Line of Succession: A Thriller

by William Tyree

  “What’re you saying? The tape’s not authentic?”

  “I’m saying it wasn’t recorded lately.”

  “Well, you would know.”

  Eva glared at him. ”And that means what?”

  “I don’t buy the tabloids, but my wife does.”

  Eva imagined a scorpion’s tail rising up behind her. “As the highest ranking officer on base,” she said, “that’s the last time you’ll speak to me with disrespect.”

  “No offense, but you’re —”

  “Not military? Please. We know the Senator Pro Tem and Speaker of the House are dead. The Vice President is rumored to be crippled, and the Secretary of State is foreign born. That makes me, at the very least, the likely acting Vice President of the United States.”

  The Colonel broke off eye contact. “Hadn’t thought of that, Secretary…I mean Madam Vice President.”

  “Madam Secretary will do until we know more. Not a word of this leaks out.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Get your senior officers together at oh-six-hundred.”

  Fort Campbell Stadium Track

  4:05 a.m.

  Agent Carver woke in an empty office where he and Agent O’ Keefe had slept for three hours on matching cots. His mind quickly went into gear, flooding with leads that had to be investigated, politicos that wanted updates and bits of Muskogee that Nico had taught him the night before. It was all coming back too fast and too early. He needed to break a sweat. Get his thoughts in order. Organize.

  He opened his eyes and touched the outline of O’Keefe’s undershirt, then tapped her gently. “Hey,” he whispered. “Hey. You wanna go run some laps?”

  She rose up on her elbows and checked her watch. “Bastard.” She punched Carver in the arm and went back to sleep.

  Since converting O’Keefe from an NSA desk jockey to a field agent, he’d managed to talk her into weapons training, jujitsu classes and brisk walks. But he still couldn’t convince her to do any serious cardio.

  He put on his shoes and slipped out of the building, making his way across the dark commissary parking lot toward a stadium he had spotted from the transport plane window. The sliver of moon provided his only illumination. Carver arrived at the football field less than ten minutes later, and having no access to gym clothes, he stripped down to his boxers and folded his suit, tie, shoes and socks neatly on a bleacher.

  The feel of his feet against the track triggered a memory of the dirt road he had grown up on. A visceral memory of childhood was all it took to wrack Carver with guilt. It had been several weeks since he had called his parents. He was a bad son. Both were still living in Joseph City, a rancher’s town off I-40 in Arizona, where his father had operated a feed store for three decades. The relationship had never been the same since Carver had decided to leave the Mormon Church, ruining his parents’ vision of an afterlife where they were sealed for eternity as a family and would one day rule, like gods themselves, over their own private celestial kingdom. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in God, as Carver had tried to explain over breakfast at the Joseph City diner one morning. He just wasn’t sure that the LDS Church had gotten all the details right.

  His career in the CIA had not helped family relations. There had been long stretches of service overseas where he had been prevented from contacting any family members for fear of compromising his identity or whereabouts. Not that he was resentful. It came with the job.

  He picked up the phone and dialed the area code. He stopped himself. It was only 1:05 a.m. in Arizona. It was typical. He always seemed to be in an inconvenient time zone, calling at the worst possible time, or dropping home unannounced when his parents themselves were headed out of town.

  Shut off the mind chatter, Carver told himself. Just run. He began a fast clip around the quarter-mile track. A military transport plane flew low overhead as it came in for a landing on the airstrip a half-mile to the east. Its thunderous screech passed slowly, but completely, until the only noise was the sound of Carver’s bare feet against the track.

  As he ran, he replayed a single conversation with Julian Speers in his head. Several weeks ago, Speers had just drafted Carver and O’Keefe into the covert investigation of the apparent DOD arms smuggling. They were at the Chief’s house, where he had cooked some garlic-heavy spaghetti and meatballs. Speers and O’Keefe had downed three bottles of wine between them, leaving the very sober Carver to listen to their drunken ramblings.

