Natasha

Prologue

Life and death- how closely they were tied together for her. Always one step closer to the grave than to the womb, she faced her greatest trial to date. In order to see tomorrow, this reluctant hero would have to sail a thirty-six foot sloop, a thousand miles, through a Category Five hurricane. Her chances of survival were slim. Then again, if anyone had told her five, ten, or even fifteen years ago that she would still be alive to see that day, she’d have thought them a fool.

This will be my finest hour, she exclaimed. She grasped the wooden cross hanging around her neck and kissed it three times for luck.

Even in the usually tranquil marina, waves were cresting well over five feet. White caps crashed against the breakwater sending a salty spray in all directions. Hurricane Natasha was moving too fast, and there was nowhere to hide. She slammed the throttle further forward than she would normally have in a no-wake zone. The time for conservative measures was long passed. If the boat did not make it to the ocean soon, it never would.

She spun the wheel to clear the last jetty near the West Palm Beach Inlet. Her escape route lie beyond the rows of richly appointed yachts. No one in one hundred and twenty years had ever seen waves breaking on the Intracoastal. Luckily for her, her five minute jaunt to the Atlantic was the shortest part of the journey.

I can do this, she whispered confidently to herself.

And then she came face to face with reality. An impenetrable wall of fifteen-foot waves had closed off the inlet from the ocean. It was too late. She was trapped inside.

Our Father, who art in heaven, she muttered, drawing in a deep breath of resignation. She opened up the throttle as far as the forty horsepower diesel would go.

Hallowed be thy name. She charged headlong toward the teeth of the ocean.

Thy kingdom come. The first crushing blow nearly turned her sideways. If it had, the sailboat would certainly have floundered.

Thy will be done, Her muscles bulged, and her arms ached, as she held the wheel tight against the mighty sea.

On earth as it is in heaven. A second wave crashed onto the bow sending a wall of water over her head.

Give us this day our daily bread. She ground her teeth and pushed forward.

And forgive us our trespasses, It was death or freedom. Closing her eyes, she prayed harder than she ever had.

As we forgive those who trespass against us. There would be no in-between today.

And lead us not into temptation, With a single colossal wave to go, she could feel the momentum switching her way.

But deliver us from evil. In the open sea, there was a chance.

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. It was not a good chance, but one she had to take.

Forever and ever, she exhaled.

Up over the final crest they went. Her entire body lifting off the deck as ten tons of wood and fiberglass breeched the ocean, pausing ever-so-briefly at its apex, before beginning the inevitable plunge into the abyss below.

Would she live or would she die? What transpired in the next few seconds would mean the difference between life and death.

Amen!

Chapter 1:

Here we go again. Detective Martin Britches of the Delray Beach police department growled menacingly at the television. For more than a week, his thirty-two inch LCD was frozen on channel 58, the Weather Channel.

It had been nearly a decade since the last hurricane had struck south Florida head on. The ferocity of Wilma in 2005 had been a surprise to most. She had been forecast to barely reach hurricane status before making landfall. Yet, when all was said and done, the storm was responsible nearly thirty billion dollars in insurable damages, and thirty-five fatalities. Since then, there had been many close calls and several near misses, but nothing significant had made a direct hit. When it comes to hurricanes though, as anyone who has lived in the Sunshine State for any significant amount of time will tell you, it always just a matter of time.

The beginning to hurricane season 2014 was starting remind many of the infamous 2004 year when no less than six named storms struck Florida from the Keys to the Panhandle. By the second week of October, they were already up to the letter L in the alphabetical list created by the World Meteorological Organization. Chaos was surely just around the corner. Still, for all the attention the previous storms attracted, Cristobal was the lone member to threaten the continental United States. According to Dr. Greg Forbes, a curious meteorological phenomenon, the Bermuda High, was responsible for our good fortune. Throughout the summer, the storms positioned themselves like the dots of an ellipsis in a straight line across the tropics. As they approached to within a few hundred miles of the East Coast, they died in the Northern Atlantic.

It was October though, and the rainforests of Central and South America shifted the tropical moisture into the Gulf of Mexico and Southern Caribbean. The same Bermuda high that tugged the African storms out to sea dragged the Caribbean ones toward the Florida peninsula. The first was an infant. Marco barely eclipsed the tropical depression stage in terms of wind speed. What it lacked in punch, it made up for in staying power. Moving at a mind-numbingly slow pace of five miles per hour, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, it dumped ten inches of rain over a forty-eight hour period. The water was still ankle deep in Martin’s front swale, when Dr. Greg pointed to another large area of disturbed weather well south of Cuba.

