Line of Succession: A Thriller

by William Tyree

  O’Keefe dimmed the lights. “This aired on Al Jazeera thirty minutes ago.”

  Faruq Ahmed’s brown, clean-shaven face came onscreen. He wore a headscarf and began speaking in Arabic. As he talked, clips of desert training camps played behind him, showing teenage recruits destroying mock U.S. and Israeli targets. In less than three minutes, it was over.

  Carver stopped the DVD. “Translation?”

  “It’s a suicide tape,” one of the linguists said. “His name is Faruq Ahmed. He says he represents Allied Jihad. He is from Yemen, has been living in West Virginia for six months, and takes responsibility for masterminding the assassinations of several top leaders, although he gives no specifics. Plus the usual garbage about Muslim youth rising up against the evil empire.”

  “That’s it?”

  “The usual promises of seventy virgins in the afterlife to any martyrs that rise up within the U.S.”

  Carver turned his gaze to Nico. “Your thoughts?”

  “The Koran cites seventy-two virgins for holy martyrs, not seventy.”

  “Okay. Is that significant?”

  “I’d say. It means Islam is running low on virgins.”

  The linguists laughed. Carver waved his hand dismissively. “Get your Ivy League asses back on those intercepted transmissions. Agent O’Keefe will hand out the assignments.”

  The agitated linguists filed out into the next room. Nico remained in his seat. A sly grin spread across his face.

  “What’re you waiting for?” Carver asked him.

  “My Presidential pardon.”

  Carver’s expression went blank. He folded his hands on top of his head. “What…You mean you cracked the code already?”

  “About that,” Nico said. “It’s not a code.”

  Rapture Run

  The elevator wobbled as it descended deeper within the vast subterranean complex. It stopped abruptly between two floors, doors opening to reveal a cold, black nothingness that frightened young LeBron Jackson. The Ulysses MP pressed the D button repeatedly until the door shut and the elevator began moving again.

  “What grade you in?” the MP said. He towered over LeBron’s short, chubby frame.

  “Eighth,” LeBron said.

  “Jesus. World’s going to hell sure as I’m standing here.”

  The elevator came to a rest and opened. “Welcome to the dungeon,” the MP said without any hint of humor in his voice. LeBron saw a long row of blue LED lamps that seemed to stretch forever. He felt the cavern’s cool, moist air and heard someone’s cries echoing off the wet rock ceiling.

  An MP got up from a chair and came to greet them. The metal of his rifle glowed blue in the lamp light. “What’s this?” he said, looking at LeBron.

  “This is SECDEF Jackson’s kid,” the other MP said. “General Farrell wanted him brought down here.”

  “What’d you do?” the MP said, still looking at LeBron. “Stay out past curfew?”

  “He ain’t done nothing,” the other MP said. “General said it’s for his own safety.”

  The MP grunted. “Okay. Number nine then.”

  As they walked past several occupied isolation cells, LeBron heard someone crying softly. The MP kicked the door and the noise stopped. They came to the ninth cell. There was no light in the cell – only the dim blue glow from the lamp in the corridor. LeBron could make out four walls, an exposed toilet, a floor mattress and nothing else.

  “This is home, kid,” the MP said.

  “Does my Dad know about this?”

  The MP gently pushed him in and closed the cell door behind him.

  *

  Speers stood next to Major Dobbs and gazed up at the tremendous, awe-inspiring monitors in the operations room. Touch-screen maps tracked real-time enemy troop movements worldwide. One showed an aerial view of a truck convoy tracked by satellite. A descriptive overlay read: YEMEN. SUSPECTED ALLIED JIHAD CONVOY. TARGET SPEED 46 MPH. CONFIDENCE 70%.

  Speers looked around in wonder. This place was a veritable Death Star. And it had been built right under their noses.

  Suddenly, General Wainewright’s talking head appeared on every monitor in the command room and every screen in the Rapture Run complex. “This is General Wainewright. We are now moving to DEFCON Two,” he said. “Fact: the last time we saw DEFCON Two? Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. The Soviets opened up torpedo tubes on us.”

