“If my partner can zoom the camera in the direction of Shoshone Lake, you can see a fiery glow on the horizon. That’s from molten rock, not the sunrise.”
At that very instant, a violent tremor slammed the light set to the ground. Both Martin and Kevin dropped down on one knee.
Martin, still holding his mic and looking toward the camera, scrambled to set the lights back up. “Oh, I forgot to mention the earthquakes. They are getting stronger and more frequent.”
Hannah broke into his narrative. “Martin, how about the citizens of West Yellowstone? And the city itself. What can you tell us?”
“Hannah, we haven’t seen a living soul since we arrived. It appears that the entire town has been evacuated. Based on the traffic we encountered coming in, they are headed into Idaho or south toward Utah. And it’s a good thing too. There are fires everywhere, and the ash is about twelve inches deep where we are standing right now. Some of the roofs on the buildings that are still standing are starting to sag or have caved in. I don’t know how much longer we can stay here. We can barely breathe.”
Hannah continued: “We have learned that units of the Montana National Guard are mobilizing and should be heading to your location. Martin, have you seen any first responders since your arrival?”
“No, we haven’t seen anyone else. In fact, we haven’t seen any signs of life of any kind. No dogs, no birds, nothing.”
A burst of light flooded the sky in the direction of the caldera, followed by a deafening explosion sharper, louder, and more bone-jarring than anything Martin or Kevin had ever experienced.
“Hannah, I believe there has been another eruption. It sounded like a hydrogen bomb, and the sky appears to be on fire.”
As Martin spoke, red-hot rocks and pebbles started to rain down, trailing streams of smoke as they fell. A marble-sized cinder hit the side of Kevin’s right leg and burned through the plastic of his PPE suit.
Kevin danced in shock and pain. “Oww! Som ov’a bich. Thas erts.” His mask muffled his screams and more or less disguised whatever he was trying to say. He switched the camera to his left shoulder and swatted his leg with his right hand, but he never dropped the camera or even stopped recording.
“That’s it for now, Hannah. We’ve got to pull back a couple of miles. We’ll be back as soon as we are in a safer location. This is Martin Driggs, Station KIFI, back to you, Hannah.”
Kevin switched off the camera, and as they started throwing their equipment back into the van, Micca Corbin’s voice blared out of Martin’s earphone.
“Stay your ass right there, Driggs! We’ve gone national. The only coverage of the biggest story of the century. Every affiliate in the Northwest will have crews up there by sunup. Don’t you dare lose our spot!”
“We hear you, Ms. Corbin. We’re not going to lose our spot, but we’re damn sure going to change it! Since you’re in the station and watched the broadcast, you undoubtedly heard me tell the whole world that we can’t fucking breath! Fire and brimstone are raining down all around us. Kevin just got a hole burned in his leg, for Christ’s sake.”
Regaining some of his composure, Martin continued: “We’re heading back west on Highway Twenty until we are at least out of this meteor shower. I have no idea how long that will take because I have no idea how far this ‘falling chunks of stuff’ extends. As soon as we quit hearing rocks hit the van, we will stop and set up again. Besides, it will give our bloodthirsty viewers even more drama—and keep Kevin and me not dead.”
“Well, you go ahead and move, you pussy. But when you get back here, you and I are going to have a little chat. And not in a good way.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Your Highness, but I’m telling you, that’s not at the top of my list of shit to worry about right now.”
24
Washington, DC; the White House
Two years before the day of
The POTUS put down his plate with its half-eaten Danish, leaned forward, and looked fiercely into David’s eyes.
“I’ve given the steps we need to take and the sequence we need to take them in a lot of thought over the last twenty-four hours. As they say, timing is everything. We want to send a shockwave across the political landscape. Or better yet, a tsunami. In fact, that’s the perfect metaphor. We’ll knock ’em down with my first announcement, and then, just as they are starting to get on their feet, boom, we’ll hit again, and then one more time for good measure. Within the span of half an hour, we will have made the most unconventional, most aggressive opening gambit ever seen on a US political chessboard.”
