by Jeff Kirkham
The president stood a couple paces back, pretending to hold in reserve. Not for a moment did Dutch contemplate staying there, but if it made Agent Brooks feel better, he would happily act as though he’d be avoiding the fight.
Agent Brooks didn’t wait for permission.
“Go, go, go,” he hissed.
The stack of men, the president at the rear, flowed into the hallway, charging toward the security section of Air Force One. Only later would Dutch piece together the cobra-fast sequence of events.
He never saw the grenades being thrown, but Dutch heard the enemy operators shout, “Grenade!”
Agent Brooks pushed into the entryway and crouched behind the secretary of defense. The thunder and flash overwhelmed Dutch’s senses, even at the back of the line. How could men be standing up to the gut-twisting overpressure of the explosion?
But the enemy operators were fazed for only a split-second. They poured gunfire down the hallway, shooting expertly around Greaney.
Agent Brooks returned fire and the second agent in line drew his handgun and joined the fight. The four men pushed into the room, firing at the operators, shooting in and around the airline seats.
Dutch’s aide de camp fell back onto him and looked up, a gout of blood pulsing from his throat. Something clicked in Dutch, like a door slamming on a section of his mind. He recognized the mortal wound and dropped the man to the floor, pushing forward, hunting to bring his own gun to bear.
One of the secret servicemen dropped, clutching his chest, and Dutch filled the gap, dumping round after round into the men behind the seats, doing his best to pull his rounds away from where his son would be hiding.
Dutch’s weapon sights were the furthest thing from his mind. He mashed the trigger over and over, seeing the bloody faces of the enemy operators bobbing above and around the airplane seats, chunks of flesh apparently blown off by the grenade, but doing nothing to slow their commitment to combat.
Sam Greaney mule-kicked Agent Brooks and launched himself onto the floor toward the security section, landing face-first and clearing the hallway for his men to shoot unrestricted.
Agent Brooks took several rounds to the chest and Dutch saw one splash off the man’s shoulder, splattering Dutch’s face with blood.
“Back, back, back!!” Brooks screamed as he dropped the magazine out of his Glock, rammed another one home and resumed firing.
Dutch was the first to duck around the corner back into the office section, bullets whizzing into the plastic and aluminum surfaces of the plane. Miraculously, all four secret service agents followed. Three were bleeding from extremity wounds, one had been grazed across the head and all of them had been shot in the body armor. Dutch was the only man to escape unscathed.
“Mother fucker, those bastards are tough,” one of the secret service agents wheezed, likely suffering from broken ribs. The five men gulped air and coughed, alive but defeated. The truth of their failure soon eclipsed the rush of adrenaline.
Dutch’s son remained in the hands of ruthless killers.
36
The firefight had further damaged the airframe, and the whistling from the hull could be heard coming from several locations. Dutch didn’t need to ask the pilot; he knew they would be landing or losing consciousness soon. During the fight, the oxygen masks had popped out of the ceilings.
“Dutch,” the secretary of defense called out, now together with his commandos in the security section. Greaney didn’t even sound injured. “I respect the effort, but now I’ve got to do some things I would’ve rather avoided.”
“Is Teddy okay?” Dutch ignored the threats.
“Oh, he’s fine, but he won’t be.”
Teddy began to scream, then the pitch of his scream climbed to an animal shriek. Dutch launched forward into the corridor, a blind lunge toward his son. One of the secret service agents hooked Dutch’s arm and wrestled him back from the shooting lane. He pinned Dutch in an iron wrestler’s hold while the young man passed through his chorus of agony. Teddy’s shrieking abated, and Dutch let out a choked sobbed, impossibly relieved to hear him weeping rather than silenced.
Something sailed into the office section and thunked to the ground in front of Dutch. His brain struggled to place the bloody mass until his mind reluctantly recognized a trim fingernail and he surrendered his denial. His son’s severed finger leaked blood on the beige carpet of the airplane. Dutch’s eyes lost focus and the bile burned in his stomach.
