Out of Crisis

by Richard Caldwell

  Everyone in Northwest Montana knew about the sleeping giant that lay beneath the Yellowstone Caldera. Everyone knew there was always the chance that one day the reputed supervolcano could erupt on an unimaginable scale‍—but no one actually believed it would. After all, it had been over six hundred thousand years, according to people who were supposed to know those things, since its last major eruption. That was well over four hundred thousand years before the first Homo sapiens made his appearance somewhere in East Africa.

  People had simply learned to live with this remote possibility of disaster, even laugh and joke about it. They wouldn’t be joking about it any longer. Not the survivors.

  Rescue ambulances were called first and dispatched, followed by the various fire departments her computer flashed on its monitor.

  Joyce started with the units situated north and east along the US 20 corridor. Unfortunately, there weren’t many. One inside the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and one in St. Anthony. All the rest were located nearby in Idaho Falls. Each time she connected with a station’s emergency operator, she had to explain why they needed to dispatch their units, all of their units, to a location, in Idaho Falls’s case, ninety miles away. She keyed her mic, mentally forcing herself to remain calm and directive as she reached out to stations closer to the caldera. “Hebgen Mobile, Canyon Village, anyone, come in!”

  Nothing.

  The Hebgen Basin Fire District rescue vehicle driver had pleaded for her to dispatch all units within a fifty-mile radius. But there just weren’t any. It was no exaggeration to say that West Yellowstone lay smack dab in the middle of nowhere. For that reason, it would be hours before National Guard units from Bozeman or Idaho Falls would begin to make their way to West Yellowstone or the northern entrance at Gardiner.

  But there was another option. A section of the EAP was dedicated to the eventuality of a volcanic eruption, specifically with the Yellowstone supervolcano.

  Joyce stood up and looked over the top of her cubical wall toward her supervisor. “Russell, when you can get free for a sec,” she shouted while motioning with her hand.

  The supervisor glanced in her direction, said something to the operator he had been talking to, then dashed over to Joyce’s cubicle.

  “What’ya got, Joyce?”

  “I can’t raise any responders north of Big Springs, not even the volunteer FDs. I think it’s time to activate section two of the EAP. Worse case, we piss off your boss and send the snow removal boys on a wild goose chase. I’m not seeing a best-case right now.”

  “I agree! Keep doing what you’re doing, and I’ll activate the next phase.”

  Someone on the planning committee had had the foresight to stipulate that second-wave responders include snow removal teams that were already organized within every city and county in the three-state region. These teams were to arm themselves with the snowplow equipment that usually sat idle from April through October. This strategy, initially labeled as ridiculous during the summer months, would save more lives and prove to be more useful than any other single initiative.

  The regional director of the Idaho DHS arrived at the makeshift command post at around 01:15 on what would unofficially become known as “the day after the day of.”

  He jumped directly into the fray and started working through his section of the EAP by calling the FAA office in Salt Lake City. At 01:35 Yellowstone and Jackson Hole Airports were closed to all traffic. By that time, shutting down departing air traffic was beyond just a precaution. It was a matter of “if you try to take off, you will die.” This didn’t stop a nationally known Alabama lawyer from going berserk when the pilots of his brand-new Citation CJ4 refused to meet him and his girlfriend at the Jackson Hole Airport to fly them back to Birmingham.

  Within two hours, the FAA had rerouted all flights within an area of the northwest United States extending east past Casper, Wyoming; south to Provo, Utah; and west to Boise, Idaho. The area would remain off-limits to air traffic for weeks, until late-summer weather fronts disseminated the still-rising column of ash, the prevailing jet streams forcing ash as far east as Philadelphia and along the North Carolina coast.

  By the end of the day after the eruption, highways within a twenty-five-mile radius of what had previously been the Yellowstone Caldera, and what in just six days would be sixteen-thousand-foot-tall Mount Shoshone, were buried in almost ten feet of ash and pumice.

