Читать книгу No Ordinary Heroes: - Demaree Inglese - Страница 20

Morning:

At 8 a.m. Katrina’s storm surge causes the Industrial Canal to overflow.

Flooding in the lower Ninth Ward is six to eight feet deep.

Katrina’s eye passes east of New Orleans at 9 a.m., with 125-mph winds.

At 11 a.m., ten feet of water flood St. Bernard Parish.

Captain Verret was exhausted. He’d changed his clothes, and his arm still throbbed, but he couldn’t sleep with the hurricane raging. He looked into the dining area near the back doors, where Skyles was watching storm reports on television with Captain Danny Boersma, another of his deputies.

“It’s bad, but the eye’s passing east of the river,” said Boersma, who carried his muscular five-foot-eleven-inch frame with the cocky confidence of a member of the sheriff’s motorcycle division. “They’re saying it could have been worse.”

“The wind’s still 125 miles an hour. That’s as strong as an F2 tornado,” Skyles said.

“But it’s almost over.” Boersma shrugged. “Still, it might be days before we get city power back.”

It really could have been worse, Verret thought as he walked outside. His eyelids felt heavy, and he hoped a blast of air would revitalize his weary mind and body. With all the windblown leaves, trash, and other debris it was difficult to see. Something struck his ear. Wincing at the sting, he turned his back to the storm just as something exploded in the sallyport.

Verret rushed to the edge of the porch overlooking the sunken driveway. “Oh, my God…” His breath caught in his throat when he realized the sallyport dam had ruptured. One of the steel plates was gone, and water from the street was surging through the breach. It hadn’t reached the basement doors yet, but it was rising fast.

Verret ran, bursting through the back doors straight to the dining area. “Skyles! Boersma! The sallyport’s flooding!”

Skyles jumped up, knocking over his chair. The blood drained from his face.

“Round up as many big guys as you can find and meet me back here in five minutes.” Verret didn’t wait for a response.

He raced out to notify Sheriff Gusman, who was sleeping in his office in the Correction Center. He alerted him to the emergency. When Verret returned, Skyles and Boersma were waiting with five other deputies.

Verret said bluntly, “We’ve got to repair the dam before water gets into the basement.”

Seven solemn faces nodded. They knew the generators would shut down if the electrical room flooded: no generator, no power—no control over the jail.

“The sheriff doesn’t want us to go. He thinks it’s too dangerous”—Verret paused—“and it is. But I don’t have a choice. I could use some help, but this is strictly a volunteer operation.”

Not one man opted out.

The deputies’ courage inspired Verret as he led them outside. It wasn’t in his nature to defy authority, but he had been at the Correctional Center in 1995 when a bad storm flooded the basement and the building lost all power. If that happened again with the Center full of wives, kids, and elderly family members, it would be troublesome at best. If 800 inmates with nothing to lose escaped, it could be deadly. He really didn’t have a choice.

Though it was well after dawn, a gray darkness hung over Verret and his men as they battled the wind on the side porch. When they neared the front corner, he shouted a warning. At the turn, the storm attacked with a deluge of rain. The gale lancing across the front porch was strong enough to send even a heavy deputy flying. Clasping hands, the men formed a human chain to keep from being carried off.

With Verret in the lead, the linked squad descended the front steps. Verret halted at the water’s edge, fifteen feet from the submerged sidewalk. The deputies crouched and clung to the banister.

Verret scanned the intersection to the left. The road was the most logical route to the sallyport, but the flood was nearly three feet deep. It was impossible to see through the water to the asphalt. Verret remembered stories of people falling into open manholes and drowning during bad storms. He didn’t know if the tales were true, but he had no intention of finding out. He shifted his gaze to the side of the steps, where he knew a cement planter ran along the front of the building and back down both sides. Two and a half feet high, the top of the planter was only a few inches under the surface of the water.

Making an instant decision, Verret climbed over the banister. As he balanced on the planter’s edge, a violent burst of wind whipped by, almost blowning him down. Fortunately, Boersma clasped his arm, holding him until he regained his footing. Once he firmly anchored himself, Verret helped his men onto the planter, one at a time.

They were above the flood, but nothing shielded them from the storm. The frenzied wind struck at an angle, smashing the deputies against the building’s front wall. The planter’s muddy soil shifted under their feet, and with each forward step they slid backward a little. Holding on to each other, they clutched at whatever support they could find: cracks in the cement, broken trees in the planter, and the porch railing above. Every inch of ground gained seemed an Olympic feat.

Before making the turn at the corner, Verret paused. A sane man would go back, but Verret knew this was a defining moment in his life. Did he have the strength and courage to lead his men forward? He pushed on.

