5 Days to Landfall Read online

  “I’m a good swimmer!”

  “I know. A real guppy.” Sarah had a certificate from summer camp that said so.

  “Shark, Mom. I’m a shark now. I passed the test yesterday, remember?”

  “OK, Ms. Shark, off to bed or I’ll tickle you to death.” She played at Sarah’s sides with her fingers. Sarah giggled, squirmed off her mother’s lap and padded slowly off to her bedroom. Amanda picked up Piglet and took him into the living room, plopped on the couch and held the stuffed animal tight to her.

  She imagined for a moment that Piglet was Jack Corbin, the reporter. The thought made her feel better. Amanda had a special place inside her heart where she kept thoughts of Jack Corbin. How different it would have been if she and Jack had tried. She would never have met Joe Springer. The worst thing that ever happened to her. Would never have had Sarah. The best thing that ever happened. She clutched Piglet so tightly that he would have screamed if he could.

  ***

  Joe Springer showed up just after eleven. Sarah was asleep. Amanda had been dozing, thinking about the night she met Jack Corbin, the night Hurricane Andrew slammed into South Florida. The night she held his hand for a brief instant as the storm shook the building. She set Piglet on the couch and went to the door.

  “C’mon in,” she said flatly.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Joe Springer said. “Plane was a little late, then…”

  “Never mind, Joe. I’ll go get Sarah up.”

  “She’s asleep?”

  “Of course she’s asleep. It’s after eleven.”

  “I thought she’d be excited…”

  “She was excited. Then she got tired. She’s six years old, Joe. What do you expect?”

  “I know how old our daughter is. Look, if you’re going to…”

  “Drop it, Joe. I’m tired too. And you know I don’t do well when she’s not with me. There’s her suitcase.” Amanda pointed behind the door. “I’ll go get her.”

  Amanda came back a moment later with Sarah snuggled into her, cheek on shoulder, groggy. Joe put the suitcase in the car and walked back through the door.

  Amanda shook Sarah lightly until the girl’s eyes rolled open.

  “Daddy’s here, sweetheart.”

  “Mmm.”

  Amanda felt tears coming. “Will you call me in the morning?”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, Mommy.”

  Amanda Cole handed her daughter to Joe Springer.

  “Hi, honey,” he said.

  “Hi Daddy.” Then Sarah was out, eyes rolling shut again. A tear spilled down Amanda’s cheek. She was glad Sarah was asleep. Amanda wiped the tear with the back of her hand, cleared her throat. “Are you watching Gert?”

  “Saw it on the news,” Joe said. “Going into the Carolinas tomorrow night, right?”

  “Maybe. But it still has a shot to run north.” Amanda’s first rule: never discount a place as the possible point of landfall until the hurricane is north of that place. “Keep an eye on it, OK?”

  “Amanda, look. I get to be with Sarah for a lousy two weeks out of the year. I don’t need you watching over us the whole time, OK?”

  “Jeez, she’s my daughter.” She had an edge to her voice now. “It’s my job to watch over her.”

  “But not me. It’s not your job to watch over me.”

  “Just keep an eye out, please.” The tears were forming again.

  “I will. I will. Goodbye, Amanda.”

  Amanda watched her ex-husband and Sarah get in the car. The first leg of their journey to the Jersey Shore, just south of Manhattan.

  Amanda sighed long. Joe Springer was taking a piece of her. Her best friend. The focus of her life. The little girl who made her laugh, who loved Pooh and Piglet and Seuss and at the same time understood how a hurricane worked.

  She turned and closed the door behind her. The click of the lock seemed louder than normal. The house felt empty. Amanda closed her eyes. She held the doorknob to steady herself. Then she did what she always did when Joe Springer took Sarah away: She told herself that it was good for Sarah to be with her father. Amanda couldn’t deny her daughter that experience. She repeated the thought, to herself and then out loud: “It’s good for her.”

  She opened her eyes and looked around the room, hoping to see Sarah sitting on the couch. Instead, Piglet sat staring at her, a sad look in his eyes, as though he’d just lost his best friend, too. Amanda’s heart shriveled with the sudden loneliness.

  She sat on the floor and cried.

