The Last Air Force One

by Jeff Kirkham

  Dutch McAdams didn’t think it was very much, but he let his SecDef keep talking. If he knew the man, the punchline was coming.

  “We need to drop the hammer on these riots, before social media eats our lunch. Right now, we’re getting just a little taste of the chaos that’s on deck. Wait until those blackouts hit the big cities of the Midwest and the East. The race-baiters are going to lose their minds. Our troops need to roll NOW. When the droopy-pant gangbangers wake up from their night of looting and partying, they need to see Humvees with belt-fed machine guns outside their windows. Either we do that, or tonight’s going to be hellfire.”

  Sam hadn’t said anything that surprised Dutch. His SecDef had let his inner bigot fly, if only a little bit. Sam had been ideologically primed to blame the decline of America on racial minorities and inner-city criminals. For his part, Dutch sensed that American moral decay went a lot deeper than gangbanger criminals and welfare mamas, but a lot of what Sam said about race riots resonated with Dutch. He couldn’t deny the threat of toxic ideas.

  Even so, Dutch preferred to let this play without taking military action. Sam Greaney was right: something needed to be done immediately or the power failures from the cyber-attacks would cause social unrest to skyrocket. But it was Dutch’s job to find a third way—a middle course that would stop short of ordering Americans to point guns at Americans.

  “Okay, let’s take a sanity break and meet here in fifteen minutes. Bring Zach in. I’m guessing there’ll be some legal issues and he’s going to insist on having a say.”

  6

  It never ceased to amaze Dutch how Sharon could compartmentalize stress. While he had been dealing with an existential threat to the United States, his wife, daughter and son had been looking through old photo albums back in the guest section of Air Force One. Sharon must have grabbed the albums when their secret service detail scooped them up for emergency transport to Andrews. Sharon always took the long view for the family. If the country was going to be nuked, she damn well wasn’t going to lose the photo albums.

  “Daddy, I didn’t know you were a mountain man,” Abby gleamed at her father.

  “That’s overstating things a bit, honey,” Dutch rested his hand on the back of her auburn hair, taking emotional refuge in her youth and beauty. He and Sharon had gotten a late start on parenting; both getting through college, grad school and a good chunk of their careers before beginning their family. During the married-without-children time, Sharon earned her degree in clinical psychology, which had unexpectedly become a secret weapon during Dutch’s career in politics.

  “Your father spent several summers working as a hiking guide for an outfitter out of Lone Pine, California, the Gateway to the California High Sierras. All summer long, he’d hike people up the highest peak in the continental United States, Mount Whitney,” Sharon smiled at Dutch, no doubt remembering the summer they first met on one of those hikes. By the look in her eyes, he was ninety-nine percent sure they were both thinking about the same hammock, a bit off the same hiking trail, on the same cool, summer day in the Grouse Creek drainage. It was a minor miracle they were both virgins when they married two years later.

  “Dang, Daddy, you were a babe!” Abby said, a little too loud. Several of the secret servicemen chuckled in the row behind the first family.

  “My dad made me take that summer job. He thought I was growing up a little too privileged. He said that no son of his would be raised with a silver spoon in his mouth.”

  “Hey, that’s the same thing you say to me,” Teddy chided, softly punching the President of the United States in the shoulder.

  “I say that because my dad was right. Who knows how I would’ve turned out if it weren’t for that summer job. Sometimes, that’s what it takes to become a man—the school of hard knocks teaches you some things you can’t learn any other way.” Dutch couldn’t help but insert a bit of parenting agenda into the conversation. He’d been trying to talk his son into joining the Marine Corps for two years. Instead, Teddy meandered his way through his undergrad, studying French at Boston University.

  “Well, there’re many ways to get there,” Sharon tempered. “Grandpa Chuck preferred the gritty, cowboy path, which is probably why they still live on a ranch.”

