Chapter Twenty-Nine

Levi

Tess licked her lips as she scanned the children. When she focused on him, she asked, “Levi, how long have we been on the roof?”

Since Levi had watched the clock in the schoolroom to time the teacher’s CPR, he was fairly precise when he said, “Twenty minutes.”

She shook her head. “It feels like hours.”

“It has been, counting everything that happened since we left the Himba village. Getting to the roof is just the next thing.” He focused on her face, assessing. “Tess, you haven’t slept in days, and now you’re running on pure adrenaline. Can you do me a favor? It’s going to be hard because, well, we’re on top of a schoolhouse bobbing down the river. But can you sit quietly for a minute and center yourself? I want you to feel the air and tell me if it will rain again.” He looked up at the steel-gray sky. “This respite from the rain is making a big difference in our survivability. But if you think those torrents are going to hit us again, we’ll need to be much more aggressive. That means tough decisions and more hazards.”

“Give me a for instance.”

He didn’t really have a “for instance.” He didn’t see a way out of this mess. “I might need to try to swim to shore with the rope.” What he really needed to do here was plant the seed that everyone surviving wasn’t probable. She’d been in enough circumstances that she knew that. But her brain needed to understand the situation and the ramifications. And he could see that Tess had that “no man left behind” conviction in her eyes.

“And pull the school over?” she asked with incredulity. “That would take a bulldozer.”

“Those who are able could monkey crawl their way to land.” He swallowed. Here it was, point blank. “There’s a possibility that we can save some but not all.”

Tess’s face blanched white.

“It could be that if I strung the rope and got you and Mojo with me to help pull, that we could tie the children to the rope and rely on their jugs to keep their heads above water as we pull them to shore. The school will be underwater at any time now. I think we need a last-ditch plan formed. But if it’s going to rain, we need to be proactive right now.”

Tess turned toward the children.

“Take everything here out of the picture, and just focus and do that thing you do when you sip the air, please. I need all of the information I can get.”

Starting on one side of the flood waters, she swept her gaze upward. Her hand came out. Palm open, gathering the energy in the wind, she rubbed the air through her fingers.

“The sky looks ferocious.” Her finger came up, and she pointed at the clouds in the distance. “That’s an odd structure for clouds.”

Then, dropping her hand, Tess stared at it for a long time. “Are those columns?”

A wave splashed over the school's apron, making the children shriek and shrink against each other. They gasped and gripped even tighter in their circle, scooting back until they were compressed into a tight knot.

Tess reached out and gripped Levi's arm. “Do you still have your binoculars?” Levi reached for his dry bag.

“I have my phone.” She pulled her phone from her bag and took a picture of what she saw. Then she turned the screen toward herself, expanding the image to see the details.

With his binoculars up, Levi and Tess said, "It's a bridge," at the same time.

Dropping the binoculars to his chest, Levi asked, “Are you getting any bars on your phone?”

Before she could answer, another wave of water came up over the apron. Now, water had formed a pool, trapped on top of the roof by the apron that saved the child moments ago.

Levi shifted until he could speak into Tess’s ear. “If the water swirls around the bottom of that bridge, it's possible that the school will crash into the pylons. When the school crashes into it, the children are going to fly forward, and then they're going to fly back. It’s going to be violent, and it’s going to be fast. We need to position them in the best way we can so they stay on this roof.”

She nodded.

“If we can catch hold of something on the bridge, I'm going to try to get a rope from the pipe to the pillar. And when it happens, Tess, listen, it’s going to be violet, and it’s going to be fast. That water is going to ram the structure against the barrier.”

“I wish we knew how deep the water is. Maybe the floor of the school is very near the bottom of this flood. Maybe that’s why we’ve only sunk this far.”

“My hope is that we have enough time to get at least some of the kids to safety.”

When Levi was with the SEALs, they were given impossible tasks without a clear means of accomplishing them. It was a challenge he really enjoyed.

The Team would brainstorm possibilities, and even the craziest ideas were put on the table. Right now, without equipment, Levi wasn’t coming up with any ideas, workable or not.

The children hunkered together, moaning their distress.

Levi held the binoculars up to assess. “Sweetheart, from what I can see, there is metal undergirding. It’s possible that I could put you on my shoulders, and you could tie the rope.”

“Then what?”

“You crawl up and straddle the beam, and I start moving kids to you.” He pulled off the binoculars and handed them to Tess.

