5 Days to Landfall Read online

  “…one fine woman,” Rico was saying.

  “You always make me feel better,” Amanda said.

  “How’s Sarah?”

  Something dark flashed across her eyes—quick, like a fast-moving thunderstorm—disappointment, or maybe fear.

  “She left last night to spend two weeks with her father.”

  “Bastard,” Rico said. “Oops. Sorry.”

  “It’s OK. He does what he can,” she said.

  Jack cleared his throat.

  “Oh.” Rico pointed with a thumb over his shoulder, across the hood of the car. “There’s Jack.”

  “Hello, Jack.” Amanda waved. The darkness seemed to lift.

  But—a wave. He’d been dying to see her again all these years. Now here she was and he got a wave. The silence lasted a fraction too long. Jack forced a smile. “Hi Amanda. Nice to see you again.” It sounded dumb as it came out.

  Her eyes squinted, a near-smile. It might have meant something. Then she looked back at Rico. “Are we going to sit here and talk all day, or do we go find some wind?”

  “Let’s do it,” Rico said.

  “Hop in,” Jack said. “Rico can sit in the back.” Screw you, pal. He tried to hold back the grin but a corner of it slipped to his lips.

  Amanda got in the front seat. Rico jumped in back and Jack started the car. He forced his way out of the parking lot into heavy traffic.

  “So,” Jack said. “Where to?”

  “Topsail Island,” Amanda said.

  “No kidding?” Jack grinned at Rico in the rearview mirror.

  “Why?” Amanda asked.

  “Oh, nothing. Just means Rico’s gonna owe me fifty bucks.”

  Amanda wrestled with her seat belt. She glanced at Jack and grinned like a little girl who’d just broken Daddy’s rule by popping a piece of candy in her mouth. She looked quickly back at her seatbelt. “There’s a guy there—Bill Leaderman—got hit pretty hard by Fran in ’96. Now he’s used some new high-tech materials to make his house safer. I want to see this stuff in action. Near as I can tell, he’s above the expected surge, so we should be safe. Assuming we get supremely lucky and Gert comes our way.”

  “Should be safe?” Jack said.

  “Well, I mean, you never know exactly how high the surge will be. The Army Corps’ SLOSH model…”

  “SLOSH model?” asked Rico from the back seat.

  “Sea, Lake, and Overland Surge from Hurricanes,” Amanda said.

  Jack spoke over his shoulder: “It’s the model that predicts storm surges up and down the coast for various hurricane intensities, different scenarios.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought it was,” Rico lied.

  Jack laughed at him.

  “Anyway,” Amanda continued, “the SLOSH takes into account the bathymetry, and wind speed, atmospheric pressure, all that, but it’s got a wide enough margin of error to breed plenty of caution. But Hurricane Fran didn’t get Leaderman’s house, and Gert isn’t gonna be any worse. The model says we’ll have a couple feet to spare.”

  “You sure of that?”

  “Of course not,” Amanda said. “With a hurricane, the only thing we’re ever sure of is our last measurements.”

  Jack looked at Rico in the rearview mirror. “You still want to do this, pal?”

  Rico leaned forward, rested his chin on folded arms and laughed nervously. “I’m livin’ on the edge already, man. Left the cap off the toothpaste this morning. No stoppin’ me now. Got to get the shot, push the envelope.”

  “Will be a little tough to get the shot in the dark,” Jack said.

  “Let’s go home, then.”

  Amanda laughed, warm and musical and rolling. “You guys are both wimps.”

  Jack punched the gas and cut off a car trying to squeeze into the line of traffic.

  ***

  By midday the sun was gone and the sky had lowered. A National Guardsman at the base of the bridge leading to Topsail Island stopped the car. An orderly river of evacuees flowed over the bridge in the other direction. Jack was surprised: The evacuation was going so well that the inbound lanes were still open.

  “Gotta live here to get in,” the trooper said politely, bayonet pointed at the sky. Jack flashed his press card. The guardsman flicked his eyebrows. “Good luck,” he said, waving them on.