  “So you rebelled against the mountain life, Dad?” Teddy counter-argued. “You moved to the East, went to Princeton and became a Boston man? Everyone thinks you were born and bred in Massachusetts.”

  Dutch stepped back and rested his hand on Teddy’s shoulder. “But I’ve got the gravel trails of the California High Sierras in my soul, buddy…enjoy the photos. Don’t miss the one where I’ve got my shirt off. Your old man once had a six-pack.” Dutch threw a quick jab that became a feather slap on the side of Teddy’s head. “I love you guys.”

  Sam Greaney came marching down the hallway toward Dutch and his family, pushing shockwaves of urgency ahead of him.

  “Dutch. The Saudis just buried the Iranians in a massive airstrike, probably reacting to the dirty nuke against their pumping station. The Iranians are mounting what retaliation they can. So far, nobody’s hit Israel, but things are heading that direction.”

  Dutch put his hands on his hips and stared out the tiny window, searching for answers in the clouds. He took a deep breath and followed Sam Greaney toward the communications center.

  7

  “Dutch, you can’t use federal troops in American cities. They are mostly protests. With the possible exception of L.A., you don’t have legal justification.” Zach Jackson stepped back from the president’s desk with his hands on his hips. “President Bush and Congress modified the Insurrection Act to allow the president to call in federal troops to fight terrorism in the United States, but that ENTIRE amendment was repealed in 2008. Gone. Like it never existed. And there’s no way to get Congress to pass something like that on the timeframe you need. The House and Senate are tossed to the four corners of the earth right now. Can’t you use state guard to contain the protests?”

  “We’ve already seen what happened in California with guardsmen,” Sam Greaney argued, wiping his face with the handkerchief he kept tucked in his pocket. “They’ve been totally combat-ineffective. They can’t even get their weekend warriors to report, much less execute on a coordinated mission.”

  “But not all states will be as uneven as California,” Dutch pointed out.

  “Sure,” Greaney chimed in. “Some states have crackerjack guard units and they might slam the door on rioters in those states, but what about the others? Social media shows up in every corner of the nation. Those people—the ones we’re fighting here—have real time coordination. We need to take control of this situation and stamp it out everywhere, all at once. We can’t abide half-assed solutions, and it’s got to happen tonight. Federal troops are the only force with the command and control we need.”

  Silence descended as Dutch thought it through. A year from now, when the urgency and fear of this day was just a vague memory, he would be called upon to answer for this decision. He’d seen it happen after 9/11. The nation had galvanized and taken action after the tragedy, but the unity didn’t last forever. Things returned to normal. People forgot. Congress returned to its aisles. At some point in the future, accountability would be measured out, especially when the Democrats had some time to think it through. If he broke the law now, it would end his career and taint his legacy.

  “I need you to find me a way, Zach,” Dutch weighed in. “I think it’d be unrealistic to trust the people, or even the states to clean up this mess on their own. The job falls to us. We’re the ones who hold the levers of the greatest political and military force in the history of the world. We can make this turn our way. Unless we employ the right amount of force in the right places, things could spiral out of control. Let’s get to work. I need legal justification to send troops into our cities and I need it now.”

  8

  As the day wore on aboard Air Force One, reports of the outages on the East Coast rolled
in like a Biblical plague. Some technologically-savvy staffer set up an electronic map of the United States on the big screen in the conference room, and the power outages burned black holes in the otherwise chestnut map.

  Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego were dark. Initially, it had been the Delta, Utah power plant that had caused the outage, but now civil disorder in Southern California raged unchecked, and power failures were occurring due to violence, absenteeism and destruction of public works. The only good news was that blackouts weren’t Southern California’s biggest problem anymore. The mass exodus out of the region created a much bigger problem, and it wouldn’t matter now if the power came back on or not.

  The blackouts east of the Mississippi were bumbling around the map like a dog who’d stolen too many rum balls. Depending on the power engineering software used in any given part of the grid, and the state of maintenance of that software, the virus made more or less headway against security countermeasures.

