Line of Succession: A Thriller

by William Tyree

  WILLIAM TYREE

  LINE

  OF

  SUCCESSION

  WILLIAM TYREE

  PART I

  “The Pentagon's reliance on outside contractors …amounts to a second, private, army, larger than the United States military force, and one whose roles and missions and even casualties among its work force have largely been hidden from public view.”

  The New York Times

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  Thursday, August 18, 2:25 a.m.

  The steady cadence of cricket chirping echoed throughout the enlisted men’s barracks. Private Matt Doheny roused from sleep, his sheets sweat-soaked, the balls of his feet stinging from a 10-mile march through North Carolina hill country. He checked his watch and fell back asleep until the cricket’s looping high-decibel strain resumed. The racket was coming from under the bunk bed he shared with Private Walker. The jumbo-size insects at Fort Bragg beat anything the Boston native had ever seen. From his perch on the top bunk, Doheny turned and shined his penlight over the side of the bed. Sweat trickled off his nose and onto Private Walker’s outstretched arm. Walker didn’t wake. The cricket flitted into the shadows.

  Doheny grabbed his can of spray insecticide, a recent acquisition that had prompted the other soldiers to dub him “Private Orkin,” and descended stealthily down the bunk bed ladder. He stretched his beanpole physique flat on the concrete floor and, holding the insecticide at the ready, shined the light under the bed frame. Nothing. Seconds later, the chirping resumed on the other side of the room.

  A kneecap bored into Doheny’s back. A hand slipped over his lips before he could scream. “Easy there, bug man,” a voice whispered into his ear. Doheny recognized the hoarse drawl of his unit’s Commanding Officer, Lieutenant James Flynn. “Dressed and outside in sixty seconds.”

  The CO uncoiled and exited the room as quietly as he had entered it. Doheny scrambled into his khaki utility uniform and canvas boots and emerged into the sticky mosquito-swarmed night 34 seconds later.

  Flynn stood some distance away, scowling, with his hands on his hips. The creases of his forest-green trousers were impeccably starched. Doheny ran to him and stopped at attention, saluting, his eyes fixed on an imaginary point across the darkened Army base. It was important not to make eye contact with Flynn. Especially when you were in trouble.

  “I’m not even goin’ to ask why you were half-naked on the floor next to Private Walker’s bunk,” the Lieutenant growled. “Anyone out of their bunk after lights out will work. That is the policy. Are you familiar with the policy?”

  “Sir, yes sir!” Doheny bleated, though he was tempted to explain about the cricket.

  “Hold out your hand, Private.” Doheny held his right hand out, his palm facing the tiny sliver of moon overhead. Lieutenant Flynn pressed two keys into it. Doheny closed his hand into a fist but continued to stare straight ahead as Flynn drummed his orders into him: “The first key operates the motor pool gate. The second key operates Humvee OU-505. You will go directly to the motor pool and drive the Humvee out past the checkpoint until you are off base. Then you will stop the vehicle. Four minutes from now, a phone will ring. You will open the glove compartment. You will see the phone. You will answer it. You will listen to the next set of instructions. Got it?”

  “Sir, yes sir,” Doheny repeated, although in his anxiety he was afraid that he had not absorbed all the Lieutenant’s directives. And he was downright petrified at the prospect of leaving base without an official travel authorization, but he wasn’t about to ask the Lieutenant for one now.

  Lieutenant Flynn stormed away without another word. Doheny sprinted to the motor pool. As the boots rubbed against his blisters, he realized that he had neglected to put on socks.

  He found the open-air, forest-green Humvee easily, put it in gear and drove it past the checkpoint, where the gate was already raised for him. As he drove past, he noticed that the Humvee’s rear end sat low on its shocks. There was something heavy in the back.

  The headlights were suddenly thick with mosquitoes. Doheny stepped on the gas and raced through the swarm, hoping to avoid adding to the two dozen chigger welts he had already picked up in this insect-infested swamp of a state.