“I hate to say it, Mr. President, but I never really learned to play chess. I remember how to move the pieces, but that’s about it. So it would probably be best if you didn’t rely too heavily on a board game as an example of our strategy.”
“Good point, David. Thanks for sharing that with me, since I was all set to talk about the Ruy Lopez, the Italian, and Caro-Kann as followup moves. I’ll be a little less oblique from here on out.
“So the first step is for me to set up a press conference and announce my condition and my decision to resign immediately. I’m afraid this needs to be done within the next few days. The Grim Reaper could knock on my door at any time.
“Equally concerning are the medications. I’m shying away from the pain meds, at least the opioids. They make me constipated, and when I’m constipated, I’m really grouchy. The chemo drugs are even worse. There is a yard-long list of mental side effects those things can cause, everything from raging panic attacks to depression. The last thing this country needs is a suicidal president who can’t shit.”
Despite his best efforts, David laughed at the president’s macabre joke.
“My point is that I need to get out of the Oval Office before I’m dead or crazy. When I first started mapping out my exit strategy, I thought it would be best if you submitted your resignation and announced your plan to run for office as the first step. Then I put myself in your shoes and realized that would require a superhuman leap of faith. Although clinically impossible, there would always be the prospect that I could hang on for another year or so and decide not to resign. You would be out of a job, and you would have shown your hand to Jim Phillips.”
“I understand, Mr. President, and I’m totally on board with your sense of urgency. However, with all due respect, I have to disagree on the sequence you just laid out. You are correct that it will take significant trust and commitment on my part to take that first step. But Kelly and I’ve made our decision. We know there are risks involved. We plan to do whatever is legally and morally necessary to win this thing or die trying.
“Today is Tuesday. I’ll write my letter of resignation this afternoon, then gather key members of my team together and let them know of my plans. I owe them at least that much. They are loyal and the most dedicated collection of government employees I’ve ever encountered. Of course, I’ll swear them to secrecy, at least until word hits the streets. And I won’t mention your illness or your intentions. This will be like tossing a pebble in the DC pond. Without a doubt, there will be ripples, but they’ll flatten out by the weekend. But your announcement will be like a belly-flop. It’ll splash water everywhere and might even create a couple of puddles on the beach.”
The president sat back, looked up at the ceiling for a moment, and pursed his lips in a half smile, half smirk before turning his gaze back to David.
“That’s an interesting image you’ve painted, David. And since what you’re suggesting was my first inclination before I overthought it, I agree on your approach. I’m going to enjoy sitting back and watching this first petal unfold and listening to the vice president’s reaction.”
“Yes, sir, that’ll be entertaining. I’ll formally submit my resignation and announce my plan to run for office on Thursday. That will allow the dust to settle down over Friday and the weekend. It will also give Judson time
to start getting the Centrist campaign machine moving. I suspect they are already ‘standing in the door,’ to use an old Airborne term, just waiting for a name to plug into their media blitz.”
The president picked up his cup and took a sip of his still-hot coffee. “That being the case, I will plan on having my resignation press conference Monday afternoon. I don’t mean ‘plan’ in the classical, Oval Office sense of the word. No one, except the two people in this office right now and Judson, who has some strings to pull behind the curtain, will know what I intend to do until I tell my press secretary on Monday morning. We will catch Jim Phillips completely flat-footed. But you’ll need that jump out of the starting gate. Despite being a world-class douchebag, the man’s no dummy.”
Pointing toward the desk in front of the Oval Office’s bay windows, the POTUS continued: “Once he is in that chair, he’ll start pulling out every dirty trick he and his soon-to-be-assembled team of slimeballs have at their disposal. And trust me, David, he knows them all.