  Jack gripped the steering wheel tightly and fought the gusty winds on the bridge. A thought had been on his mind since they’d left Myrtle Beach. “Hey Amanda. How come the official forecast is still Charleston and you’re taking us to Topsail Island?”

  Jack could feel Amanda staring at him. It seemed she’d been doing it quite a bit all the way up, but now it felt more intense. She took a moment to answer.

  “Hunch,” she said.

  “Hunch? You’re a hotshot hurricane specialist and you’re picking landfall on a hunch? If Gert is going to hit Topsail Island, wouldn’t it be a good idea to let the residents know?”

  There was an edge to her voice, as though he’d pushed a button. “Forecasting is complicated,” she said. “There’s a half-dozen computer models we look at, then we add in our own experience, maybe a little intuition. The models are still saying Charleston, but we always try to make it clear that the place we pick is just the midpoint of a likely range of where the storm might come ashore.”

  “And so you get these hunches.”

  “Not strong enough to go public with, you know. The three of us are taking a chance with Topsail Island. See, another meteorologist is forecasting Gert today, and we don’t always agree a hundred percent with each other. I see something slightly different in the data, but that’s normal. That’s why you see hurricane warnings from Savannah to the North Carolina/Virginia border.”

  “This got anything to do with the LORAX?” Jack asked.

  He looked over at Amanda, caught her eyes averting his. A hesitation. Whatever she said next was calculated.

  “The LORAX isn’t operational,” Amanda said. “You know we don’t use non-op models for official forecasts.”

  “But you’ll use it to make your own guess,” Jack said.

  “I didn’t say that. Besides, the LORAX is down now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Non-operational models don’t run real-time when there’s a hurricane within thirty-six hours of landfall. Saves the computer’s processing power for the operational models.”

  Jack smiled. He would have to find out how much the LORAX figured into Amanda’s thinking. And how much it might have figured into the official forecast. If the Hurricane Center was using a new model in their forecasting suite, that was news.

  CHAPTER 5

  TOPSAIL ISLAND

  12:15 P.M.

  As they got out of the car in Bill Leaderman’s driveway, Amanda looked over at Jack Corbin. The wind lifted his hair and blew it across his face. Amanda took a quick breath. Or, more accurately, Jack took it from her.

  Since Joe Springer had deserted her three years ago, Amanda hadn’t paid much attention to other men. She noticed them, but seldom did she take a second look. Life was too big, too busy, and the pain of being left was still too fresh. Now she found herself staring at Jack whenever she thought she could get away with it. It felt good. And it frightened her.

  Bill Leaderman’s house was perched atop a dune that was higher than the ones on either side. Amanda felt better. Though she’d checked the height of his house, she still had a knot in her stomach, as she always did when she chased a storm. But Leaderman’s house looked comfortably above the surf, and the knot relaxed slightly.

  Leaderman’s thin brown hair was parted on the side and receding, so that his forehead seemed to protrude. He was average height, thin but muscular like one who does much physical labor. His manner was lazy, movements deliberate. He was out front loading bags into a minivan. Amanda said hello and introduced Jack and Rico.

  “Packing up?” She asked Leaderman.

  “Wife and kids.” Bill Leaderman spoke slowly, too. “
They want to get to the mainland. They remember Fran in ’96 and they don’t want to see another one.”

  Leaderman’s wife came out the sliding door and walked down the long staircase followed by a boy and a girl both around the age of eleven. A black Labrador passed them on the stairs, made a beeline for Amanda and sniffed her shoes. Rico slipped away, surveying the house for angles to shoot from.

  “And you?” Amanda asked Leaderman.

  “Staying, like I told you. Gert doesn’t sound any worse than Fran, and I’ve hurricane-proofed the house since then. Want to see how it does.”

  “When you have a minute, could you show us what you’ve done?”

  “Sure. Just a couple more suitcases first.” Amanda helped Leaderman with the bags, met his family in a brief and awkward moment, then waved goodbye.

