by Jeff Kirkham
The Last Air Force One
A Post-Apocalyptic Saga
Jeff Kirkham
Jason Ross
1
A nuclear blast looked nothing like a mushroom cloud from so close.
Dutch’s mind struggled to find solid ground. The same thing had happened on September 11th, 2001 when he watched an airliner hurl into the twin towers on TV. Just like that morning twenty years ago, President Nathaniel “Dutch” McAdams’ mouth hung agape and his knees went to water as he watched America being incinerated by its enemies.
The picture on the television jerked side-to-side. The iPhone cameraman must have been running away from the blast while filming toward it. A massive sphere of light wrapped around a cluster of high-rise office buildings. The light overwhelmed the tiny camera and the buildings vanished in a starburst. A split-second later, the light receded, and the camera adjusted to the exposure, the buildings still standing.
The President of the United States exhaled. He had been holding his breath for the last twenty seconds. Returning to this terrible reality, he watched as one of the wealthiest cities in America crouched before a thunderclap of flame.
The windows of the office buildings vaporized as the over-pressure of the blast pulsed through the high-rise, sucking atomized glass and a hundred thousand pieces of paper into thin air. Dutch watched for falling bodies but saw only ticker tape floating leisurely toward earth.
He already knew that the shockwave wouldn’t be followed by white-hot flame—otherwise, the cameraman wouldn’t have uploaded the video to the internet. If the man had burned up, the president and his staff wouldn’t be watching him run for his life on the big screen TV in the Oval Office. Apparently, the explosion wasn’t enough to incinerate all of downtown Los Angeles. Still, the ground in L.A. must’ve heaved like a kicking mule. With the cameraman running pell-mell, it was hard to tell.
The cameraman slowed, either from over-exertion or from the realization that the fireball wasn’t going to immolate him. A heavy-set man with a wispy beard turned the camera on himself, gasping for air and stating the obvious.
“Los Angeles has been hit by a nuclear weapon. I’m going to post this on Instagram and run for my car. I don’t know how long I have before the fallout gets me. I want my family to know I love them. Goodbye.”
The TV flipped back to a blond-haired man in a suit, sitting behind a desk at a Fox News studio, probably in New York City. The newscaster began to repeat what everyone who had watched the last fifteen seconds already knew: Los Angeles had been attacked.
Dutch blinked away his amazement and resumed his role as the most powerful man on Earth.
“What else do we know?” he asked his team assembled in his office. They had been working almost non-stop for two days on a financial crisis that had already been threatening to swamp the world economy, even prior to the nuke. This latest attack—and it could only be an attack—raised a thousand questions. Who was aggressing against the United States, and what did it have to do with the dirty bomb in Saudi Arabia and the crash of the stock market? The string of events made absolutely no sense to McAdams.
Nobody from the president’s team spoke, the newscaster droning in the background, repeating essentially the same sentence over-and-over.
The doors to the Oval Office burst inward and Dutch’s contingent of secret service agents fanned out in the room, peering at his staff with unnecessary suspicion.
“Mister President, we’re taking you to Air Force One right now.”
Dutch had argued with his protective detail before and he’d always lost. Whatever power he held as president didn’t extend to bending the will of the government organizations he supposedly commanded. Secret Service policy, as with all governmental agencies, spanned many dozen presidents. There was only so much he could do to alter the institutional will of the over four hundred agencies, sub-agencies and departments, many with more than two hundred years of bureaucratic inertia. Most days Dutch felt like a conductor standing in front of an orchestra, the musicians with bags over their heads.
He grabbed his laptop and cellphone before his security dragged him away.
“Janice, get Sam Greaney and Zach Jackson to meet me at Andrews AFB. They need to be on that plane.” He turned to the secret service agent holding his arm. “Where’s my family?”
“In a helo on their way to Andrews, sir.”
“Thank you… Robbie, come with us.”