  Once off base, Doheny did not stop the vehicle as Flynn had requested. But sure enough, the phone rang, just as the Lieutenant had said it would. Doheny pulled off to the side of the road, opened the glove compartment and found the disposable handset. He answered. “Reset your GPS,” Lieutenant Flynn told him without preamble. “Head south for exactly twenty-two-point-six miles.”

  Doheny felt compelled to give his exact location. “Right now I’m about –“

  “I know where you are!” Flynn shouted. “When the GPS odometer reads twenty-two-point-six miles, you should see FR 66B. Take this road north for exactly one mile. Then park and shut off the engine. Leave the vehicle lights on. Do not leave the vehicle for any reason. Do not make any other calls. Await further instructions.”

  The conversation ended abruptly. Private Doheny put the Humvee into gear. He drove off into the night as the wind cooled his closely cropped scalp and the gnats filled his teeth and the headlights attracted moths by the thousands.

  Just two weeks out of basic training, Doheny had been sent to Fort Bragg to train with the 192nd Ordnance Unit, where he would learn to disarm or remove unexploded missiles, shells and improvised explosive devices. His unit had just eight more weeks of training before they would be deployed. Rumor was that they were headed to the Indonesian islands where the U.S. was battling Islamic revolutionaries that were slowly but surely taking over the local governments. Apparently the militants had taken to shelling the schools and universities in an attempt to keep little girls – and anyone else, for that matter – from getting a decent education. It wasn’t hard for Doheny to envision his arms being blown off while attempting to remove an unexploded shell from some Indonesian schoolyard.

  Meanwhile, he knew that at this moment his friends from Boston Bayside High School were down on Cape Cod enjoying a last blast of summer before going their separate ways for college. His girlfriend, an average student who had somehow lucked into George Mason University, was probably with them too. Doheny had never imagined himself the odd man out of higher education. He blamed himself. He had pretty much slacked off his entire junior year, pretending to study in his upstairs bedroom, while actually spending all night every night playing video games. Come senior year, his grades were so bad that not even his safety schools out West would have him. By mid-June, four years in the Army and a $15,000 signing bonus had sounded better than local community college.

  He swerved to avoid a trio of deer grazing on the highway’s shoulder, slammed on the brakes and skidded on some gravel. He put the Humvee in park to catch his breath. The cell phone was blinking on the floorboards, having skidded off the passenger seat. He bent down to retrieve it and held it for a moment. Doheny was suddenly forlorn, gripped with a potent, undeniable urge to call his girlfriend back home. It was a no-brainer that the Lieutenant would find out later and punish him for it. But hearing her voice, the way she baby-talked him, would be worth it.

  He dialed twice. When she did not answer the second time, he left a rambling, whining message that he regretted instantly. He put the vehicle in gear and continued on his mission.

  In a few minutes the odometer read exactly 22.6 miles. Just as Lieutenant Flynn had predicted, he saw the tiny sign for FR 66B. Doheny motored over the cratered, muddy forest road for exactly one mile, where there was a clearing and a cattle pond. He shut off the engine and sat with the headlights on and the insects swarming about his head. His thoughts drifted back to the cricket in the barracks
. He wished he had simply let it sing.

  Doheny’s vision flickered and then flashed white as a single .50 caliber rifle shot vaporized his brain stem. He was clinically dead before his forehead came to rest against the steering wheel.

  Moments later, a Polaris off-roader came from the tree line, driven by a pale man with a pockmarked face and a clean-shaven head. He wore night-vision goggles and a black track suit and carried the .50 caliber rifle on a strap across his shoulders. His name was Chris Abrams.

  The little four-wheel vehicle towed a lightweight trailer that jounced over rocks and mud as it sidled up alongside the Humvee. Chris Abrams leapt out of the Polaris and secured the area, his movements downright sprightly for a six-foot-six 34-year-old who’d been living with HIV for ten years. He put the rifle down, picked up a tiny video camera, and began recording as he briefly inspected Doheny’s body. He set the still-running camera on the hood as he pulled his night-vision goggles off, revealing a pair of red-rimmed, hazel eyes with dilated pupils. He unwrapped a protein bar and shoved it into his mouth, chewing as he transferred the cargo – twenty shoulder-mounted Stinger missiles weighing thirty-six pounds each – into the trailer.

