by Tim Downs
Nick wondered what else might be trapped inside.
“So this is the neighborhood you volunteered us for,” Jerry said.
“This is it—the Lower Ninth Ward.”
“It’s underwater.”
“That’s sort of the point, Jerry.”
“How come this neighborhood?”
“Low income, substandard housing, single-floor dwellings, low-lying area—high crime rate too. Great place to look for bodies.”
“I thought we were here to rescue people.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Hurricane Katrina was now four hundred miles beyond the city, near the Tennessee border, downgraded to a tropical storm with winds of less than 50 miles per hour—just a blustery shadow of the destructive giant she had been less than twenty-four hours ago. The National Hurricane Center’s forecast had proven impressively accurate; the storm had made landfall at precisely 6:10 a.m., smashing into the Gulf Coast with winds exceeding 120 miles per hour—and pushing a massive storm surge ahead of it.
Nick had wanted to get into the city yesterday afternoon, before the storm had even passed—but Denny refused, unwilling to allow any of his team members to risk becoming casualties themselves. Nick and Jerry left the moment they had permission to do so, departing just after dawn to reach the Lower Ninth Ward as early as possible. A nine-passenger van from DMORT’s motor pool had shuttled them to the outskirts of New Orleans, but there they found every major artery into the city blocked by water. They had to make their own way to the Lower Ninth Ward, partly by hitching rides on emergency vehicles and part of the way on foot.
The city was preternaturally still. The silence was eerie; it had never occurred to Nick that a lack of sound could create such a powerful impression. There were no horns, no engines, no radios or sirens. The birds were silent, if they were present at all; maybe they had all been blown away by the hurricane winds. Even the rustling of the trees had been reduced to a wet whisper. The only sound that could be heard anywhere was the periodic cry of a human voice echoing across the water from some unseen place.
Across the bridge, at the point where St. Claude Avenue now became a boat ramp, a single Chevy Blazer was backed against the water. From a trailer behind it, a uniformed man was busy unloading a black rigid inflatable boat.
“Where is everybody?” Jerry asked. “I thought there would be more people here to help. Who do we report to?”
“Beats me,” Nick said. “Let’s try that guy.”
They hiked their canvas duffel bags over their shoulders and descended the three blocks to the water.
“Morning!” Nick called out as they approached.
The man answered without looking up. “Yeah, how ya doin’.”
His shoulder patch bore the insignia “NOPD,” and his nameplate said “LaTourneau.” He was of medium height but lean, which made him look taller than he really was. His hair was black and coarse, wavy on top and short on the sides, just beginning to show gray around the temples. He was clean-shaven, something Nick found odd given the circumstances, and his NOPD uniform was crisp and starched tight.
The man worked quickly and deliberately, sliding the sleek black rescue craft off its trailer and into the water. The boat was little more than an oversized inner tube bent into the shape of a horseshoe, with cone-shaped caps covering each end. A rope handrail ran along the top of the tube, attached every couple of feet and lying in a scalloped pattern like icing along the rim of a cake. A single bench spanned the back of the boat, and behind it a Johnson RescuePro motor angled forward with its shielded propeller pointing into the air. On each side of the craft, in giant white letters, was the word ZODIAC.
“Cool boat,” Jerry said. “What kind is it?”
The officer didn’t bother to answer.
“Just a wild guess,” Nick said. “It might be a Zodiac.”
“I’m in kind of a hurry here,” the officer said. “The sun’s coming up, and it gets pretty hot on an asphalt roof.”
“Are you working alone, Officer LaTourneau?”
“Not much choice.”
It suddenly occurred to Nick that, in their civilian clothes, he and Jerry might look like nothing more than a couple of curious onlookers. “I’m Dr. Nick Polchak,” he said. “My colleague here is Jerry Kibbee. We’re with DMORT up in St. Gabriel.”
The acronym didn’t seem to ring a bell.
“Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team,” Nick explained.
“You boys here to collect bodies?”
“Eventually, yes. They sent us down to help with the rescue efforts first. Where is everybody?”
“Who?”
“FEMA, Urban Search and Rescue, the National Guard. DMORT told us there would be half a dozen agencies pitching in.”
“Well, if you see any of those boys, tell ’em I could use a hand.”
Nick and Jerry watched as the officer loaded his equipment into the boat and climbed into the stern, lowered the motor into the water and checked his fuel.
“So,” Nick said, “what’s the plan?”
“Plan?”
“The strategy, the order of events. What do you want us to do?”
The officer stopped and looked up. “You got me confused with somebody else. I’m with the New Orleans Police Department. We’re not in charge here.”
“It’s your city.”
“Yeah, well, our city is underwater right now—about 70 percent of it, from what I’ve been able to piece together.”
“Don’t you know?”
“The power’s off; the phones are out; even the cell towers are down. We’re completely cut off. The only way we can talk is by radio, and every emergency service in the city has to share one frequency. You can’t get a word in edgewise, so I just listen in and try to figure out what’s going on—as long as the batteries hold out, that is.”