"Conditions are extremely favorable and will continue to be so over the next five days, as the storm moves slowly northward over the warmer waters of the Caribbean, and then eventually into the Florida Straits. The residents of the northern Bahamas and South Florida will need to diligently monitor its progress. Natasha could become a major hurricane by the time it reaches you. The sound of his voice in the background grew as familiar to Martin as one of his own children. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, at fifty past the hour, Dr. Steve graced the airwaves with his Tropical Update". Many people believed he believe he was a product of computer animation, and not a living breathing human being. How else could one explain his survival without the benefit of sleep? Eleven storms later, Martin had grown tired of the good doctor’s meteorological babbling. After hearing the latest coordinates and projected path, he left the subtitles on to catch any vital updates and muted the volume.

Formerly from the City of Brotherly Love, Martin gladly would have donated his right arm and maybe a kidney or two, in order to remain in Philadelphia. Philly was his home, it would always be his home. It was where he’d expected to spend the rest of his days. Fate, as it often did, had other plans. Shortly after his nineteenth birthday, he received the news that his high school sweetheart was with child. Martin was an upstanding young man of high moral value and Adriana Morales was a good Catholic girl. Long before anyone would glimpse the growing bump, they were married in Mount Carmel Cathedral in front of all their friends and family. Their union was never meant to last. Lust/Good Intentions makes people do stupid things. Their union was never meant to last.

Her extended family, all twenty-two of them, lived in Hialeah, Florida. Citing a wicked case of separation anxiety and morning sickness, she dropped out of Temple University and returned to the place of her birth. Martin followed closely behind. Any hope he had of returning to the Keystone State was removed before he placed the ring on her finger. Thinking back, the first time Adriana flirted with him, the first time she batted those thick, dark lashes, she sealed his doom. Lust/Good Intentions makes people do stupid things.

Martin passionately and openly loathed South Florida. In his estimation, the northern transplants were rude. The locals were ignorant. There were far too many wrinkly, elderly people. It was ninety degrees all year long. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find a decent cheese steak. There were so many aspects of the slower-paced, temperate lifestyle that irked him. It was hard to put his finger on the worst. However, if need be, he would gladly take a soggy hoagie roll with Cheez Whiz and Steak-ums over another hurricane-filled summer. For the better part of a decade, he survived the months of August and September living in fear.

It had not always been that way. Prior to 2004, Martin relished the possibility of a confrontation with one of nature’s most powerful displays. He was deluded, as is anyone who watches tropical updates with fascinated interest. Despite the firsthand accounts of Hurricane Andrew from his ex-wife’s family, and the countless articles he’d read concerning the subject, Martin had never personally witnessed their awe inspiring force.

His naiveté vanished forever in the midst of the most prolific hurricane season of the last century 2004. As Frances approached the coast, Martin tried in vain to hide his growing sense of excitement from his children. Even during the twenty-four straight hours of tropical storm force winds, he was furtively relishing the thrill. Peeking through the millimeter of space between his shutters, he longed to see a tree fall or a telephone pole snap. He was a fool.

What most severe-weather virgins cannot seem to comprehend is that the storm, with all its ferocious power, is merely the beginning. The real challenge comes once it’s over. It may seem hard to believe with all their immense power that the hurricanes themselves kill surprisingly few people. The preparation and the aftermath is where most of the tragedies occur.

Martin realized that truth fourteen days after Frances hit. Their home was still without electricity and he was trapped in a sweltering house with a bitchy wife and two bored-to-death teenagers. They had no AC, no fridge, no TV. It was at that very moment that Martin fully understood the toll of living in the tropics.

As if he had not endured enough hardships, the season had just begun. Jeanne visited four weeks later. Two years after that, Wilma tore apart his screen porch and removed the roof on his Florida Room. From 2004 to 2006, he spent a total of thirty-nine days without the conveniences of a post-Thomas-Edison America. Any pleasure or exhilaration he had for that first storm was replaced by trepidation and a foreboding sense of dread. The mere mention of the words hurricane season led to acid reflux disease. 2014 promised to be more of the same.

As predicted, Natasha evolved from a broad area of disorganized cloud cover, into a massive ogre bearing an eye nearly fifty miles wide. With sustained winds of one hundred-thirty miles per hour, the Category Four bitch threatened to decimate the low lying sections of the Sunshine State. The big question on everyone’s mind was; where would she strike? At first, the cone of probability covered a wide swath, predicting landfall anywhere from the Gulf of Mexico to Bermuda. Five days later, Natasha fixed her sites intently on Southeastern Florida. All of the computer models and simulations were in complete and total agreement. Natasha was hitting there and hitting hard. Any hope they had of being spared was gone.