  Power companies employed a perplexing array of software solutions—DigSilent, SKM, ERACS, CYME, ETAP, RSCAD and PSSE, just to name a few. The virus penetrated software like a lothario working a singles bar. First, it would try a pick-up line, then buy drinks, next, hit on the “ugly friend.” Eventually, the virus got into everyone’s pants.

  Cincinnati and the surrounding areas were almost entirely spared, thus far. Baltimore and D.C. had gone entirely dark. The Carolinas and Georgia were experiencing rolling brownouts. In Indianapolis, they couldn’t even connect with cell phones—everything had gone down.

  That made Dutch think about his in-laws. Sharon’s parents lived in Indianapolis in a posh retirement community twenty minutes outside the big city. The president got up from his chair and walked back to his family.

  “Sharon, have you had contact with your folks?”

  She looked up from the paperback novel she was reading. His wife loved thrillers, this one with a shadowy figure with a pistol on the cover. “No, I didn’t think we could call out on our phones during a WarFlight exercise. At least, that’s what they told us in the briefing.”

  “I’m pretty sure you can connect in the comms center upstairs. They’ll manage the security. Go call your folks. I’m worried.”

  “Is there a problem?” Sharon put down her book and unbuckled her seatbelt.

  “The blackouts are hitting Indianapolis pretty hard. Let’s see if their cell phones work. They’re not getting connectivity within the city. Maybe Indianapolis didn’t have as good a battery backup system. Or maybe the virus got into the cell networks.”

  Dutch and Sharon walked forward together toward the stairs at the front of the plane.

  “What about your mom and dad in Bishop? Are you concerned with what’s happening in California?”

  Somebody had been keeping Sharon briefed, Dutch noted.

  “The town of Bishop is a hell of a long ways off the beaten path. I’m sure they’re getting some refugees up the backside of the Sierras, but I’d hate to be the guy who pushed his luck with my old man.”

  “Still…I’ll go ahead and call them too.” Dutch and Sharon arrived at the staircase and Sharon climbed toward the comms center while Dutch continued on to the Oval Office.

  9

  “I think I’ve found a way to justify troops,” Zach Jackson announced. “But I can’t guarantee it’ll keep us out of trouble when Congress resumes. Protests are not the same as riots, and we’ve never seen a president respond to civil disorder with troops in EVERY major city. We could potentially be prosecuted.”

  Like all lawyers, Zach generally couched things in terms of absurd future risk. Never had a president been incarcerated for a crime.

  “Go on…” Dutch nodded to his attorney general.

  “We can take two approaches. The Obama administration passed this bit of language where we can claim that there is a threat of radiological weapons being used against major U.S. cities. We don’t have any evidence of a threat other than the L.A. bomb, but that’s a carve out from Posse Comitatus and we can use it. It’s weak, but if we combine it with the stated purpose of the Insurrection Act—to prevent national rebellion—we could buy ourselves some wiggle room. It’s not entirely without precedent. They used the same logic to send in Army and Marines during the D.C. riots in ‘68 and the L.A. riots in ’92. We don’t have widespread riots to back us up, but hopefully, by the time troops are in position, you’ll have the riots you need.”

  “Jesus, Zach. I’m hoping to stop riots, not use them.”

  “Then I don’t know what to tell you. If you stop the riots before they happen, then our legal justification evaporates.”

  “What about the looting last night?” Dutch challenged.

  “That helps, but it wasn’t enough to trigger states to call up guard units outside of California. It’s a huge stretch to call them riots, especially when they’re protesting racially-biased utility access. And I assume you’ll be sending troops into other cities that have no rioting at all. To my knowledge, we don’t have an invite from any governor or mayor other than California’s.” The attorney general held out his hands. “That’s all I’ve got. There’s non-inconsequential legal risk here, Dutch.”

  “Thank you, Zach. What are our next steps?”