  “Thailand has had seventeen military coups since World War Two,” Speers ranted. “Seventeen!” Thailand’s Prime Minister had been out of the country on vacation as tanks rolled through the streets of Bangkok. Those loyal to the PM had been quietly notified of the impending changes in their offices. Meanwhile the King, who had apparently given tacit approval for the takeover in advance, made no public statements. As Speers described it, the public had grown quite used to occasional military takeovers. “Why not here?” Speers raved.

  “Americans transfer power peacefully,” Carver had told him. “That’s what sets us apart from the developing world.”

  “Oh, grow up,” Speers slurred. “Twenty-five flag-draped coffins come home every week. President’s never fired a gun in his life. Military types didn’t vote for him in the first place, now they blame him for the quicksand. The SECDEF’s berating him publicly. He’s got a twenty-two percent approval rating. The market’s in the toilet. Dollar’s at half the Euro. Thirty-eight percent of the population thinks he should be impeached. Nine percent will actually admit to hoping he gets assassinated. Need I say more?”

  Insight into the extent of Speers’ political awareness wasn’t the only interesting thing that happened that night. He recalled walking O’Keefe back to the subway stop that night. He commented that the Chief of Staff had a dangerously free-ranging, undisciplined mind for someone in such a powerful position. O’Keefe, herself quite drunk, came to Speers’ defense, saying that he was only stating what everyone already knew – that the President was losing his grip on power, and if he didn’t step gracefully aside, Congress was going to do something about it. They began to argue. O’Keefe called him a narrow-minded puritan. He called her unpatriotic. She shouted something back. But by now he wasn’t listening. He was too consumed with how beautiful she was. He couldn’t stop watching her mouth.

  He kissed her. She kissed him back. Regret instantly washed over him. He broke their embrace as O’Keefe gazed up at him with a mischievous spunk that only her ex-boyfriends had known.

  “Look, Meagan…” It was the first and only time he had ever used her first name.

  “No,” she scolded him. “No first names. That’s rule number one.”

  “Rules?” he said, laughing. “You’re making up rules now?”

  “We have to maintain professional distance,” she teased. Then she kissed him again.

  “Last subway’s coming. You should get home.”

  “You should come with me.”

  He grinned. “We should be good.”

  “I’ll be good. I swear.”

  “That’s not what I mean. If we’re going to slip, let it be when you’re sober. And trapped in a government car on a stakeout somewhere.”

  “Surveillance sex?” she said, bursting into hysterics. “You want surveillance sex?”

  “No. I’ve just got a thing for cars. Government cars. That’s how patriotic I am.”

  She kissed him and backed away, slowly, giving him one last wave before heading down the escalator at Foggy Bottom Station. Carver’s soul felt a little lighter that night. He actually felt giddy.

  But by morning the feeling had given way to regret. He had cheated himself out of a rare chance to feel intimate with someone. Something he had needed for far too long.

  Now he finished his run, slowing to a walk for the last lap around the track. He didn’t bother to stretch. He put his suit back on and walked across the grass to the makeshift barracks to see if O’Keefe was awake yet.

  The memory of th
e night at the subway station filled him with a kind of music. All these weeks later, he could still taste her mouth on his. I could slip, he told himself. I could slip right now. The sky is falling, the world is coming undone, and I could slip.

  But back at the barracks, he found her sitting upright on her cot, holding her phone to her ear. O’Keefe’s mind was on business. She signed off brusquely and hung up.

  “That was the Bureau,” she said gruffly. “They found evidence in Faruq Ahmed’s home linking him to six other Allied Jihad cells in four cities. They’re making arrests right now.”

  Carver’s pulse quickened. This was unexpected. Nico’s assertion about the tape rang true with him. He didn’t believe Ahmed was who he said he was. And all those assassinations weren’t just the work of some crafty terrorist cells. There had to be an insider. “I need to see the evidence.”

