He slumped. Fatigue and disorientation were setting in. He waited, his mouth foul, his breath dry, then lowered his head onto his arms and fell asleep.
* * *
The door pulled back, allowing a square of light to fall upon the floor, the patch of white broken only by the shadow of a black man standing there. He was small, with silver glasses framing his almond eyes and graying hair around his temples. “Mr. Secretary,” he said as he walked into the room and closed the door. “Brucius, are you awake?”
Brucius kept his head down though his eyes opened at the voice. For a moment he didn’t move, allowing time to clear his thoughts. Then he slowly lifted his eyes. “Hello, James,” he said, his voice acidic and tight.
“Mr. Secretary, you’ve got to forgive me, the treatment, the isolation. Believe me, it was the last thing we wanted to do. But we just felt . . . Brucius, we felt as if, under the circumstances, we didn’t have any choice.”
Brucius raised his head and lifted a hand to cut him off.
His angry eyes cut through the other man like broken glass, and the black man almost looked away. “Mr. Secretary,” he went on, “please try to understand, we had no choice. We really didn’t know. It’s impossible to know right now who is with us or against us. The nation is hanging by a thread, and we couldn’t take any chances until we knew for sure. I’m sorry, it has pained me to see this happen, but I think you’ll understand. The enemy is deeply embedded. Until we identify them, we have to take every measure to be sure.”
Brucius leaned back and frowned. “Instead of apologizing, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
The black man moved toward the chair on the opposite side of the table, motioned to the Secretary, who nodded consent, and sat down. “You got my family, right?” Brucius demanded.
“Yes. They’re okay. We’ll be flying them out here . . .”
“Where are we, James?”
“Offutt Air Force Base.”
Brucius nodded. “Offutt . . . of course. Okay, you got my daughter, her husband, and their little boy?”
“As I was saying, they’ll be flying out here tonight. We’ve had to take some countermeasures to make certain we could relocate them without being traced.” He glanced at his watch. “A few hours, Brucius, and I think they’ll be here.”
“What time is it? What day?”
“Seventeen thirty-three local, sir. Tuesday afternoon. It’s been almost thirty-six hours since you arrived here.”
“Thirty-six hours.” Brucius sat back and pushed his hands through his dark hair. He watched the black man with small, deadly eyes, the anger rekindling inside him. “That’s a long time to work through your suspicions, my friend. Long time to figure out if you could trust me or not.”
The black man didn’t say anything.
“James, I thought that we were friends.”
The man thought before he answered, “The ugly truth is, Mr. Secretary, I might be your only friend.”
Brucius huffed.
James tilted his head. “You know that you can trust me, Brucius. In your heart, you know you can. That’s why, in the pitch of the battle, you trusted my people. I didn’t force you to go with them. You could have stayed. ”
“And if I had?”
“Then you’d be dead now. So would your family. Everyone you love.”
Brucius dropped his eyes and swallowed.
“Those men who were coming for you at your daughter’s house in Vienna, they weren’t coming to defend you. They were coming there to kill you. Is there any question in your mind which side they were on? Yeah, I know back in the old days of, say . . . oh, I don’t know, a week or so ago, a personal assault on the SecDef would have been inconceivable. But things are different now.
“The good news, if there’s any good news in this mess, is that we beat them to you. Still, it was close. Really close. We barely got you out. A couple of seconds later, and you all would have been dead.”
Brucius pressed his lips together. “I need a drink,” he said.
James nodded to the mirror. The two men stared silently at each other, their faces blank. A minute passed in silence until the door pulled back and a military staff sergeant walked into the room, a plastic tray in hand. Sandwiches. Chips. A twenty-ounce diet soda. He twisted the lid for Brucius and poured soda into an ice-filled cup, then retreated, closing the door behind him. The Secretary of Defense drank the entire glass, picked up the bottle, reloaded, drank again. Light fizz misted his upper lip and he placed the half-empty glass down.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re my friend. That’s why I chose to come here. But you’ve really got some guts, pulling off such an operation and keeping me here like this.”
James nodded, almost smiling. “You think so?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
“Don’t be so sure.” Brucius took another sip. “You might have guts, but that doesn’t prove that you’re no fool. I’ve always told you, James, God knew what he was doing when he put you in that small body. You’re like a Chihuahua, snarling and yelping all the time. You snap at everything. Everyone’s the enemy. But yelping irritates a lot of people. I suspect you’ve angered some more now.”
“I hate Chihuahuas,” James said. “I want to kick them. They’re obnoxious, noisy dogs.” He reached across the table, opened the bag of chips, and stuffed a couple in his mouth. “And let me tell you something, Brucius, this Chihuahua saved your life. Saved your daughter and her family. You owe me. I’ll remember that. And I’m good at keeping score.”
Brucius finally laughed. “Add it to my bill.” He drained his glass. Leaning back, he looked around, the two men sitting a moment again in silence.
“I’ve been elevated, Brucius,” the black man said. “The director was killed in the attack on D.C. I’m the director now.”
