Line of Succession: A Thriller

by William Tyree

  “Eva!” a voice called out as she was about to enter the car. It was Dex Jackson. A Secret Service agent was holding him at the base of the Memorial steps.

  “Let him through,” Eva said.

  Speers’ hands balled up into fists as Dex cut through the semi-circle of Secret Service agents and came toward them. He was sporting a nasty bruise on his jaw from Dex’s sucker punch earlier in the day. But as he got closer, Speers looked in the SECDEF’s eyes. He was broken up inside.

  “Where’s Angie?” Dex said.

  “On her way to Bethesda.”

  McClellan didn’t like the looks of the Ulysses troops organizing just thirty or so yards away. “Madam President, we have to move now!”

  The four of them – Eva, Dex, Speers and McCellan – piled into the back of the Beast. The motorcade proceeded down Constitution Avenue in the opposite direction of the White House. Without the usual legions of security, throngs of curiosity seekers were free to run alongside the limo and peer through the veil of deeply tinted glass.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” Eva said.

  “We’re not going to the White House,” Speers said.

  “Someone care to tell me why?”

  “Because they’ll kill you,” Dex cut in, talking over Speers. “Ulysses is shoring up positions around the Mansion.”

  The glow of accomplishment fell from Eva’s face. “I’ll have you hung for your part in this.”

  “No,” Dex said. “You won’t. You need me.”

  “Madam President,” Speers interrupted, “I propose that we head to NBC studios. I think we need to go on camera and tell the country what’s happening.”

  Again, Dex cut in. “We’re way past the media war. This is a military coup. They only understand force. And without me, you’ve got none.”

  Eva frowned. “And I suppose I’m supposed to beg for your help?”

  “Grant me full immunity and I’ll start calling the Pentagon brass right now.”

  The Tunnels

  11:27 a.m.

  Agents Carver and Rios walked through the amber-lit subterranean corridor linking the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. They went single file, with Carver in front, as the tunnels were no wider than four feet in this stretch.

  From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Carver had been among the first to notice the Ulysses troops melting away from the National Mall. Seconds later his phone buzzed in his hand – a text message from Haley Ellis telling him that Ulysses was marching up 17 Street NW toward the White House.

  “A military dictatorship?” Rios said in disbelief. “The public wouldn’t stand for it.”

  Carver knew the opposite to be true. “Everyone thinks that we’ve been brought to our knees by Islamic terrorists,” he reminded Rios. “A lot of people will think a military man is just what the doctor ordered.”

  The tunnel portal opened to a private bunker some 100-feet below the West Wing. The main room featured an open floor plan and a dozen single beds separated by yellow shoji screens. Against the far wall, a private office was stocked with computers and communications equipment. The near wall was stacked to the ceiling with shelves full of MREs and emergency medical kits.

  “The First Family’s personal shelter,” Rios explained. “They call it Camelot.”

  “They wouldn’t head for Raven Rock?”

  “Get real,” Rios said. “If the Allied Jihad got themselves a couple of submarines and started launching nukes off the coast, there’d be no time to go anywhere but here.”

  Carver’s mind was on the hundreds of Ulysses troops heading toward the White House Complex. “Any weapons?”

  Rios led Carver to a weapons locker, revealing a half-dozen standard M4 carbines. Carver couldn’t hide his disappointment at the slim pickings. He slung one of the carbines over his shoulder. “Anything high-impact? RPGs? C-4? Grenades?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Then we’ll have to get organic,” Carver said.

  Rios raised an eyebrow. “We’re not here to fight, are we?”

  Carver shook his head. “No, Hector. We are here to destroy.”

  The way Carver figured it, the White House – and specifically the Oval Office – was like the Sword in the Stone. Anyone that possessed it would suddenly inherit unimaginable powers that were only safe in the hands of a legitimately elected Chief Executive. Carver was still old enough to remember what came after the fall of the Soviet Empire. Mikhail Gorbachev had been a prince among world leaders. Idolized. Worshipped around the world. Then one day Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank in front of the Kremlin, and a couple hours later found himself in Gorby’s old office getting drunk and fielding congratulatory calls from Gorbachev’s old friends. It wasn’t that anyone liked him all that much. They were just afraid of him.