  When Abrams was done, he covered the trailer, then placed C4 explosive under the Humvee’s gas tank and set the timer for twelve minutes. Although he had eaten two full dinners totaling 3,000 calories, and had additional snacks, he was still ravenous. He opened a package of beef jerky and devoured it as he drove the back roads to the transfer point. By the time the explosion lit up the night sky, the Stinger missiles were safely aboard a TV repair truck en route to a warehouse in Frederick County, Maryland. There, Abrams would be able to snatch a couple hours’ sleep and a hearty breakfast before meeting his crew for the next leg of the mission.

  THREE DAYS LATER

  Washington D.C.

  Sunday, 4:45 a.m.

  Blake Carver watched his prisoner, United States Army Lieutenant James Flynn, through a two-way mirror. Flynn knelt, blindfolded, with his hands cuffed behind him. His uniform lay in a heap in the corner, and the officer’s fluorescent-lit skin had taken on a slight bluish hue.

  “I want a lawyer,” Flynn repeated in a raspy voice that crackled over the observation room’s monitors. “I know you can hear me. I got my rights.”

  This was good. Flynn was about to cross an important psychological milestone. He was about to lose control of his emotions for the first time in twenty two hours of captivity. Carver had not been an interrogator by trade at the CIA, but he had logged more than 300 hours in rooms just like this in six countries. He had learned some things about breaking points and how to achieve them. Now he waited patiently, watching Flynn from behind the reflective mirror. Ten seconds later, the Lieutenant suddenly began screaming at the top of his lungs. “Where am I? Where am I? What day is it? Talk to me!”

  It was Sunday morning, before dawn. Agent Carver was holding Flynn in the basement of Field House DC310, a two-level 1850s brownstone on a leafy Georgetown residential street. The National Security Agency had acquired the home seven years earlier to spy on the Central African Republic Embassy, which had been located in a decaying mansion across the street. The upstairs bedrooms were outfitted with observation posts with night vision scopes and directional microphones that could penetrate twelve inches of solid concrete at up to one hundred yards. The field house’s communication hardware had been completely replaced with equipment dedicated to NSA’s private Ethernet. Though the original surveillance operation had produced nothing of value, the home had been retained by the White House as an urban outpost of sorts, where sensitive investigations could operate at a safe distance from the prying eyes of the Defense Department brass.

  The home’s ground floor was an elaborate façade for the fictional couple in residence, Ethan and Melissa Danforth. Carver had employed several aliases during his 16-year intelligence career, and he had been using Ethan Danforth for only a few weeks. The mythical Danforth had an MBA from George Washington University and an office on K Street, where he and his wife ran a small consulting firm called FutureK. The firm had verifiable clients – all dummy businesses – and a young receptionist named Madison who did not ask too many questions.

  Brochures for European cycling vacations were magnetized to the fridge. Magazines were scattered on the coffee table. Bottles of limited production cabernet sat in a starter wine rack, and a digital picture frame on a bookshelf cycled slideshows of Carver and his partner, Agent Meagan O’Keefe, with aspiring politicos at black-tie events.

  Like Lieutenant Flynn, Agent Carver had not slept in more than a day. He went to the ancient sink basin in the corner of the room where there was a black and white photograph of the home’s previous residents – or perhaps their grandparents – standing where he was now, filleting freshly caught trout.

  He turned on the cold tap and splashed water onto his chiseled features. He squeezed anti-redness drops into each of his green eyes. The drops stung. He blinked the artificial tears away and looked into the mirror. His face was still tan despite having spent so much time in basements, surveillance posts and windowless offices during the past several weeks. Carver made a point to get out and run at least once a day, no matter how hot and sticky it was outside. A little sun on his face did wonders for his attitude.

