Deluge (The Best Thrillers Book 2) by James Best (top romance novels txt) 📗

the residential intersection, he glanced out the passenger window to see water about to hit his truck. A sideways onslaught would be the end of them. He had to take a chance. He cranked the wheel, bounced over the curb and cut the corner across yet another lawn. Then he thumped back on the perpendicular road catawampus.

The wall of water hit the truck.

In his head, everything moved in slow motion. He knew what he wanted to do, but his hands and arms did not move as fast as his thoughts. He struggled to get the wheels aligned with the direction of the water, but the truck stubbornly tracked at an oblique angle to the water front. For a split second, he was sure they were going to get rolled, but suddenly the wave miraculously pushed the back end around, so he was facing straight down a cluttered street. He didn’t wait to thank god. He punched it.

He didn’t know how fast the water was moving, but his speed hit sixty miles an hour in seconds, and he kept the gas pedal floored.

They pulled away from the wall of destruction. Three more seconds and he knew they were going to make it.

He felt a smile as he exclaimed, “Gnarly!”

Chapter 16

Smith terminated the call. He had tried to get through to Paul Gleason, the lieutenant governor, but the official’s gatekeepers kept him at bay. He threw the phone into a center console tray and muttered a curse. No one spoke. The rain pelted the car with an irritating rat-a-tat-tat, and the windshield wipers kept up their monotonous swishing in a futile attempt to provide a clear field of vision.

The news on the radio had conveyed no positive actions, other than self-evident announcements that the state was in crisis, and hardship interviews in which victims were continuously asked how they felt about whatever tragedy had befallen them. Newscasters said the governor seemed primed to call out the National Guard, but something stymied action, probably a reluctance to turn law enforcement over to weekend soldiers. The last time martial law had been declared for a California natural disaster had been in 1906 for the San Francisco earthquake. The current crew of Sacramento politicians abhorred the military and strove to keep them away from higher education, police, and research institutions, and tolerated the marines at Camp Pendleton only because they preserved 125,000 acres of near-pristine coastline, which was the only barrier that kept Los Angeles and San Diego from becoming a continuous urban blight.

After a quiet moment, Smith hit the steering wheel with the butt of his hand. “Damn their incompetence. Well, it won’t be long before they’re forced to act. Need will overcome bureaucratic dithering. Gangs are already divvying up swatches of Sacramento as their territory. Oh, they’ll eventually send in the National Guard, but only after hoodlums have finished looting the stores, homes, and government buildings.”

Baldwin lifted her cell phone. “Maybe I should try.”

“Be my guest,” Smith said dismissively.

Smith had made the initial call due to his position as vice chair of the commission, but Baldwin knew Gleason from when he was a UCLA provost. Would a personal bond work when a professional relationship hadn’t? Baldwin didn’t know, but they weren’t doing anything but sitting in a traffic jam anyway. She punched up his number.

After she hung up from the call, Smith said a little too gleefully, “Well?”

“The lieutenant governor is busy … and may remain too busy to return my call.” Baldwin shrugged. “Brad’s busy as well, squiring his knight around, I suppose.”

Smith snorted. “And here we are, governor-appointed members of a highfalutin commission, and we can’t even report our rigorously staffed-out recommendations.”

Baldwin laughed. “Rigorously staffed-out? Two commission members and two guest consultants conversing in a car. And we were never a highfalutin commission. Just a bunch of academics who provided backup for annual appropriation requests. We earned our keep by getting bigger budgets for our sponsors.”

“Haven’t we become cynical?” Smith said. “Careful, or you’ll end up like me.”

“You mean a wizened old jock striving to remain relevant?” asked Wilson from the back seat, her tone clearly lighthearted.

“Whoa! You keep up those razor-sharp repartees, and I’ll draft you onto my team.” Smith kept his tone equally jocular.

Everyone laughed. The general mood had improved after they had rejoined the I-80. The wet surface remained slippery, but they hadn’t encountered any standing water. The slow traffic lurched down the highway but never came to a dead stop, and on occasion, moved forward at fifteen to twenty miles an hour. As long as they were making progress, everyone remained optimistic. It appeared they’d make San Francisco by nightfall, although with the heavy black clouds, it could hardly be darker.

In the last hour, they had cobbled together a highly improved set of recommendations to deal with flooding. Their new set of actions revolved around Ashley’s comment that the only way to lessen the weather calamity was to drain water to the sea or store it in unpopulated areas. After they finished, they felt more hopeful and tried to contact Gleason to explain their new suggestions.

“They’re doing nothing,” Wilson complained from the backseat. “What a shame. We have an actionable plan, but we can’t get hold of anyone with the authority to do anything about it.”

“Moving day is always a bitch,” Smith said, trying to return to their previous tone. “They need to get their new offices tidied up before dealing with their heady responsibilities.”

Baldwin said, “Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said that you cannot escape the responsibilities of tomorrow by evading them today. We need them to deal with tomorrow’s rain today. If we wait, it will compound the disaster.” After a deep breath, she added, “And that’s the rub. Politicians run from risk, and the only mitigating actions require additional risk.” She shook her head. “If we keep on this path, we’ll probably see dams bursting up and down the state.”

“I sent the email,” Wilson offered.

“That only puts us on record,” Baldwin