Line of Succession: A Thriller

by William Tyree

  This wasn’t Carver’s first mission with Hundley. While in CIA counter-terrorism, Carver had led a joint op with Hundley’s recon unit in the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hundley had seemed far too fearless for his own good, and Carver was somewhat surprised to find that the Sergeant was not only still alive, but also that he still had the arms and legs he had been born with. All but one of the Green Berets in Hundley’s unit were combat veterans; three had prosthetics, including a Staff Sergeant with artificial legs that were every bit as nimble as the real thing.

  “Saddle up,” Carver called out. The men and women of Viper Squad slid into either side of the unit’s Humvees. Nico was cuffed into the second vehicle – not because they needed him for this leg of the operation, but because there was nobody else to babysit him.

  Carver’s phone buzzed. He answered without thinking and found himself on the line with Eva Hudson. She sounded pissed.

  “I give you credit for ingenuity,” Eva started, “but unless you clue me into what’s going on right now, I’ll have Colonel Madsen order the Green Berets to take you and O’Keefe into custody.”

  He considered faking a bad connection. He couldn’t risk having her stop the operation now. They were too close.

  “If you hang up, the next person I dial is Sergeant Hundley.”

  Carver was cornered. He checked his watch. It had now been nearly forty-four hours since he’d heard from Speers. That was far too long. He was likely dead. It was either clue Eva in and accept her authority, or risk the operation.

  Carver spotted a pay telephone across the street. “I’m calling you on a land line,” he announced. The public phone wasn’t exactly secure, but it was probably safer than his lightly encrypted cell phone. He went to it and called Eva. He gave her the sixty-second version of how the President himself – through Speers – had ordered him to investigate Ulysses.

  “And there’s something else,” Carver added. “Someone from the Bureau called O’Keefe and asked us to back off of the investigation of the Monroe bomber, Faruq Ahmed.”

  “That shouldn’t surprise you. Typical FBI territorialism.”

  “But it wasn’t. I made a few calls. Right after the attacks, Ulysses evacuated the West Virginia field office. The person who supposedly called me hasn’t had basic phone service since the attacks. He hasn’t even been able to log into the network since yesterday morning.”

  “You’re swimming in deep waters,” Eva said.

  “All I know is that I need to get to Elvir Divac before they do.”

  “I’ll give your operation my blessing, but I’ve got a mission of my own. I’m prepared to offer Nico Gold a pardon when this is all over if he solves one riddle.”

  “But we’re about to mobilize,” Carver protested.

  “Then mobilize. Have someone get him in front of a computer. Then have him call me. The future depends on it.”

  Carver hung up, checked his watch, and turned to O’Keefe. “Eva wants to use boy wonder to check something out. It can’t wait.”

  “Guess I’m with baby,” O’Keefe said cheerfully.

  “Don’t sound so disappointed.”

  “I’m a thinker,” O’Keefe said, “Not a fighter.”

  Rapture Run

  The enlisted barracks was a cool, wet limestone cavern some 200 feet below ground and 50 yards southwest of the bunker’s subterranean command center. It was linked to the main complex by a stone floor hallway with real stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The Army Corp of Engineers had not yet wired the barracks for electricity, so battery-operated LED lanterns were spaced every twenty yards along the treacherous walkway. In the barracks themselves, two hundred bunk beds were arranged in clusters of eight. Buckets collecting dripping groundwater sat everywhere.

  Julian Speers slept on a bottom bunk in the middle of the cavern. Something woke him and he shot up, smashing his head against the metal bed frame. A large hand covered his mouth as he cried out. “Shhh,” a Ulysses soldier whispered. “My turn to sleep.” Speers focused, recognizing the soldier as his designated bunk buddy. Rapture Run was overcapacity, and the White House Chief of Staff had been asked to share a bunk with the rank and file.

  Speers slowly pulled himself upright. The exhausted soldier wasted no time in sliding under the still-warm wool blankets. Speers rubbed the growing knot on his head and stood in the middle of the barracks, getting his bearings.