  Working around the clock for the first three days, snowplow teams were able to keep the three main arteries, US Routes 20, 191, and 14, more or less drivable south past Jackson Hole, east to Wapiti, and north to Big Sky. Driving within that almost sixty-five-mile circle was virtually impossible after the first twenty-four hours following the eruption. And the closer you got to the epicenter, the less likely it was that you would return.

  Using a technique learned and refined during the winter months, snowplow drivers cleared the path by pushing the ash to both sides of the road. They were followed by front-end loaders, which would scoop up the sometimes still-smoldering ejecta and load it into an endless stream of dump trucks. The trucks hauled the ash to previously identified ravines and washed-out gullies.

  In the months to come, this practice would present its own set of problems and environmental issues. But on a battlefield, every soldier knew you had to “clear the airway, stop the bleeding,” and then “protect the wound.” These units were on the front line and working like madmen to clear the airway and save their patient, metaphorically speaking. They would let someone else worry about cleaning up the mess.

  Meanwhile, back at the IFDEC, Joyce and her team were going through their daily shift-turnover routine. Only today wasn’t routine. Not even close. Every member of the next shift had shown up early, and every member of Joyce’s team offered to stay late. However, the regional director would have none of that.

  “Wrap up your turnover report and then go home,” he ordered. “It’s a fact that the second day of a disaster is the worst. Everyone comes off their adrenalin high and starts to crash and burn. We can’t have that. I want the current shift to go home, get some rest, and be ready for a fresh start tomorrow. Now, finish up and get out of here!”

  …

  Martin Driggs sat at his desk at ABC affiliate KIFI polishing copy sheets for the early-morning news. The talking-head newscast team would roll in at four thirty to begin their daily makeup routine and to review the summary of national and local events he had gleaned throughout the night from the Associated Press wire service. They would bitch and whine like two-year-olds if his electronic copy sheets weren’t polished up, double spaced, and available on the iPads on the anchor desk.

  Martin was just biding his time at KIFI, waiting for a chance to move up the investigative reporting ladder. Maybe at a larger station in Seattle or Portland or, if he struck newsperson gold, Sacramento or San Francisco. He thought of California as the promised land.

  As he assembled what in just a few hours would become the early-morning news, he listened, sort of, to the scanner that occupied one corner of his desk. It continuously squawked with police, fire, and 9-1-1 department radio chatter. One of Martin’s duties was to monitor the scanner and alert KIFI’s standby news team if there was a wreck, a fire, or, if they got fortunate, a murder within their catchment area. He had been doing this for so long that his brain tuned most of the radio traffic out as merely background noise. Not tonight.

  As his fingers nursed what he initially thought would be the morning’s headline story from his iMac’s keyboard, he heard the tone of one IFDEC operator’s voice move up a couple of octaves.

  Usually, each member of the 9-1-1 team worked diligently to maintain a calm, detached, almost perfunctory radio demeanor. They sometimes sounded bored as they responded to mothers calling to report a missing child, or the wife of a suspected heart attack victim.

  This woman was undoubtedly under control, but Martin could de
tect a not-so-subtle sense of urgency in her voice. Then he heard keywords that caused him to stop what he was doing and pick up his phone.

  “Idaho Falls, this is Hebgen Basin Fire District, Mobile One. There has been a major earthquake and an explosion like nothing I’ve ever heard before.”

  “Hebgen Fire, Idaho Falls, what’s your twenty?”

  “We’re rolling out of West Yellowstone, heading east toward the park entrance. I think the volcano has erupted. It’s like the sky is on fire. It’s lit up as far as I can see.”

  “Roger Hebgen Fire, do you require assistance?”

  “Hell yes, we need assistance! We need every first responder within a fifty-mile radius. And while you’re at it, the National Guard. And they better bring body bags. Fucking boulders are falling everywhere.

  There is an enormous cloud of smoke and ash moving up into the sky and, from what I can see, in all directions. It’s starting to blot out what little sunlight is left. It’s almost dark now. I can barely see the taillights on the unit in front of . . .”

