Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (8 page)

The ax crashed down again and again.

The instant there was an opening as large as his body, the man threw himself into it—and then his strength failed him. He lay over the splintered edge of the roof vent like a doll on a handrail, unable to move any farther.

Then he felt two powerful hands seize him by the arms and drag him through the opening. He felt his legs hit the water and then he was hauled toward the boat, where the two hands hooked his arms over the sides of the boat and then released him.

The man lay clinging to the side of the boat, bobbing in the waiter, waiting for his strength to return to him. He lifted his head and looked up at the face of his rescuer, silhouetted against the raging sky.

“Thank you,” the man gasped. “I'll never forget—”

“Are you Tommy Lee Batiste?” the voice demanded.

“Yes—I'm Tommy Lee Batiste.”

The figure in the boat lifted a thick section of tree branch over his head and brought it down hard on the center of the man's forehead.

He saw a flash of light, and then his arms went limp.

Tommy Lee Batiste slipped silently away from the side of the boat and disappeared into the churning black water.

7

Tuesday, August 30

Nick and Jerry stood at the eastern end of the St. Claude Avenue Bridge, surveying the flooded neighborhood in front of them. Three blocks ahead, the four-lane highway dipped and disappeared beneath a greenish-brown cesspool of floating debris. As far as the eye could see, only rooftops remained above the water, like little black and brown and orange playing cards folded in half on a sheet of glass. Only the top halves of trees protruded, looking more like sprawling bushes than crepe myrtles or oaks; electrical wires hung tangled in their branches like strands of silken web. Objects drifted everywhere—sofas, refrigerators, mattresses, ovens, things that Nick would have sworn were too large or too heavy to ever float. There was even an entire trailer home that bobbed in the water like a giant slab of ice cream, buoyed by some air pocket still trapped inside.

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?”