Chapter 168: Off to the Races

August 26, 2007

We managed to get our lives back to a semblance of normal by the start of business Monday. Molly and Bucky had been packed off to Hougomont on the G-IV, Holly and her boyfriend went back to Princeton Sunday, and Charlie and Megan left on Sunday as well. He was taking her back to Hollywood, and then was flying to meet his racing team.

Charlie’s professional motorcycle racing career was the stuff of legend. A local level pro champion as a teenager, he had given it up when he went into the Marines. Once he was out of the Marines in the fall of 2003, he had decided to give it a try. He had raced in the 2004 season, never losing a single race, and worked his way up to the AMA Championship series by the end of the season. He had won the MX series, the larger and heavier bikes, back-to-back in 2005 and 2006, and this year he was defending his title, trying to make it three in a row.

The weekend of the wedding had been an off week for racing, so he didn’t lose any points for missing a race. The previous weekend, that had been a problem. He had missed Budds Creek in Maryland to run the parties in Vegas, and his sponsors weren’t amused. When I heard him comment on that I asked him about it.

Charlie’s reply? “I guess I’ll just have to win the rest of the season and take the championship again. That should get them off my back.”

“It’s good to see somebody so humble. It’s a refreshing break from the usual egos I see here in D.C,” I answered dryly.

He simply laughed at that. “It ain’t bragging if it’s fact!”

I grumbled and rolled my eyes. Damned if he didn’t make good on that boast, too! The following weekend he won in Buchanan, Michigan, and then two weeks later he took Unadilla in New York. He only placed second in Lakewood, Colorado on July 22, but won the next two races in Washougal, Washington, and Millville, Minnesota. His next big race was in Delmont, Pennsylvania, on August 26, which was a bit east of Pittsburgh. That was close enough for us to take Marine One to.

Every year we tried to see one of Charlie’s races. It’s difficult, however, since the President has to take a giant entourage with him everywhere. I hated taking the zoo for a personal trip. Fortunately, there is usually a track somewhere in Maryland, Virginia, or Pennsylvania close enough to take a helicopter to. We would send up the appropriate advance elements, and then fly up for the day, and be back in Washington by the evening. Half the time the press never even noticed, since there was no flaming wreckage on the South Lawn to clue them in. We never made an announcement, but simply flew to the nearest drop off point - perhaps the local police barracks or fire department parking lot - and picked up a quiet convoy to go to the races.

We tried to keep it low key. We didn’t do local interviews unless somebody stuck a camera in my face. We didn’t meet with local politicians. I didn’t have fundraisers or dinners. It wasn’t that kind of trip. It wasn’t like NASCAR, either. There are no grandstands and no luxury Skyboxes. You generally stand outside a chain link fence, and your seats might be a pair of lawn chairs with a beer cooler in between, and a beach umbrella in case it rained. It didn’t matter all that much to Marilyn or me. We would have never gone if Charlie wasn’t involved, but he was involved, and he was our son, so we tried to make a race during the season.

The security involved in low key situations like this is still quite intricate. The President just doesn’t go places. No matter where I am, I have a lot of heavily armed Secret Service agents in very close proximity. We have the War Wagons, a doctor and nurse in attendance, an armored limo, and usually extra vehicles as decoys, and around that are typically local and state cops in an elaborate motorcade. We also have some lower impact alternatives for when I wanted something a lot more subtle. Put the locals and Staties in unmarked cars, cut down on the decoys, use a War Wagon and not a limo, and dress everybody in civvies.

Another thing you did was simple misdirection. Tell people you were going to be someplace else, and they look someplace else. Even though people might know that my son was a nationally ranked motocross champion, they also knew we didn’t attend his races. Toss another factor into the mix - I don’t look all that Presidential! Real Presidents look like Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney, or John Kerry - tall, full heads of hair, square jawed, and handsome. As I occasionally joked with my wife, I was just a middle-aged bald guy with bifocals and a busted nose. I might be in good shape and not overweight, but I was fifty-one years old, my hair was more than a little thin and more silver than dirty blond, I had bags under my eyes, and I was getting a bit jowly. Put me in a dark suit and slap on some makeup and give me a speech and I looked like the President. Put me in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and I looked like your neighbor getting ready to mow the lawn.