  Then, for a few seconds, until it picked up another radio signal, the scanner was silent.

  Martin realized he had overheard what might very well be the beginning of the most earth-shattering disaster‍—he brushed aside his mental pun‍—that modern man had ever witnessed. He forgot the half-cobbled news summary on his iMac and barked, “Siri, call the KIFI News Response Team driver.”

  18

  Germantown, Maryland

  Two years before the day of

  David held their front door open for Kelly. She stepped outside, focused on the Mercedes. “Wow, nice ride. Beats the hell out of my Prius.”

  Charles, who had been simultaneously watching the road and the front of David’s house, walked to the passenger side of the car and opened the rear door.

  “Kelly, this is Mr. Crum. Charles. He’ll be watching out for us tonight,” David said.

  Kelly smiled and thrust out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Crum. May I call you Charles?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Stakley, Charles is just fine.” Charles shook Kelly’s hand.

  Kelly nodded at the car. “I was just admiring the Maybach. Is this the V-twelve version of the S650?”

  “Yes, it’s the six-liter V-twelve, six hundred twenty-one horsepower,” Charles replied casually. “She will get you there in style and, if need be, quickly.”

  David followed Kelly into the back seat. “My wife is something of a car buff. Especially the ones we can’t afford.” He fastened his seat belt. “Tell me, Charles: SEAL? Ranger? Marine?”

  “Army Special Forces, Mr. Secretary, eight years.”

  “I sensed it was one of our more elite branches. So, Charles, what all are you cleared to tell me?”

  Charles glanced over his shoulder and pulled onto the street. “I am cleared to respond to any question you ask that I have an answer to. I am not cleared to volunteer anything.”

  “I gotcha, Charles. I came from an Army Intel background myself. So does the Maybach belong to Envision-2100?”

  “No, sir. They lease both it and me from Blackwater.”

  “Interesting, and I guess not surprising. I suspect that the group wants to keep their big-dollar asset inventory as skinny as possible. I assume you know how to get to the Comus Inn?”

  “Yes, sir. Twenty-Three Nine Hundred Old Hundred Road. We should be there in about twenty minutes.”

  David and Kelly sank into the luxury of the Maybach’s impossibly soft leather back seats. David leaned closer to Kelly and lowered his voice. “Can I be so bold as to assume you’ve been thinking about what I told you?”

  “You can assume I haven’t been thinking of anything else,” Kelly whispered back. “On the one hand, I am, to put it ever so conservatively, surprised. You have never expressed any interest in running for anything. Or at least not to me. And I thought I was privy to just about everything that was going on up there.” Kelly playfully poked the side of David’s head. “And then you come flying into our back yard in a frigging helicopter and tell me a bunch of rich kids wants you to run for the most powerful office. In. The. World.”

  David gave her a guilty-as-charged smile.

  “On the other hand,” Kelly continued, “you are without a doubt the smartest, most politically adroit man I’ve ever known or read about. So, if I come at it from that angle, it makes me wonder why it took them so long to give you the nod. But what’s with the raging sense of urgency? Matt Sheppard is one of the most popular presidents we’ve had in the last twenty years; he’s doing an admirable job and can still run for another term. What am I missing?”

  “Well, to the first question, thank you!” David leaned across the Maybach’s enormous back seat and pecked Kelly on her cheek. She smiled sweetly and put her hand on David’s knee.

  “It’s always nice to know that my wife thinks I’ve got at least a little bit of walking-around sense. And I guess some of the Bulldog’s political skills rubbed off on me. At least I haven’t been fired yet. Now back to your question about the urgency and why me and why now.”

  Despite his confidence in the privacy afforded by the Mercedes’s back seat and Charles’s discretion, David put his arm around Kelly’s shoulder, drew her face closer to his, and began speaking in a conversational whisper. He told her about the president’s recent cancer diagnosis and his expected imminent demise.

