by Mike Maden
“Then you should go. We can discuss this matter later,” Strasburg said, remaining seated. His arthritic knees were particularly troublesome lately.
“You spoke about timing, Doctor. I’d say this tragedy starts the ball rolling on our plan, wouldn’t you?”
“Perhaps.” Strasburg polished his glasses with the silk pocket square from his elegant Savile Row suit. “But it’s not without its risks.”
“It’s a simple risk-versus-reward calculation. The reward is clearly greater than the fallout if we fail,” Myers said. “We can’t just keep swatting bugs, especially now that they’re swatting back. It’s time to drain the swamp.”
“Your critics will accuse you of ‘nation building,’ an activity you promised never to engage in.”
“I have no interest in nation building. What I want is a free and democratic Mexico, governed by and for Mexicans. Tell me a better way to accomplish that goal than what I’m proposing and I’ll take it.”
Strasburg shrugged with a smile, defeated. “I can’t.”
“Would you be willing to contact Cruzalta? Make the inquiry on my behalf?”
“I think it would be more persuasive if it came from you, Madame President.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Well, it’s time for me to go. Will you be joining me?”
“I’d rather be waterboarded. With your permission, I’d prefer to make a few phone calls from here.”
“Of course. Make yourself at home.”
Dr. Strasburg had been in the Oval Office faithfully serving presidents of both parties for over forty years. Maybe I’m the one who should be asking his permission to use the phone, Myers thought to herself as she headed for the Situation Room.
Time to find out if the world really had come to an end.
The Situation Room, the White House
Organized chaos.
The room was packed despite the late hour. Too many people, Myers thought to herself. Who are they? What are they even doing here? A dozen department, agency, and committee heads sat around the table in a carefully choreographed pecking order. Congress was on summer recess, but the bigwigs had hung around or flown back in just for this meeting. Seated behind their bosses in a row of smaller chairs were the senior staff members of each high potentate, and standing off to the sides and behind the senior staff were the young junior staff and assistants. The room burbled with a hundred whispered conversations and urgently tapping keyboards.
Some of these people were a strange breed of adrenaline junkie who just wanted to be in on the action. Others were simply afraid to not be in the room, for reasons of ego and perception. All of them wanted to be near the seat of power.
Crisis was the time when the presidency became paramount in importance, primarily because a singular voice and singular mind were more effective in the short, intensive time frame of a national emergency. Congress usually dithered at times like these, seldom mustering more than nonbinding resolutions and patriotic proclamations. There was nothing decisive about 535 men and women organized into committees designed to ensure their incumbencies in perpetuity. Who in her right mind would turn to a madhouse of caterwauling whores like the U.S. Congress when real decisions had to be made?
“Bill, let’s bring this meeting to order now, please.”
Donovan gaveled the room to order like a circuit court judge. Voices hushed. Lights were lowered. A big digital screen flashed satellite images of what was being called the Houston catastrophe. Huge gouts of fire raged in the night above a dozen large circular tanks in the overhead shot. A burning tanker ship—the Estrella de la Virgen—was half sunk next to the dock.
“As you can see here, it appears that an attack on the Millennium Oil storage depot in Texas City, Texas, occurred some three hours ago. Firefighting units from seven municipalities, along with Houston Port Authority firefighters, firefighting tugs, and oil-fighting specialists, have all converged. Police, army, and National Guard units have been activated and deployed for security and evacuation.”
“Has anywhere else been hit?” Myers asked.
“Not that we’re aware of. We’ve alerted every storage facility and refinery in the nation and additional security personnel have been deployed.”
“Where are the attackers now? Any captured or killed?” Early asked.
FBI Director Jackie West answered. “They’ve gone to ground. No bodies, no clues. We have a massive search under way.”
“Who’s responsible?” Senator Diele demanded.
Donovan nodded to his assistant running the laptop. Port security-camera video flashed on the big media screen. Two dozen armed men wearing black combat fatigues and black hoods running, shooting rifles, or planting bombs were displayed in a wide variety of camera angles. The video was alternately black and white, night vision, wide angle, or close- up, depending upon the make, model, age, and location of the security camera.
Donovan narrated. “You can see the assailants. Military dress, no insignia, AK-47 assault rifles, and RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades. A few carry sidearms. My guess is that they’re all male. But with their faces and bodies covered and no audio available from any of these cameras, we’re unable to determine the nationality or affiliation of these terrorists.”
Director West discreetly answered her vibrating smartphone. She frowned.
“Bill, I’m sorry to interrupt. Can you pull up the al-Jazeera website on your laptop?”
Donovan’s assistant nodded and tapped a few keys. Moments later, the live English-language broadcast appeared. It was the jungle video showing the Bravos in their masks and uniforms and brandishing their weapons and repeatedly shouting, “Burn them all down!”