This wasn’t an unusual situation, historically speaking. Since nobody cared all that much about the V.P., he didn’t need to be all that handsome. FDR looked rather patrician; Truman looked like a clerk in a shoe store. JFK was young and handsome; LBJ looked like a sad sack hound dog! Neither Truman nor LBJ would have had a shot at running for President after their boss had served his full term but wasn’t everybody surprised when they died! Now I was in the same situation. GWB was arguably better looking than me, and my replacement probably would be, too.

When we went to Delmont, we took the small and quiet version of the zoo, and most of them stayed in the parking lot. Even though I had survived an assassination attempt just a year ago, I wasn’t terribly worried. We had several dozen agents around us in three layers - immediately around us, more wandering through the nearby crowds, and the rest farther out, wandering randomly. Meanwhile, Marilyn and I wore cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts, sunglasses, and big straw hats. We didn’t look like the President and First Lady of the United States. We looked like a couple of gym teachers from the local junior high.

One thing I noticed, in the pictures we saw of the races and Winner’s Circle, was that Megan was in a lot of the pictures. Charlie might be getting kissed by the local Miss Motocross, but he often had an arm around Megan while he did so. I saw her in enough photos that I had called in one of my Secret Service agents a few weeks ago and broke about a dozen laws. Who was this girl? I had sent him off to do a very quiet background check.

It came back pretty much like Megan had told me at the wedding. Megan Morgan, born Megan Pulaski on May 4, 1984, in Elkhorn, Nebraska, a small neighborhood on the outskirts of Omaha, which had just this year been annexed by Omaha. Her father, John, was a family law lawyer and her mother, Barbara, worked as a receptionist at a local park called Chalco Hills. She had lived her entire life in Elkhorn in the same house with her parents and two younger brothers, John Jr., and William (he went by ‘Will’). She went to public schools, first Westridge Elementary, then Elkhorn Middle School, and finally Elkhorn High. Good grades, cheerleader, Girl Scouts, all the usual stuff. Got a part in a middle school play in the 7^th grade and was hooked. Her last two years in high school she played the female lead in the school play, to rave reviews. After high school, Megan went to the University of Nebraska, where she majored in theatre.

Following her graduation from Nebraska, Megan took the bus to Hollywood and Vine, in the hope that she would soon be discovered and become the next Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. Fortunately, she had a cousin she could stay with while she went about being discovered. On the advice of her agent, she changed her professional name to Megan Morgan since it sounded less ethnic and more alliterative. Unsurprisingly, discovery never happened, and like millions of aspiring actresses before her, she ended up waiting tables in bars and clubs while doing bit parts and non-speaking background roles. Some of the jobs had some nudity (unnamed dancer in a strip club in a biker movie, unnamed doomed sorority girl in a horror flick, etc.) but there was no evidence she had done anything worse than that.

While I wasn’t any kind of expert on Hollywood, I knew enough about the business to know that every year thousands of kids, guys and girls, hop off the bus from Omaha and every other damn place with stars in their eyes and dreams in their hearts. A handful make it big. Most end up working bit parts and whatever they can land for a few years, and then move on. Some end up making a living as character actors or doing commercials. Some drop down to the lower levels, where they end up doing XXX stuff and can’t ever show their faces in public again. Megan hadn’t sunk to that point, and instead seemed to be in the vast middle ranks. Back in Elkhorn and Lincoln, she was damn hot stuff. In Hollywood, she was just one more good-looking leggy blonde with big tits. They grew them on trees out there.

I kept my mouth shut, and didn’t even tell Marilyn I had her investigated, since that would have been tantamount to telling Charlie. Charlie seemed happy. Maybe he was settling down after all, inconceivable as that might be. If she was a gold digger, she was certainly subtle about it. There had been no requests for money or loans or influence from my son. Megan might simply have concluded that whatever she was looking for in Hollywood was a real long shot, and that a relationship with Charlie Buckman was a better long-term possibility. Even that sounded too cold and calculating. Maybe they were simply falling for each other, and she was spending time with him.

