Thinking Out Loud: Are we Getting into a Serious Mess?

As a child of the cold war, do I feel a Red Dawn coming on?

A NOTE: I SENT THIS EARLIER, BUT IT DOESN’T APPEAR TO HAVE LEFT THE STATION. IT MIGHT HAVE, IN WHICH CASE THIS MAY BE A DUPE. SORRY!

Do NOT read what follows as a political rant. It’s not. What I’m about to get into is neither right thinking nor left thinking.  It’s just some paranoia I grew up with in the ‘50s resurfacing. It’s just me looking at some current facts and hypothesizing. I’m not suggesting any solutions nor pointing any fingers. I don’t hang-out in bars so I can’t unload on a bar keep. Today, that’s your function.

Like most of my generation, part of my teenage years were spent under my school desk practicing school-sponsored nuclear survival drills. Of course, it never dawned on me that my school desk couldn’t even protect me from the ceiling tiles falling, much less the bombs we all expected Russia to drop on us. We were a tiny town, 25 miles west of Lincoln AFB, home to SAC B-47s, 70 miles west of Offutt AFB, SAC headquarters and home to B-52s. That put us in the nine-ring of a major target should a nuclear conflict erupt. We even had our very own Nike missile site, its lights visible from town.

Some of us were convinced Russkies were going to come marching down Highway 15 to herd us all into wire prisoner enclosures. I was ready for them. I had a surplus footlocker, my go-box, crammed with camping gear, lots of canned beans and my trusty .22 Marlin lever action rifle. They weren’t going to take this kid to no damn prison camp!! I’m an American! Screw you Russia!

All of this was before Patrick Swayze showed us how it should be done in Red Dawn. He, however, didn’t have a single thing on the 16-year-old me!

Then, the other day I heard something on the news that touched some long forgotten Red Dawn nerves: Besides the fact that we have a large number of military age Chinese immigrants coming across the border, a number of them have been reported at local gun ranges target shooting. WHAT? First, I thought China tightly controlled people coming into and out of their country by airlines. So, how are these Chinese immigrants getting to Mexico to cross our borders and reportedly are staying in hotel rooms in Mexico. They appear clean and well funded. Hmmmmm! State sponsored?

As soon as I heard military-age Chinese were coming across the border and practicing shooting, something I had written, but not published, in the early ‘90s popped into my head. At that time, I fancied myself a budding novelist, which I definitely was not (I did, however, write three novels and self-published two of them).

During that period, my brain was busy coming up with new plots and writing the first few sample pages of what I just knew were going to be runaway best sellers, which again definitely were not. So, I have lots and lots of plots and sample chapters jammed into dark corners of this computer which will never see the light of day. However, the image of Chinese target shooters reminded me of a plot I had envisioned but had never written nor sent to a prospective agent. I didn’t push it because I felt the plot was too doable as a threat to the US and I didn’t want to think I had helped plant it in the minds of bad guys who would carry it to fruition. I had more ego then than I do now!

Several of my novels-to-be were based on the fact that civilization, as we normally experience it, is incredibly fragile and easily disrupted to the point of collapse by damage to any of a number of systems we depend upon (electrical, computer, supply chains, etc.). In my theoretical, never written attack scenario, 15 terrorists come into the country and spread throughout the US. At 10 AM, Monday morning each of them snipe and kill a civilian; A farmer on his tractor, a school kid playing at recess, a factory worker on a lunchbreak, city officials in big and little towns, a long-haul truck driver on I-80, etc., etc. Then, at 10 AM Wednesday, they do it again in wildly different locations. Then, at 10AM on Friday, the same deal. In a week they kill 30 people of every possible kind in every part of the country, urban and rural. They would stop shooting for a couple of weeks then do it again on random days. Paranoia would rapidly reign supreme. People would be afraid to go about their daily lives.

Remember how the beltway snipers pretty much shut down the DC area some years ago? This would have the same effect nationwide. Plus, another half dozen shooters would target vital components of power transfer stations, of which I’m told eight are the most important in the US. Underlying this entire action would be a maximum effort cyber-attack on our grid and banking systems. Don’t think bad guys somewhere haven’t had exactly the same thoughts.

Patrick Swayze, where are you, when we really need you?

This is just me reacting to what appear to be organized groups of male immigrants coming from the most devious, best financed and determined of our many enemies.

