Once the man was out of earshot, Speers slipped behind him and into the open Willard Hotel kitchen. A startled chef looked up and yelled “Security! Security!”
“Calm down!” Speers cried. “I’m with the Administration!” He flashed his White House credentials, but with his hair cut and beard shaved, and dressed in Mr. Tenningclaus’ ill-fitting clothes, he looked nothing like the man in his Federal ID photo. The chef screamed again and banged a large pot with a soup ladle.
A Secret Service agent in a black suit entered with his weapon drawn. Speers closed his eyes and waited for the bullet to come.
“It’s okay,” Speers heard a familiar voice tell the cook. “Calm down. This guy is who he says he is. I got this handled.”
The mountainous Special Agent Hector Rios took Speers by the arm and pulled him roughly into a walk-in freezer. As usual, Rios was immaculately put together. His uniform was tailored to a tee, he was freshly shaved and his hair was slicked back tight atop his scalp. The circles under his eyes told another story. That and his hands. They were trembling.
“Julian,” he said, “I’ve got orders to use deadly force on your ass.”
Speers broke away from Rios’ grip and smoothed his shirt sleeve. “And you think that’s reasonable?”
Rios shook his head. “I get orders, not explanations.”
“You don’t want to hear them.”
“Don’t feed me that line, Chief! I haven’t heard from First Team in three days. Went up to Camp David myself but Ulysses won’t let anyone near it. I’m taking orders from some assistant to the Joint Chiefs now. What the hell is going on?”
“The President is dead.”
Rios spun around once on his heels and punched a side of frozen beef hanging from the ceiling. “I knew it! I knew it, man!”
“We don’t have much time. Trust me when I say that more people will die unless you get me in to see Dex Jackson.”
Rios, still reeling from the news, shook his massive head. “Doesn’t make any sense.” His thoughts turned to the men he gunned down on Martha’s Vineyard. The smell of gunpowder was still fresh in his senses.
“Hector, did you hear me? I need to see Dex.”
The frozen beef swung into the freezer sidewall as Rios pummeled it once more. “There’s a half dozen agents between the kitchen and his room.”
“Then you’ll have to bring Dex to me.”
*
Jack McClellan, the graying agent who stood on watch outside Dex’s Willard Hotel suite, was less than a year from retirement. He had survived four administrations. He had also survived a gunshot from a would-be assailant during George W. Bush’s presidency. The failed assassination attempt never made the press, thanks to media suppression from the CIA.
For a while after the incident, McClellan had been taken off security detail because there were questions about his ability to shake symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He’d only made it back to the POTUS rotation this year. Even so, it was more of a retirement present. The other agents were careful never to leave him alone on duty.
Over the past three days, Agent McClellan’s worst fears were all coming back to him. First, the high-level assassinations. Then that sketchy pre-recorded video of the President. Then the rumor that First Team hadn’t reported in. A buddy guarding some high value targets at the Raven Rock bunker had told him off the record that POTUS had never showed there. Beyond spooky.
His earpiece crackled. “Agent Rios coming up.”
The elevator tone sounded and the doors swooshed open. Agent Rios stepped out the floor pushing a room service cart full of covered trays.
“What,” McClellan said, “Secret Service delivers food now? Where’s the room service guy?”
“I was told no visitors.” Although Rios was technically McClellan’s boss, the elder agent didn’t always treat him with appropriate respect. For the most part, Rios allowed McClellan his ego. He had earned it.
McClellan lifted one of the platters and regarded a plate of Maryland crab cakes. He looked back at Rios and shook his head in disbelief.
“I took a bullet for Bush Forty-Three,” he said, “and now they expect me to be an errand boy? I refuse to take this crap.”
“Take a break,” Rios said. “I’ll do it.”
Agent Rios knocked on the suite door and stood directly in front of the peephole so that Secretary Jackson would recognize him. Rios pushed the cart past Agent McClellan, then past Dex, who was clad in a white bathrobe, and closed the door behind him.
“We didn’t order room service,” Dex said as he gazed up at the six-foot-ten secret service agent. LeBron slept behind him on the couch in front of the TV.
“If you’ll please just sign this,” Rios said. He took the black folder from the cart and presented the check. Dex pulled his reading glasses from his bathrobe pocket and saw the hand-scrawled note: “YOUR WIFE IS ALIVE.” He looked at Rios over the eyeglass frames. His pupils darted from side to side like fidgety tadpoles. He re-read the note. YOUR WIFE IS ALIVE.
Dex went to the TV and turned it up loud. LeBron squirmed in his sleep, but did not wake.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Dex whispered.
“Someone important knows where your wife is,” Rios said. “I can take you to her.”
Dex studied Rios’ face before answering. “What would happen if I picked up the phone right now and asked General Wainewright about this?”
“You’d never know peace,” Rios said. “You’d always wonder about Angie.”
The would-be President couldn’t hide his feelings. He was about to become the centerpiece of something that was far more sinister than he had even imagined. He was becoming acutely aware of the fact that he still didn’t know the rules of the game or even who all the players were. He cast a worried glance at LeBron.
