“It’s a compound that causes soils and other solids suspended in water to form into clumps,” Eric answered. “It’s used in sewage treatment plants, for example, to settle out the waste.”

“She wanted to find a way to bind the organic material found in seawater in order to turn water into a gel.”

“What for?” Max asked bluntly.

“Didn’t say,” Mark replied, “and apparently no one on the peer review committee cared because she got the go-ahead without explaining the need for something like this.”

Stone continued, “We know from your talk with Merrick that the reaction is exothermic and, from what I can guess, it probably isn’t sustainable. The heat will eventually kill off the organics and the gel will dissolve back into ordinary seawater.”

“I’m following you,” Juan said, “but I don’t see a point to all this.”

“If Singer lays down a line of flocculent it will spread for a while and then just fizzle out.” Mark blew a raspberry to emphasize his point. “The hurricane would absorb some of its heat as it passes over it but not really enough to make any major changes to its severity or direction.”

Eric butted in, “My idea is that if he spreads it in a circle just as the hurricane begins to revolve he will be able to dictate where and when the eye will form — and most important, how big it will be.”

“And the tighter the eye, the faster the wind can whip around it,” Max added.

“Andrew’s was eleven miles across when he came ashore in Miami,” Murph said. “Natural processes limit how small it can be, but Singer can push that so the hurricane goes above five on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. He might also be able to control where the storm tracks as it heads across the Atlantic, in essence pointing it like a gun at whatever coastal region he chooses.”

Cabrillo studied at the monitor again. It looked as though the Gulf of Sidra was doing exactly what Eric and Murph predicted. She was in the beginning of a spiraling turn, using the heat generated by Susan Donleavy’s gel, which she was doubtlessly discharging as fast as her pumps could go, to tease the storm tighter and tighter. Singer would make the eye smaller and thus the hurricane more powerful than anything nature was able to create.

“If he finishes that turn there won’t be a damned thing we can do,” Eric concluded. “The eye will be formed and no force on earth will be able to stop it.”

“Any idea where he’s sending it?”