  Kelly’s eyes welled up as the news sank in. She had been a fierce supporter during President Sheppard’s election and had grown to admire the man after he took office. Kelly wasn’t a party loyalist and, like David, had zero use for Vice President Phillips, but she worshipped the president and what he had accomplished over the last few years.

  David sat up straight and looked out the window. The countryside outside Germantown surrounding the meandering path of the Potomac River and up into Sugarloaf Mountain was a montage of hardwood forest and meticulously maintained farms and horse stables.

  They drove past a monastery. The Aung Yadana Monastery, a Myanmar Buddhist temple, was hidden among the oaks and pines just north of Comus Road. Most of the real estate in the area had been snatched up years earlier by Senior Executive Service employees and the staff of government contractors and was now obscenely expensive.

  The neatly laid-out pastures and tree-lined farms would typically have made the drive from Kelly and David’s house a pleasant and relaxing break from their pressure-cooker jobs in DC However, tonight they paid scant attention to whatever lay outside the Mercedes’s passenger windows. Kelly was still rebounding from the news David had shared.

  “Kelly,” David said softly, “I have a meeting with President Sheppard at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. He wants to discuss his condition and his decision to resign immediately with me face-to‍—‍”

  “We’re here, Mr. Secretary,” Charles announced.

  Charles maneuvered the car to the front of a long, wooden former farmhouse with a muted red metal roof. What was now the Comus Inn had originally been the Johnson-Wolfe Farm, whose construction dated back to 1862. In 2002 a group of local investors bought the building complex and restored it as a fine-dining restaurant.

  As soon as the Mercedes stopped, a black male dressed exactly like Charles opened the door on David’s side.

  “Good evening, Mr. Secretary. Welcome to the Comus Inn. My name is Lawrence Smith. I’m Mr. Crum’s associate and will be working alongside him as a part of your security team. The restaurant is expecting you, and your table is waiting.”

  Except for his skin color, Lawrence was a physically exact copy of Charles. Both were an inch or so over six feet, devoid of body fat, and immaculately dressed in perfectly tailored black wool suits.

  Blackwater must get a volume discount on custom-made clothes, David thought as he helped Kelly out of the Maybach’s back seat.

  “Let me guess, Lawrence:
Special Forces?” David asked.

  “No, sir. Marine Recon.”

  David glanced at Kelly and grinned. “You know, I almost wish someone would try to mug us tonight.”

  Lawrence led David and Kelly up the porch steps and into the inn’s reception area. A beaming, twentysomething hostess stepped out from behind the reservation podium. “Welcome, Mr. Secretary. It’s good to see you again. We have a table already set up for you on the back corner of the veranda.”

  David and Kelly followed the bubbly hostess as she snaked through the main dining room to a long, somewhat narrow room at the back of the inn.

  Six tables with place settings for four aligned the floor-to-ceiling windows of the room, with its unobstructed view of Sugarloaf Mountain. Three couples and two parties of four were already seated. The hostess ushered David and Kelly toward the last table, tucked away in the far corner.

  As they made their way to their designated table, people from two of the other tables greeted David, who stopped and shook hands with them and their dinner companions. It was getting harder and harder for David and Kelly to share an intimate night on the town. Soon it would be impossible.

  When they arrived at the table, a young male wearing a white shirt, black slacks, a black bow tie, and a burgundy vest, with a burgundy napkin draped across his left arm, glided up behind Kelly. As he seated Kelly, the hostess announced, “Mr. and Mrs. Stakley, this is Chris. He will be your attendant this evening. If there is anything you need or anything that any of us can do to make your experience here perfect, and we mean perfect, please let Chris know.”

  “Thank you, Madison,” Chris said. “I’ll take good care of them from here on.”

  As Madison left, Chris turned to David and Kelly. “Before we begin, I need to let you know that Mr. Elton Kirby and his associates are taking care of everything tonight. He has even suggested the menu, the wine, and dessert‍—if they meet with your approval. Of course, you are more than welcome to make your own choices, but his instructions are to make sure you are nothing short of impressed.”