5 Days to Landfall

by Robert Roy Britt

  The flight mechanic quickly lowered the swimmer until his fins touched the tops of the highest waves. “Forward and right,” the mech instructed.

  “Roger,” Meg Evans said. The victims would soon disappear from her view, under the chopper. The flight mech was in charge now.

  “Forward 100 feet… right… right ten… forward and right… hold!”

  Evans could not see the victims now. She focused on the horizon, moved as instructed, and then momentarily held the Jayhawk rock steady like a feeding humming bird. Then a fierce downdraft shuddered the chopper toward the waves and the mech screamed: “Steady! Swimmer’s under!”

  “Gust of eighty-five, Meg!” the copilot shouted. “Get out! Get out!”

  A wave slapped the Jayhawk’s tail wheel. Lieutenant Evans added power, pulled up, leveled off, and said a quick silent prayer. “Stay with it,” she said evenly.

  “Left five… ahead… ahead… hold!”

  Below, the swimmer tried to separate the victims and take one at a time. They would not let go of each other. Together, they weighed no more than a large man, so the swimmer strapped his harness around both and signaled the mech to hoist.

  In a moment, there were two more people aboard the now-crowded Jayhawk.

  Evans immediately lifted the chopper to 200 feet.

  “Damn,” the copilot said. “One’s a little girl.”

  “Thought so,” Meg Evans said. “That’s why we went in.”

  ***

  Amanda had never felt so blissfully claustrophobic. She clutched her shivering daughter next to her as a starving person protects a basket of food. The Jayhawk vibrated loudly. A crewmember was trying to separate Sarah and Amanda enough to attach some sort of belt to each of them. Amanda resisted.

  “I have to talk to the pilot,” she shouted over the rumbling, metallic clatter.

  “Victim wants to talk to you,” the crewmember said into his microphone. Then he nodded and put a spare set of headphones on Amanda.

  “Go ahead,” the pilot said. It was a woman’s voice, and Amanda recognized it. “Lieutenant Evans?”

  The pilot struggled to turn and look into the back of the helicopter. “Holy cow! Twice in one week. Now that’s a record.”

  “Meg, you’ve got to take me to New York.”

  “Not a chance. I’m heading to McGuire. Shouldn’t have picked you up in the first place, but I saw the kid.”

  “You see the convection that’s coming?” Amanda knew they’d be flying right into a deadly pocket of turbulence that even the Jayhawk couldn’t handle.

  “We’ll beat it,” Evans said.

  “No you won’t. I looked at the radar just before I went in. You won’t beat it. Head north and you can outrun the pocket. And save a bunch of lives, too.”

  “New York?”

  Amanda explained.

  CHAPTER 50

  In the skies above Manhattan

  5:39 p.m.

  Lieutenant Meg Evans brought the Jayhawk in over the Verrazano Narrows bridge at the lower end of New York Harbor, cruising at 130 knots groundspeed in a strong right-side cross wind. She dropped to 200 feet above the Hudson. The Statue of Liberty slipped by on the left.

  Heading north, she had flown faster than the storm. The winds had dropped back down to around seventy knots, better conditions for a tough landing. But it wouldn’t last long as the pocket of dangerous convection raced to catch up.

  “Helipad right along the river,” the copilot pointed. “C’mon, Meg. Use it. Putting them on a forty-seven story building is nuts. Orographics might suck us right into it.”

  Meg Evans was fully aware that buildings acted like mountains, funneling wind over and between themselves into deadly rivers of incredible turbulence. She shot the copilot a stern, determined look. “Done it before,” she said.

  Evans orchestrated one loop around Building 7 of the World Trade Center, feeling the wind and looking for obstacles. The windsock atop the building flapped madly.

  Blue lights ringed a giant, white H adjacent to the only apparent danger—a compact, eight-foot tall protrusion above the roof that housed a staircase into the building.

