Designated Survivor

by John H. Matthews

  “Insta-terrorist,” Grace said. “Lethal. Disposable.”

  “Brilliant,” Arrington said. “But we can’t be sure.”

  “That’s why I have Ben and his team going through phone records for all of the officers and agents in the Capitol,” Grace said “We need something linking them.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The screens around the room displayed the live satellite imagery over the United States Capitol. The sun was still down and the video was grainy. Flashing lights surround the building where police and military vehicles were stationed.

  “We don’t have SEAL Team Four anymore,” Grace said.

  “What about Special Forces?” Arrington said.

  “The 1st battalion out of Fort Bragg landed over an hour ago,” Darby said. “And the 3rd out of Birmingham should be on the ground anytime. We can get troops from Kentucky activated and in the air.”

  “That gives us roughly a thousand troops,” Grace said. “We’re going to need every last one of them for the recovery effort, but that’s way too many for first strike.”

  Grace drew on a wireless tablet that sent his drawing to the screens above. He began making marks around the Capitol.

  “I think we put as many men as we have ready on the ground, but the primary contact will be made by six-man teams of Special Forces,” Grace said. “One team at each of the four main entry points.”

  “What if we come from below?” Leighton said.

  “The tunnels?” Arrington said.

  “Exactly,” Leighton said. “They connect the Capitol to all of the congressional office buildings, the Supreme Court and even the Library of Congress.”

  “But that’s putting all of our men in an enclosed space,” Darby said. “If they’ve thought about that it could already be wired with explosives or have armed guards down there.”

  Grace continued drawing as he thought about the layout of Capitol Hill. “It’s not one or the other, it’s both,” Grace said. “But one is only a diversion.”

  He turned to see if he had their attention then pointed up to his scribbles.

  “We send in Special Forces on the ground, in a full circle around the building and the breach teams at the doors,” Grace said. “This should draw out most of the enemy gunmen to prepare for battle. We put helicopters in the air. Anything we can do for a distraction. Then we have small groups come in through the tunnels from each direction. Fewer troops will be able to better watch for booby traps and explosives than sending hundreds of men through there.”

  “Draw them to the doors then attack from below,” Arrington said. “It could work.”

  “It could also get every last one of them killed, including the president,” Grace said. “We don’t even know who we’re dealing with here yet. If we knew it was Al Qaeda, we know how they work, how they plan. If it’s the Russians, we know how they think. But we don’t. Going in against an unknown enemy is dangerous.”

  “How do we find out? There’s still no chatter, no one’s taking credit yet,” Leighton said.

  “Before any full assault you need a recon team,” Grace said. “We need to get an idea of some faces, manpower counts, weapons being used. From that we can better determine who we’re up against and how to neutralize them.”

  “Let me guess,” Arrington said.

  “We’ll do it,” Grace said.

  “Graham won’t like it,” Arrington said. “He wants something big.”

  “Then we don’t tell him,” Grace said. “Work up a full on assault plan and tell him that’s what we’re doing, it’s just going to take time to get all the moving parts in position. Meanwhile, my team will already be underway.”

  “How do you think you can get in?” Arrington said.

  The map above them all moved and a circle Grace had drawn centered on the screen.

  “Anyone know what this is?” Grace said.

  “Dupont Circle,” Paulson said.

  “Right. But do you know what’s under Dupont Circle?” Grace said.

  “The abandoned underground,” Leighton said. “For an electric streetcar or something, right?”

  “Give that man a banana,” Grace said. “Around 1950 they used them to try to alleviate the already shitty traffic in D.C., but it failed. The ventilation couldn’t move the air fast enough and it stank so bad down there nobody would take the underground train.”

  “How’s this help? Dupont Circle is almost three miles from the Capitol,” Arrington said.

  “A lesser known fact,” Grace said. “One line was built from Dupont to the Capitol building to allow congress to easily come and go, many residing in Dupont due to the abundance of housing and restaurants. The tunnel was sealed up for security in the 1970’s.”

  “How do you know about it?” Paulson said.

  “Because it also had an exit here,” Grace drew another circle on the map.

  “The Mayflower Hotel?” Paulson said.

  “Exactly. The preferred host of congressional extramarital affairs,” Grace said. “When congress approved the secret train line, they figured they might as well make it easier to sneak around on their wives.”

  “Have you been down there?” Arrington said.

  “Once about five years ago,” Grace said. “I used it on a covert mission. We can gain access below the hotel. It’s easier than from Dupont Circle since there are a couple more walls between the two now. It’s similar to the Capitol subway between the main building and the Congressional office buildings, just a lot longer.”

  “You’ll have a two mile walk in the dark between the Mayflower and the Capitol,” Paulson said. “That’ll take a lot of time.”

  “I have an idea about that,” Grace said.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was one o’clock in the morning as Grace left the building in Herndon in an unmarked white Homeland Security car with Corbin in the passenger seat and headed towards D.C. He had sent the rest of the team with Netty in the van to their building to get the gear they would need. He had Highway 66 to himself and cruised the left lane at eighty-five miles per hour while Corbin stared out the side window.

