Final Finesse

by Karna Small Bodman

  “With that storm getting worse, we’ll probably lose power now too” the nurse lamented.

  “If that happens we’re in deep trouble. No gas coming in, and the generator is being repaired,” the doctor said as he raced toward a storage closet.

  “We’ve been begging for a new one for ages.”

  “Fat chance,” he said. “Generator, MRI, CT Scan, you name it, we don’t have it. Not in this town.”

  “Could you try to get some portable generators from Don over at the hardware?” the nurse suggested, hurrying along to help him.

  “I’ll try, but they won’t open for a while.”

  She looked distraught as she followed the doctor into the unit where five tiny souls were wrapped in thin pink and blue blankets. “He’s got to help us,” she called over her shoulder as she picked up one of the babies and held her close. The newborn was whimpering. “Whatever happens in this storm, we’ve got to save the babies!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE WHITE HOUSE–MONDAY MORNING

  Samantha pulled up to the Southwest Gate of the White House and waved at the agent inside the guardhouse. He could see the sticker on the back of her rear-view mirror. He waved back when he also saw the badge she fished from inside her coat.

  The massive black wrought iron gate opened to the driveway on West Exec. She headed toward her assigned parking space, giving a mental thank you to her boss for securing parking spaces for the six heads of his directorates. Gregory Barnes may have an inflated opinion of himself, but she had to admit he looked after his staff, especially the ones who made him look good to the powers that be.

  After she had graduated from Princeton with majors in English Lit and Geology, Samantha had quickly figured out she couldn’t make a living with the English part, but Geology opened a whole raft of job offers. Her dad was in the oil and gas business, she had been raised near the Texas oil fields, and it was only natural that she would feel quite at home with a subject where she already knew the history as well as the lingo.

  She had accepted a position with a consulting firm specializing in energy issues and when one of her op-ed pieces on energy independence was printed in the Wall Street Journal, Greg Barnes called to ask if she’d accept a position at the Department of Energy where he was assistant secretary. She had called her dad to ask his advice on whether to take a pay cut and go into government. She always remembered his reply, “You can either serve yourself or serve your country!” She took the job.

  Secretary Barnes came to rely on her to do his research, write his speeches and statements when he had to testify before Congress and pull everything together when he appeared on television news shows. The man could speak in great sound bites and while others in the agency ridiculed his ego behind his back, the talk show hosts loved his act.

  When the President asked Greg to be his White House Chief of Homeland Security, figuring he would be a great mouthpiece for the administration, he took Samantha with him. Now, every time there was even the hint of a new threat to the country’s national security, the television stations clamored for Greg Barnes’ take on the situation which meant Samantha often felt like an adjunct to the White House speechwriters’ office, except she wasn’t writing for the president, which would have been a total head trip. No. She was writing sound bites for the biggest egomaniac on the staff. And she was sure that today would be no exception.

  As she pulled into her spot, she saw the snow swirling against the wind shield. Suddenly, she was five years old and her dad had just brought home the little glass globe with a tiny house and the snow inside that swirled when she shook it. She thought about her father down in Houston and wondered if he had been affected by the storm. She’d have to remember to give him a call a bit later.

  Grabbing her purse and black leather folder with some notes for the CNN interview she had drafted last night, she hurried to the door of the West Wing basement and pushed inside. A blast of warm air greeted her in the vestibule. “Good morning, sir,” she said to the Secret Service agent as she again waved her White House pass hanging on a silver chain around her neck.

  “Morning, Ma’am. You made it.”

  “Took forever, but I’m glad to be here.” She quickly walked across the blue carpet, past the door to the Situation Room and headed up the narrow stairway to her office on the second floor.

  As deputy assistant to the president for Homeland Security, she was one of the lucky few who had an office in the West Wing. Greg had seen to that too. Hers was a tiny cubicle next to his, but she was grateful for desk space in this building.

  Most of the staff had expansive offices in the OEOB with sixteen foot ceilings and tall windows. Some even had fire places and conference tables in their offices, complete with leather chairs and bookshelves. Her office didn’t even have a window. But that was all right. She knew that if anyone were asked if he would prefer a conference room in the OEOB or a closet in the West Wing, the answer would be obvious. Proximity to power was the name of the game. At least that’s what it was in Washington, D.C.

  Tossing her folder on the desk and stashing her purse in the bottom drawer, she powered up her computer to double check the headlines. She scrolled through updates on the arrest of more opposition party members in Venezuela, trouble with the new virtual fence on the Texas border, the resignation of Congressman Davis Metcher who had been sued for additional child support by a former Congressional page, the extent of the ice storm that now had knocked power out in a number of areas, and a gas line explosion in Oklahoma which killed one and left thousands of people in freezing conditions.

  She clicked on the last headline and read the details. A local officer, Sheriff Chapoton was quoted as saying, “There was a huge gas fire that sent flames sky high. One firefighter has died and another one is in the hospital. GeoGlobal Oil & Gas sent their team to investigate, but they told me that so far they haven’t figured out how it could have happened. We’re in a real state of emergency around here. No gas, no electricity, no telling when the line can be repaired.” The article went on to say that hospitals and nursing homes were scrambling to move their patients to other locations. Calls to GeoGlobal had not been returned.

