Line of Succession: A Thriller (12 page)

Nico grinned for the first time all day. “You actually bought my book!”

“
Don’t flatter yourself. I borrowed it from the library.”

O’Keefe checked her watch. It was coming up on a quarter past eleven. “We might as well tell you where we’re headed now. We’re going to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. There’s a joint op effort between the feds and Army Intelligence.”

“
Army Intelligence? That’s an oxymoron.”

Agent Carver picked up his attaché and pulled out a folder full of coded transcriptions stamped CLASSIFIED. He handed them to Nico. “You might as well get started.”

Nico pushed his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose, looked over the transcriptions for all of two seconds before pushing them back at Agent Carver. “These are beyond comprehension. I need to hear the original audio files.”

“
Our people put a lot of time into those.”

“
If your people were all that great, you wouldn’t have hauled my ass out of jail.”

He had a point. Carver had been utterly confounded with the G-linguists who were supposed to be such effective code breakers. The NSA was the nation’s single largest employer of mathematicians and had some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. Twelve cryptologists had already failed to produce any results. Carver subsequently had them all replaced with contractors. Three weeks later he regarded them as a bunch of overpaid, greedy academics with no real world experience.

Agent Carver’s and O’Keefe’s cell phones buzzed at the same time.

A paratrooper sitting across from them growled as the two startled federal agents whipped out their phones. “Hey! Cell phones off during flight!”

Carver ignored him. He had been told by his Air Force buddies that the concept of cell phones interfering with flight navigation was a myth that had been perpetuated by commercial airline pilots. Quiet passengers made for more enjoyable travel, and considerably happier flight attendants.

His face darkened as he read the first text message: ATTEMPT ON CAMEO INCONCLUSIVE. Carver had, unfortunately, seen this type of message many times before. “Attempt” was fed-speak for an assassination attempt. “Cameo” was the codename for the Vice President. “Inconclusive” meant that there were casualties, but there was a chance of survival. Had the Vice President been dead, the message would have read “Conclusive.”

The other messages followed in rapid succession: ATTEMPT ON H MAJ LEADER CONCLUSIVE; ATTEMPT ON SENATE MAJ LEADER CONCLUSIVE; ATTEMPT ON SECDEF INCONCLUSIVE; ATTEMPT ON SECTREAS NONSTARTER.

O’Keefe’s eyes welled up. She turned to Carver. “We’re too late.”

He smiled. “I love your optimism.”

“
Optimism?” O’Keefe said in an angry whisper. “How can you joke?”

“
I wasn’t joking,” Carver said. “Only an optimist would assume the worst is already over. But that would be the best-case scenario.”

“
What are you saying?”

“This might be just the beginning.”

The Pentagon

11:14 a.m.

Marines deployed retractable SAM batteries along the five edges of the Pentagon’s massive 28.7 acre rooftop. Within the five floors and six million square feet of office space below them, some 23,000 military and civilian employees were ordered to stay clear of all window-facing offices. The building had been hastily constructed in the 1940s as a temporary military headquarters, and as 9/11 had proved, it was hardly impenetrable. The Pentagon had been built on the cheap during one of the most trying economic times in American history, right down to the several thousand pounds of horsehair used as insulation. In recent years its windows had been upgraded with Kevlar overlays to provide some measure of protection against a sniper or exterior blast. The SAM batteries had been added to defend against suicide pilots.

Deep beneath the Pentagon’s ground floor, General Wainewright’s staff gathered in the National Military Command Center, or NMCC. This was the subterranean vault from which the Joint Chiefs directed military operations during DEFCON 3 situations. Should the crisis go to DEFCON 2, plans called for strategic command to be evacuated to Raven Rock.

The officers gawked at several gigantic monitors, where the drama unfolded on live television. FOX was running a montage of the late Congressman Bailey. CNN depicted a 2008 still image of Holy Grace Baptist Church, then cut to live aerial footage showing the smoldering city block where the church and two adjacent buildings had stood only an hour earlier. General Farrell, the Vice-Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, turned up the volume. “
You’re looking at what once was Speaker of the House Bill Bailey’s home church
,” the news anchor said, “
where it is reported that the congressman was killed while attending services today
.”

“
They don’t know the half of it yet,” General Farrell snorted.

General Wainewright hurried into the NMCC with his waifish assistant, Corporal Hammond, trailing behind him. The blast doors closed behind them and the officers sprang out of their chairs. Wainewright peered over his reading glasses at the group. “The TV goes off,” he said. “Status!”

Farrell began a sober tally of the morning’s events. His voice was permanently hoarse from four decades of chain smoking and barking out orders. “We have several concurrent, seemingly coordinated assassination attempts,” he began. “The Vice President is in critical condition: Unverified rocket attack on his car in Wyoming. Speaker of the House Bailey is believed dead: Car bombing in Monroe. Senator Thomas is believed dead: Blast at his vacation residence in Kennebunkport.”

The brass volleyed a dozen questions all at once. “When did the attacks begin?” someone shouted.

“
This morning,” Farrell responded. “Between ten and eleven, and the situation is ongoing.”

“
What do you mean coordinated?” came General Shufford’s voice over the speaker phone. Shufford was one of four Joint Chiefs, representing the Air Force, and had called in from a base in Europe.

Before Farrell could respond, the blast doors swooshed opened. The meeting’s latest arrival wore running shoes, black spandex leggings and a snug gray athletic shirt with GWU emblazoned across the chest. Her long raven hair was pulled back into a pony tail. She carried only a Blackberry.

Haley Ellis had been in downward dog position at her Sunday morning yoga class in Rock Creek Park when she received an NIC alert on her phone. It had taken her just seventeen minutes to make it to the Metro Center subway station and out to the Pentagon. Despite a rock star security clearance that provided access to nearly any government facility, the Pentagon MPs had – as they always did – hassled her at the security checkpoint, delaying her arrival by several more minutes as they pretended to confirm her identity.

