Line of Succession: A Thriller (17 page)

“
Soon,” Wainewright said confidently. He had planned out every eventuality of the operation months earlier, storing them in a virtual decision tree that he updated on his mobile device every hour. So far, they were doing remarkably well. The fact that Eva Hudson was alive was the only significant glitch. But even that was something that could be remedied in short order.

His counterpart wasn’t satisfied with Wainewright’s pat answer. “The general public is starting to panic,” he said. “They’re already stockpiling food and gas in Los Angeles and there are reports of militias on alert in Michigan and Texas. Some people on the East Coast are already lining up outside banks.”

Wainewright took Lincoln’s opera glasses from his pocket and clutched them as he walked.

“
These remind me of what not to do,” Wainewright said.

“
What’s that?”

“
Deviate from the plan. Fact: after Booth shot Lincoln, he jumped from the Presidential box onto the stage. He was shouting ‘death to all tyrants.’”

“
He was showboating.”

“
That too. But at the core he was deviating from the plan.” Wainewright stopped as he imagined the scene at Ford’s Theatre a hundred and fifty some-odd years earlier, closing his eyes as he spoke. “Booth broke his leg with that stunt. He should have escaped out the back. It was dark and there was a horse waiting for him. Nobody would’ve seen his face. He could’ve led the resistance, just as he’d envisioned, and taken over Washington while the Union was reeling from the loss. All the pieces were in place. Security in the Capitol was light. Secretary Seward was incapacitated from his own stab wounds. Johnson was a closeted Confederate and was ready to take power. The timing was right. If only…” The General opened his eyes and stared at his shoes as he thought about his own plan. He looked up at Farrell, who had turned to listen to his ramblings. “You see where I’m going with this?”

Farrell was operating on too little sleep to indulge the civil war allegory. “No.”

They resumed walking. “My point is that we need to stick to the plan,” Wainewright said. “Dex Jackson is the next POTUS, just as we discussed. But we have to swear him in before the politicos can get organized.”

“
Speers made quite the case for Eva Hudson today. That bitch will be warming the President’s desk before the devil knows he’s dead.”

”Relax. I’ve come to an understanding with Justice Dillinger. If we say Dex Jackson is our guy, the Court will bless it.”

“
Dex is a wreck. We need at least a day to get him straightened out. Then there’s the matter of security.”

“
So we buy a day. ”

Farrell stopped. “You mean the video?”

“
Damn right the video. Call the networks.”

PART II

“
The next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics."

Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Fort Campbell

Monday, 3:03 a.m.

Seventeen hours after the car bombing in Charleston, Eva Hudson’s cell phone echoed in the command post ladies’ room. She crouched low to look under the toilet stalls. She was alone. “Hudson,” she answered in an unintentionally husky voice. It was her Under-Secretary calling from her house in suburban Maryland. The President was going to be on NBC in five minutes.

Worries lifted. Her heart soared. If the President was going to be on TV, that meant he was alive.

But as Eva washed her hands in the sink, her mood quickly swung back to outrage. Seventeen hours since the Monroe bombing. He hadn’t even bothered to call. Forget the fact that they were in a serious relationship. She was a cabinet-level secretary who, incidentally, had nearly been assassinated yesterday. He was punishing her for not going to Camp David, she decided. Letting his personal feelings get in the way of national security. There was no other explanation.

She wiped down her phone’s keypad and used a paper towel to open the restroom door. As she walked toward Colonel Madsen’s office – he had a TV – she speed dialed the President’s personal cell phone. It went immediately to voicemail.

She remembered the rules she and the President had set for themselves: Don’t put anything to the President in writing, because even if the tabloids didn’t get hold of it right away, it would eventually be public – framed in the Isaac Hatch Presidential Library ten or twenty years from now. More importantly, don’t leave the President personal voicemails. Considering the circumstances, this was a rule she was ready to break.

And after the beep, she tore into him: “It’s me. I can appreciate that we are in crisis mode, but denying me entry to the executive bunker is a violation of Security Council protocol and regardless of your personal feelings, I will not stand for it. I expect to hear from you.”

Hanging up didn’t make her feel any better. She took a breath and went down the hall to Colonel Madsen’s office. Eva knocked but got no response. Madsen had said he planned on sleeping on the couch in his office until the crisis hit some breaking point.

Eva opened the door and flipped on the overhead lights. Sure enough, he was out cold on his couch. She went straight for Madsen’s TV, powered it up, and switched to ABC.

“
And now
,” the network anchor said, “
a special message from the President of the United States
.”

The screen cut to a tight shot of the Presidential Seal, then cut to the President himself, where he was shown seated at a desk with only a gray wall and an American flag behind him. “
Good evening
,” he said. “
It’s with a heavy heart, but with faith in the freedom that we cherish and our democratic republic, that I address you tonight. The Federal Government is operating smoothly and efficiently from a secure, undisclosed location
.”

Madsen sat up on the couch, rubbing his eyes. He took note of Eva’s body language – arms folded tight across her chest, leaning forward, pupils way too close to the screen.

“
It’s only natural
,” the President continued, “
that your hearts are filled with fear, thoughts of vengeance, and concern for our military men and women
.”

“
We ask that you do not panic
,” the President said. “
Any type of disorder, including looting, hoarding supplies or other criminal activity only diverts attention from our common enemy and makes it harder for us to respond. Please know that our emergency systems are working as planned and our government is taking all necessary measures to ensure your safety. More developments will be revealed as soon as possible. Good night and God speed
.”