“What have you heard?”
“Do you know the city?”
Nick shook his head. “We’re from out of town.”
The officer pointed up the road. “You came across the St. Claude Avenue Bridge. It crosses the Industrial Canal—that’s a shipping channel that connects Lake Pontchartrain with the Mississippi. There are neighborhoods all along the canal, and there are concrete levees on both sides to keep the water out.”
“They’re not doing a very good job.”
“Nobody counted on this much water; the levees gave way sometime yesterday. The storm came in about 6:00 a.m. By 9:00 a.m. there was eight feet of water here—ten over there in St. Bernard Parish. The levees on the Seventeenth Street Canal failed too; that’s flooding the rest of the city, from what I hear. I came out here yesterday as soon as the storm passed, but the wind was still pretty rough. I only had a few hours before dark, but I started pulling people out of trees and such.”
“You were the only one out here?”
“Me and a couple of locals.”
Nick paused. “There must be some kind of plan.”
“Look—nobody can call in and nobody can get to the station, so NOPD has no way to coordinate efforts. FEMA, the National Guard—they’ve all got the same problem we do: Communication is out, the roads are blocked, there’s no infrastructure. The only reason I’m here is because my house didn’t flood—not yet, anyway. I just grabbed a boat and headed over—I know this neighborhood like the back of my hand. There are fifty-six hundred homes in the Lower Nine, and the water came up fast—no telling how many are trapped here. There are folks on rooftops, folks in attics—”
Nick looked across the neighborhood at the low-pitched rooftops, their attics vented by only a few narrow rows of slats at each end. It was August in New Orleans, with the temperature over ninety degrees and humidity to match; by afternoon the attics would be little more than slow-cookers.
“How can we help?” Nick asked.
The officer looked over Nick’s shoulder at the empty road behind him. “You boys got a boat?”
Nick turned and looked, too, as if he
somehow expected a cabin cruiser to have magically materialized behind him.
“How did you figure you’d help without a boat?”
“I guess we figured you guys would have boats.”
“You don’t say.”
“Where’d you get yours?” Jerry asked.
“NOPD has seven. I grabbed one; the rest are all out.”
“That’s not a lot of boats for a whole city.”
“I hear the Guard has more.”
“Where are they?”
“They can’t get to them—they’re surrounded by water.”
“Imagine that,” Nick said under his breath. “No offense, but . . . didn’t you people ever think about this possibility? I mean, if you live in a bathtub, sooner or later you’re going to get wet.”
Plan ahead,” the officer said. “Thanks for the advice. Here’s some “advice for you boys: Next time, bring a boat.”
“Where can we get one?”
“Why don’t you ask DMORT? Sounds like they’ve got everything figured out.”
The officer pushed away from the pavement with his oar until the propeller had safe clearance; then he started the motor and raced off into the Lower Nine.
“Hardworking guy,” Jerry said. “FEMA should put him in charge.”
“They better put somebody in charge fast,” Nick said, turning back toward the bridge. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To find a boat.”
The St. Claude Avenue Bridge was an old bascule-type drawbridge, counterweighted at the near end to allow the span to swing up and out of the way of passing ships; the lumbering metal structure towered over Nick and Jerry like a rusted dinosaur. At the foot of the bridge they left the roadway and turned right, following the earthen levee north along the Industrial Canal. In the canal to their left, they could see the massive locks that lifted ships and barges from the lake up to the level of the Mississippi River. The locks were empty; there were no vessels in sight, except for one long barge half a mile ahead that had smashed through the levee and rested among the houses in the Lower Ninth Ward.
“Look up ahead,” Nick said. “We might be in luck.”
A hundred yards ahead of them, an old man sat parked along the grassy levee in an old Dodge pickup. Behind him was a trailer towing a flat-bottomed silver boat. As they approached the truck, the door creaked open and the old man stepped out to greet them.
“Morning,” Nick said. “Going fishing?”
“Wish I were,” the old man said. “Thought I might see if I could help out.”
“That’s nice of you. We heard there were some locals out here yesterday. Thanks for pitching in—we could use a lot more like you.”
“Who’re you boys?”
“We’re with—the federal government. Is this your boat?”
“What’s the government doing about all this? We got people who need help here.”
“That’s why we’re here, sir. Nice boat you got there. Is it an eighteen-footer? I love these old aluminum johnboats. Nowadays they’re all fiberglass—I hate fiberglass, don’t you?”
Nick’s tongue was on autopilot; his mind was racing, trying to concoct the Big Lie that just might win him a boat. He could try the patriotic approach: Your government needs your sacrifice; or maybe an appeal to pride: You and you alone can make the difference; and, if all else failed, there was always power: By authority of the federal government, I am authorized to commandeer this vessel.
But while Nick was still formulating his strategy, the man said, “Take ’er.”
“Excuse me?”
“I figure you boys need a boat. That’s what you’re hinting at, ain’t it? Seems like everybody got caught with his pants down this time.”