  All work stopped. All eyes went to the General’s image onscreen. “Momentarily,” he continued over the internal broadcast system, “Martial law will be declared across the U.S. The last time that happened? 1865. The Civil War.”

  Wainewright signed off without further elaboration. Monitors cut back to normal. The Ulysses command personnel went back to their work without a word.

  Corporal Hammond came to fetch Speers and Dobbs. “You’re needed in the NCA meeting,” he said, referring to the National Command Authority. Dobbs again handed temporary CENTAF command to his junior officer and followed Corporal Hammond to a large conference room. Speers recognized many of those seated at the table. The Secretary of the Interior. The head of the House Foreign Intelligence Committee. Several high-ranking generals. The junior senators from Texas, Florida and Utah.

  Hammond pointed Speers and Major Dobbs to chairs at the back of the room.

  As Dex Jackson walked in, the brass stood and applauded. “Mister Secretary,” they said in near unison. Speers, who hadn’t yet heard of Dex’s surviving an assassination attempt, and who had only that morning advised the President of his possible role in weapons disappearances, wondered what the Defense Secretary had done to become so popular.

  The room got quiet as Dex sat in the lone remaining chair at the big boy’s table. Hammond closed the door behind him and, with a touch of a button, frosted the glass separating the conference room from the command center.

  Wainewright broke the ice: “Our condolences regarding your wife, Mister Secretary.”

  “Noted and appreciated,” Dex replied. “Is the POTUS en route?”

  Everyone looked to Wainewright, who broke the news: “It’s my solemn duty to inform you – and anyone else who hasn’t yet heard – that the POTUS has been killed.”

  The news hit Speers square in his chest. His stomach was empty, but he nevertheless felt the urge to vomit.

  “But the radio…” Dex said. “There was nothing about it on the radio.”

  “We’re delaying the news cycle,” Wainewright said. “The public only knows the half of it and people are already losing their shit.”

  Dex looked around the table. ”Where’s Number Two?” he said, meaning the Vice President.

  Again, the room turned to Wainewright, who said, “He was attacked in Wyoming.”

  Dex jerked upright, his chair clapping to the floor behind him. “Christ almighty! Will someone just tell me who’s in charge?”

  “We’re calling the shots,” Wainewright said coolly.

  Dex paced alongside the table. Speers wiped the perspiration from his brow in the suddenly close room. General Farrell lit a cigarette and offered the rest of his pack, but there were no takers amongst the obsessively fit, gum-chewing leadership. Speers took a lollipop from his pocket, unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth.

  “Get the Secretary of State on the phone,” Dex growled at Corporal Hammond. No sooner had the corporal picked up the wall-mounted phone than Speers took it from him and placed it back on the receiver.

  “The Secretary of State was born in Australia,” Speers said from the back of the room. “She’s not eligible to assume the Presidency.”

  Jackson stopped pacing and cast his full eyes onto Speers. “With all due respect, Chief, I’m of the opinion that your job died with the POTUS. You shouldn’t even be here.”

  Speers wasn’t having it. “Not so fast,” he said. “In the event of Presidential assassination, the President’s personal staff, including the Chief of Staff, remains intact until the succeeding Commander-in-Chief relieves them of duty.”

 
“Well I don’t mean to be presumptuous, Chief. But if the Secretary of State is ineligible, I’d say you’re looking at the new President.”

  “I’d like to challenge that,” Speers said. He stood and went to the whiteboard on the far side of the room. He grabbed a blue marker and wrote POTUS, with a flow chart arrow to the word VEEP. “The line of Presidential Succession is as follows...” he began as he illustrated an org chart several layers deep. “If the President is deceased, the Vice President ascends. If the Vice President is deceased, power falls to the House Speaker. Next in line, the President pro tempore – the late Senator Thomas.”

  Dex had no patience for this. “As we’ve heard, those four leaders are deceased. That means leadership falls to the Cabinet Secretaries.”

  “Right. But the order of ascension for Cabinet posts is State first, then Treasury...and then Defense.”