The attractive Lebanese-American news anchor read her teleprompter. “To repeat, members of the Bravo Alliance have posted this video to our website claiming responsibility for the attack on the Houston oil refinery early this morning, local time. They claim it was in retaliation for the attempted murder of the Bravo family by Israeli assassins hired by the American CIA. They also condemn the illegal mass assassinations of the Castillo crime syndicate carried out by the administration of President Margaret Myers earlier in the year.”
“Shut it off, please,” Myers asked.
“What was that about Israelis and assassins?” Diele asked.
“It’s bullshit,” Early said.
Jeffers turned to the treasury secretary. “On a different subject, what’s this attack going to do to the stock market when it opens tomorrow?”
The treasury secretary read from her smartphone. “Dow futures are already down five hundred points, and oil is spiking to over $120 per barrel on the open spot market.”
It was the oil price that worried Myers most. The fragile economy, still limping along at 1.5 percent annual GDP growth, was barely above stall speed and could easily tumble into a tailspin if those prices didn’t come back down quickly. The cost of just about everything—especially food, transportation, and utilities—all depended upon the price of oil. More important, consumer spending accounted for 70 percent of the nation’s economic activity, and high fuel costs robbed the average consumer of what little discretionary income was available.
“That oil price will sound like music in the ears of OPEC. Russia, too,” the energy secretary added. The Oklahoma native was intimately familiar with petroleum economics. Her entire family was in the oil business, as was her husband’s.
She isn’t going to do too badly in this crisis, either, Myers thought.
“What we need is a decisive military response.” All eyes turned toward Senator Diele.
“Are you proposing an invasion of Mexico, Senator?” Early asked. “We could dust off Plan Green,” he said with an easy smile.
Plan Green was a plan to invade Mexico that was drafted by the American secretary of war in 1919 and had been recently republished. Surprisingly, it hit the New Yor
k Times best-seller list for nonfiction almost overnight.
“We do have current contingency plans for a Mexico invasion. Canada, too, for that matter,” General Winchell said. Senator Diele’s friend was dead serious.
“It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a full-scale invasion. But our lack of serious action sends a very powerful signal that we are weak. President Myers, with all due respect, your failure to provide a more violent and timely response to the El Paso massacre is partly to blame here,” Diele said.
The room erupted in debate.
“You’re out of line, Gary. Back it way up,” Senator Velázquez growled. The normally affable Texan had family in Houston.
“I apologize, Madame President, if I’ve offended you, but I hope you see my point. This attack was an outrage. Another Pearl Harbor or 9/11. It demands a swift and violent response.”
“An invasion of any size isn’t justified by this singular act, horrible as it is, but I’ll take your suggestion under advisement.”
Myers turned to the secretary of state. “What do the Mexicans have to say about all of this?”
“President Barraza’s office has expressed his outrage and concern, as well as his support, but then again, so has Trinidad and Tobago, so I don’t know what it’s worth. I’ll be curious to see what the Mexican government’s response will be following this al-Jazeera report, but my guess is that they’ll just offer more of the same.”
“Is there any chance at all the Mexican government is behind this?” Greyhill demanded. He was skyping from an air force base in Greenland and clearly agitated.
“To what purpose?” Strasburg said, incredulous.
“Dr. Strasburg’s right. There’s no indication of official Mexican involvement,” Donovan added.
“They better damn well be kicking down doors and taking names trying to get at these guys,” Diele insisted. “If we’re not going to kick some ass, somebody has to.”
“Right now we have an economic crisis on our hands. I have complete confidence in the Department of Homeland Security to find and arrest the bastards who did this,” Myers said.
Donovan sat a little taller in his chair. “Thank you, Madame President. We’ll catch them before they strike again.”
Myers addressed the rest of the room. “So for the moment, let’s focus on our options for tackling the economic issues. Suggestions?”
She sat silent as a sphinx as she listened to the options. Some were conventional, some out of the box. All of them had carry costs. None of them was a perfect solution. Factions began to form. Arguments broke out.
After an hour had passed, Myers held up the palm of her hand. The room silenced.
“Thank you all. I’ve made up my mind.”
“Would you care to share it with us?” Diele asked.
She stood, and gathered up her papers.
“I’ll be holding a little press conference tomorrow morning, Senator. Tune in, if you can. I think you might get a kick out of it.”
33
Gulf of Mexico, near the Texas coast
The stock market opened on Monday morning and immediately plunged over 650 points before the secretary of the treasury ordered trading suspended on the New York Stock Exchange “for reasons of national security,” an order the NYSE directors complied with happily and immediately. Unfortunately, the secretary had no such authority over the Asian markets, which had plunged precipitously the night before, and the European markets had jumped off of the same fiscal cliff as the rest of the world before trading was suspended there, too.
The price of oil was holding steady at $127 a barrel this morning, after a steep 30 percent increase in just twenty-four hours. The only reason the spot price was holding, according to Myers’s advisors, was that if the economies of the world really were going to crash—as it seemed they probably would at any moment—then the demand for oil would plummet, and the price would drop. It appeared as if the oil speculators were giving her some breathing room, albeit temporarily. The financial markets waited eagerly to see what she would do with the respite.