  17th Avenue

  11:31 a.m.

  Haley Ellis stood on the Eisenhower Building rooftop with a pair of binoculars. The midday sun beat down on Ulysses troops pouring in from every direction. They had effectively surrounded the Executive Mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue between 15th and 17th Streets, and had cut off the intersection of 17th and New York Avenue as well. Bradleys fortified their positions in the Ellipse, also known as the President’s Park – fifty-two acres of public green space adjacent to the White House’s South Lawn. Ellis counted at least four hundred armed soldiers and fifteen Bradleys so far.

  Her headset buzzed. It was FBI Director Chad Fordham. “Just got off the phone with your boss,” Fordham said, referring to the NIC Director. “You wouldn’t believe the rumors flying around.”

  “All true,” Ellis replied. “The question is what we’re going to do about it.”

  “Do about what? I just received an explainer fax from the Pentagon. It says Ulysses has a contract to protect the Capitol during martial law.”

  Did she really have to spell it out? “They’re not there to protect anyone,” Ellis snapped. The FBI Director was silent on the line. Ellis took this as encouragement. “Mister Director, we have somebody inside the White House. You need to hear it from him.”

  *

  The scent of spoiled meat permeated the West Wing kitchen. A row of salads had been left on the countertops in mid-preparation. Flies buzzed around a piece of cut blood sausage. Hundreds of tiny bugs swarmed over a vat of creamed corn that looked about as appetizing as a bucket of vomit.

  “Looks like the staff was expelled in a hurry,” Carver whispered.

  Rios nodded. “Just like Mary said.”

  He opened the door to the Butler’s Pantry. “Let’s see if anyone’s home.” Once upon a time, the Butler’s Pantry had been stocked with the President’s favorite foods and wines. In the late 2000s, it had been transformed into a security monitoring room full of surveillance video cameras and corresponding remote controls for each. Except for bedrooms and the Oval Office itself, there was virtually no nook or cranny in the White House that couldn’t be seen from the pantry.

  Rios powered up the system and began scrolling through hundreds of camera views. Carver’s phone buzzed. It was Ellis. “I’m conferencing you with FBI Director Fordham,” she said.

  Carver didn’t have time to ask questions. He closed the pantry door and spoke in a quiet but stern voice, explaining that Ulysses had surrounded the White House in advance of a military takeover, and that within the hour, General Wainewright would be in the Oval Office. “The first thing we have to do,” Carver explained, “is convince Ulysses that they’re not going to get out of this without a fight.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Fordham said. “You want me to commit FBI agents to fight our own people?”

  “Not people,” Carver asserted. “A rogue corporation that’s acting against the interests of the United States.”

  Director Fordham was silent for a few seconds. “Call it what it is. You’re talking about killing Ulysses employees,” he said. “That means killing Americans.”

  Carver realized the magnitude of what he was asking. The FBI had managed
to lose fewer than fifty agents in the line of duty during the Bureau’s entire history. It had done that, in part, by sticking to its core mission, and that mission didn’t typically involve urban combat. But the stakes were higher now than they had ever been. “Call it what you will,” Carver said. “But if you don’t help us, there won’t be a White House to defend. And that’s a promise.”

  “That sounds like a threat.”

  “It’s a vow. If the rightful President can’t occupy this house, then nobody will.”

  The Director sighed heavily. “Look, I’m not sure how many agents are even on the premises right now. Maybe a hundred.”

  “It’s a start.”

  “Ulysses has heavy weapons. How are we supposed to deal with that?”

  FBI Headquarters – otherwise known as the J. Edgar Hoover Building – was only a few blocks away. Carver had only been there once, in the mid-90s, to see a weapons demonstration the agency put on to attract recruits. The demonstrators had pulled guns from a large cache of confiscated criminal weaponry, including a large number of assault rifles that had been taken from gangs, terrorists, Mafia families and militias throughout the ages. He had even laid eyes on one of Al Capone’s Tommy Guns.

