Kelly proved to be an exceptional campaign asset in her own right. She also worked independently, stumping colleges and universities coast to coast, always urging students to get registered, get involved, and get out the vote.
The results were staggering. Most mainstream Americans had long grown weary of shit-slinging politicians. They ravenously welcomed the energetic, upbeat Stakley-Lopez style. The evidential majority were vociferously amenable to the Centrist platform and ideals. Even the suggestion of national service as a prerequisite to citizenship went over better than anticipated. In fact, most people who were already citizens or who would be grandfathered in thought it was an excellent idea for their children and their children’s children.
By the end of September, the Stakley-Lopez campaign had moved to within a few points of President Phillips. Although not totally out of the running, McCray-Brown slipped into an increasingly distant third. If the always-dubious polls were anywhere near reliable, swing voters from both major parties were defecting in droves.
But David and Mia and the campaign team did not allow their success to lure them into complacency. Just the opposite. Every increase in the polls seemed to double the intensity of their effort. The same held true for Centrist supporters. It had become a movement. And oddly, the more vicious the attacks from the Phillips camp, the larger and stronger the Stakley-Lopez crusade became. By the first of November, statistics and artificial intelligence algorithms discerned a virtual tie.
Then came the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, Election Day. The American people were ready for a leader capable of taking their country from “great” to “greatest.” The Stakley-Lopez ticket found itself squarely in the center of “the right people at the right place at the right time.”
And so, it came to pass that the Wednesday edition of the few remaining printed newspapers all across America carried their version of the New York Times headline declaring, Stakley-Lopez Win by a Landslide! President Phillips Refuses to Concede, Demands Recount despite Underwhelming Performance.
43
The White House
The day of
The secure phone on the nightstand next to David’s side of the bed blared an earsplitting ring shortly after midnight.
David was instantly awake. Kelly didn’t move. It would take more than two rings on a phone to wake her at this time of night. He swept his phone off the nightstand. “POTUS here.”
“Mr. President, Major Cain, duty officer. Sir, we have a situation!”
David sat up. “Major Cain, I’m awake, sober, and alert. Go!”
“Sir, seismographic stations in Utah and Montana indicate there was an enormous explosion in the northwest corner of Wyoming around twenty-two hundred forty-seven hours. Their calculations point to an area known as the Yellowstone Caldera.”
“The Yellowstone supervolcano.” David swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“Yes, sir. NRO satellites have confirmed an eruption with a plume of over twenty-five kilometers. The team at the University of Utah estimates a volcanic explosivity index of seven or eight. They say right now it’s classified somewhere between a supercolossal and a megacolossal eruption.
“The folks at UT are comparing the Yellowstone eruption to Krakatoa, which exploded in 1883. When it did, it produced the loudest sound ever heard on earth. Its sound waves traveled around the world four times and could be heard three thousand miles away. Yellowstone is roughly seventeen hundred miles from Washington. The speed of sound is seven hundred sixty-seven miles per—”
“So the boom we heard a while ago was from the eruption?”
“Yes, Mr. President, and there may be a couple more on the way. Right now, my team has the FAA duty officer on the line. They are shutting down airspace in the northwest quadrant immediately. Plans call for NOAA to calculate plume drift and to work with the FAA so they can close airspace as necessary when it moves east. And it’s going to be necessary, and it’s going to be big.”
For a fleeting second, David realized that he had never given any consideration to how, and especially how closely, government organizations worked together. Here was the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, working tongue-in-groove with the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA. He pushed the thought aside. “Roger that, Major Cain. If this thing is as serious as they’re leading us to believe, we need to get in front of the action. I need for you to do some things neither one of us has done before.”
“Just say the word, Mr. President.”
“OK, first of all, I need to get as close to the front line as possible without putting anyone else at risk. And the ball needs to start rolling the instant we hang up.”
“Clear, sir. Are you authorizing me to alert the Air Force One team?”
“Negative, Major. Too slow and too many moving parts to get me there during the time frame I envision. I want you to scramble one of the F-15s sitting on the tarmac at Andrews. They’ll want to fly as a pair, and that’s fine. I have a pressure suit sized and ready in the Andrews squad room.
“As I recall, the F-15G has a ferry range of three thousand miles and change. So even if we have to swing south then north to avoid the plume, we should be in good shape. But you don’t need to worry about all that. Just give the scramble order, my destination, and that I want to be wheels up in sixty mikes. They will take it from there.
“I need Marine One on the front lawn in fifteen minutes with orders to get me to the Andrews flight deck in time to get me suited up and strapped in the number two seat before the jockey lights his Pratt and Whitneys. I know all of this is tight, but that’s why we pay you the big bucks, Major Cain. But wait, there’s more.”
Kelly rubbed her eyes and sat up. Looking appropriately puzzled, she opened her mouth to speak, but David held up his hand. She flopped back down on her pillow.
David continued: “I want you to alert the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security. Tell the SecDef I want him to convene the National Security Council. I’ll call the vice president when I’m on my way to Andrews, tell her what I know, and direct her to ride herd on the NSC. I’ll also give her your name as a temporary point of contact.