  “Coffee?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Amanda said.

  She studied the way the house sat atop a mound of sand that rose three feet higher than the other dunes. After Fran, she remembered, the surrounding dunes had been eroded to a vestige of what they were now, but they had been built back up.

  Leaderman’s dune was left relatively intact. All of the homes were built atop a grid of spindly pilings. Leaderman’s first floor sat about four feet above the dune on this side and some ten feet on the beach side, a design meant to allow a surge to pass through the pilings and over the dune.

  They walked into the kitchen, which opened directly into a large living room that faced the ocean. Two bedrooms and a bathroom were connected to the living room by a hallway to the left. Another bedroom sat at the end of a short hallway to the right.

  Leaderman poured coffee and led them to the living room, through another patio door onto a large deck that, because of the angle of Amanda’s view, seemed to hang right over the ocean. None of the windows, nor the large patio door, were boarded up.

  The wind was stronger. A stray seagull hovered motionless in slanting spray over froth-covered waves. Brass wind chimes that hung from the eaves of the roof made a slow, unpatterned ting, ting, ting, giving voice to the silent wind. The dog paced the perimeter of the deck, brushing Amanda’s legs on each loop, stopping finally along the front rail to bark at the wind.

  Jack looked at the dog, puzzled.

  “He feels the lowering air pressure,” Amanda said. “Maybe smells things that come out of the earth as the reduced pressure opens the surface.”

  “Hmm,” Jack said.

  Leaderman was relaxed enough, as though the wind were a summer breeze making a hot day more pleasant. He pushed his limp hair aside, pointed lazily at the chimes. “Got to get those down,” he said. “They’ll drive me nuts.”

  “So,” Amanda said. “The only damage you suffered from Fran was a few missing roof shingles, a broken window and a little rain damage?”

  “And we lost the car to the surge. The water went right under the house, though, just like it’s supposed to. In the old days, people walled in the area around the pilings, made garages, basements. Anybody with one of those lost it, and in some cases the force knocked the whole house over.”

  Amanda took a sip of her coffee, which the wind had already made cold. She stole a quick look at Jack, who was taking notes as Leaderman talked. She looked back to Leaderman. “And you’ve made some improvements.”

  “This house is storm proof now,” Leaderman said. He stood, put his hands on his hips and looked up at the roof. “We were going to replace the damaged shingles, but the real problem, we found out, was underneath. See that gabled roof?” He pointed with a long, skinny finger up toward the wind chime. “If Fran’s wind had been much stronger, it might have pushed on that wall and sucked the whole roof off. We also found out that the roof sheathing was attached to the trusses with short nails, which a good storm might just rip out. So we had a contractor come in and tear the shingles off, put new sheathing on, and fasten the roof trusses to the walls with hurricane straps. They’re just metal strips they nail to the truss and to the studs in the walls. Then they squirted this foam stuff all around, a new high-tech adhesive called StormSeal 2000. It’s a liquid that works its way into all the joints between the wood in the roof trusses, then expands into a foam that holds everything together. They say it’s four times stronger than a roof with nails only. I can show it all to you.”

  “Good,” Jack said. “Juan here will probably want to take some pictures, too.” Rico had silently reappeared, was shooting Leaderman with his house in the background. Rico nodded. Jack asked Leaderman: “So you’re not going to board up?”

  “Don’t have to. That’s the other thing we did. Installed impact-resistant windows. Can’t tell the difference, can you?”

  “Look just like any other windows,” Jack said.

  Flying debris often shattered windows before the wind itself was strong enough to blow them out. Once that happened, the wind pushed against the walls and the roof from the inside. The wind outside lifted the roof, pulled at the rear wall, and then the walls collapsed or the roof lifted off.

  “These windows were tested by the Dade County building inspector, where Andrew struck,” Leaderman said. “They do a whole bunch of tests, but the one I like is that they throw a piece of two-by-four at the window at thirty-four miles an hour. If it doesn’t break, it passes.”

  Leaderman smiled. He was pleased with the improvements to his home.