“Get your son dressed,” Rios warned. “He’s not safe here.”
Over Northern Virginia
4:50 a.m.
The first hint of purple sunlight appeared through the Gulfstream’s cockpit windows. The porch lights and streetlights of D.C.’s bedroom communities twinkled like constellations not 500 feet below the aircraft. It had taken some convincing, but the pilots had come to believe Carver’s story that they had been targeted by CENTAF. Until now, they had stuck to Carver’s orders to fly at treetop level, under radio silence and without running lights.
But radio silence also meant no contact with air traffic control. They weren’t cleared to land at any airport – military, federal or civilian. The copilot turned in his seat to face Eva and Carver. “We’re low on fuel,” he said. “I’ve gotta radio in.”
“No radio,” Carver replied.
“You don’t get it,” the copilot said. “This is the Capitol we’re talking about. The airports are surrounded by SAM installations. If we’re not careful we’ll get an ass full of Patriot missile.”
Carver maintained his composure. “No. We need another option.”
The copilot pulled at his hair and thought for a moment. “There’s a small private airstrip near Valley Forge. My kid got his license there. With a little luck we could —”
“Too far,” Carver said. “We need to get our team into the D.C. area immediately.”
The pilot spoke up without taking his eyes or hands off the controls. “Not many cars on the beltway this time of morning.”
The copilot shot him a dirty look. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I spent two years putting F-18s down on the U.S.S. Carl Vinson.”
“Stop.”
“That boat’s just one hundred thirty-four feet wide. Runway couldn’t have been wider than two freeway lanes. Floating, no less.”
The pilot was for real. Carver looked to Eva. “What do you say?”
“I think we’ll qualify as a carpool,” she quipped.
The copilot began to recite Psalm 23 as the plane slowed and turned northeast. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me…”
They came in so low over Alexandria that Carver could see the face of a woman getting into her car for the morning commute. The Gulfstream jet skimmed the telephone poles as it came in over the I-495, the rumble of its engines triggering car alarms. It extended its landing gear as the first sight of light pre-dawn freeway traffic came into view.
Eva and Carver bent over in their seats with their heads between their knees, bracing for a hard landing. The co-pilot’s recitations grew louder: “…Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.” He stopped abruptly as he saw three economy-size sedans merge onto the otherwise wide-open freeway ahead of them. “Oh God!” he said. “Pull up and re-approach.”
“Negative,” the pilot answered. “We won’t get a second chance.”
The landing gear hit the asphalt hard. The sedans careened to either side of the freeway. The Gulfstream’s wing flaps snapped to 90-degree angles as the aircraft braked, skidding across the median and into the path of two oncoming cars. The left wing dipped as they entered the wide, grassy median, clipping the windshield of an oncoming truck and slicing the cab clean off. The Gulfstream’s left landing gear snapped on the uneven ground, sending the plane sliding in a shower of white sparks.
The grinding roar of metal on asphalt slowly petered out. The pungent odor of jet fuel filled the main cabin, snapping Agent O’Keefe alert. Pink hues of sunrise filtered into the cabin through smashed passenger windows.
Beside her, Angie’s head was cocked back against her seat. Her eyes were shut and her hair was streaked with blood. O’Keefe slowly pushed the bangs back. There were no abrasions. Angie’s eyes flapped open and locked with hers. She was alive. The blood belonged to someone else.
O’Keefe unbuckled her seatbelt and got shakily to her feet. Several chunks of scalp were blown across the seatbacks in the row in front of her. Crimson droplets were spattered on the cabin ceiling. She walked two rows forward and found herself gazing into the top of Elvir Divac’s skull. A seatback tray had sheared it open like a watermelon.
In the window seat, the doctor’s body slumped sideways. His lifeless eyes gazed skyward and the window was a smear of matted blood and hair. One row up, O’Keefe found Colonel Madsen. His eyes were closed. O’Keefe put her index and middle fingers on his neck, hoping for a pulse. His head tipped sideways, resting at an unnatural 90-degree angle atop his shoulders.
She feared more carnage as she wobbled on shaky knees toward the cockpit. Her fears were realized. From behind, she saw the pilots’ arms hanging limply at his sides, elbow joints jutting out his blood-soaked shirt sleeves in a horrific compound fracture. Both pilots’ faces were smashed grotesquely into the instrument panel.
An orange-tanned arm stretched out into view. O’Keefe recognized it as Eva’s. She was alive.
There was one more passenger to account for. Agent Carver had been seated adjacent to Eva. O’Keefe entered the cockpit, afraid of what she might find next. As she rounded the corner, she found him standing in the corner of the cockpit, peering out a tiny clear prism of smashed window. A traffic chopper was hovering overhead.
“Smile,” Carver said to his fellow survivors. “We’re on TV.”
The Willard Hotel
The Iranian Ambassador entered the Presidential Suite wearing a new black silk suit that would have been more appropriate in a European disco. He shook Wainewright’s hand and wasted no time in getting to the point. “I could not risk telephone communications,” he said with precise enunciation. “I received a call yesterday from your Treasury Secretary.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Wainewright gruffed.
