Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  Randy wasn’t concerned about the track - he had been assigned to estimate the maximum strength of Mandy. Estimating maximum strength of a storm was even more difficult than estimating the track, because even with all of the data they gathered, little was still known about what causes a hurricane to form in the first place, much less what makes one grow while another sputters out.

  Randy pulled up all the information he could find, culling data from a dozen different sources, and dumped it all into a strength estimation program he and others had developed. It was the best model they had for estimating max strength, but it was still only accurate about 20% of the time. They had developed the model using historic data, which meant data from storms over the past 15 years, the only years where extensive data on hurricanes and tropical storms was available.

  The computer processed the data, thinking it over. Randy watched as the computer worked through several hundred permutations, making assumptions about several of the variables and calculating the outcome.

  It worked through 46 different scenarios before finishing, displaying a table of its results. Twenty of the scenarios had the storm losing strength after staying on its present track, crossing the Bahamas and over mainland Florida before passing into the Gulf of Mexico and dying out. Fifteen of them had the storm staying at about the same strength, currently just under a category 1, and the other scenarios had it growing in strength. But none of them had it growing bigger than a category 3.

  Randy hit the PRINT SCREEN button and waited by the printer. A category 3 was still nothing to sneeze at, but it was nothing like a category 4. The difference of one number seemed insignificant, but historically the difference was huge. Storms of category 3 were normally the strongest in any hurricane season, and although they sometimes did property damage or caused the deaths of a few civilians depending on where their tracks took them, they were not normally considered on the ‘disaster’ level.

  His boss took the sheet when he handed it to her, and she glanced at the data.

  “What do you think?” she asked him, handing the paper back.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think it’ll get any bigger, but then you never know. Edwourd was this level for a while and then it grew to a category 3, and we still don’t know why. The models didn’t show it getting any bigger, but you know that it depends on the track. Ed and the others should finish their track estimates before I run the data again on max strength.” He used the word ‘it’ to describe the storm because it was what he was supposed to do - the higher-ups frowned on the politically incorrect.

  She nodded. “Yeah, that’s sounds good. Anything else you can think of?” His boss was new, having just come down from the National Weather Services’ Severe Storm Center in Kansas, but she was good enough to understand that she needed help on this one. It could be the biggest storm to churn up since she’d joined the Center last April, and she had never been here on staff when they had a big one come through. Randy had, and she knew it, and so she asked for his opinion.

  “No, not really. We’ve got those fly-through’s out of Nassau and Kemp’s Bay planned in about twenty minutes, and that combined with the San Salvador balloon data should give us a better idea.”

  He glanced out of the interior window into the Center’s main control room, and from here it looked even more like Mission Control for a shuttle launch, with big screens flashing up maps and data in front of rows of technicians and scientists hunched over their computers.

  He nodded at the large computerized weather map of the continental United States. “There’s that very large high-pressure mass sitting over the eastern seaboard that’s been causing warmer-than-normal temperatures from New York to North Carolina, and another over Texas and the Gulf. If Mandy goes very far north, the coastal air mass should keep her from making deep landfall. And if it crosses Florida and heads into the Gulf, it could hit that high-pressure mass and sputter out in the open water before it even gets close to Texas. Or she...I mean it could turn north and go between them.”

  She followed his eyes, and nodded. “You’re probably right. They’ll get strong rain along that line, though, if the storm bumps up against either of the warm air masses.” She was a good meteorologist, despite what some of the guys said, and Randy knew she was good at what she knew, and that was precipitation patterns. She was smart enough to let others lead on the stuff she wasn’t strong in, like storm track and strength estimation. She was more experienced in land weather patterns and storms like tornadoes and blizzards because of her experience in the Midwestern Severe Storm Center, but she was still pretty good and looking at a weather map and picking out the important details. Randy liked her.

  “Yeah. She’ll have trouble turning inland with that air mass there, assuming it stays, but they’ll get severe weather where the two systems meet.” He thought about it for another moment, then continued. “But not enough to put out a warning or anything. Not yet.”

  For a moment, they both stared at the full color computer weather map in the other room, each alone with their thoughts, and then he excused himself and went back to his computer terminal to run more estimations and try and guess the storm’s strength. The data from the track estimations came through a few minutes later from the team assigned to make that educated guess, and Randy took their myriad possible storm tracks and fed them into his model, and then he sat back, waiting for the results.

  The storm was coming, and no one in the room was sure where it would go, or how strong it would be when it got there. All they could do was take the numbers, look at them, and then make an estimation, literally nothing more than an educated guess.

  But there was no one better in the world at guessing where the storm would go.

  Chapter 3 - Monday,

  September 12

  “And this here, well, this will be where you work. Or at least until we can find you a bigger office.” Agent Jeff Collings was talking to her, but she wasn’t paying him or his long, appreciative looks at her legs much attention. She was busy staring at, or more accurately, into, her new “office”.

