The New Madrid Run

by Michael Reisig

  Travis had returned to the airport while listening to the news. He parked his car in front of the building that served as the Unicom station and the FBO offices for several flight-line businesses, and got out. As he put his feet on the ground, he sensed a vibration—an almost imperceptible movement of the ground beneath his feet. He started toward the building when he heard the plaintive meowing, almost a crying. At first he couldn’t place the direction of the sound, but as he looked up at the roof, he saw the kitten high above him on the rain gutter. The small orange-and-white cat was perched there looking down and complaining loudly. The kitten had been a birthday present for Linda only weeks before, to keep her company while Travis was gone on overnighters. Travis glanced over at the big Poinciana tree next to the building—the obvious route the errant kitten had taken—but now, unable to find its way down, it was frightened and vocal.

  Travis looked up again and shrugged. “What the hell, it’s not like I’m in a hurry.”

  Travis knew where the access door to the roof was, so up the stairs he went. He found the hatch, pulled down the foldout stairs and climbed up and out onto the roof. There, twenty feet away, still near the edge, was the kitten. He walked over slowly, speaking softly to the frightened animal. Then he stooped down and gently picked it up. As he stood and turned, he saw it.

  There on the horizon, barely distinguishable at that distance, was a wall of water—a tidal wave at least a hundred feet high and running the entire length of his vision. This colossal wall containing thousands of tons of water was bearing down on the Keys with the speed and intensity of a runaway freight train. As the wave gathered momentum and rose to its full height, cresting in an awesome display of raw energy, it greedily sucked the waters from the offshore channels, then the flats, adding to its already enormous strength. Roaring in a thunderous cacophony, sheets of diaphanous white foam peeling off its back and soaring hundreds of feet into the air, the leviathan ripped mile-long rows of lobster traps from the sea floor in a maelstrom of boiling water and sent them whirling into the sky. It engulfed reef lighthouses and crushed fishing and pleasure craft with vicious indifference, as it surged inexorably toward the small string of islands. In a matter of minutes, the Keys would face not just destruction, but complete annihilation.

  In a heartbeat, Travis was bolting across the roof and through the hatch. As he raced down the stairs and out of the building, the cat, frightened by the rapid movement, tore at his arm and broke loose. There was no time to worry about it. He only had seconds.

  Knowing it was a futile effort, he ran to his office, yanked open the door, and yelled for Linda. She was still at her mother’s, five miles away. She might as well have been in China; there was no helping her.

  When Travis saw the wall of water racing toward the Keys, he knew his only chance was the plane. After checking for Linda, he raced out onto the tarmac. The ground was rumbling. People were stumbling out of the terminal and the FBO, confused and frightened. As he headed for the aircraft, the earth began to shake. The roar of the wave was audible now, like the bellow of a great, terrible creature— the sound of death. Travis opened his mouth to shout a warning, but he realized it was useless—the people were already panicking, shouting and screaming, running for their cars. A young woman carrying a small child raced by him and in desperation he reached out, grabbing her arm. “It’s a tidal wave!” he shouted. “C’mon! I have a plane!”

  Wild-eyed and frightened, she broke away from him and ran for the parking lot. Travis took one last look as the confusion became pandemonium. There was no point in shouting warnings. It didn’t matter. Everyone on the island was as good as dead. He knew it, and he ran.

  As he reached the plane, the rumbling in the ground was much stronger. Black clouds swept across a darkening sky, the surface of the earth was trembling, and a wind had come up out of nowhere. It was a hell of a wind, whipping at his clothes and throwing dust and dirt into the air hard enough to blind him. Thank God this damned wind’s coming down the runway, he thought as he shielded his face and pulled the chocks away. He jumped onto the wing, ripped open the door, and threw himself into the left seat. “No pre-flight today,” he whispered tensely, as he rushed through the pre-start procedure. He hit the starter and was rewarded as the port engine fired into life. The shaking was growing stronger still—the tarmac behind the plane cracked and split like a fifty-foot run in a nylon hose. He almost screamed with relief when the starboard engine cranked over and started. He had been having trouble with that engine lately.