Myers flew to Houston on Air Force One, which was crammed with the Washington press corps. They all then loaded into a fleet of Bell Ranger helicopters and choppered out to one of Chevron’s biggest oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
Myers began her early morning press conference on the blustery deck of the big rig, flanked by the CEOs of Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Baker Hughes, and Halliburton, along with the rig’s oil-begrimed crew of roughnecks, roustabouts, and derrickhands, some of whom were sitting high in the superstructure. Against Jeffers’s recommendation, Myers excluded all members of Congress, wanting to keep the event as apolitical as possible.
Myers wore blue jeans and steel-toed workboots along with a denim shirt and a white hard hat that sported an American flag on the front. The sounds of a working rig—turbines, drills, hammers, chains, and ocean wind—filled the air. A crisp morning sun rose just above her shoulder. It was an image of hardworking Americans beginning a brand-new day.
“My fellow Americans. First of all, let me express my deepest condolences to the families of the three firefighters who lost their lives last night battling the oil fires down in the Houston area. Because of their brave sacrifice, along with the heroic efforts of all of our first responders, National Guardsmen, and military units, the fires have been finally contained. Our nation is grateful to all of you for your courage and skill, and I want to thank each of you personally for what you have accomplished. I have been told that the fires will be completely extinguished by noon tomorrow, local time.
“Second, let me assure you, my fellow citizens, that we’re monitoring events very closely at home and around the world. The catastrophe in Houston has caused crude oil prices to spike, which in turn threatens to throw our economy—along with the rest of the world’s—back into a recession, or worse. This morning I am signing an executive order that puts a temporary freeze on all environmental regulations related to oil exploration, drilling, production, and refining, as well as removing all restrictions on drilling on federally protected lands. I am clearing the path for the construction of new oil and gas refineries as well. It’s time for ‘Drill, baby, drill!’”
The rig crew roared with approval. Grinning CEOs clapped and hollered.
“This same executive order applies to the American natural gas and coal industries as well. I am also opening the strategic petroleum reserve and clearing the way for the Keystone Pipeline construction to begin immediately. In short, I am declaring America’s energy independence today. Before the end of my first term, America will no longer be an energy importer, which means we will stop funding global terrorism at our gas pumps. By 2020, I intend for the United States to be the world’s largest and most profitable energy exporter, creating tens of thousands of new high-skill, high-paying, high-tech energy jobs this year and every year that will refuel and replenish the next American century.”
Another round of raucous applause and cheers rang out.
“Third, I want to assure the American people that national security is of the utmost importance to my administration. The horrific violence inflicted upon the Mexican people as a result of the drug wars has now crossed our borders and as many of you know, that violence has touched my own family in the recent past. Thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials are on the hunt for these narcoterrorists at this very moment, and I promise you, they will be brought to justice. Thank you, and God bless each of you here today, and all over this great nation, who make the energy industry possible, and God bless the United States of America!”
The steel platform thundered with cheers and shouts of “USA! USA! USA!” as Myers smiled and waved at the adoring rig crew.
Within eleven minutes of Myers’s press conference, the Dow Jones futures had reversed their steeply downward trend. Trading was resumed.
&nbs
p; By the time Myers landed back in Houston an hour later, the Dow had climbed back into positive territory, and when her plane touched down at Andrews Joint Air Force Base at 1:14 p.m. EST, she was greeted with the unbelievable news that the spot price of oil had simmered back down to just $102 a barrel.
Because oil prices had responded so favorably to her new energy policy, the Dow actually began screaming upward and reached a new market high for the year. Investors were betting heavily that a new American renaissance had just been launched and that an era of prosperity and job growth appeared to be just around the corner. Foreign markets followed suit.
Jeffers read the economic headlines out loud, straight off of the Internet feeds as Air Force One was taxiing to a stop. So far, it was all great news, especially on the employment front. Tens of thousands of jobs in the energy sector, along with ancillary occupations like transportation and machine building, were projected to be filled in the months to come.
But Jeffers stumbled across a couple of critics, too. The “usual suspects” whined about the imminent destruction of the environment and the hastened onset of global warming as a result of Myers’s new energy policy.
“What’s wrong with these people? You just saved the global economy, and you’re bringing new jobs to America,” Jeffers said.
“If my critics saw me walking over the Potomac, they would say it was because I couldn’t swim,” Myers joked. “You need to stop reading those ‘nattering nabobs of negativism.’ They’ll only give you indigestion.”
Jeffers threw a thumb at the passenger compartment where the press corps was seated, his face reddening.
“But half of those dick wipes are sitting back there sucking down mimosas and cheese blintzes on our dime. Effing ingrates. I ought to kick them out onto the tarmac right now.”
“I’ll hold the door open for you, if that would help.”
Jeffers ran his fingers through his thick silver hair. “This job’s going to kill me, I swear.”
