He had not told her his name. Then he remembered it was on the little brass plate pinned over his shirt pocket.
He pressed the button. The arm swung up. The red Honda went through it fast, not reckless, just fast, and accelerated down the long straight lane between the storage lots toward the berths, its taillights getting smaller, and then it turned the corner at the end of the row of new white pickup trucks and was gone.
Wade stood in the open window of the shack with the radio in his hand. The air conditioner rattled. Out to the southwest, the thunder came again, closer now, a long, low, grinding roll that he felt in the soles of his boots. A paper cup skittered across the asphalt in front of the gate, pushed by a puff of hot wind, and then another puff, stronger, and the cup tumbled away into the dark.
He looked at the clock on the wall of the shack. It was six fifty-one. She had been at his gate for ten minutes.
He thought about the woman saying, I'd like you to remember that I told you. He thought about the word he'd used. He could still feel the shape of it in his mouth.
Then the radio in his hand said, in the same clear, calm voice he had just been listening to through the window, "Line Gang Four, this is the pilot, Captain Mansour, I'm on the terminal channel. I'm two minutes out. Who's your foreman?"
And the deep, breathless voice came back: "Pilot, Line Gang Four, this is Alcide Batiste. Thank God. Go ahead."
Rania drove the long lane between the storage lots with the terminal radio in her lap and her phone on speaker on the passenger seat, Hap still on the line, breathing.
"Alcide," she said into the handheld, "where are your men right now? Exactly."
"Forward, by the number two and three bollards. We were fixing to single up when the springs started jumping, so I pulled them back about twenty feet."