“You got that right.”
“Know how to run ’er?”
“No problem,” Nick said. “I grew up in Pittsburgh, right along the Allegheny River. I used to have a skiff a lot like this one, only not quite as big. You’ve got an Evinrude, I had an old Mercury—only mine was a lot smaller. I have to say, that’s a lot of muscle for an eighteen-foot johnboat.”
The old man grinned. “Can’t make much use of it in the bayous, but when I get out a ways I like to open ’er up from time to time.”
The old man backed the trailer down the levee to the edge of the water. Nick and Jerry helped him offload the johnboat, then listened as he reviewed the workings of the boat and the peculiarities of the aging motor.
“I sure appreciate this,” Nick said. “When do you need it back?”
“I’ll give you my number,” the old man said. “Just call me when you’re done; I’ll come and get ’er.”
“It might be a while. That okay with you?”
“Like I said, I’d like to help out. You’ll find a lock and chain in the bow—just lock ’er up at night.”
“You made this awfully easy,” Nick said.
“You boys can use it better’n I can,” the old man said. “Besides, I’ve got Cajun blood—we’re known for our generosity.”
Fifteen minutes later, Nick and Jerry were motoring across the water, headed into the center of the Lower Ninth Ward.
Jerry sat in the bow, glaring at Nick at the tiller. “I’ve got a bass boat back in Fort Wayne. I’m out on the lake every weekend. How come you get to drive?”
“Physics,” Nick said. “You’re the only thing we’ve got that’s as heavy as this motor; if we put both you and the motor back here, we’ll be standing on end.”
“Physics,” Jerry grumbled. “What happens when we find somebody to rescue?”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t like collecting bodies, Nick. These are real people we’re dealing with—neither one of us was trained for search and rescue.”
“Denny explained it all to me,” Nick said. “It’s just like recovering bodies, only the body walks away later.”
“Let’s hope so,” Jerry said.
8
Nick guided the boat down the center of a main street, trying to imagine what the Lower Ninth Ward must have looked like before it was cut off at the knees. Nick’s head was almost even with the streetlamps; street signs were completely underwater, making it almost impossible to follow a road map—even if they had one.
“You think any of these electrical wires are live?” he called up to Jerry.
“Could be. Better steer clear of them, just in case.”
The water looked even higher than it had just an hour ago, rising just to the soffits of some houses and overlapping the lowest shingles of others. Nick wondered how long it would take the Corps of Engineers to repair the breached canals; he wondered how long it would be before the water reached an equilibrium and stopped rising; he wondered what would still be visible when it did.
“Looks like we’ve got customers,” Jerry said.
One block to the north they spotted two men stranded in the top of a tall chestnut tree. They were smiling and waving and appeared to be shouting, though their voices couldn’t be heard above the engine’s drone. Nick steered down an alley and approached the tree; as he drew closer, the two men stopped smiling.
Jerry turned to Nick. “They don’t look too happy to see us.”
“You don’t make a very good hood ornament,” Nick said. “It’s like being charged by a hippo.”
Jerry looked at the two men. “I don’t think that’s the problem.”
Nick looked up into the tree. The two men staring back at him were African-American—a high statistical probability, since 80 percent of the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward were black. Maybe that was the problem; maybe these men were expecting someone a little more familiar to come to their rescue—a neighbor, a friend, even parish police.
“Good morning!” Nick called up in his friendliest voice. “Can we help you gentlemen?”
There was a long pause. “Who’re you?”
“We’re with DMORT.”
“Who?”
“The Disaster Mort
uary Operational Response Team.”
“Say what?”
“We collect—we’re a part of—”
Nick stopped to reconsider; Jerry took over. “We’re here to get you guys out of that tree.”
“What for?”
“You don’t want to stay up there, do you?”
“That depends. Where you planning on taking us?”
Jerry turned to Nick.
“Beats me,” Nick said. “They told us to report to whoever was in charge and get further instructions here. I’m not sure where to take them; let’s just get them to dry ground.”
Jerry looked up into the tree. “Let’s get you out of that tree first. We’ll figure it out from there.”
“We’re staying,” the man said.
“C’mon now, you can’t just stay up there.”
“It’s my tree,” the man said. “I can stay up here if I want to—and he can stay with me.”
“We’ll take you anywhere you want,” Jerry said. “Back to the levee, over to the bridge—”
“You go on now,” the first man said. “We’d just as soon wait for another boat.”
Nick watched the two men; they kept slapping at their arms and legs as they spoke. He used an oar to bring the boat in closer and reached for one of the tree’s lower branches.
“You just keep your distance now!” one of the men shouted down.
Nick adjusted his glasses and studied the tree branch closely. “Solenopsis invicta,” he announced. “You can tell by the single median seta on the anterior clypeal margin.”
“What’s that?”
“Fire ants—and not just your run-of-the-mill domestic variety either. These are red imported fire ants, introduced from the jungles of Brazil back in the 1930s. You guys better come down from there right now.”