  There was no time to taxi down to the runway threshold. The wave would be on him long before he reached it. He realized, as he frantically turned the plane’s nose down the taxiway into the wind, that his chances of being alive ten minutes from now were slim.

  He hammered down the throttles and gave himself ten degrees of flaps. The 310 leapt in response. As Travis concentrated on keeping her on the narrow taxiway in the gale-force winds, he glanced at the horizon for a second and gasped. The giant wall of water was aimed right at him, less than half a mile away. It was easily a hundred and twenty feet high, and as it crashed into Marathon, buildings exploded and disappeared. Instinctively he pushed the throttles tighter against the panel but there was no more power to be had, and he still needed another hundred yards to be airborne. Then he had to clear the wave.

  Everything went into slow motion. He was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to make it, but he wasn’t frightened anymore. Life had been reduced to a contest between himself and the wave. If he won, he lived. If he lost, well, he’d damn sure go out kicking.

  The plane broke free of the ground as the churning, foaming avalanche crashed across the last hundred yards to the airstrip. The Cessna was arching upward, gaining altitude despite being buffeted by fierce winds, but the barrier of water loomed before him, nearly towering over the aircraft. He slammed back the yoke and threw the airplane up, almost vertically, toward the top of the wave. His first thought—natural instinct for a pilot—was, I’m going to stall this son of a bitch. In the midst of it all he laughed fiercely. If he didn’t make it over the water, he was dead anyway, so what the hell.

  The monstrous wave reared up and curled over him, debris from crushed houses, destroyed boats, and uprooted trees cascading down its face. Spray and foam slapped the fuselage and windshield with fat, blinding pellets.

  Suddenly it was as if he was back in ’Nam, slashing through the sky and dodging tracers; the roar of fifty-calibers and the yells of soldiers numbing his senses. He felt as though he’d just mainlined a quart of adrenaline. The streaming, frothing fingers of the top of the wave reached out for the tiny insect that was trying to escape its grasp. The engines strained and whined as the wave struck the plane. The stall warning buzzed in his head like an angry giant insect and Travis screamed a challenge, a cry of defiance, an acceptance of whatever fate held for him.

  The deafening roar of the water drowned his scream in his ears, and the sky went dark. Sheets of spray blocked the sun and the top of the wave smacked the underside of the plane like a hammer, tossing him fifty feet higher into the air. Suddenly, when Travis was certain he was dead, the aircraft broke through. He was losing what precious little altitude he had, and barely in control of the airplane, but he was on the back side of the wave—and alive. There was little time, however, to take satisfaction in this tenuous piece of fortune. He had major problems.

  Besides being buffeted by winds of tropical storm strength, his starboard engine was sputtering and vibrating badly, probably from the impact of the water. He climbed, using both engines at half power. As the vibrations increased to a dangerous level, he applied opposite rudder, feathered the prop, and shut down the bad engine. The plane plummeted toward the water, tossed like a gum wrapper in a gale, as he attempted to stabilize.

  Sweat poured from his face, stinging his eyes. His shirt was soaked as he struggled with the controls and fought off panic as the shuddering aircraft fell toward the sea. Finally, only fifty feet
from the tumultuous surface of the water, he manhandled the 310 into straight and level flight. Slowly, inexorably, he climbed to a safe altitude of a few thousand feet. He would need the height to buy him time in a crash landing, if the other engine went. Then he glanced down at the surrounding waters—the sight took his breath away.

  The Keys were gone. Below, the debris-littered water agitated like that of a washing machine. The leviathan wave had passed, followed by several slightly smaller ones. They left in their wakes complete devastation. The islands were buried by at least forty feet of water. It was as if the Florida Keys had never been.