So, there we were, Marilyn and I, on Sunday, August 26, in the early afternoon, on the side of the track, in a couple of folding chairs and with a six-pack of Iron City on ice in a cooler between us. The weather was in the mid-70s, the sky was clear, and the day was beautiful. In front of us, a bunch of filthy and muddy guys in colorful racing leathers went round and round, half the time on the ground and half the time flying through the air. Marilyn and I cringed more than once, but by now we were used to that. I can’t even ride a bicycle without both hands on the handlebars. Charlie had all the luck in the family on that score.

And then he ran out of luck.

He was leading on the third lap, and overtaking the lagging racer, and was being closely followed by the rest of the pack. Suddenly, the guy in front of him went down, and my son was fucked. He crashed into the downed bike and fell off, collapsing into the wreckage. The riders behind him, half of whom were airborne, couldn’t evade. One after the other, they slammed into the pileup, generally stopping their crash on my son’s body. Within seconds there was a giant clusterfuck of broken bikes and broken bodies, with Charlie at the bottom.

It took all of thirty seconds to happen, as Marilyn and I stared in horror and disbelief. The race was over. Officials came pouring out onto the track, some waving flags and shutting it down. Around us everybody was on their feet and screaming. Pit crews and sponsors came out, and a couple of ambulances pulled up. Marilyn was crying as she held onto me. Beside me, one of the agents in my travel detail vaulted the fence and headed down to find out what had happened to Charlie. Within seconds, Doctor Tubb and his nurse showed up at our sides.

It was strange watching this unfold in front of me. My son was underneath that unholy mess, and yet one of the odd things that ran through my head was that this was bound to make the news, and for once it wouldn’t be because I was there. A crash like this was going to make the highlight reels. Then a chill ran up my back. It might not make the reels, either. They normally don’t include it in the highlights when somebody is killed.

It took several minutes to unpeel things. Most of the young men were able to walk away from it, though some looked a little battered and shaken up. A few more had to be carried out, but they were conscious and would give a wave or a thumbs up. Often, they had to wait to pull a bike off somebody under the pile, to get to the next person down. As I scanned the group in front of us, I could see the agent on the periphery, but I could also see some guys in Red Bull uniforms, and standing with them was Megan Morgan, a shocked expression on her face.

At the bottom of the pile, was Charlie, and he wasn’t being helped to his feet. Megan collapsed at that point, and the ambulance was brought up. The agent ran back over and spoke to us from the track side of the fence. Marilyn and I rushed over.

“He’s alive, sir!” he exclaimed.

“How ... what...”

“He’s alive! He’s all messed up, but he’s alive. I heard them say that he needed to be transported to Pittsburgh. They are going to try to send him out by air.”

I pointed back at the mess. “Go back and offer them Marine One! Go!”

He ran back, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I tried to climb over the fence, only to slip back. It was getting to be a real bitch, this getting old. A different agent stopped me and said, “No, sir, you can’t go!”

“Get out of my way!”

He grabbed me and kept me where I was. “No, sir! You’ll just be in the way! They know what they’re doing! You have to stay here!”

“SHIT!” I stepped back and put an arm around my wife. I knew he was right, but I simply hated it. I grabbed Doctor Tubb and pushed him towards the fence. “See what you can do!” He ran off and joined the agent. I could see that Charlie was on his side, and wasn’t moving, but they had his helmet off. He was being worked on by a couple of EMT types, and then they cleared the way and backed the ambulance up. They pulled a stretcher out, along with a back board. One of the ambulance personnel was talking on the radio.

The agent who had gone up to the wreck and the ambulance returned. He had Megan in tow, along with Tubb. “They have a Life Flight coming in to medevac him. They are prepping him for transport now. I am told the odds are good if they can get him to the hospital, but he’s in serious condition.”

