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.
I nodded and made a note to talk to Tommy Thompson. He would need to alert the Centers for Disease Control about possible health hazards from all that shit.
“When do they expect President Bush to be rescued?” asked Cheney.
I eyed him for speaking out of turn, but then looked at Brown. “It’s the next question. Any ideas, Mr. Brown?”
He simply shook his head. “I’m sorry, but that seems like it is going to be a real long shot. So far none of the people who have gotten out or been found were from above the plane strikes. They are still looking, of course, but… sir, there’s just nothing left!”
“Thank you, Mister Brown. I appreciate how difficult that is to say.” To the group I stated, “Last night I met with the leadership of the House and the Senate. John Boehner and Harry Reid volunteered to go to New York to report back to Congress on the rescue and recovery operations.” To Brown I said, “Make sure that you do what you can to help them. Do we have any idea what the count is yet? How many people were in there?”
He shook his head. “No. A lot of people managed to escape, at least from the lower levels, but nobody was running a head count. We probably won’t know for days, maybe weeks.” He thought for a second, and then added, “It will be in the thousands.”
There were a few gasps at that. There had been wild speculation on the television stations yesterday, but this sounded ominously official.
I muttered something rude under my breath and then nodded. “I’m going to need to see this for myself. This afternoon, I should be able to get over to the Pentagon. Tomorrow, I can fly to New York.” I looked around and caught the eye of one of the Secret Service agents on the periphery. “Did you catch that? I’ll take Air Force Two. Please set that up, along with a drive over to the Pentagon later today.”
“Yes, sir.” He departed the room.
To the others I added. “The original Air Force One is still in New York, and I loaned the second to the President’s father.” I turned to Colin Powell. “Are we still at DEFCON Three?”
“Yes, sir, but nothing seems to be happening. I think we should downgrade to Four,” he replied.
“That is much too preliminary!” argued Cheney. “We need to maintain this readiness state. We’ll be making a response to this as soon as President Bush is returned to office.”
“When we make a response, then we can worry about the readiness state at that time. Until then, maintaining a Level Three readiness state puts excessive wear and tear on both the troops and the equipment, and costs us an excessive amount of money for a level of protection not currently warranted,” responded Powell.
I looked at Powell. “Are we locked down overseas, too?”
“Yes, sir.” He gave us a quick outline of what DEFCON Three involved, including increased patrolling with planes, readying vessels for sea and increasing naval patrols, and locking down on overseas bases.