“Depending on feedback from NOAA and the NRO, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will most likely want to go to DEFCON Four. They’ll want to let Iran know that we know that they know what’s going on. We may be distracted by Mother Nature, but we can still turn Tehran into a slag heap if they fuck with us.”
“Roger that, sir! Based on the images the NRO is releasing, it looks like military airspace in Wyoming, the Dakotas, and points east could be compromised, if not crippled, when the volcano’s plume starts spreading. SAC will be forced to relocate our B-52 and B-2 launch sites. The LGM-30 Minuteman silos may be less at risk. They could probably punch right through atmospheric ash.
“But our friends on the Persian Gulf may not know that. They may see this as an opportunity to launch a strike in retaliation for that spanking we gave them two years ago. A shift to DEFCON Four, or Three, will get everyone’s attention.
“That brings me to the subject of where we want to put you on the ground once we get you out west.”
“Yes, I was thinking the same thing,” David said. “Airports anywhere near Yellowstone will be shut down. Bozeman may be north and west enough to keeps its doors open, but like an old friend of mine likes to say about flying, even when you’re there, you’re not there. That means at least a two- or three-hour convoy to West Yellowstone.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. President, but I’m way ahead of you on this. The Secret Service guys will be all over my ass if they find out that I told you what I’m about to say. The F-15 model G is carrier ready, meaning it has the beefed-up suspension necessary to land on US aircraft carriers. The F-15 drivers are navy pilots who have already logged carrier landings. What that means is that a
ny of those jockeys can put a model G down on a straight stretch of two-lane highway.
“Officially they need a minimum of four thousand feet to land empty. And you’ll be close to empty after a one-hour Mach two ride. They can take off in less than one thousand feet, so getting them out will be no big deal. I’m checking the map as we speak. There’s a nine-mile stretch of Highway Two Eighty-Seven northwest of Yellowstone that, once cleared, will work just fine if you’re feeling lucky.”
“Luck has never been my strong suit,” David said. “Things just seem to work themselves out. But one thing I’ve learned is that nothing makes a decision easier than a lack of options. Make it happen, Major!
“Now I’ve got to get dressed and ready to catch my ride on Marine One. And it looks like I have about an hour’s worth of explaining to do in five minutes to a very perplexed looking wife. Did I mention she’s not a morning person?”
44
Andrews Air Force Base and points west
The day of
Marine One touched down on the lawn of the White House directly south of the main entrance.
As soon as it did, with its engines running and rotors spinning, David dashed to the port-side door surrounded by four puzzled third-shift Secret Service agents. They would be briefed on his zero-dark-thirty departure later.
It was less than eleven miles, as the presidential helicopter flies, from the White House to the Andrews Air Force Base Rapid Response hangar. That barely gave David enough time to call the vice president. “Mia, we’ve got our first executive branch crisis. And guess what? I need you to run with the ball for the next several hours while I take an e-ticket ride to Yellowstone National Park. Or as close as I can get to it.” David gave the vice president an overview of the situation and orders to coordinate the NSC and to contact the White House duty officer, Major Cain, for additional details.
As Marine One touched down near the RR hangar, a small group of military personnel, three of whom were dressed in flight suits, came out to greet him.
“Welcome to Andrews, Mr. President. I’m flight leader for today’s mission. Commander Davis, call sign Redtail Three. This is Lieutenant Commander Fenster and Lieutenant Commander Pruitt, call signs Tabasco and Cornflakes, respectively.”
After shaking Commander Davis’s hand, David did the same with Fenster and Pruitt, then smiled and said, “It looks like you’ve got the major food groups covered.”
David turned his attention back to the flight leader. “Redtail Three, Commander Davis? Why does that sound familiar?”
“I’m Benjamin O. Davis the Third. My great-grandfather was Benjamin O. Davis Junior. He was one of the original Tuskegee Airmen. He used the call sign Redtail Two during the Second World War. He advanced to four-star general before he retired. I tell folks that I can fly a lot faster than he did but not near as far.”
“Well, you’re still young, Commander. Now, let’s get me out of here and see what that thing will do,” David said.
Twenty minutes later, David was suited up and strapped into the weapons systems officer seat behind Commander Davis.
As Redtail Three maneuvered the eighty-thousand-plus pound, thirty-two-million-dollar F-15G into takeoff position at the north end of the main runway, he spoke into his flight helmet microphone. “Mr. President, we’ve been cleared for afterburner takeoff and unrestricted climb out of here. We’re going to stand this bird on its tail, so you might want to hold on to the handles in front of your seat.”
Commander Davis stopped the plane at the end of the runway, pressed the brakes, and pushed the throttle forward. The sound was deafening as the two recently upgraded Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines poured out over twenty-five thousand pounds of thrust each. Pressing hard on the F-15’s brakes, Redtail Three set the throttles at 50 percent until the engines stabilized. When the whine settled into a continuous hum, he pushed the throttle forward.
“Here we go, sir. Hold on.”
