"I could have," she agreed. "The ship schedule doesn't say the forward breast lines are working. Captain Bautista told my dispatcher that forty minutes ago."
He opened his mouth. He did not know what he was going to say.
The radio on his belt clicked twice, the double click of someone keying up, and then the open hiss of a live channel.
"Gate Two, Gate Two, this is Gulfline Ops." It was Twyla Guidry's voice, a smoker's alto, clipped and urgent in a way Wade had never heard it before, not in twenty-six years. "Wade, do you copy?"
He unclipped the radio. His thumb found the key without his looking at it. "Ops, Gate Two. Go ahead."
"Wade, is the pilot at your gate? Captain Mansour. Rania Mansour, Bayard Pilots. Pilot dispatch just called me on the landline. Hap Landry says she's been sitting at Gate Two since six forty-one, he's had her on the phone, and she says the guard has her TWIC card and won't open the arm. Is that right? Is she there?"
The woman in the red Honda did not say anything. She did not need to. She just sat there with her hand still out, palm up, and watched him.
"Ops, uh." Wade's mouth had gone dry. "I've got a female here, says she's a pilot. The reader's down. I couldn't verify the..."
"Wade." Twyla's voice dropped half an octave, and in it he heard, for the first time since the crane, not pity but something closer to fear. "Listen to me. She is the pilot. She's the only pilot. Hap says there's nobody else within forty minutes, they're all on ships down the channel trying to get to safe water before this thing hits. She's small, she's about five-four, she drives a red Accord, she wears a navy or a black hijab, Hap says she always does, and she's been taking ships off our berths for two years. Captain Bautista is on the bridge of the Corvina Star right now asking for her by name. He's got his forward breast lines singing and he says his gangway's going to tear off the dock in the next ten minutes, and the Evangeline and the Bayou Rose are standing off waiting for orders from a pilot who is sitting at your gate. You open that arm right now. You hear me? Right now."
Then a second voice cut in on the channel, a man's, deep, a little breathless, with wind already roaring in the microphone behind it. "Ops, Line Gang Four. Twyla, tell Gate Two we need that pilot yesterday. The forward springs are coming off the winch drums. We're backing everybody off the bollards." A pause, a burst of static, and then, in the background, unmistakable, another voice, younger, shouting something Wade couldn't make out.