Portent Read Free

his own body was buffeted by the sudden surge, he witnessed the most horrific thing in what was to be his comparatively short life.
        With a boom that might have come from a hundred cannon, fragments of living polyps shot towards the surface like blasted shrapnel, tearing through the other diver's body as though it were no more than papier-mache. Barry-or the main part of Barry-disappeared in a great swirl of red, while other pieces of him flew upwards with harder fragments to explode into the sunshine above in a furious fountain of blood, coral and flesh.
        Schneider screamed into his air tube.
        Just before the whole of the coral reef in his vicinity erupted with a violence that pierced every floating thing above-semi-submersible, amphibian plane, catamaran, pontoon, scuba deck and swimmers-splitting every object, soft and hard, with equal ease, tearing them into a million pieces, he managed to curse his doctor, who had ordered this bloody holiday in the first place.
        Then Neville Trevor Schneider Ill's number increased a thousandfold.
        
***
        
        'Coffee, Doc?'
        'Uh?' James Rivers turned from the small window, his thoughts still on the interesting cloud formations, mainly cumulonimbus, in the distance.
        The stocky, mustachioed man leaning over him raised the beaker he was holding an inch or so. 'Coffee. Gonna be your last chance before the shit hits us.'
        Rivers nodded and took the plastic beaker from Gardenia, wincing as the hot liquid burned through to his fingers. He sipped quickly, then switched hands, managing a smile as he did so. The bastard was still having fun with him.
        'What altitude are we going in at?' he asked loudly enough to be heard over the droning of the aircraft's four engines.
        'Haven't decided yet,' the other man replied, taking a glance at the monitors ranged in front of Rivers. 'I'd kinda like to go in low, say 5,000-we'd get more info that way-but I guess it's up to the pilot. Ten thousand would be a lot safer. How's your stomach?'
        'It'll take whatever you decide.'
        Gardenia scratched his balding head. 'We've had some bad ones over the past few years-Hurricane Gilbert was the first of them back in'88-but this one's heading up to be the worst. Check those readings.' He stretched over the narrow desk to peer through the double-layered polycarbonate windows, forcing Rivers to press back into his seat.
        'Surface wind looks to be eighty or ninety knots right now.' Gardenia's eyes squinted through thick, horn-rimmed glasses. 'That's soon gonna change, though. Hey, what has three humps and sings "Stormy Weather" through its asshole?'
        Rivers shook his head, although he had an idea what the answer would be; these jokes had been doing the rounds for two years now, ever since the disaster.
        'An Iraqi camel.' Gardenia clucked his tongue, as if embarrassed himself. 'Yeah, I know, bad taste. But the crazy bastards shouldna' messed with things they didn't understand,'specially after they got the crap beat outa them in the war. Jeez, take a look at that up ahead. Don't hold onta that coffee too long, Doc, or you'll end up with a hot pecker. We're in for a bumpy ride.'
        Rivers looked past Gardenia at the distant weather. The clouds were even blacker and more angry than a minute ago. They moved as though they were boiling.
        'You been through one before, Jim?'
        Rivers was glad that Gardenia had dropped the 'Doc'-doctors of physics weren't used to being addressed in that way-but the other man's sudden serious tone was hardly relaxing. Thom Gardenia, despite his crassness, pretended or otherwise, was chief scientist for Hurricane Research at the Miami-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and certainly no fool. His manner might well have been his way of dealing with his own tenseness, a tenseness felt by all members of this particular mission.