Montaigne had stepped out on deck as the gates swung and closed off the water of the Mississippi and watched as the walls of the lock seemed to rise toward the sky while the survey boat descended to the Atchafalaya. He waved to the lockmaster, who waved back. The waters of the Atchafalaya run fifteen feet lower than the Mississippi's, but it only took ten minutes before the west gates opened and the Larson moved out into the channel that led south to Morgan City and the Gulf beyond.

"What time do you estimate our rendezvous with the NUMA research ship below Sungari?" he asked the Larson^ captain.

"Around three o'clock, give or take," answered Giraud without indecision.

Montaigne nodded at a big towboat pushing a string of barges downriver. "Looks like a cargo of lumber," he said to Giraud.

"Must be heading for that new industrial development near Melville." Giraud looked like one of the Three Musketeers with his hawklike French features and flowing black mustache waxed and twisted at the ends. Like Montaigne, Giraud had grown up in the Cajun land, only he had never left it. A big man with a belly seldom empty of Dixie beer, he possessed a sardonic humor that was known up and down the river.

Montaigne watched as a small speedboat filled with four teenagers darted recklessly around the survey boat and cut in front of the barges, followed by four of their friends astride a pair of watercraft.

"Stupid kids," muttered Giraud. "If any of them lost their engines in front of the barges, there is no way the towboat could stop the momentum before running them over."

"I used to do the same thing with my father's eighteen foot aluminum fishing skiff with a little twenty-five horsepower outboard motor, and I'm still alive."

"Forgive me for saying so, General, but you were even dumber than them."

Montaigne knew that Giraud meant no disrespect. He was well aware the pilot had witnessed his share of accidents during the long years he'd piloted ships and towboats up and down the Mississippi river system. Ships running aground, oil spills, collisions, fires, he'd seen them all, and as with most old river pilots, he was a cautious man. No one was more aware that the Mississippi was an unforgiving river.

"Tell me, Lucas," said Montaigne, "do you think the Mississippi will flow into the Atchafalaya one day?"

"One great flood is all it will take for the river to tear away the levees and sweep into the Atchafalaya," replied Giraud stoically. "One year, ten years, maybe twenty, but sooner or later the river will run no more past New Orleans. It's only a matter of time."

"The Army Corps has fought a good battle to keep it hi control."

"Man can't tell nature what to do for very long. I only hope I'm around to see it."

"The sight won't be pretty," said Montaigne. "The effects of the disaster will be appalling. Death, major flooding, mass destruction. Why would you want to be a witness to such devastation?"