  “That’s what I said. They’re saying our security clearance isn’t high enough.”

  “What? The wolf is at the door, and they’re going to quibble about security clearances?”

  She nodded. “They found another body. Some cop at a drag strip outside Monroe. They’re saying Ahmed was practicing there. They figure the cop was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  He sat down on his cot and thought for a moment. “They want us to back off, don’t they?”

  “Those weren’t his exact words.”

  “We’re resuming our end of this investigation. Screw the Bureau. We only answer to Julian now.”

  Rooftop, Baltimore, Maryland

  5:45 A.M.

  Elvir sat atop a five-story brownstone office building, watching McAlister Park through the scope of a sniper rifle. There were thunderheads on the horizon. He was sweating. It was too damn early to be this damn hot.

  He spotted Ali. His partner wore a white cap and came across the street to enter the park’s green space. Elvir switched his phone on and talked into the receiver fixed in Ali’s ear. “Twenty meters at two o’clock. See the van?”

  “Got it,” Ali replied.

  “Just get the money. If they invite you to go with them, walk away. Don’t say anything. I’ve got you covered.”

  Ali went to the van and knocked on the door. It opened. A man in a black jump suit and sunglasses sat inside. Elvir could hear the man’s voice through Ali’s Bluetooth. He sounded white.

  “This won’t do,” he said. “We hand the money off to Elvir directly. Take us to him.”

  “No,” Ali said. “I get the money here and now. That is the deal.”

  Elvir found the man’s face in the scope of his rifle. He wasn’t in uniform, but he had a jarhead haircut. He had big horse’s teeth. “Why don’t we go get some breakfast?” the man asked Ali. “Somewhere we can negotiate.”

  Just as Elvir has instructed, Ali turned to walk away, but the man grabbed him around the neck from behind and shoved a gun into his face. The click of the gun’s safety switch releasing was audible over the radio.

  “Tell me where Elvir is. I’ll make you rich. Or you can die. Your choice.”

  Elvir put pressure on the trigger of his sniper rifle, but he hesitated. Killing the man meant they might never see the last payment. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted two more men get up from park benches and walk towards the van. Why hadn’t he spotted them before?

  Ali saw them too. “Okay, okay,” he said. He was cracking. And they hadn’t even hurt him yet.

  No, Elvir thought. No, Ali. Don’t make me do this. Just stay still long enough for me to pick these guys off.

  Elvir found the man’s face again in the rifle scope. His finger found the rifle’s trigger. “It’s an apartment,” he heard Ali say. “Third floor.”

  There was no alternative now. He moved the scope one-eighth inch to the left. That was all it took to put Ali’s chest in the scope’s crosshairs. “I forgive you.” He took the shot, blowing a hole through Ali’s right lung. The armor-piercing bullet went straight through Ali’s slight 130-pound frame and into his attacker and through the van, lodging into one of the park’s mighty oak trees.

  Elvir’s second shot missed. He repositioned for a third, trying to target one of the other goons, but the familiar flash of an enemy muzzle stopped him. He ducked just as returning fire blew brick fragments into his eyes. The former Army sniper scrambled away from the roof’s edge, temporarily blinded, retracing his steps to the fire escape on the other side of the brownstone.

  Fort Campbell

  Carver hated meetings. Or at least the kind that he and O’Keefe had just been summoned to. It was always the same. A bunch of Washington bureaucrats wanted thousands of case hours boiled down into a 60-second oral report and a 200-page written report that would never be read. On the basis of that, the bureaucrats would make a decision that would affect the fate of the operation. Nine times out of ten, they ended up killing it.

  Eva Hudson was the new sheriff in town, and it seemed that she wanted to get her mitts on Carver’s investigation. There was no way that was going to happen. Julian Speers and the President had requested that the operation stay off-the-grid, and it was going to stay there until they said otherwise.

