The Filter Trap by A. L. Lorentz Page A

others in the Hummer as they plowed through the swamp lapping at Marine Drive.
    “I seen this before,” the driver said. “I got sent in after Katrina. People were dragging bodies out of flooded homes in knee-high water in the 9th Ward the day after the storm.”
    “That president failed to act quickly and decisively. I think this president will do better,” Allan claimed.
    “You think!” The other soldier turned his head. “This is Katrina times a thousand, all along both coasts.”
    They climbed up the hill in silence from Marine Drive.
    “Then again, you on his little list, so you’d know,” the driver sarcastically stated.
    Passing over the Presidio by taking the 101, he lamented, “Hope he’s right. We almost there.”
    The Humvee halted near Cow Hollow, miles from Coit Tower.
    “Why did we stop?” Lee demanded of the young Army driver. “I thought you were taking us to the hill.”
    “I don’t give the orders, Lieutenant, I just carry them out,” he said gruffly without turning to face her. “Brig-gen says take you to Cow Hollow and we do it. I don’t ask questions and neither do you.”
    Lee wanted to sock him in his smug jaw. He loosened it a bit after seeing her expression.
    “But . . . if I had to guess, Lieutenant, I’d say the chatter we’ve heard over the radio about the streets being flooded with busted water mains all along the northeast part of the city have something to do with it. We can ride along those marshes back there on Marine just fine, but this sucker ain’t a boat.” He patted the ceiling of the Humvee hard. “We try to drive through that shit and they’ll have to evacuate us too. Another dead Hummer ain’t gonna help them poor folks in the swamp none when the food comes.”
    “I’m sorry, Private, will you help us unpack, please?”
    “Course, Lieutenant,” he said and brought the radio linked to the second Hummer behind them to his lips. “Hup to!”
    Both drivers leapt out of their trucks. Their passengers filed out of the cramped quarters. As they walked to the second truck Allan leaned in to LARS and asked, “What’s brig-gen?”
    Allan might as well have asked why the sky was blue or apples fell from trees.
    “Brigadier general. Duh.”
    A lifetime of studying planetary orbits didn’t leave much room for military hierarchy.
    “Is that better than a major?”
    “Good Jesus, yes,” LARS answered. “But you might as well treat them all the same. We’re about to enter as close to a war zone as you’ll ever get, so stay close and do everything we tell you to the letter.”
    LARS patted him on the shoulder and Allan winced. The last time LARS did that she shoved Allan out of a perfectly good helicopter.
    The lesser of the two privates unloaded supplies from the top of the second Hummer: a large backpack, which could be turned into a raft in a few seconds, bottles of water, and dry goods the brig-gen could spare.
    “It’s a long hike up there, Lieutenant,” the driver informed Lee. “Not so bad for us roughnecks, but, uh,” he looked at Allan’s gut, “you folks are used to sittin’”
    “I’ve walked from the Palace of Fine Arts to Coit Tower and back,” Allan said defiantly.
    “How many decades ago?”
    Lee sternly cautioned the private, “We’ll see everyone gets there in one piece. You still need to tell us how to call the evac once we get up there.”
    “Right,” the driver remembered. “Brig-gen said you’d have a flyover every six hours, reconnaissance across the bay area out of Travis. Check your watch, next opportunity is about four hours from now. Send up this flare.” The private took it out of a box strapped to the inside of the wheel well of the truck and put it in her hand. “Huey’ll come out for ya.”
    “You got a lot of questions for your own mission,” the other private scoffed. “Did they drop you out here without a plan?”
    “The plan was to rendezvous at the Golden Gate. Our evac was supposed to be safe and