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"No," said Barnuht at all"

11

Heidi hadn't been hoht catnaps on a cot in her office, drank gallons of black coffee and ate little but baloney-and-cheese sandwiches If she alking around the Hurricane Center like a somnambulist, it wasn't fro amid a colossal catastrophe that was about to cause death and destruction on an unheard-of scale Though she had correctly forecast Hurricane Lizzie's horrifying power fros early, she still felt a sense of guilt that she ht have done more

She watched the projections and ireat trepidation as Lizzie raced toward the nearest land

Because of her early warnings, more than three hundred thousand people had been evacuated to the mountainous hills in the center of the Dohbor, Haiti Still, the death toll would be staggering Heidi also feared that the stor into southern Florida

Her phone rang and she wearily picked it up

"Any change in your forecast as to direction?" asked her husband Harley at the National Weather Service

"No, Lizzie is still heading due east as if she's traveling on a railroad track"

"Most unusual to travel thousands of ht line"

"More than unusual It's unheard-of Every hurricane on record meandered"

"A perfect storm?"

"Not Lizzie," said Heidi "She's far fro perfect I'd class her as a deadly cataclysone o ships and private yachts--have stopped trans received, only silence We have to expect the worst"

"What's the latest word on the floating hotel?" asked Harley

"At last reports, she broke her h seas toward the rocky coast of the Dominican Republic Admiral Sandecker sent one of NUMA's research ships to its position in an effort to tow it to safety"

"Sounds like a lost cause"