Robbie Leforth, Dutch’s chief of staff looked rattled. The younger man jumped up from the sofa and blundered toward the phalanx of secret service agents now heading out the door.
“Robbie. You’re going to need your laptop,” the President pointed toward the coffee table as he was being pulled from his office and into the hallway.
2
Upon boarding Air Force One, Dutch broke ranks with his protective detail and headed back into the section of the plane set aside for reporters and his office staff. He needed to check on his family.
His wife, Sharon, his twenty-three-year-old daughter, Abigail and his twenty-year-old son, Teddy were buckled in, ready for the Boeing 747-8 to get in the air.
Dutch noticed a cluster of three special forces operators in full military kit, speaking privately with Secretary of Defense Sam Greaney. He overheard something about “a full frange load-out” which meant nothing to Dutch. His secret servicemen stood in a separate cluster, eyeballing the other gunmen. Nothing about the scene alarmed the president. Greaney’s personal security detail were Army Delta Force, and his own secret service detail distrusted everyone as a general rule.
After trading a quick touch-of-the-hand with his wife, and a smile with each of his now-adult children, Dutch strode with purpose toward the front of the gleaming aircraft.
The glamor of Air Force One still hadn’t worn off on Dutch. Aside from the top-secret features of the plane, no effort had been spared for style and comfort. Even the office, guest, security and press sections in the back of the hulking fuselage put most first-class sections to shame; with wide leather seats—each with an array of connection and entertainment options imbedded in their consoles. On every bulkhead, crystalline LCD screens silently scrolled through passenger safety instructions produced exclusively for the president’s personal jumbo jet.
Heading toward the nose of the plane, the duties of governing the greatest empire the world had ever seen took precedence over design. The main hallway dog-legged to the port side of the plane, affording space for a large conference and dining room, a senior staff office, the plane’s galley, a small medical office and the Oval Office. The president and first lady’s executive suite filled the nose of the aircraft, where one might expect the pilots.
The Boeing 747, one of the first “jumbo jets,” not only ran much wider than most jets, but offered an upper deck in the front of the craft, where Air Force One housed a state-of-the-art communications center and the flight cockpit.
Everything about Air Force One, from its fit and finish to its capability to stay aloft indefinitely through mid-air refueling, spoke to the incomprehensible might of the United States of America. Stepping aboard the aircraft was like walking into the throne rooms of medieval Europe. Allies and rivals alike were to take notice: the U.S.A. ruled the Earth.
Whereas the Oval Office in the White House had been packed with economic and diplomatic advisors, the front section of Air Force One bristled with military men. Secretary of Defense Sam Greaney sat on Dutch’s couch and uniformed servicemen hustled past on their way to the communications center on the second floor of the aircraft.
The use of nuclear weapons would typically have that effect, Dutch reasoned. Still, even as a Republican, he had developed th
e habit of leaning away when the war hawks appeared. Almost from day one as president, Dutch found himself choking back on the military, as though it were a pit bull straining on its leash.
It made Dutch think of one of his father’s favorite truisms: to a hammer, everything’s a nail.
“I would love an update,” President Dutch McAdams requested as he settled behind his desk. The plane hadn’t taken to the air yet, but he had just spent twenty-five minutes in a helicopter without any news.
SecDef Sam Greaney would have the latest information, given that the military undoubtedly had aircraft circling over Los Angeles and maybe even troops on the ground by now. The secretary of defense would probably become Dutch’s best source for hard data from this point forward, no matter how much Dutch would’ve preferred to use domestic resources.
“Mister President, F-35s out of Miramar are currently over-flying Los Angeles harbor, and we have zero indication of a follow-on threat as of this time,” Sam reported. “Uncorroborated initial sit reps indicate that the device detonated four kilometers out to sea and that damage to Los Angeles proper was collateral overpressure and not the primary detonation.”
