5 Days to Landfall

by Robert Roy Britt

But now a van had flipped on the bridge, the fireman said, blown over by the wind. The bridge had been closed. The evacuation from Point Pleasant Beach in this direction was over.

  They hopped out of the vehicle and were nearly blown over. The wind was growing each moment now. Amanda ducked reflexively, looked past the shuttered Spike’s Fish Market and across the river at Gull Island. The old sunken boat was gone. The water was inching up into the reeds. On the near side of the river, the grass of the public park was beginning to flood.

  There were hundreds of cars backed up with nowhere to go. She wondered how many other people, like Joe Springer, hadn’t even left their houses.

  Sarah’s teeth chattered: “Mommy, I’m scared.”

  “We’ll be OK,” Amanda shouted over the growing wind. She tugged at her daughter’s arm.

  “What are we going to do?”

  Can’t stay here. Surge will wash right over us. She pointed at the bridge.

  Sarah pulled hard against her mother’s grip. “I’m not going on the bridge,” Sarah said, face set in a firm scowl.

  “We’ll be safe on the other side. Stop arguing with me, will you?”

  Sarah shook her head in fierce defiance.

  “Look up,” Amanda said.

  Sarah did so, and her eyes grew wide. Sepia clouds raced overhead, folding upon each other like kneaded dough and moving with dizzying speed.

  Sarah pulled her mother toward the bridge.

  A town cop was huddled next to his car, which blocked the bridge. He stopped them and, pressing his face close to Amanda’s, shouted: “Bridge is closed, lady. Nobody allowed.”

  You’ll have to shoot me to stop me.

  “Everybody on this side of the bridge is going to drown,” she said. “I’m crossing.”

  “No you’re not, lady. I got orders.”

  “You going to arrest me now or shoot me in the back?”

  The cop stared at her, thinking. “Drown?”

  “Storm surge.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’m a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center. I know. Water will be fifteen feet deep here. How tall are you?”

  The cop winced, curled his nose. Rain washed across his face. He nodded his head toward the bridge.

  Amanda took her daughter’s hand, held it with clasped fingers and started across the 3,000 feet of exposed steel. She glanced back. The cop watched her, nodded once, held his position.

  Once up and away from the relative protection of buildings and trees, Amanda realized the difficulty. The wind was blowing at near hurricane force out of the northeast—at right angles to the bridge. There was no way they would cross standing up.

  On the wing of an airplane, a stuntwoman in flight. That’s how Amanda felt, crossing the metal bridge over the Manasquan River. The wind, blowing out of the northeast, hit them from the right. She was sure it was at hurricane force now—on the bridge, at least, high over the water. A straggling seagull gave up and was thrown backward.

  Amanda huddled against the railing on the upwind side of the bridge, moving forward a few inches at a time on her knees and alternating holds with her hands, always one hand gripping firm. Sarah was downwind of her, arms wrapped around her mother’s waist. They crawled together, fingers clutching belt loops.

  Got to make it to the other side soon. Can’t hold on much longer.

  They passed the flipped van that had blocked traffic. Terese’s voice filled Amanda’s head: There’s going to be some accidents.

  The impact of the thought suddenly hit Amanda. She understood where the accidents would be. She imagined the streets of Manhattan now, gridlocked with people trying to escape. She knew about New York drivers. They would sit and honk and curse and honk some more. And then a lot of them would drown. The nagging thought returned: She should be at the Emergency Operations Center. Just as the mayor had waited too long to start the evacuation, now he would wait too long to stop it. And somewhere, someone was encouraging him to do just that. She had to find out who. She had to warn the mayor.

  They were mid-span when the lighting started up again. The wind gusted, and Amanda pulled her daughter flat against the cold steel until the gust abated. Then they continued.

  Sarah pleaded every minute or so. “Mommy, I’m scared.”

  “You’re doing great. Hold on tight. We’re almost there.”

  ~ ~ ~

  EXCERPTED FROM HURRICANE HARVEY: CHRONICLE OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, BY NICHOLAS K. GRAY (2000)

  Hurricane Harvey sent an advance warning, its first gusts of seventy-four miles an hour, to New York’s most famous and most crowded borough during what would have been the evening rush hour at the beginning of a busy tourist weekend. The moon was full, making the tides higher than normal, exacerbating an already deadly situation.

