Code name, p.23
Code Name, page 23
Mark collapsed into the car. His breathing came heavy and deep. His clothing was soaked, and his tired body shivered from the labor. He was wrung out from the ordeal of worrying every minute that the bridge might collapse and take his wife to the bottom of Wax Bayou.
For a while, he sat and recovered his strength. Laura rubbed his shoulders to help him relax as the wind jostled the car in the darkness.
After a few minutes, Mark took the wheel. “Four more miles to go, and I don’t see anything on the map between us and the salt mine.”
He pulled the shift lever into Drive and slowly moved ahead, guided by the dim beam of the headlights. The car’s clock read 3:12 a.m. It had taken them nearly an entire night to cover a little more than half a dozen miles.
Reaching down, he turned on the radio, hoping to pick up a local station that would give a report about the storm. All he heard was static.
“Honey, please see if you can find a station with a weather report.”
She began scanning the frequencies, finally stopping at a strong signal:
‘… surge has already reached high levels in virtually all the communities along the delta. Residents have been advised to evacuate, and most have left their homes for higher ground.
‘The eye of Hurricane Carli is expected to make landfall about daylight, three hours from now, bringing wind in excess of 95 miles per hour. The storm track is on a heading of 302 degrees magnetic and appears to be zeroing in on the Terrebonne Bay. Coastal areas at greatest risk include St Mary, Terrebonne, LaFourche, St Charles, Jefferson, Plaquemines, and St Bernard and areas inland from those parishes.
‘Storm surge will be most severe along the coast and in communities adjoining rivers and bayous with direct links to the Gulf of Mexico. New Orleans is expected to suffer heavy damage from flooding and high winds. Outlying areas both east and west of the eye will be affected by heavy rain, high winds and flooding.
‘As the storm extends over the mainland, it is expected to weaken, and a high-pressure area over eastern Texas is anticipated to deflect the storm from its northwest track to north and then to northeast.
‘If the storm turns as predicted, it will most likely rake the gulf coast of Mississippi, bringing high levels of surge and flood damage to that region. Local wind speed and rainfall are expected to diminish by noon tomorrow; however, heavy flooding, severe thunderstorms and the possibility of tornadoes may persist in the area for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
To repeat …’
She turned the radio off and glanced at Mark. His attention was focused on the path ahead, but he had heard every word of the broadcast. “Good,” was all he said.
“Good?”
“At least we know what to expect.”
“How do we know that?”
“Grandpa was in New Orleans in ’26 when a big one hit the gulf coast. He used to tell me stories about that hurricane. It was so devastating and had such an impact on his life that he made quite a study of meteorology.”
“He did?”
“Yup. He and I used to go out and sit on the hill and watch the clouds. He explained all about air movement and condensation and precipitation. We had some big storms on the farm, lots of lightning and thunder. Even saw a tornado once, in the distance. He taught me a lot about how all that happens.” He looked her way. “Am I boring you with all this?”
“No, absolutely not, please go on.”
He eyed her suspiciously, knowing that her interest was probably only marginal at best, but continued anyway.
“Okay. Hurricanes – let’s talk about that, since we’re to going have some close personal contact with one. They begin life as nothing more than a thunderstorm way out at sea. But not every thunderstorm becomes a hurricane. It takes a very specific set of conditions to make it all work.”
Mark spent the better part of the next fifteen minutes explaining about the formation of cyclones. Laura patiently listened to what sounded like a college-level class in weather forecasting. But she could see that rehearsing all this in his mind gave him confidence. Understanding what was coming was somehow comforting.
“… storm surge is really serious in coastal areas, like where we are. The ocean will surge inland, flooding places that are normally well above water level. As the surge presses inland then sweeps back out to sea, it can carry away houses, cars and people.”
“Whew, thank you Grandpa,” Laura whispered, “gives me a whole bunch of new things to worry about.”
