’s only a short hop across the docks.’
He nodded. ‘And we need to get Nic and Liberty running south before whatever is actually up there starts coming down in earnest.’
‘Damn right.’ She was in motion as she spoke.
‘You get things organized in the cabin and I’ll settle the bill. Meet you at the gangway,’ he said decisively, following in her footsteps. ‘And while I’m doing that I’ll check how things aboard Sulu Queen are proceeding. I don’t want Captain Sin to have to face this particular storm tiger either if we can possibly avoid it. Maybe Antoine can get some cargo for him in Puerto Banderas.’
‘If they have port facilities anywhere near big enough to handle her down there,’ called Robin as she vanished downwards towards their cabin. ‘I mean, I know she’s not a Maersk Triple E super freighter, but even so …’
Richard was waiting at the top of the gangplank when Robin reappeared with a laden steward in tow fifteen minutes later. ‘Captain Sin is not a happy bunny,’ he called, then paused, distracted by the coincidence that made him refer to Sin’s favourite Chinese insult. Unconscious association? he wondered. Then he speculated for a sidetracked instant who the outraged captain would be calling a son of a rabbit next. Richard himself, probably, for the cunning plan seemed to have backfired. The National Guard containers had been loaded aboard Sulu Queen by midnight, just as he had calculated — but they were still aboard, apparently, as were Antoine Prudhomme, Major Guerrero and his people. The freight yards were being cleared far more slowly than they had hoped. Guerrero’s emergency containers looked as though they would need to stay in place for much of the rest of the day, at least. And, until they were unloaded and the rest of Sulu Queen’s cargo removed and replaced, the vessel was stuck in dock. But maybe she was safer there, Richard thought, looking for the bright side as ever, in spite of what the NOAA scientists believed was on its way.
‘Penny for them?’ asked Robin, breaking into his reverie.
‘Nic’s sending Biddy McKinney with the Bell to pick us up,’ he answered with a swift mental gear change. ‘But we’ll need to take a cab over to the Island Express helipad. I don’t want to get caught in whatever’s coming down. Especially not on foot and laden with luggage.’
‘That cab waiting at the foot of the gangplank, perhaps? I got the steward to call on our way up here.’
As the steward packed their cases into the cab’s boot and they folded themselves into the back seat, the rain started. Fortunately it was not the kind of rain they had experienced outside the Sky Room last night. There were no drops the size of baseballs, tennis balls or cricket balls. Just a sudden, penetrating drizzle, almost as warm as blood, which blew in across the docks as though some new-fangled colossal shower attachment was hidden behind the low black clouds.
‘Is this the start of the ARkStorm?’ asked the cabbie of no one in particular as he pulled away without even bothering to switch on his windscreen wipers. ‘This ain’t so bad. Take the storms during Oscars season last year. Now they were something! The cops closed major roads and highways. The fire department rescued people from tree trunks floating in the Los Angeles River. Power outages hit 24,000 customers. Evacuation orders were issued for 1,000 homes in Glendora and Azusa that sit beneath steep mountain slopes. Hell, they even had to cover all the big Oscar statues outside the Dolby Theatre with plastic sheeting. I’ve never seen anything like it. I tell you, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t stop water when it comes down hard. But this ain’t even in the same league. All this Noah’s ark stuff is just so much hooey, if you ask me.’
The Bell was sitting waiting on the helipad and it was empty apart from Biddy, so Richard had no trouble slinging their luggage into the passenger cabin at Robin’s feet and scrambling in himself. As he strapped in and settled the headphones in place, the chopper lifted off into the low overcast sky and was soon immersed in a fog that was just on the point of turning from vapour to liquid.
‘Lord only knows what’s in this foul stuff,’ said Biddy. ‘There’s enough static electricity to interfere with some of my displays.’
Even as she spoke, a huge bolt of lightning slammed down all too close on their left. By chance, Richard was looking in that direction, straining to get a glimpse of Sulu Queen. And, indeed, it seemed to him that the lightning bolt illuminated her as it dazzled him. The searing power of it was like a blow from a boxer. His head reared back. He closed his streaming eyes as tightly as he could and, as he did so, he seemed to see a picture that had been seared on to his retinas. His brain fought to comprehend the frenetic activity of what he had observed almost unconsciously with the still picture that seemed to be all that was left. And it was not helped in this by the overpowering crash of instantaneous thunder, loud enough to be disorientating on its own. The Bell jolted as the power of the strike hit it like the blast wall of an explosion. There was a powerful smell of ozone.
It seemed to Richard that the lightning bolt spread out as it tore down, out of the clouds, with lightning branches striking in white and gold at the speed of light through the streaming air. And, eerily, answering wisps of electricity grew from the tops of the tallest points in the picture revealed by the blinding cataclysm. Ghostly fingers reached upwards from the top of Sulu Queen’s guidance and communication display, from the crest of her one tall funnel, the tip of the loading crane reaching across her square piled cargo and the top of the crane itself. The downstrike of lightning met each of these, flickering between them as it discharged its unimaginable static power.
But the picture that seared itself immovably, unmoving, as still as a photograph, on to the backs of Richard’s eyes was that of the most powerful contact — of the great column of power connecting the heart of the black clouds to the top of the crane beside Sulu Queen. The crane seemed to explode with sparks as its metal structure earthed billions of volts and tens of thousands of amps into the concrete beneath it. It seemed incredible to Richard that the structure had not melted or exploded. It seemed inevitable that every electric circuit in the crane — and possibly in his ship — must have been burned out. He rubbed his fingers over his eyes, dashing away the burning tears, suddenly fearing that there might be dead and wounded over there.