She stared at the bridge for a long moment. “Yeah, I think I see what you’re suggesting. And under any other circumstances, I’d say you’re crazy.”

“A touch of crazy usually helps in tight places like this one.”

A wave pressed behind the school, and suddenly, there they were, hitting the pylon.

Without further discussion, Tess reached out, climbing onto Levi’s shoulders as she clung to his hands.

With the school sinking even deeper into the water, Tess couldn’t reach the beam. “Levi, I need to stand on your shoulders.”

The school shimmied and shook; getting her up that high would be a trick. But Levi knew that tone in her voice. She’d committed to the idea and wouldn’t be easily swayed.

It was nothing Levi had tried before, but they fumbled through. With Tess’s sneakers on his shoulders and his hands wrapping her ankles to hold her steady, he could feel her straining upward.

“Still not high enough, Levi. Grab my ankles tighter, and I’ll lock my knees. You can shove me up there the length of your arms, right?”

Levi wasn’t so sure about that.

His legs wide and his knees bent for stability, Levi knew just how precarious this all was. But what choices did they have?

When he was a SEAL based out of California, he’d learned to surf. Was this that much different?

Probably.

But Levi was projecting only good outcomes.

“Just another little thrust, and I can hook my arm. Push me a little farther, Levi.”

He didn’t want to do that. It meant gaining inches by shifting his feet closer together and unbending his legs. Less stability, more danger.

But he did it. Because sometimes there were no choices.

And this time, it paid off.

Tess was able to get her hands on the beam and rest her hips there, allowing her to throw a leg over and push herself to a seated position. Tying the rope into place, she called down, “Okay, ready.”

Thirteen times, Levi pressed a child onto the rope. Thirteen times, Tess grabbed them at the top and positioned them on the beam.

Levi was down to the teacher and Mojo.

The school was breaking apart with every wave.

The water was up to Levi’s mid-shins.

“Send Mojo up next,” Tess called. “There's a place for him near the bridge pylon, and no one else will fit in there.”

Levi squatted to gather Mojo into his arms and moved him to wrap his neck, leaving his hands free. “I’m going to take Mojo up,” he told the teacher. “I'm coming back for you. I’m not abandoning you. I'm coming back.”

The teacher nodded vigorously, her teeth chattering.

The school banged and lurched, and now the teacher was in the fast-moving waters up to her thighs, with nothing to hold on to for balance.

Levi grabbed the rope and, hand over hand, hoisted himself up as fast as he could.

Tess, straddling the beam, reached for the handle on Mojo’s tactical vest.

Ducking his head, Levi pushed Mojo toward Tess, not letting go until Mojo scrambled toward the spot Tess had picked for him.

“No, Mojo, no. Go there.” She pointed.

Mojo seemed to get the idea. It wasn’t an easy space to get into and fit. Mojo waggled and strained, grunted and growled to get himself up underneath. As soon as he was positioned, Levi went back down to find the teacher clinging with both hands to the rope.

The three empty jugs held her chest high enough in the water that her face wasn’t in the current.

There was no schoolhouse to be seen.

“Give me your hand,” Levi yelled, reaching for her.

She was obviously terrified.

“Grab my hand!” he ordered.

She was in a state of freeze. Levi had experienced it himself. It’s a terrible feeling to think that you might die because—while your brain is processing and begging the body to cooperate with the right action—in freeze, no action is possible.

He moved farther down the rope, closer to the swelling waters.

Catching hold of her wrist, she continued to grip the end of the rope, looking wild-eyed.

With the teacher dangling from his left hand, Levi was grateful for the knots in the rope. He placed his boot on the knot and then shoved his weight into his feet. He slid his right hand up above the next knot. Again and again, he crawled higher.

The teacher was still in shock, clinging to the end of the rope, when Tess reached out and grabbed her. Tess helped maneuver the woman to a spot on the beam.

With the roar of water beneath them, his normal voice sounded like a whisper. “Tess, you never told me—will it rain?”

“Yes, it's coming.”

“And this bridge is made of concrete. It's not going to hold up. I can already see side fissures forming from the pressure of the water. We've got to get people on top of the bridge and see if we can't get help. I don't know what's up there. So I need to go see for myself and make a plan.”

Levi pried the teacher’s fingers from the rope, tied it to his waist on one end, and tied the other end to the undergirding.

Tess reached out to stop him. “No, what are you doing?”

“Tess, up is our only hope.”

“Up then.” She tipped her head back. “How do we do that?”

He looked around. “I have no idea.”