David expected to be pushed back into his seat when the jet reached its takeoff speed and lifted off the runway, but he wasn’t prepared to be body-slammed.
As the F-15 went from zero to two hundred knots in less than five seconds, he was pinned to the back of his seat. Then the afterburners kicked in, and the plane rocketed into a near-vertical ascent. David fought off a wave of nausea.
The F-15G reached its cruising altitude of sixty thousand feet in a little over two minutes. According to the FAA and NOAA, and supported by real-time images provided by NRO satellites, the volcano’s fan-shaped plume had reached eighty thousand feet. Aided by the southern edge of the west-to-east jetstream, it was spreading across central Wyoming and southern Montana at sixty miles per hour.
That was good news for David and his flight team. They were cruising at a little over twice the speed of sound, Mach 2.3, or 1,764 miles per hour. At that rate, they could swing south, avoiding the plume, which was, relative to the F-15, moving slowly eastward, and still be at the recommended landing site in less than an hour.
David tried to focus on what he planned to say and do once they were on the ground. Naturally, he wanted to provide some level of comfort to survivors and those suffering from the disaster. And motivation to the National Guard and first responders. But primarily, he had to carry the flag without disrupting rescue efforts or otherwise getting in the way.
Redtail Three’s voice exploded in his earphone, derailing his thoughts: “Mr. President, can you see that glow at the peak of that mountain on our starboard side?”
“Yes, I see it, Commander. It’s pretty hard to miss,” David replied.
“Well, sir, that mountain wasn’t there yesterday.”
45
US Route 191 north of what was the city of West Yellowstone
The morning after the day of
The eastern sky glowed an eerie reddish orange and cast shapeless, ghostly shadows through the falling ash.
“Change of plans, Driggs,” Major Kohler shouted over anew and increasingly ominous rumbling. “I told you the situation was fluid. And it just got more so. A lot more. My convoy is going to head west on Highway Two Eighty-Seven. We’ll pull back from here and head out past Hebgen Lake and into Montana. We’ve received orders to rendezvous with a VIP.
“We’ll provide security and convoy him back to this area, or as close as we think we can get without putting anyone in danger. I can’t imagine how things could get any worse, but the volcanologists at the University of Utah haven’t ruled it out. And I’ve been warned that this guy better not get hurt on my watch.
“Anyway, climb back into your van and stay a cat’s-eyes distance behind my Hummer. Or as you so cleverly stated, watch my rear. You’re coming with us.”
Maybe it was his imagination, but for a second, Martin thought he detected the hint of a smile behind Major Kohler’s mask. “Hold on, Major. The action is here. What if we don’t want to tag along with your convoy?”
“I’m sorry, Driggs. Apparently, I gave you the impression that you had a choice. You don’t. As I predicted, the governors of Wyoming and Montana have designated the eruption as a disaster. And, just as I suspected, they have imposed martial law. Guess what Driggs, until a higher-ranking officer shows up, I’m the only sheriff in town. But if it makes you feel any better, you’re less than thirty minutes away from being famous. World famous.”
“How’s that, Major Kohler? Yeah, we were first on the scene, but within an hour, reporters will be on this place like flies on . . . well, you know the old saying.”
They headed toward their respective vehicles.
“Wrong again, Driggs,” Major Kohler said. “Every road within a fifty-mile radius is either impassable or closed to everything except emergency and military vehicles. And civilian airspace has been totally shut down. So your competition can’t even get close. But that’s not your news reporter pot of gold, you lucky son of a bitch.”
&nbs
p; “Really? Then what is my pot of gold?”
“You are about to meet and probably get an exclusive interview with the most powerful man in the world.”
“Nick Saban is coming out here?”
“No, you moron. We’re going to pick up the pres-o-dent and give him an up-close and personal tour of what’s left of Northwest Wyoming.”
“President Stakley?”
“Nothing gets by you, does it, Driggs? Yes, President Stakley. Now saddle up and let’s get out of here. We can’t be late for this gig. Besides, we’ve been tasked with cleaning up a stretch of Highway Two Eighty-Seven along the Madison River so they can land without crashing into some redneck’s abandoned pickup.”
“Serendipitous,” Martin muttered as he scurried toward the KIFI van. “All those years of scut work, and the biggest scoop ever lands squarely in my lap. Well, like they say, better lucky than good.”
46
US Route 287; not the end of the world, but you can see it from there
The morning after the day of
Fighting cramps in his legs and severe pain in the small of his back, David concluded that the old air force saying was spot-on: the F-15 was built for speed, not comfort.
Even at this time of year and at this latitude, it was still too dark to see anything more than the orange-red glow coating the mountain in the distance.
At the direction of the NRO’s geostationary spy satellites one hundred twenty-five miles above, Commander Davis was giving the volcano and its noxious plume a respectfully wide berth. They had reduced their airspeed from Mach 2 to .5 as they passed over the Grand Tetons and turned north toward what they hoped was at least a mile-long section of debris-free pavement. The F-15 slowed even more as they started their descent, in an impossibly steep approach, in what David thought was total darkness.
Out of Crisis Page 28