  He exited left from 66 onto E Street then swerved right towards the White House and used the lights in the grill of the car and his DHS credentials to get through two roadblocks. A few minutes later he pulled up on Desales Street beside the Mayflower Hotel and parked behind the black Mercedes van. The side door of the van slid open as he and Corbin approached and the team began spilling out onto the sidewalk.

  “Get everything?” Grace said and heard only grunts and swear words back at him. He knew they were always prepared and expected the response. “Avery, get what we talked about?”

  “Yup,” Avery pulled the large canvas duffel out of the van and put it on like a backpack.

  “Great. Access is from below the boiler room, a couple stories down from street level,” Grace said. “The lobby should be empty at this hour, so we just have to get through to the service area then no one will care we’re there. Let’s do this.”

  They were all dressed in grey coveralls with a logo for Bugged Out, a fake pest control company, on the backs. Each grabbed a pair of large bags. They came around the front of the building, the side doors of the hotel being locked after hours. Two men in ornate uniforms opened the double gold doors and let them in.

  As they stepped through they stopped and looked at each other then at Grace.

  “Thought you said it would be empty,” Holden said.

  The lobby was packed with people from one side to the other. News crews had cameras set up in several places conducting interviews with people in suits and police uniforms and anyone else they could stop.

  “This is a shit storm,” Grace said. “We just have to get through to the back. Keep away from any cameras. Hats down.”

  The team headed out in a single line through the crowd, Holden leading the way to clear a path for the rest of them. Nobody who turned to look at him hesitated before they stepped out of the way.


  They reached the back of the lobby and went through the door to the employees only service area. After a long hall with white floors and walls they came to a locked door that Levi had open easily and they passed through. Grace went last, checking both ways down the hall before closing the door behind them. They moved through the darker area and down a flight of metal suspended stairs into the boiler room that provided all of the heat and hot water for the hotel.

  “Where to, boss?” Avery said.

  “All the way to the end then take a left,” Grace said. “There should be an old door that leads to the sublevel.”

  After moving through the hot room they turned and stopped at a cement block wall.

  “Well, this doesn’t look good,” Corbin said.

  “Shit, they bricked over it,” Grace said. “It was here five years ago.”

  They all stared at the wall. Holden stepped up to it and looked closer then reached into the bag he was carrying and pulled out a drill.

  Avery looked down at the power tool and raised his eyebrows. “Why the hell are you carrying that around?” Avery said.

  “Maybe in case there’s a huge ass cement block wall in our way,” Holden said.

  He ran the power cord and Avery found a socket and he began drilling one-inch holes every six inches along the border of the newer cement blocks.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Grace said. “We should already be a quarter mile down the tunnel.”

  “Levi, give me a block of the Semtex,” Holden said.

  “You want to let everyone in the hotel know what’s going on?” Levi said.

  “Trust me,” Holden said.

  He took the block of orange plastic explosives and cut thin strips off with his pocketknife then pushed one piece into each of the holes he’d drilled in the wall. Then he placed a blasting cap into each piece and ran the wire down to the floor.

  “Just inside the door to the boiler room there was a cart with building materials on it,” Holden said. “Someone go bring it here.”

  Avery turned and jogged off down the long hallway and returned a minute later pushing a large maintenance cart.

  “Thanks,” Holden said. “On the bottom of the cart there’s a big can of spackle. Pull it out and open it for me but don’t stir it up. I want it thick.”

  Avery knelt down and looked at the bottom level of the cart. Between a box of light bulbs and a broken plastic toolbox was the round tub of spackle. “How the hell did you see this?” He pulled the plastic container out.

  “Know your surroundings,” Holden said. “Never know what you’ll need. I took inventory of that cart with a glance as we walked past it.”

  Holden took the spackle and a trowel and filled each hole then ran the wires together.

  “Is that it?” Levi said.

  “One more thing,” Holden said.

  “What’s that?” Levi said.

  “Get the fuck back,” Holden said.

  Everyone went around the corner as Holden ran the wires and attached them to the small black box with a hand crank on the side, a trigger he’d built that required no electrical power source.

  “Fire in the hole!” Holden turned the handle a full rotation. A metal cylinder spun inside a series of magnets, creating a small electrical charge that traveled down the wire to the detonators in the plastic explosives. A series of small explosions went off inside the cement block wall. The floor shook for a moment then everything was done.

  They all went back around the corner to see the wall still standing.

  “Any other ideas?” Avery said.

  Holden walked towards the wall then stopped just in front of it. He ran his hand around the perimeter of the holes then stepped back and extended his right leg out in a kick, striking the wall with the bottom of his heavy work boot.

  The wall began to crumble from the bottom, which allowed the top to fall away.

  “Damn,” Netty said. “That’s some kick.”

  Holden and Levi cleared enough of the debris to let them climb over carrying their bags. Ten feet past the rubble was the decades old steel door.