  “You still have that gonzo criminal weapons collection?” Carver asked.

  “It’s still there,” Fordham confirmed.

  “Open the entire collection up to any field agents that are willing to fight. Let them choose their weapon and all the ammo they can carry. Then get your people on the rooftops along 17th Avenue and start picking off these corporate knuckle-draggers.”

  Carver hung up. Behind him, Agent Rios toggled through screen after screen of surveillance cameras. “Cavalry coming?” Rios said hopefully.

  “You’re not off the hook yet. Let’s move.”

  “Five minutes,” Rios said. Mary had said that LeBron Jackson was being held in the White House. The kid’s life was in jeopardy because of him. No way was he torching this place with an innocent inside. But he had nearly exhausted the six stories, 132 rooms, thirty-five bathrooms and eight staircases covered by surveillance.

  Finally, Rios detected movement on the camera. “There,” he whispered. “Second floor. The residences.”

  The camera zoomed in on two Ulysses soldiers sitting in chairs outside one of the bedrooms. They had pulled an antique side table between them and were playing a game of Hearts.

  “Bored-silly babysitters,” Carver quipped.

  “The kid’s gotta be in that room.”

  Rios stood. Carver pushed him back down. “I’ll go,” Carver said.

  “There’s two of them.”

  “Let me worry about them. You know this place better than anyone. Figure out how to blow it up.”

  Burlington, North Carolina

  11:39 a.m.

  As Madge snoozed in the bedroom, Nico watched MSNBC’s coverage of the events in Washington turn ugly. A camera crew had been booted off the top of the Treasury Building by hostile Ulysses troops. A reporter had fallen to his death.

  Nico was no fan of Eva Hudson, but the idea of enduring Ulysses’ brand of military rule was unbearable.

  He set to work on the Ulysses USA firewall.

  Less than five minutes went by. Bingo. He received a pixel flare from a slave machine within Ulysses’ headquarters confirming that the hack was successful.

  So he was in. Now what? It wasn’t like he had time to develop some killer malware that would wreak major havoc in their mobile combat systems. Nico knew nothing about the security giant’s internal operations. He needed someone to tell him how to throw a wrench into the machine.

  “Nico?” Madge’s disappointed voice floated up behind him.

  Nico spun around in his chair and absorbed the reality of Madge in the morning. Tracks of dried drool caked the corners of her mouth. Hair pulled back into an unflattering bun. She wore the bed comforter as a makeshift robe.

  “How’d you sleep, sweetie?” Nico managed. He backed his chair up against the monitor in hopes of obscuring the screen. But Madge had already seen enough to know what he was up to. “Madge,” he began backpedaling, “Babe, I can explain this.”

  Her disappointment morphed into palpable anger. “Nico, I told you to wake me if the old urges came back. This is my house! This is God’s house! I can’t have this in here!”

  “God?” Nico said. “Madge, you’re wrong. God would totally approve of what I’m doing. Can you please sit down? Please?”

  She sat at the dining table. “I didn’t listen to the radio in the car yesterday,” she started. “I didn’t want to know why you were out. I wanted to believe.”

  “I’m legitimately out of jail,” Nico said, “and that’s the truth. I’m just not legitimately out of custody.” Madge sobbed. “Sweetie, just listen, please. I made a deal with two intelligence agents right after the bombing in Monroe.”

  “From what country?”

  “What country? Ours! The National Security Agency. The N-S-A!”

  An excited gleam twinkled in Madge’s eyes. “Are you telling me you helped the government catch the terror cell in Yemen?”