As I look back at what I’ve written here, if someone else had written it, I’d judge him/her as having some sort of paranoid breakdown. Right now, however, you’re my digital bartender so just ignore me and let me babble on. I guess some part of me thinks we’re not truly in touch with the dire possibilities attached to our border surge and I needed an outlet. I hope I’m wrong. bd

PS

Just for the helluvit I’ve attached some opening chapters I wrote 20 years (or so) ago about a similar, possible national disaster (our trucking system shuts down). It uses some of the characters out of my novel Stonewall File. This is totally unedited. Just as it came out of the keyboard. This is long so ignore it, if you have something important to do.

Sample Chapters: 10 pages

Road Kill

By

Budd Davisson

Prologue

“Mr. President?” The presidential advisor had delivered difficult news from nuclear stand-offs to assassinations, but he really didn’t want to be the messenger this time, “I have some bad news about the state dinner tonight for President Umbabi.”

President Thomas McAlvery Buchanan looked up from his desk, his round, featureless face a question mark, “Now, what?”

“The cook says the planned menu of fillet mignon can’t be served.”

“Why the hell not?” Buchanan snapped. Buchanan, the first president from Mississippi, didn’t consider it food if it hadn’t once been alive and covered with hair.

“Sir, the truckers strike has prevented deliveries to our normal suppliers so there are no fillets available anywhere in town.”

“Goddammit, do I have to do all the thinking around here?” the most powerful man in the world roared. “Do T-bones then. How obvious is that?”

“Sorry, sir, no T-bones either.”

Buchanan, wrinkled his brow and put his face down into folded hands as if saying a prayer. This trucker strike was becoming a pain in the butt, but he’d be damned if he’d give in to those sonsabitches. Quietly, from behind his hands he said, “Okay, then, what exactly does the chef say he can serve?”

“Spaghetti.”

Buchanan looked up with big eyes, “Spaghetti? You have to be kidding! With meatballs?”

“No, sir, just spaghetti.”

Chapter One

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain speaking. We’re about twenty minutes out from landing and we have a highly unusual situation developing at Kennedy. Don’t be alarmed, as it shouldn’t affect our landing or safety at all, but I thought you should know about it in advance.”

Molly Slattery looked over at her husband, Jack, and squeezed his arm.

“As you know the trucking strike has gone on for over a month now and it appears the lack of deliveries to supermarkets and grocery stores has spread to the point that people are leaving their posts to care for their families, and we just got word that includes air traffic controllers as well.”

A slow mumbling amongst the passengers could be heard over the engines.

The pilot hesitated, cleared his throat and continued, “The airport is officially closed and there is no formal air traffic control. However, we’re talking to all the other aircraft inbound to JFK and we’ll just follow each other in. It is, however, going to be crowded because weather has diverted traffic from other cities to Kennedy. The local New York weather is perfect, however, so there should be no problem.”

“No problem, my ass,” Jack Slattery hissed as he imagined what was going on in the cockpit. A pilot himself for over thirty years, he had his own thoughts on the matter. “I’ll bet there’s not a pilot inbound to Kennedy who can remember the last time they made a landing without having radar and controllers covering their butts. This ought to be a lot of fun.”

He didn’t try to hide the sarcasm. Molly knew the signs: Jack was just getting up a head of steam. She’d do her best to calm him down, but the trucker’s strike and the way President Buchanan was handling it was one of his soapbox subjects.

Dammit,” Jack Slattery said. “I knew we should have left earlier. As soon as I saw how badly that jerk Buchanan was screwing up, we should have packed up and left England right then.” He was fuming. “I don’t know what the hell Buchanan thought was going to happen. It’s been damn near six weeks and grocery stores can’t last nearly that long. Same thing with gas stations. We should have learned our lessons with the gas shortages. Or Katrina. Let a population think they’re about to run out of something and everyone starts hoarding. Then, guess what? They do run out of everything. Then it’s every man for himself.”

Molly, put a finger to her lips making Jack aware that people were looking at him. He didn’t care and was on a roll.

“Don’t kid yourself, this is happening everywhere in the country. Everywhere! Things started to go to hell a couple of weeks ago. And what did Buchanan do? He just sat there acting like God. Now, not even the truckers are eating. Damn! We should have headed for home right then.”

Molly knew what was bothering him. “Jack, Debbie will be just fine. She’s a levelheaded kid and can take care of herself.”

Jack wasn’t convinced, “Yeah, but we should never have left her alone. I absolutely guarantee you that we’re one step away from gangs cruising neighborhoods looking for food. And she’s stuck at the house. At least I hope that’s where she is. I don’t…” he was interrupted as the captain continued delivering more bad news.