  “All I really have left to do is put the furniture away. I learned that from Fran. She picked up a lawn chair from the neighbor’s house and put it through our bedroom window. Our Hibachi crashed into the house across the street.”

  Jack stood and Amanda watched the wind kick his hair up. It had increased in the short time they talked. The sea also was growing, and it moved and boiled like a living being, an angry monster heaving and falling with the cycle of waves.

  Leaderman led them back inside.

  “You all set with provisions?” Amanda asked.

  “Got everything I need to last several days,” Leaderman said, “so even if it’s real bad, I’ll be fine. I’ve got most of my supplies here.” He opened a closet.

  Amanda scanned the contents: jugs of water, canned foods, briquettes, hammer, nails, flashlights, batteries, fire extinguisher, dried fruits and nuts, rope, a folding hunting knife, first aid kit, sugar, flour, and rolls and rolls of toilet paper.

  Leaderman went through a checklist of preparations as he wandered to the kitchen, pointing. “I’ve got a generator at the side of the house. Bottled water in the fridge. Cupboards are full of canned beans.” He opened a cupboard. “And there’s plenty of beer.” He swung the fridge door open, revealing two cases of beer and several gallon jugs of water. “I’ll turn the fridge way up later on and keep it closed, in case the power goes out.”

  ***

  Jack recoiled when the first drop hit his forehead. He stood on a point of land with a good view in both directions, watching a surfer a quarter mile down the beach who defied the evacuation—and common sense—for the ride of his life.

  Juan Rico was having his third meal of the day, a late lunch with Bill Leaderman. But Amanda had wanted to be out in the wind, wanted to face the oncoming storm. She asked Jack to go for a walk.

  He stood behind her, off her left shoulder. She had changed into khaki shorts and a white Lycra running top. Her legs, as promised, had the same slender muscularity as her arms. Amanda leaned into the wind, spread her arms wide like some antenna trying to communicate with the storm. The wind carried a mix of jasmine and something heavier, sexy, to his nostrils.

  “Smell that?” she asked.

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “Reduced air pressure allows for more rapid evaporation of the fragrance molecules. You’re downwind.”

  “Didn’t know,” Jack said.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I do. Jasmine and…”

  “Musk,” she added.

  “Nice.”
That’ll woo her, Jack. Way to pour on the charm. He leaned into the wind, too, to keep his balance. He didn’t feel as graceful as Amanda looked.

  More drops hit them, large splattering drops. The last of the birds made their straggling retreat from the sea, flying low.

  “They’re struggling in the reduced buoyancy of lower atmospheric pressure,” Amanda said.

  Jack wondered if she always answered unasked questions. He thought about the birds. They probably knew which way to fly, where to escape. They’re smarter than I am. I come to face the storm. They fly away from it.

  “Flying to safety,” Jack offered, wondering what was on Amanda’s mind.

  “Smart,” she said. “Some of the them won’t escape, though. They’ll die. A few will end up in the eye, ride the storm out, maybe survive.”

  Sand was beginning to blow across the beach, a see-through carpet skating and skimming along the surface. The tide was supposed to be low, but there was no strip of dark, hard sand indicating it had gone out. The waves had grown to six or eight feet, and were closer together.

  “I always think of the fish,” Amanda said.

  “What about them?”

  “The storm messes with their world, too. Churning water pulls some of the deep-water fish up. They explode. Others that live on the surface get sucked out and become birds for a while. Sometimes they eat rocks to try and sink themselves. Bad swimmers, like shrimp, go wherever the currents decide.”

  Jack didn’t want to think about what was going on underneath the angry surface.

  It was starting to rain for real now. Soon the wind would get worse and it would seem like the water came from all sides. Each new sign of the storm took on ominous significance. This was a Category 3 hurricane, capable of destroying homes in a single gust, of producing a storm surge sixteen feet high. Only once before, during Andrew, had Jack been in the middle of a hurricane that strong, and he’d rode that one out in the relative safety of the Hurricane Center.