  It would have been easy to let Madge believe this. But, Nico decided, it was time for total honesty. “No, no, no. It’s not like what you’ve seen on the news. There is no connection with Yemen. That’s a big lie perpetrated by the Pentagon brass. I helped them find the terrorists, all right. Turns out, they’re right in our own government.” Nico stopped, waiting for Madge’s response. She didn’t blink. “I’m saying that Americans planned this. People in the Pentagon, Madge! After the President was assassinated…”

  The rims of Madge’s eyes grew red. “What?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot you didn’t know. They announced it while you were sleeping. President Hatch is dead. They killed him.”

  Madge grabbed the remote control, pointed it at the little TV on the bookshelf and turned up the TV. A FOX News camera was trained on the Presidential motorcade, which was winding away from the White House. A ticker ran along the screen that said CHAOS IN WASHINGTON.

  “Madge,” Nico said, “Forget about the President for a sec. This isn’t what I wanted to tell you.”

  “Forget about it? The President is dead!” Madge ran to the bathroom, slammed the door and locked it. Nico heard the sound of running water, then uncontrollable sobbing. As much as Nico wanted to comfort her, there was no time. Nico turned back to Madge’s computer and resumed his exploration of the Ulysses network. There had to be something he could do, some wrench to throw in the machine.

  The White House

  11:43 a.m.

  Agent Carver crept up the staircase to the Executive Residences. He slung the M4 Rios had taken from the weapons locker over his shoulder and held his SIG out in front of him. If given the chance, he would use his bare hands. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

  He stopped at the next corner and held his breath, listening. He heard the dry slap of cards against a wooden table. “Gin!” someone said. It was a man’s voice, and he was just down the hall.

  “Screw you, cheater,” the other soldier said. “Shuffle ‘em, will ya? I want revenge. Gotta take a piss.”

  Carver heard a chair slide backwards and footsteps on the floor runner. Carver backpedaled, ducking into a doorway that he soon realized was an open bathroom. He stepped behind the door just as the soldier entered. The soldier did not bother to shut the door behind him, nor did he bother to raise the toilet seat as he unzipped his cargo pants and sprayed his urine into the bowl, onto the seat and onto the floor.

  A bronze bust of Jefferson Adams stood on a wooden nightstand beside him. It looked heavy, and the thought of using it to bash the kidnapping bastard’s skull in brought a smile to Carver’s face. But the soldier would inevitably clang head-first into the mirror or toilet bowl, which would alert his colleague. Carver was all alone. Stealth was key. Carver decided he would have to get his hands dirty. It was the only away.

  Carver qui
etly holstered his pistol and took a towel from the hook behind the door. In one motion, he stepped out from behind the door and looped the towel tight around the soldier’s neck, squeezing hard enough so that he could neither breathe nor scream. The only sound was the stream of urine splashing the vanity, wall and flooring. The urine flowed long after the point that the man’s heart stopped. Bending to a near-squat, Carver settled the soldier’s dead weight noiselessly down onto the bathroom floor.

  He left the bathroom and crept back to the corner. He held his hand over his mouth and began coughing. “Mike?” the other soldier called. “You okay in there?” Carver coughed again, more violently. “Mike?” the soldier repeated. Carver launched into a series of choking sounds, the likes of which he had not tried since he was in seventh grade, when he and his friends would pretend to have asthma attacks to get out of algebra class.

  He heard the other soldier’s chair slide behind him, then footsteps. Carver kept up the charade until his target rounded the corner. Then he chopped him hard to the neck. Once he was on the ground, the soldier’s face froze in shock as he grappled at his shattered windpipe. Carver put one hand over the man’s mouth and used the fingers of his other hand to pinch off his nose, effectively shutting off his airways. The soldier blacked out thirty seconds later. In sixty seconds, he was dead.

  Carver dragged the body into the bathroom, laid it next to the other Ulysses soldier, and shut the door. Then he proceeded down the hallway to the bedroom that the men were guarding. The door was slightly ajar. As Carver approached, he heard the bleeps and bloops of a video game. He nudged the door wider with his foot and saw LeBron Jackson in his native habitat – happily playing his first video game since his father had taken him and his mother on that fateful Chesapeake fishing trip.