  Black clouds descended on the island of Manhattan as water seeped into its edges.

  The storm pushed water into the wide mouth of New York harbor, and as the channel narrowed, the water rose, surging over the concrete seawall at Battery Park along the south end of the rocky island.

  Three-foot waves pounded a set of stairs that led up to a series of eight engraved stone monoliths honoring U.S. servicemen who sleep forever in American coastal waters. The quantity of engraved names hinted at the remarkable number of people the sea had taken by other means. Harvey would add greatly to that tally.

  CHAPTER 47

  Manhattan

  4:38 p.m.

  The dock was connected to the mainland by a hinged ramp, which always sloped downward by a slight angle at high tide and a steep one at low tide. Walter Beasley, drenched, held the rail with both hands and walked upward to the dock. The rain splattered his glasses, making his narrow field of vision even more blurry than usual.

  The dock was secured by steel rings to narrower steel pilings, so that the pilings remained fixed while the dock rose and fell with the tide. The steel rings made a loud ker-chunk, ka-clink as the dock lurched a half-inch with the wind and back again.

  Beasley had always wondered why, even at high tide, the pilings towered over his head. He reached the dock, shuffled with his feet wide apart for balance against the fierce gusts. The tops of the pilings were at eye level.

  The boat rocked dramatically in the wind. With such a deep draft, it took a lot of wind to rock the Slow Times. There was no sign of other people.

  It was partly the loose stern line that allowed the Slow Times to move about so feverishly. Beasley held fast to a teak handle and stepped into the stern deck. He unlocked the cabin door and went inside. Rain was forcing its way through the weather stripping in the windows, dripping onto the small pullout couch. The drugs would be getting wet underneath. He wondered why Leonard Lassitor hadn’t sent someone to pick them up. He pulled the couch out, removed the bags and stowed them in the windowless forward bunk. He didn’t know why he did it, other than the fact that he was terrified of Leonard Lassitor.

  He opened a large cupboard door and found two short lengths of rope and went back outside to secure the boat with extra lines. He finished, and pushed his glasses up onto his nose. Now he had to decide where to ride the storm out, whether to stay on the boat or return to the newsroom.

  The sky had lowered, grown darker while he worked. Beyond the feeble breakwall of the marina, the Hudson was a deserted, frothy mess. Lightning flashed down river; the thunder competed with the deafening wind, the ker-chunk, ka-clink of the dock, the flapping of loose rope ends, groaning and creaking of taut lines.

  He didn’t even have time to lunge for them. The wind tore his glasses from his head. They slammed into the side of the boat and fell soundlessly into the river.

  Walter Beasley wrapped his arms around himself and looked at his blurry boat, fading at the edges into a circle of darkness. He clenched his eyes and thought of the newsroom, how it would be buzzing right now as every available reporter and editor tried to find something useful to do. He wondered if anyone would even notice that he’d left, just wal
ked out. He thought of Jack Corbin, whom he had failed to find. He thought of Leonard Lassitor, his only friend who was now his worst enemy. He thought of the drugs, a certain fortune, a possible end to his career.

  Walter Beasley went inside. The cabin door creaked as it closed behind him.

  CHAPTER 48

  New Jersey

  5:10 p.m.

  The sound was deafening. Like metal on metal in a horrific crash. Joe Springer thought at first that two planes were colliding above the house. He reached reflexively to put his hands over his head. Then the hair on his arms and his head stood up, and he felt a tingle run through his body.

  This is it. The worst of it. I’m surviving.

  Hands shielding his face from the lightning, he looked across the small deck toward the ocean. Waves at eye level, eating into what had been a wide stretch of beach, munching their way toward the boardwalk that sat three feet below his deck.

  Joe Springer was still fuming about Amanda taking Sarah. Somewhere deep in his mind he acknowledged that it was all about control. He was bucking Amanda’s authority, and now his conscience began to suggest that perhaps his anger had gotten the better of his judgment.