  He had been dreaming about Eva Hudson. She was the rightful next in line, and the way the Joint Chiefs were operating, she’d never find out. He had to contact her. How he would do this was another matter. Not only had Corporal Hammond confiscated his work phone, but he had also been denied use of the facility phones.

  After a few minutes of searching, he eventually found Hammond’s empty bunk. With bed space at such a premium, Speers found it odd that Hammond wouldn’t have given someone else a chance at his shift. Speers ambled down the slippery lamp-lit limestone corridor until he came to the Command Room. It was still fully-staffed, even at this early hour. The officer on watch was the junior officer, a Second Lieutenant, in Major Dobb’s CENTAF unit. He busied himself by reviewing a list of DEFCON 2 communication protocols.

  “Excuse me,” Speers said. “I’m looking for Corporal Hammond.”

  “Check his bunk,” the Lieutenant said.

  “Hasn’t been slept in. Last time I saw him, he was on his way to see General Wainewright. But that was hours ago.”

  The officer didn’t look up.

  “Mind if I check the exit logs?” Speers pressed.

  “Don’t bother. Nobody’s left the facility.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “Nobody gets out without a signed authorization from General Wainewright. And nobody’s presented one on my watch.”

  Speers grabbed the file folder and flipped through them. Among the pile, he found a series of blank authorization forms signed by the General himself. Speers waited until the duty officer was distracted. As he turned to answer a question from a fellow officer, Speers slipped one of the pre-signed forms into his jacket pocket in case he needed it later. Even if he could locate his phone, he’d need to get out of the bunker somehow to get a signal.

  Somewhere across the command room, two men were arguing. Speers couldn’t see them, but it sounded intense. “Gotta call my family,” someone was shouting. “Gotta call my family. Gotta call my goddamn family.”

  As if tossed by a giant, a metal file cabinet came crashing across the command room. Then an officer in a short-sleeve khaki uniform flew into the air. Speers saw him smash spine-first into a large monitor. He collapsed to the ground like a sack of oranges. Blood pooled around his head.

  Speers ran to an aisle and, looking down the row of workstations, saw an enraged, acne-scarred Ulysses soldier whose biceps were so massive that Speers wondered how the man could wipe his own ass. “I got a family, man! Gotta call ‘em! Gotta call ‘em!”

  It had been only a matter of time before someone snapped. The crew at Rapture Run was hundreds of feet beneath ground level, in a facility that only a small handful of outsiders knew about. They bore the burden of being the only people on the planet that knew that the POTUS was dead. They alone watched Iranian tanks as they moved unchecked toward Israel.

  An MP appeared in the doorway behind the crazed soldier. He leveled his rifle and filled the soldier’s chest with a quick burst of lead. The shots echoed throughout the cavernous former nuclear missile silo, bringing all activity to a stop.

  General Farrell burst into the room and walked toward the scene. All eyes were on him. There was absolutely no sound, and when the General stepped in a puddle of urine – it was pooling from the pant leg of a communications officer – everyone stopped breathing. Farrell looked at his shoes once, but did not single out the offender. He calmly proceeded toward the gory scene and said, in a measured voice, “Good enforcement, soldier. Now let’s clean it up.”

  Everyone returned to their stations. A sen
se of normalcy – or at least Rapture Run’s extreme version of it – slowly resumed.

  Speers wasn’t cut out for the kinds of things he’d seen in the past forty-eight hours, starting with Lieutenant Flynn’s interrogation in Georgetown, the car bomb in Monroe, and now this. He stumbled back down the long corridor to the enlisted barracks cavern. His senses felt muted. A growing numbness came over him. He wondered if this was what post-traumatic stress disorder felt like.

  Secluded as the barracks were, Speers was astounded that neither the shots nor the shouting had awakened anyone there. Even so, he walked among the soldiers as if they were a den of sleeping rattlesnakes. He returned to Corporal Hammond’s bunk, knelt before it and slid his hands beneath the bed frame. There he found the briefcase full of confiscated cell phones. Speers opened it and located his phone among all the others. He realized he had no charger with him, so he quickly found two other phones of the same model and pulled the batteries from each.