“Where we are, I’m pretty sure we’ll be all right. But if I were Elizabeth Mabrey, I’d put on more than a towel and head inland.”
The dim glow of their lights penetrated only a few feet into the unbroken blackness. At a ponderously slow pace they drove through the wild stormy night. A solid sheet of water covered the windshield in utter defiance of the wipers.
For three miles, they fought their way through the maelstrom; then the engine stumbled and died. Mark studied the instrument panel in disbelief. The fuel gauge was pegged on empty.
“Dang!” He smacked the steering wheel with his hand. “All we needed was one more mile.”
A distant flash of lightning, then a crack of thunder rolled over the car. Powerful gusts of wind rocked it side to side. Lightning lit the sky again, this time closer, followed in a few seconds by a deep rumble.
He reached down and turned off the lights, and the night went completely black around the car. The sky burst into light again, and in the fleeting brightness Mark thought he saw the figure of a thin man standing in front of the car. Then he was gone as the night went black again.
The car rocked in the wind.
Suddenly, there was a tap at Mark’s window. He spun toward the noise and, at that exact moment, another flash of lightning revealed the grizzled image of a very old man with his face pressed up against the water-streaked glass.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Pages 20–31, notebook #3
The startling vision of the wrinkled old man standing at the window vanished with the lightning. Then came the tapping again, and out of the blackness, a voice: “Hey, what you doin’ out here?”
Mark could see nothing through the rain-streaked glass. Slowly, he rolled his window down a crack and found himself staring into the dusky brown eyes of a very old man. His eyebrows were bushy and gray, his complexion dark and deeply furrowed with age.
“What are we doing out here?” Mark yelled loud enough to make himself heard above the wind. “What are you doing out here?”
“I saw yer light. There’s a blow a comin’. This place’ll be under water soon. Y’all can’t stay out here.”
Mark rolled his window down halfway to get a better look at their night visitor. He was old, all right; how old was anybody’s guess. He was dressed in a pair of worn coveralls, a black oilskin slicker; a droopy wide-brimmed hat covered his head.
“Y’all come on to my place. You’ll be safe there and then we talk more.” His voice was deep and mellow, his words slow and friendly, his accent softly French Cajun.
“Do you want to get in the car out of the rain?” Mark invited.
“No, thanks. Y’all come with me,” he insisted. “You’ll be safe at my place with mama and me. This place here is not safe.”
Mark looked at Laura.
“Please, y’all come,” the stranger spoke again through the window.
Laura nodded.
“Okay,” Mark said. “We’ll follow you.” Then he stripped out of his shirt, collected all the food and placed it on the outspread shirt. Pulling the corners together, he made a bundle.
“Hurry, we must hurry. This blow’s a gettin’ worse.”
“Okay, but my wife is pregnant, so we have to go slowly.”
“Ah, she is at that.” The man beamed a wide smile as he saw Laura’s tummy. “Mama take good care of y’all,” he assured her. “Now we go.”
Mark leaned against the door to force it open against the wind as he reached for Laura’s hand and helped her from the car. They bent into the gale and followed the old man into the darkness.
He was a skinny man. His back was slightly hunched over, yet he walked easily through whipping swamp grass even with the powerful wind doing its best to knock him over.
With Mark’s arm around Laura, they tried to keep up with the old man, but were soon far behind. Mark called out for him to slow down, but his voice was lost in the wind. And suddenly their guide was gone.
They stood alone in a whirlwind of brush that whipped every which way under the heavy breath of a wild gale. The scene was confusion in every direction. Looking back, Mark could no longer see the car and had no idea which way the man went.
Then a voice, and a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “Sorry, I walk too fast. I forget y’all don’t know the way. I go slower.”
“Thanks,” Mark shouted with relief. “We’ll try to keep up. How do you see where you’re going out here?”
“Don’t need to see; I just feel the way inside me,” the old man replied. “When you live out here, you gotta be able to find the way home blind, ’cause you just never know what’ll happen.”