I looked at the scene, and then at the agent. I nodded and said, “Yeah, okay, but we need to follow them. As soon as this Life Flight takes off, we are next.”

“I’ll set it up, sir.”

He began speaking into his sleeve mike. Marilyn was standing there crying, and she had Megan with her, wrapped up in each other’s arms, and Megan was practically hysterical. I gave them the latest news, and we simply waited, the seconds ticking by like hours. Charlie was loaded onto the stretcher and placed in the ambulance, which was driven into an empty section of the parking area. We heard the helicopter rotors, and watched as an air ambulance landed, and he was transferred. A minute after the Life Flight helicopter took off, Marine One landed, and we hustled over. Marilyn and Megan were still wrapped around each other, so we took Megan with us.

We had to wait for the Life Flight helicopter to lift back off the helipad at the hospital before we could land. There were a lot of people staring as we came in, but we were just directed towards the Emergency Room, and that was as far as we could go. Charlie was hustled straight into their trauma center, but just like anybody else, we had to hang around the waiting room.

My day job began to intrude at about this point. The Secret Service must have been in contact with the staff back at the White House, because almost immediately a cell phone rang and one of the agents handed it to me. It was Frank Stouffer, my Chief of Staff. “How’s he doing, Mister President?”

“Jesus! How did you...”

“Sir, please! This is the White House. We know everything, remember! I heard from the Secret Service.”

I snorted out a laugh at that. “Yeah. We don’t know yet. They airlifted him to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. We flew in after that. He’s in the emergency room now. We just don’t know.”

“Will and I will be there in a couple of hours. Under no circumstance are you to say a word to the press,” he told me.

“Frank, there’s no need...”

“Mister President, with all due respect, shut up! This is already on the news. If the press isn’t already in the parking lot, they will be within minutes. Will has promised to inflict bodily harm on everyone if you go on the news.”

I muttered something under my breath, but the rational part of me knew he was right. “Okay, Frank, see you in a few hours.”

My Chief of Staff and my Communications Director were prescient beyond belief. I handed the phone back to the Secret Service agent and said, “We need to get out of the lobby.”

“Working on it, sir. We should be able to move into a conference room in a bit. It’s Sunday, so a lot of the administrators aren’t here...”

He hadn’t even finished his sentence when the door to the parking lot swished open. Bright lights and a camera barged in, and a loud voice yelled out, “IS HE DEAD YET? CAN I GET A PHOTO OF THE BODY? WHERE’S THE BODY?”

Marilyn shrieked and fainted dead away. I turned towards her and saw her slumping down, and an agent next to her grabbing her and picking her up. He looked a bit mystified, and the head agent swore, and he pointed at two agents and ordered, “Shut them down!” To the rest of us he said, “On my six!” and then he stormed through a door into the interior of the hospital, into an empty hallway and around a corner, leaving the yelling reporter behind us. Once out of the view of the lobby room, he turned to the agent I knew was his second in command. “I don’t care if it is Sunday, somebody must be running this place. I want them here, now, and their head of security. We need to get a handle on this immediately!”

Things weren’t quite as dire as they seemed. Marilyn came to and was set back on her feet. After about thirty seconds a secretary type appeared and led us all deeper into the hospital and deposited us in a large conference room. A couple of minutes later an administrator showed up, and he and the Secret Service made the arrangements they needed. Meanwhile, I got a report that the rest of the motorcade was already well under way at top speed here to the hospital and would probably arrive here in about a half hour. Also, Frank and Will had been driven over to the Naval Observatory and had been picked up by HMX-1 and were being flown up.

I pulled some chairs from around the conference table and pulled them to the side, and sat Marilyn and Megan down, and then I sat between them. My wife was still a little out of it, and Megan was staring at everyone scurrying around. In front of us order began to arise from chaos. Doctor Tubb, and a nurse took one look at Marilyn and gave her a sedative. Within a couple of minutes, she was lights out, and we loaded her on a gurney in the corner and covered her with a blanket. She didn’t need to be involved. We still didn’t know what was happening to Charlie. Half an hour later the motorcade arrived, and we got into high gear. More agents and staff came in.

