Kansas City barbecue among other local treats. Kipper took one discreet whiff of the beef ribs and decided that though they might have been made in the city this morning, it definitely wasn't KC barbecue as he understood it. It smelled like curry. The dark-skinned, bright-eyed young woman wielding the tongs flashed a mouthful of blindingly white teeth at him.
'The barbecue has some extra spice today, Mister President.'
'I'm sure it does, ma'am,' Kipper said. 'But I haven't even had my breakfast doughnut yet. Do you know if Mister Tench has left any for the rest of us?'
She pointed toward the far end of the trestle table, where Kipper could see Jed guarding a precious stash of leftover crullers, muffins, and glazed twists. His chief of staff fixed the recon boss with a forbidding glare.
'I think my wife's been talking to him,' Barney stage-whispered to the young serving girl.
'She needed to,' said the president, backhanding Tench in the gut. 'So how many hours of power a day does the city get?'
Tench took a guilty bite of his glazed doughnut and sucked down a mouthful of rare and precious coffee before answering. The doughnuts, Kip had discovered, came courtesy of a local franchise owner for LaMar's who had been out of the country when the Wave hit. The coffee, he had no idea, but given how difficult it was to get, he'd resolved to limit himself to just one cup so that the plant workers might enjoy the leftovers. Barney wiped a small dollop of jam from his mouth before continuing.
'Right now we get close to eighteen hours a day. More if the trains are consistent. Sometimes that's not the case, though, because you're dealing with train crews from India who are used to doing things their own way. They're efficient and hardworking, but they're, well…'
'They just have their own way,' Kipper finished for Barney. 'I know. You take the help you can get. And India's been a godsend for us.'
'True enough,' Tench said. 'There is one problem, though, boss. A big one.'
Kipper waited as his good mood threatened to curdle and sour.
'No one's been paid for three weeks. Some folks, I just found out, got over four months of back pay on the books. Granted, many of them are refugees who are happy to have three hots and a cot, but it's not sustainable,' Tench said.
Kipper sighed. Money. You had to spend money in order to make money. And to spend it, you had to have it or borrow it. He was the first to admit that finances were not his strong suit, but he didn't need a Nobel Prize in economics to understand that the implosion of the world economy, the total collapse of the banking and financial markets, had real-world effects down on the ground, in this very parking lot.
The United States was broke. Living off the stored capital represented by its empty cities and silent infrastructure, it could not pay its debts, had refused to, indeed, for the last three years, in complete contradiction to Alexander Hamilton's advice to the Founding Fathers. An act of treachery according to some of its creditors that could even have led to armed conflict in one case, had China not fallen into civil war. His fine temper of the morning spoiled, Kipper tried to recapture some of the optimism by turning back to the plant and basking in the view again. He tried to convince himself they would get out of this with the same hard work and native ingenuity that the men and women who were reclaiming this city had shown. This wasn't the first time America had been laid low. The nation had been born virtually bankrupt, yet it had managed to climb to the top of the heap in less than two centuries. If they played their hand right, they could recover from this mess as well.
They had to.
'Barney.' Kipper put his hand on his friend's meaty shoulder and looked him in the eye. 'Your people will get paid. You have my word on it.'
But he had no idea how. An hour later the convoy of Secret Service black Chevy Suburbans made its way across the Chouteau Bridge over the Missouri River. A dredge was visible to Kipper's left, docked alongside Harrah's Casino. Construction equipment and workers toiled to restore the Muddy Mo's traffic channel to navigable status. Trains rumbled along the rail line on the north side of the casino complex. Laden with salvage, food, and cattle, they were bound for a central processing point in the river bottoms on the eastern side of North Kansas City, which had ample warehouse and light manufacturing space to accommodate them. A makeshift train station for passenger traffic had been established at the casino to augment the main facility at Union Station on the other side of the Missouri River. New workers, most of them participants in the Federal Homestead and Resettlement Program, had brought their families in search of a fresh start.
To Kipper's right, they passed a complex of buildings and a BP gas station surrounded by an earthen berm topped with sandbags. A couple of army Humvees rolled out and headed south toward the Kansas City Southern rail yard.
'Local troops, militia,' Culver said, taking note of the small fort.
'None of us are local anymore,' Kipper said. 'What are they doing here?'
'Securing the railroad, I suspect,' Culver replied. 'They patrol as far as Fort Leavenworth. From there an army detachment takes over.'
Kipper watched the storm clouds building on the horizon, pleased with the progress.
'We're getting there, Jed,' he said.
'Are we?' Culver asked. The chief of staff had his old briefcase open and was poring over piles of documents. 'If we pay Cesky's men at Hawthorne, then other workers elsewhere will demand the same. Budget's a zero-sum game at the moment, Mister President. We can't borrow money; there is no one who will lend us anything near the amount we need. We can't just print it. Economy's like fucking ground zero, if you'll excuse my French.'
'I promised them they'd get paid,' Kipper said. 'We have to make it happen. Not just here. Everywhere. That bastard down in Fort Hood doesn't seem to have any trouble raising money and spending it. He's even using our currency, the sorry son of a bitch. And he's getting loans! Goddamn Saudis advanced him that big one just last week.'
Jed looked up from his paperwork.
'He's selling off assets to fund consumption, Mister President. Remember how we talked about him overreaching? This is just an example of it.'
'They're our assets, Jed.'
'Possession is nine-tenths of the game, sir. And we do not have the means to enforce our rightful possession yet. Now, as to Tench's problem, you know there is significant opposition to the appropriations for restoring coal- fired power plants,' Culver said. 'The Greens are united with the Northwest Democrats on this one. They'll keep the money for Hawthorne tied up for months if they have to.'
'Can't we find a way around that?' Kipper asked.
Culver nodded. 'Sure. Sandra Harvey wants one of her Borg drones appointed secretary of energy. Greens also want more of their people over at EPA. And they want EPA fully empowered. Give 'em that and you'll get your money. But then either your new crazier EPA or your new crazier energy sec will shut down that shiny new power plant we christened this morning and insist on installing thousands of solar cells in its place. Should only take about eighteen years to replace the lost wattage. And a coupla billion new dollars. But they'll want to sell off another aircraft carrier soon, anyway, so maybe the folding stuff won't be a problem.'
Jed's smirk was almost purely evil.
Kipper felt a Godzilla headache coming on, sharpening itself within the dark recesses of his mind. He had a war to fight against men who'd carve up and eat the old bones of his country, which he was trying to rebuild and rehabilitate. Sandra Harvey's Greens and their allies on the far left of the Dems, of which he'd once been a member, should be on his side. Some of Harvey's people in particular had been instrumental in the revolution that had swept Blackstone out of Seattle without firing a shot. Yet they stood in the way of every effort to repopulate the Wave- affected United States. More than a few of them even argued that those areas should be allowed to go fallow and wild.
Forever wild, their motto went. Forever free.
The fucking wing nut faction of the Republicans, in contrast, wanted everyone above the age of sixteen years drafted, school prayer made mandatory, Roe v. Wade overturned, every migrant expelled, the borders closed, wars launched on half a dozen problematic foreign powers, and a settlement with Blackstone that would probably see the crazy fucker in the Western White House before Kip and Barb had finished packing their suitcases.
And Jed wondered why he was reluctant to commit to a second term in 2009.
The convoy passed under the Highway 210 overpass and climbed the ramp back toward North Kansas City. As