  He and O’Keefe made their way down the hallway toward Colonel Madsen’s conference room. They had spent all morning going over Nico’s assessment of the Muskogee translations. The news wasn’t good. They were dealing with a bunch of nameless suspects that had been careful not to give up their locations or contacts in any of their transmissions. Carver felt strongly that the key was finding the language geek who had taught them Muskogee in the first place. It wasn’t like Muskogee experts were a dime a dozen.

  His phone buzzed. It was Madison, the receptionist at the K Street office. “Madison,” he said. “How are you today?”

  “Terrible,” she said. “I’m all worried about what’s been going on. Couldn’t sleep. How are you, Mister Danforth?”

  Madison was still under the impression that Carver and O’Keefe were consultants. She had never asked what kind. She was young, unambitious, preoccupied with her social life, and completely uninterested in the services that the company performed for its clients. She was one of those people who just wanted to punch in and collect a paycheck and get health care. A perfect fit for a front company.

  “We’re on our way to a client meeting,” Carver told her as he winked to O’Keefe. “What’s up?”

  “I heard on the news that lots of companies are closed today because of the attacks. And I was wondering…”

  “Stay home,” Carver said. He was trying to be practical. And since the Georgetown field house had been compromised, he knew that they could expect a break-in on K Street as well. They wouldn’t find anything, but there was no reason to put Madison in harm’s way. “And don’t worry about coming in the rest of the week. We’re on the road anyhow.”

  “Uh, okay, but I don’t want to use up all my vacation time. I’ll still get paid, right?”

  For God’s sake. Carver was trying to save the country from further attacks and he had to worry about some receptionist’s paid time off. He had told Speers from the start that these elaborate dummy aliases were more trouble than they were worth.

  *

  The markets were due to open shortly. The Treasury Secretary walked with an attaché in one hand and her phone in the other. On the receiving end of Eva’s call was the Federal Reserve Chairman, who sat in an office high above the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, where nervous stock runners talked incessantly into cell phones to anxious brokers who feared the worst.

  This wasn’t the 72-year-old Fed Chair’s first rodeo, and he was predicting a massive sell-off that might send the already troubled economy into a tailspin.

  “Mister Chairman,” Eva said, “I think that if we can manage the message before the opening bell, the markets should open as usual.”

  “Eva,” the Fed chair countered, “in my neighborhood there was a line a hundred deep outside Bank of America. And that was at five a.m.”
/>   “And you think closing the markets will make them any more confident?”

  Eva knew that the President had fantasies about forcing the old man’s resignation, but the Chairman was an institution, having survived twenty-two years and four different administrations. Eva liked the old codger. He was a little conservative for her taste, but there was something to be said for someone who worshipped fundamentals. His favorite book remained Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, and to Eva’s mind, everyone needed a cynical old coot like that in their camp. If the Vice President was truly dead, God rest his hateful soul, Eva wished the President would call her and make her the Veep already. As the mere Treasury Secretary, her relationship with the Fed Chair was little more than one friend talking another down from a suicide jump.

  “If you close the markets,” she explained patiently, “and you cut people off from their investments, it’s only going to make it worse.”

  “How about early closure?”

  “No. Just listen to me. Call the major analysts. Get them to go on the networks advising a strong buy on any defense contractor and aerospace. You also pitch high-tech, natural resources, and precious metals.”

  “Those sound like protracted war investments. Are you trying to tell me something? Should I be thinking about war bonds?”

  “You must’ve seen the Allied Jihad tape by now,” Eva said. “If I know the President, he’ll open up another front on those barbarians before the week’s out. Point is, if we can get the talking heads invested in the idea that more fighting is good for the economy, we might avoid a crash today.”

  She hung up just as she entered Colonel Madsen’s conference room and sat at the head of a cheap fiber-board table. Colonel Madsen and his senior staff sat at her flank. The American flag, the Kentucky State flag and the Army flag hung in a row behind her.