“We’ve been in contact with aircraft that have landed ahead of us and they advise us that all of the boarding bridges are full so we’ll have to deplane you on the ramp and will probably have to use the emergency slides. Again, this will be no problem and our flight attendants will assist you and give you instructions on how to use the slides. We apologize for this inconvenience, but we’ll do our best to help in every way we can.”

Jack Slattery had dealt with serious adversity from his days as a young Marine to his rough and tumble life as a commercial building contractor in the New York metropolitan area and he was thinking far past the words being said by the captain.

“Babe,” he said, moving closer to Molly so others in first class couldn’t hear him, “I think there’s a real shit storm going on and we’d better be prepared for it. Take a look down there.” 

As Slattery was speaking, the airplane was in a bank giving them a clear view of a river with a number of big bridges spanning it. Traffic filled every lane of highway as far as their eyes could see.

Jack said, “That’s the Triboro Bridge and it doesn’t look as if anything is moving. The tunnels have to be disasters. This is just great! It’s so clear we can damn near see our place,” he indicated the far horizon on the other side of the unmistakable outline of New York City, “but you can bet we’re going to have a helluva time getting there.”

Even as Jack and Molly Slattery stared out across New York at their home in far western New Jersey, Bo Black, a twenty-nine-year-old youth with the build, complexion and demeanor of a short Mike Tyson was sitting in the back of a Department of Corrections van handcuffed to the seat. He couldn’t help but grin as a bulky guard/driver yelled into the radio.

“Dispatch! Dispatch! Is that you, Jackson? What the hell do you mean; the station is leaving?

A tinny voice came out of the speaker, “Yeah, Things are going to hell in a hand basket around here. Maloney got word that a gang was moving down his street in Secaucus cleaning the food out of every house as they go. He wanted to roll a couple of black and whites to stop it, but the captain said they didn’t have the manpower, so Maloney told him to go to hell and left. Most of the other guys are gone too. Heading back to their places. Hey, man! We’re supposed to be protecting the people but just who in the hell is protecting us? I’ll talk to you. I’m splitting. Later.”

“Jackson! Jackson, what the hell am I supposed to do with this load of jail birds?” his answer was random static.

“Shit!” He dropped heavily into the driver’s seat, a bewildered look on his face.

Bo Black was enjoying the display immensely. The van was sitting on a side street in Hoboken where the driver had stopped after being forced off the Jersey Turnpike because of a near riot at a traffic jam.  It was obvious that getting to the prison was going to be nearly impossible. Even Black, himself a product of the inner city and used to a high level of localized chaos, was amazed at how quickly the area was unraveling. It seemed as if every block had its own little battle in progress.

The guard abruptly picked up a clipboard fastened to the dash of the big van. He scanned down it, his lips moving as he read. Satisfied, he reached into a lock box and came out with a ring of keys.

He was shaking his head in disbelief as he moved down the aisle unlocking handcuffs and leg chains as he went. The nametag on his khaki uniform shirt said, “Datillo.” He was talking in a near-shout as he worked.

“Alright, you dirt bags, this is your lucky goddamn day! The frigging world is going down the toilet and I don’t want to be nurse-maiding you assholes while one of your homies is out there burglarizing my place or hassling my family, so I’m outta here. For two goddamn cents I’ve leave you all chained up in here, but I’m such a nice frigging guy, I’m not going to do that. I’ve checked all your sheets and none of you are rapists, murderers or really bad guys, so you’re on your own.”

As Officer Datillo finished speaking, the key clicked in Bo Black’s cuffs. He was free! He’d been on his way to serve two years for armed robbery and now he was free, courtesy of stubborn truckers who wanted to overturn regulations he neither knew nor cared about.

Bo Black stood on the curb watching Officer Datillo drive away in the van with New Jersey government license plates. He had to swerve to miss a slow-motion fistfight between two elderly white women. A broken grocery bag was at their feet. Black looked around at a part of Hoboken he knew well and rubbed his wrists where the cuffs had been. Life was suddenly very good, even though his old neighborhood was beginning to like a combat zone complete with a couple of burning cars.

As Black watched the van disappear, he saw something very symbolic in it: the law had just decided to return home to tend to family business. Bo Black grinned his signature toothy grin. This was a career opportunity of massive proportions, and he wasn’t going to let it pass without engaging his natural bend towards entrepreneurialism. People had to eat. People had to travel. New Jersey had just become a commodities-based economy with the only two commodities that counted being food and gasoline. Yes sir, with the law at home guarding their own gates, there were some real opportunities here.