Dutch understood the words, but Sam Greaney had gotten into the habit of over-using military jargon since his posting to secretary of defense. Sam had served briefly as an Air Force officer three decades back, primarily working in intelligence and then working for the CIA. After that, he had moved into the private sector. Dutch had hoped that over twenty years in business would have made Sam a bridge between the military and civilian worlds, but during the last two years as SecDef, Sam had become something of a “fan boy” of the generals, officers and special forces soldiers that reported to him as secretary of defense. Perhaps Sam’s time in the military hadn’t been enough to answer that burning question inside most men: am I a warrior or am I not?
“Thank you, Sam. Could you please say that again, maybe in a way we’re all sure to understand?”
Sam Greaney blinked back the veiled criticism and ran his hands through his cropped gray hair as he gathered his thoughts. He tucked his dress shirt into his belt, tidying up the fabric around his trim waist. In the last two years, he had picked up the military officer habit of maintaining his fitness, despite being over sixty-years-old.
“Well, in civilian terms, I would say that the bomb seems to have been a small one. Maybe even a backpack nuke. We have no idea why, but it exploded three miles offshore from Los Angeles. We’re still trying to figure out why it didn’t hit L.A. directly. We have hearsay reports of L.A.P.D. intercepting a small sea craft right before detonation. There are no hostile warships in the area, and we have no reason to believe that enemy forces are in theater. But it’s hard to say for sure because from the sky, L.A. appears to be in total chaos.”
The airplane rumbled as it taxied on the runway, causing a short a pause in the briefing.
“Chaos?” Zach Jackson asked. As per Dutch’s request, both his SecDef and attorney general had made it onto the plane in time for takeoff.
Dutch had the same question: how had the bomb affected the rioting that was already going on in southern California. Los Angeles had been in a crisis even before the nuclear attack. More accurately, Orange County, California had been experiencing blackouts and brownouts over the previous two days, and the power problems had spread to the margins of L.A. as had rioting and civil disorder.
Dutch had never been entirely clear on the difference between Los Angeles and Orange County. They both seemed to be part of the same, sprawling mass of strip malls, commercial buildings and tract homes, stretching from Camp Pendleton in the south to Ventura in the north. Orange County had been experiencing rioting as had some parts of Los Angeles due to several days of power outages. Dutch and his staff were just working on a federal response to the rioting when they were interrupted by news of the nuclear attack.
Like Zach Johnson, the president wanted to know if the attack had stopped the rioting. They were both probably thinking of 9/11, when America quickly unified in the face of an attack on one of their great cities.
“Well,” Sam Greaney explained, “We’re talking about F-35 pilots looking down from several thousand feet going point-seven-five mach. It’s not like they can see the expression on peoples’ faces. They’re telling us that a mass exodus is underway, worse than before, if that’s even possible. I have troops rolling from El Segundo to give us eyes on the ground. I expect a report any minute.” He looked down, pulling his cell phone from his pocket and thumbing the screen, scrolling through messages, probably looking for a report from L.A..
“Is that a report from L.A., Sam?” the President prodded the secretary of defense, who had become engrossed in something on his cell phone. “Yes sir. Sorry, sir. I’m trying to find out more.” Sam Greaney sat down on the couch between Robbie Leforth, Chief of Staff, and Janice Brown, the president’s personal secretary.
“I’ll let you know more when I know more,” Sam Greaney said before getting lost in the data stream.
3
Everyone had been cleared out of the Oval Office by the flight attendant for takeoff. The president could buckle into his office chair, but everyone else had to take their assigned seats until they reached cruising altitude.
Dutch pondered the irony of the moment. California might be spiraling out of control, caught in a grab bag of disasters, but the pinnacle decision-makers, upon whom millions of people relied for leadership, were being herded to their seats by a flight attendant just to make absolutely sure nobody bumped their head during takeoff.
