Out of Crisis

by Richard Caldwell

  Despite the increased visibility, Jeremy still wasn’t able to drive over ten miles an hour. The F-250’s four-wheel drive was able to push the truck forward, but Jeremy knew it would only be a matter of time before the ever-accumulating ash would grind them to a stop.

  Please, God, let us make it to some kind of shelter in Jackson Hole before that happened.

  The truck’s GPS had stopped working. Jeremy suspected this was due either to the layer of ash covering its roof-mounted receiver or the amount of material in the air, blocking satellite signal reception. Most likely, both. Regardless, he had only a vague idea of where they were and how much farther they had to go before they reached anything resembling a city.

  As he pondered the question, they crept by another park sign next to the road: Snake River Overlook, 500 feet. If memory served him well, this would put them roughly thirty miles from Jackson Hole. The road would be flat and about as straight as it got in this part of the country. Jeremy drove on, hoping to get at least another hour farther south before they had to stop for a bathroom break. And to change out the makeshift filter he had put on the F-250’s air intake.

  Just as they passed the first overlook turnoff, Judy pointed out lights in the distance. “Jeremy, look over to the right. Looks like a stranded vehicle.”

  The vehicle—one of the trendy BMW SUVs that was so popular with young professionals‍—had stopped partially off the road, its emergency blinkers flashing. When the slowly moving F-250 was about sixty feet from the BMW, a man and woman got out. The woman was holding a small child in her arms. Jeremy guessed the kid to be less than a year old. Once out of the SUV, the man started waving his arms above his head.

  Jeremy eased the truck up next to the BMW, and Judy lowered her window a crack to talk to the couple. They didn’t need any more ash drifting into the truck.

  Stepping closer to the passenger door, the man said, “Thank God you stopped. We’ve been stranded here for hours. We’re the Tanners, from Duluth, Minnesota. I’m Brandon, this is my wife, Sophie, and our son, Hunter.”

  Jeremy and Judy locked eyes. Jeremy nodded. Judy unlocked her door and opened it halfway. “We’ll do formal introductions later. Put Hunter in the back seat with our twins. You and your wife can get under the tarp in the back of the truck. Be careful climbing in. We picked up another couple a while back. Bikers. They’re under the tarp, probably asleep.”

  “Asleep! How the hell we gonna sleep?” the man roared, sticking his head out from under the ash-covered tarp. “There’s four bicycles back here. There ain’t room for anyone else.”

  Jeremy partially opened the driver’s door, leaned out, and shouted back, “Throw the bicycles overboard and make room. But do it while we’re moving. Even with four-wheel drive, I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to push through this stuff.”

  As Jeremy shifted the transmission back into M1, Sophie handed Hunter to Judy.

  Cursing for all to hear, the biker got out from under the tarp and tossed one of the four bicycles over the side of the truck as Sophie and Brandon climbed in over the tailgate.

  “Well, grab a bicycle, Brandon from Minnesota,” the biker growled as he tossed another bike off the side of the truck.

  Brandon did as he was told, first one bike and then the last, as the F-250 slowly muscled its way forward, its obscenely wide all-terrain tires slipping in twelve inches of powdery pumice.

  From his side mirrors, Jeremy watched Sophie pull one side of the tarp up and slip into the semiprotective shelter it provided from the falling cinders. She held it up high enough to allow Brandon to crawl in next to her.

  “Close the door, sweetie,” the biker chick twittered. “You’re getting the floor all yucky.”

  Openly leering at Sophie, the biker added, “Yeah, we might as well get cozy. Looks like we’re gonna be here awhile.”

  26

  Washington, DC; the Harry S. Truman Federal Building

  Two years before the day of

  It was scarcely a mile’s drive back to his office in the Truman Building, even following the least circuitous route from the White House. Yet thanks to a combination of DC traffic and never-ending road repairs, the trip took almost twenty minutes. David didn’t mind, though. Getting behind the wheel gave him a little uninterrupted time to mentally compose the letter he had to write.

