Line of Succession: A Thriller

by William Tyree

  “Maintain speed,” Carver told him. “Focus on the mission.”

  They rounded a corner and came upon a mob scene. Looters were carrying TVs out of the shattered front window of a large electronics store. Carver counted at least twenty men and women helping themselves to the latest in home theater equipment.

  “Keep driving,” Carver insisted.

  But Private Scott braked. “All due respect,” he said, “We’re under martial law. We should get busy on these assholes.”

  “Nobody shoots,” Carver said into his radio. He turned to the private. “Now get this convoy moving before somebody does something dumb.”

  Two shots rang out from the second Hummer. Carver flinched and crouched out of instinct. Then he recognized the sound of the M4. Damn. It was one of theirs.

  He unfurled and peered out the window. One of the looters was down on the pavement, clutching his leg. Blood pooled all around him.

  The other looters dropped their wares and fled on foot up the street. Carver reached into his holster and took out his SIG. He levered a round into the chamber and got out and walked to the second Hummer. Twenty yards behind him, the wounded man screamed in agony. Blood streaked the sidewalk as he pulled himself with his hands up the fractured concrete sidewalk.

  Carver kept his attention on the Green Berets inside the vehicle. Viper Squad was a frightfully unified fighting machine. Each assumed an identical posture – assault rifles across their laps at matching angles, eyes locked on Carver, mouths stretched tight and expressionless. Only the plume of bluish rifle smoke lingering alongside the rear driver’s side of the vehicle gave the shooter away.

  Sergeant Hundley sat at the rear driver’s side window. Carver leveled his gaze at him. “Sergeant Hundley?” he said. Hundley did not respond. For Carver, that was as good as a confession. “Step out,” Carver said as the wounded man’s screaming echoed throughout the near desolate street. Hundley unfolded himself from the cramped Hummer. Carver snatched the soldier’s M4 and slung it over his shoulder. He pushed his SIG underneath the Sergeant’s chin, stripped his grenade belt away with a quick jerk, and then stepped back to a safe distance. “Empty your clip,” he said. He pointed to the sidearm that Hundley kept in the pocket of his cargo pants.

  Hundley obeyed without question. He had seen Agent Carver at work with enemy prisoners in Afghanistan. He had learned then that the ex-CIA agent had a highly quantitative mind that, in fractions of a second, weighed the eventualities of any action and followed the path with the most upside. He would not hesitate to kill one person if he could save two.

  “You gonna shoot me?” Hundley asked.

  The looters had gathered about a hundred yards up the street, and the size of the mob had grown. The early morning shadows were still dark enough for Carver’s eyes to play tricks on him, but he thought he saw weapons in their hands – guns, bats, tire irons, bottles.

  “You disobeyed a direct order,” Carver said.

  “Yessir,” Hundley replied. “I don’t like thieves.”

  “I like riots even less. The way I figure this, I can either demonstrate that your actions are not condoned by the United States government, or a lot more people end up dead.”

  The mob kept their distance, but they began screaming out for vengeance. It was the first time Carver had ever seen the Sergeant scared. “Sir? What are you going to do?”

  “You once told me you ran a 4.4 fifty yard dash,” Carver said. “For your sake, I hope you were telling the truth.”

  He left the Sergeant unarmed on the sidewalk and climbed back into the lead Hummer. Private Scott reluctantly stepped on the gas.

  Over West Virginia

  5:55 a.m.

  The Blackhawk chopper Major Dobbs had appropriated at Rapture Run enjoyed clear morning skies as it clipped along at 2200 feet. With all commercial air travel grounded, they had the skies to themselves. But Dobbs wasn’t aboard to enjoy the view. From his seat behind the pilot, Dobbs eyed the instrument panel and saw that the directional was pointing northeast.

  Speers’ knuckles were bone white as he gripped an exposed piece of the chopper’s frame. The Chief of Staff’s only other helicopter flights had been with President Hatch aboard Marine One. It was like going from a luxury cruise ship to a jet ski.