  ~ ~ ~

  EXCERPTED FROM HURRICANES: HISTORY AND DYNAMCS, BY DR. NICHOLAS K. GRAY, HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY PRESS (1998)

  Evacuations started early in the morning on September 21, 1989. Hugo was coming. Interstate 26 out of Charleston was bumper to bumper with fleeing residents and beachgoers. Motels booked up quickly, convenience stores ran out of batteries and bottled water. Then news reports said Hugo was turning north, likely to go out to sea.

  By early afternoon, most thought the worst was over.

  On the six o’clock news, Hugo was reported to still be moving north, and forecasters hedged, saying the storm might go out to sea or that hurricane winds could hit Charleston within three hours. By eight p.m. the massive storm had made a sharp left turn and headed straight for Charleston. An hour later the storm was tearing the town apart. High-voltage lines snapped, dangled and flashed, and transformers atop utility poles blew out, creating blue and white flashes that lit up an otherwise gray-green sky. Gas lines ruptured, causing explosions that were heard miles away. A wall of water pushed over the seawall at the Battery and, together with the wind, damaged eighty percent of the town’s buildings.

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday, August 23

  CHAPTER 4

  Charleston,

  South Carolina

  8:00 A.M.

  Incongruous gusts of wind carried the promise of change through steamy morning streets. Like cotton pulled by an invisible hand from an aspirin bottle, thin curly strands of cirrus clouds bearded half the sky, 40,000 feet up. Over the Atlantic, a fuzzy orange orb gave way to a thickening baffle of cirrostratus clouds.

  Juan Rico, Nikon around his neck, stuffed a weathered, workingman arm into a bag of Doritos, rummaging for full-size chips.

  “Looks like nothin’ ever happened here,” Rico said as they drove over cobblestone streets through old city.

  “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” Jack Corbin said. “For all the talk, Charleston got off pretty easy.”

  “Thought it was a Cat 4,” Rico said. “Hundred-and-forty-mile winds.”

  “The eye passed right over Charleston. Worst winds were farther up the coast.”

  “Right-side eyewall,” Rico said. I know. Shit. Like ridin’ with a damn scientist.”

  Jack Corbin smiled. The weather beat reporter’s long black hair flew backward in the light breeze as he craned his neck out the window to look at another three-story home surrounded by wrought iron fencing, Jack loved how Charleston oozed history.

  “It’s like stepping back in time,” he said.

  “Except for the tourists.” Juan Rico pointed at three large, stark white northerners at the corner, sunburns on their forearms and the cameras around their necks.

  “Not many around,” Jack observed.

  “Smart ones left early.” Rico fiddled with his Nikon. “Beat the rush. Folks down here know how to evacuate. Not like us stupid New Yorkers, man. We fuckin’ drive toward the storm.”

  “Got to get the story,” Jack said.

  “Don’t worry. You get your story. Amanda put you right in the middle of it. You be wishin’ you never asked.”

  “We need it, pal. There’s been so many hurricanes this year the readers are losing track. They’ve got to be sick of prep stories, and I’m sick of aftermath stories. What’s missing is the first-person account in the storm. We need that story out of Gert. Bad.”

  “Speak for yourself,
man,” Juan Rico said. “I’m not in trouble with my editor. Shooter only has to get one good pic now and then, everybody goes ooh and aah and forgets all the average shots.”

  That was it, Jack knew. A photographer just needed the shot, one click every so often, a 125th of a second, an image that stuck in peoples’ minds for months or years. But a reporter was only as good as his last story which, by the afternoon, was invariably sitting in somebody’s birdcage being shit on. Editors always seemed thrilled to get just about any picture to go with a story, and they always seemed less than thrilled with most of the stories they got. Jack was overdue for a good one.

  Juan Rico had set up the rendezvous with Amanda Cole. He and Amanda had been friends since Rico’s days at the Miami Herald. The diminutive photographer left a trail of good friends wherever he went. Jack felt lucky to be at the top of that list. Juan Rico had been his best friend for several years now, ever since the two first teamed up. Jack was known around the Times newsroom as the guy who tried to get in the path of hurricanes. Rico was the only shooter who would work with him. Jack felt a slight throb of jealousy over the fact that Juan Rico was such good friends with Amanda. But he never let it show, always played his feelings for Amanda close to his vest. But now she is divorced. I wonder…

  He asked Rico: “Where do we meet her?”