  Travis gazed down at the flotsam and jetsam that was everywhere. Anything that would float littered the surface of the sea, from palm trees and sofa cushions to huge sections of roofs. Miraculously, a few boats seemed to have survived, though most were badly damaged; a great many were capsized. He circled and watched as what was left of his hometown rose and sank in the milky, green waters. There were all manner of things on the surface below, but he had yet to see a survivor. It was then that he was struck by the thought of Linda. Linda, his lover, his friend, was dead. So was every other friend he had in the Keys.

  The moment of introspection was interrupted when he glanced at his nearly empty fuel gauges. “Son of a bitch,” he moaned to himself. He knew he had no chance of making Miami and the mainland on so little fuel. Hell, he wasn’t sure there was a Miami anymore.

  On impulse he picked up his mike and adjusted the radio frequency. “Miami radio, Miami radio. This is November one, seven, four, niner, delta. Do you read me?”

  Nothing but static.

  “Miami radio, this is November one, seven, four, niner, delta, approximately ten miles north of Marathon Airport. Do you read me?”

  Nothing.

  While Travis was using his radio and contemplating his options, which fell into the slim and nil category, he noticed a sailboat about a quarter-mile to the west of him. His attention was piqued when he realized that it still had one of its masts and was right side up. He had to do something in the next half hour, before the engine quit and he did his flying rock act. He took another look at the sailboat in the distance and smiled grimly.

  “Any port in a storm,” he muttered.

  Still fighting a tremendous buffeting by the wind, he dropped a wing and banked gently downward toward the boat. He made a low-level pass at about one hundred feet and got a good look at her. Then he did it again. She was beat up, there was no question about that, but she wasn’t listing. Even though she’d lost a mast, the other seemed intact and appeared, miraculously, to have its sails neatly bound to the boom.

  “Well, Trav, ol’ buddy, I think it’s time to trade this girl for a boat.”

  He knew that what he was about to attempt was dangerous as hell, even in the best of circumstances, but the truth was, there weren’t a whole lot of choices.

  He took the plane up to eight hundred feet and out a half mile from the sailboat, then turned around and headed back. Throttling off while gradually losing altitude, he aimed for a spot one hundred yards in front of, and fifty yards to the side of, the craft for a point of impact. Travis unlocked his door, grabbed a life jacket from under the seat, and made sure the landing gear was up and tight. He adjusted the prop pitch and backed off the power as the aircraft glided toward the water. He was still a little hot as the plane approached touchdown. He pulled the nose up a bit and the 310 complied by losing speed. As the last twenty feet of height evaporated and the ocean loomed up on both sides of the cockpit, he pulled back on the controls and the tail section caught the water. The jarring impact threw him forward against the controls, banging his head on the door and knocking the breath from him. The plane continued slamming and skipping across the water for a few moments, gradually losing momentum and finally lurching to a halt. Suddenly it was quiet. The only sound was the clicking of the electrical system as it shut down.

  Travis, a little dazed, gasped for air as the plane settled onto the rough ocean, and instinctively shoved the door with his elbow.

  The door didn’t budge—that brought him around like a slap in the face.

  Forgetting his sore ribs and the blood running down the side of his head, he swung around in the seat and hammered the door with one hand while pulling the latch with the other. Nothing. As he turned in his seat and struck the door again, he heard the sound of the water rushing into the cockpit. He looked down. Seawater was bubbling into the cabin from a gash in the floor. It was already covering his ankles.

  You frigging idiot, use the other door!

  He quickly pulled himself across the seat to the passenger’s door.

  He grasped the handle and shoved. Again, nothing—it was jammed just like the other. The water was up to his knees and the plane was starting to list, nose first, into the ocean.

  Running out of time, he forced himself to look—really look—at the door before attacking it like a maniac.