Bo Black had a plan. Get his guys together, get a few guns and get going. Corner the food and gasoline market and he would be czar of New Jersey. He grinned again. This was going to work!

As if endorsing Black’s concept, a Hispanic woman came screaming out of the brownstone directly behind him. She was driving a middle-aged white male in a well-pressed business suit down the steps while beating him with a broom. “You sonuvabitch, that’s my bottle of milk and I don’t give no damn how much dinero you got. We can’t eat money. It’s mine! I catch you in my building again and my man gonna cut you good!”

Chapter Two

“I don’t like this one damn bit,” Jack Slattery said under his breath. He had his nose glued to one of the airliner’s windows. “Look down there. I can actually see mobs of people around the stores. It looks like wall-to-wall riots and…oh, shit!”

A moving shadow cut quickly across the ground beneath them and Slattery snapped his head up. A United Airlines 757 was barely 100 yards away slowly converging on them.

“I don’t believe this!” Slattery blurted. Molly leaned over his lap and looked out. Jack said, “I think he’s trying for the same runway we’re going for! Oh, man! This isn’t going to work!”  Then, the other airplane stopped moving toward them and held position. He was flying a very tight formation with Slattery’s airliner, which let Sam know the pilot had them in sight although he couldn’t guess why the pilot insisted on flying so close.

Slattery’s Boeing 767 was grumbling along, gear and flaps down on final approach to runway 17 Right at Kennedy International. Slattery could imagine the runway dead ahead but could see none of it. He wasn’t looking anyway. He couldn’t take his eyes off the airliner that seemed glued to their wing tip. Even as he watched, a quick puff of dark smoke came from the left engine.

“Damn! One engine just flamed out. He’s running out of fuel,” Slattery blurted. “That’s why he’s so close. He’s planning on landing right behind us. He must have been diverted from some place else. I hope he has…oh, oh, there goes the other one. Oh, my God! It looks as if he’s trying for the taxiway.”

Its source of propulsion gone, the giant airliner began sliding back and Slattery had to lean forward to see, unable to take his eyes off it. The airplane sank lower and Jack knew he was in serious trouble—they weren’t yet over the airport boundary and there was nothing below but buildings and the occasional boulevard. And airliners on final approach don’t glide.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the paved end of the taxiway just ahead. But it was too late. Just before crossing the muli-lane highway bordering the airport, one of the aircraft’s landing gear hit a light stanchion and the airliner slewed sharply right. The pilot corrected with a left bank but he was out of airspeed, altitude and luck all at the same time: the down wing tip caught the edge of the raised earthen berm at the airport boundary. The last Slattery saw of the airplane it was a cartwheeling mass of flame that catapulted wreckage up onto the taxiway.

“They didn’t make it,” Slattery quietly breathed, as he slammed back in his seat and stared straight forward.  “They didn’t make it! Dammit!” He immediately wondered how many other desperate pilots were out there staring at fuel warning lights.

“Sir, just cross your arms in front of you and jump feet first, the slide will catch you.”

Standing in the open door looking down, Slattery only half heard the shaken flight attendant. He was having trouble processing what he saw. The massive JFK terminal was over a quarter mile away and the usually empty ramp between was a hodgepodge of aircraft parked at odd angles, like giant insects trying to build a nest. Noisy groups of people were milling around not knowing what to do, and the occasional airport vehicle could be seen in the distance drawing a beeline for an exit somewhere.

Before jumping, he looked across the confusion and mentally marked the route he and Molly would have to take to make it to the parking lot where he hoped his truck was still parked. The situation was much worse than he had imagined.

Standing at the bottom of the slide, Slattery caught Molly’s arm, as she slithered to a stop and jerked her to her feet before a portly old lady squashed her.

 “Let’s go. We have to get out of this mob before it gets really ugly,” he said.

Even as Jack spoke, an overly tan, middle-aged man with too many gold chains, too much chest hair and too much attitude was screaming at one of the flight attendants.

 “Hey, lady, I don’t give a damned about your problem, here. I want my goddamn bags! I wear thousand dollar shirts, ya know, and you don’t think I’m going to leave my stuff in the belly of your goddamn airplane do you?”

As Jack pulled Molly through the disorganized crowd, she had to shout to be heard, “Jack, what about our baggage?”

“Forget it,” Jack yelled back, “When people realize they’re stranded in the middle of an airport, it’s really going to get crazy out here. I hope to hell someone disarmed the ramp side security door locks, or we’re not even going to be able to get off the ramp. What an incredible mess!”

