Line of Succession: A Thriller (36 page)

“
Get your son dressed,” Rios warned. “He’s not safe here.”

Over Northern Virginia

4:50 a.m.

The first hint of purple sunlight appeared through the Gulfstream’s cockpit windows. The porch lights and streetlights of D.C.’s bedroom communities twinkled like constellations not 500 feet below the aircraft. It had taken some convincing, but the pilots had come to believe Carver’s story that they had been targeted by CENTAF. Until now, they had stuck to Carver’s orders to fly at treetop level, under radio silence and without running lights.

But radio silence also meant no contact with air traffic control. They weren’t cleared to land at any airport – military, federal or civilian. The copilot turned in his seat to face Eva and Carver. “We’re low on fuel,” he said. “I’ve gotta radio in.”

“
No radio,” Carver replied.

“
You don’t get it,” the copilot said. “This is the Capitol we’re talking about. The airports are surrounded by SAM installations. If we’re not careful we’ll get an ass full of Patriot missile.”

Carver maintained his composure. “No. We need another option.”

The copilot pulled at his hair and thought for a moment. “There’s a small private airstrip near Valley Forge. My kid got his license there. With a little luck we could —”

“
Too far,” Carver said. “We need to get our team into the D.C. area immediately.”

The pilot spoke up without taking his eyes or hands off the controls. “Not many cars on the beltway this time of morning.”

The copilot shot him a dirty look. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“
I spent two years putting F-18s down on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson.”

“
Stop.”

“
That boat’s just one hundred thirty-four feet wide. Runway couldn’t have been wider than two freeway lanes. Floating, no less.”

The pilot was for real. Carver looked to Eva. “What do you say?”

“
I think we’ll qualify as a carpool,” she quipped.

The copilot began to recite Psalm 23 as the plane slowed and turned northeast. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me…”

They came in so low over Alexandria that Carver could see the face of a woman getting into her car for the morning commute. The Gulfstream jet skimmed the telephone poles as it came in over the I-495, the rumble of its engines triggering car alarms. It extended its landing gear as the first sight of light pre-dawn freeway traffic came into view.

Eva and Carver bent over in their seats with their heads between their knees, bracing for a hard landing. The co-pilot’s recitations grew louder: “…Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.” He stopped abruptly as he saw three economy-size sedans merge onto the otherwise wide-open freeway ahead of them. “Oh God!” he said. “Pull up and re-approach.”

“
Negative,” the pilot answered. “We won’t get a second chance.”

The landing gear hit the asphalt hard. The sedans careened to either side of the freeway. The Gulfstream’s wing flaps snapped to 90-degree angles as the aircraft braked, skidding across the median and into the path of two oncoming cars. The left wing dipped as they entered the wide, grassy median, clipping the windshield of an oncoming truck and slicing the cab clean off. The Gulfstream’s left landing gear snapped on the uneven ground, sending the plane sliding in a shower of white sparks.

The grinding roar of metal on asphalt slowly petered out. The pungent odor of jet fuel filled the main cabin, snapping Agent O’Keefe alert. Pink hues of sunrise filtered into the cabin through smashed passenger windows.

Beside her, Angie’s head was cocked back against her seat. Her eyes were shut and her hair was streaked with blood. O’Keefe slowly pushed the bangs back. There were no abrasions. Angie’s eyes flapped open and locked with hers. She was alive. The blood belonged to someone else.

O’Keefe unbuckled her seatbelt and got shakily to her feet. Several chunks of scalp were blown across the seatbacks in the row in front of her. Crimson droplets were spattered on the cabin ceiling. She walked two rows forward and found herself gazing into the top of Elvir Divac’s skull. A seatback tray had sheared it open like a watermelon.

In the window seat, the doctor’s body slumped sideways. His lifeless eyes gazed skyward and the window was a smear of matted blood and hair. One row up, O’Keefe found Colonel Madsen. His eyes were closed. O’Keefe put her index and middle fingers on his neck, hoping for a pulse. His head tipped sideways, resting at an unnatural 90-degree angle atop his shoulders.

She feared more carnage as she wobbled on shaky knees toward the cockpit. Her fears were realized. From behind, she saw the pilots’ arms hanging limply at his sides, elbow joints jutting out his blood-soaked shirt sleeves in a horrific compound fracture. Both pilots’ faces were smashed grotesquely into the instrument panel.

An orange-tanned arm stretched out into view. O’Keefe recognized it as Eva’s. She was alive.

There was one more passenger to account for. Agent Carver had been seated adjacent to Eva. O’Keefe entered the cockpit, afraid of what she might find next. As she rounded the corner, she found him standing in the corner of the cockpit, peering out a tiny clear prism of smashed window. A traffic chopper was hovering overhead.

“
Smile,” Carver said to his fellow survivors. “We’re on TV.”

The Willard Hotel

The Iranian Ambassador entered the Presidential Suite wearing a new black silk suit that would have been more appropriate in a European disco. He shook Wainewright’s hand and wasted no time in getting to the point. “I could not risk telephone communications,” he said with precise enunciation. “I received a call yesterday from your Treasury Secretary.”

“
Don’t worry about her,” Wainewright gruffed.

“
But you leave me no choice. First, you assured me she would be dead by now. Second, the President obviously told her about the Camp David meeting despite my request for confidentiality. Now she is twice as dangerous.”

Wainewright was distracted. The timing of so many things – including the inauguration and shifting of Ulysses forces to additional key posts – was dependent on the carefully timed release of influential information. He glanced at the muted TV, eager to see whether his personal press corp had managed to maintain control over the network news feed.

The Ambassador did not like to be ignored. “General, did you hear me?”