  General Wainwright looked like he had just taken a gut punch. Dex’s eyes turned a deeper shade of red. “Eva Hudson outranks me?”

  Speers drew a red circle around Eva’s place on the flow chart. “Yes sir,” he replied. “Looking at this in a historical context, you can see why. Until 2003, the Treasury Department was a fixture of National Security, directing both the Secret Service and NSA.”

  General Wainewright cleared his throat. “But that was before Homeland Security was created. The old line of succession doesn’t make a lick of sense now.”

  Dex wanted back into the debate. “Show me where in the constitution it says that Treasury trumps Defense,” he demanded.

  “It’s not in the constitution,” Speers replied. “The line of succession comes from an act of Congress, specifically President Truman’s Succession Act of 1947.”

  The room phone rang. Corporal Hammond put the receiver to his ear and answered in a low murmur. “Put me through to the President,” the shrill voice demanded. Hammond turned to the room. “Excuse me, gentlemen. As luck would have it, Treasury Secretary Hudson is on the line. Shall I put her on speaker?”

  “Negative,” General Wainewright said.

  Circling overhead, Eva Hudson was a passenger in a small Air National Guard helicopter whose pilot was searching desperately for the landing pad. “I’m tired, I’ve been shot at, I’m starving and generally annoyed that nobody bothered to tell the Security Council about the new Site R,” she complained to Corporal Hammond. “Transmit landing coordinates right now, Corporal!”

  Hammond turned again to the room and said, “Secretary Hudson is requesting permission to land, sirs.”

  “Tell her to hold,” Jackson said, feeling the dark joy that came with keeping the late POTUS’ girlfriend at bay.

  “Are you there?” Eva demanded.

  “Yes ma’am, I’m here,” Hammond replied into the phone.

  “Someone tried to kill me today, Corporal. I’m not in a patient mood.”

  “I’m doing everything I can,” Hammond said as the Joint Chiefs’ conversation swirled behind him.

  “Corporal,” Eva said, “I am a sitting member of the National Security Council! My secret service escort was recalled to Washington, and I practically had to hijack this aircraft to get here! I demand to know why I wasn’t informed of the new bunker location!”

  Hammond put the phone on mute and watched the debate around the eight-sided table. “With all due respect,” General Farrell said to the group, “during a time of war, I’m not inclined to take orders from a glorified banker.”

  “If it’s not in the constitution,” Dex interrupted, “then there’s wiggle room.”

  Speers wasn’t about to give in. “That would be for the Supreme Court to decide,” he argued.

  “We don’t have that kind of time,” Wainewright said.

  Hammond pointed at the ceiling. “Sirs,” he cut in. “Permission to light up the landing pad so that Secretary Hudson can land?”

  “Negative.” Wainewright snapped. “Divert her to Fort Campbell. We’ll be in touch.”

  FORT CAMPBELL

  10:25 p.m.

  Eva’s chopper landed amongst an expanse of identical battleship grey buildings. Like all U.S. military bases tonight, Fort Campbell was on alert. Even at this hour, armed troops walked the fenced perimeter in the distance.

  There was no welcome party. A lone officer wearing a short sleeve khaki utility uniform stood in the wet-hot Kentucky night. His hair was gray and his lips were pursed, and he was surprisingly pear-shaped for a former Green Berets. Had it not been for the brass birds on his lapels, Eva would have taken him for a career enlisted man.

  He held his hand out to shake hers. “Colonel William Madsen,” he said. “Garrison Commander. That means I run this place.”

  “Eva Hudson,” she said. “Treasury Secretary.”

  “You need no introductions,” Colonel Madsen drawled as he led her across the heliport to a modest single-story command post. “I’ve never met a celebrity,” he added, eyeing her in wonder. Eva had heard that one before, but she still hadn’t devised a polite reply. She just held her tongue.

  As they walked, Eva tried all the speed dials on her phone. The President wasn’t answering. Speers wasn’t answering. The Vice President wasn’t answering. Even her little sister wasn’t answering. She had only been able to raise her rather useless deputy secretary, who along with every other federal agency employee, had been told to stay away from the federal offices until the threat level slid back down to orange.