  That’s odd. Gas lines don’t just don’t explode. And that poor fireman. This is awful. She remembered that a terrorist group in Mexico had sabotaged a number of gas lines some time ago. It had caused huge problems, but she couldn’t fathom that a group like that would have a reason to do the same thing here in Oklahoma. She added the story to her notes for the morning staff meeting.

  “Okay, folks, a lot on our plate today.” Gregory Barnes shuffled some papers as he glanced around the small conference table at the heads of his six directorates. There was the man in charge of the executive secretariat who managed all the paperwork coming in and going out to the various agencies regarding threat levels and the efforts to coordinate policy, especially through the Department of Homeland Security with its some two-hundred and forty-thousand employees.

  The deputy in charge of Borders and Transportation had her hands full working on security for the railroads and illegal immigration, especially the Mexican paramilitary groups who were teaming up with drug lords to smuggle people as human decoys to divert border agents from the billions of dollars of cocaine shipments coming across at different locations. Even though three had been arrests of several leaders of the Sinoloa Drug Cartel, the notorious group had still been able to consolidate most of the routes into Arizona, while its rival, the Gulf Cartel was focusing on Texas.

  Problems with the virtual fence just added to the challenge. At least the International Narcotics Enforcement Office at State was being cooperative on that one. Samantha had been somewhat amused to learn that this particular office was known as “Drugs and Thugs.”

  Next to her sat the head of Chemical and Biological Defense, then came deputies for Preparedness, Response and finally Samantha whose portfolio included Nuclear Defense and Energy, as well as keeping up to speed on all of their
issues so she could write Greg’s speeches and interview notes.

  As he often did, Greg turned to Samantha first. “Are we set on the talking points for the CNN interview today?”

  She nodded and pushed a two-page summary across the table. “I know they’ll be asking you about the Thanksgiving threat and the great save on the Metro Pentagon stop. The guy is still being questioned, but it should be a good opportunity to highlight coordination between the agencies on that one.”

  Greg perused the points. “Coordination? Right. Good idea. Most of the time we can’t announce plots that we stop because we can’t compromise sources and methods. The press keeps hitting us for surveillance techniques, saying we might be infringing on somebody’s rights somewhere. But when those contacts pan out and we actually prevent an attack, we can’t take any credit. I mean when does this White House get accolades for things that don’t happen?”

  The deputies nodded as their boss went on. “Drives me crazy. At least with the nut job on the Metro, we got lucky. Can you imagine what could have happened if that back pack had been detonated right underneath the Pentagon?”

  “There’s an awful lot of concrete between the Metro and first floor of the building, so I’m not so sure …” one of the deputies remarked.

  “Forget it. People on the train would have been killed, and we just don’t know what could have happened to the building. Anyway, put that one down in the win column. Don’t have too many these days.”

  “Uh, Greg,” Samantha interrupted, “I wanted to mention something I saw in the headlines this morning that you might be asked about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The gas line explosion in Oklahoma early this morning.”

  “I saw a headline about it too, but so what? It was probably some maintenance issue. That’s the gas company’s baby to fix, not ours.”

  “But there was a huge gas fire, one guy is dead, and it reminded me of the terrorist group in Mexico that blew up a whole series of lines down there. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember. But that was EPR blowing up state-owned gas lines, Pemex lines and because those zanies …”

  “The People’s Revolutionary Army,” Samantha supplied the name.

  “Yeah, that group wanted the government to release some of their guys they’ve got in prison. Look, I can’t imagine Mexican rebels coming up here and blowing up a gas line in Oklahoma for God’s sake”

  “But what if …”

  “Forget it. We’ve got too many other issues right now. As I said, let the gas company handle their own problem. But now that you bring up Mexico, they announced in the senior staff meeting this morning that at least their government has those Bell 412 transport helicopters and CASA CN-235 surveillance planes up and running, the ones we gave them. Mexican police should be using them to track the drug dealers not only at our border, but the speedboats that are bringing the stuff from South America to some of the remote Mexican drop off points. Anyway, we all know it’s a big god-damn problem.”

  “So they’ve got the planes, but what about tracking those submarines?” a deputy asked.

  “That’s another challenge,” Greg said. “Ever since we found out they were building submarines in the jungles of Colombia, loading them up with as much as twelve tons of cocaine and dropping it off on the west coast to Mexico, it’s just one more huge headache.”

  He turned to the deputy, “That reminds me. Get hold of that contact of yours over in the Pentagon and see what they’re doing about those things, if anything. I heard they have a working group trying to figure out a strategy, so check on that. I don’t want to elevate this to the SecDef’s office at this point. But if they don’t come up with some sort of solution, we may have to get some high-level attention for this one.”

