“Absolutely, sir. That stuff’s next door.”
21
Word spread that Air Force One had landed in Offutt, and Dutch’s worst fears began to coalesce around the front gate to the base. The two security forces officers helping Dutch were pulled away to address a menacing crowd of angry civilians at the base entrance, shouting pleas and curses for their president to save them from the turmoil that had seized Omaha.
Dutch had no time to agonize over their ire. He had only an hour left on the ground and he wracked his brain as to what his family might need in the months to come.
Try as he might, he could not come up with a large-scale, reliable solution to providing clean water for his family. Every good option seemed tied to a piece of land. He needed a river, lake or a well to provide water for any length of time, and he had a bad feeling about setting up near ground water. It seemed like ground water would attract people, and that he must stay clear of the masses at all costs.
The more he thought about long-term survival, the bigger the problem loomed. Dutch felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole—the questions becoming deeper and stranger the farther he descended. The president kicked himself for not preparing ahead of time, like setting up a ranch in Montana or a farm in a small town. He’d had the money. He just hadn’t thought to make it a priority.
Ultimately, Dutch admitted to himself that he couldn’t conquer all the variables by raiding storerooms at Air Force Bases. There were hundreds of necessary items the Air Force had no reason to stock, like solar panels, portable generators, freeze-dried food, field toilets and family-sized tents.
He would need to bet it all on some strategy of survival other than becoming frontier settlers. Setting up an entire farm, like a modern-day homesteader, wasn’t going to be possible. Not now…
In a storeroom beside the armory, Dutch and Teddy found Doom and Bloom STOMP med kits, stashed away in a locker reserved for pararescue training. They rushed to the base PX and loaded up on military fatigues in their sizes: boots, socks, underwear, feminine hygiene products, and toilet paper. Dutch sped through the cosmetics section and picked up hair dye for himself and Sharon. Then he grabbed a beard trimmer, not sure if he would have electricity to even run it. In a flash of guilt, Dutch insisted on leaving his credit card with the befuddled cashier as they hurried out the door, running against the clock.
They made their last stop at the airman survival container and stocked up on compact water filters, one-man tents, knives in various sizes, flashlights, radios that Dutch didn’t how to use, mace and Meals Ready to Eat.
The MREs presented a particular challenge. Dutch compared their weight with the practical limitations of airplane cargo and concluded that he had a problem. To Dutch, the meals seemed to weigh well over one pound each, and they would add up very fast.
He knew he wouldn’t be abandoning Robbie Leforth, nor Janice Foster, at Offutt Air Force Base, no matter Sam Greaney’s push to get rid of the chief of staff. The same would go for another half-dozen of the team aboard the plane. His new “family group” numbered around ten people, and that would add up to thirty MREs per day or at least nine hundred pounds of MREs per month. If they were stuck in the boonies for a year, they would have to pack over twenty thousand pounds of food—much more than Dutch imagined a Boeing 747-8 could carry and still get off the ground.
Dutch called ahead to the pilot and asked.
“Sir,” the pilot replied, “we can carry a hundred tons of whatever you want. Ten tons won’t be a problem.” Dutch jumped behind the wheel of the Humvee and sent the supply officer to track down twenty pallets of MREs and a forklift and meet him at the plane.
As Dutch crossed the basics of survival off his hurried list, he returned to thinking about his long-term strategy. How could his family enter a fresh, belligerent world with a decisive advantage? How could he trade the next fifteen minutes for a plan that would catapult his loved ones ahead of the curve?
Dutch made a hard U-turn, bumped over the curb and onto the grass, then went back the way he had come. A Humvee going the other way slammed on his brakes to avoid a collision and gave the president a hearty middle finger out the window.
“Sorry, pal,” Dutch apologized out loud. His son couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of an enlisted man giving his Commander in Chief the bird.
“I’d bet he’d be horrified if he knew who you were,” Teddy said.
“Maybe not today. There are a lot of Americans who’d probably love to see me crucified right now,” Dutch finally spoke the truth to himself, and his son.
No matter what happened now, and no matter how much virtue and honor he had intended, he would forever be the president who presided over the greatest horror to ever touch the United States of America.
22
Dutch and Teddy had returned to the armory, much to the shock of the enlisted man standing behind the front counter. Two hours before, his superior officers had helped the president. Now, they were tied up at the base gate practicing riot control. The young airman would have to handle the scenario by himself. Noticing the young man’s discomfiture, Dutch jumped ahead of the stress he could see painted across the young man’s face.
“Feel free to take pictures with your phone so you’re not held responsible for what happens next.”
The young enlisted man nodded and went to work helping Dutch and Teddy demolish their stores of weapons and ammunition.
Dutch first had the young airman set aside all the firearms and ammunition he thought they might need for base defense. Then Dutch grabbed every weapon they could lay hands on, including belt-fed machine guns, links, grenades, cleaning kits, tactical flashlights and every remaining case of ammunition in the building.
The more he thought about it, the more Dutch figured that military firearms might be worth their weight in gold. While Dutch hadn’t planned well enough to own a farm or a cattle ranch, he could do the next best thing: work for a farmer or rancher to keep land and animals out of the hands of the lawless. If the civilized world failed completely, a truck full of military weapons and ammunition could probably be traded for hundreds of acres of arable land, complete with wells, herds of beef cattle, horses and farm equipment. Dutch knew it was a guess, but it was his best stab at getting ahead in a world where people no longer respected property rights. Even in that world, no sane person would walk into machine gun fire to steal a cow.
Dutch would bring the guns, and maybe the gunmen—thinking of his secret service detail—and given the right rancher or farmer, he might be able to strike a mutually-beneficial partnership.
The idea of himself cruising the countryside as a gunman made Dutch feel like a macho-fantasy fool, but he looked across the base at the smoke hanging over Omaha and he suddenly didn’t feel quite so foolish.
Dutch heard the artificial click-hiss of a cell phone camera and turned to see the young airman taking snapshots of the president in front of the Humvee, now bristling with gun barrels, poking out in every direction.
“Just so they don’t think I took the guns for myself,” the airman explained feebly.
Dutch laughed and shook the young airman’s hand. He would’ve loved to say something presidential in that moment, but he felt more like a pirate than a president, leaving the base security with less than half their ammunition and a small percentage of their guns. Dutch hoped they would no longer need them after he took to the air and the angry crowd disbursed.
“I hope I didn’t leave you guys in a bad way,” Dutch apologized, nodding toward the Humvee.