Meanwhile,” he took his cell phone from his pocket, “I’ll call the National Weather Service people down in Cape May and have them issue a warning over the television and the NOAA weather radio.”
“Holy Jesus. Um, okay.”
Harper retreated to his office. She continued watching him while she tapped in the number with a trembling hand. He left both doors open and pulled up the shades. The symbolism was impossible to miss. As he spoke into his cell phone, he picked up the desk phone and placed another call. Marie’s desire to drop everything and get the hell out of town was overwhelming, but she fought it. What struck her as strange was that Harper didn’t seem to be suffering the same battle of nerves. He was so outwardly calm it was intriguing. In fact he seemed to actually be…
enjoying
himself. The irony was almost a tangible thing—when it came to a scandal, he was so listless and dispirited that he seemed like a cadaver. But now, facing a natural disaster and the possibility of death, he seemed more alive than ever. The reality was that Donald Harper, plain and simple, thrived on challenges. Crises were the lifeblood of his soul. That came from a variety of factors, one being his naturally restless personality, another his years of military training.
As he got back behind his desk, this realization brushed across his mind like a loving hand. The one that immediately followed was,
If you’d only realized
that before Gus Riggins came along
. It wasn’t the temptations that Riggins carried with him that lured Harper from his integrity; it was boredom. Pure and basic, the same variety suffered by millions of people every minute of every day, some for countless years, some for most of their miserable lives. At the time Riggins entered his life nothing of great note was happening. There were the normal demands as the mayor of Long Beach Township, and of course certain challenges went along with that. But he’d been managing them for so long and was so overqualified for the position that they weren’t really challenges anymore. He could’ve phoned in his duties. He possessed the necessary skills to be a goddamn
senator
, after all. Whiling away the hours as a mayor in a place like this was downright painful.
He wiped these thoughts away; consciously cleared them from his mind like clearing off a table with one broad sweep of the arm. This was the first step in the focusing process, something else he’d picked up during his years of military training.
The current objective was clear—
Evacuate the island
.
01:33:00 REMAINING
At a convenience store in West Lafayette, Indiana, more than two-dozen customers had gathered around a television perched high in a corner to watch CNN’s report on the developing story. In Times Square, hundreds crowded the sidewalk to follow it on the giant 26′ by 34.5′ Panasonic Astrovision TV screen. And in Tupelo, Mississippi, two millworkers who were on strike and already half-drunk so early in the day started a betting pool where the winner would be the one who came closest to guessing the eventual number of fatalities. They would get nearly a dozen entries. CNN got hold of a recording of the final transmissions from the cockpit of the airliner that went down. Some kid in Virginia had picked it up on his ham radio, recorded it, and sold it to them for five thousand dollars. It would eventually come to be considered part of the “soundtrack” of this historic tragedy, like WLS Chicago reporter Herb Morrison’s quavering voice as he cried, “Oh the humanity!” when the
Hindenburg
fell, in flames, at Lakehurst’s Naval Air Station in 1937.
To calm a jittery public and an even more jittery Wall Street, the President of the United States made a statement just after nine o’clock. He told the country that the incident appeared to be isolated and not part of a broader terrorist attack. No other planes were grounded, much to the relief of the airline industry. He assured
“Holy Jesus. Um, okay.”
Harper retreated to his office. She continued watching him while she tapped in the number with a trembling hand. He left both doors open and pulled up the shades. The symbolism was impossible to miss. As he spoke into his cell phone, he picked up the desk phone and placed another call. Marie’s desire to drop everything and get the hell out of town was overwhelming, but she fought it. What struck her as strange was that Harper didn’t seem to be suffering the same battle of nerves. He was so outwardly calm it was intriguing. In fact he seemed to actually be…
enjoying
himself. The irony was almost a tangible thing—when it came to a scandal, he was so listless and dispirited that he seemed like a cadaver. But now, facing a natural disaster and the possibility of death, he seemed more alive than ever. The reality was that Donald Harper, plain and simple, thrived on challenges. Crises were the lifeblood of his soul. That came from a variety of factors, one being his naturally restless personality, another his years of military training.
As he got back behind his desk, this realization brushed across his mind like a loving hand. The one that immediately followed was,
If you’d only realized
that before Gus Riggins came along
. It wasn’t the temptations that Riggins carried with him that lured Harper from his integrity; it was boredom. Pure and basic, the same variety suffered by millions of people every minute of every day, some for countless years, some for most of their miserable lives. At the time Riggins entered his life nothing of great note was happening. There were the normal demands as the mayor of Long Beach Township, and of course certain challenges went along with that. But he’d been managing them for so long and was so overqualified for the position that they weren’t really challenges anymore. He could’ve phoned in his duties. He possessed the necessary skills to be a goddamn
senator
, after all. Whiling away the hours as a mayor in a place like this was downright painful.
He wiped these thoughts away; consciously cleared them from his mind like clearing off a table with one broad sweep of the arm. This was the first step in the focusing process, something else he’d picked up during his years of military training.
The current objective was clear—
Evacuate the island
.
01:33:00 REMAINING
At a convenience store in West Lafayette, Indiana, more than two-dozen customers had gathered around a television perched high in a corner to watch CNN’s report on the developing story. In Times Square, hundreds crowded the sidewalk to follow it on the giant 26′ by 34.5′ Panasonic Astrovision TV screen. And in Tupelo, Mississippi, two millworkers who were on strike and already half-drunk so early in the day started a betting pool where the winner would be the one who came closest to guessing the eventual number of fatalities. They would get nearly a dozen entries. CNN got hold of a recording of the final transmissions from the cockpit of the airliner that went down. Some kid in Virginia had picked it up on his ham radio, recorded it, and sold it to them for five thousand dollars. It would eventually come to be considered part of the “soundtrack” of this historic tragedy, like WLS Chicago reporter Herb Morrison’s quavering voice as he cried, “Oh the humanity!” when the
Hindenburg
fell, in flames, at Lakehurst’s Naval Air Station in 1937.
To calm a jittery public and an even more jittery Wall Street, the President of the United States made a statement just after nine o’clock. He told the country that the incident appeared to be isolated and not part of a broader terrorist attack. No other planes were grounded, much to the relief of the airline industry. He assured
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