Within a few moments, they began climbing to higher ground and entered the edge of a forest. Laura struggled and lost her footing, but Mark kept his free arm around her to help take one step then another up what was, in her condition, a treacherous trail.
The wind strengthened with every minute, wailing through the trees like an eerie lamentation, as if the whole earth were mourning a great loss.
Less than a hundred yards into the woods, a pale yellow light appeared through the dismal forest. As they approached, the outline of a simple wooden shack gradually took form, standing three feet above ground on a raised stilt-type foundation. Four steps led up to a covered porch that ran the entire length of the cabin front. Paint had never been applied to the raw overlap siding, allowing the wood to gray with age. A single door was flanked by two windows.
Trees surrounding the little house were bent over and shuddering under the unbridled fury of the storm. Mark looked at his watch. It was nearly six o’clock in the morning. It would be dawn now but for the storm’s black overcast.
If the radio’s forecast was right, the eye of the storm would be making landfall many miles to the east with winds topping 100 miles per hour. Being this far west of the eye, he hoped wind speed would be somewhat less. The counter-clockwise rotation of a Northern Hemisphere cyclone naturally offers some wind speed relief west of the eye in a storm that was moving north, as this one was; especially if the powerful high over Texas moved in and bumped the hurricane to the northeast, as the radio broadcast had mentioned.
But he knew the damage could still be formidable. The next few hours would be the worst, as the eye passed far to the east. But if the storm stalled after making landfall, as is sometimes the case, the worst could last a long, long time.
Lightning ignited the air, and Mark was thinking about tornadoes that are spawned by the unstable air surrounding a hurricane. Twisters could rip through any part of the countryside, including where this cabin stood. If that happened, trees could be uprooted and sent flying. And this frail little shack didn’t look like it could stand much stress before caving in or being blown away.
They stepped on the porch and the old man held the door open for Laura and then called out to his wife. “Mama, lookee what followed me home. Can I keep ’em?” He laughed out loud at his own joke.
“Papa,” she scolded impatiently, “what you talkin’ about?”
“These people were on the old salt mine road in their car, all broke down. I found ’em and brought ’em home. Mama, she’s expectin’ a baby …” he pointed to Laura, “… an’ real soon, I’m a guessin’.”
The old woman took Laura gently by the hand and led her to an overstuffed chair. “Oh, come with me over here to rest.” Then she flashed a cutting look at Mark. “How could you bring your pretty wife out here on a night like this?”
“Ma’am …” Mark started, and then Laura interrupted.
“Mama …” She smiled warmly, using the term the old man had used to address the woman. “My husband and I are being pursued by very bad people. We were trying to escape when we got stuck down there on the road. I’d be much obliged if we could rest here a little while. But please don’t blame my husband. He’s a very good man and would do anything to protect me.”
“Hrummph!” The old woman snorted, eyeing Mark with a skeptical glance as he stood there with no shirt on and carrying a bundle over his shoulder. “He don’t look like much to me …”
“Mama,” the old man cautioned, “mind your manners; I brung ’em here as guests in our home. I’d appreciate it if you’d treat ’em such.”
“Okay, tell your man I be sorry …” she said to Laura.
“Mama …” the old man started.
The old woman turned to Mark. “Oh, awright.” She extended her bony, frail hand. “Welcome to our home. Now, put that down and put your shirt on. You be in the presence of a lady!”
Mark smiled. “Pleased to meet you, Ma’am. My name is Mark, this is my wife Laura. We’re deeply in your debt for helping us.”
The old woman was a foot shorter than Mark, but her height was no measure of her spunk. She moved in close and put her face right up close to his, squinted and then boldly announced, “I don’t take to men who treat their wives poorly.”
“Good,” Mark replied. “Neither do I.” He turned to the old man. “Feisty, isn’t she?”
“Y’all don’t know the half of it.” He shook his head. “But she keep me young.”
