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THE EXPLOSION THUNDERED in the ears of the soldiers and sheriff's deputies who had stopped just half a mile from the two semitrucks and trailers The sky tore apart in a violent, demented convulsion of compressed air as the horrendous detonation tore the heart out of the levee Seconds later, the eruption of the pressure wave stunned them, followed by a blast of dirt fro metal from the shattered trucks rained down froiven a universal order, everyone ducked behind or under his vehicle to shield himself from the storm of debris

Sandecker threw up an arreat roar pounded his ears A huge ball of fire rose andinto a swirling black cloud that blotted out the stars

And then all eyes turned back to where a hundred yards of highway, the levee and the two big trucks once stood All had disintegrated None of those standing there in shock were prepared for the horrific spectacle that avalanched through the vanished re reverberation in their ears that slowly faded, only to be replaced with a farsound as a seething wall of water gushed catastrophically into the waiting ar for this very event

For one long, terribleeyes, hypnotically drawn to a cataract so violent that it could not be conceived unless witnessed They watched ih the breach in the highway and levee, dragged by the natural laws of gravity and impelled by the force of the river'swater with nothing to stop its greatoff the main flow of the Mississippi

The great destroying flood tide was on its way, oblivion in the

Unlike ocean tidal waves, there was no trough Behind the crest, the fluid estion of distortion, its texture sy

What was left of the abandoned town of Calzas was inundated and swept away Nearly thirty feet high, the irresistible, seethingarms of the Atchafalaya River A s part of the river, at the wrong tied dizzily through the wildwall of uncontrollable water as it rushed across the valley before advancing toward the Gulf, where its muddy floould be absorbed by the sea

Sandecker, Olson and the other htmarish disaster like eyewitnesses at a train derail cataclysm that could penetrate and crush concrete, wood, steel and flesh They watched silently in the face of what appeared to prohtened in expressionless masks Gunn shivered and looked away toward the Mississippi

"The ship!" he shouted above the rush of the flood He pointed excitedly "The ship!"

In almost the sa past Mesmerized by the awesootten about her Their eyes followed Gunn's outstretched hand and finger, seeing an unending black silhouette eible monster from the darkness Her superstructure, fore and aft, was blasted into a shell-torn, jagged one, her funnels raked and holed, great gaps of twisted steel ripped into the sides of her hull

But still she caht to the devastation There was no stopping her She passed thereat sheet of water as she drove against the current under full power Despite the fact she had been used to cause death and destruction, she looked et that they were seeing a legend die No dra

They stared enthralled, expecting to see her hull turn and slant across the river in preparation of her role of beco a dam to cast the Mississippi away from her established channel forever Their convictions seeside her hull

"Mother of God!" oing down!"

Any shred ofthe floas gone now as the glorious superliner began to settle in the water

But the United States was not headed on a course to bury her bows in the east bank with her stern slanted across the river toward the west She was running straight up the center of the ara-like falls roaring through the breach