Brucius smiled with satisfaction. “Congratulations,” he said.
James nodded humbly, his modesty sincere. “I wish it hadn’t happened. At least not the way it did.”
“James Davies, FBI Director. Sounds good, don’t you think?”
James pressed his lips and hunched his shoulders. “I don’t care that much.”
Brucius watched him, sucking a piece of ice as he thought. He’d known the man sitting opposite him for almost thirty years, going back to their days at Yale. Skull and Bones. Time on the Yard. Coeds, parties, debate, and basketball. He knew James as well as he knew any man. If any of a number of men had told him they didn’t care about being promoted to FBI Director, he would have called them bald-faced liars, or worse. (And he’d called others much worse, for his temper, like his intelligence, was way off the charts.) But James was different. He’d always been different. And what he said was true: He really didn’t care. All he cared about was serving his country. He was one in a million, and Brucius’s feelings for the black man fell short only of the relationship he’d had with his wife.
A sudden pain shot through him when he thought about her, and he did the same thing he’d done a thousand times since that dreadful day in D.C.: He shoved it down, pushing the thoughts of her away. Someday he would think about her, he’d memorialize her in a meaningful way, but not now. He couldn’t. It was too painful. And he was in the middle of a war.
He rubbed his fingers against his temples and cleared his throat. “Okay, you’re the FBI Director. That’s good, James, very good. We need you right now. Now, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
James took another bunch of chips. “There’s something else you should know first,” he said as he crunched.
Brucius waited.
“You’re next in line to be the president of the United States.”
The Secretary scoffed. “Next in line. I don’t think so. You’ve got the vice president . . .”
“Killed in the explosion . . .”
“The Speaker of the House of Representatives . . .”
“ . . . who, as we speak, is lying in a
hospital in Leesburg, Virginia, with severe neural and cerebral damage. The doctors tell us she’ll remain in a vegetative state until her body gives out, which won’t take much time, based on her other injuries and the strain on the medical services we’re experiencing. Scarce as our resources are, it’s going to be difficult to continue providing life-sustaining measures to a person who has no detectable brain function remaining.”
Brucius’s face drained of color, his lips turning gray. “I knew she’d been injured, but the report I’d been given was that she was expected to recover. I had no idea . . .”
“She won’t recover. There were complications. Complications that seem very difficult to explain.”
Brucius stopped moving, his eyes and face motionless. “I heard rumors. I didn’t believe them. I didn’t know . . .”
“Of course you did, Brucius. That’s why you went into hiding. You knew very well. That’s why I had to hunt you down.”
Brucius started to answer but James cut him off. “There’s no explanation for the neurological damage based on the injuries that she sustained. We are certain she was poisoned.”
Brucius Marino, son of Italian immigrants, son of a man who’d worked his way through law school delivering papers and booking at the tracks, son of a man whose mother had died when he was born and who had taught himself to read English before he was even four, took a breath and groaned, then stared down at his hands. “Bethany Rosen would be the next in line . . .”
“Dead now, Brucius.” James dropped a highly classified report on top of the metal table. “Died in her sleep within a few days of being sworn in. Remarkable, isn’t it?” The black man sat back and picked his teeth.
“With Bethany gone, then that . . .”
“Brings us to you. You’re next in line. The line of succession is not disputable. The SecDef should have been the next president.”
Brucius wet his lips. It was the last thing that he wanted, the last thing he had ever thought about.
“Whatever,” James went on after a moment of silence. “It doesn’t matter. What they’ve done is more than obvious, claiming you were dead and putting their own man in place.”
Brucius grew intent. “Someone else is president?”
James nodded yes.
“Fuentes?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“The guy’s got the moral compass of a fish.”
“That’s an unfair comparison, don’t you think?”
“I’ll apologize to all the carp.”
James almost smiled. “Anyway, they had to know we’d figure it out, but they don’t care. This isn’t a conspiracy any longer, this is out-in-the-open war. And we’ve lost the first battle, that’s for sure. They saw their opportunity and they took it. They knew if they could get their man in place before we could react, it would be impossible for us to push him out amid the chaos and confusion. Another thing they’re banking on—and I think they got this right—is that the American people are consumed with only one thing: survival. Nothing else. They don’t give a flying bag of bones who’s in charge so long as someone steps forward to take care of them. They would accept Stalin as their leader if he arranged to bring them food. Hunger has a way of focusing the issue, and the protocol of succession doesn’t mean squat to the American people right now.” He fell silent, thinking, then concluded, “Brucius, we’ve thought this out. The last thing the American people will suffer is a constitutional crisis over who’s next in line, especially with another guy already in place. He’s getting ready to address the nation. He’ll say the right things, make all the right moves, start getting the emergency supplies in place. They’ll look to him as their savior. It’ll be hard to move him out.”
Brucius shook his head. “Look, I want to be clear, I have no more desire to be the president than I desire to have toothpicks driven under my nails. But there is principle. Precedent. We can’t just go wandering off into la-la land; we have to do this right! If not now, then what about the next time? Who gets to be the president then? If we don’t have some kind of order . . .”