The telecast bounced from field reporters all up and down the East Coast, with details of impending doom.

"Hurricane Natasha is a killer. Let’s make that perfectly clear to everyone watching this program today. There hasn’t been a storm like this to hit our soil in more than a century. Currently, we at the National Hurricane Center are projecting that the eye-wall will pass over land somewhere along the Broward /Palm Beach County Line, with the strongest winds to the north. For those of you living in the Boca Raton/Delray Beach area, the time has passed for evacuation; you need to stay put. All of your preparations should be complete. For the rest of you, please do not focus on the exact vicinity of landfall. Natasha’s hurricane force winds will extend some eighty miles with tropical storm force winds up to two hundred miles from the core. The majority of coastal cities, from Port St. Lucie to Florida City, will experience life-threatening conditions as Natasha approaches. By sunrise tomorrow morning, the barrier islands of Boca Raton and Delray Beach could see one hundred-eighty mile per hour wind gusts.

Accompanying these deadly winds will be a catastrophic storm surge nearly twenty feet high. By noon tomorrow, it should cover the barrier islands completely and wash inland as far as five miles." Martin stared at the meteorologist on the screen with disgust. With his tight fitting shirts and bulging muscles, the sight of Jim Cantore made Martin sick. Images of him braving bone-crushing winds to show off his physique were permanently ingrained in Martin’s mind. From Charley, to Frances, to Ivan, to Katrina, to Wilma, to Ike, Jim Cantore was ever present.

Get a life, you jerk, he snarled impatiently.

The room he sat in was mostly dark. All of the windows were covered by hurricane shutters so that only a single ray of sunlight shone through the steel armor. Outside, it was ninety-two degrees and clear with brisk breezes out of the southeast at fifteen miles per hour. It was just another perfect day in paradise.

The calm before the storm, Martin mumbled aloud. As a child, he wondered what this oft-used phrase referred to. Unfortunately, a gnarly veteran, he knew the answer. The scenario was set. With little to no warning, lines of rain-soaked black clouds would come from the east. They were called feeder bands and they would be making their way onshore soon.

Enjoy the sunshine. It won’t last long, Martin grumbled.

His ex-wife’s entire family, accompanied by his son and daughter, packed into a dilapidated school bus and drove six hours north to Jacksonville. Even his ex-golden retriever, Bobo, went along for the ride. Martin didn’t have that option. As a police officer, he worked for the Palm Beach Country Emergency Management Administration, and he was on the clock. His superiors set the wind speed benchmark at seventy-five miles per hour. When sustained winds reached that level, he was off duty. When they subsided to that level again, he was back on duty. Until the threshold of seventy five M.P.H. was surpassed, Martin wasn’t going anywhere.

Sitting in front of his computer, he tried to keep busy by reviewing his post-storm supplies. He had a first-aid kit and several gallons of clean drinking water on hand. Two cases of canned soup, assorted canned vegetables, and fruit cocktail were piled up in the corner with a carton of military rations; more commonly referred to as M.R.E’s (Meals ready to eat). His wallet held two hundred dollars in twenty dollar dominations. ATM’s used power and internet connections. In a post-apocalyptic environment, they were useless. His minivan sat in the garage beside half a dozen five-gallon containers of gasoline. Gas pumps used power and would be useless, too.

Outside, his lawn was mowed down to the sod and his hedge had a flat top haircut that would make a drill-sergeant proud. Both of his coconut palms were stripped of fruit. All of the kid’s toys and his former wife’s plants were piled up in the garage next to lawn furniture. When the winds began to howl, he did not want any of his possessions flying around the neighborhood endangering lives. The exterior of his two-story house was eerie with its barren yard and shuttered windows.

His fully charged cell phone and beeper lay side-by-side on the mahogany desk, as he waited for the call that would allow him to evacuate with the others. If Natasha was as bad as expected, neither of them would function when it was over. Cell towers would blow away. Telephone and electrical poles would tumble and fall like Lincoln Logs, leaving a grown-up game of pick-up-sticks behind. Even the repeaters for the digital radio in his car would be floating somewhere in the Everglades. Short wave was all he had when Wilma came through, and he expected it would be even worse that time.