It was kind of odd, just sitting there and watching what was going on. It was a Sunday afternoon, and America was relatively quiet that weekend. We weren’t invading anybody, we weren’t in the midst of a budget crisis, and we didn’t have any major scandals going on. It was just business as usual, and the First Lady and I had managed to take the afternoon off. Megan simply commented, “This is unbelievable!” as everybody scurried around.

After Doctor Tubb took care of Marilyn, I asked him, “Doc, can you find out what’s going on with Charlie? We haven’t seen anybody to tell us.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll look into it.”

“Find out where the best hospital is. I mean, if there’s a hospital or doctor or treatment, we’ll do it.”

He hesitated a second, and replied, “This is the place you want him to be at, sir. Pittsburgh is really good. If it had been you in an accident near here, this is where we would have taken you.”

“Okay, thank you. Now, please find out about Charlie.”

He nodded and took off out the door, leaving the nurse to check on Marilyn. Suddenly I felt underdressed. We were still wearing our shorts and flowered shirts, and Megan was in muddy jeans and a t-shirt. I caught somebody’s eye and he came over. “At some point I am going to be on television, and right now I look like a muddy tourist in Maui. Any chance we can scrounge up some decent clothing?”

“Yes, sir, it was in the motorcade; we’ll get something sent up. One of Charlie’s agents is enroute with his and Miss Morgan’s clothing; they’ll be here in an hour. Another has taken possession of the motorcycle pending the investigation.”

Megan looked confused. “What investigation?”

I knew the answer already, but I nodded to the agent to explain. “The President’s son was injured while the President was present. Was it an accident? Or was it part of a plot to get the President somewhere he was vulnerable? There will be an investigation.”

“That’s crazy! He landed on a downed bike!”

“That will also be investigated.”

Before Megan could say anything, I laid a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. I am sure that it was an accident. These guys are professional paranoids, but they have to be. They simply have to investigate everything. I was almost killed a year ago. It kind of goes with the territory.”

The agent nodded and moved away. Next through the door were Frank and Will, both of whom came up and asked how Charlie was doing. I gave the ‘I don’t know’ speech again, and Will took off to find a doctor. Frank simply went to work with the weekend administrator and talking on his phone. I just ignored them. I turned my head to Megan and said, “I think we are going to be here for a bit. Tell me about Megan Morgan.”

“Me?” came out in a squeaky soprano.

I smiled and nodded. “You just landed on the front page of every newspaper in America. What are they going to be reporting about you?”

“What?”

“Welcome to the nightmare. Oh, crap, that reminds me, I have to call the girls!” I grabbed a phone and called Holly and Molly. I told them what happened, and what we knew so far, which was diddly, and they both promised to get out there by that evening. Molly would bring Bucky with her. After hanging up with them, I told Frank to make it happen, and he didn’t even blink, but just grabbed his own phone.

Doctor Tubb returned a minute later and reported that Charlie was in surgery. We should expect something more in about an hour. After that, I looked back at Megan and said, “Now, where were we? You were going to tell me how you met Charlie.”

She gave me an odd look. “How do you do that?”

“Hmmm?”

“Switching back and forth like that, how do you do it? It’s like you are running five different conversations in your head!”

“Ahhh, yes, that.” I nodded and shrugged. “It drives Marilyn nuts, too. It’s just how I cope. In this job, if you can’t manage your time and compartmentalize things, you will be very unhappy and not get much done. It’s just the way it is. Not everybody can do it. Marilyn certainly can’t.”

“It seems so ... so...”

“Cold blooded?” Megan didn’t answer, but I could see in her eyes she agreed with me. “Don’t worry, I’ve heard it before, from my own wife. It is simply how I manage to cope with everything. I just keep everything separate. I don’t mix business with home, although in this job you have to. Still, I try. It doesn’t always work, but I try. Tell me about your folks. What do they do?”