  “I need to draw up a request for Sam to send troops to intercept nuclear devices that we both know don’t exist. Unfortunately, I’ll have to sign the request myself, so it looks like you and I are in this together.”

  “Well,” the President joked, “if we wind up in prison, I’ll let you have the bottom bunk. How’s that sound?”

  “That doesn’t sound funny, Mister President.”

  Sam Greaney knocked on the door and walked into the awkward pause in the conversation.

  “What’s the news? Are we rolling tanks or not?” Sam challenged, oblivious to the tension in the room.

  Dutch tried to clear his mind, flipping back to a montage, three years earlier as he stumped along the campaign trail across the American South. He imagined the cities, waking up one by one as the sun rose across the country.

  Charleston. Atlanta. Montgomery. Baton Rouge. Houston.

  He pictured the young punks, sleeping off a night of mischief, in their beds, still living under their mothers’ roofs in crowded low-income housing. He pictured the single moms, alone in their mass-built duplexes on the fringes of the cities, wondering when the electricity would return. He thought about African American children, frightened at the kitchen table, staring at a box of cereal, tuned to their parents’ concern. He saw the retired pastor he’d met in New Orleans, his wife having just passed away. Dutch saw him wake up in his tiny urban home, flip the light switch and furrow his brow as nothing happened.

  Dutch tried to take in all of America at once, three-hundred and twenty-five million people, and he weighed their fear, their vulnerability and their trust in him.

  Most of them didn’t understand the law or the Constitution. What they understood was food, water and electricity. They knew when their house was too hot or too cold. They knew when a flood, a fire or an invisible blanket of fallout threatened their children.

  Those Americans could no longer care for themselves with the lights out, except in small pockets of hardy folk like his mom and dad. Most would expect the government to care for them, and right now, Dutch was the government.

  They would want him to take command of the situation, regardless of the law.

  “Sam. Send the Army into every city over 100,000 people. Send them armed, but I want a total weapons lockdown. This is a show of force, nothing more. Please do it now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Sam Greaney set his coffee mug on Dutch’s desk and walked out of the Oval Office.

  10

  As Dutch contemplated the decision he had just made, alone in his office, a gentle knock on the door broke his reverie.

  “Come in, Sharon.”

  “You okay, Dutch? You look shaken. And you need a shower.” Sharon smiled.

  It amazed D
utch how Sharon still took his breath away—the only person who would tell the President of the United States that he needed a shower. Sharon moved through the world like gentle storm, lightly refreshing the land, but capable of bringing focused destruction when necessary. Somehow, she had taken a moment to “freshen up” which meant she looked like a million bucks, despite being on an emergency WarFlight on Air Force One.

  Even in her mid-sixties, Sharon kept her hair long and colored in the fashion of the day. Right now, she wore it slightly-platinum blonde with a darker shade at the roots. Dutch had no idea what to call the coloring, but he saw it on younger women in the political circles of power. Sharon had maintained an excellent figure, especially considering the natural drift of age. She filled the role of first lady with impeccable poise and decorum, and everyone in the belt loop figured her for a beautiful political wife with a decorous, professional degree buried in her long-forgotten past.

  Very few knew that Sharon was nobody to fuck with. Her indomitable will was a weapon she kept in her psychologist’s tool box, rarely bringing it into the light of day.

  “Hey babe. How are your parents?” Dutch stood and maneuvered her over to the couch so they could sit together.

  “They’re not answering their phones. The communications officer said that nobody in that region is connecting via anything other than satellite phone. They’re beginning to think that the cyberattack included a hit on the older cellular networks.”

  Dutch took a deep breath and lifted Sharon’s hand. “And my mom and dad. Are they good?”

  “They’re not answering either. I tried the home phone and both their cells.”

  “That’s strange,” Dutch worried aloud. “I can’t imagine where else they’d be.”

  “Sam Greaney was up in comms when I made the calls. He offered to send troops to check on both our parents. Dutch, are you sending troops into the cities?”