Dutch didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. Sharon pulled her husband to the couch and sat with him while their dinner cooled on the conference room table.
14
Dutch gazed at the E-4B Nightwatch through the bullet-proof glass window beside his desk in the Oval Office. It was just past 11 p.m., Eastern Time, and his staff had left him alone for an hour, no doubt giving him time to grieve his father and mother.
While Americans on the ground ran in fear from rioting, looting and fresh terrors, Dutch was left to grieve his 87-year-old father and mother. How many lives would this grieving cost? How many would die while the president got his personal shit together and headed back to business?
The Nightwatch plane blinked its mindless wingtip code of red and green. It looked like it was just off the wing of Air Force One, but Dutch knew that aeronautical distances were deceiving. The companion plane was probably more than a mile away.
Dutch understood Sharon’s doubt of Sam Greaney. She had never liked the man—never fully supported Dutch’s decision to tap him for SecDef. In her words, Sam Greaney always thought he was the smartest guy in the room. While Sam showed outward respect for Dutch’s office as president, Sharon didn’t buy it. She pegged him as a climber; a man pretending to defer to the Commander in Chief as a rung in his own ladder of ambitions.
Sharon had loved Dutch’s mom and dad, maybe even more than Dutch loved them, and he had seen her do this before; letting emotions get out ahead of clear thinking. But Dutch could hardly blame her. The nation had plummeted into a downward spiral and all Dutch could do was dwell on his personal grief. Who was he to judge Sharon’s emotional bias against Sam Greaney?
“Robbie, are you up?” Dutch hit the intercom on his desk and called back to the staff area.
“Yes, sir,” Robbie answered, sounding like he hadn’t slept in days.
“Please grab Janice and anyone else you need, and let’s get to work. I’d like a brief on the rioting and the impact of the speech. Nothing fancy.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll join you in the Oval Office in five minutes.”
Getting back to work satisfied his grief like four fingers of bourbon. He'd feel better for a little while, but there’d be hell to pay come three o’clock in the morning.
In five minutes, Robbie Leforth and Janice Foster sat in the Oval Office and Robbie began his brief.
“Mister President, I tried to gather response data from your speech tonight—I thought it was an amazing speech by the way, truly one of the great speeches of all time—but the polling firms have gone offline, and half the people called in sick from our NSA signals and intelligence group, which might not have mattered since they don’t do consumer polling anyway. Usually, the media polls our moves, but they’re either understaffed or focusing on their own ideological positions. I couldn’t find any media polls relating to your speech. Basically, all I can show you is my own review of the social media reaction, which might be the most accurate, since we don’t know how many people even had the ability to tune in on television. While cell batteries hold, and while cell towers continue to function, almost all media is being consumed on smart phones.”
Dutch nodded for him to continue.
“On your personal Facebook page and the White House page, you got over one-point-seven million reactions, mostly ‘likes.’ There were over a hundred thousand comments and they expressed a lot of support overall. I did notice a substantial number of comments expressing distrust of your relationship with the electrical company CEOs, since you said that you called them personally. A substantial minority of comments criticized your motives as a ‘white, patriarchal male’ and made unflattering comments about you having the kind of friendship with large corporations where you could call them. But I emphasize that critical comments were in the minority.”
“And what about the reality on the ground? What impact did the speech have on civil disorder?”
“We have reports of major rioting in seventeen cities, and we expect more before the evening is through. The riots in California have intensified. I don’t think we can say Los Angeles is ‘rioting’ anymore because I don’t think there’s a coherent police presence in most of the Greater Los Angeles area. It’s more like anarchy—”
A knock interrupted Robbie’s report and Sam Greaney stepped into the Oval Office, his face set hard like the prow of a Greek fighting ship. “Dutch, we have lost our first military personnel. Three men were just killed in hand-to-hand fighting against rioters in Detroit.” He handed Dutch a piece of paper that looked like a report of some kind. “It’s now or never, sir,” Sam prodded.
Dutch didn’t like being backed into a corner, but he’d learned that sometimes you played the cards you were dealt. He might never know the ultimate impact of his speech, but it seemed clear at this point that the kind of people who rioted probably weren’t the kind of people who watched speeches from the White House.
“Order our men weapons free,” Dutch said, putting the nation and his presidency in God’s hands.
15
“How much longer should we stay in the air, Sam?” Dutch ran into Sam Greaney walking down the hallway at first light.
“We just mid-air refueled and we’re waiting for confirmation that the riots are under control. Going weapons hot stopped the bastards in their tracks, Dutch. Looks like we might have this licked.”
“How many dead?” The President listened intently.
“I’m not sure. Sounds like two or three hundred dead in thirty cities, sir. We’ve suffered thirteen casualties among our military personnel, but I’m still waiting for reports. We are experiencing some… communications difficulties.”
Dutch sensed something lurking beneath the words. “Tell me what that means, Sam.”
“You already know that we lost a few officers over legal objections when we ordered them into American cities. I already covered most of those losses with inline promotions.”
Dutch pictured the kind of men who would object to his order to shoot at civilians and couldn’t help feeling like he might have been among them.
“A couple more commanders withdrew troops to their base when we made the call to go weapons hot. I’m working on getting those officers replaced. A couple of our bases have gone radio silent.”
“Radio silent?” Dutch couldn’t believe that the hardened military communications systems had been impacted by a cyberattack.
“Some of our bases and also units in the field have stopped communicating with us. Mister President, I’m guessing that some of them are objecting to orders and others are losing cohesion of force.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sir, I believe we are experiencing absenteeism and desertion in some of our units, mostly admin and support. Combat troops are holding up better.”
Dutch imagined how servicemen and women might feel about the power outages, the nuclear attack, the riots and the stock market crash. Many would have a strong desire to rally around their families rather than stay at their jobs. The ragged truth: their duty to family might be stronger than their oath to the country. Dutch could understand that feeling, especially today, with his father’s body lying on concrete in an airplane hangar somewhere in the California desert. At some point, family would become everything, regardless of oaths.
“Why are we still in the air? We’re seeing no missile launches, no ground forces and no planes threatening our airspace. Why aren’t I on the ground talking to these officers personally?”