Dupree nodded, seeing she’d prevailed. He knew she’d done so with her touch, not just with her words. When reason fails, when instructions lose all meaning, when fatigue overwhelms bodies and souls, when it comes down to the decision to continue or give up, no force is more redemptive than the touch of skin on skin.
Sunset was forecast for 7:25 p.m. The light took a sudden flight westward in the last half hour of the day and colored the sky pink and purple. It painted a sunset so glorious and incongruous that not one of them would ever forget it.
Charbou’s prediction came true. As light died on the horizon, the city of music reverted to the Stone Age.
They needed to find shelter as soon as possible. Most of the reference points along the flooded streets would soon be invisible. Though they’d originally planned to get to Florida Avenue, they chose a closer street that might have been Dorgenois or Rocheblave. Bull, at the helm, sounded the air horn. Its blast rolled through the dark as they slid up to a two-story house that was completely flooded downstairs. The structure looked stable, and the second-story windows were accessible from the boat. He steered along the side to make sure the house was uninhabited, sweeping their spotlight across the upper windows in search of signs of life. Bull had begun to turn the boat when Johnson called an alert. “There! I saw something. I think there’s someone inside.”
Bull corrected course and sent their craft back in the direction Johnson was pointing. They all focused their lights there.
The back door downstairs, barely visible in the water, stood open an inch or two. A hand clutched the top of the door.
“Someone’s trapped inside!”
They maneuvered the Zodiac close to the house. Johnson and Charbou grabbed the top of the door and yanked. Stuck underwater in the mud, it didn’t budge. Dupree joined them. The three pulled with all their might. The door grudgingly gave way just a little, then a bit more, and at last they managed to pull it open. The hand dropped, the Zodiac rebounded sluggishly, and a corpse floated out of the opening. Caught by the strong current, it glided past their craft along the wall of the house. Amaia could tell the man was elderly, because of his white hair and beard. His skin, softened and bleached by the water, gave no clue to his actual age. He’d probably died the previous night during the worst of the storm. Bacteria in the water and the elevated daytime temperature had done the rest. Bare feet, colorless as gelatin, brushed against the siding. He was in jeans. His white T-shirt had bunched up and left exposed the lower part of a pale belly already mottled with the lividity of decomposition. Red letters across his T-shirt proclaimed him “World’s Greatest Dad.”
Amaia’s scream turned into an agonized moan. All eyes turned to her. She was covering her mouth with both hands as if trying to fend off the pain and menacing darkness. Face contorted, eyes filled with horror, she watched, devastated, as the sluggish current moved the body along. Without stopping to think, she plunged overboard so quickly that no one could stop her. As her team members shouted and called her back, she treaded water, blinded by tears and mud-laden water. She swam across the back yard to the street behind the row of houses, conscious she was fortunate to be wearing the buoyant ballistic vest of the New Orleans police, not the FBI issue.
Bull maneuvered the Zodiac in an attempt to reach her, but the sharp points atop the fence between the back yards were too much of a risk to the boat. He reversed course, retreated a couple of yards, and navigated along the far side of the fence to the street.
Dupree stopped Charbou from going overboard after her. “Wait!”
“What? But . . .”
“Just wait.”
Amaia reached the floating body and grabbed it by one hand. He’d been a big man. Strong. Even afloat, the body was heavier than she could manage; she couldn’t move it back toward the house. Desperate, she looked about her.
“Amaia!” Charbou shouted from the Zodiac. “There’s nothing you can do! He’s dead!”
But she wasn’t listening. Her eyes, filled with tears, fixed once more on the T-shirt. Was this man the world’s greatest dad? She heard her own voice as a child of twelve, answering from far, far away. He was. For someone, he was, and that was enough.
She unbuckled his belt and pulled it free of his jeans. She ran it through the two rear loops, then took the other end and towed the body sluggishly to the metal post of a traffic signal. Finding footing on the cement base, she used the belt to tie the body fast. If that man had been a good father, a child would come to grieve at his graveside; it was only fair to give that child the chance. She was determined to keep the flood from washing him away. She floated there beside the corpse, absolutely still. She sought the words for a prayer. “Our Father, our Father, ourFather ourFather . . .”
“What the holy hell is she doing?” Charbou exclaimed, transfixed.
Dupree was going to tell him, but Johnson spoke first. “She’s mourning her own father.”
Bull and Charbou turned to look at him.
“Salazar’s father died yesterday. Half an hour before we left Quantico, they telephoned to call her back to Spain. This morning they let us know he’d died.”
“I can’t believe it! Why didn’t you send her home? Just look at her!”
“She chose to stay. And not one of us has the right to judge her. We all make tough choices, promises that are hard to keep. You were about to give up a little while ago. I’m in awe of the way she’s been handling it, but a person can be taken by surprise. By a drowned pet, for example. Or the words on a T-shirt. Sometimes it’s just too much.”
Charbou accepted that reminder with a nod. Turning away to give Amaia her privacy, he said, “Don’t you think we should go get her?”
“Yes,” said Dupree. “We should. But give her another minute.”
They chose a fairly large house two streets farther west, announced their presence loudly, and shined the searchlight beam into the windows before concluding the place was empty. Then they forced a second-floor window open and crawled inside. Straightening up, they experienced the odd sensation of being able to stand erect and take steps across a firm surface after the long hours in the Zodiac. The staircase to the lower floor was flooded right up to the top. The second floor had three bedrooms in good shape and a bathroom where toilet overflow had left a foul and stinking mess. Johnson closed the bathroom door while Bill and Bull surveyed the rooms and checked a low, windowless attic crammed with junk.
The air inside was hot and heavy and humid and reeked of slime. Even so, they were grateful they could stretch out, take off their protective equipment, and settle down. In tacit accord, they avoided the beds. Taking shelter under an unknown stranger’s roof was one thing, but sleeping in unmade beds with outlines left in the bedclothes by the former inhabitants was another. Instead, the team gathered cushions and pillows, placed them along the wall, and sat together on the floor of the room they’d first entered.
The darkness outside was absolute, a black void with not a star in sight. Now that the helicopters had returned to base, the only sounds were their breathing and the creaks of swelling wood and timbers absorbing the foul water. They’d eaten nothing but granola bars since their hasty breakfast at the fire station. They parceled out the night’s rations and ate. Their spirits were lifted for the first time that day; they even smiled a bit in the eerie light of their electric lamps.