  He entered through his office’s side door to avoid any impromptu visitors who might be waiting for him in the reception area. Once inside, he woke up his computer by moving its mouse. He then clicked on an icon that caused Trish’s workstation to ding and changed a symbol on both their screens from red to green. This let her know David was back in his office and she could come in if necessary.

  Thirty seconds later, there was a muted tap on the door. Trish opened the door and slipped inside, gently closing it behind her. “Welcome back, Mr. Secretary. Here’s a list of people who have been trying to get in touch with you this morning.” Trish handed David a sheet of paper. “I’ve taken the liberty of organizing them according to what I think will be your sense of urgency.”

  David glanced at the list and then laid it on his desk. “You’ve got some kind of superpower, Trish. But today these folks are all going to have to wait a little longer. Go grab a steno pad. We’ve got a fire to light.”

  “A steno pad? Mr. Secretary, you do realize we’re a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century. I’ve never seen an actual steno pad. I’ve heard the term, maybe from my grandfather.”

  “Yeah, I guess I forgot. You learned your trade after the days of voice recognition and cursive handwriting. Just get your iPad, transfer our phones to the switchboard operator, and hurry back.”

  As Trish scurried away, David sat down at the small conference table in the center of his office, a somewhat casual departure from his usual, more formal working position behind his desk. When Trish returned seconds later, David motioned for her to sit down across from him.

  “Trish, I know we’ve discussed some extremely sensitive material before, but nothing‍—and I mean nothing‍—comes close to what I’m going to share with you now. My saying that may be a bit insulting, especially given your security clearance, and if so, I apologize.”

  “Mr. Secretary, I can’t imagine anything you might say that would insult me,” Trish said.

  “I’m obligated to ask you to treat everything we discuss in this meeting just like it was top-secret sensitive compartmented information. It isn’t officially classified SCI simply because we don’t have time to go through normal channels. Again, forgive me for asking, but can you swear that what you are about to hear will not leave this room until I release it?”

  “I assure you that I will treat whatever we discuss as a matter of national security.”

  “Thank you, Trish. I knew you would and that you would understand my caution. And it is a matter of national security. This coming Thursday, I will announce my resignation as the United States secretary of state.”

  It was a good thing Trish wasn’t trying to take shorthand. She would have broken her pencil. A stunned expression flooded her face as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

  David continued, anticipating his next words to be a knockout blow to her senses. “And I’ll announce my intention to run for president in the next election.”

  Trish’s jaw dropped.

  “So let’s compose a letter to the POTUS,” David said. He proceeded to dictate to his shell-shocked administrative assistant. When he was finished dictating his gratitude for the opportunity to serve and his regard for the president, he leaned back in his chair.

  Trish closed the cover on her iPad. “My head’s spinning, Mr. Secretary. I hope the last two shockers are all you have for today. I don’t think I can handle anything else.”

  “You’re safe for now, Trish. Once you print my letter on State Department letterhead, I’ll sign it and we w
ill send it by courier to the POTUS. Any other time, I would have hand-carried it, but he knows it’s on the way. And he knows what it says. He’ll call me on my cell once he receives it.

  “As soon as I get his call, I would like you to set up an emergency close-hold meeting in my conference room.” He tore off a sheet on his yellow legal pad and handed it to Trish. “Just the staff on this list. It might be wise to send a group text and tell them to be on standby, just in case someone has plans to leave early.”

  Scarcely twenty minutes later, Trish tapped on David’s door and came in with his letter of resignation. David signed it in the painstakingly precise brush script he had mastered in grammar school. After making copies of the signed document, Trish placed it in a white nine-by-twelve envelope stamped POTUS EYES ONLY, sealed it, and gave it to the waiting courier.