The mobs were everywhere on the ramp and Jack was acutely aware of palpable panic floating in the air. People were just beginning to understand the desperate nature of their dilemma. Airports are not designed to have large numbers of people on the ramp. In fact, post-911 airports are specifically designed to keep people off the ramp and away from the airplanes, which creates a weird sort of reversal—once people are inside a fence that was designed to keep them out, there’s no logical way to escape because every door and gate is locked.

As Slattery dragged Molly through the frantic crowd, he was trying to apply what he knew about airport security and the way buildings are built to getting past the terminal to the parking lots. It was as if everything he’d done in his life, from the Marines to construction had lead up to surviving in this situation.

Everywhere he looked panicked mobs were beating on locked doors at the elevated ends of jetways and ground level personnel doors. They were crammed against one another as if thinking that by shoving the people ahead against the doors they could somehow gain entry. But it wasn’t working.

Jack’s eyes scanned the lower levels and spied a way in.

“Molly,” he pointed to where some equipment was backed up to a wall where there were no people, “there’s a baggage loading dock. Let’s go.”

Molly immediately saw what he was thinking and changed direction. A British national, when she and Jack met several years earlier, she’d been working for British intelligence as a field agent, so she was also used to handling unusual situations and had received training most women couldn’t even imagine. They were a good match. Without Jack saying a word, she hopped easily up on a belt loader, clambered over some baggage and crawled through the heavy plastic drapery that kept the weather outside from following baggage through the small portal. Her small, but athletic, frame fit easily.  Jack was close behind, but at six feet and one-hundred-ninety pounds, he didn’t slide through as easily.

“Oh, this is charming!” Molly said, as she smoothed her short-cropped auburn hair. Jack dropped off the conveyor belt beside her in a darkish room that was a mess of baggage, conveyors, and baggage carts. Although the murmur of the crowds could be heard through the walls, a gloomy silence lay thick around them.

“What now, Mr. Slattery? You know it’s going to be pandemonium as soon as we get into the terminal.”

Jack stood for a moment looking around. Thinking. She was right. They needed a plan. They couldn’t just go barging out there and get swept away by the crush of people that undoubtedly filled the terminal. There had to be a hundred airliners clustered on the ramp in addition to those already on boarding gates, so the problem of people getting out of the airport was reaching critical mass. He tried to picture what was happening on the other side of the terminal wall and what it would take to make it to the parking lot.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” he said. “Let’s do the baggage thing and follow the conveyor. That will put us on the lower baggage claim area. That’ll be away from most of the crowds. I hope. When we hit the terminal floor, we can count on every door and stairwell being packed to the point they are dangerous. Once we’re out of the terminal, I think we’ll be okay. So, let’s make our own door.”

As Jack was talking, he was walking slowly amongst the loaded baggage carts. He was looking for something. Molly didn’t even try to guess what.

 “Aha!” Jack said. “This’ll do the trick.” Hefting a baggage cart tow bar in his hands, he said, “Yeah, this’ll do it. Let’s go.”

As the Slatterys crawled through the small baggage conveyor door into the baggage claim area and dusted themselves off, not one person in the frantic mob even noticed them. Nor did they question why Jack Slattery was dragging a heavy steel tow bar behind him to the center of the concourse. They were all too intent on forcing their way into the impenetrable mass of humanity that was trying to wedge itself through the hopelessly jammed revolving doors. Between the doors, huge windows offered an unobstructed view of people outside running one way or the other on the sidewalk.

“You ready?” Jack asked Molly, who was standing directly behind him holding the other end of the tow bar. She nodded.

“Then, let’s do it!” he said.

In unison, the pair lunged toward one of the glass walls of the terminal. Jack guided the tow bar into the exact center of a panel, which was designed to survive decades of careless skycaps and passengers but not the onslaught of a tow bar. Jack stopped abruptly and let the tow bar do its job. The results were spectacular.

The tow bar pulverized the lower four feet of glass, causing the glass above to collapse and cascade down, the wide sheets shattering like ice, as they hit the floor. Just that quickly, they had a way out and took advantage of it. Now all they had to do was hope their truck was still there and prepare for becoming part of the lemming rush to nowhere they had seen from the air.

As they dashed down the sidewalk toward the distant parking lots, Jack was thinking about the nightmare of trying to get through New York City and said, “This is going to be a very long day.”

Molly wrinkled her freckled, pug nose and answered, “What do you mean ‘going to be?’”