  “Winds sixty-eight knots out of the east,” the copilot said. “Gusts to seventy-six. Torque available is one-oh-three.”

  “Plenty,” Evans said. “I’ll approach from the west. No-hover landing.”

  “Roger.” The copilot paused, then said softly: “Get it right the first time, Meg.”

  She started her final approach. “Flight mech con me in.”

  “Ahead… easy left… easy forward… watch the tail!”

  ***

  Amanda had gotten a good view of the City streets as the Jayhawk approached the Emergency Operations Center. They were clogged with cars, just as she feared.

  The helicopter lurched upward and the flight mechanic was thrown to the floor. He recovered as though it had probably happened before. The door on the helicopter was open. Amanda worried suddenly that the door to the stairway might not be. There was a flurry of chatter on the headphones. The Jayhawk lifted, circled, approached, and descended again.

  Meg Evans put one wheel on the roof, maintained power and held a no-hover landing. It was the safest way, she had said. They could abort easily if the wind dictated. The flight mechanic unbuckled Amanda and Sarah from their seats. He jumped out the door and disappeared, crouching to keep from being blown off the roof. Amanda and Sarah followed him. He pushed them to the roof and onto their stomachs and helped them crawl to the staircase. Coast Guard rules dictated he escort them until they were out of danger. Amanda didn’t mind.

  The flight mechanic checked the door. It was unlocked but he couldn’t open it against the wind. Amanda helped him and together they pulled it open and it slammed back against its hinges. Amanda and Sarah went inside and crawled down the stairs.

  She heard the Jayhawk power up and move away. Evans had promised Amanda she would head north, staying in the relatively calm pocket of air between bands of thunderstorms until she found a safe place to put down. Like a bird caught in the storm. Amanda hoped Meg Evans would have better luck than most of the birds.

  ***

  Once safely on the forty-seventh floor, Amanda decided she didn’t want to risk another run-in with security, so she avoided the elevator and carried her wet, weary daughter down the stairs.

  On the twenty-third floor, she pushed the door open into a utilitarian hallway with restrooms on one side and boxes of supplies on the other. The hallway ended abruptly to the left, so she went right, past a small kitchenette. Two men were pouring coffee. They stepped back as she approached. Their faces showed the puzzlement.

  “This the EOC?” Amanda demanded.

  “Yeah, but what the hell?”

  “Thanks.” Amanda pushed past them. The hallway quickly opened up into the vast room that was the Emergency Operations Center.

  She went looking for the mayor. He was not in the main room. Again, people stared at her. She was getting used to it. She marched to the mayor’s office. Inside, he and Leonard Lassitor were huddled over a computer. The door was open. She stepped in quietly, put Sarah down. They dripped onto the carpet. Neither man looked up, but the mayor put a don’t-bother-us-yet hand in the air.

  “Only three evacuation centers left in Manhattan that aren’t stuffed full,” Lassitor said. Amanda could see his profile. He did not look overly worried. His cheek was bruised and he held his side as though injured.

  “So what do we do when those are full?” the mayor asked.

  It was Amanda’s turn. “Tell everybody in New York to stay wherever they are, get to a higher floor and away from the windows. You have to stop the evacuation.”

  The mayor spun around. Wide eyes conveyed his surprise. Amanda knew she and her daughter, their clothes soaked and torn, must have been a sight. Lassitor only glanced up, said nothing.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said the mayor. “First you barge in and order me to start an evacuation. Now you barge
back in and tell me to stop it. Who in the hell do you think you are, lady?”

  Amanda didn’t answer. “There are thousands of people on the streets,” she started, “in cars and on foot, all trying to go somewhere. In the next hour, most of them will die if they don’t find cover. You must tell them to get inside and stay inside. Radio, bullhorns, any way you can.”

  “How in the hell did you get in here?” the mayor asked. Amanda was peeved that he’d ask such an impertinent question. She retorted with more spite than she’d intended.

