Chapter Seven - part four

   James had less than two hours to work with his remaining staff on coordinating the suddenly expanded responsibilities and range of his operations before he received the list of people required by Hodges. James just smiled and made a call to Kendrick. It was a long list. A lot of the people were already in place, but there was still a good number that would have to be brought in. Most of those were now overseas. In addition to the list of people that Hodges wanted brought in, he had also included a list of his recommendations for replacements for many of those people where they had been stationed. The remainder of the day was spent shuffling people and supplies. James spent most of his time on conference calls with the people who had been running things in other areas that were now under his direct command. Some of those calls went smoothly and some didn't go so well. A few of the generals in charge weren't willing to follow the orders of a lowly colonel without orders from above. In fact a couple of them were removed from command when those orders had to come from the President himself. James had to deal with the results of that too. Generals might hesitate when a Colonel gave orders, but any hesitation when the President spoke brought instant action.

   James hadn't liked any of it, but at the moment he simply didn't have time to work things out more smoothly. He had very little time to do a very big job and no time at all for debates about the command structure. By the end of the day James was told that everyone was onboard and that within two days they should be handling all supply operations from Edwards AFB. The people at Edwards were keeping the other area supply centers in place and letting them handle the local details, but the major logistics would all be handled at Edwards AFB for now. James fully intended to get that switched over to another more central location, but that would have to wait and be done in steps as time and manpower allowed. General Hodges had a new plan for moving to restore order in the cities ready by the end of the day, too. It was very rough, but it gave James a basic view of what Hodges believed would be required to restore order in the major cities without using extreme measures immediately. Hodges plan had made it clear that he believed it would be best to start with the major cities rather than smaller ones. James agreed that while it would be easier to restore order in smaller cities first, it would be best to do the biggest first and work out from those. By regaining control of the largest cities first the smaller ones might fall in line without any major uses of force at all.

   The next day at noon they had the first major meeting with the new staff. It was done over secure video links since they weren't all in place yet.  That allowed all of the major people to be part of the meeting. General Hodges went over the rough plans to start taking control of the cities back first. There were some places where a little order had already returned when supplies arrived, but it was very limited and fragile at best. Once he had laid out his basic plan of action James stepped up and overlaid it with a much more detailed plan that tied in the supply side with the troops moving into the cities. Even Hodges had been surprised by what James had put together. James had both a short term and a long term plan that would begin to restore the infrastructure in the cities and much of the outer areas at the same time. James was planning to use mostly Guard forces, under local control, to secure the outer areas and use the military, under General Hodges direct control, in the metropolitan areas. The President was quick to ask how long James had been working on his plans. James had been forced to reveal that he, and others, had been working on these plans since the start of everything. In fact they had been working on certain things since the first of the year. That hadn't gone over well with a lot of the President's people. Some of them wanted the names of those people, which James flatly refused to give them.

    Only after several long minutes of yelling and accusations did the President bring things to an end. He simply informed everyone that he had made a command decision and that until he said different, Colonel Cooper was in command of these operations. After that James went on to explain in detail how he wanted to go about doing the things he had outlined. His first order of business was to begin restoring communications to the people, nationwide communications, not just local. That had started another fight, but the President had ended that one quickly. The next step was to restore security and order to areas, while getting utilities operating again at the same time. That would require coordination with local private firms and the troops. James also wanted to get the major roads opened up as quickly as possible. He still wanted to limit people from traveling; requiring a reason and destination before letting anyone move out of or into the areas that had initially been shut down to keep the chaos from spreading. After several long hours of debates and yelling matches James finally received approval from the President to go ahead with his plan. A few things had been slightly altered, but only minor changes in the overall plan had been made. The big question now was how long it would take to get the equipment, supplies, and people in the right places to get started.

   It took a little less than a week to get the first operations started. James wasn't happy and wanted things done even faster, but Hodges was openly elated that they could even begin that soon with a totally new plan of this size. He had come onboard completely during the week it took to get things together. When James had brought the people who had helped to plan this major operation together it had been a shock to Hodges and several others. That so many high ranking generals had been working and planning for just such a catastrophe was a real shock to the President and most politicians who had any input. That had been one of the things that had won Hodges over. James had refused to allow any of the politicians to start amending the plan. In fact he had tried to limit their access to any detailed information about the operations at all. The President had agreed in the end that perhaps that would be for the best, at least for the short term. A limited command structure should limit the amount of possible confusion as to who was really in command in any particular situation too. The President made it very clear to everyone involved many times that Colonel Cooper was in charge of all military operations west of the Mississippi.