  “Myrtle Beach,” Rico said. “Couple hours. We gonna eat first?”

  Jack ignored the question. Rico was always hungry. “Hope she hurries. We need to get into position soon.”

  Jack thought some more about Amanda. They’d met in the days before Hurricane Andrew came ashore in 1992, and there had been an instant spark. When Andrew hit, they found themselves next to each other in the crammed sixth-floor offices of the Hurricane Center.

  Then there was a loud crash on the roof like a muffled bomb or a dropped car.

  “Radar’s out!” one of the meteorologists reported.

  The building swayed. The center’s wind gauge recorded a gust of 164 miles an hour. Then it broke. The room went quiet. Amanda reached out and found Jack’s hand. She curled her fingers through his. He didn’t resist.

  After Andrew devastated Dade County, Jack and Amanda both became burdened with endless sixteen-hour days, he reporting and she analyzing the storm’s effects.

  Then Jack flew back to New York.

  Jack often relied on Amanda as a source. But their careers kept them apart. And then Amanda got married and had a kid.

  “What’s she like? I mean, it’s been years. I talk to her on the phone a few times each season, but…”

  “Smart,” Rico said. “She smart. Looks smart. Acts smart. Is smart. And don’t underestimate her.”

  “About what?”

  “About anything, man” Rico said. “She talk circles around you about weather, computers, baseball, you name it. Piss her off she probably kick your ass, too.”

  “I knew about the intelligence. Didn’t know she was a brute.”

  “No brute. Strong beauty. Like a racehorse. Pure. Why you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  “Yeah right.”

  “I just hope she finds the spot.”

  “She find it,” Rico said. “What you guess?”

  “Landfall?”

  “Yep. Time to place your bet.”

  “How much this time?”

  “You won twenty-five bucks from me last time,” Rico said. “Double or nothin’?”

  “OK. But I don’t know where the heck it’s going. Tell you what.” Jack thought about the Hurricane Center’s forecast. “I think Gert’s going to skirt north on them. I’ll pick Topsail Island.”

  “Wherezat?”

  “Barrier Island in North Carolina, up by Cape Fear. It’s where Bertha and Fran hit in ’96. I count those people unlucky. You?”

  “What’s the farthest south you figure it can go now?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “Maybe Georgia.”

  “I pick Savannah,” said Rico with a smile. “They haven’t had one for awhile.”

  “Hurricanes aren’t like computers, pal. They don’t keep track of where the last one went.”

  “Savannah,” Rico said again. “I just like to say the word. Savannah.”

  ***

  The cirrostratus clouds moved inland and reached to all horizons as the reporter and photographer drove north. The sun gave up to being no more than a bright area to the east. The thick dead early morning heat was being carried away by gusty winds.

  “You know about the snakes?” Jack asked.

  They had crossed the three-mile long bridge spanning the Santee River delta, and drove north to Myrtle Beach. The lowcountry they had driven through was made up of lazy rivers lined with sweet gums, magnolias and cypress, their murky waters filled with alligators and poisonous snakes. Snakes were Rico’s one big phobia.

  “Snakes?” Rico munched on a pepperoni stick, wiped the grease on his pant leg.

  “The ones in the trees after Hugo,” Jack said.

  “What the fuck?”

  “The storm surge picked them up out of the swamps and deposited them in the trees, or at least the trees that were left standing. Or maybe they swam for high ground and climbed into the trees themselves.”

  “Don’t fuck with me.”

  “I’m not kidding. People saw them in the trees for weeks.”

  Rico set the pepperoni stick, half finished, on the dashboard. Jack drove on, letting the snakes sneak into Rico’s subconscious.

  In Myrtle Beach, traffic was heavy. Many cars had beach chairs and bright towels stuffed into the rear windows. The tourists were leaving. Jack checked plates. Several from Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee.

  Some had furniture tied to the top—and South Carolina Plates. The locals were getting out as well. Jack pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store, which was doing a great business.

