Line of Succession: A Thriller

by William Tyree

  *

  Colonel Madsen took Eva to an office with wallpaper depicting bald eagles flying around snowcapped mountains. It contained a government-issue mahogany desk, a file cabinet and a computer docking station. Madsen nodded to a full-length couch against the wall with a set of blankets carefully folded at one end. “These are my old digs,” he said. “That couch will do for tonight, and we can get you a hotel off-base in the morning. “All I need tonight is an outside line,” she said.

  Madsen nodded toward the desk phone. “There ‘tis. You need anything else, I’m down the hall. I’ll be bunking in my office tonight in case more hell breaks loose.”

  Eva lifted the desk phone receiver and waited for the Colonel to exit. She dialed the Iranian Embassy in Washington. To her surprise, the Ambassador took her call despite the late hour.

  “Madam Secretary,” the Ambassador said, his British-accent indicative of his Cambridge University education. “I’m happy to hear you are alive and well. I was expressing my concern about your health to my colleagues.”

  How touching. Eva didn’t buy it for a minute. “Mister Ambassador, I was calling to get your perspective on your meeting this morning with the President.”

  The Ambassador was quiet for several moments. “Pardon?” he said. “Perhaps something is lost in translation…”

  “Camp David. This morning. You and the President were scheduled to meet.”

  “Madam Secretary, you have been misinformed. We have not yet had the honor of a Camp David invitation. To say such a thing is to rub salt in the wound.”

  “I meant no disrespect. I was just told that…”

  “You are incorrect. And if you will excuse me, we are following the developing military situation quite closely, and if I can say, with much approval.”

  The Ambassador hung up. Eva’s head mushroomed with questions.

  She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her mind. She imagined that her anxieties and unanswered queries were white noise, like static on an old terrestrial radio station. It was usually a matter of concentrating, very hard, and imagining herself turning off that radio. In these meditations, she sometimes had to turn the radio off a few times. Eventually she would think about nothing. After some time, she would cease thinking altogether.

  Tonight was different. The white noise was unbearable. It had only been this loud once before, after leaving the governor’s mansion to take the IMF job a few years back. That time she was unable to quiet her mind for days at a time. She ended up needing medication to take the edge off.

  She picked up the phone again and dialed her sister. The phone rang seven times. Finally her brother-in-law answered. He didn’t even ask if she was okay. He just started in with the questions.

  “Eva, what’s going on out there? Are there going to be more attacks? The news is saying maybe we should wrap the house in plastic in case of chemical attacks. Is there any truth to that at all?”

  Eva should have known. Nobody wanted to hear about her fears. Not even family. They had their own bitter little world to worry about.

  Rapture Run

  11:19 p.m.

  Chief Justice Stanford P. Dillinger entered Rapture Run in the same bewildering way that Speers had before him – driven blindfolded through West Virginia hill country, and then escorted into the retrofitted former coal mine on an underground subway. Unlike Speers, he had been permitted to bring a duffel bag with two changes of clothes, which he carried on a strap around his shoulder. Two Ulysses soldiers brought him past the enormous CENTCOM command room and to an isolated chamber. It was uncomfortably chilly. Nevertheless he sat alone at a plain folding table, soothing himself by stroking the enormous beard that hung like a gray fox’s tail from his chin.

  General Wainewright entered the room twenty minutes later. He sat opposite the Chief Justice and folded his hands before him as if to pray.

  “Your Honor,” Wainewright said. He regarded Dillinger’s jeans, wing tips and button down shirt. The country’s leading constitutional authority looked incredibly small without his black robes. “Can we get you some tea or coffee? Maybe something to eat?”

  “Don’t gimmie this gimcrackery,” the 85-year-old Dillinger said. He looked like a doddering old man, but his mind was sharp. “The President should have made a statement by now, and the networks are spewing disinformation. Cut the crap and tell me how bad it is.”

  Wainewright nodded. “All right then. A series of coordinated terrorist strikes have effectively beheaded our country’s senior leadership and disrupted the continuity of government.”

  The Chief Justice absorbed this for less than two seconds, the scowl on his face unchanging. “That’s the most deliberately obtuse bullshit I’ve ever heard. Just tell me who’s dead and who’s alive.”

  “Suffice to say, we’ll need you to swear in the next President of the United States within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

  Dillinger pounded a scrawny white fist on the table. “Are you dense? I’m asking you for names, General.”

  Wainewright bristled, but managed to stay professional. “We’ve managed to maintain the National Command Authority, but due to the security situation, the planned model of Presidential succession just won’t meet the country’s needs.”