  As Speers closed the case, he heard footsteps behind him. He closed his eyes. He remained on his knees. His time was up.

  “Won’t get a signal,” a whispered voice said. “Not down here.”

  He turned and saw Major Dobbs, the CENTAF air traffic czar who had tipped him off about the President’s demise. But Dobbs didn’t look so friendly now. Although Speers had never been in a fight in his life, he often sized up other men by asking himself if he could take them down. Dobbs was a burly man who looked like he could manhandle just about anyone.

  “Please, Major,” Speers whined softly. “This is more than just a phone. I have classified documents in here. For God’s sake, I work for the President.”

  Dobbs leaned closer. “Worked,” he said. “You worked for the POTUS. He’s gone. He can’t help you now.” Dobbs exhaled a stinky breeze into Speers’ face. Speers tried not to throw up. “I’m the next officer on watch,” Dobbs said before turning away. “Come see me at oh-five-thirty.”

  *

  General Farrell stood watching as the MP pulled the slain family man’s body into a black body bag. Wainewright came up behind him, whistling so as not to spook either. He had seen the entire incident via camera from his quarters. He wasn’t concerned. It was to be expected.

  “Report.” Wainewright’s request didn’t have anything to do with the dead man. He didn’t give a shit about the dead man. Wainewright was good about keeping his mind on his priorities. Farrell understood this.

  “Abrams’ crew is rolling into Baltimore now,” Farrell replied as they walked through the command room. “They should have it pretty much done within an hour.”

  “Good. And the withdrawals?”

  They went into the adjoining conference room and shut the door behind them.

  “Thirty C-130 transports landed in Kuwait City this morning,” Farrell said. “Ten more have already left Baghdad. Two strike units left Lebanon this morning. The secret bases in Israel bugged out this morning. The heavy armor—”

  “There’s no time to pull out the armor. Destroy it and leave it in the sand. Syria opened up the border to Iranian armor divisions. There’s no turning back.”

  Farrell lit a cigarette. “I’d feel better if we had some progress on the Allied Jihad situation.”

  Wainewright pulled the cigarette from Farrell’s mouth and stamped it out. “Fact: elite Revolutionary Guard units are moving into Afpak right now. The Iranian Ambassador knows that if they don’t produce results within a week, the deal is off. We’ll have no choice but to send the Carrier Strike Group in to cut off the campaign in Israel.”

  “How do we know the Iranians won’t seize the opportunity to invade Pakistan altogether?”

  “We should be so lucky. Their economy can’t handle fighting a two-front war. As long as they keep the Allied Jihad busy for awhile, and give us the desalination technology, I’ll keep our end of the bargain.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Trust me. We’re going to need the water.”

  *

  Speers’ stomach was a queasy ball of nerves as he entered the command room at oh-five-thirty on the dot, just as Major Dobbs had suggested. He clinched his last lollipop between his teeth. He had been rationing them.

  Dobbs sat on the throne-like chair in the command room. Beside him, his deputy – a young Lieutenant who looked like he had been shaving for a year at most – talked through a list of bunker procedures. When Speers came into view, Dobbs turned to the Lieutenant and interrupted his monologue: “Take my shift, Lieutenant. Wainewright’s sending us offsite.”

  The young Lieutenant looked puzzled. “Right now, sir? I wasn’t aware of a change in schedule.”

  “We’re at DEFCON two,” Dobbs reminded him. “Information’s on a need-to-know basis. Get used to it.”

  Dobbs led Speers toward the entrance. “Just go along with whatever I say,” Dobbs whispered. “You’ll live longer.”

  They came to the cornfield entrance elevators. Two MPs stood before them with rifles held diagonally across their chests. Speers immediately recognized one as the MP who had gunned down the family man. “Authorization?” the MP asked, without even the pretense of respect.

  “See these?” Dobbs said, pointing to the brass clusters on his lapels indicating his rank. “And these?” He pointed to a brass globe on his shirt pocket, adorned with an early model jet aircraft and Olympic-style laurels, signifying him as the CENTAF commander. “These are all the authorization I need.”