“Believe me, Brucius, you’re preaching to the choir.”
“It’s not about me. It’s not about what I want or don’t want. It’s about the truth, the principle, doing this thing right!”
James shook his head and leaned forward angrily. “I’ll tell you what it’s about,” he almost sneered. “In the long term, it’s about defending the Constitution. You won’t believe the things they plan to do. They will destroy the country. We’ll be no better than any third world dictatorship with a worthless constitution of a power that barely moves along. In the short term, it’s about not letting a group of thugs steal the presidency. It’s about keeping the power with the people, not in a group of murderers’ hands. That’s what this whole thing is about. And that’s why we have to act.”
Brucius frowned. The smell of the food sitting on the table was making him sick. “Fuentes,” he mumbled. “I can’t believe that he’s the acting president.”
“He’s not acting, Brucius, he is the president. It is done. We couldn’t stop it.”
Brucius shook his head and swore.
James went on, his voice dark. “It’s too late, we know that. If you were to make a move on the presidency, the American people would perceive it as a greedy and pointless grab for power, especially if Fuentes is able to convince them that the measures he’s proposing are necessary for their survival.” James fumed, his breathing heavy, his eyes angry and alert. Brucius watched him, his head still bent, his eyes looking up through bushy brows; then he stood, moved toward the window, and stared out through the glass.
“They were coming for you, Brucius. Do you understand what that means? They were coming to your daughter’s house to kill you.”
The Secretary took a deep breath. “I had a meeting with a few of them a couple of days ago. They tried to persuade me to join them. They were adamant, although adamant is probably too soft a word to describe what they said. It was pretty convincing.” He stopped, his voice trailing off.
James stood and walked toward his friend. “Let’s be very clear about this, Brucius. Even if they are convincing, they are not right. They are traitors and deceivers. They thirst for power, nothing more. They know our country is on her knees now. She might not recover, we don’t really know, but if these guys have their way, it won’t matter anyway. We won’t be a republic or democracy, we’ll be a dictatorship and nothing more. Sure, we’ll still call our “leader” Mr. President, but it won’t mean a thing. Mr. President, Prime Minister, Party Chairman, King—call him what you want, he won’t be working for the people, he’ll be working for himself. Himself and his inner circle.”
James started pacing nervously, then dropped down in his chair. “You were sleeping when I came into the room?”
Brucius shrugged and nodded.
“I hope you got some rest, because I’m going to lay it on the line. I’m going to tell you everything we know. And when I do, it’ll be a while before you’ll be able to rest again.”
“ . . . for by [their] sorceries were all nations deceived.”
—Revelation 18:23
“And it came to pass that there were sorceries, and witchcrafts, and magics; and the power of the evil one was wrought upon all the face of the land.”
—Mormon 1:19
“And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
—Matthew 24:31
Chapter Thirty
Offutt Air Force Base
Headquarters, U.S. Strategic Command
Eight Miles South of Omaha, Nebraska
After leaving the confines of the interrogation room, Brucius Marino and James Davies turned right, walked down the hall, and climbed two flights of stairs. Down another long hallway, they walked to where the afternoon sunlight slanted through a set of glass doors. Two guards were positioned behind a thick pane of bull
et-proof glass. James nodded as they walked toward them. The hallways and offices were busy with officers in uniform, none of whom paid any attention to the civilians in the hall.
Outside, they turned left and moved along the sidewalk that led to the base park. As the men walked, a black SUV followed them along the road. Occasionally, James glanced toward it, knowing his four-man security team was inside. Otherwise he paid it little attention, concentrating on explaining the current political and military situation to the Secretary of Defense. Thirty minutes later, the two men stood atop a ten-foot dam that held back a small pond on the west side of the base, a result of extraordinarily heavy rains over the past couple of weeks. Brucius watched the waves move across the murky water and wondered: drought in one area, massive downpours in another. Even Mother Earth was going crazy.
Turning, he looked toward the road. Funny how they seemed so out of place now, the military trucks and cars that filled the streets. Two weeks before, he wouldn’t have noticed them any more than he would have noticed the air that he breathed, yet now, just a few days later, the working vehicles seemed amazing, almost magical, as they moved along the busy road.
Designed to continue military operations in the event of a catastrophic attack upon the United States, Offutt Air Force Base was staffed with military personnel from every branch of service. Well maintained, trained, and staffed, all the base facilities were hardened and prepared to continue operations in a time of war and, while the senior civilian leaders were gathering, organizing, and taking up residency in Raven Rock, Offutt was preparing to execute whatever orders they received from those leaders in the underground Command Center back in southern Pennsylvania.
The two men stood atop the earthen dam for a long time, the sun setting at their backs, the wind picking up, the brown waves slapping at the grassy shore. When he was finished, James nodded to a small bench near the water and the men sat, a flock of friendly ducks waddling along beside them, pulling feathers and fighting for position. The birds were hungry. With food in critical supply and a national calamity in the making, no one had stopped to hand out the chunks of bread and crackers they were used to receiving.
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