  A gray hair had sprouted on his otherwise black sideburns. He plucked it out, but neither the pain nor the cold water was enough to fight his drowsiness. He loosened his black necktie, popped in a piece of sugarless gum and dropped his lean 185-pound frame to the floor to rip off ten quick pushups. Screw caffeine. To hell with ginseng. Blood to the brain was all he needed.

  He heard the row house’s squeaky back door, followed by two sets of footsteps on the floorboards above him. Carver reached for his SIG 9mm and levered a round into the chamber. It was probably just O’Keefe, but Carver took no chances. He was, after all, operating blind – the building’s security and surveillance systems were offline. Due to another round of crippling budget cuts, field house DC310 was on a 30-day waitlist for standard repairs.

  Carver recognized Agent O’Keefe’s clip-clop gait on the hardwood and put his weapon away. They had been partners for almost two months now, and he already knew O’Keefe inside and out, down to the tiny mole on her slightly crooked right index finger, her left-leaning voting record and the way her allergy to watermelon made her lips go numb for an hour after eating it.

  O’Keefe did the perfunctory secret knock – more of a cheesy joke between her and Carver than insurance against accidentally blowing each other’s brains out – and entered with the White House Chief of Staff, Julian Speers, behind her. Their clothes were soaked and they were tracking mud.

  “Working late again?” Carver said to his fictitious better half. “Dinner’s getting cold, honey.”

  Carver helped O’Keefe with her coat. The roots of her shoulder-length strawberry-blonde hair were matted against her head and the drizzle had spotted her black-framed eyeglasses. Carver pulled a hanky from his suit jacket and offered it to her.

  At 26, with an M.S. in applied mathematics from MIT and a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern languages, O’Keefe was more than a decade younger than the 39-year-old Carver. Like many at the agency, she was a numbers geek originally hired to work in cryptology. And like every NSA employee, field work was officially outside her job description. Recruited specifically to conduct counter-terrorism surveillance and interpret intercepted transmissions, she had never received combat training, nor had she been formally issued a gun. The target practice she put in after hours, as well as the matching SIG 9mm she wore in a holster around her left ankle, was at Carver’s insistence. He needed to know his partner could back him up in a jam.

  Speers had dark circles under his doughy eyes and he was sucking on a grape-flavored lollipop. “Thanks for the wakeup call,” the Chief of Staff snapped, rubbing his hands through his damp, overgrown haircut. He’d missed two buttons on his white oxford shirt and his dress socks w
ere different shades of black. Then he spotted Flynn through the observation glass. “What the hell?” he hissed, pushing past Carver to get a look at the naked prisoner. He’d seen that face on TV. He pulled the lollipop from his mouth. “Tell me that’s not the missing officer they’re showing on CNN every fifteen minutes.”

  Flynn was indeed the missing officer. The previous evening, Carver and O’Keefe had snatched him in the Fort Bragg Officer’s Club parking lot. They had sedated him, thrown him into the trunk of their sedan and driven him back to the field house for questioning. It had been by far the most violent event of Agent O’Keefe’s young career. For Agent Carver, who had been with the CIA for several years before his sudden transfer, it was just another day at the office.

  “Don’t worry,” Carver said. “Once the Army finds out what he’s done, they won’t even want him back.”

  Speers’ cheeks flushed crimson. “You’re not CIA anymore,” he snarled. “How am I supposed to explain this?”

  Carver and Speers had first met in the Chief’s Eisenhower Building office some two months earlier, on the morning of June 17. Within three minutes, Speers had effectively ended Agent Carver’s illustrious career at the CIA.

  It had not been the homecoming that Carver was expecting. For the past several weeks, he had been in pursuit of an ex-Pakistani intelligence agent that had entered the U.S. on a student visa. The man suddenly left his chemistry program at the University of Mississippi mid-semester and fled the state.

  The agency spotted him near El Paso, abruptly lost him, and then picked up the trail again near Laughlin, where the Pakistani spent two nights in a motel with an American-born Allied Jihad sympathizer. By that time, Carver had also arrived in Nevada, but he wasn’t in a position to make an arrest. The Pakistani had committed no crime, and he still had time to return to the university before he could be legally deported.