A crewman took Larry’s good arm and helped him into the chopper. Jessica stepped back and waved as the Sikorsky lifted from the grassy pad.
Her office, minus walls and her collection of diplomas, had been recreated in one corner of the headquarters tent. The scent of old canvas and fresh grass was invigorating. The tent’s sides were rolled up for light and ventilation, and from Jessica’s corner she had an excellent view of the bustling techs setting up her state-of-the-art satellite communications rig.
Working for an organization with the resources of the Defense Department was sometimes perfectly awesome.
“Jess?” It was Pat, with the portable computer in hand. “I’ve got a selection of those photos from NASA and NOAA.”
“Set the ’puter down here.”
Once Jessica saw the pictures, she knew why she hadn’t heard from Memphis or St. Louis. The rubble that was St. Louis was practically an island, the Missouri flooding toward it from the north and west, the Mississippi from the east. Much of Memphis was covered by a cloud of smoke, and what she could see through the cloud looked like rubble. She looked at the photos from the Harbor of Memphis, and she heard her breath hiss from between her teeth.
“God damn,” she whispered to herself. “I was afraid of this.” Natural disasters do not just have a single result. There was a whole chain of consequences: earthquakes cause fires, fires cause deaths, broken levees cause floods, floods cause evacuations. And industry, destroyed by earthquake, flood, or fire, had levels of consequence all its own. Jessica feared she was going to have to call the President soon and advise him to do something she knew very well he would not want to do. She didn’t want to have to do that: powerful people had been known in the past to execute the messengers who told them about problems they didn’t want to know about. What Jessica badly wanted was a choice. She had a feeling the situation wasn’t going to give her one. But she would give it all the opportunity she could. She would lay on a helicopter flight for tomorrow morning, and do the research with her own eyes and mind. And then, if necessary, she would call the President and give him his orders.
SEVENTEEN
The inhabitants of the Little Prairie and its neighborhood all deserted their homes, and retired back to the hills or swamps. The only brick chimney in the place was entirely demolished by the shocks. I have not yet heard that any lives were lost, or accident of consequence happened. I have been twice on shore since the first shock, and then but a very short time, as I thought it unsafe, for the ground is cracked and torn to pieces in such a way as made it truly alarming; indeed some of the islands in the river that contained from one to two hundred acres of land have been nearly all sunk, and not one yet that I have seen but is cracked from one end to the other, and has lost some part of it.
The second helicopter thundered into sight just as Larry Hallock was returning from his inspection of the Poinsett Landing station. Larry didn’t pay it much attention. He was returning in a rubber raft to the big Sea Stallion helicopter that had brought him out here, which sat on the water and had to keep its rotor turning to maintain its position against the current. Even though Larry was just a passenger in the rubber boat, the chop raised on the water by the downblast from the Sikorsky’s six huge titanium-edged composite rotor blades was enough to keep his head down, and his mind firmly on keeping his seat in the raft.
Besides, he assumed the second helicopter was another military outfit.
It was after two crewmen, careful to avoid his damaged left arm, helped him into the Sikorsky by its crew that one of them said, “We have a radio call for you, sir. From the other helicopter.” Larry made his way forward, and one of the crewmen handed him a headset. “Go ahead and talk, sir,” he said—shouted, rather—as Larry put the earphones over his ears.
“Larry Hallock here,” Larry said. With his right hand, the one he could use freely, he pressed the right foam pads over his ear so as to hear the reply over the thunder of the Sea Stallion’s rotor.
“Larry? This is Emil Braun. Are we ever glad to finally get ahold of you!” Larry only vaguely remembered Emil Braun, who worked for the power company that owned the Poinsett Landing station, but the relief that soared through him at the sound of the voice was still profound.
He wasn’t alone anymore. He didn’t have to carry the burden of what he knew by himself.
“We’ve been trying to get ahold of someone since the quake last night!” Emil Braun said. “But no phone answered. No radio. We couldn’t get a vehicle anywhere near the plant. And it was hell finding a helicopter, believe me! Our own chopper was down for maintenance, and ten minutes after the quake, you damn betcha that every civilian chopper in the country had been chartered by someone!” Larry eased himself onto a fold-down seat. He found Emil’s troubles in chartering aircraft to be at the least remote, not to say quaint.
“We’ve got problems here, Emil,” he said.
“I can see that. Can you follow me to corporate HQ in Jackson and give everyone a briefing?” Larry paused while a crewman competently and efficiently strapped him into his seat for takeoff.
“I think the Navy will want their helicopter back, Emil,” he said finally. “From here I have to fly to Vicksburg to brief the Corps of Engineers,” he said finally. “Why don’t you follow me, and I’ll brief you both at the same time?”
“The Corps of Engineers?” Emil repeated. Larry understood Emil’s uncertainty: the Corps of Engineers weren’t exactly in the electric company’s chain of command.
“We’re going to need their help, Emil,” Larry said as the Sea Stallion’s huge rotor increased its speed and began to move the big Sikorsky forward over the brown water. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
Bail, splash. Bail, splash. Sweat ran into Jason’s eyes. Retired and Gone Fishin’ had survived the Tennessee Chute and had floated into a far more gentle part of the river. There were signs of burning on both flanks of the river, and the treeline was full of wrecked boats and barges that had come spinning down the chute from the port of Memphis, but the current was easy, and the cottonwoods on the western side cast long shadows on the sunset-tinted water.
The air reeked of dead fish. There were hundreds of them within sight, pale bellies uppermost. Something had poisoned them.
Nick, having lost his appetite for fish, had pulled in the fishing lines he’d been trailing astern. The cockpit had almost filled with river water, and now Jason’s job, and Nick’s, was to bail. Bail, splash. Bail, splash. Jason’s arm ached as he lifted the plastic milk jug filled with water and tossed the Mississippi back over the side where it belonged.
At least it was going faster than the first time he’d had to bail out the boat, that morning. Jason then had held his motley assortment of containers under the water, waited for them to fill, after which he poured them out. Nick had shown him a better way, one so simple that Jason wondered why he hadn’t thought of it. Nick tore off the tops of the plastic jugs and bottles, so that he and Jason could scoop them full in one motion, then throw the water over the side.
Simple, but one of those simple things that Jason hadn’t known or thought of. If he’d just known, if someone had shown him the trick, he could have taken it from there.
If he’d known about the boat’s little electric motor, his mother might—no, would—still be alive. He didn’t know enough to live through all this, he thought. He didn’t know enough to help anyone. In fact, he thought, he knew just enough to get himself killed. Maybe he should just throw himself in the river before he killed someone else.