  Grace walked up to the door and turned the unlocked handle and pushed but the door was jammed in place.

  “How about you bring your thunder boot over here again,” Grace said.

  “Thunder boot, I like that,” Holden stepped to the door and repeated his kick and the door opened eight inches.

  With a few more shoulders and kicks it was open wide enough for them to pass through with their bags. Following Grace they each wore night vision goggles. They came to a metal stairwell that went down twenty feet then found themselves standing on the wooden platform where the electric subway train used to pull up.

  “You’re standing where J. Edgar Hoover once stood, men,” Grace said.

  “And women,” Netty said.

  “And women,” Grace said.

  “So now we have two miles to walk in this tunnel?” Corbin said.

  “Hopefully not,” Grace said. “Avery, over here.”

  Twenty feet down the track sat an abandoned open-topped subway car. A tower came out of the middle and attached onto a grooved track in the ceiling. Electricity would have flowed through the elevated groove and traveled down the tower to the electric motors on each set of wheels on the subway car.

  “It’s an electric subway car from the 1950’s. It was used to transport members of Congress back and forth,” Grace said. “Can you get it going?”

  Avery opened the large duffel he’d been wearing as a backpack and pulled out a two-foot square battery pack. “Let’s give it a try.”

  “Give it five minutes, if you don’t think it’ll roll then we’ll set out on foot,” Grace said. “Everyone else, get ready. Either way we’re out of here in five.”

  Bags were opened and gear spread out on the platform. Each person took off the grey coveralls to reveal their green combat pants. They pulled on the bulletproof vests they’d brought and strapped side holsters on and filled pockets with extra ammunition.

  Chip opened his second bag and handed a Sig Sauer 516 tactical rifle to each person along with two extra magazines.

  “I modified them myself,” Chip said. “Sound suppression is better than anything on the market.”

  A clicking sound came from the small electric motor on the subway car followed by some swear words from Avery. He reached under the motor to check the wiring then tried to start it again and the motor came to life in a low hum.

  “All aboard,” Avery said.

  Everyone sat along the edge of the narrow platform of the cart. Netty put two bags in the middle and was the last to climb on.

  “Here we go,” Avery shoved the handle forward to push the transmission into gear and the cart lurched forward almost throwing him off the back then steadied out and moved along.

  “Not the fastest thing,” Corbin said.

  “Probably seven or eight miles per hour,” Avery said. “Faster than we could make on foot through here.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “You know if we have to leave in a hurry, this thing ain’t gonna do the trick,” Avery said. The electric subway car moved slowly within the tunnel

  “These boots were made for running,” Grace said.

  “That’s reassuring,” Chip said.

  The ride took 18 minutes through the dark tunnel. Avery turned the motor off as they neared the end point and they rolled to a stop and sat in the quiet to listen for any movement.

  “Sounds clear,” Grace said. “Let’s just hope we don’t have to blast another wall.”

  “Yeah, I’m guessing security in the basement of the United States Capitol is a little better than a hotel’s,” Levi said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Not helpful, Levi,” Grace said. “For that you get to scout. Avery, you’re with him.”

  “Just because I Indian, no mean I scout,” Levi said.

  “Can it and get moving,” Grace said. “Okay everybody. Earpieces in, volume on low. Maintain
radio silence as much as possible. We don’t know what channels might be getting monitored. Even with our secure channels, we can’t count on them unless necessary.”

  Levi disappeared down a dark hallway at the end of the tunnel with Avery right behind. The team sat in silence as they waited. It took four minutes and Avery returned.

  “Door’s still there,” Avery said. “Levi ran a camera underneath. Looks like a clasp and padlock on the other side.”

  “Netty, you’re up,” Grace said. “Show me what you got.”

  “Sure thing, captain,” Netty said.

  She moved into the darkness. At the end she found Levi then opened the satchel she’d carried with her.

  “Any movement?” she said.

  “Nothing,” Levi said. “We’re in the basement still so they’re probably all watching the ground level.”

  “Good.” From her bag Netty pulled out a can of automotive air conditioner refrigerant and a short crowbar. “I need you to pry the door away from the jamb as much as you can. I need at least a third of an inch.”

  Levi took the crowbar and placed it just above the doorknob then leaned back and let his weight pull the lever back. A quarter inch gap opened up allowing Netty to see through to the back of the metal clasp. She mounted a brass valve to the can with a six-inch extension tube attached to it and pointed it into the jamb and began spraying.

  “How long?” Levi said.

  “Only a minute or so, hopefully,” Netty said.

  “Will it break the clasp?”

  “No, it’ll weaken the hinge,” Netty said. “The clasp is all one piece of metal. I’d need liquid nitrogen to get through that. The pin in the hinge is usually weaker. We just need it to get fragile enough to break apart with a little bit of pressure.”

  “Where’d you learn this?” Levi said.

  “Girl Scouts,” Netty said.

  The can stopped spraying as it ran out of refrigerant and she set it off to the side.