  The Chief Justice shook his head. “I’m getting the impression that you brought me here to bless military control of the country.“

  “Rest assured, the next POTUS will be a civilian,” Wainewright assured him. “A sitting cabinet member. You have my word.”

  “More bullshit. The fact that you won’t name this mythical future leader is most disconcerting. Yes, most disconcerting indeed. Sounds like a black market auction, with the job going to the highest bidder.”

  “Presidential succession isn’t a constitutional matter,” Wainewright said, aping what he’d heard Speers say earlier.

  “If you’re going to flagrantly disrespect the laws this country has created, why are you wasting my time?”

  Wainewright grinned. He thrived on this type of banter. Especially when he held all the cards. “You’re the high priest, sitting in your temple of truth and justice with your fellow disciples. People respect you. If we’ve got any hopes of keeping the country together, I need you to swear in the new President.”

  Dillinger considered his options. The General was technically right. The Presidential Succession Act had come out of Congress, not the Constitution, and as of now, the Legislative Branch had no say over who took the throne. And if the situation was as bad as the General suggested, there could be riots, economic failure, anarchy. He had no intention of taking orders from the military, but on the other hand, if the High Court refused to participate in the process, they’d be permanently weakened. If anything, withdrawing the Court from the process might further fuel the country’s burgeoning police state.

  “A sitting cabinet member,” Dillinger repeated.

  “Yes your Honor.”

  Dillinger knew that this was the very kind of back room deal that changed civilizations. He only hoped that this was the lesser of two evils. “I’d make you swear on a stack of Bibles, but everyone in Washington knows you’re an atheist.”

  Wainewright laughed, took Dillinger’s hand and shook it. He had just cut the second most important deal of his career; The first had been persuading President Hatch to give him authority over Ulysses contracts.

  *

  Corporal Hammond led Dex Jackson down a low, dark corridor, lit with blue LED lamps, that reminded him of the nuclear submarine that he had served on after his graduation from Annapolis.

  Hammond stopped and opened a small door to his right, which was much better lit.

  “I’m afraid these are your quarters, sir. It’s not much, but I’ll get you some clean clothes.”

  Dex went inside, regarded the four walls, bunk, the small desk with a chair on either side, the video screen and the airplane-sized bathroom. He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. He was exhausted, but fo
r the first time in his life, he feared sleep. Dex knew that when he closed his eyes, he would see his wife Angie flailing in the Atlantic.

  “Dex,” someone said. It was General Wainewright, standing in the doorway. “Got a sec?”

  The room seemed much smaller as the General shut the door behind him and sat in the plastic desk chair. Dex had never been alone with the General, and he was awed by how much oxygen his presence seemed to require. The four stars on each shoulder of Wainewright’s uniform did not seem nearly enough.

  “I’m concerned about LeBron,” Wainewright said without preamble. “He’s blaming you for Angie’s death.”

  Dex thought on this. “Well of course he is.”

  “That’s between you and your conscience. Bottom line, we can’t let him go on record saying you left Angie for dead.”

  We can’t let him go on record. Dex thought about that statement for a few seconds. He didn’t understand who the General meant by “We” – the Joint Chiefs? The Pentagon? And Dex took offense at anyone but him trying to parent his child. Still, this was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs he was talking to. And for now, Wainewright seemed positively Czar-like. America didn’t know it, but Wainewright was running the country from a secret bunker that he didn’t even know the coordinates of, and he could do anything he wanted. This was no time to pick a battle.

  “Don’t worry,” Dex said. “I’ll talk to LeBron.”

  “Do yourself a favor,” Wainewright said. “Let him sleep it off. Then let the chaplain or the staff psychologist have a crack at him. You’ll have your hands full here with us.”

  Wainewright slapped Dex on the back and stepped into the corridor, where he spotted the glowing cherry of General Farrell’s cigarette. He grabbed the smoke from Farrell’s mouth and stomped it into the floor. “Don’t be such a dinosaur,” he chastised him.

  They walked down the four-foot wide corridor single file. As always, Wainewright walked in front. He had been one year Farrell’s senior at West Point, and had remained one step ahead of him his entire career. The nation’s second-most powerful military man was happy in his friend’s shadow. Farrell regarded himself as merely a great military mind, but thought Wainewright to be a true visionary, as evidenced in the way he had deftly outmaneuvered the President and DOD to feed Ulysses USA, his very own private army. Over the next week, they would have their chance to return America to its former greatness.

  “The Allies are demanding communication with the POTUS,” Farrell said. His voice was raspier than usual from shouting orders in the command room.

  “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 o
nly 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.”