Line of Succession: A Thriller (34 page)

“
Yes Admiral,” he said into the receiver. He listened for a moment as the Admiral chewed him out for going over his head and contacting the Chairman directly. Then he said again, “Yes Admiral,” and hung up.

“
Sir?” the Ensign said.

Captain White kept his gaze on the erupting coastline. “We’re moving out to international waters. Tell the crew.”

The Ensign was aghast. He flinched as a series of cluster bombs fell on a coastal village that, from this distance, sounded like a string of erupting firecrackers. “Sir,” he said, “I got relatives over there. All my neighbors back in L.A. got people over there.”

Being privy to far more intelligence than his men, the Captain knew the situation was far more dire than the Ensign even knew. Iranians and Syrians were attacking from the northeastern front. Palestinians were coming in from the east and south. Hezbollah agents were everywhere. Without U.S. support, he gave the nation of Israel three days max.

Washington D.C.

2:45 a.m.

Speers surfaced from the tunnels underneath Arlington Station like some artful rodent that kept cheating death. There was no activity in the station. The last trains had stopped running hours earlier under the disquieting spell of martial law. The Chief stole across the vacant platform, hopped the turnstile and made his way, slowly, silently, up the motionless escalator. As he crept out onto Memorial Drive, he found the humidity absolutely overpowering. The night air felt textured and heavy as it flowed into his body. But there were no Ulysses patrols in sight, and that was a relief. The streets were empty of pedestrians or cars, and there was virtually no noise except for the nagging buzz of mosquitoes flitting around his head.

Up Memorial Drive, he eyed the rolling green hills of the Arlington Cemetery. Unending rows of white tombstones glowed brilliantly under soft yellow lights. He looked over his shoulder as he walked up the gentle slope. The Arlington hillsides had a sweeping view of the Capitol. A mile across the Potomac River was the National Mall, a majestic two-mile stretch of green space that hosted the Lincoln Memorial, the Korean, Vietnam and World War II memorials, the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument, and at the far end, Congress itself. Across the Potomac and to the southeast was the massive Pentagon.

But he was not here to admire the view. He was here to hide. Out of respect for the nation’s dead, Arlington Cemetery was one of the only places in the D.C. area without NSA-controlled surveillance cameras. And as Speers had expected, the guard booths at the cemetery gates were empty. The Army MPs who had once guarded Arlington had long ago been replaced by civilian security guards who were no doubt sequestered at home under martial law.

Speers scaled the eight-foot cemetery gates with some difficulty, huffing and puffing as he lifted himself high enough to drape his right leg over the top. The leg of his pants caught at the hemline, tearing as he pulled the rest of his body onto the other side. He crossed himself as he walked past the first rows of identical white tombstones in Section 26.

Over the past three years, Speers had taken it upon himself to know every nook and cranny of the cemetery. Not because he was morbid, but rather because he had, after the Santa Monica bombing, been tasked with overseeing the Administration’s disaster evacuation planning.

He had first requested each previous administration’s disaster preparedness plans from the National Archives. He’d expected five or ten records, beginning with the Cold War administrations. Instead he received thirty-seven such plans, dating back to 1811, when the primary national threats were considered to be British invasion, slave uprisings, plague and fire. Of those, only the British invasion had actually come to pass, during the War of 1812. As Speers learned, the hills where Arlington Cemetery now stood had often figured big in those plans.

Before Arlington had been formally turned into a National Cemetery, the hill had been the strategic highpoint of the Capitol and the Potomac region. It had been settled by a long line of military men descending directly from George Washington. Arlington House, the stately Greek-revival mansion on the cemetery’s hilltop, had been built by President George Washington’s grandson, George Washington Parke Custis. Custis had positioned himself as a pacifist, only to find himself firing cannons at the British before they eventually swarmed into the Capitol in 1814. Two decades later, in 1831, Custis’ daughter married General Robert E. Lee, who lived in the home for thirty-years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

During his research, Speers had seen copies of letters from Union spies claiming that Lee had designs on defending Arlington House at the outset of the Civil War. Lee apparently envisioned a massive battle in northern Virginia, knowing the steep hill would have been an excellent firing position for his cannons upon the Union Army. Lee set his staff to building escape tunnels below the wine cellar in the event that they were overrun. It was soon evident that the Confederate Army would not be able to mount a defensive posture in time, and as Union forces began gathering in Washington, Lee resigned his post and set off for Richmond, where he assumed command of the Confederate Army. Upon Lee’s departure, Lincoln directed General George McClellan to inhabit Arlington House with a Federal staff, setting up cannon positions on the hillsides overlooking Virginia. Three years later, in 1864, Union soldiers had been buried just outside Arlington House’s front door. Speers tried to imagine Lee’s anguish upon learning that enemy dead were buried in his own front yard.

In 1952, General Eisenhower’s administration, fearing a Soviet attack, devised the elaborate labyrinth of subterranean tunnels beneath the Capitol, including one from beneath the West Wing to an underwater port in the Potomac, where a Polaris submarine manned by the Naval Administrative Unit would whisk Eisenhower out to the relative safety of the Atlantic and chart a course for London. In the event that the Potomac might be blockaded by Soviet warships, the CIA’s Plan B involved burrowing a tunnel beneath the Lincoln Memorial, underneath the Potomac, and linking to one of General Lee’s original tunnels underneath Arlington House, where Eisenhower could theoretically escape into the Virginian suburbs. Speers had himself written Lee’s tunnel system into the current administration’s evacuation plans, receiving in return a budget of two hundred thousand dollars to install the new retina scanners on each of the twenty-two tunnel entrances in D.C., Arlington and Silver Springs.

Now the drone of a low-flying helicopter cut through the otherwise silent evening. The memory of Dobb’s final moments in West Virginia was all too recent. Speers crouched behind a hedgerow.