A finger. His son’s finger. Maimed forever. But alive. Still alive.
“I’m sorry, Dutch, but pieces of your son will keep coming if you don’t put this plane on the ground and give me the launch codes and your authorization to act as Commander and Chief. We’re done playing.”
In five minutes time, Dutch had learned two things about himself.
One; that he was no coward in a fight.
Two; that all it took to evaporate his will was his son’s severed finger.
As Teddy cried in the background, and as the airframe of Air Force One warbled its death wail, Dutch McAdams surrendered the presidency to a man nobody would’ve ever elected.
“Okay, Sam. You win. I’m getting you the codes.”
37
Please take your seats and buckle your seat belts. We’re on final approach, the pilot warned over the intercom.
Considering the five dead bodies, uncountable flesh wounds and Dutch’s tortured son in the security section, the safety warnings sounded like a cruel joke. Procedure will be procedure, Dutch supposed, his mind drifting on the come-down tide of adrenaline.
Even so, Dutch sat in his office chair and buckled his seat belt.
He wondered if Sam Greaney would try to seize the airplane before they could offload. Dutch still had his secret service detail, so the two teams of fighting men would still probably cancel one another out. His men were all severely wounded, and he had no doubt the commandos were injured as well. Dutch doubted that anyone wanted another gunfight.
At this point, the variables of the situation were spread all over the map. Sam Greaney had been right: Dutch had never been good at looking three steps ahead. He had already handed the nuclear football over to Sam, but he refused to give him the combination to the suitcase locks. Also, Dutch withheld the letter of authorization, holding it until his family and supplies were off the plane.
It was the best he could do.
Dutch felt his defeat, whole and unmistakable. He knew he was handing the remnants of America over to a soulless tyrant.
The aircraft trembled as the wheels contacted asphalt. Dutch inhaled, subconsciously allowing himself to breathe again. He looked out at endless sage and rolling hills racing past his window. The Idaho desolation was to be their new home, and if the handoff went according to plan, the desolation might be their savior.
He unbuckled his seat and headed out of his office to shepherd Sharon and Abigail down the jetway, hungry to get as much of his family off the plane as he could.
The women had gathered up the most rugged clothes they could find, even while Teddy sat bleeding and maimed in the back of the plane. Everyone had to do what they could to survive. Something about that refrain struck Dutch as a new and permanent reality.
Get used to it, he told himself. He watched his wife and daughter descend the built-in jetway on Air Force One. They stepped down and greeted the soldiers—wide-eyed and gawking at the unexpected arrival of the president’s airplane. The three armored vehicles he requested and two Humvees awaited.
Dutch moved aft toward the no man’s land between the office section and the security section of the airplane. Sam Greaney and his commandos hid in their section, giving Dutch no idea as to their disposition. For all he knew, the operators could’ve died from their wounds.
“Sam, we’re disembarking and unloading our gear. Send Teddy out now.”
Unseen behind the bulkhead, Sam Greaney shouted back. “With respect, sir. Fuck you. You’ll get him when I get my letter and the combination
to the briefcase. Don’t toy with me or I’ll send you the middle finger. Literally. Also, get those airmen refueling us and patching the holes. You’re lucky I’m even going let you have your prepper crap. I don’t have to do that, you know.”
Sharon must have handled offloading logistics with the airbase because Dutch heard the sound of forklifts and felt the airframe vibrate as the cargo doors opened.
“I’m going to make sure the mechanics are en route. My men will stay right here,” Dutch threatened. He didn’t want Greaney to get the idea that he held all the cards. Agent Brooks, still bleeding from the open wound on his shoulder, gave Dutch a thumbs up.
“Dutch. If you want your boy back with his hands still attached, you’ll stay here. I don’t want you going anywhere. And throw us the big med kit. Do it in the next ten minutes, or I’m going to have them cut off his right hand,” Greaney demanded.