“That brings me to the next and final point that I wanted to make this morning: your running mate. This is something else I’ve given considerable thought to and discussed with Milt and Judson. As you know, when the Envision-2100 team was casting their net for a presidential candidate, they purposely steered away from career politicians. However, you don’t want to completely divorce yourself from the establishment, at least not the mainstream. The radical Left or Right, yes, and the old-school career politicians, but not those who represent capable, bipartisan, objective leadership. Make that tripartisan now that you’re in the mix.”
“You’re generally at least one step ahead of me, Mr. President, but not this time. I’ve been winnowing a list of possible VP candidates in my head and came to pretty much the same conclusion. Some but not too much name recognition. Experienced but not jaded. Willing to take a stand but not die on a hill for a lost cause.
“I’ve tried to run this thing out mentally through, with Phillips in the game, what is bound to be a nasty campaign and well into the first one hundred days in office. That’s an arbitrary benchmark, but I think it’s reflective of how aggressive the POTUS is coming out of the chute and the potential driving their agenda. And long-term success. FDR pushed an astounding seventy-six bills through Congress and signed ninety-nine executive orders in his first one hundred days. And none of the EOs were revoked.
“As I worked my way through my self-compiled list, I kept coming back to one name: Texas Senator Mia Lopez. She ran and won as a Democrat in a historically red state. She is about as conservative a Democrat as you’ll find, which may account for her swinging fifty-two percent of the popular vote. Admittedly, her opponent was a pathological liar and reeked of corruption, but she did change the leopard’s spots. And she is a she.
“Could we swing her? I don’t know. We have a cordial relationship, but I don’t know her on a personal basis. I do like what I’ve seen of her professionally. She’s not afraid to back off of a stance if someone on either side of the aisle makes a logical case for doing so. And she’s gained a reputation for herding hardliners to a compromise. We could do a lot worse. Assuming she would be willing to be reborn as a Centrist.”
The president leaned back, shifted his gaze toward the portrait of Washington hanging over the fireplace, and nodded in contemplative agreement.
“I admire your thought process, David. I agree that the one-hundred-day benchmark, albeit, as you say, a bit arbitrary, is as good as anything else we’ve got. And it does seem to be a predictor of success. Not necessarily popularity, but you’ll have to learn to get over that concept anyway.
“Mia Lopez would be a damn-good choice. In fact, I’m thrilled that she bubbled to the top of your candidate list. I do know her personally, and now that you’ve brought her name up, I can’t think of a better candidate. If it’s OK with you, and if I’m still around, I’ll reach out to her the day after my announcement hits the streets. But before I do, you might want to bounce the idea off Judson and Milt. I don’t see either of them having an objection, but it would keep them from wasting Envision-2100 resources if they agree on her as your running mate. Besides, it’s a courtesy and sends an ‘I’m in charge but haven’t forgotten who brought me to the dance’ message to those guys.
“So, David, we’ve both got resignation letters to write, and I’ve got a photo op scheduled in the Rose Garden. Funny, it could be one of the last ones I will ever do. If you don’t have any burning questions, I’ll let you head back to Foggy Bottom.”
The president stood up and thrust out his hand.
As the two friends shook hands, David replied, “As always, Mr. President, thank you for your counsel and, most importantly, your confidence. It looks like it’s time to shake things up in this town.”
25
Grand Teton National Park
The morning after the day of
Fiona’s shriek shattered the muffled silence and jerked Jeremy out of his pitifully shallow sleep. It cut to his core, like fingernails scraping on a blackboard. He jerked up straight from his semireclined position in the driver’s seat and spun around to face a cacophony of screams.
Ellis and Fiona were both looking out the left passenger window, their faces contorted in fear. Judy bolted upright too, her eyes reflecting the fact that she was now in fight-or-flight mode, but not fear.
A face was pressed against the rear passenger-side window, like a kid window-shopping at Macy’s. Only this wasn’t a kid, and this damn sure wasn’t Macy’s.
