“They won’t agree to meet you for no reason at all.”
“You’re forgetting about the girls. Samedi knows the two girls from NOLA are alive, because Len told him so. They’ll tell Dominic to take them someplace, just the way they were planning.”
“And what if they send someone to pick up the girls instead?”
“That’s a risk we have to take.”
“All right, suppose they agree and set up a rendezvous. If we’re planning to arrest whoever shows up, perfect, no problem, but you’re talking about infiltrating the gang. What’s going to stop them from putting a bullet in your brain as soon as they see you don’t have the girls? Why would they trust someone who shows up empty handed?”
Dupree stood grimly silent for several seconds before answering. “You’re right, Bull. That’s why I’m going to hand over the girls.”
72
THE FOURTH DAY
New Orleans, Louisiana
Thursday, September 1, 2005
Getting back to the city was easier than escaping it, but finding the way to their destination was another matter altogether. They came back across the Westbank, crossed the Mississippi at Bywater, and from there, proceeded eastward on foot to get to Jackson Square. Their route, sometimes across highway bridges, other times through chest-deep water, got more and more complicated.
The greatest difference between the city Amaia left and the one she found on their return from the swamp was the sense of absolute desperation.
People had been numbed by shock immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit. It’d been evident from the disbelief in their faces, their incredulity at the sheer brute force of nature. The waters rose throughout that first night, so the day broke to catastrophe. People were initially in a stupor, but the progressive deterioration of the situation established a cycle in which each day, the unprecedented disaster became even worse than the day before.
The third day dawned with no significant change. The flood seemed to have reached its maximum level, though there was still the possibility another levee might give way. Even that wouldn’t change things much. Eighty percent of the 170 square miles of New Orleans’ terra firma was underwater. The power was out and municipal water plants had shut down. No shops were open. There was no air-conditioning in a city where daytime temperatures regularly broke ninety degrees. Nights weren’t much cooler.
The third day was one of hopelessness. Children and the elderly remained on highway overpasses, huddled together or passed out under the cruel sun after three days without food or potable water. Rumors of impending rescue passed from mouth to mouth, fed by reports via the few functioning transistor radios, but no help came.
By the fourth day, madness reigned. The team came back from their time in the swamp to a changed city.
Amaia, Johnson, and Charbou trudged along a highway at five in the afternoon. The sun shone as mercilessly as at noon. Under those brilliant, gleaming skies, the city stank of feces and death. It seemed totally absurd that only a few miles away, international flights were departing on schedule, evening newscasters were prepping to go on the air, and some people were luxuriating in long, hot showers and others were making love.
The great mass of NOLA city dwellers, whose initial reactions to this unthinkable torment had been similar, were now divided like cancerous cells into two equally ghastly camps: those who’d lost all hope and those equally bereft of hope who were also incensed.
Some of the despondent did look up as the team approached. Indifferent voices warned them there was no way out; the road they were on went nowhere. Like all the rest of the streets in post-Katrina New Orleans.
The second group, the angry one, made noise and talked rowdy. They screamed at the passing team, threatening them and demanding attention. At the sight of representatives of the state, they yelled, “Where the help you bastards promise us?”
“They ain’t sending help!” ranted one man. “Our USA finally done figure out how to kill us all!”
Charbou looked at Amaia. “You know, they’re not wrong. Terrorists blow up the Twin Towers, and the whole country has a shit fit, but a city full of black folks drowns, and who cares? Can you even imagine New York four days after the towers fell if nobody went to help?”
Amaia nodded. “This is unbelievable.”
Another, smaller group emerged, a breed of determined trekkers. They were scarce and increasingly infrequent, but all the more extraordinary for that. Some were women with infants in their arms. Others were squalid men pushing supermarket carts heaped with the most bizarre assortment of objects imaginable. Shirtless old men, badly sunburned, staggered along carrying shopping bags with photo albums and wedding mementos. They all shuffled drearily and stopped only to shade their eyes and squint into the distance. They resumed their strange pilgrimage like dead souls in Dante’s Inferno, damned to walk day after day but never arrive at their destination.
The team had just waded through waist-deep water to access one end of an I-10 overpass. Once up on the road’s surface, they took time to dump the water and muck out of their rubber boots and dry and check their sidearms. Johnson and Charbou took turns in the lead as they proceeded along the highway. Amaia kept relatively close to them, listening to their conversation. Charbou pointed south. As he turned to look, Johnson suddenly jerked and fell headlong. Amaia halted, confused, not knowing whether Johnson had fainted or simply slipped. Half a second later, she heard the echoing report of a gunshot. Charbou grabbed her arm and pulled her down. Another bullet whizzed overhead.
“They’re shooting at us!” Charbou shouted as he crawled past her toward Johnson. Amaia had already taken cover behind the concrete barrier along the edge of the overpass.
“I’m pretty sure it came from that building,” she said, pointing past Charbou. “Wait until I give the signal.”
“Hurry up!” he shouted, shielding Johnson with his own body.
Kneeling, she raised her pistol above the barrier, shouted to Charbou to go, and discharged a full magazine toward the building without aiming at anything in particular, her only objective being to cover her teammates.
Charbou got up just enough to grab Johnson under the arms and haul him to the side of the road. He fell heavily at her side with Johnson on top of him. Covered in sweat, the FBI agent was clenching his jaw and sucking air noisily through his nostrils, struggling against the shock of being shot.
Amaia checked the wound. He’d been hit in the left shoulder just at the edge of his vest. His arm was twisted at a strange angle, and she suspected damage to the bone and tendons. She dumped out the contents of her knapsack, grabbed a cotton blouse, and pressed it against the wound as she ran her fingers across his back, checking for an exit wound. There was none.
“It’s not serious, Johnson. The slug’s still in you, I can feel it under the skin. I think the bone is broken, but there’s not much blood. You’ll pull through this one.”
Johnson didn’t answer but he turned his head, looking around at their exposed position on an empty highway bridge where each end sloped down to the water.
Amaia read his mind. “Stop it, Johnson, don’t even go there! We’re going to get you out of this, you understand?”
Charbou straightened up a bit, trying to see where the shots had come from. He slid back down again. “Looks like they’ve stopped. Probably weren’t expecting return fire.” He pulled the radio out of its sling. “Attention, code three. This is Detective Bill Charbou, we have an officer down, repeat, code three. We’re on the I-10 overpass over Elysian at Tonti Street.”