  A wave crashed into the boardwalk, lifted the two-by-fours up, spread them like a giant Oriental fan, flipped them over and onto his deck.

  He should have evacuated. The thought barely had time to enter his head when a vast dark shape, taller than the house, filled the window. It looked like some larger-than-life science-fiction wave rolling toward him, but it couldn’t be. Couldn’t be.

  He ran to the kitchen, headed for the side door leading to the sand pathway off the dunes, toward town. He jumped three stairs onto the sand, ran two steps and the wave picked him up, hurled him and his house in a frenzy of froth. Odd sounds of wood and glass and water. Slam into the sand. Desperate attempt for air. Only water.

  Deathly weight on chest. Push and drag, a leg twisting into an impossible contortion. Darkness. Nothing.

  ***

  Amanda hadn’t rolled down a hillside since she was Sarah’s age. It was the quickest way down from the bridge without standing up, which they couldn’t do. Amanda felt her shirt tear as sharp rocks on the artificial bank cut into her back. She would be bruised from it. They rolled all the way to the white Dodge and leaned up against the passenger side, protected only from the worst of the wind, which now seemed to come from all sides. Like fighting an army. It’s everywhere, a constant barrage. No escape. The restaurant? She glanced at the red building. The cars that had been there were gone and the place was deserted. Surge will take it anyway. Run up the hill? Flying debris might kill us. Amanda fumbled for her keys and opened the passenger door, picked Sarah up and climbed in. The Dodge rocked in the wind.

  Lightning was moving toward them, its frequency increasing. Driving, she realized, might be more dangerous than sitting where they were.

  Amanda knew she might have only a few minutes before the wind became too strong to venture out into. She needed to know the latest forecasted track for Harvey so she would know what the surge might be. That knowledge might be critical in deciding what she and Sarah should do: It might determine whether or not they lived. She still hadn’t figured out how to warn the mayor, but that would have to wait.

  She reached into the back seat, opened the suitcase and set the satellite dish up in Sarah’s lap. Then she fired up her laptop, connected to the Internet. She commanded her email program to download in the background while she studied the storm. The LORAX was still down, but she knew that even the GFDL model would have figured the storm out by now. She downloaded the forecast.

  A graphic scrolled onto her screen and Amanda saw in real time what she had feared for most of her professional career, what she and others had modeled hundreds of times in an effort to predict just how bad it could be, the worst-case scenario for a hurricane in the Northeast. The forecast now had Harvey’s eye passing just offshore of Atlantic City-close enough to be considered a direct hit. She would win the bet with Frank Delaney. He’d owe her dinner. It was a hollow victory and no more than a fleeting thought. Harvey was heading north-northwest, headed straight for her.

  Manhattan was twenty miles east of the projected path—smack in the middle of the right-side eyewall.

  Winds had dropped to 130 miles per hour. But Hurricane Harvey was moving at the speed of a car on the freeway—fifty-five miles an hour—creating an effective wind of 185 miles per hour in the right-side eyewall. It was nearly high tide. The timing could not have been much worse.

  She searched the latest land-based radar image for some shred of good news. There wasn’t much. A solid wall of red surrounded the eyewall, indicating intense convection and the associated heavy rainfall and intense winds. But in front of the storm, nearly upon them, was a pocket of cooler colors. If they could wait for that to arrive, it would provide a temporary respite from the worst of the wind, just long enough to move to higher ground and find shelter. If they could wait.

  Amanda clicked on her email inbox. Still nothing from Jack. But there was a note from Frank Delaney. She could see only two words of the message’s subject on her small screen. It read, “Jack is…” Excited, hopeful, Amanda clicked on the message to open it.

  “Mommy!”

  Amanda put her hands to her ears when her daughter screamed. Sarah was looking out the back window toward the river. Amanda saw the horror on her daughter’s face and glanced into the rear-view mirror. A huge wall of water was racing across the river, toward them, more ominous than anything even Amanda Cole had imagined. There was no time to read the message. There was no time to think.