Ellis was used to the outsider treatment. She was the Senior Liaison for Pentagon-White House Affairs at the National Intelligence Center (NIC), a position created by President Hatch to foster greater oversight of Pentagon operations. But while the White House referred to her as a liaison, the Pentagon brass regarded her as little more than a civilian snitch. This came despite the fact that Ellis was herself an Iraq War veteran who had led a platoon during some of the most dangerous fighting in Ramadi. A war wound had earned her a purple heart and successive desk jobs at the DIA, CIA and now the NIC.

General Farrell watched disdainfully as Ellis walked to the back of the room and began typing notes into her Blackberry. General Shufford’s voice resumed over the room speaker. “I asked what you meant by coordinated,” he repeated.

“
All the victims,” Farrell replied, “were attacked shortly after returning to vacation homes or in transit. And far as we can tell, all the attacks occurred between eleven-hundred hours and eleven-hundred fifteen hours.”

The room erupted in side conversations. Farrell spoke over it, adding another to the tally: “A chopper has picked up Defense Secretary Jackson. He and his son are on their way to Bethesda Naval Hospital for evaluation. His wife’s status is unclear.”

“
Has the POTUS been evacuated?”

“
Waiting on status,” Farrell replied. “We have not heard from the President’s security detail.” The Vice-Chairman decided it was time to put Ellis on the spot. “Any news on your end, Miss Ellis?”

She looked up as the brass’ eyes fixed upon her. Ellis felt self-conscious of the perspiration marks on her yoga shirt, but she had already made several calls on the way over. “I talked to the First Team chief,” she said, referring to Special Agent Rios. “He wasn’t with the President and hadn’t heard from today’s detail.”

Wainewright’s lower left eyelid twitched. “Has Admiral Bennington been notified?” Admiral Bennington was the fourth Joint Chief, representing the Navy.

“
Affirmative,” Bennington’s dour voice called out over the speakerphone.

A private entered behind Wainewright with a sealed envelope. His hands shook as he handed the message to Wainwright. The General opened and read the one-line message: MARINE ONE SHOT DOWN: POTUS BELIEVED KILLED.

There were no details. Wainewright calmly passed it to Farrell, who read it briefly, without showing any emotion, and turned to the private. “Who’s seen this?” he demanded.

“
Myself and the duty officer in the ESC.”

“
The media doesn’t have it?”

“
No sir.”

Ellis beckoned to the messenger. “Bring the note here,” she said. “I need to see it.”

Wainewright gripped the messenger’s right arm, holding him in place. “Negative,” he told Ellis. “This one’s beyond even your security clearance.” He turned back to the messenger. “You’ll stay in my presence until MPs can escort you safely off-site.” Then he turned to Farrell. “Find that duty officer. Isolate him and anyone he’s had contact with. Shut down the whole ESC if you have to.”

“
General,” Ellis said, “Are we suppressing casualty information?”

“
Fact: the less our enemies know, the safer we are.” Wainewright turned to the group. “Confiscate all personal mobile devices in your units. The National Command Authority has been disrupted. The Joint Chiefs will assume temporary command of the Armed Forces.”

“
You’ll need to explain that,” Ellis said. “Is there something I should know?”

“
You said yourself that nobody’s heard from First Team. The Vice President is at best incapacitated. The House Speaker is deceased and the line of succession beyond him is not clear. Therefore the chain of command is not intact. We are running the show, Miss Ellis.”

General Farrell looked up at the Chairman, allowing himself a moment to admire his longtime friend’s resolve. Then he stood up, sticking to the well-rehearsed script. They had drilled this situation at least a hundred times. “Protocol requires moving to a secure location. Transport NCA communications staff to Rapture Run. Let’s execute.”

Ellis watched the brass rush toward the exits. “Excuse me, General,” she said, running after Wainewright. “I’m not familiar with the codename Rapture Run.”

Wainewright paused and glanced over his left shoulder. “Just go home, Miss Ellis. There will be no further need for your services.”

Corporal Hammond followed the General upstairs to his office. Like the rest of the staff, Hammond had never heard of Rapture Run. He had always assumed that they would be safe from attack in the NMCC, which had recently been reinforced to withstand the latest in bunker-busting missile technology.

Wainewright looked around the room and began rattling off a list of items to pack. “Laptop. Data cards. Three utility uniforms and five dress uniforms. Every item in my desk drawers. And those,” he said, pointing to two framed photos on his desk. The first was of the General himself standing atop a burned-out Iraqi tank during the first Iraq war. The other photo depicted a young man in his West Point graduation photo. Although the General had never talked about it, Hammond knew from the other staffers that the young man was Wainewright’s late son, who had been killed in action during a covert op somewhere in the Middle East. Hammond lingered on the photo for a moment. Packing family photos had an air of finality that made him uncomfortable. He wondered if the General knew something that he did not.

He wrapped the photo frames in soft cloth and packed them carefully but quickly between the General’s uniforms. Then he moved on to the other items. He was finished in less than a minute. He stood at the doorway with the General’s luggage, watching as Wainewright opened a transparent airtight display case on his desk that held a pair of antique optics.

“
Sir, I’ve been meaning to ask you about those binoculars,” Hammond said.

“
Not binoculars,” Wainewright corrected, “Opera glasses. They belonged to Abraham Lincoln.”

“
Seriously?”

“
He was holding them at Ford’s Theatre when he was assassinated.”

The General unlocked the cable securing the display case to the desk, opened it, and delicately picked up the opera glasses. He pointed to a small brown splotch on the left rim.

“
Is that Lincoln’s blood?”

“
So I’m told.”