  The shelves were nearly bare. He scanned the store to see what was left, to catalogue it so he could write about it. Two loaves of rye. A decent selection of cookies, but not many crackers. Most of the canned foods were gone. The beer was gone, but there was still plenty of soda. Bottled water gone. Juice depleted. No milk. Choice of frozen dinners getting thin, but plenty of ice cream.

  “Gert’s fourteen, maybe sixteen hours away,” Jack said. “At least the worst of it. If it comes here. And everybody is either gone or has already stocked up.”

  “Told you, people here know ’bout hurricanes.”

  Jack gathered up what he could for lunch. Potato chips, two colas, the last hunk of cheese. Rico warmed to the idea and bought a half-dozen long, flat and greasy jerky sticks.

  They headed for the car. Far down the road Jack spotted a green line moving toward them, growing larger. At first it appeared fuzzy and wavy through the rising heat from the asphalt. The closer the caravan got, the longer it became, seeming to have no end. Jack knew at once what it was. Emergency officials in South Carolina had learned their lesson with Hugo, and they weren’t taking any chances this time.

  The lead vehicle was a Humvee. Directly behind it was a flatbed tractor-trailer carrying two bulldozers. Next came another flatbed loaded with portable generators.

  The National Guard was moving in.

  Rico stared at the green line, set a piece of cheese absentmindedly on the hood of the car and fiddled with his Nikon. He pulled the short, 28mm lens off, grabbed a 300. “Here you go, baby, nice and smooth,” he said, screwing the 300mm lens on the digital camera. He pulled the camera up to his eye, buried one elbow into his stomach, “Amanda better hurry. They gonna snap this place shut like a fuckin’ crime scene.”

  Jack looked at his watch. “She’s still over an hour away.”

  Rico took a deep breath.

  Click-click-click.

  ***

  Jack and Rico waited. Lower clouds shuttled landward below the thickening cover. The wind, steadier now, lifted Jack’s long black hair, made a flag of it.

  “Cut that shit off, would you?”<
br />
  “What? My hair? It’s me.”

  “It’s out of style,” Rico said.

  “I don’t follow styles.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. You make ’em.” Rico laughed.

  Jack looked down at his plain dark trousers, simple white button-up shirt and conservative tie. “Screw you,” he said. “You’re still wearing short-sleeved plaid. You look like somebody’s dad from the sixties.”

  A blue Chevy pulled into the parking lot with a screech, curved into the spot next to Juan Rico’s open door, stopped too late with a jerk of the brakes and scraped something on the curb. Amanda Cole got out. Her smile was broad, warm.

  “Fuckin’ nearly killed me,” Rico said.

  “Missed you by a mile,” she said.

  “Scraped the car up.”

  “Rental.”

  “C’mon, Amanda. Cars are like best friends,” Rico said, only half-joking. “Gotta take care of ’em or they go to shit.” He stood, walked past her, got down on one knee and stuck his head under the front bumper.

  She put a hand on her hip in mock frustration, then folded her arms. “Juan, it’s a freaking car. Now give me a hug.”

  “What if I treated my ol’ Dodge that way?” Rico said. “It’d be a junker by now.”

  “What year is that thing, anyway?”

  “Sixty-seven.”

  “Dinosaur.”

  “Looks and runs great. ’Cuz I take care of it.” Rico mumbled something under the car, then stood. “Looks OK.” His voice became warmer. “So do you. And sorry ’bout the language.”

  Amanda laughed. “Bar of soap for you. Now come here.”

  Rico kissed her cheek and hugged her, then took her hands and let the smile, which he’d been stifling, spread across his face.

  Jack felt himself flush in the morning heat. Amanda was as beautiful—in a sultry kind of way—as he remembered. She was about an inch taller than Rico, maybe five-eight, and had a slender strength that hinted at running and weightlifting, a sculpted valley between shoulder and bicep, warm healthy skin exposed by a sleeveless black cotton shirt. She wore blue jeans. Jack’s imagination worked to picture equivalently sculpted legs. She was Jack’s age but she looked younger. Her black hair danced across her shoulders in flashes of reflected light. He studied her face: Strong cheeks, thin nose, brown eyes that might seem too big to some people, but not to Jack. Big brown eyes that moved constantly, active, curious. Juan Rico held her hands. Jack was jealous. He tried to fend off his imagination.