The sun had risen less than an hour earlier, giving the air the soft gray glow of impossibly heavy morning fog. The visibility was better than it had been the night before, but barely so. Ash continued to fall just as heavily as it had been doing. Everything was covered in a smothering blanket of the stuff for as far as Jeremy could see, which, despite the radiance from the filtered sunlight, wasn’t over thirty feet.
The man whose face was pressed against the wind—Jeremy could tell it was a man by the figure’s size and hulking demeanor—had pulled a T-shirt over his head and torn two half-dollar-sized holes in it to peer through. The shirt, the skin around the man’s eyes, and his clothes were covered in black, glittering ash. He was so close to the truck that Jeremy couldn’t judge how tall he was, but his arms and shoulders made him out to be well over six feet and thickly muscled.
Three or four steps behind the man moved another smaller, shadowy, ghostlike figure. The cantaloupe-sized bumps inside a two-sizes-too-small Harley Davidson pullover indicated this was the man’s female companion. She had a bandanna wrapped over her nose and tied in the back, train-robber style. Her hair was stuffed inside a biker do-rag.
The man rapped on the window with the knuckles of his hamlike left hand.
“Hey, mister, we need to hitch a ride,” the man hollered through the closed window. “My bike choked up in all of this shit. Me and my old lady are stranded.”
Jeremy felt a wave of compassion—until he saw the tire jack handle clenched in the man’s right fist. Compassion was replaced by alarm.
“We’re heading south, toward Jackson Hole,” Jeremy shouted through the closed window. “If you put that club down, you can ride in the back of the truck until we get out of this mess.” He started the F-250’s engine.
“Sure, mister, but how about we ride in your trailer? Get us out of the volcano dirt.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Jeremy shouted back. “We’re leaving now. If you want a ride, throw your jack handle down and climb in the back.” He put the truck in M1 and started slowly moving forward.
“OK, motherfucker, you win, but you’ve gotta stop sometime!” the man screamed. He and his “old lady” clambered into the bed of the F-250.
Watching the pair through his rearview mirror, Jeremy didn’t miss the fact that the man was still holding on to what was potentially a deadly weapon. He didn’t say anything to Judy or the tw
ins, who were watching through the back window.
The F-250 continued rolling as the man and woman crawled over the truck’s tailgate and into its bed, moving forward as far as the rack of bicycles and toolbox allowed. They settled under a tarp Jeremy had used to cover their firewood supply.
As he maneuvered slowly back onto US 191, Jeremy kept his eyes on what he hoped was the middle of the ash-covered road. “We’ll drive as far as we can, but at some point, we’ll have to take a potty break. I’m not even going to try to pull over. I’ll just stop, and we all get out and do our business. We’ll just have to play it by ear with those two.”
Jeremy caught Judy’s eye. He reached between his seat and the center console for the .357 Magnum. Judy nodded slowly. He laid the gun next to his right hip so that either of them could grab it if, heaven forbid, the need arose. The pistol was a five-shot revolver. The first two rounds in the gun’s cylinder were loaded with CCI shotshells, each of which fired 150 pellets of birdshot instead of a solid projectile.
Years earlier, when they first decided to purchase a firearm, Jeremy and Judy had jointly decided they wanted the protection. But even if push came to shove, they would try to avoid killing an attacker if at all possible. For that reason, they planned to pepper an assailant with birdshot rather than blast a hole in his chest the first time they squeezed the trigger. This strategy did not sit well with their die-hard Second Amendment friends, but Jeremy and Judy were more comfortable with this approach.
The visibility was much better now that the sun was out. Jeremy could make out rough shapes up to thirty feet in front of the truck, and he had a better sense of where the highway shoulders were. There wasn’t much, if any, difference in the volume of ash that continued to fall. It had accumulated significantly since they had pulled over for what pitifully little sleep they had been able to get. A good ten-to-twelve-inch-thick glittery black mat now covered the road and ground for as far as he could see. Tree branches sagged under its still increasing weight. Many had broken and fallen to the ground. These were evidenced now only by swollen mounds on an otherwise smooth surface.
Out of Crisis Page 17