  “Proof that you guys don’t know what the hell you’re doing,” she said. “Just like you didn’t know when to start the evacuation. Or that you have to stop it.”

  Lassitor kept his cool. Like he didn’t really care. Or was avoiding involvement. “We’re handling things just fine,” the mayor said “And now you’ve pushed me too far. This is my City, and the evacuation is ours to call. Get the hell out.”

  Amanda had been afraid of this. She wished she hadn’t put him on the defensive. The testosterone level on the twenty-third floor of Building 7 was off the charts, and the mayor had lost sight of what was best for his City, and now he didn’t want anyone getting in his way. He was running on storm-induced adrenaline—like forecaster Greg Chen—not wanting the fun to stop. But she had to stop it, and now there was no going back to try a softer approach.

  Amanda sensed the two security guards that had moved in behind her. She looked at the mayor and Lassitor. She needed something drastic to shake things up, or she was going to be hauled away and nothing would get done right. She wasn’t sure who was involved in the stock-market scheme, but she was out of time and out of ideas. It was her only shot.

  She looked firmly at the mayor. “Mr. Mayor. Somebody is placing bets on the storm. Whoever it is is trying to make a mess of your evacuation. I doubt you can trust the people around you.”

  Amanda glanced at Lassitor. He didn’t flinch, gave no sign that he might be the one. She gave no sign that she suspected him. She looked back at the mayor.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” the mayor said.

  As succinctly as she could, Amanda explained the connection between the Dominicans, Global Insurance Company and PrimeCo, and how a botched evacuation would make the PrimeCo stock transactions more valuable.

  “The first trade on PrimeCo was placed at 7:52 this morning,” she said. “We hadn’t issued our bulletin yet. Only someone awfully familiar with the storm could have known it was coming here before eight o’clock. That would be our own forecasters, and the people in this building.”

  The mayor was listening now, curious. “Who, then?”

  “Don’t know yet,” she said, “but I’m certain it’s happening. I’ll find out who before I’m done.” She made a point of not looking at Lassitor. If it was him, she’d figure it out, and meanwhile she didn’t want him to run. Just be a little nervous.

  The mayor’s eyes narrowed, but he hadn’t been totally convinced. Then Amanda remembered the accidents.

  “You had some accidents on the Jersey side of the river?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not so unusual in an evacuation.”

  “Planned,” Amanda said. “To make it all worse. C’mon. It really doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong about that at the moment. The important thing is we’ve got people in the streets and a lot of them are going to die unless you get them off the streets.”

  The mayor chewed his lip and studied her. “You were right earlier.”

  “And I’m right now.”

  “OK, we’ll get people inside.” The mayor offered his hand to Amanda. “Thank you, and I’m sorry.”

  Amanda couldn’t take his hand. Too many people were going to die anyway. She turned to leave.

  “Where you going?” the mayor asked.

  “Out.”

  “But I thought you said everybody should stay in.”

  “I’ve got some things to figure out. And I’ve got one more person to take care of.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Outside Santo Domingo,

  Dominican Republic

  5:55 p.m.

  Maximo had two distinct moods going when the phone rang. He was still fuming over Terese running off. He hadn’t heard yet from his men, and that was a bad sign. Either they hadn’t found her or they were doing things to her that he didn’t want to imagine. But his latest stock market bet was already paying off as the general market turned lower before trading was halted mid-day because of the approaching storm.

  “Nombre?”

  “Octopus.”

  Hearing from the Octopus let the better of his two moods float to the surface. “Hello, my friend. I see on the television you are about to be, how do you say it? Pummeled?”

  “Your bet is well covered, Maximo. But there’s a little trouble on this end.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s a woman from the Hurricane Center who’s figured the scheme out. She knows it’s you.”

  “Not a problem. It is done. No one can touch me here,” Maximo said with more confidence than he felt. Terese scratched at the back of his mind.

  “But she can touch me,” the Octopus said.