The meticulous preparation necessary for any storm drove most people insane. For Martin, it was just part of the routine. All of the items on the hurricane preparedness list were checked and double-checked. He was as ready as he was going to be.

That was the time that he loathed the most. The waiting and the guessing were nerve racking. In case of a smaller storm, it was wait to see if it got stronger. With a monster such as Natasha, it was wait to see what’s left of your home, when she is done. The waiting was the worst.

At a few minutes after nine p.m., the tropical storm force winds buffeted the outside of his concrete blockhouse. It sounded as if someone left the teakettle on. There was a low whistling noise all around him. Every few seconds, he’d hear mini-collisions between the swirling debris and his aluminum shutters. They sounded like Jiffy Pop over an open flame. All the other noises he had grown so accustomed to were gone including the ever-present blare of car horns and the thump of too much bass from his neighbor’s stereo. There were no chirping birds, no laughing children. The swelling sound howl of the wind grew tiresome. Martin lived seven miles from the coast, so he wasn’t so much concerned by the storm surge. The ocean wouldn’t make it that far inland. It was the projected gusts, in excess of one hundred miles per hour, which frightened him.

The lights dimmed briefly several times and the television screen flickered. Losing power was inevitable. Martin prepared a flashlight and candles on the nightstand beside a battery-powered radio. He unplugged his laptop computer and turned it off.

He watched television as the storm began to inch closer and closer on the computerized map. Those were jus the feeder bands coming in. The core of Natasha was still several hours away. Jim Cantore was broadcasting live from West Palm Beach, where he demonstrated the power of the ever-increasing winds by standing valiantly in their path. His navy blue rain jacket billowed when he leaned forward into a sturdy gust.

You are such a tool, Martin grumbled. Outside the house, the whistling grew louder in pitch and intensity. It’s getting nasty out there. Just when they cut to the studio for another live update, he heard a thunderous boom outside his window. Martin saw the blue flash of a blown transformer, seconds before the television screen went blank.

The power was out, and it wasn’t coming back. His pager vibrated pointlessly on the table. The fluorescent green letters spelled out a worthless message.

ALL PALM BEACH COUNTY EMERGENCY EMPLOYEES ARE NOW OFF DUTY. YOU MAY PROCEED TO YOUR DESIGNATED SHELTER. PLEASE, STAND BY FOR POST STORM INSTRUCTIONS

Now, you tell me. Martin snickered; because there was nothing else he could do.

Chapter 2:

Denis Sauvage was all too familiar with hurricanes. Having volunteered with the Salvation Army ever since graduating Tulane in 2010, he’d seen more than his fair share of tropical tempests. Natasha was a Category Five on the Saffir-Simpson Scale; the strongest storm possible. Point of fact, only two Cat 5’s had struck the continental United States since the turn of the last century. The most recent was diminutive but powerful Hurricane Andrew. Its compact eye wall passed quickly over the sparsely populated city of Homestead causing cataclysmic damage to the tune of 23 billion dollars in insurable loses. Natasha was taking dead aim at the Palm Beaches, some of the priciest real-estate in America, and moving at a mind numbingly slow pace of eight miles per hour. If it stayed true to form, a hundred-billion in insurable damages was not out of the question.

Monetary losses were the least of his worries. The possible human casualties weighed heavily on his heart. Katrina in comparison was a Category Three storm, and responsible for over four thousand deaths. Granted, the majority of those were the result of flooding from the breeched levees after the storm. Theoretically, Natasha could be far worse.

Ironically, in some ways, Katrina and Andrew would save lives. Historical evidence alleviated much of the ignorance of the past. In the golden, olden days, most people simple didn’t know what hurricanes could do. As soon as the Weather Channel announced the possibility of this hurricane reaching Cat 5, a mass exodus began. It was estimated that eighty percent of all people residing east of Interstate 95 had evacuated.

Still given the high population density of Southeastern Florida, it left close to one million human beings in harm’s way. In his mind, Denis broke them down into a few generic categories. First there were the people with no common sense. Second, were those who were those who would be caught unaware (most of them were elderly). These two groups would make up the largest percentage of the injuries and fatalities. Lastly, there were the emergency management folks. They chose to risk life and limb to protect the people who did not evacuate. Denis Sauvage was considered part of that group.

Unlike the others, Denis was hunkered down in an over-glorified bank vault. The model he had could survive a direct hit from a Category 5 storm, or so the warranty read. He’d never had the opportunity to put it to the test. His safe room was constructed of six inch, seamless steel and was centrally located in the interior of his two-thousand-square-foot ranch home. Wind rated up to two hundred miles per hour, it would require something extraordinary to take that puppy out. Regrettably, the same could not be said for the concrete and wooden structure surrounding it. The products of man were never meant to hold up against those of nature.