It was an unnecessary threat, but Sam Greaney apparently enjoyed making them. As he picked up the phone on the wall, Dutch couldn’t imagine how he had overlooked the malignant soul in his pick for secretary of defense.
38
Air Force One taxied away moments after Dutch McAdams descended the stairs, holding Teddy up as his son stumbled down the jetway. All their supplies had been forklifted down, the holes in the airframe hastily patched, and medical supplies thrown to Sam Greaney and his hired shooters. The exchange was done, but Dutch hadn’t surrendered.
Dutch had given Greaney the letter and the combination to the nuclear suitcase in exchange for his boy, but he had promised himself he would destroy the plane before he would let Sam Greaney get away.
“Did you tell them to shoot it down?” Dutch yelled at Sharon as he passed Teddy off to an Air Force medic and ran toward the armored vehicles. When Sharon replied with a bewildered look, Dutch veered toward the nearest Stryker.
“Destroy that plane now,” Dutch shouted. The reservists stumbled about the vehicle looking for some kind of command authorization. “I’m your Commander and Chief,” Dutch roared. “You don’t need to confirm my order. Shoot it down!”
The crew commander finally grasped the order and bellowed at a crewman to bring up ammo for the fifty cal. While the men struggled to load the huge machine gun on top of the Stryker, Air Force One thundered past on the opposite runway, taking to the sky just as the top plate on the machine gun slammed shut.
The Browning M2 exploded to life, the line of tracers lagging a hundred yards behind the plane as it banked off the runway. The machine gunner corrected, firing a string that chased the 747 but fell short and to the outside of its banking turn. The machine gunner elevated his next burst and placed the glowing rope exactly where the jet liner had been moments before, still falling behind.
The belt expended, the assistant gunner quickly laid another belt into the feed tray and slapped the top plate closed. Air Force One continued to climb, now almost two miles away. The machine gunner continued firing, trying to walk the line of tracers into a target approaching a speed of three hundred miles an hour. If he scored any hits, it had no apparent effect on the aircraft.
When the massive din from the machine gun died, the machine gunner apologized. “I’m sorry sir. That was my first time shooting at an aircraft. I’m sorry. I’ve never attempted anything like this.”
Sharon stepped beside her husband as he ran his fingers through his silver hair over and over again. “Oh my God, Sharon. I let him get away with the codes. Oh my God…”
She took his hand in both of hers, calming him. “Dutch. It’s going to be okay.”
A familiar face stepped out from behind the Stryker and Dutch took a second to recognize the co-pilot from Air Force One. Dutch turned to his wife, struggling to understand.
Sharon looked at him with hard eyes, sadness and resolve playing across her face.
It had been the same expression a year earlier, when she had urged him to fire his secretary of state. With those same eyes, she looked toward the horizon—toward the dwindling shape of Air Force One.
“Jeff said he’d be willing to make the sacrifice if it came to that,” Sharon explained without taking her eyes off the aircraft. “Jeff’s wife and daughter are gone, so dying for his country would be a gift, he said.”
Dutch watched the plane make a slow banking turn, then it tipped nose forward and banked in the opposite direction.
“Not everyone in this country has forgotten about honor,” Sharon spoke the pilot’s epithet.
Air Force One angled from the sky at full speed, then suddenly disappeared into the side of a mountain, a mile-wide starburst erupting from the grey rock. A massive, silent fireball rolled into the sky. Twenty seconds later, the sound of ripping thunder reached the airfield.
“Sweet Mary, Mother of God,” Dutch whispered.
“He said it’d be a gift,” Sharon turned toward Dutch and leaned her forehead against the side of his head, her tears trickling down his sideburn. “We aren’t the kind of people who let a monster hold America in his hand, and neither was Jeff Crane. That wouldn’t be something we could live with.”
“This was you?” Dutch pleaded with her for understanding.
