Parveen was already on her phone. She was twenty-eight and had been his assistant for three years and she moved with the particular speed of someone who understood that in the nine minutes between something going wrong and someone reaching it, the quality of the preparation made the difference between recovery and catastrophe.
Sanjay looked at the radar. The system over the catchment was still active — still producing the rainfall that was filling the gorge. It was not going to stop soon. He had thirty-two children — he had that much from the transmission — on a mountain road above a gorge that was in flash flood. He did not know exactly where. He did not know the condition of the ledge or the bus or the road between here and them. He did not know if the radio on the bus end could receive him even if he could transmit. He did not know if the single adult on the bus — a teacher, the transmission had said, a name he had half-caught — had any idea what to do.
He knew the gorge road. He had driven it. He knew kilometer fourteen — it was the section above the second major bend, where the rock face came down close to the road on the left and where, on the right, there was a series of limestone ledges above the gorge floor. Good solid rock, those ledges. If a bus had gone off the road there, the ledge might have caught it. The ledge might hold it. For a while.
For how long depended on the flood level and whether the road drainage was channeling additional water onto the shelf. He did not know the current flood level. He needed eyes on the gorge.
"Helicopter?" he called to Parveen.
"Aviation says the cloud ceiling is too low currently," she called back. "They're re-evaluating at nine. If the ceiling lifts even marginally they can go."
Nine AM. It was seven fifty-two. Over an hour before they could get a helicopter into the gorge, if the weather cooperated. He had to find another way to make contact and assess the situation before then. He needed someone physically closer to kilometer fourteen. He needed someone on the road above the gorge.
"Ground team," he said. "Who is the closest team to the Kedarpur gorge access point?"
"There's a team at the river monitoring station at Sonprayag," Parveen said. "Twenty minutes by road if the road is passable."
"Is the road passable?"
"Roads department says the lower section is clear. The upper section — kilometer ten onward — unknown."
