She tuned the radio to a local news station and heard that the hurricane was not only far worse than had been expected, it was still gaining strength. But how could that be if it was over land? She had to assume that Washington was being struck by scalar weapons technology, and frankly, their possession of a weapon like this made it even less likely that any human force, no matter how strong, was going to be able to turn the situation around.

The car shook as if it had been picked up in the jaws of some gigantic animal. She managed to get it down the drive, though, and from there onto the access road. There had been a sawhorse closing Memorial, but it was blown to pieces, which she drove over as she entered the highway.

Her plan was to go north and west, which was the shortest route out of the weather zone. If she could manage it, she would get an air force Gulfstream from Wright-Pat to meet her at the airport in Altoona. Unfortunately, all of the nearer air bases hugged the East Coast, so Wright-Patterson was the nearest operational facility.

The difficulty was going to be reaching air force operations and getting the plane in motion. For that, she needed a working phone of some kind, and that was not going to happen until she was well out of this area.

Driving was an extraordinary struggle, but the car was powerful and heavy, and its front-wheel drive was a major asset. Once, she saw a state police vehicle. Just to be safe, she put up her light, and he did no more than flash back at her.

The wind kept coming up under the car and lifting it off the roadway, causing brief, heart-stopping hydroplaning. She’d done some defensive driving at Camp Swampy, but that had to do with escaping from ambushes, not hurricanes. Turn-into-a-skid was the only maneuver she’d actually practiced that was relevant to this situation. Problem was, it didn’t help a whole lot when the entire car was, in effect, airborne.

She kept the satellite phone on, waiting for the green light to pop up. It took a lot of cloud cover to scatter the signal—but there was, indeed, a lot of cloud cover. Worse, she was only managing about thirty miles an hour. Any faster, and she was going to blow right off this road. As it was, every mile or so, she had to maneuver around an overturned eighteen-wheeler or some other vehicular disaster.

She came to a complete blockage involving two trucks, a bus, and a lot of people. They came running toward her car. Obviously, there were casualties, and they probably thought she was some sort of official help.