Executive orders - Tom Clancy [46]
Have Scott Adler go over this, will you? Somebody would have to determine how much time he should spend with the official visitors, and Ryan wasn't qualified to do that.
Yes, Mr. President.
What sort of speeches will I have to deliver? Jack asked.
We have our people working on that for you. You should have preliminary drafts by tomorrow afternoon, Mrs. Simmons replied.
President Ryan nodded and slid the papers into his out-pile. When the Chief of Protocol left, a secretary came in-he didn't know this lady's name-with a pile of telegrams, the leftovers from Eighth and I that he hadn't gotten to, plus another sheet of paper that showed his activities for the day, prepared without his input or assistance. He was about to grumble about that when she spoke.
We have over ten thousand telegrams and e-mails from-well, from citizens, she told him.
Saying what?
Mainly that they're praying for you.
Oh. Somehow that came as a surprise, and a humbling one at that. But would God listen?
Jack went back to reading the official messages, and the first day went on.
THE COUNTRY HAD essentially come to a halt, even as its new President struggled to come to terms with his new job. Banks and financial markets were closed, as were schools and many businesses. All the television networks had moved their broadcast headquarters to the various Washington bureaus in a haphazard process that had them all working together. A gang of cameras sited around the Hill kept up a continuous feed of recovery operations, while reporters had to keep talking, lest the airwaves be filled with silence. Around eleven that morning, a crane removed the remains of the 747's tail, which was deposited on a large flatbed trailer for transport to a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base. That would be the site for what was called the crash investigation, for want of a better term, and cameras tracked the vehicle as it threaded its way along the streets. Two of the engines went out shortly thereafter in much the same way.
Various experts helped fill the silence, speculating on what had happened and how. This was difficult for everyone involved, as there had been few leaks as yet-those who were trying to find out what had happened were too busy to talk with reporters on or off the record, and though the journalists couldn't say it, their most fertile source of leaks lay in ruin before thirty-four cameras. That gave the experts little to say. Witnesses were interviewed for their recollections-there was no tape of the inbound aircraft at all, much to the surprise of everyone. The tail number of the aircraft was known-it could hardly be missed, painted as it was on the wreckage of the aircraft, and that was as easily checked by reporters as by federal authorities. The ownership of the aircraft by Japan Airlines was immediately confirmed, along with the very day the aircraft had rolled out of the Boeing plant near Seattle. Officials of that company submitted to interviews, and along the way it was determined that the 747-400 (PIP) aircraft weighed just over two hundred tons empty, a number doubled with the mass of fuel, passengers, and baggage it could pull into the air. A pilot with United Airlines who was familiar with the aircraft explained to two of the networks how a pilot could approach Washington and then execute the death dive, while a Delta colleague did the same with the others. Both airmen were mistaken in some of the particulars, none of them important.
But the Secret Service is armed with antiaircraft missiles, isn't it? one anchor asked.
If you've got an eighteen-wheeler heading for you at sixty miles an hour, and you shoot out one of the tires on the trailer, that doesn't stop the truck, does it? the pilot answered, noting the look of concentrated intelligence on the face of a highly paid journalist who understood little more than what appeared on his TelePrompter. Three hundred tons of aircraft doesn't just stop,