Dutch smiled despite the tension grinding in his gut. How had the world come to this: diminutive safety concerns and ponderous policy outweighing common sense? Nine-tenths of the straightforward actions he wanted to take as president had been stymied by political exigency, social sensitivity, and good, old fashioned inertia. Doing the smart thing had never been more difficult in politics, even with mind-boggling technology at their fingertips.
For the thousandth time, he compared his presidency to Abraham Lincoln’s. Oh how Dutch would’ve loved to lead the country back when a president could turn the rudder and the ship would follow.
He closed his eyes and tried to make sense of the deluge of information he faced since waking up that morning. What had started out as a terrorist attack in the Middle East had become an energy crisis which had transformed into a stock market problem. Then a bomb exploded off the California coast. Dutch failed to grasp the connection. It felt like a tangle of string and he couldn’t find the end.
This happened a lot as POTUS. He faced so many data points, factors and question marks that it became impossible to get them all on the same map inside his head. Having done this job for two years now, Dutch had a lot more sympathy for the guy he replaced. Doing the “smart thing,” even with more information than anyone on the planet, still involved a ton of guesswork.
He sat back in his chair and inventoried the events of the last few days, stripping them of drama as best he could.
Unless his people had missed something, the first big dollop of trouble had been the dirty bomb hitting the oil transfer station in Saudi Arabia three days before. The CIA’s best guess was that Iran mounted the nuke attack, for some reason that only made sense to that maniac, religious dictator who ran their country. Putting the whys and wherefores aside, the bomb in Saudi Arabia had generated a stampede in the energy markets.
The U.S. had been a net exporter of energy for some time, but the commodity pricing of oil still rocked and rolled based on global factors. How much oil was coming out of Siberia? What craziness was going on in the minds of OPEC? How were the Arabs, Jews and Iranians behaving this week?
American gas on the American mainland was secure. But the American commodities market was not secure at all.
Rising tides lift all boats, as the saying went. But plunging tides also dumped all boats in the mud. With the price of oil skyrocketing, the first boat to hit the seafloor had been the Union Pacific Rai
lroad.
The venerable, old railroad’s sickly stock had been propped up for years by cheap diesel fuel and the coal transport market. But coal had become a swearword for the eco-minded denizens of America. Coal transport, from mines to power plants, meant a hell of a lot to Union Pacific Railroad and their shareholders. When diesel fuel doubled in price, the railroad stock fell off a cliff, and their fuel contracts hit stop-losses, giving the fuel suppliers a chance to renege on their deals. The ensuing contractual stutter-step temporarily halted all rail movement in the western United States, which meant that coal couldn’t get where it needed to go. No matter how much the eco-social-justice crowd hated coal, the dirty fossil fuel still provided thirty percent of the power for their electric cars and cappuccino makers. Like a family with an awkward, homeless uncle, America couldn’t just abandon coal without first figuring out a sensible game plan. But, the collapse of the energy market had rendered these questions moot. Union Pacific and the coal it shipped had taken a premature dirt nap, and Dutch had no idea how a president was supposed to fix things when markets convulsed entirely on their own.
On the opposite side of the political divide from the eco-minded, the ultra-right citizen militias had been on edge lately. While they generally liked Dutch as president, the militia types couldn’t stand the federal government. The week prior, there had been an unfortunate shooting between a militia group in Texas and a federal park ranger. Five men had died. On top of that, the dirty bomb attack in the Middle East had the alt-right screaming “false flag operation” though it wasn’t clear who they thought had secretly orchestrated the bombing. For all Dutch knew, they could be right. He’d seen stranger things in his time in politics.
As fate would have it, the biggest power plant supplying Orange County and the eastern third of Los Angeles County sat on a hotbed of militia activity: the town of Delta, Utah—one of the same power plants that missed their coal shipment because Union Pacific Railroad lost its diesel supplier. The Delta, Utah power plant was hundreds of miles from Los Angeles. But losing that chunk of electricity during the end of summer in sweltering Los Angeles basin had an impact nobody might’ve imagined.