"Of course."
I finished dressing and headed out, with Marilyn behind me in a bathrobe and fuzzy slippers. The girls were still upstairs, so I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to them. Breakfast was a quick bagel and cream cheese and juice, and then I was off to the White House. I got there by 8:00, by which time the place was already a beehive of activity. It never really goes to sleep, of course. A lot of the office staff starts coming in before 6:00, just to prepare for the President to arrive.
As usual, the first person in my office was a National Intelligence Officer with the President's Daily Brief, a daily summary of the latest intelligence. It was compiled by the CIA overnight and the first person to get it is the President. Other people to get it typically included the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and the National Security Adviser. I knew for a fact that there had been arguments made by Cheney and Wolfowitz to cut me out of the loop, but Bush hadn't gotten to that point yet. I read it over quickly, and wasn't surprised by any of it. Most of the world's militaries had increased their levels of readiness, the smart ones because they were worried about Islamic nut jobs, the dumb ones because their neighbors had increased their readiness. The rest of the brief was mostly information about various terrorist groups. Nothing like locking the barn door after the horse had bolted.
I raised an eyebrow at one piece, which was tying Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein. "What is the basis for stating that Osama bin Laden is sharing information with Saddam Hussein?", I asked.
"I'm not at liberty to say, sir.", he replied.
I set the Brief down on my desk. "You want to think about that for a second and come up with another answer, buster?"
"Sir? That information is classified and cannot be divulged."
This fellow was in his late twenties, a junior version of the regular NIOs who met with the President. "Sonny, I'm the Acting President of the United States. When I tell you I want some information, you can trust that I really want it."
He looked very confused at this. "Sir, my understanding is that this is just something temporary."
"Uh, huh. Who told you that?", I asked pleasantly.
"Mister Wolfowitz, sir, and Mister Libby."
"Scooter said I'm just temporary, too?"
"Yes, sir. You're going to be Vice President again as soon as the President is rescued, so we shouldn't break security.", he told me.
"And besides, I'm not going to be here much longer anyway, right?" He didn't know what to say to that, but it was obvious he had heard this. "Okay, thank you.", I told him.
He looked relieved. He collected the report and left. Yet one more damn thing to sort out.
One important moment came when Frank Stouffer came through and said, "Air Force One, the spare anyway, is in Houston. The first President Bush and Mrs. Bush are going to leave within the next hour. They'll be here sometime early this afternoon."
"Okay, Frank. I want you to keep track of that and head over to Andrews when it lands. For as long as the Bushes are here, you belong to them. Get them where they need to be. Grease the ways. If the Bushes want you to take off your skin and dance in your bones, do it. Got me?", I told him.
"Understood, sir."
"Good man. President Bush was President when I first got to Congress. I have a lot of respect for the man, and I expect you to show it."
"I won't fail you, Mister President."
I stood up and smiled. "I know you won't, Frank, that's why I'm giving you the job. One thing ... I am sure the first thing the Bushes will want to do will be to see Laura and the girls. Make sure to mention to Mister Bush that I would appreciate some of his time. This afternoon would be good, if possible."
"Yes, sir." He left to go about his duties, and I thought about him for a second. He was now my Deputy Chief of Staff, a big step up from the Vice President's Chief of Staff. He'd been with me just over a year now, since when he came on board with me after Springboro. I'd been using him as a combination Chief of Staff and body man. Deputy Chief of Staff meant I'd need to find a new body man. One more damn thing to do.
I headed to the meeting I had ordered for the morning. It was time to sort this mess out. I grabbed a covered leather clipboard sporting the Presidential Seal, and tossed a few items in it.
We were meeting in the Cabinet Room, and I took the central seat at the long table. There had been a quiet buzz as I came in, but it silenced as I sat down. I glanced around. As far as I could tell, the key people I wanted to speak with were present, and there looked to be an equal number of other people, their deputies, most of whom I didn't know, sitting in chairs behind their bosses, along the wall. Everybody's eyes were on me as I sat down.
"Thank you all for coming.", I started. "Now, before we get into anything, I want to tell you something. Last night, when I got back to the house, I found my wife sleeping in her bathrobe on the couch, with the television on showing the news from yesterday. She had been crying. Upstairs, my daughters were upstairs in my bed, also asleep with the news on, and they had been crying as well, and they were huddled up with my dog to protect them. All across this country the people who rely on us to protect them are crying in their beds because they are scared! We have failed to protect them. We have to fix this, and this meeting is the start. If you do not understand this, there's the door. Is that clear enough?"
A chorus of "Yes, sir!" came from around the table, some clear and some mumbled.
I looked around and nodded to everybody. "Thank you. Okay, first things first." I looked around again. "Where's Joe Allbaugh?" Joe was a long time political fixer and was now the head of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration. He was a long time pal with the President.
A voice came up from the end of the table. "He's at a conference in Montana, sir. I'm Michael Brown, Deputy Director of FEMA."
It took me a second to recall Brown's round face, and then it hit me. This was the guy who, on my first run, had been running FEMA at the time of Hurricane Katrina. Yeah, Michael 'Heck of a job, Brownie!' Brown. Great! For years both political parties had been using FEMA and a few other agencies as dumping grounds for politicians who managed to raise enough money for them and needed an easy job. Both Allbaugh and Brown fit the bill perfectly.
"Okay, Mister Brown, what's the current status with the crash sites?"
To be fair, his answers were clear and concise and accurate as to what we knew. The Pentagon was severely damaged on one side, but not destroyed and was still functioning, and the structural design of the building (five separate rings, one inside the other, with connecting corridors at the vertices) broke the building into separate sections. We probably had a few hundred dead, but the fires were out and cleanup was proceeding.
The real problem was New York, where we now had two gigantic piles of smoking rubble. Giuliani was running the show, and doing it competently, and had all the men and equipment he could ask for. The biggest problem was the choking smoke and dust surrounding the area. Otherwise, everything that could be done was being accomplished, but it would be slow. There were some survivors, but not many.
"Thank you. A few questions. Do they have enough respirators and gas masks, that sort of thing? Does FEMA have a stockpile of that? Can we get them more?"
"They are using what they have, and more are being rushed in.", he replied.