  “Mister Speers,” Major Dobbs said suddenly, “I’m about to give the pilot the details of our itinerary. Please pay close attention.”

  Speers looked to Dobbs just in time to see him leveling his .45 automatic at the base of the pilot’s neck.

  Speers shouted “No!” at the exact instant that Dobbs pulled the trigger. The bullet entered the pilot’s cerebellum and exited his left eye socket and ricocheted off the chopper’s steel framing. Multi-colored giblets of brain, bone and blood splattered across the front glass.

  The old Julian Speers would have hyperventilated or thrown up. Now, after all he had seen in the past two days, his primary instinct was merely to stay alive. He immediately overcame the shock of the Lieutenant’s sudden execution as the pilotless chopper began to pitch slightly. He looked around the cabin in hopes of spotting a parachute.

  Dobbs, however, had no plans to bail out. He had started his career thirty years earlier as a helicopter pilot, had flown combat missions in a Huey attack chopper during the invasion of Grenada, and despite moving into an administrative role in CENTAF’s air traffic command, he had still managed to log a few dozen flying hours each year. Now he learned forward from the back seat and took the chopper’s control stick in one hand. Then he half-climbed onto the dead pilot’s lap, unfastened the corpse’s safety harness and pushed the body against the door. The pilot’s dead weight carried itself out. Dobbs resisted the urge to watch the body fall to earth.

  He could hardly see out the windscreen. “Gimmie your tie,” Dobbs said. Speers untied his half-Windsor and handed it to the Major, who used it to wipe the pilot’s spatter from the glass.

  “Okay there, Chief?” Dobbs said.

  Speers found his voice. “I’d like to know why you’re helping me.”

  “Rapture Run was starting to feel a lot like Jonestown,” Dobbs replied. “And if there’s two things I can’t stomach, it’s murdered congressmen and poisoned Kool-Aid.” Speers couldn’t argue with that. “Our pilot was circling back to Rapture Run,” Dobbs went on. “We’re officially AWOL during martial law, and that makes us targets, Chief. I am prepared to kill any treasonous, Ulysses-loving SOBs that get in our way.”

  The Major pushed the stick forward. The chopper descended toward the tree line. Speers drummed his fingers nervously on his legs.

  “Now then,” Dobbs said. “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble so that you could make a phone call. I think it’s time you make it.”

  Speers pulled the phone out of his pocket, powered it up and found Eva Hudson’s mobile number in his contact list.

  Fort Campbell

  The Federal Reserve Chairman’s head looked enormous on Eva’s monitor. His 72-year-old chrome dome twittered ever so slightly as he jawed at length about the financial implications of the crisis. “I hope you can convince the President to act on this pronto,” the Chairman yelped over video chat. “His predecessor was granted certain emergency powers that he shouldn’t be shy about using.”

  She didn’t have the stomach to tell the Chairman that she hadn’t spoken to the President since the church bombing in Monroe, and that she didn’t know a soul who had. “I’ll do my best, Mister Chairman.”

  Colonel Madsen abruptly opened Eva’s office door. “Chief of Staff Julian Speers is on line one.”

  Eva didn’t have to be told twice. “Mister Chairman, I apologize. Call you back.” She cut the video feed and picked up the phone. “Julian?”

  “Eva, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  It was good to hear Julian’s voice too. But there was only one thing on Eva’s mind. “Is the President with you?” she said. “He hasn’t returned my calls.” Eva heard a familiar whirring in the background. “Chief?
I hear rotors. Are you on Marine One?”

  “Eva,” Speers began with a foreboding tone, “This isn’t easy for me to say…” Speers choked up, unable to speak.

  So it was true. Eva had suspected as much from the moment she saw the emergency tape. She felt the tears coming, but she couldn’t let herself go there. She resolved to hold herself together. There was no time for grieving. Not now. There was a leadership vacuum. She had to find out the details and act on them. “How did it happen?” Eva said.

  Speers relayed the story that Major Dobbs had told him, and then offered his speculation that Marine One’s flight plan randomizer had been rigged ahead of time. It was the only theory that made sense. The signal dropped before Eva could respond.