  “She knows you are involved?”

  “No, but she’s close. I’m afraid she might figure it out.”

  “Then we must get you out of there quickly,” Maximo said.

  “That’s a problem. I can’t go anywhere until the storm is over. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a flight tomorrow. Airports could be down awhile.”

  “How close is she?”

  “I think I have a day or two, at least,” the Octopus said.

  “Then stay until morning. Get out of the City any way you can tomorrow, but make sure nobody is looking for you. Catch a flight somewhere else. Of course, I will keep my promise. Once you get here you have no worries.”

  “Thank you, Maximo. I will see you soon, then.”

  CHAPTER 52

  Manhattan

  6:02 p.m.

  Juan Rico huddled under a maze of metal pipes and two-inch-thick planks that made up a construction scaffolding against the north wall of the Holland Plaza Building. His camera, resting on the cast on his left arm and under his rain poncho, was already fitted with a 200 mm lens, chosen to perfectly frame the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, which was closed now and blocked by heavy orange construction cones.

  Rico estimated he was a foot or so above the crest in the road, where the water would shoot down into the gaping black hole. The surge would come quickly and rise fast. But he wasn’t sure exactly where from, as there was no way to gauge with his eye where the low spots were in the maze of intersecting roads and sidewalks. Rico wanted only to get the photo of the tunnel entrance turned into a river, one river flowing under another. That was the shot. Nobody else would have it. Then he would head back to his apartment to relative safety. He acknowledged the risk. What else is there, he had asked himself. I am a photojournalist. This shot will happen once in my lifetime. I’ll get it. Maybe I’ll die. I almost died in North Carolina, and for what? Didn’t even get a picture out of it. This time, I at least get the fuckin’ picture.

  A Port Authority guard was throwing sandbags into the roadway, more to stop cars than to stop the surge, Rico figured. He snapped a couple frames of the guard and the sandbags. He glanced at his watch.

  The cab came from Canal Street. A long black gouge ran down the side. The guard stopped it. Rico couldn’t hear, but by the gestures he could tell that there was an argument. Then the guard stepped back and bowed as he let the cab pass. Then he flipped the bird at the back of the cab and went back to his work. Rico snapped several frames of the cab as it disappeared into the tunnel. Who is this fuckin’ idiot?

  In the last shot, through a lens blurred by raindrops, he made sure he had the license plate.

  Rico was wiping his lens and didn’t see the water coming. When he looked up, the rising river lapped gently against the sandbags, as though it had been there be
fore, then found its way around the partial wall and rolled down into the tunnel.

  Click click click.

  Fuckin’ a. Shot of my life.

  Rico ducked his head down into his poncho and opened his laptop. He plugged his digital camera into the computer and transferred the images to the computer’s hard drive. Then he typed an email to the photo editor at the Times:

  Holland Tunnel

  5:38: Unknown Port Authority guard sandbags closed entrance to Holland Tunnel after orange cones had blown away.

  5:40: Unknown cab driver enters tunnel after argument with PA guard—

  5:41: Surge of water flows into tunnel. River under the river.

  NOTE: Pls check, but I think Jersey side floods first. This guy won’t be coming out. Note license plate number for possible ID.

  Rico

  Rico closed the computer, stuck his head out of his poncho and found the water curling around his boots. He tried to send the email and the digital pictures to the newsroom, but the cellular modem in his computer got only a busy signal. He had the picture, but now he couldn’t transmit it. He cursed the storm. The water rose. He needed to find a safer place and try again.

  He left the relative protection of the north wall of the Holland Plaza building and waded out into the street and was immediately blown onto his back. His first thought was that his equipment would be ruined. His second thought was of being washed down into the tunnel.

  Not again, you son of a bitch.

  On his hands and knees he crawled against the rising surge toward his apartment. He glanced back. The scaffolding he’d been standing under was coming apart, board-by-board. A window blew out of the Holland Plaza building. Then another.