  Back in his office, David texted Kelly: “It’s done. Plan on submitting your own letter as soon as word hits the streets. I’ll be home for dinner at the regular time tonight. This may be our last chance to have a regular meal for a while.”

  David meant his last statement to be hyperbole; it wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

  27

  The town of West Yellowstone, Montana

  The morning after the day of

  “Let’s get out of here, Scoop!” Kevin jerked open the driver’s door and leaped into the van. “It’s raining fire and brimstone. I’m not sure what brimstone is, but I do know my leg hurts like hell and there’s a hole in my PPE. Protective my ass!”

  “It’s sulfur,” Martin said, climbing into the passenger side and buckling his seat belt.

  “Huh?” Kevin slammed the van into drive and started rolling as an increasing number of smoldering pebbles dropped from the sky, peppering the van and covering the ground all around them.

  “Sulphur. Brimstone is burning sulfur. You know, an element. The symbol S. Atomic number sixteen.”

  “I’m a driver, Einstein. You don’t have to have a degree in chemical engineering to make this thing go forward when you want it to go forward and to stop when you want it to stop.”

  “Well, make it go forward faster, then. It sounds like hail hitting a tin roof in here.”

  In the glow from the van’s headlights, they could see that some of the projectiles were beginning to exceed the category of “pebble.”

  Martin studied a paper map; the GPS was on the blink. “Let’s head north on One Ninety-One until we run out of this meteor shower. We know there is nothing to see heading west on Twenty. If we get on One Ninety-One, we can still put some distance between us and the volcano, and we might be able to intercept the teams from KTVM or KBZK on their way down here. We were first on the scene, and I don’t mind rubbing their noses in that little fact. Besides, KBZK is a CBS affiliate, and a public display of beating them to the punch just might get us out of hot water with the ice queen.”

  “Aye, Captain. Setting a course north,” Kevin responded in a pitiful George Takei imitation.

  They had driven about ten miles when the van’s GPS started working again. Martin assumed this was the result of accumulated ash blowing off the receiver and that they might actually be on the outer fringes of the cloud. And they seemed to be far enough away from the eruption to be out of danger from falling rocks. The GPS indicated they were about thirty miles from the caldera and just south of a bridge where US 191 crossed over Cougar Creek.

  “There’s a pull-off just ahead at the bridge,” Martin said. “Let’s stop there and set up again.”

  Ash continued to fall and accumulate in drifts as Kevin raised the satellite dish. A slight breeze blew from west to east, which, if Kevin’s prayers were answered, would start pushing the cloud away from their location.

  In the distance, the volcano rumbled, occasionally increasing to an ear-splitting roar. Each explosive clap was accompanied by violent tremors powerful enough to bounce the van sideways. Even though the rock bombardment had slacked off, they were still in danger. To the east, the sun was peeking through pines, its light competing with the red-orange glow in the sky above what had been the caldera.

  As the sun climbed over the tree-studded horizon, Martin spied the outline of a tall, perfectly shaped cone to the southeast. It was hard to see through the polluted air, but it appeared to be a mountain.

  One that hadn’t been there before.

  What Martin didn’t know, couldn’t have known, was that one of the tectonic shifts caused the caldera to collapse and fall into itself and its magma intrusion zone deep below the surface. In an instant, it went from caldera to supervolcano, releasing billions of tons of pressure and molten rock through the earth’s upper crust. It was this explosive eruption of lava that formed a gigantic‍—and growing‍—mountain whose core was belching ash and bedrock thousands of feet into the air.

  In less than a week, this pile of still-smoking volcanic ash and rock would rise to 16,530 feet, towering over Alaska’s Mount Bona. It would eventually be named Mount Shoshone, after the nearby lake and Native American tribes originally indigenous to the area.

  As soon as Kevin raised the satellite antenna into position, he started the generator and pressed auto seek on a control panel. The dish rotated, tilted upward, and in seconds locked onto a communication satellite twenty-two thousand miles above.