  Closer to a closet, she thought. The room measured no more than seven feet on a side, and the small, used desk and computer terminal seemed to take up most of the useable space. There was no window (that was really too much to ask for, she reminded herself) and the room smelled musty and hot, as if it hadn’t been used in years. Plastic wrap, the kind of plastic shipping wrap that comes with all of those little blisters of air that everyone just loves to pop, still covered the computer monitor and keyboard, presumably inferring that they had never been used.

  “Well, it’s not much, but it’s a start,” she said, trying to be optimistic. “Where’s the nearest bathroom?”

  Collings seemed to fidget uselessly. “Well, this east wing of the whole fifth floor is pretty much out of commission, but the floor above has plenty of offices and people - and bathrooms.” He smiled in a way that he probably thought was charming, but to Julie it only looked like he was trying to imagine what color bra she had on.

  He looked up at the door and smiled again, this time to himself. “Oh, and we’ll get rid of that, too,” he said, pointing.

  She looked up. Great. The sign holder on the door still held a corroded, yellowing sign designating the room’s previous use.

  “Maintenance.”

  After he had finally left (he’d asked her out to dinner twice in the space of less than twenty minutes, constituting something like a new record for her – she’d politely but firmly refused him), she began to unpack the small satchel of things she had brought with her: two reams of good computer paper; three boxes of pencils and two boxes of good pens, all made in America and often difficult to find; a stapler; a small framed picture of her with her little dog, Mr. Smith; her calculator, the same old one that she had used all the way through High School and College; her appointment book; a Far Side calendar to hang on the bare walls; and a coffee mug that read “If I were any smarter, I’d be a threat to national
security”, an all-too recent gift from her sister upon Julie’s graduation from the FBI Academy.

  Julie sat back and surveyed her ‘domain’. Not much to look at, but it’s a start, she thought. Eleven weeks out of the Academy, and she was one of the only two or three graduates in her class to land a job at Headquarters here in Washington, D.C. Sure, she was working deep inside the bowels of the vast complex, hiking distance from the offices full of power and influence, but she was here, at least.

  I guess all those hours of homework and extra study while Tina, her Academy roommate, and her friends went out and partied, I guess they finally paid off, she thought. Tina had still managed to graduate in the top half of the class and had been offered an exciting and challenging position in the FBI’s Nashville office.

  She suddenly remembered something else she had forgotten, and pulled one more item from her satchel. It was a very nicely engraved nameplate, the other graduation gift from her sister.

  It read “Julie Noble - Special Agent - FBI”

  “Well, her credentials are good, even excellent, for someone right out of the academy.” Mike Wallace, Deputy Director of Personnel, said as he laid her file down on his supervisor’s expansive and impeccably maintained desk.

  “She graduated at the top of her class at the Academy?” Darren Paynod asked, reaching for the file. He was the Director of Personnel, and his meeting with Mr. Wallace, his Deputy, was in regards to Special Agent Julie Noble, fresh out of the Academy and their newest addition. A suitable assignment for her would result from this meeting.

  “Yes, several points ahead of her next closest competitor,” Wallace answered.

  Does she have any particular interests?” Paynod asked. He had found that, in the past, giving a green agent their first assignment in an area they enjoyed often smoothed the initiation process.

  Wallace had scanned her file earlier and was thoroughly familiar with it. “Well, she seems to be a whiz at computers.”

  Paynod laughed. “Aren’t they all, nowadays? All we seem to get nowadays are computer experts or martial arts experts.” He scanned her file again. He was still getting used to training people, or kids, really, who had grown up with computers. Tell them how we used to do things around here, and they would look at you as if you were talking about the Civil War. It was all Ancient History before 1960, at least to them.

  Wallace smiled. “Now, you know that’s not really true, Darren. True computer experts are rare. She seems to have concentrated a little more on the human side of technology. She catalogued and organized all of the academy’s training files, and then she transferred them to the main computer. Now any of the trainees can instantly access any of the files from the central computer without even having to leave their dorm rooms. They can just pull the files up on their personal computers, and multiple students can access the same files at the same time.”

  Darren Paynod’s eyebrows arched upwards slightly, which was about the most emotion Paynod ever showed. “Well, I like that a lot,” Paynod said. “I remember lugging those stupid piles of cases from the Central Library all the way across campus to my dorm room, and then finding out that someone else had already checked out the one file I needed to complete my report.” He sat back in his chair to think, absently playing with his bottom lip. Students of the FBI Academy studied the cases and files from actual investigations, files and reports that had been submitted by the FBI Agents that had worked the original cases, and the cadets were challenged to try and come to their own conclusions about the case. Second-guessing the original agent was something of a student requirement, but very rarely did the students ever manage to come up with something that the original Agent had missed. It was really more an exercise in study and duplication, witnessing through the reports how an Agent should proceed while investigating a case.

  But Miss Noble had almost single-handedly brought about a mini-revolution at the Academy, one that Darren Paynod had gotten wind of through other channels. That had been a large factor in the decision to bring her here to HQ.

