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Hilke Mcnally
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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 pilot continued,"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 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 level headed 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 a disaster. 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 yelled into the radio.
"Dispatch! Dispach! 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 stuff it 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.
"Dammit!" 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 pretty 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 damn 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 œ 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 abandon their jobs and 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!"