Dan nodded reluctantly, his eyes on the line of trees that marked the edge of the state park. They were tossing fitfully now against the gray clouds scudding across the sky. Soon their leaves will be blowing off, then whole branches. Lots of debris is going to be flying around, he thought.
“Okay,” he said grudgingly. “Take her down.”
He turned and clambered down the launch platform’s steel steps, then walked swiftly to his waiting Jaguar. It took less than five minutes to drive to Hangar A, but Dan thought the sky darkened noticeably in that short time. Once he parked in his slot he pulled up the top on the convertible and locked it down tight. The car had never leaked before, but it had never gone through a hurricane, either.
The sound of the wind was an eerie wail inside the hangar. Now we’ll see if these buildings really will stand up to hurricane winds, Dan thought as he hustled up the stairs to his office. We’re high enough above sea level so we don’t have to worry about storm surges. Then he thought, Unless we get a tidal wave. That would be the finishing touch.
April was at her desk, looking worried. Her computer screen showed an animated weather map. Dan saw the big swirling cyclonic clouds of Hurricane Fernando out in the Gulf moving remorselessly toward the Texas coast.
“Heading our way, huh?” he asked, half-sitting on the corner of her desk.
“Straight toward us,” April replied, her voice a little quavery.
“You’d better get out of here while the ferry’s still running.”
“I’ve still got to get this order for liquid hydrogen processed.”
“It can wait.”
With the hydrogen facility destroyed by the explosion, Dan had to purchase liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the spaceplane from a commercial supplier. He had asked April to handle the task, bypassing his purchasing department because he didn’t know whom he could trust within his own company.
April said, “I can stay—”
“No. We won’t get much work done today. The launch is scrubbed and the crew’s going to tow the bird back into its hangar. Get on home, kid.”
“What about the others?”
“Get on the P.A. and tell ’em that everybody except the launch crew can go home for the day. If the ferry stops they can stay at the motel, on the company.”
The motel was the island’s official storm refuge. It was stocked with emergency food and water and had its own auxiliary power generator for electricity.
As April patched her desk phone into the public address system Dan went into his office. Too nervous to sit at his desk, he stood by the window and watched the booster being lowered to its side by the gantry crane.
Feeling helpless, restless, and more than a little scared, Dan paced his office for a few minutes, then headed back out.
April stopped him. “Call for you from Venezuela,” she said. “Señor Hernandez.”
“He’s got a great sense of timing,” Dan grumbled, turning back to his office. Over his shoulder he said, “I told you to go home, April. Git!”
Sliding into his desk chair, Dan tapped the phone’s ON key. Rafael Hernandez’s handsome face filled his display screen.
“Señor Hernandez,” Dan said, putting on an amiable smile. “Good morning.”
Hernandez smiled back. “Buenas dias, Mr. Randolph. How are you this lovely day?”
Dan couldn’t see much past Hernandez’s head and shoulders. He appeared to be in an office of some kind.
“It may be a fine day in Caracas,” he said. “We have a hurricane bearing down on us.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed.”
Totally unperturbed by Dan’s troubles, Hernandez said calmly, “I have called to inform you that all the necessary arrangements have been made. You may send your technicians to Caracas as soon as you wish. I will see that they meet the airport’s director of flight operations and anyone else they will need to interact with.”
Dan broke into a genuine smile. “That’s very good news, Señor Hernandez.”
“I am pleased also, Mr. Randolph.”
That means he checked his bank account in Washington and found the money I deposited there, Dan knew.
Aloud, he said, “Please, call me Dan. We’re going to be partners, after all.”
Hernandez dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “And you must call me Rafael.”
They chatted for a few minutes more, then Hernandez pleaded the press of other business and cut the connection. A gust of wind rattled the steel wall of Dan’s office. He looked out the window and saw that it was almost as dark as night. No rain, though. Not yet.
Maybe I should get over to the motel, he said to himself. Then he answered himself: No. I’ll ride it out here. If these hangars don’t hold up to the storm then I might as well be drowned along with everything else.
Hurricane Party
By the time April got to the ferry pier, the last boat had gone. Heavy gusts were lashing frothy whitecaps across the normally tranquil bay. The windswept concrete pier was empty, abandoned, a sign bearing a hand-scrawled CLOSED FOR FERNANDO flapping in the gusts.
So she turned her baby blue Sebring around and drove to the motel. Plenty of cars parked there, she saw. April ran through the strengthening wind into the motel’s lobby. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Kelly Eamons wasn’t on duty at this time of the morning, but the bar was jammed with refugees from the storm, raucous music blaring from the loudspeakers, news coverage of the approaching hurricane on each of the TV screens.
“Hey, April!” one of the men crowding the bar called to her. “Come on over and have a drink.”
It was Len Kinsky. All the booths were jammed, and men were packed three deep at the bar, with a scattering of women among them. April recognized most of them as Astro employees. With a resigned shrug, she went to the bar. When they hand you a lemon, her father had always told her, make lemonade. Good idea, she thought. She ordered lemonade, which the men who quickly surrounded her found uproariously funny. Even the normally sourpussed Kinsky laughed.
They’re already half drunk, April recognized. And it hasn’t even started raining yet.
Kelly Eamons was arguing with the ferryboat skipper at the pier on the mainland side of San Antonio Bay.
“But I’ve got to get over to the island!” she shouted over the howling wind. “I’ll lose my job if I don’t show up for work!”
The skipper looked up from the line he was tying off. He was wearing a polyester windbreaker, its hood bunched up around the collar, and a baseball cap perched on his bald head. His ferry, which had once been a tank-carrying landing boat for the U.S. Marines, was heaving up and down in the swells, grinding its truck-tire bumpers against the length of the concrete pier with a shrieking sound that was almost like fingernails on a blackboard.
“Whattaya think I am, Prince Henry the Navigator? I’m not takin’ her out until this storm passes.”
“It’s only a few miles,” Eamons said.
He turned away from her, muttering, and bent over the line he was knotting. Eamons thought of flashing her FBI badge, but that would blow her cover completely. A few fat drops of rain spattered down. She retreated to her car, parked alone in the lot except for a new-looking SUV, which she assumed belonged to the skipper.
She phoned April’s office. No answer except for her recorded voice saying the office would be closed until after the hurricane had passed. Eamons tried April’s cell phone.
“Hello?” April’s voice, with a lot of noise in the background: voices, music.
“April, it’s Kelly. I’m stuck on the mainland. The ferry’s not running.”
“That’s okay. I’m at the Astro Motel. Looks like we’ll have to stay here until the storm blows over.”