Джейсон Росс: The Last Air Force One

To his knowledge, they had never done this before—moving a president to “WarFlight Status” during a heightened threat. President Bush had spent only three hours in the air after the 9/11 attacks, and that had been to get him from a grade school in Georgia to Strategic Air Command in Omaha, Nebraska.

Dutch lifted his window shade and looked out into the still-dark morning sky, the slight orange scrim of dawn etching a line to the east of their flight path. Two red lights blinked in the distance, probably the E-4B Nightwatch that served as a flying command center in case of nuclear war. Thank God the secret service hadn’t dragged him onto that plane instead of Air Force One. He and Sharon would never have gotten a good night’s sleep in the super-spy command center. It would’ve been worse than trying to sleep in a hospital.

The President’s cell phone buzzed again. Dutch kicked himself for getting talked into accepting an iPhone. His staff now controlled his attention 24/7. At least prior to the phone, they had to wait for him to wake up in the morning before giving him his marching orders. Now they could reach into his sleep and jerk him back to reality whenever they saw fit. So many people relied on him, Dutch was afraid to turn the damn thing off, even at night.

It didn’t matter anyway. He had barely slept, feverish with concern over the nuclear attack and the civil disorder in California. His mind had been flipping bits of information until the wee hours of morning, hungry to connect the dots.

Dutch hunted around blindly in the dark stateroom, trying not to wake Sharon, until he found his reading glasses on the nightstand next to the bed.

“Jesus, God in Heaven,” he swore, reading the first text on his phone.

“What’s wrong, Dutch?” Sharon asked, startling awake.

“Homeland Security thinks we’re being hit with a cyberattack. Power plants along the east coast are now having problems. When people start waking up in the east, we could be in for more power outages.”

“Who?”

“Who’s attacking us? We don’t know, but the usual suspect would be Russia. They’ve probed our power systems before and they managed to shut down Ukraine’s power grid a couple years ago.”

“Why would they hit us?” she asked, sitting up in bed.

“The Russians are like that. If they sense weakness, they don’t let the opportunity pass them by, even though tanking our economy would likely tank theirs.” Dutch moved around the room, searching for clothes. Sharon turned on the reading light to make it easier for her husband to dress.

“Will we retaliate?”

Dutch chuffed. “Not unless we have proof, and I’m guessing we have bigger fish to fry today. Six metro areas in California rioted through the night. California State Guard is having trouble putting down the civil disorder. Apparently, only sixty percent of their guardsmen showed up for duty last night. They’re not sure how many more will make it in today.”

Dutch slipped on a clean undershirt and pulled on a track suit he found in a drawer. Like everything else in their life, someone had thought through this potential outcome ahead of time and stocked the presidential suite with clothes for he and Sharon.

He brushed his teeth and waded into the early morning maelstrom of the conference room, his gray and white streaked hair sticking up in the back.

“What’s the situation?” Dutch took note of the staffers who had probably been awake most of the night, or at least since Homeland called in the cyberattack. His entire staff, plus the Attorney General, were present.

SecDef Greaney wasn’t there, but Dutch doubted he had slept much either, not with a cyberattack underway. As suspected, Sam Greaney appeared in the doorway sipping a mug of coffee. He had probably been upstairs in the communications center.

“Good morning, Mister President,” Robbie, his chief of staff, began the brief. “As you saw in my text, Homeland Security detected a virus working its way through our power companies and their transfer points starting at 3:35 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Homeland is organizing a response, but the virus has been self-replicating, and we can assume that it’s present in every power grid system across the nation and the eastern half of Canada.”

“Have we launched our counter-measures?” Dutch had been briefed on a possible cyberattack on the power grid, and he knew that Homeland Security had prepared a defensive response.

“Well, this virus caught Homeland doing a scheduled update on their systems. They won’t be back online until 8 a.m. Eastern. By then, the worm may have generated too many iterations in the system to isolate it.”

Dutch glowered. “Why the HELL did DHS run a system update the night after a nuclear strike against the country?”

Robbie quailed at the unusual display of anger. “I’m sorry sir, but nobody in management told the programmers to hold off on the computer update. Those programmer guys kind of live in their own world. They will eventually eradicate the virus, but it won’t be as quick as if we’d responded immediately. Homeland anticipates about fifteen days of power interruptions before they get it under control.”

Dutch dropped into one of the chairs around the conference table.

“What else?”

“California is requesting federal troops. Last night, they reported rioting and looting in…” Robbie looked down at a list he’d written on a yellow legal pad, “Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Sacramento, Oakland, San Jose and San Diego. They’re due to report in at 8 a.m. Pacific to assess damage and to discuss rules of engagement, but the governor forewarned us that they would be requesting federal troop support.”

“Careful,” Zach Jackson, Attorney General, interrupted. “Congress altered the Posse Comitatus Act during the Bush administration and then repealed it. We don’t have the same free hand that they had back in the Los Angeles riots.”

Dutch narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

“That isn’t all, Mister President,” his chief of staff turned to Sam Greaney, as though they had already discussed the next piece of information. “Other cities are experiencing sympathetic riots based on what social media is calling ‘racially-biased distribution of electrical power.’ They’re convinced that the power companies are channeling available electricity to white, upscale neighborhoods, and they claim to have proof in the form of videos posted on Facebook, Instagram, Twitch and Twitter. We’re getting reports of minor looting last night in nearly every major metropolitan city in the United States. Tonight, it might get worse.”

“Let me make sure I’m getting this straight,” Dutch bristled. “Cities without interruption to their electrical service are rioting because of some racial bias bullshit in other cities that they heard about on Facebook?” He leaned forward in his chair, fury now coming off him in waves.

“Yes, sir. The movement already has a name.” Robbie looked down at his notes. “They’re calling it ‘Fair Power.’”

Dutch threw himself back in his chair. “People are probably dying from radiation poisoning from a nuclear attack on our country, and people in Chicago are rioting because they think some races are getting more electricity than others in Los Angeles ? Is that what I’m hearing you say? Because this is not how America responds to an attack on our soil! We proved that with 9/11.”

The president’s staff shuffled their feet and looked anywhere but at their leader. Most of them were younger than Dutch by a fair margin. Two people in the room were Millennials. It seemed that the only person in the Oval Office who didn’t understand how much America had changed since 9/11 was The President of the United States.