Cal had no further trouble hanging on to the tanker trucks.
Azizi also proved to be a first-rate scrounger, which as anyone who has ever served on a battlefield will attest is a skill to be cherished. The food on the three cruise ships improved markedly almost from the day of Azizi's arrival, and CWO Parker, who liked his grub, was moved to say that Lieutenant Commander Azizi ought to be put up for a medal.
The four of them did not long remain the only Coasties on the scene but Cal was indisputably the one with the most stroke, including the direct line to the old man, which he tried not to over-exploit but which proved to be a significant asset. When the police parked their cruisers so that they blocked access to the docks where the ships were moored he had six of them towed so the water tankers could offload, and no one so much as blinked in his direction. Had to be a first in relations between an East Coast intellectual elitist in Coastie blue and a bunch of brawny down-home Louisiana cops, most of whom were living in their cruisers at the time and so had a right to be a little cranky.
They were probably hoping they'd get a room on one of the ships. Everyone wanted a room on the ships. Short of presidential visits, of which there were two, both unwelcome and both so far as he could see productive of nothing more than a massive logistical headache for the people on the ground (and after the first visit he wanted to fall to his knees and give thanks he didn't work for the Secret Service), Cal gave first priority to those Louisiana residents who had lost their homes. He held staterooms even for those who had been evacuated out of state and had to be repatriated. When he turned down his third flag request (this time a Navy admiral whose dog robbers threatened to write to Congress if he didn't let them overnight on board) he was summoned to Baton Rouge, from where the vice admiral was running relief operations for Katrina and Rita. A helo took Cal off the ship and set him down in the parking lot of the commandeered office building that was serving as HQ. He was escorted promptly to the vice admiral's office.
The vice admiral looked at him over the tops of half-glasses. "I hear you bounced Jim Levy off the Aurora Princess."
Cal braced himself. "Yes, sir." He offered no explanation and no apology.
The vice admiral's face relaxed into a grin. "Never did like that asshole. How about a drink?"
They spent a genial half hour with rather more conversation about Cal 's father and his slam-dunk re-election prospects than Cal would have liked. At one point the vice admiral gave him an overall assessing look and said, "You look older, Cal. And taller, somehow. You're not growing up on me now, are you?"
At the end of the audience the vice admiral shook his hand, escorted him personally to the door, and congratulated him in a loud, penetrating voice on a job very well done within conspicuous earshot of some thirty loiterers. "Amazing what the U.S. Coast Guard can do to get the job done with no resources and no experience in disaster relief on this scale, isn't it, Cal?"
"Gives a whole new meaning to search and rescue, sir," Cal said, returning the handshake with interest, and then got the hell out of there.
The helo took him straight back to the Aurora Princess, still moored at the Riverfront, where a delegation from Princess Cruises swarmed around him on touchdown. The chief complaint seemed to be his continual unavailability to discuss the use to which their ship was being put. They had what they obviously considered was a brilliant solution to this problem. They wanted him to take occupancy of the owner's suite, which had the latest in state-of-the-art communications, the inference being that with him in residence there they could reach out and touch him whenever they wanted.
They managed to muscle him into the glass elevator leading to the suite-he had to admit to a certain curiosity to see it-but when they got there he took one look at the Jacuzzi, which could have slept five, and the bed, which could have slept ten, not to mention the phone with six lines mounted at the head of the bed, and made a polite but very firm refusal.
He was ushering them kindly but firmly down the gangway when a motorcade only slightly smaller than the president's pulled up. The driver got out and opened the rear door, and a tall man in his early sixties climbed out. His hair was the white gold some blond men were gifted with as they age, he had a smile whose teeth could be seen to flash all the way from the deck of the ship, and he was dressed in a three-piece gray pin-striped suit that anyone but a blind man could see had been lovingly cut to display his broad shoulders, his still-slim waist, and his long, muscular legs.
The cruise ship people, momentarily dazzled by this vision, stopped short. One of them said, "Hey, isn't that Senator Schuyler?"
Another one looked from the senator to Cal and back again. "You're that Schuyler?"
Cal was spared an answer when the senator caught sight of him and waved. His long legs ate up the distance between the car and the bottom of the gangway. The cruise ship people forgot Cal and trotted down to meet him, hands out. The senator, never one to neglect an opportunity to gladhand a potential campaign contributor, shook hands, slapped backs, and all in all seemed to be delighted with his new best friends. There was a reason he kept getting re-elected. There were, in fact, many.
Cal was essaying a soft-footed retreat until his father looked up and raised his voice. " Cal! Come on down here!"
Cal, caught, reversed course and stumped grimly down the gangway.
His father embraced him, beaming. "I see you've all met my son, Cal. That's Captain Cal Schuyler to all of us peons, of course." There was a dutiful laugh. The senator, now looking suitably grave, said, "Cal and the Coast Guard are doing a heck of a job down here. I venture to say they're the only federal agency that is being of any help at all. I don't know where these poor folks would be without them." He shook his Head. "Tragic, just tragic some of the stories I've been hearing. Washington has really fallen down on the job. There will have to be an investigation, of course." The senator, not currently a member of the majority party in Congress, tried not to look overjoyed at the prospect. He wasn't entirely successful.
He turned to his son and only child. " Cal, these good folks tell me there's an empty room on board with my name on it. You mind showing me up there?"
There wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could do at that point, so he said baldly, "Sure, Dad," and led his father and his father's entourage to the owner's suite.
"What are you doing here, Dad?" he said when they had a moment alone.
His father raised an eyebrow. "Why, I'm serving my tax-paying constituents, son, by getting a firsthand look at what's going on down here. You should see the newspapers, they're saying Louisiana might as well be Bangladesh for all the federal help they're getting."
"That's true enough," Cal said.
"Billy tells me you're doing a hell of a job," the senator said. "How did you get here, anyway? I thought you were in Alameda, bossing cutters around."
"I was. The vice admiral asked me to fly in ahead of him, give him a good picture of what was going on, what was needed. Then he asked me to stay on for a bit. I've got a good second in Alameda, so…" Cal shrugged. "How long are you staying?"