Once a Warrior by Jake Wood

Author:Jake Wood [Wood, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

OCTOBER 31, 2012

I walked through the heavy door of Team Rubicon’s office before dawn. “Good morning, Maurice,” I said to our office manager. The clock on the wall read six a.m. I recalled leaving the office less than six hours before, after midnight. It wasn’t the team’s normal work schedule, but this was an extraordinary circumstance. Two days prior, Hurricane Sandy had made landfall in New York and New Jersey, wreaking havoc on the nation’s most densely populated metropolitan area. Nearly one hundred thousand residences on Long Island were damaged or destroyed. Meanwhile, underground tunnels and subways were rendered inoperable for weeks, and in some cases months, grinding public transportation to a halt. When it was all over, Sandy would become the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history. In 2013, a year after the storm, FEMA records showed that fewer than half of residents who’d requested relief assistance from the agency had qualified for it, while thirty thousand residents of New Jersey and New York still remained displaced. Team Rubicon had activated teams from Washington, D.C., all the way through Boston who were now on the ground helping communities clear roads with chain saws. A palpable energy cut through the stale air.

The news media was covering the disaster around the clock. Nearly eight million people were without power, many of them almost unreachable. We had only sporadic communication with our team on the ground in New York City, led by Matt Pelak, but he needed more people. He needed more supplies. He needed help.

My computer screen fired up and I reached forward to tap a username and password into the website portal. There it was, Team Rubicon’s checking account information. The situation had not changed since Dipali had raised it with me several weeks prior. In fact, our cash had only dwindled further. Twelve hours earlier we had discussed deploying every volunteer who would answer the call to NYC. We knew the need was there. Our only limiting factor was money, and it was a big factor. Would this be it? The moment that would make or break Team Rubicon?

Andrew popped his head into the office. “Some lady from Goldman Sachs just called. She wants you to call her back immediately.” He handed me a piece of scrap paper with a phone number scribbled on it.

“Did she say anything? What did she want?”

“She just wants to speak with you,” he said.

Goldman Sachs was a behemoth. Exactly the type of company that Team Rubicon needed to convince of its merits. It was also the only company in lower Manhattan that had power at the moment, the result of effective emergency planning by its leadership. I picked up the phone and punched in the numbers. Anxiety filled my belly as the phone rang. I really need to get a cup of coffee, I thought. Four hours of sleep was not cutting it. A woman’s voice answered on the other end.

“Hello, this is Anne Black.”

“Hi, Anne. This is Jake Wood from Team Rubicon returning your call.

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