He could hardly believe his eyes when the ghost ship flew directly overhead. The VH-71 Kestrel skimmed the Arlington Hills at about 90 miles per hour, and Speers, who had often been a Marine One passenger, recognized the helicopter’s unmistakable profile against the night sky.

His hands balled up into fists as he watched the Kestrel land between the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. The thought of someone other than the President requisitioning Marine One for personal use was maddening.

A fleet of vehicles pulled around the National Mall. They looked like Ulysses Bradleys, but it was hard to tell from this distance. Soldiers scrambled from the vehicles and began setting up a security perimeter.

Speers got to his feet again. His exhaustion was all-consuming, but so too was his curiosity. He would have to take a closer look.

*

A homeless couple munched potato chips and leaned against one of the Lincoln Memorial’s 38 fluted columns. Behind them, the nineteen-foot, 175-ton white marble statue that deified Abraham Lincoln was surrounded by dozens of homeless families. The luckiest of them were in tents that had been supplied by the National Park Service. The less lucky squatted on blankets donated by a local shelter.

On the mall below, the convoy of Bradley personnel carriers four-wheeled across the grass. In the middle of the 2000-foot long Reflecting Pool, Ulysses contractors erected enormous scaffolding.

The VH-71 Kestrel came in low and loud over the Lincoln Memorial and touched down in the narrow strip between the steps and the Reflecting Pool, sending miniature tidal waves across the shallow water. Ulysses troops scrambled out of the Bradleys and formed two receiving lines. The soldiers saluted as General Wainewright, General Farrell, Dex Jackson and his son LeBron exited the chopper.

The entourage made its way to the base of the Memorial, where two Secret Service agents escorted Dex and LeBron into a waiting car. Wainewright and Farrell, with soldiers in tow, marched up the ninety-eight steps to the top. The cadence of stomping boots gradually woke the hordes sleeping near Lincoln’s throne.

As he finally reached the top, Wainewright found himself winded and grumpier than usual. There he came face-to-face with a Forest Service employee who failed to salute. “What’s all this?” Wainewright snarled.

“
This is what martial law looks like,” the Forest Service employee said as he gestured at the dozens of families behind him. “Last night your mercenaries shot a homeless family of four right over there on Pennsylvania Avenue. They’re all dead. Even the two kids.”

“
The eight o’ clock curfew is not complicated,” Wainewright said. “We broadcast the rules in seven languages.”

“
The shelters were full,” the Forest Service employee explained. He gestured toward the people gathered around Lincoln’s statue. “We had to put these people somewhere.”

“
Cram ‘em into Roosevelt’s memorial,” Wainewright said, nodding in the direction of the far humbler monument to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the distance. “This one is reserved.”

*

A black armored SUV pulled up to 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, where two Ulysses MPs stood with loaded M4s at the front entrance to the Willard Hotel. The taller of the two MPs stepped forward to open the rear door. Dex and LeBron Jackson exited the SUV as the soldiers all but shouted, “Good evening, Mister Secretary, sir!” Dex put his hand in the small of LeBron’s back and ushered him past the MPs without so much as looking them in the face. They had no bags except for a single military issue duffel.

For the past 150 years, it had often been said that the Willard Hotel was the nation’s actual seat of power. An easy walk to the White House, the hotel had long been the de facto lodging for visiting heads of state. Abraham Lincoln himself stayed there – under tight security – in the days before his inauguration, as death threats poured in from pro-slavery Southerners.

The Willard’s lobby, with its high ceilings and gilded crown moldings, was one of Dex’s regular haunts. He had taken to meeting foreign dignitaries in its lounge, where Ulysses Grant had enjoyed cigars and cognac.

But there was no time for leisurely pleasures tonight. The Secret Service agents hurried him and LeBron through the lounge and past the bar, where a large flat screen TV broadcasted CNN. Dex broke away and entered the lounge to see what was on television. It’d been three days since he’d seen any news that wasn’t filtered by Wainewright’s screeners.

A crowd of tense-looking hotel guests stood around with cocktails as the CNN anchor remarked, “
Next we’ll show you how local volunteers are pitching in to save animals displaced by the Monroe bombing
.”

“
What is this Mickey Mouse feel good crap?” someone said. “Turn on the BBC.”

The barman switched to the BBC, where the screen filled with images of the war zone developing in Eastern Galilee. The anchor read from a teleprompter: “
Our correspondents in Jerusalem are seeing a heavy barrage of incoming Iranian artillery. The Israeli government is calling for the U.S. to honor the terms of its NATO alliance, but the American government has yet to respond
.”

The Secret Service Agent tapped Dex on the shoulder. “Mister Secretary.” Dex didn’t budge. “Mister Secretary, we need to move.”

The TV suddenly reverted to CNN’s feel-good animal story. The crowd glared at the barman, who threw up his hands. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I didn’t even change the channel.”

“
Mister Secretary,” the guard intoned. “For your sake, sir, let’s go.”

Dex and LeBron followed the security detail to the elevators. Inside, the senior agent pushed the fourth floor button.

“
Top floor,” Dex corrected him. “The Presidential Suite’s on the top floor.”

”
You are correct, Mister Secretary, sir. But General Wainewright has reserved the Presidential Suite for himself, sir.”

Dex swallowed his pride and adjourned to the fourth floor hallway, where another member of the detail held the room door open. It was a junior executive suite with a single bedroom and a small kitchenette. “You still have time to catch a few winks before the inauguration, sir. We’ll be outside if you need anything.”

The door closed. Dex and LeBron were alone together for the first time in months. Neither one looked at the other. LeBron went straight to the TV and flipped it on, searching for the BBC. It was nowhere to be found. The CNN broadcast was on every channel.