  While Kevin was once again getting their equipment ready to begin broadcasting, Martin tried to make himself presentable. He pushed back the hood of his PPE and removed his goggles, but his eyes began to sting the instant he did so. He would hold off on the surgical mask until he actually started speaking into his microphone. As before, he wanted his audience to recognize his face, but he didn’t want to look too fresh. He had to elicit some empathy, but he didn’t want to choke to death doing so.

  Just when he found his presentation sweet spot, the sound of approaching engines roared above the volcano’s rumbling. Stepping into the center of the highway, Martin looked north toward the noise.

  At this location, US 191 ran straight as an arrow, slicing through the pine-and-hardwood forest without being hindered by hills or curves. If the ash weren’t falling, Martin would have had an unobstructed view for miles. But through the dense layer of ash, the sun was still struggling to turn the night into dawn. The glow of headlights, lots of them, pushed through the cloud of ash.

  Perfect timing, Martin thought. “Kevin, bring the camera over here. I think the army’s coming. Get them and the highway in the background behind me, and let’s get on the air.”

  “Got it, Scoop,” Kevin said, moving the camera. “Ready in three, two, one.”

  When the camera’s green light came on, Martin snatched the surgical mask off his mouth and started talking.

  “Hello again. This is Martin Driggs, KIFI, reporting live just outside Yellowstone National Park. Earlier this morning we brought you the story of what appears to be the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. I say ‘appears to be’ because no one has been able to get close enough to verify that to be the case. However, as you can see, the air is so thick you can almost slice it, the landscape is starting to look like the surface of the moon, and in the distance you can see the outline of Wyoming’s newest mountain.”

  Kevin panned the camera to the east and, using its telescopic lens, zoomed in on the ominous, glowing shape on the horizon. He then pointed the camera back toward Martin and the approaching convey.

  “We believe the fabled Yellowstone Caldera, which sat above the long-dormant volcano, literally blew its top shortly before midnight. That cataclysmic event was responsible for most of the damage we’ve seen. However, the volcano is still active and extremely dangerous. In fact, we had to retreat from our original broadcast location due to falling chunks of rock and spewing lava.”

  Martin knew he was taking a bit of literary license with his use of “spewing lava,” but it was a technicality. He was painting a mental image for his vi
ewers. Besides, the overwhelming majority wouldn’t know the difference.

  Making a quarter turn to his right so that Kevin could still keep his face and torso in the foreground, Martin pointed up the highway, toward the line of vehicles inching their way in his direction. “It looks like we are about to get some company.”

  An olive-drab—better known as OD green—five-ton truck with an eleven-foot snowplow lumbered its way down the highway, pushing a path through the accumulated ash and creating a four-foot-high drift on the right-hand side of the road. Two Humvees followed two vehicle lengths behind the truck, then three two-and-a-half-ton trucks, the US Army’s fabled deuce-and-a-half, and finally, two white-and-blue buses with Cline Tours painted on the sides, all spaced precisely the same distance apart.

  The truck with the snowplow pulled up alongside the KIFI van and stopped, bringing the rest of the convoy to a halt. After the first Humvee stopped, someone on its passenger side, wearing a military-standard-issue protective mask and a battle dress uniform, which the army called a BDU, started walking toward Martin.

  Kevin focused the camera on Martin and the approaching soldier.

  Martin strode to meet the BDU-clad figure. “Martin Driggs, KIFI News. Are you with the Montana National Guard?”

  “I’m Major Lynette Kohler, Eighty-Third WMD Civil Support Team, headquartered outside Bozeman. We’re an advance party here to provide medical assistance and to support evacuation efforts.”

  The protective mask and its rubberized hood completely covered her face and head, muffling her voice and making it almost incomprehensible. However, Martin could not help noticing that even the bulky BDUs could not hide an exceptionally well-constructed woman. Hmmm. This might prove interesting. He switched off his mic. “Do I call you Lynette or Lynn?”