  Wallace sat patiently, waiting. One of the first things he had learned about Darren Paynod, a painful lesson that he had learned just weeks after he had begun working under the Director of Personnel, was to keep your mouth shut while he was thinking.

  Finally, Darren sat up straight. “How is the new computer coming?”

  Mike’s brain changed gears smoothly. He had guessed that this would be the approach Darren would take, and he was prepared. And there was only one NEW computer coming to the FBI that deserved a title of its own. “Well, the peripherals and subsystems were installed on Friday, but the crew that will train our people to use it, they won’t arrive until early next week. Probably Monday or Tuesday. They’ve experienced some type of logistical problem, and were forced to stay at their last location longer than planned. But the main unit itself is scheduled to be installed by the Cray technicians on Thursday, the 15th”, Mike answered.

  Darren nodded. “Four days. Hmmm. Where is the Team right now?”

  “They are just finishing up in Europe. That Paris thing, remember?”

  Darren knew well - the Team, the FBI’s crack group of computer experts, had been sent to Paris to help the French government tighten security on their governmental computer network. Evidently, they had had some problems with hackers penetrating the net and skulking around in their national security files. Whether it had been a kid playing on his personal computer at home or a more serious matter, Darren did not know, and frankly, he didn’t really care. The loaning of the team to the Frenchies had been purely a sign of good will between the two powerful allies, and nothing more. The FBI had enough problems to deal with without getting involved in the internal security of other countries.

  But the Team had been sent to France because they were some of the best in the world, and they would be returning very soon, hopefully.

  “Attach her to the Team, and brief her on the Cray and the Team’s next project. I want her up to speed by the time the training team gets here, and make sure she meets the rest of the Team when they return.” He handed her thin file back to Wallace. “Keep me informed of her progress, and set up an informal meeting here on...” He glanced at his appointment book, open on one corner of his huge desk. “Friday afternoon.”

  “Yes, sir.” He’s like a boulder, Mike thought. Just sits there most of the time, but when he gets moving, you’d better dive out of the way. “Anything special you would like her to do on the Team?”

  “No, just find her a place that she’s comfortable with.” His mind was already moving on to the next meeting, a tricky internal affairs investigation that would have to be dealt with carefully. “Oh, and keep Collins and the single boys away from her for a while. She doesn’t need any distractions.”

  Wallace wondered what that was supposed to mean. Had Paynod been asking around about her or something? The picture in the file certainly did not do her any justice, and Wallace wondered where Darren got some of his information. “Yes, sir.”

  Abe Foreman‘s office was smallish but neat and well decorated, and there were the obligatory framed diplomas and citations, along with a dozen or so framed pictures of Mr. Foreman with some of the more prominent businessmen and politicians in Liberty and the Anne County area. In the middle of the wall of photos and citations and holding a place of dignity, almost reverence, was a small, framed color photo of a smiling and obviously very happy Abe Foreman shaking hands with then-President Ronald Reagan.

  David wasn’t looking at the pictures or admiring the framed proof of Mr. Foreman’s extensive education.

  “And...?” David asked pointedly, his voice having risen an octave or two since he had come in the door of the office less than five minutes ago. He was trying to keep his cool - he hated showing his emotions.

  Abe Foreman sat relaxed as far back in his chair as it would go. He knew that David Beaumont was pretty much a pushover, but underneath that detached and cool exterior, Mr. Foreman wondered if there was
any of his father’s notoriously short temper. Abe didn’t think so, but if David was ever going to lose his temper, he wanted to be there and see it. Evidently, David was one of those people that liked to keep everything inside. He would not have made a great sheriff, in Abe Foreman’s opinion. Too easy to get worked up, not able to stand up for himself. Bad qualities in a sheriff.

  David looked at him expectantly, but Abe just couldn’t keep him waiting. It was fun to bait the kid, but he had work to do.

  “Okay, David,” Abe began. “I know that you want the story, so here it is, as straight as I can tell it to you. I talked to your Aunt the other night and suggested that she sell the house and move into some place smaller. That’s it.”

  “Why? Is she out of money again? I thought you were...” David started, but then backed off. “I thought all of her money was safe.”

  Abe searched this young man’s eyes for some clue as to what he was thinking or feeling, but there was nothing in his crystal green eyes that gave any hints. It looked as if he might be trying to get up a head of steam and get angry, and this pleased Abe.

  Abe liked to think of himself as a student of human nature, and David Beaumont was one of his favorite subjects. There was something about David Beaumont, something about him when he tried to get angry or upset, something that made him back off, to keep it all inside.

  To Abe, this boy was a classic example of someone who had never been trained in how to control his emotions, and he must’ve learned what little he knew on his own. David Beaumont must have kept everything inside for a long time. Abe was, frankly, a little disturbed by David Beaumont and the heaps of anger he must have locked away inside himself.