  She took out the bottle of Ativan. She took the other half of the pill she had ingested earlier and calmly swallowed it.

  Eva sat for a moment, absorbing what she had heard. Not a surprise. But a blow nevertheless. The biggest blow.

  She looked at the Ativan bottle. Taking it had been a mistake, she decided. She needed a clear head. The fog might numb the pain a little, but it wouldn’t fix anything.

  Eva pulled the wastebasket close to her, leaned over it, and stuck her right index finger down her throat. Her gag reflex kicked in immediately. The anti-anxiety pill and what remained of last night’s dinner came out with force, filling the bottom two inches of the trash can.

  She sat up, reached calmly for a Kleenex and wiped the corners of her mouth. Then she dropped the rest of the pills in the garbage. There would be no more crutches today.

  Baltimore

  Four short minutes after Carver had left the unarmed Sergeant Hundley as a sacrifice to the city’s vengeful looters, the Viper Squad convoy pulled within two blocks of the Hamilton Arms. A figure in jogging shorts and a blue hoodie emerged from a parked car and approached the lead Humvee. Carver rolled down his window.

  “Nobody’s been in or out since three a.m.,” the man said. He was CIA case officer Celon Wise. Carver had only last night picked Wise out of a CIA directory in hopes of finding someone local to stake out the Hamilton Arms. To Carver’s surprise, Wise was better than just local. He had a high school acquaintance that was a super in the building next door, so he had been able to set up an observation post without any problems.

  Wise pulled the hood back, revealing the speckled charcoal complexion and left-veering nose that Carver recognized from his agency profile photo. “Tin foil’s on the back windows,” he went on. “I counted four people in the thermal goggles.”

  “Any weapons?”

  “The three men have assault rifles. But they’ve got a lady in there with ‘em. Pretty sure she’s not there by choice.”

  Carver switched on his radio. “All units, we have a possible hostage situation. Use discretion.”

  Sergeant Hundley’s second-in-command responded from the second Hummer. “Interrogative, Agent Carver: what is the definition of discretion?”

  “It means don’t shoot an unarmed woman,” Carver said. “And be careful with other residents that might be coming out of the building. Thanks to Sergeant Hundley, we missed our strike window. Curfew just ended.”

  Celon Wise donned his hood and got back into his car. Viper Squad scrambled from the Humvees and proceeded toward the building. “Unit one, cover the building's rear entrance. Unit two secures the lobby. Nobody gets in or out. Unit three’s with me.”

  Carver led his troops into a lobby that had last been redecorated in the 1980s. A few elderly residents sat reading in pleather chairs. Others were playing poker around a glass coffee table. Their eyes got big when Carver entered with his armed-to-the-teeth Special Forces unit. Two Green Berets split off immediately, securing the lobby at both ends.

  “Hey fella,” an old man said. His dyed black hair was swept back tightly against his head. Carver could smell the shoe polish from several feet away. “You're here for those jerks in 309, yeah? I called the cops days ago.”

  Carver went to the table. “What’s going on in 309?”

  “Rough lookin’ C-U-Next-Tuesdays. Last week they were carrying these long gym bags, like they was going to play lacrosse or something. But I saw the outline of a gun stock pressed up against the fabric of the bag. They was carrying rifles, all right. And I know there ain’t no hunting season in August.”

  “We’ll check it out.” Carver addressed all the residents. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry about this, but you need to get some fresh air right now.”

  “Like hell,” the old man said. “Ulysses shot up a handful last night. Saw it on the Internet.”

  “Curfew’s over,” Carver said. “And trust me on this – you’ll be much safer outside than in here.”

  The residents got up – some of them with great difficulty – and made their way to the front doors. Carver took two Green Berets with him up the stairwell and left four to cover the lobby.

  *

  Chris Abrams pulled his unmarked Humvee alongside the other two sitting down the street from the Hamilton Arms. The four men in Abrams’ crew were eager to get out. Two stood on lookout as the others began inspecting the other vehicles. “They’re from Fort Campbell,” one of them said. “You figure they’re here on patrol?”

