“It’s time to make some changes on the staff anyway,” the President said. He turned to Reeder. “Mark you are no longer needed in the White House. Thank you for your service and I’ll accept your resignation immediately.” He turned to Butler. “Jim, beginning this morning, you are my new Chief of Staff. Commander,” he said looking at Hammond, “I’d appreciate it if you could hang around a few days to help us get started. Nice little speech, by the way,” he said as he sat in his seat at the table.
The former Chief of Staff began to turn red again. “You can’t do this,” he said incredulously.
“Agent Fry, can you escort this gentleman to clean out his office and then out of the White House?” the new Chief of Staff said.
Agent Fry, who witnessed the whole affair, nodded. “Mister Reeder, would you come with me please?”
Reeder seemed to visibly deflate. His head slumped and his shoulders sagged. Without another word, he turned and left the room with Fry. Another agent took Fry’s place.
“I feel better already,” the President said with a grin. “Hope you two got better sleep than I did.”
“Not too bad, sir,” said Roger Hammond, taken aback from what had just taken place. He sat back in his chair and seemed to let out a breath.
“Why me?” asked Butler.
“Roger said it. This is a war — a military situation. I can’t afford either a politico or a bully around me right now. We speak the same language and think a lot alike. You have your shit together. I need that more than anything. If it gets to be too much, just let me know and you can have your old job back, but I think you’ll manage. As for the politics — well, I’ve been doing it for years anyway. Doesn’t pay to let someone do everything for you,” he said seriously. “Matter of fact, Roger, why don’t you take his place for right now? I’ll sign your new commission at the rank of Captain. I understand you were selected before you retired anyway. I’ll mark the last year down as a leave of absence. How will that do?”
Butler grinned and Hammond sat and nodded. “I wasn’t really expecting this. All I was hoping for was to get back to sea,” Hammond said.
“Maybe, but then you opened your mouth and got me talking to people around the world again. Then you opened it again and laid out exactly what I was thinking last night after you left and the Chief of Staff came in. So I guess you did it to yourself.” He reached over and shook Hammond’s hand. “Thanks for the wake up call. Now what has happened since last night?”
The three got down to business. Coffee was poured and the President even ordered up a real breakfast. By 9:30 a.m. the men went to the Oval Office conference center to speak to the first of the industrial leaders of the nation.
The men were sitting around the table in various moods. Most of the men looked like they had slept in their suits, even though they spent the night in a local hotel. Most knew each other. Nearly every communications leader and company was in the room. Not too many were talking. An uneasy tension filled the air. When the door opened and the President entered, several men almost jumped out of their chairs from fright.
“Please be seated,” the President said. He was followed by Butler, Hammond and Red Gross, the FCC Chairman. “I am truly sorry to have to summon you here today, but we are in a crisis. As you may or may not know, our nation was attacked day before yesterday by nuclear weapons exploding high in our atmosphere. This caused an electromagnetic pulse that effectively shut down this country. As of now, we have lost about two million people in this attack. I don’t have to tell you the seriousness of this situation. But you are the people I need to take the first step in getting out of it,” the President said as he stood before the men. There was a fire in his eyes that Butler had never seen before in the man. It was a look of complete determination.
The President sat down. “You probably all know each other. If anyone can start this ball rolling, you can,” he said. “We need to communicate. I need phones, teletype, radio, and TV. I need satellites back up eventually. But no matter what, I need to be able to talk to the people necessary to keep this nation moving. Now how do we do it?” He sat back and touched his fingers together.
“We’re already working on the phones,” came one answer from AT&T. Unfortunately, most of the network is digital, but we have some backups. The system is being rewired right now so that I can get some basics up and running. We don’t have the satellites anymore, but I have copper wire and fiber optics. The fiber optics weren’t damaged, but the devices on either end were fried. I really need a couple of weeks.”
“Same here,” came the answer from Windstream. “Unfortunately, we also use a lot of fiber optics. That’s going to take some time to replace the systems, but we’re doing what we can.” The other telephone institutions were nodding their heads.
Brad Freeman from CBS chimed in. “Mister President, we want to help, but this thing knocked us all over the map. I have no hookups to keep the networks going. All the networks are in the same boat,” he said. The other men were nodding with him. “I don’t see how we can get anything going for a long time even after we get the replacement equipment.”
“My wire services are going back to the old teletype system,” said the man from Associated Press. We’ll be back up in three days, but the sources of information will be sketchy. We won’t be back to business as usual for months.
The arguments went around the table and soon everything grew quiet. No one had all the answers. The President couldn’t blame them; they had been hit hard and were still trying to get their businesses back on line. Everyone was looking inside the box. They needed a little push.
“Friends, I want to propose something,” said Gross, sitting behind the President. “I recommend that we set aside our differences as far as company boundaries and attack this from a systems point of view,” he said standing. “I propose all telephone communications be our first priority. We do what we can to get this country talking to each other again. That way not only can we get things done from the federal level, but Mom and Dad can make sure the kids are okay. That means everyone starts adding to this piece of the pie. From now on, we share equipment, manpower, services, all those things necessary to let the phones ring. Where are your sources for new equipment?” he asked AT&T.
“Mexico mostly, some from Canada. The U.S. sources are probably down hard.”
“Then I’ll get SecState to get word to whomever we need to get those parts to you as soon as possible,” said the President.
“May not even need that,” this time from Sprint. “We purchased a company that makes the stuff this past year and have a warehouse full of equipment down below Guadalcahara. How can we get it up here?”
The men were starting to talk to each other. Most had equipment in various places. In a few minutes there was enough to get the system back up in a limited way. There wouldn’t be internet, but that wasn’t really a problem, was it?
Butler stood up. “It sounds like the only thing you need is transport from your sites to the nearest centers. I’ll get some things set up with the transportation department and the military to get that online,” he said. “Just don’t be surprised when some Army trucks pull up to your warehouse.” That brought a few chuckles.
FCC continued. “As far as the networks go, we’re going to have to rely on the phone system and our friends at AP and UPI. If you guys can get the teletypes running again, then we can get the public in the loop.” He stopped as the Secretary of State entered the room. He quickly walked to the President and with a smile whispered in his ear. The President smiled as well and motioned for him to spread the news.