“Jeff…the pilot. He and I agreed that this would be best, if it came to that.”
She had always been the knife’s edge in their partnership—the carbon steel to his hickory grip. While Dutch struggled to think three moves ahead, Sharon did it in her sleep.
“May God have mercy on their souls,” Dutch intoned, the finality of their struggle finally dawning on him.
Epilogue
Within hours of the death of Air Force One, a new struggle unfolded—primal, ruthless and never-ending. If ever he forgot the brutality of their new life, Dutch had only to look at his son and the stump of his left pinky finger. Gone was the boy who studied French and loved video games. His son had learned the lessons Dutch wanted him to learn, but those lessons had come at a horrific cost—evaporating the twinkle in the boy’s eye and hurdling him into the calloused manhood he would likely need to survive.
Several weeks had passed and winter closed in on southern Idaho. Fleeing from the dangers of civilization, their caravan of three Strykers and three Humvees struck deep into the gray shale deserts of Idaho and Nevada, seeking refuge as far from human habitation as possible. In the end, it was the Shoshone-Paiute Indians of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation who took them in. Despite their deeply troubled history with the United States, the Shoshone-Paiutes graciously offered a home to the U.S. government in absentia, giving the president and his people medical care for their wounds, fresh food and above all else, secrecy.
Three miles outside of town, wedged between a reservoir and a mountainside, the McAdams family, their secret service detail and twenty-five young men from Mountain Home Air Force Base and the Idaho National Guard set up a heavily-armed garrison; protecting themselves and defending the entryway to the tiny Native American town of Owyhee, Nevada. Their ability to crush marauding gangs with high-tech weaponry more than made up for the nuisance of having strange, white faces in town.
The McAdams and their team set out into the wilderness with two communications specialists from Mountain Home, together with their SINCGARS Humvee. The communications men joined the president’s entourage in order to monitor events, and perhaps someday to reconnect with fragments of the government and military. For now, Dutch didn’t think he had anything to say to the military commanders in the field that they couldn’t come up with on their own.
As Dutch McAdams sat atop a Stryker armored vehicle, performing his turn on guard duty, Sharon joined him. Dutch pulled her close and wrapped his heavy parka around them both, steeling them against the snowstorm building on the northern horizon.
“It’s beautiful,” Dutch said. “I’d forgotten how majestic it is to live outdoors.”
Sharon smiled. “I might enjoy the majesty of it more when I finally forget what a hot shower feels like. I’m still grieving what was.”
“Our family made
it, Sharon. We’re incredibly blessed.”
“Except Robbie,” she corrected. They sat in silence for a moment, remembering their friend.
“I spend a lot of time thinking about what I could’ve done differently to change things. Maybe if I hadn’t called troops into the cities the riots would’ve burned out and food shipments would’ve resumed. Maybe if I’d never appointed Sam Greaney in the first place things might’ve ended a lot better.”
“I’ve been thinking about it too, Dutch.” Sharon regarded the coming snow flurry. “No civilization ever lasted forever. Sooner or later, every great civilization convinces itself that it’s entitled to more. When human selfishness exceeds our ability to care for others, we reap the whirlwind… We call forth the storm. Dutch, it didn’t just happen. We called it up. No president was ever going to stop that.”
Dutch thought back to the expression on her face as she watched the fiery death of Sam Greaney and his commandos—an execution she had arranged. That memory struggled to exist in the same universe as the graceful woman sitting beside him, her cold-dappled cheeks flushing red in the winter wind.
The first, fat snowflakes settled on Dutch and Sharon, blown from the storm, traveling probably five miles before making landfall.
“Time for you to get indoors,” Dutch unwrapped his parka from around her shoulder.
“What’s one more squall?” She chuckled and pulled his parka back around herself. “They come, and then they go. You and I, and hopefully our kids—we’re the kind of family who steps into the storm.”
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BLACK AUTUMN
The 380 page companion novel to
The Last Air Force One