  Greg then ticked off a number of other issues including an update on the 11:00 a.m. meeting with the airline executives. “That meeting isn’t going to come off today. Dr. Talbot said she could make it in, but with the ice storm grounding so many planes, the airline group can’t get here. I doubt that we’ll get any cooperation from the airlines anyway. They pretty much stiffed the secretary of Transportation over the idea of installing Talbot’s anti-missile laser system on very many of their planes. They’re too broke to take that one on. At least that’s their excuse. The thing is, her system would cost about a million dollars a plane.”

  “That’s a hefty price when you consider most of the airlines are in deep shit right now,” said one of the deputies.

  “Get off it,” Greg said. “A million bucks? That’s about what their audio systems cost. And you tell me. Would you rather fly on a plane with a fancy music system or one you knew had protection from a possible attack?”

  No one said anything.

  “Point made,” Greg said. He gathered up his papers and pushed back from the table.

  Samantha closed her leather notebook but got up with a feeling of unease about the meeting. They went over national security issues every morning of every week, but something about the storm and the gas line explosion wasn’t sitting right.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WASHINGTON, D.C.–MONDAY MORNING

  “Any word yet from headquarters on that mess in Oklahoma?” Tripp Adams, vice president of GeoGlobal Oil & Gas, asked his lobbyist as he hung up his overcoat in the closet of the spacious office overlooking K Street.

  “They’re really scrambling down there. A whole crew went out at dawn. They shut down the line and finally got the fire out, but you probably heard there was one fireman who died. And now they say it’ll be a while before they can figure out what happened.”

  “We’ve had our share of maintenance issues, but nothing like this. I mean, a gas line doesn’t just suddenly explode and burst into a big fireball.”

  “You got that one right. Our guys said it looked like something Red Adair, that famous firefighter, would have handled in the old days.”

  “Jesus!” Tripp walked over to the bay window and stared out at the empty street. “Amazing sight out there. How’d you get in anyway? Does that Prius of yours make it on ice?”

  “More or less. I didn’t really want to buy it, but I figured it might be a good image for an oil and gas lobbyist, you know?” Godfrey Nims said with a grin. “It’s bad enough having to go up to the Hill all the time to meet with the members. I mean, it’s tough up there. Last week, when I was giving the Energy Committee a description of the small amount of land we’d be using if and when they finally give us permission to drill on that lease we want in Alaska, they hit me with so many counter points, I felt like a god-damn piñata.”

  “Welcome to Washington!” Tripp said. “Then again, it might have had something to do with the fact that you told them the size of the drilling area compared to the whole wildlife acreage was like the mark of a BB gun on the ass of a grizzly.”

  The lobbyist looked slightly chagrined. “Yeah, well.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad we both made it in today. I had my own problems getting across Key Bridge. There was a taxi smashed against the guard rail.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “They had a police car there, but I couldn’t tell. At least there weren’t many other cars around, so I got by that one. Guess the admin staff isn’t coming in, right?”

  “Right. They’ve been calling. I didn’t expect any of them. I picked up my coffee at Starbucks on the way in. At least that place was open.”

  “Rats. I should have thought of that. Do you think there’s any in the kitchen?”

  “Sure. You’ll just make your own.”

  Tripp sat down in his black leather chair and turned on his computer to check the headlines.

  Godfrey called from the hallway, “Take a look at the story in the Washington Post on my big issue.”

  Tripp glanced down. “You mean this one about the new hearings on oil and gas exploration?”

  “Yep, that one,” his colleague said. “That’s why I was up there last week, trying to forestall those he
arings until we can get more of our ducks in order. Since this Congress won’t let us drill where the oil and gas happens to be, a problem like this Oklahoma thing could really screw up what little chance we had with the new bill, you know?”

  Tripp furrowed his brow and paused. “Damn. You’re right. And with the bitch from Oregon chairing the hearing, you’re going to have your hands full, my friend.”

  “I know. Every time I have to deal with Cassidy Jenkins, I wonder how that woman ever got elected.”

  “Are you kidding? She’s got the women’s vote, and every tree hugger in the Northwest thinks she’s their hero.”

  “I doubt if she’ll continue in hero status when the price of oil and gas goes up again.”

  “Sure she will,” Tripp said. “She’ll just call for more wind power or something.”

  “That’s what they’ve got at these hearings.” Godfrey shrugged, then added, “Well, let’s just hope we can get our gas flowing again.”

  “We can hope. But with this storm, the ice and the blackouts all over the place, we could have people freezing to death down there.”

  “Jesus, Tripp, don’t talk like that. Nobody is going to freeze to death.”

  “How the hell do you know that? You know damn well that half the homes in this country are heated with natural gas. A lot of it is ours. And then there are the schools, the hospitals, and the factories that can’t operate either.”

  “Let’s not get in some crisis mode here until we find out what’s going on in Oklahoma. They should be calling us pretty soon with an update.”

  Tripp stood up, straightening his six foot one frame, and headed toward the door. “Okay. While you wait for the phone to ring, I gotta make some coffee. Can’t get through a day like this without a caffeine fix.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  OKLAHOMA–MONDAY MORNING

  “Did you see the report about all the people who won’t leave their homes? The sheriff was saying they could freeze to death,” the supervisor in the control room said to his assistant.