Slightly after four in the morning, his garage door collapsed inward. A royal palm tree weighing close to a ton slammed straight through its thin aluminum shell. At twenty minutes past five, the garage roof peeled off and windows throughout the house exploded outward from change in pressure gradient. By six a.m., the roof was gone from the rest of the dwelling, and it was only a matter of time, before the walls went too. When the eye finally passed over the remains of his domicile at seven fifteen, Denis cautiously slid open the door of his solid steel crypt to peak outside.

Mon Dieu! C’est incroyable! (My God! It’s incredible). His house was destroyed. All that remained were the interior walls and a concrete foundation. Most of his neighbors had fared only slightly better. Many were missing sections of roof, but at least they had walls.

Staring at the blue skies overhead, he watched several birds soaring in the serenity of a sunny day. No matter how many times he witnessed that meteorological anomaly, he was rendered speechless. How could it be so tranquil after the hell that had just passed? There was no time to marvel at it, though. To the east, he spotted the dark clouds building on the horizon. In a matter of minutes, the backside of the eye-wall would unleash its fury.

Get back inside your houses! She’s coming back around. He yelled at a couple of neighborhood teenagers who came out to gawk. They heeded his dire warning, as did any other neighbors who’d emerged out of curiosity or the necessity of damage control. They all knew what was coming.

After snapping a few dozen photos in rapid succession, Denis locked himself back inside the vault. Perhaps, it was just his imagination, but the second half of the hurricane always felt worse than the first. In the case of a slow moving storm like Natasha, it was mentally draining to have experienced six hours of hell, only to have another six hours to endure. It was especially ghastly to watch as pieces of your dreams and your hard work were torn away like posters from a wall.

Denis was quite content where in his cage. The home around it was insured for its full value. Possessions of sentimental and financial value became meaningless when life was on the line. In matters of mortality, life won out over stuff. Locked in his darkened prison, Denis recalled his very first storm.

…

The year was 1995. He and his family were on holiday in St. Thomas. The Sauvage family from Montreal had no clue what they were in store for. Although the seaside resort was evacuated, Denis’s family chose to remain behind. In the hours prior to Marilyn’s unwelcome visit, they shot lots of photos and fantasized over the adventure to follow. As the bands of rain hit, the family pointed outside with a sense of awe. By the time the storm itself finally arrived, and the realization of their idiocy apparent, it was too late to take it back.

The roof of their beachside bungalow peeled off like the cellophane skin of an over ripened onion. The walls buckled and quickly disintegrated into pieces which flew like aluminum Frisbees through the sky. Before the winds could carry them away as well, his mother shoved him and his sister underneath a double sink cabinet in the bathroom. Holding onto the pipes for dear life, they listened to the horrible shrieks and cries of their parents, as they were pummeled and pelted with flying debris. Shortly after sundown, the water arrived. As it poured into the cabinet doors, he pulled his ten-year-old sister to safety. Denis couldn’t see a thing in the blackness of a cloud-covered night. He nearly crushed Marie’s hand with his grip.

Ouch, you’re hurting me. She whined.

Hold on to me, no matter what happens, don’t you ever let go! He screamed above the rushing tide. His eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness. He couldn’t see twenty feet in front of his face without the benefit of electrical streetlights. The fear at that moment was intense. Like most teenage boys, death was nothing more than a surreal nightmare. Denis never thought to question his own mortality. He questioned it that night though as the wind and sand tore at his eyes and skin.

Searching the black of night for any hope of salvation, his eyes began to play tricks on him. He saw shapes pass by in the distance. Was that a boat? There was no reason for a boat to be floating by the living room. Reality, it was not part of an illusion. Coming at him out of the darkness was a sailboat turned on its side. He reached out and grabbed a tattered line. He wedged his sister tightly between the metal rungs and grasped the rail in a death grip. They practically skidded across the surface on the storm surge, while pieces of houses and botanical debris rushed by them. Where were his parents? Denis could not see them, but he could hear his mother’s frightened voice. Several times, she prayed in French loud enough for him to make out the words. At first, they were prayers for forgiveness and safety. As the winds grew stronger, they were prayers for death. The sounds of her voice would haunt him always.

That fateful night seemed to drag on forever. He lost track of time and slipped in and out of consciousness. Somewhere during the early morning hours, he must have nodded off, because he awoke to the sound