“But you leave me no choice. First, you assured me she would be dead by now. Second, the President obviously told her about the Camp David meeting despite my request for confidentiality. Now she is twice as dangerous.”
Wainewright was distracted. The timing of so many things – including the inauguration and shifting of Ulysses forces to additional key posts – was dependent on the carefully timed release of influential information. He glanced at the muted TV, eager to see whether his personal press corp had managed to maintain control over the network news feed.
The Ambassador did not like to be ignored. “General, did you hear me?”
Wainewright’s attention returned to the Ambassador. “You won’t be hearing from Eva Hudson again.”
“I’m delighted to hear that. As expected, NATO is calling on us to stop our invasion of Israel. We are prepared to justify ourselves in this cause, as always, but we cannot afford speculation that there is any connection with the American President’s death.”
“You hope for too much,” Wainewright said. “Fact: Iran’s an easy scapegoat for the world community. Fact: there will be rumors of your involvement no matter how good we are. We have to stick to our assertion that this was the work of the Allied Jihad.”
The Ambassador’s gaze fell upon the dresser, where Lincoln’s opera glasses sat on a folded white handkerchief. “I have an eye for antiques,” he said. “Mid-nineteenth century, yes?”
General Wainewright had never before passed up an opportunity to explain about his prized keepsake, but he had no time for it now. “What about the mountain campaign?” Wainewright said. In exchange for Wainewright’s promise to abandon its pact to defend Israel, the Iranians had promised that elite Iranian troops would invade and destroy Allied Jihad bases in Afpack. Iran had been funding Allied Jihad operations for years, but their offspring had spiraled out of control. Nevertheless, the Allied Jihad were dependent on supplies from Iran, and the Iranians were in a unique position to squash their Afpak capabilities once and for all.
“We have already destroyed nine Allied Jihad camps,” the Ambassador confirmed. “This is only the beginning. Within one week, Israel will be pushed into the sea. And by November, any Allied Jihad camps in the mountains will be exterminated and we will have accounted for ninety percent of its leadership.”
Wainewright glanced at the TV and saw imagery from a live traffic cam aboard a network helicopter. The titles on the screen read LIVE FROM I-495. He grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume.
“Beltway commuters,” the TV anchor said, “you may want to think about telecommuting today. We are looking at live footage from our eye in the sky traffic cam. This apparently happened just moments ago. We have what appears to be a Gulfstream jet down on the Beltway. Yes, you heard me. A plane crash-landed on the 495 just minutes ago.”
Wainewright’s phone rang. It was Farrell. “We have a situation,” he said frantically.
“I’m watching it now.”
Farrell hesitated. “That’s only the half of it. Our people just went to wake up Dex. He’s not in his room.”
The Beltway
Carver stood in the middle of I-495 as a TV news traffic chopper hovered overhead. Adrenaline blocked the pain from the fractured collarbone he had suffered during the crash. Behind him, O’Keefe and Eva teamed up to pull Angie Jackson from the Gulfstream’s fuselage. Her eyes were vacant and she hadn’t uttered a word since the crash. She was ambulatory, but they were going to have to go at her pace.
They needed a car. It took Carver only a few seconds to spot a prospect: a middle-aged government worker in a navy blue Ford economy car that had slowed down to rubberneck. He was an IRS auditor, which was clear from the Internal Revenue Service badge around his neck. Carver raced across the median and pulled the driver’s side door handle. The door was unlocked, and the auditor was so busy gawking at the plane wreckage that he did not see Carver in time to pull away.
Carver gripped the auditor by the collar of his blue oxford shirt and yanked him out of the vehicle as it continued to roll forward at idle speed. Carver slid into the warm driver’s seat and braked so that O’Keefe could push Angie and Eva into the back seat.
The bewildered auditor regained his balance and began ru
nning alongside his car just as Carver began to accelerate. Carver pulled a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it to him through the window. “Call my office. We’ll get you a new car.”
The auditor stumbled and fell. He got up, brushed himself off, and held the card in both hands as he read the name aloud: “Ethan Danforth. FutureK Consulting.” He looked up at his ride as it powered away.
Carver struggled to weave the American-made economy sedan through the light dawn traffic. The engine was sluggish and the handling was an abomination. “We should’ve waited for somebody in a BMW,” he complained.
O’Keefe craned her neck out the rear passenger seat window. “Traffic ‘copter’s following us.”
Carver was in no mood for a televised freeway chase. They careened onto the Georgetown Memorial Parkway off-ramp. The news chopper followed. Carver gunned it, racking his brain for some competitive advantage that a car might possibly have over a helicopter.
“Where are we headed?” Eva said.
“Arlington,” Carver shouted back, knowing they wouldn’t be able to drive there without leading the bad guys straight to Speers. He had to ditch the car.
A mile later he saw the exit for Turkey Run Park, where he often went running on weekends. He took the exit and wound the car under the first bridge, skidding to a stop under cover of the 200-foot long overpass.
O’Keefe and Eva jumped out. Carver helped Angie out of the car and pulled her by the hand toward a section of wooded green space.
Line of Succession: A Thriller Page 26