As the eight men moved along the side of the building, the wind savaged them from behind, lifting them off their feet. The deputies clawed their way forward, clinging to the rough concrete wall till their fingertips bled. Shards of wood and glass pelted their backs. Splintered shingles became shrapnel. But every man knew the stakes. They all kept going. At the end of the planter, the men were forced to wade into the flooded street. Verret went first, without a word or hesitation.

“Where in the hell’s the trailer?” Boersma shouted when they reached the sallyport.

The deputy wasn’t kidding, Verret realized with a quick glance toward the dam. The trailer holding the pumps had disappeared, and the water in the sallyport was now level with the flood in the street. The lower end of the driveway was under nine feet of water. Its surface rippled with small waves.

The trailer is still in the sallyport, Verret thought. Water rushing through the breach must have pushed it to the deep end of the driveway. Before they could search for the pumps, however, they had to repair the dam. The basement doors and sandbags wouldn’t hold for long, and every minute brought them closer to catastrophe: flooding of the electrical room.

The water at the top of the drive was three feet deep. Ducking under, the deputies felt for the missing steel plate. After a few tries, Boersma surfaced with the free end of one of the pumps’ drainage hoses.

A few minutes later, Skyles yelled, “Found the plate!”

Three deputies wrestled the heavy plate back into position between the steel posts. Boersma and another man retrieved submerged sandbags that had shifted and wedged them against the seam.

With the dam restored, Verret was ready to tackle the trailer. “Now we have to get the pumps.”

“How?” Boersma asked.

“We’ll use the hoses to pull the trailer up the driveway,” Verret said.

“Do you know how heavy that rig is?” Skyles exclaimed.

“We need those generators,” Verret insisted. He grabbed Skyles squarely by the shoulders. “Are you with me?”

“No retreat, no surrender!” The ex–army man shouted, responding to Verret’s intensity.

With the hurricane howling around them, the two men made their way into the churning water following the drainage hose down into the sallyport until they could no longer stand.

“The trailer must be right below us,” Skyles sputtered, treading water.

Taking a deep breath, Verret dove. For the first time in hours, the storm sounds were silenced. He couldn’t see in the murky water, but he groped until he touched machinery. Running his hands over the pump, Verret searched for another hose. When his lungs begged for air, he kicked upward. As he broke the surface, rain again sltung his skin and the hurricane-force wind shrieked in his ears and battered his face. He gasped, taking in water and coughing.

“Any luck?” Skyles asked, surfacing beside him.

“Yeah, it’s right below.” Verret dove again.

After the third dive, Skyles came up with a hose. He swam the end back to the men on the street and then returned to the submerged trailer. Fifteen minutes later, they had located all three missing hoses.

Exhausted, Verret and Skyles swam back to the road and leaned against the dam. The men took a moment to catch their breath. Then they joined the other deputies and took up positions, two men to a hose. They planted their feet in the swirling flood and paused for just a moment.

“On three!” Verret shouted. “One! Two…three!”

With teeth gritted and muscles straining, the men pulled. The trailer didn’t budge. Verret shouted again. The men hauled on the hoses, but there was still no movement. When a third attempt failed, the men waited.

“This just isn’t going to work,” said a deputy, flinching when a crushed beer can blew into his shoulder.

Verret stopped to think, then turned to Skyles again. “If we push the trailer while they’re pulling, we might be able to move it.”

“That’s enough, Verret,” one of the deputies snapped. “It’s over. There’s nothing more you can do.”

Verret ignored him. “Skyles?”

“I’m just waiting for you,” Skyles said.

Verret had passed the point of reason. Refusing to give up, he and Skyles swam madly back to the trailer.

As Verret and Skyles dove, Boersma shouted. “Ready…”

Under the water, Verret and Skyles pushed the back of the trailer. It shifted forward a few feet. Then they surfaced for air.

“Damn, this is going to work.” Skyles grinned.

Again and again, the men dove, and the trailer slowly inched forward.

Spurred on by Verret’s relentless determination, the deputies pulled, pushing their physical limits until the heavy trailer finally reached the top of the steep drive.

Aching and spent, Verret swam to the dam and hung on the edge. Skyles gripped the steel plate with both hands, too breathless to talk.

Boersma raised the ends of the suction hoses. “What about these?”

Verret realized the intake hoses had to be dropped back in the deep end. He groaned and held out his hand.

“Give me one,” Skyles said wearily.

When Verret and Skyles returned again, the deputies helped them over the top of the dam. The two men collapsed against the warehouse wall, content to observe while the others struggled to start the waterlogged pumps. Twenty minutes passed before one pump engaged and water began pouring from the outflow hose.

Fifteen minutes later, Boersma gave up on the second pump. “I’m done. We’ll just have to hope that one pump is enough.”

Verret was too tired to argue.

It took every last shred of energy to make the trek back around and into the building. Verret just wanted to sleep. But first, he had to report to the sheriff. And he needed to check with his deputies on the tiers. Only then would he fall into bed. At least the building was safe, for now.