  The MP smirked with an arrogance that surprised even Speers. “There are at least fifty officers down here with higher rank. And all of you still need a little yellow piece of paper with General Wainewright’s signature on it.”

  Dobbs stepped into the MPs face, spitting as he spoke. “Choose your words carefully, Corporal, or I’ll have you court-martialed for insubordination to an officer.”

  “Ulysses has deemed this a combat situation,” the other MP said as he launched into a well-rehearsed response: “During combat situations Ulysses troops are not subject to U.S. military law except those laws that are specifically expressed by the Joint Chiefs or the President. By order of General Wainewright, we are also authorized to enforce martial law upon pain of death, regardless of U.S. military rank.”

  Dobbs stayed in the MP’s face, muttering obscenities in a low growl that struck Speers as particularly vile and abusive, even for the military. As Dobbs distracted the MP with his verbal assault, he slowly reached for his sidearm.

  Speers cut in before it could devolve into more senseless violence: “I think I have what you need.” He produced the yellow signed authorization he had lifted from the officer on watch’s folder hours earlier. He had simply time-stamped it and filled in CLASSIFIED as the reason. Dobbs’ eyes were big, and his fingers still fondled the pistol-grip of his still-holstered .45. Speers sucked hard on his lollipop as the MP scrutinized the form.

  “Have you arranged transport?” the MP said.

  “It’s already on the pad,” Dobbs snapped.

  At that, the MP switched on his radio and spoke into it: “This is two sixty. Can you confirm transport on the cornfield helipad?”

  “Affirmative,” the radio voice chirped back. “The helipad is occupied.”

  The MPs grudgingly moved aside so that Dobbs and Speers could enter the elevator. They did not look back as the doors closed behind them. Speers spotted the elevator’s surveillance camera and was careful not to smile or speak. He felt his ears pop as the elevator muscled its way up several hundred feet to the surface. When the doors finally swooshed open, Speers took in the smell of cornfields and felt dizzy with the rush of fresh air. Dobbs grabbed him by the arm and led him toward the clearing, where there was indeed already a helicopter on the pad, its rotors spinning against the yellowing eastern sky.

  The pilot wore a bandana around his neck and, although it was only sunrise, sunglasses as well. He grinned and stretched out his hand. “Morning Major,” he said. “General coming with?”

  “Negativ
e,” Dobbs replied, “and you’ll be less familiar with me from now on.”

  “Sir, yes sir.”

  He shoved Speers into the passenger seat while he sat behind directly behind the pilot. “Take us due east at eighty miles per hour,” Dobbs said.

  “Sir yes sir. Destination?”

  “More as you need it, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir yes sir.”

  The chopper pulled up and away from Rapture Run. Speers kept his eyes on the golden cornstalks and the tiny bunker entrance until they were high enough that he could no longer see it. Convinced that they had completed their escape, he breathed a little easier.

  Dobbs apparently did not share his relief. “Get to four thousand feet,” he told the pilot. “And quickly.”

  “Sir yes sir.”

  Baltimore

  5:39 a.m.

  Dawn broke over the city’s buildings, flickering out street lamps. Faces peered out from tenement windows as the two battleship grey U.S. Army Humvees rolled through the desolate city streets. Martial law, which imposed a curfew until six a.m., had, if nothing else, eliminated traffic. Four Ulysses units patrolling in Bradley Fighting Vehicles had made sure of that.

  Viper Squad was split into two six-man units. Carver rode in the lead vehicle, his typically smooth face darkened by more than two days without shaving. “We’ll stage two blocks east of the target,” he said into the radio. “Copy that,” Sergeant Hundley reported from the second Humvee.

  They passed a young Asian couple that had been shot dead on the sidewalk. They had no doubt been caught out after curfew. “Ulysses got some last night,” Private Scott, Carver’s driver, said. He slowed the vehicle down and gawked at Ulysses’ bloody handiwork. “Heartless, man. Just heartless.”