“You say your name is Mark?” the woman asked. “Well, Mark, if’n y’all gonna be stayin’ in my house, you gonna tell me why. Just sit right over here …” she pulled up a straight-backed wooden chair and thrust him down on it, “… and don’t go tryin’ to make somethin’ up, ’cause I can read a lie all the way across the swamp.”
“Well, Mama—” Mark began, only to be cut off in mid-sentence.
“My name ain’t Mama. Only he can call me Mama,” she motioned to her husband, “and your sweet wife can call me Mama. I like her. Y’all can call me Marie, ’cause that’s my name, Marie Chambleau. It’s French, you know. And his name’s Franco Chambleau,” she shrugged toward her husband, “I don’t suppose he introduced hisself. He ain’t much on social graces.”
“Well, Marie, some people are hunting us, trying to kill us—” She cut him off again.
“Govemint?”
“Yes, people from the government—”
“Yep,” she tossed her head back, “you can’t trust the govemint. They steal you blind and leave you for dead. Lie, cheat and steal, that’s the govemint!”
Mark began again, “You would have loved my grandpa. He felt the same way you do. Anyway, we used to work for a government agency. I discovered some secrets I wasn’t supposed to know, and now they’re hunting us, and they’ll kill us to keep the secret. We’ve been on the run for a long time. I think we’ve lost them, but we have to leave the country or eventually they will find us.”
“They would kill a pregnant woman and her baby?” Franco asked from across the room.
“Yes, they would.”
“See, I told you, Papa, the govemint’s up to no good.”
“I know, I know. You told me,” he confessed with a wave of his hand.
Marie turned her attention back to Mark. “So, now what? They follow you here. They kill you here. They kill us just for good measure?”
“Oh my! I hope not,” Laura exclaimed. “We didn’t mean to bring you any danger.”
“Don’t worry, little mama,” Marie comforted her. “We be awright. Nobody gonna follow y’all here in this storm. Right now, let’s get you out of these wet clothes. I got some dry for y’all to wear.”
She got up and walked into the bedroom, the only other room in the cabin.
In a moment, she appeared, carrying a long cotton nightgown. “Here, go put this on, see if it fit over your tummy.”
Laura took the gown and struggled to rise from the chair. She faltered, and instantly, both Mark and Franco were by her side, helping her up. She thanked them then walked unsteadily into the other room. It was obvious that she was tired and stiff from her ordeal. To Mark, she looked more pregnant than ever.
Mark looked over at Franco and raised his eyebrows, and the old man smiled. “Men can be wet and miserable, women gotta be comfortable.”
“What you two talkin’ about? I bet y’all sittin’ there talkin’ about women, now ain’t you? “
“Ah, Mama …”
“Ah sure, it always be the same when men gets together, all they do is talk about women.”
Franco smiled a big, mostly toothless, grin at Mark. “Well, why not? You women be so darn pretty.”
“Yeah, right,” Marie mumbled under her breath. Mark thought he saw a blush move up the back of her neck as she turned away to help Laura. “Don’t go gettin’ your hopes up tonight, Papa; we got guests in the house.”
Franco laughed. “Dang,” he snapped his fingers in mock disappointment, “and I was feelin’ so spunky tonight.”
Just then, Laura gave out a tiny cry of pain from the other room, and they heard a soft thud. All three of them rushed to the room together, but Marie shouted, “Franco, stay where you are.” Then like a drill instructor she commanded Mark, “This is your wife. Come and help her. I help, too.”
He rushed into the room – just a tiny bedroom with an old dresser and mirror beside the bed. Laura lay on the floor, half undressed, the cotton nightgown on the floor beside her. He lifted her onto the bed and covered her with a thin blanket.
Marie cried out, “Oh see there, her water broke. She’s ready to have this baby. Papa,” she shouted, “run and get Miss Olivia.”
“Who is Miss Olivia?” Mark asked.
