A chill ran through me. I thought, suddenly, no way out.
“You understand now, Adrian?” She tossed the pen to Krom.
He caught it. “Do you work for FEMA, Lindsay?”
She eyed him. She saw the tables turn.
Say something, I thought.
“Lindsay?” he said, gauging the attention of the room, “are you on staff with the Federal Emergency Management Agency?”
She said, icy, “I consult.”
He smiled. “FEMA worked hard to overcome its past troubles. I’m certain they welcome your expertise.”
“Yes Adrian. They do.”
“Delightful. And so you know how to work the channels to get the resources?”
“We’re building the road.”
“Who calculated capacities? Who ran the numbers on visitor population fluctuations? What’s the peak vehicle load, adjusted for weather and disrupted communications?”
“There is nowhere else — adjusted or not — to build an escape route.”
“How many emerg-ops have you run?”
She said, “You mean like Rainier?”
That sent a puzzled buzz through the room. But I sucked in a breath, as did Walter and acting-mayor Jefferson Liu, beside me. I thought, now she’s the one being unfair. Rainier was Adrian Krom’s worst nightmare, the volcano that nearly ended his career. But he’s been working his way back. The last thing he needed here was to have to defend himself for a mistake he’d long ago corrected. The last thing we needed, I thought, was to question the capability of our emerg-ops guy.
Krom said, icy, “Who ran the numbers, Lindsay? The numbers here. Let’s stick to the point. Nobody from FEMA ran them here because you started before I got here.”
Jefferson Liu cleared his throat. “Winter was coming, Adrian.”
“Winter’s here,” Krom said. He turned to the easel and drew a new line connecting town to Highway 395.
I strained forward, along with everybody else. Hal’s flash lit it up. This new line connected with 395 well south of the active magma chamber — and it did not run near the Inyo system, like Lindsay’s Bypass. My God, I thought, Adrian Krom had come up with an alternate escape route.
Lindsay lifted the overlay and squinted at the map. “Pika Canyon?” She let the overlay drop. “That’s what you came up with? It’s a bobsled run.”
“No,” Krom said, “it’s a forest service road.”
“It’s a one-lane dirt road through a narrow canyon.”
“And,” he said, “it can be extended a couple of miles to link up with 395.”
“It would take three times as long to evacuate on that as it would on the Bypass.”
“You’re the volcanologist,” he said, “you tell me. Is there any one of your babies that will take out that road?”
Her fine features hardened.
Krom scanned the crowd. “Jimmy! Can you build that?”
Jimmy Gutierrez, cornered, came forward. Jimmy’s chief engineer on the Bypass. He’s a perpetually sunburned man with a mass of white hair and the gangly mien of a hound, and he paused beside Lindsay. Chief engineer of her escape route. “See Lindsay,” he said, nervous, “Adrian did have me look at a few alternates — just rough estimates.”
She lifted her chin.
Walter whispered, “Let’s get her out of here.”
“Wait,” I said, heart slamming. I wanted to hear what Jimmy had to say.
Jimmy began shredding his styrofoam coffee cup, and turned to Krom. “It’s like I told you before, Adrian. Pika’s not plowed and it’s gonna be hard getting the big cats and dozers up in there and at the other end you gotta go from scratch. You’d have to divert everything we got going now on the Bypass to this here if you was serious about doing it.” He stored bits of styrofoam inside the diminishing cup. “Can’t do both. It’s a question of time and resources.”
“No,” Krom said, “it’s a question of safety.”
Lindsay looked like she’d been slapped.
I had the urge to step between Linday and Krom but I didn’t know what I would say if I did. I didn’t know why it had to be a question of safety, anyway, because between the two of them, they should know. Why couldn’t the volcanologist and the emergency-ops czar work it out?
“Jeff!” Lindsay looked to the acting mayor. “You saw no reason to doubt the safety of the Bypass back in November when you voted to build it.”
Jefferson massaged his goatee. “I didn’t know we had an alternative.”
People milled on the porch outside, zipping jackets, plunging hands into gloves, broaching the cold of the night.
Walter jostled me. “Do you see her?” In the crush of the meeting’s adjournment, we’d lost Lindsay. We made our way forward and went safely down Mike’s swept stairs and came upon Krom. He stood shivering in his sweater.
Walter said, “You’ll catch your death out here, Adrian.”
“Seeing the guests off. Couldn’t get near the coat-check.”
I said, “What about the road?” and Walter sent me a look, and I said, “I’m sorry, I’m cold, so I’m just cutting to the chase.”
Krom laughed. “So you are. Don’t worry, I’ll convene the Council and we’ll discuss the options. Lindsay will join us.” His attention shifted. “And here she comes, as we speak.”
In her field clothes, Lindsay looked like she looks when she’s tramping happily around the caldera looking for trouble. She waved. She had a cell phone in her hand.
“There you are,” she said to me and Walter. “I just got off the phone with Len. That’s Len Carow, Cassie — he’s Adrian’s boss at FEMA. We all met on Adrian’s first volcano. A fellow named Rainier.”
I thought, oh shit here we go.
She turned to Krom. “Be good to see Len again. Tomorrow, nine ayem shuttle from LA — assuming his DC flight gets into LA on time. Must say, I’m miffed he’s waited so long, since I’ve been asking ever since you got here that he send someone to replace you.” She gave a graceful shrug. “Bureaucracy. You hear nothing and then the big man himself decides to come.” She pocketed the phone. “Fait accompli.”
Krom was silent, like he was trying to figure how many ways that phrase could be translated.
“Len simply couldn’t understand, Adrian, why you wanted to throw months of roadwork and our hard-earned funds by the wayside. He wants to see for himself.”
Krom spoke then. “Be careful what you ask for, Lindsay.”
She smiled her cat’s smile.
CHAPTER NINE
I took Highway 203 out of town, counting cars.
This has been the road out of town since the town was built. The Bypass, or any other emergency evacuation route that gets built, will be a secondary way out. Right now, this is the only way out. Highway 203 runs five miles from town down into the high desert, intersecting Highway 395.
I’d never given much thought to traffic on 203, unless I was stuck in it, but I sure did now.
Within a mile, thirty-one cars — twenty with skis and eleven with snowboards — passed in the westbound lane heading into town. I saw three cars in my eastbound lane and a bus in the rearview. Of course it was morning; most people were coming into town now to get to the slopes, not trying to get out. On a big ski weekend we probably get twenty thousand people. I increased the traffic on 203 to bumper-to-bumper, peak vehicle load. If the day was clear like this morning — and no flat tires, no disrupted communications — we should all keep crawling along. I adjusted for weather. Fog, snowstorm, black ice — well that would make it stop-and-go.