Page 36 of Hurricane Irene

“Abso-fucking-lutely not!” yelled Luc. “You will not go out there!”

“Luc, you’ve been married to me for a very long time. When did ordering me around ever work for you?” She gave her husband a smirk and a kiss. “Let me man the submersible with a SEAL. I know the machine better than anyone since I was the engineer that designed it.”

“I’ll go with her,” said Ryan stepping forward. “I was an engineer on the project as well. It holds five people. Me, Montana, Garrett, Nash and one SEAL.”

“Me,” said Mo. “I deployed from subs on more missions than just about anyone in this room. I know the submersible isn’t a submarine but it operates in the same way. Garrett, Nash, and I can take the diver propulsion vehicles and hit the surface. It will be rocky and rough but we’ll manage.”

Luke paced back and forth at the front of the room, Cam staring at his friend. They were both SEALs and they knew the extreme danger of this but if they didn’t do something to prevent the next rainstorm, the results would be absolute desolation of the area.

“Luke, we can do this,” said Nash. “We’ll be okay and we’ll make sure to come back alive. You have our word.”

“I’m not sure that’s something you can promise,” said Luke.

“No, but I can,” said Matthew. “Leave them to me. They’ll return.”

“See. Divine protection,” smirked Garrett.

“Don’t get cocky. Even grandpa has his limits.” Luke stared at his grandfather, his trademark smirk and twinkling eyes telling him all he needed to know.

“Alright. The five of you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Gulf had swallowed the horizon hours ago. Above three hundred feet of black water, another potential tropical storm advanced on Louisiana with the patient violence of a machine too large to understand. Below it, the G.R.I.P. submersible drove south through a darkness churned white by collapsing currents, its blunt titanium bow shivering each time a pressure wave struck broadside.

Inside, red emergency light washed over four faces and made the cabin look smaller than a coffin. Montana sat locked into the pilot cradle, boots braced against the deck, both hands spread across G.R.I.P.’s control yokes. Ryan was next to her in the co-pilot seat.

Every gauge trembled. Every warning icon flickered. On the navigation glass, the Louisiana coastline burned amber beneath overlapping hazard fields—levees, refineries, drowned parishes, evacuation corridors already stopped cold by rain.

A thin red track crossed the map and ended at the coast. Impact projection: forty-two minutes. The numbers beside it kept revising downward as the storm accelerated. Water was already being driven into Barataria Bay. The model shaded entire neighborhoods blue, then purple, then black.

Montana rolled the port thrusters two degrees and fed power into the keel vanes. The vessel answered late. A lateral current hammered the hull, throwing Garrett against his restraints. Nash caught him by the forearm before his helmet struck the equipment rack. Across from them, Moses—Mo to everyone who trusted him enough to shorten it—checked the seals on three black diver propulsion units clipped beneath the air-lock ladder.

The plan had been calculated in clean air, on dry screens, with arrows that held still. Montana would put the submersible beneath the southern edge of the storm’s inner circulation and hold it there. Nash would reach the surface and create a sustained high-altitude outflow toward the southwest. Garrett would take hold of the Gulf beneath the storm—not the whole sea, not even close, but enough of its warm skin to pull the system’s feeding currents off balance. Mo would keep both of them alive.

Neither ability worked like a lever. Garrett could not simply shove a hurricane. Nash could not point at a cloud shield and command it away. Their reach depended on contact, concentration, and time. The storm had mass enough to drown cities and momentum enough to ignore nations. All they could do was change the pressure around it, grain by grain, until nature chose the easier road.

The depth indicator spun past two hundred feet. Montana flattened her right hand and lowered it: descend. Mo answered with a closed fist. Nash touched two fingers to his visor, then pointed upward. Ready. Garrett gave no sign. He stared through the forward viewport at the green-black water unfolding in the lamps and flexed his hands as if feeling a pulse through the hull.

The first rainband reached them underwater as a moving wall of pressure. The submersible dropped six feet, rolled hard to starboard, and groaned from bow to stern. A locker burst open. Tools flashed through the cabin. Montana held the yokes while a wrench struck the glass beside her head and ricocheted away. The port thruster alarm changed from amber to red.

She snapped two fingers at Mo, pointed to the aft panel, then drew a slicing motion across her throat. Cut auxiliary feed. Mo moved at once, hauling himself hand over hand along the overhead rail. Another roll pinned him against the deck. He crawled the rest of the way, opened the breaker housing, and slammed his palm across the manual disconnects.

The cabin dimmed. Montana rerouted battery reserves from environmental redundancy into the wounded thruster. Carbon-dioxide scrubbers fell to half capacity. The timer on her display jumped from thirty-seven minutes to thirty-four. She pushed the bow upward.

At sixty feet, the sea became noise. Surface waves dragged columns of water down into the dark, then ripped them apart. The lamps caught bubbles plunging like silver rain. Montana’s sonar painted broken crescents all around them—debris, perhaps; fish driven deep; fragments from platforms evacuated too late. One hard contact crossed their stern and vanished.

Montana brought the submersible onto a northeast heading and fought it into a slow hover. She raised one finger. One chance.

Mo clipped each propulsion unit to its operator, checked Garrett’s chest regulator, then Nash’s. He tapped both pressure gauges twice. Full. He pressed his fist to Garrett’s shoulder and waited until Garrett looked at him. Index finger and thumb formed a circle. Garrett returned it. Nash did the same.

“Come back,” Montana said.

Mo looked at her through his visor. Two fingers to his eyes. A point toward her. I see you. Then he pulled the inner hatch closed.

Water burst into the lock. It climbed their boots, waists, shoulders, and swallowed them. The small round window went black. Pressure equalized with a heavy metallic knock. Mo spun the outer wheel. The Gulf tore the hatch wide and tried to pull all three of them into the storm at once.

“They’ll be okay,” said Ryan. “We’ll make sure of it.”