spoken to the man before takeoff, and he seemed to know quite a bit about the evacuation efforts. He was an older guy, gray haired with deep frown lines across his forehead, but clearly in fantastic shape. He looked as though he could lean out the door of the chopper and scoop people from their rooftops with his bare hands.
“There are people on a roof down there!” she shouted to him. “Can we get them?”
He shook his head. “We’re not equipped,” he said. “One of the rescue choppers’ll see them.”
There certainly were plenty of other helicopters. She watched them zip through the air, buzzing precariously close to one another. Some were huge and olive-drab, like the one she and Adam were in. Others were tiny and colorful, most likely donated to the cause by private companies. Rebecca could no longer see the roof where she’d spotted the man and child, and she hoped one of the choppers had already managed to pick them up.
She leaned toward Adam, her lips close to his ear. “The worst part of DIDA work is when you feel helpless,” she said, and he nodded.
It was rare that she felt helpless, though. She was a problem solver and the more chaotic the setting, the better she performed. Dot had once gone so far as to call her a magician. “The only woman I know who can manage two dozen patients at one time, make a jetload of supplies appear overnight and still find time to sleep with the best-looking dude on the site,” she’d said, annoying the hell out of Rebecca. Dot was one of the few people who knew how to yank her chain.
The gray-haired man abruptly unbuckled his seat belt and walked to the front of the helicopter, leaning into the cockpit to talk to the pilot. Rebecca watched him, wondering if he would mention the people she’d seen on the roof. He spoke with the pilot for several minutes. Like the other DMAT team members flying with them, his battalion dress uniform was blue, while her DIDA uniform was dark gray. His multiple pockets, though, bulged just as hers did. In hers, she carried two water bottles, batteries, an MRE, a protein bar and her cell phone, which Dorothea told her she might as well leave behind. The cell towers near the Wilmington airport, where the evacuees were being taken, were down.
Rebecca brought it along anyway, and she knew Adam had his as well.
The man returned to his seat. He leaned toward Adam and Rebecca. “I was wondering why we went past the airport,” he said.
“We did?” Rebecca had been so mesmerized by the helicopters that she hadn’t even noticed the airport.
“Right,” the guy said. “The pilot got word that someone on the ground was shooting at the choppers.”
“You’re kidding,” Adam said. He looked a little green.
“They think it was a rumor, so now we’re going down.”
Rebecca gave Adam a “whatever” shrug of her shoulders. She faced the swaying tower of supplies again, tightening her seat belt, and psyched herself up to face whatever they’d find on the ground.
She sensed Adam’s disorientation as they climbed out of the helicopter, and remembered feeling the same confusion the first time she’d landed in a disaster area. The tarmac was brutally hot, the sun so bright and the smell of jet fuel so strong that her head instantly began to pound. There was no time to waste, though, and they joined the DMAT team in unloading the supplies from the helicopter. Adam was quick to get a grip on his confusion. She saw the energy she’d always admired in him as he climbed back into the cabin and began handing boxes and crates down to the volunteers on the tarmac. He’s going to be good at this, she thought. She remembered her conversation with Maya at the Starbucks a few nights earlier. A little separation was probably the best thing for the two of them right now. Time apart would give them a new perspective on their problems.
On the runway in front of them, she could see the string of helicopters landing and taking off. The choppers remained on the ground only long enough to dump their human cargo of evacuees before lifting into the sky again. Just like Katrina, she thought, as she watched so many people pour from one chopper that she knew they must have been piled on top of one another inside the cabin. Most of them were empty-handed, although a few clutched overstuffed plastic garbage bags. Mothers grabbed the hands of their children. One man carried an elderly woman in his arms. Rebecca turned back to the task of unloading the supplies. She would see plenty of these people in the days to come. There was no time to worry about them now.
“You two!”
Rebecca recognized Dorothea’s booming voice over the din from the helicopters. She turned to see the older woman standing near the bottom of the steps leading up to the concourse, her gray uniform a few shades darker than her braid and her hands forming a megaphone around her mouth. “Get your gear and come inside!” she called.
They finished unloading the chopper, then rummaged through the cargo until they found their duffel bags and ran together into the terminal.
Inside the glass walls of the concourse, the din changed from the roar of the helicopters to the buzz of human beings confined in too small a space to hold them. The gates looked as they might during a freak snowstorm on Christmas Eve, when all the flights had been grounded. People were everywhere. They slumped in the chairs. They sat on the floor, leaning against one another to stay upright as they tried to sleep. Long lines snaked to the restrooms, as well as to the few bottled water stations Rebecca could see.
She and Adam followed Dorothea through the corridor to the lobby, and Rebecca felt Adam’s hand light against the small of her back. He was so physical, and she liked that about him. He was always touching Maya—an arm around her shoulders, holding her hand, smoothing her hair. Brent touched Rebecca when he wanted sex; he was so damn predictable. They’d be walking home from a restaurant, and if he took her hand, she knew what he was after. The only good thing was that she nearly always wanted it, too.
In the lobby, Dot ushered them into a small office and closed the door. Two desks took up nearly all the space in the room, and there were no chairs. “Okay,” Dorothea said. “Have a seat.”
Rebecca boosted herself onto the edge of one of the desks, but Adam dropped his bag at his side and remained standing, hands in his pockets. He rocked on his heels as though raring to get to work.
“Is there any organization to what’s going on out there?” he asked. Clearly he thought there was none, and Rebecca guessed he was close to being correct, but it wasn’t the sort of question you asked Dorothea Ludlow. He didn’t know Dorothea well, so he couldn’t really have known. She tried to keep a smile off her face.
“Damn straight, there’s organization!” Dorothea said, gray eyes flashing. “We’ve accomplished more here in two days than you could in a month.”
Adam held up his hands in surrender. “I believe you,” he said with an uncertain laugh.
Rebecca grinned. “Don’t beat up on my brother-in-law,” she said to Dorothea.
“I can already see I’m going to have to separate the two of you.” Dorothea shook her head in mock disgust.
“We’ll behave,” Rebecca said.
Dorothea folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the second desk. “Well, listen up, and I’ll tell you the setup,” she said. “The concourse is where the majority of evacuees will hang out for now. Here in the lobby, on either end, is where the medical teams are setting up the tent walls. I’ll let one of the DMAT workers give you the full rundown. Look for Steve. He’s in the baggage-claim area.” She looked at Rebecca. “We’ve got the four zones going, like we did with Katrina,” she said, and Rebecca nodded. She would explain what that meant to Adam later. “No one expected this many people, and the teams are overwhelmed—” Dot looked at Adam “—which is not the same as disorganized. We’re trying to get some more teams in here. Like I told you, the cell towers are down, but I have a sat phone. Here’s your two-way radios and some extra batteries.” She pointed to the radios on the cluttered desk behind her. “No power, needless to say. The medical areas’ll have some AC from generators, but the rest of the terminal’s a damn steam bath.”