Джейсон Росс: The Last Air Force One

Anuclear blast looked nothing like a mushroom cloud from so close.

Dutch’s mind struggled to find solid ground. The same thing had happened on September 11th, 2001 when he watched an airliner hurl into the twin towers on TV. Just like that morning twenty years ago, President Nathaniel “Dutch” McAdams’ mouth hung agape and his knees went to water as he watched America being incinerated by its enemies.

The picture on the television jerked side-to-side. The iPhone cameraman must have been running away from the blast while filming toward it. A massive sphere of light wrapped around a cluster of high-rise office buildings. The light overwhelmed the tiny camera and the buildings vanished in a starburst. A split-second later, the light receded, and the camera adjusted to the exposure, the buildings still standing.

The President of the United States exhaled. He had been holding his breath for the last twenty seconds. Returning to this terrible reality, he watched as one of the wealthiest cities in America crouched before a thunderclap of flame.

The windows of the office buildings vaporized as the over-pressure of the blast pulsed through the high-rise, sucking atomized glass and a hundred thousand pieces of paper into thin air. Dutch watched for falling bodies but saw only ticker tape floating leisurely toward earth.

He already knew that the shockwave wouldn’t be followed by white-hot flame—otherwise, the cameraman wouldn’t have uploaded the video to the internet. If the man had burned up, the president and his staff wouldn’t be watching him run for his life on the big screen TV in the Oval Office. Apparently, the explosion wasn’t enough to incinerate all of downtown Los Angeles. Still, the ground in L.A. must’ve heaved like a kicking mule. With the cameraman running pell-mell, it was hard to tell.

The cameraman slowed, either from over-exertion or from the realization that the fireball wasn’t going to immolate him. A heavy-set man with a wispy beard turned the camera on himself, gasping for air and stating the obvious.

“Los Angeles has been hit by a nuclear weapon. I’m going to post this on Instagram and run for my car. I don’t know how long I have before the fallout gets me. I want my family to know I love them. Goodbye.”

The TV flipped back to a blond-haired man in a suit, sitting behind a desk at a Fox News studio, probably in New York City. The newscaster began to repeat what everyone who had watched the last fifteen seconds already knew: Los Angeles had been attacked.

Dutch blinked away his amazement and resumed his role as the most powerful man on Earth.

“What else do we know?” he asked his team assembled in his office. They had been working almost non-stop for two days on a financial crisis that had already been threatening to swamp the world economy, even prior to the nuke. This latest attack—and it could only be an attack—raised a thousand questions. Who was aggressing against the United States, and what did it have to do with the dirty bomb in Saudi Arabia and the crash of the stock market? The string of events made absolutely no sense to McAdams.

Nobody from the president’s team spoke, the newscaster droning in the background, repeating essentially the same sentence over-and-over.

The doors to the Oval Office burst inward and Dutch’s contingent of secret service agents fanned out in the room, peering at his staff with unnecessary suspicion.

“Mister President, we’re taking you to Air Force One right now.”

Dutch had argued with his protective detail before and he’d always lost. Whatever power he held as president didn’t extend to bending the will of the government organizations he supposedly commanded. Secret Service policy, as with all governmental agencies, spanned many dozen presidents. There was only so much he could do to alter the institutional will of the over four hundred agencies, sub-agencies and departments, many with more than two hundred years of bureaucratic inertia. Most days Dutch felt like a conductor standing in front of an orchestra, the musicians with bags over their heads.

He grabbed his laptop and cellphone before his security dragged him away.

“Janice, get Sam Greaney and Zach Jackson to meet me at Andrews AFB. They need to be on that plane.” He turned to the secret service agent holding his arm. “Where’s my family?”

“In a helo on their way to Andrews, sir.”

“Thank you… Robbie, come with us.”

Robbie Leforth, Dutch’s chief of staff looked rattled. The younger man jumped up from the sofa and blundered toward the phalanx of secret service agents now heading out the door.

“Robbie. You’re going to need your laptop,” the President pointed toward the coffee table as he was being pulled from his office and into the hallway.

Upon boarding Air Force One, Dutch broke ranks with his protective detail and headed back into the section of the plane set aside for reporters and his office staff. He needed to check on his family.

His wife, Sharon, his twenty-three-year-old daughter, Abigail and his twenty-year-old son, Teddy were buckled in, ready for the Boeing 747-8 to get in the air.

Dutch noticed a cluster of three special forces operators in full military kit, speaking privately with Secretary of Defense Sam Greaney. He overheard something about “a full frange load-out” which meant nothing to Dutch. His secret servicemen stood in a separate cluster, eyeballing the other gunmen. Nothing about the scene alarmed the president. Greaney’s personal security detail were Army Delta Force, and his own secret service detail distrusted everyone as a general rule.

After trading a quick touch-of-the-hand with his wife, and a smile with each of his now-adult children, Dutch strode with purpose toward the front of the gleaming aircraft.

The glamor of Air Force One still hadn’t worn off on Dutch. Aside from the top-secret features of the plane, no effort had been spared for style and comfort. Even the office, guest, security and press sections in the back of the hulking fuselage put most first-class sections to shame; with wide leather seats—each with an array of connection and entertainment options imbedded in their consoles. On every bulkhead, crystalline LCD screens silently scrolled through passenger safety instructions produced exclusively for the president’s personal jumbo jet.

Heading toward the nose of the plane, the duties of governing the greatest empire the world had ever seen took precedence over design. The main hallway dog-legged to the port side of the plane, affording space for a large conference and dining room, a senior staff office, the plane’s galley, a small medical office and the Oval Office. The president and first lady’s executive suite filled the nose of the aircraft, where one might expect the pilots.

The Boeing 747, one of the first “jumbo jets,” not only ran much wider than most jets, but offered an upper deck in the front of the craft, where Air Force One housed a state-of-the-art communications center and the flight cockpit.

Everything about Air Force One, from its fit and finish to its capability to stay aloft indefinitely through mid-air refueling, spoke to the incomprehensible might of the United States of America. Stepping aboard the aircraft was like walking into the throne rooms of medieval Europe. Allies and rivals alike were to take notice: the U.S.A. ruled the Earth.