  They entered the command post and began down a hallway lined with framed photographs of past Garrison Commanders. “First time on a military base, Miss Hudson?” Colonel Madsen said.

  “Hardly.” As a child, Eva’s Air Force father had dragged her all over the world, but it wasn’t worth getting into with the Colonel. “And please address me as Madam Secretary.”

  “Fine, Madam Secretary,” he said. “Will you be needing an office?”

  “I’ll be needing much more than you have.”

  “I know you think you’ve been exiled to the boonies, but we think we’ve got some of the finest Intel resources in the armed forces.”

  Eva stopped. “Intel? I thought this was a combat training base.”

  “That’s what we’re known for. But last year we inherited some Army Intel brain trust from Fort Huachuca and now we’ve got the Feds working a joint op too.”

  “No offense, but why here?”

  “This is a bureaucrat-free zone. We focus one hundred percent on disrupting the enemy. Our people go out and execute. We’re players, not planners.”

  “Can I have a look?”

  Madsen pointed down the hall to the briefing room, where Agent Carver’s linguists were filing out into the hallway. “Couple feds are working on that Allied Jihad suicide tape.” Eva looked through the glass and recognized Agent Carver. Though she didn’t know him by name, she had seen him leaving the Oval Office with Julian Speers on at least two occasions.

  She stopped in her tracks at the sight of the tall, lanky man with dark hair and wire-rim glasses. Her arms were instantly covered in goose bumps that prickled to the point of being painful. She turned to Madsen. “Nico Gold.”

  “You oughtta be on a quiz show,” Madsen said. “World’s most notorious hacker, right here on the base. Not many people remember his case.”

  She cocked her head to read the twin tattoos on Nico’s forearms that read EVA. “I’d say he remembers me too.”

  *

  In the briefing room, the incredulous Agent Carver asked Nico to repeat himself for the third time.

  “This code you’ve been trying to crack,” Nico repeated as patiently as he could, “it’s not a code. It’s a language, y’see?”

  “No. I don’t see.”

  “Muskogee. A Native American language. An oral language. The thing is, nobody speaks it anymore. The actual tribe died out decades ago.”

  Carver’s face was suddenly full of malice. He stepped into Nico with both hands and lifted him by his shirt collar, throwing him back against a table. ”Yo
u knew what it was right off, didn’t you? Back in Virginia. You knew!”

  “How could I?” Nico said as he tried to fight Carver off. “You gave me those crappy transcripts, remember?”

  O’Keefe pushed her index and middle finger into a pressure point just below Carver’s right shoulder blade. His left arm suddenly dropped to its side. O’Keefe easily pulled him off, smiling at the perfect execution of a move she’d learned in her weekly jujitsu class.

  Carver smiled too, despite the lingering pain. O’Keefe had only been taking those classes for a few weeks.

  “You,” she chastised Carver, “behave!”

  She turned to Nico. “Now explain. Slowly. You said it’s an oral language?”

  “Was.The last survivor was coaxed into transcribing a phonetic version for archival purposes. No small feat. Muskogee is full of smacking sounds and tongue clicks and guttural sounds.”

  “Yet you claim that you can read it. Explain.”

  “Back then I was looking to develop a new programming language. Something spybots couldn’t recognize. I saw a writeup about Muskogee in a linguist’s community site. I ended up bribing a professor just to get a photocopy of it. Guess I wasn’t the only one in the world with that idea.”

  Carver’s left arm was still tingling from O’Keefe’s pressure point move. He rubbed his forearm back and forth, coaxing the feeling back into it. “Just tell us how this relates to the codes.”

  “Look, it’s an old trick. Some coder adopts an obscure tribal language with a completely alien syntax. Like when the Americans used Navajo against the Japanese in World War Two. The Japanese went the rest of the war trying to figure out this impossible code, which was really a Native American language with a sentence structure unlike anything they’d ever seen. Same idea here. You were busy cracking a code, when all you had to do was learn Muskogee.”