The screen abruptly cut to black and then to the Presidential Seal.

Eva flipped the TV off.

“
He didn’t get my vote,” Madsen piped up, “but I gotta admit it’s a relief seeing him in charge.” Eva sat hugging herself. Her mind raced. “Penny for your thoughts.”

She reached for words. She didn’t want to cause more alarm. But she needed to talk it through. “The President hasn’t looked like that since his first few months in office.”

“
What’re you saying? The tape’s not authentic?”

“
I’m saying it wasn’t recorded lately.”

“
Well, you would know.”

Eva glared at him. ”And that means what?”

“
I don’t buy the tabloids, but my wife does.”

Eva imagined a scorpion’s tail rising up behind her. “As the highest ranking officer on base,” she said, “that’s the last time you’ll speak to me with disrespect.”

“
No offense, but you’re —”

“
Not military? Please. We know the Senator Pro Tem and Speaker of the House are dead. The Vice President is rumored to be crippled, and the Secretary of State is foreign born. That makes me, at the very least, the likely acting Vice President of the United States.”

The Colonel broke off eye contact. “Hadn’t thought of that, Secretary…I mean Madam Vice President.”

“
Madam Secretary will do until we know more. Not a word of this leaks out.”

“
Yes ma’am.”

“
Get your senior officers together at oh-six-hundred.”

Fort Campbell Stadium Track

4:05 a.m
.

Agent Carver woke in an empty office where he and Agent O’ Keefe had slept for three hours on matching cots. His mind quickly went into gear, flooding with leads that had to be investigated, politicos that wanted updates and bits of Muskogee that Nico had taught him the night before. It was all coming back too fast and too early. He needed to break a sweat. Get his thoughts in order. Organize.

He opened his eyes and touched the outline of O’Keefe’s undershirt, then tapped her gently. “Hey,” he whispered. “Hey. You wanna go run some laps?”

She rose up on her elbows and checked her watch. “Bastard.” She punched Carver in the arm and went back to sleep.

Since converting O’Keefe from an NSA desk jockey to a field agent, he’d managed to talk her into weapons training, jujitsu classes and brisk walks. But he still couldn’t convince her to do any serious cardio.

He put on his shoes and slipped out of the building, making his way across the dark commissary parking lot toward a stadium he had spotted from the transport plane window. The sliver of moon provided his only illumination. Carver arrived at the football field less than ten minutes later, and having no access to gym clothes, he stripped down to his boxers and folded his suit, tie, shoes and socks neatly on a bleacher.

The feel of his feet against the track triggered a memory of the dirt road he had grown up on. A visceral memory of childhood was all it took to wrack Carver with guilt. It had been several weeks since he had called his parents. He was a bad son. Both were still living in Joseph City, a rancher’s town off I-40 in Arizona, where his father had operated a feed store for three decades. The relationship had never been the same since Carver had decided to leave the Mormon Church, ruining his parents’ vision of an afterlife where they were sealed for eternity as a family and would one day rule, like gods themselves, over their own private celestial kingdom. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God, as Carver had tried to explain over breakfast at the Joseph City diner one morning. He just wasn’t sure that the LDS Church had gotten all the details right.

His career in the CIA had not helped family relations. There had been long stretches of service overseas where he had been prevented from contacting any family members for fear of compromising his identity or whereabouts. Not that he was resentful. It came with the job.

He picked up the phone and dialed the area code. He stopped himself. It was only 1:05 a.m. in Arizona. It was typical. He always seemed to be in an inconvenient time zone, calling at the worst possible time, or dropping home unannounced when his parents themselves were headed out of town.

Shut off the mind chatter, Carver told himself. Just run. He began a fast clip around the quarter-mile track. A military transport plane flew low overhead as it came in for a landing on the airstrip a half-mile to the east. Its thunderous screech passed slowly, but completely, until the only noise was the sound of Carver’s bare feet against the track.

As he ran, he replayed a single conversation with Julian Speers in his head. Several weeks ago, Speers had just drafted Carver and O’Keefe into the covert investigation of the apparent DOD arms smuggling. They were at the Chief’s house, where he had cooked some garlic-heavy spaghetti and meatballs. Speers and O’Keefe had downed three bottles of wine between them, leaving the very sober Carver to listen to their drunken ramblings.

“
Thailand has had seventeen military coups since World War Two,” Speers ranted. “Seventeen!” Thailand’s Prime Minister had been out of the country on vacation as tanks rolled through the streets of Bangkok. Those loyal to the PM had been quietly notified of the impending changes in their offices. Meanwhile the King, who had apparently given tacit approval for the takeover in advance, made no public statements. As Speers described it, the public had grown quite used to occasional military takeovers. “Why not here?” Speers raved.

“
Americans transfer power peacefully,” Carver had told him. “That’s what sets us apart from the developing world.”

“
Oh, grow up,” Speers slurred. “Twenty-five flag-draped coffins come home every week. President’s never fired a gun in his life. Military types didn’t vote for him in the first place, now they blame him for the quicksand. The SECDEF’s berating him publicly. He’s got a twenty-two percent approval rating. The market’s in the toilet. Dollar’s at half the Euro. Thirty-eight percent of the population thinks he should be impeached. Nine percent will actually admit to hoping he gets assassinated. Need I say more?”