  It was then that he saw the stress buckles in each door, which were forcing the locking mechanism against the jambs. Amazed at his own calmness, he suddenly knew exactly how to solve his problem: He reached into his chart compartment and pulled out a Colt .45 service model. He wasn’t supposed to carry a gun while flying, but it was a throwback to another time when something like that made him feel more secure.

  The water was at his waist, and his hand was shaking noticeably as he aimed the gun at the door lock and pulled the trigger four times. The sound inside the confines of the plane was like a cannon going off, but that was the least of his concerns. Better to be deaf than drowned. He brought down the gun and studied the damage that the hollow-point .45s had done. There was no longer a lock, just a six-inch hole rimmed by ragged metal. He shifted his legs up on the seat and slammed his feet against the door. When it burst open, he almost cried out.

  The weight of the engines and the water in the cockpit were rapidly drawing the plane into the ocean. With only seconds left before the aircraft went down, he threw himself out the door and onto the wing where he slipped and fell into the water. Still holding onto the life jacket and the pistol, he struggled to the surface and kicked off his shoes, but lost the .45 as he attempted to don the jacket and get it buckled. He wasn’t ten feet from the aircraft when, with a gurgle and a groan, it was swallowed by the sea.

  CHAPTER 2

  He spun in the water frantically, looking for the boat. The waves seemed to have no pattern; they dipped and rose and crashed into each other, throwing spray everywhere. He had only a second to look each time a swell threw him high enough to search. Then he was back in a trough, sputtering and gasping and praying he’d see the boat on the next upward swing. The bile of fear rose in his throat as he thought for the first time of what would happen if he couldn’t reach the sailboat, if it drifted away, out of swimming distance.

  The sea cast him up again, and this time he caught a glimpse of the mast. That was good news. The bad news was that it was a hell of a lot farther away than he had expected. Travis was a fairly good swimmer and he was wearing a life jacket. In calm water, the two-hundred-yard swim would be a piece of cake. But in these seas, with the wind pushing the boat away from him, it was going to be close.

  When another wave washed over him, shoving him down into the water for a second time, he came up sputtering and angry. He set out at a steady pace. Each time he was atop a wave, he got his bearings, then stroked like a madman. Every few minutes he’d rest and catch his breath, allowing the jacket to support him, then off he’d go again.

  After the first fifteen minutes, he could tell he was gaining, but it was tough going and he knew that this was a battle he could yet lose. If not for his excellent physical condition, he would have had little chance. He ran two miles most every day and worked out in the gym two or three times a week. As he struggled through the water, he realized it was those punishing daily exercises that were making the difference.

  An hour and a half later, his shoulder muscles were screaming in agony. Hi
s legs were knotting in cramps, and due to the incessant gulping of salt water, he had thrown up everything but the lining of his stomach. The good news was, the sailboat was only thirty yards away.

  When Travis finally reached the hull, he realized it was trailing a stern anchor line. He grabbed the line, pulled himself hand over hand to the boat, and held on. He drifted in that position with the craft for about ten minutes—long enough to gather sufficient strength to haul himself up onto the deck and into the steering cockpit, where he collapsed.

  He awoke just as the sun was beginning to set on the turbulent waters. The rise and fall of the waves cast shadows across a darkening sea. Travis rose painfully and stretched his sore muscles, holding onto the wheel in the cockpit. Up to that point, his concentration had been focused on surviving and reaching the boat. His interest now switched to just what kind of boat, and its condition. There was still enough light to see below, and he wanted a look inside the cabin before it was totally dark. Pulling back the hatch doors, he entered.

  It was as he had expected: The place looked like a cross between a breaking-and-entering and a bomb explosion. She was an expensive boat and had been outfitted well, almost luxuriously, but damned-near everything that could be broken, was. Dishes, pots and pans, broken furniture, lamps and charts littered the foot-deep water on the floor. The propane stove had been torn loose from the bulkhead and lay face down in the water. Most of the electronics and navigational equipment had been ripped from their brackets.