  Amanda reached across Sarah’s lap and pushed the door open. They tumbled out, and the computer setup crashed to the ground. Amanda pushed Sarah in front of her and they put distance between themselves and the white Dodge. A wave slammed into the side of the car and shoved it toward them.

  They were nearly above the reach of the storm surge, but the next wave was coming, taller than the last.

  Amanda grabbed Sarah by the wrist and tried to head up the embankment. Sarah, terrified, froze.

  The wave came.

  Heavy water pounded Amanda into the ground, pushed her up the bank, then pulled back and dragged her down. One hand held Sarah by the wrist. She dug the fingers of her other hand into the wet earth, tried to keep the high ground she’d attained. But the undertow won and sucked them both into the water.

  Amanda managed to pull her daughter into her chest as the two tumbled in muddy darkness.

  They struggled to the surface and another wave crashed over them, then pulled them farther from land.

  For Amanda, it was a hell far exceeding Topsail Island, for now Sarah was in danger. Each time they reached the surface, she struggled toward the shore, but the waves pulled them backward and soon they were in the middle of what earlier had been a lazy river but was now part of the sea. Amanda quit trying to swim to the shore and focused on keeping their heads above water.

  And she knew this was neither the worst of the surge, nor the worst of the wind.

  CHAPTER 49

  In the skies above New Jersey

  5:16 p.m.

  Coast Guard Lieutenant Meg Evans had gotten lucky. She’d gambled on the soft spot in the storm, the lighter shades of green on her radar screen, and stayed in the air an extra few minutes to make one last water rescue. The last thunderstorm band had nearly overpowered her stout Sikorsky HH-60 Jayhawk, but Lieutenant Evans had skillfully put down on the lee side of a hill, safely depositing two old New Jersey men who’d been trapped on a barrier island.

  Now the wind had settled temporarily to a manageable seventy knots. Barely manageable. And it would change soon for the worse. No more rescues. It was time to head back to base.

  In the right seat, Evans gripped the cyclic in one hand and the collective in the other. The Jayhawk was her aircraft. She flew it. The copilot in the left seat was content to let Lieutenant Evans fly in this weather. He knew she was
the best.

  “Damn!” The copilot’s voice rang tinny in Evans’s headphones. “Visual, three o’clock.”

  Evans peered through blurry sheets of rain into the open water below. “Holy Cow!” She corrected the copilot: “Two targets in the water. Mark, mark, mark.”

  The copilot noted the location in case they lost visual. “You’re not going in?” he asked.

  “The hell I’m not,” Evans said. She looked over her shoulder and barked at the flight mechanic. “Mech: Give me part one!” To her copilot: “Kill outside radio.”

  “Don’t have to, Meg.”

  “What?”

  “Atlantic City just went off the air.”

  “Holy Cow!” Then Evans settled into the routine. “Give me power.”

  The copilot shook his head and fell in line. He set the engines for additional emergency power. The flight mechanic and the rescue swimmer put on their gunner’s belts and moved to the hatch. The swimmer, wearing fins, snorkel and mask, clipped the D-ring of the hoist to a harness around his blue drysuit.

  Lieutenant Meg Evans dove the chopper, shot an approach downwind of the victims, who clutched each other. She lost visual in the heavy waves, then regained it and moved in. In less than sixty seconds the rescue swimmer was ready.

  “Flight check one complete,” the flight mechanic said.

  “Roger,” Evans said. “Shotgun approach. Rescue check part two.” The hatch was opened, the hoist readied. “Go on hot mike,” she said. “Check swimmer.”

  The mechanic tapped the swimmer three times, signaling the pilot was ready.

  Evans descended to thirty feet above the water and held the chopper as steady as she could in winds that switched directions as fast as she reacted.

  “Wind is jumping up,” the copilot warned. “Seventy-five knots. Seventy-nine. Careful, Meg.”

  Meg Evans knew she had only one shot. The wind was quickly becoming too much. Even the Jayhawk had limits. She’d once done a water rescue in eighty-six-knot winds—a hundred miles an hour. Much more than that and it would be foolish to risk the lives of her crewmembers. She hovered just downwind of the victims. The rotor wash was blown safely backward. “Deploy swimmer!”