Wainewright’s attention returned to the Ambassador. “You won’t be hearing from Eva Hudson again.”

“
I’m delighted to hear that. As expected, NATO is calling on us to stop our invasion of Israel. We are prepared to justify ourselves in this cause, as always, but we cannot afford speculation that there is any connection with the American President’s death.”

“
You hope for too much,” Wainewright said. “Fact: Iran’s an easy scapegoat for the world community. Fact: there will be rumors of your involvement no matter how good we are. We have to stick to our assertion that this was the work of the Allied Jihad.”

The Ambassador’s gaze fell upon the dresser, where Lincoln’s opera glasses sat on a folded white handkerchief. “I have an eye for antiques,” he said. “Mid-nineteenth century, yes?”

General Wainewright had never before passed up an opportunity to explain about his prized keepsake, but he had no time for it now. “What about the mountain campaign?” Wainewright said. In exchange for Wainewright’s promise to abandon its pact to defend Israel, the Iranians had promised that elite Iranian troops would invade and destroy Allied Jihad bases in Afpack. Iran had been funding Allied Jihad operations for years, but their offspring had spiraled out of control. Nevertheless, the Allied Jihad were dependent on supplies from Iran, and the Iranians were in a unique position to squash their Afpak capabilities once and for all.

“
We have already destroyed nine Allied Jihad camps,” the Ambassador confirmed. “This is only the beginning. Within one week, Israel will be pushed into the sea. And by November, any Allied Jihad camps in the mountains will be exterminated and we will have accounted for ninety percent of its leadership.”

Wainewright glanced at the TV and saw imagery from a live traffic cam aboard a network helicopter. The titles on the screen read LIVE FROM I-495. He grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume.

“
Beltway commuters,” the TV anchor said, “
you may want to think about telecommuting today. We are looking at live footage from our eye in the sky traffic cam. This apparently happened just moments ago. We have what appears to be a Gulfstream jet down on the Beltway. Yes, you heard me. A plane crash-landed on the 495 just minutes ago.”

Wainewright’s phone rang. It was Farrell. “We have a situation,” he said frantically.

“
I’m watching it now.”

Farrell hesitated. “That’s only the half of it. Our people just went to wake up Dex. He’s not in his room.”

The Beltway

Carver stood in the middle of I-495 as a TV news traffic chopper hovered overhead. Adrenaline blocked the pain from the fractured collarbone he had suffered during the crash. Behind him, O’Keefe and Eva teamed up to pull Angie Jackson from the Gulfstream’s fuselage. Her eyes were vacant and she hadn’t uttered a word since the crash. She was ambulatory, but they were going to have to go at her pace.

They needed a car. It took Carver only a few seconds to spot a prospect: a middle-aged government worker in a navy blue Ford economy car that had slowed down to rubberneck. He was an IRS auditor, which was clear from the Internal Revenue Service badge around his neck. Carver raced across the median and pulled the driver’s side door handle. The door was unlocked, and the auditor was so busy gawking at the plane wreckage that he did not see Carver in time to pull away.

Carver gripped the auditor by the collar of his blue oxford shirt and yanked him out of the vehicle as it continued to roll forward at idle speed. Carver slid into the warm driver’s seat and braked so that O’Keefe could push Angie and Eva into the back seat.

The bewildered auditor regained his balance and began running alongside his car just as Carver began to accelerate. Carver pulled a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it to him through the window. “Call my office. We’ll get you a new car.”

The auditor stumbled and fell. He got up, brushed himself off, and held the card in both hands as he read the name aloud: “Ethan Danforth. FutureK Consulting.” He looked up at his ride as it powered away.

Carver struggled to weave the American-made economy sedan through the light dawn traffic. The engine was sluggish and the handling was an abomination. “We should’ve waited for somebody in a BMW,” he complained.

O’Keefe craned her neck out the rear passenger seat window. “Traffic ‘copter’s following us.”

Carver was in no mood for a televised freeway chase. They careened onto the Georgetown Memorial Parkway off-ramp. The news chopper followed. Carver gunned it, racking his brain for some competitive advantage that a car might possibly have over a helicopter.

“
Where are we headed?” Eva said.

“
Arlington,” Carver shouted back, knowing they wouldn’t be able to drive there without leading the bad guys straight to Speers. He had to ditch the car.

A mile later he saw the exit for Turkey Run Park, where he often went running on weekends. He took the exit and wound the car under the first bridge, skidding to a stop under cover of the 200-foot long overpass.

O’Keefe and Eva jumped out. Carver helped Angie out of the car and pulled her by the hand toward a section of wooded green space.

They picked up a jogging trail that stretched under a thick canopy of poplar trees. Following Carver’s lead, they went as fast as they could for the length of a football field before stopping. Angie was still foggy, but she moved well with O’Keefe’s help. Carver crouched to peer between a pair of shrubs. The traffic helicopter was still hovering over the bridge where the car was parked. It had been joined by two Army Huey attack choppers.

“
We don’t have long,” Carver said. “They’ll have boots on the ground within ten minutes.”

“
It would suck if they released dogs,” Eva said.

“
We’re one hill away from the Potomac Heritage trail. There’s an oak and beech forest not far from there that runs all the way to Arlington. It’s our only shot.”

Washington D.C.

5:15 a.m.

Agent Rios led Dex and LeBron to the Metro Center station entrance as the day’s first orange line train was about to arrive. The mid-career secret service agent’s hands trembled. Sixty-six hours ago he had shot two assassins dead on Martha’s Vineyard. For that, he had no regrets. It was the prospect of using his weapon again that bothered him.