  “Not a chance,” Abrams said. “These things didn’t drive themselves all the way from Kentucky. And the Army wouldn’t just airdrop any unit’s vehicles into Baltimore.”

  The four men in Abrams’ crew had already added it up in their heads. “Twelve Green Berets,” one of them calculated, “versus five of us.”

  “Like those odds,” Abrams said as he opened a protein drink. After shooting down Marine One and personally assassinating the leader of the free world, Abrams equated himself with Iron Man and the rest of his crew as slightly lesser, but still lethal, superheroes. So far, their engagements on U.S. soil had been vastly easier than anything they had been asked to do in North Africa or Iraq. They were careful to always maintain the element of surprise. The constant intermingling of corporate defense contractors such as Ulysses and the traditional armed forces had nearly wiped out any suspicions that might have existed previously.

  He parked the Hummer right behind the others, so that the vehicles looked to be part of the same convoy. The crew readied their weapons and approached the building on foot. Now it was time to divulge the details of the mission to his crew.

  Abrams pulled three photographs of Angie Jackson from his pocket and handed them to the men.

  “She goes by Angie,” Abrams explained. “Make sure she’s dead. We’ll take the body with us.”

  “What if she’s in pieces?”

  “We’ll vacuum her up if we have to. Don’t leave a single scrap of DNA.”

  *

  In Apartment 309, Angie Jackson sat in the living room propped up against two floor pillows. Her ankles and wrists were duct-taped together and the television had been her only companion for hours. The pundits on TV, a pair of retired Generals who had once served under General Wainewright, paraded on-and off-screen like a couple of buffoons trained to recite from the same script. “The foreign press wants you to believe these strikes in Yemen are somehow reckless or without justification. But let's recap what we know about Yemen. First off, it's long been a harbor for terrorists. Second, the government has been openly sympathetic to extremism.”

  Elvir entered the room looking like he had just woken from a too-short nap. He had large puffy circles under his eyes. An M4 was strapped around his shoulder.

  “I gotta pee,” Angie told him.

  “When don’t you have to pee?”

  He sighed and helped her to her feet.

  “I can’t feel my fingers and toes,” she complained.

  He used a kitchen knife to cut the duct tape around her wrists and ankles and walked behind her to the bathroom. They passed the apartment’s lone bedroom, where two men slept on a floor mattress snuggling machine guns like teddy bears.

  Angie went into the sparse, windowless bathroom
and shut the door behind her. She stooped to look under the door to see if Elvir was waiting outside. As evidenced by his boots, he was. She turned the sink faucet on full and opened the medicine cabinet as quietly as she could. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to find – something sharp, maybe– but the cabinet was empty. Deflated, she sat on the commode and peed and, when she realized that she had to do much more than just urinate, noticed that the toilet paper roll was gone. In its place, a magazine with several pages ripped out rested sadly on the vanity. She dreaded the feel of the glossy pages against her bottom.

  She mindlessly tapped her feet, a habit she had picked up as a child when her mother taught her how to make sure her feet didn’t fall asleep on the toilet. Then she felt it – something cool and round grazing the ball of her foot.

  *

  In apartment 209, the unit directly below 309 where Elvir Divac held Angie Jackson, Agent Carver stood on a living room table. He used a whisper-quiet drill with a two-foot masonry bit to bore a quarter-inch hole in the ceiling between the two apartments. He had not needed the masonry bit after all. The ceiling was impossibly thin and the insulation was non-existent.

  209’s residents sat on a loveseat in the corner watching him work. Like many other elderly couples, they were too broke to move out of the crime-infested building. Carver had urged them to go downstairs, where they would presumably be out of the line of fire, but they had insisted on keeping an eye on their possessions.

  Carver inserted a 20-inch fiber optic probe into the hole. Then he attached a small viewfinder to the end. By twisting the probe in a circular motion, he saw the entirety of 309’s living room. The apartments’ floor plans were identical. Carver saw the newscast on the TV in the living room and circled the probe around slowly. The room looked empty.