Line of Succession: A Thriller (14 page)

Dex grunted disapprovingly. “How is it that the Secretary of Defense doesn’t know about the construction of a new emergency bunker?”

“
Don’t take it personally. Google Maps doesn’t even know about it yet.”

The elevator doors opened to reveal a cavernous underground defense operations center. The room was easily the length of a basketball court and three stories tall. Touch-screen monitors built into the walls tracked troop and weapons movements around the world. Dozens of uniformed Ulysses communications personnel sat at workstations around the room.

“
Sweet Jesus,” Jackson said. “It’s as big as NORAD.”

“
You have no idea. We carved the command room out of an old Cold War missile silo that the Soviets never got wind of. The facility joins up with a natural cave to the north and a retired coal mine ‘bout half a mile south. We could keep an entire brigade down here for years if we needed to.”

Dex took note of all the Ulysses uniforms in the room. “General,” he said, “I don’t see many regular military personnel.”

Wainewright smiled. “Dex, you’re a Republican. You of all people should appreciate that the private sector will outperform the public sector every single time.”

The General motioned for Corporal Hammond, one of the few regular military personnel in the bunker, to come to Dex’s assistance. Hammond carried a titanium briefcase with one hand and saluted with the other. “Secretary Jackson,” he beamed, knowing nothing of Angie Jackson’s disappearance into Chesapeake Bay. “Happy to see you safe and sound, sir.”

Hammond. The imbecile that was responsible for all this. Dex clinched his fists and took a swing.

Dex’s right hook connected with the Corporal’s left eyebrow, sending him to the deck with a rivulet of blood trickling into his eye.

Wainewright shoved Dex backwards. “What’s gotten into you?”

“
This is the little prick that called me on the boat. He told me to stay put. That hesitation killed my wife.”

“
The Corporal here was just the messenger, Dex. He had no way of knowing.”

Hammond got to his feet, wiped the blood out of his eye and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about your loss,” he said. “I really had no idea.” The Corporal plopped the briefcase atop a workstation and opened it, revealing several dozen phones with the names of their owners written on sticky notes. “I’m afraid I need your phone, Mister Secretary.”

“
You don’t know when to quit, Corporal.”

“
He’s not trying to antagonize you,” the General explained. “There are no personal phones allowed down here. Not that you could get reception anyhow.”

Jackson reached into his pocket, produced his phone, and grudgingly handed it over. LeBron’s phone – outfitted with little grips for playing video games, tucked into the carrying strap on his backpack – didn’t escape the Corporal’s prying eyes.

“
Sorry, kid,” Hammond told LeBron. “Rules are rules.”

Dex’s jaw tightened. “He’s just a kid.”

“
Let him be,” Wainewright cut in. “He lost his mother today.”

The Coal Mine

8:47 p.m.

After spending six gut-busting hours in a Ulysses Bradley armored vehicle that chugged along at sub-highway speeds, Julian Speers was led into an abandoned coal mine that had been fitted with blast-proof shielding. There the Ulysses soldier that had donated his gym clothes bid him good riddance and passed him off to a pair of MPs that led him down a long, gradually sloping tunnel. They passed through two additional sets of shielded doors and took an elevator and a rail car through what the MP described as the “ass end of the bunker.”

They finally came to the Rapture Run command room. The cavernous operations center had the same awe-inspiring effect on him as it had on the other two hundred personnel that had first passed through its doors that day.

Speers recognized Corporal Hammond, the little terrier of a man who often waited outside the White House cabinet room for General Wainewright during Security Council meetings. “Welcome to Rapture Run,” Hammond said with a smile. “I’ll need to check your phone.”

The Corporal obviously didn’t recognize him. “I’m Julian –“

“
Speers. I know. You’re cleared to enter, Chief, but I’m afraid there are no exceptions to the policy on mobile devices.” The Corporal held out his hand for the phone.

The Chief shook his head. “I’ve got data on this phone that is way above your security clearance.”

Hammond leaned close and whispered into Speers’ ear. “Compliance with the rules is
very
important here. There is a zero tolerance policy.” Speers looked over his shoulder. He was surrounded by four armed Ulysses soldiers that were carefully observing his every move.

Don’t piss off the guys with the guns, he reminded himself. Especially these guys. They don’t just have guns. They’ve also got stock options.

As he surrendered his phone, he realized he had forgotten to call his neighbor, Ms. Tenningclaus. By now she was way out in Arizona, and the way this was going, those cats were going to have to catch their own dinner.

The Corporal put Speers’ phone into the titanium briefcase that held several dozen others. He then led Speers through the command room toward the emergency NMCC. There, Speers recognized Major James Dobbs from CENTAF. Dobbs was supervising a small group of air traffic controllers. Speers left his chaperone and went to the mustachioed air traffic control czar.

“
Major Dobbs?” he said. “Julian Speers. We met last fall. You were testifying before the Armed Services Committee.”

“
I think everyone here knows who you are, Chief.” Dobbs looked Speers up and down, frowning at his track suit.

“
The President told me to meet him at Camp David,” Speers said. “When I got there they told me he’d never arrived. Nobody will give me a straight answer.”

Dobbs turned to a junior officer. “Take the con. I’ll be back in five.”

Dobbs took Speers by the arm and led him to an empty conference room adjacent to the command center. He shut the door. “What I’m about to tell you isn’t public knowledge. I haven’t even been debriefed yet.”

The Chief of Staff sat down. He could tell by the look on Dobbs’ face that whatever story he was about to hear wouldn’t end well. His mouth seemed to fill up with cotton as he listened to the Major’s story. Dobbs described how he had generated a flight plan for Marine One that morning, and then tracked Marine One and its three identical decoys into the Maryland hills until they suddenly disappeared from radar. “I scrambled a pair of F-35s,” he said. “I notified General Wainewright.”

“
You said three choppers went down,” Speers interrupted. “That means one survived.”

Dobbs shook his head. “You want to know if the President is alive. The answer is that I honestly don’t know. The NMCC took over communications with the surviving chopper on a secure channel. We weren’t even allowed to eavesdrop. Next thing we know, our entire squad of controllers was relocated here. We were told not to ask any questions.”

“
Was it the Iranians? “ Speers said.

Dobbs was puzzled. “What Iranians?”

“
That’s the reason the President was going to Camp David. To meet the Iranian Ambassador. You see where I’m going with this. They request the meeting, then the Speaker of the House gets vaporized, then someone takes a shot at Marine One...” Speers tolerated Dobbs’ blank look for less than a second. “Don’t tell me nobody’s put that together yet.”

“
Chief, you’re mistaken. If there was an Iranian delegation en route to Camp David, I would’ve been told. Anytime foreign heads of state visit Camp David, we tighten up our air patrols. It’s protocol.”

Speers held his weary face in his hands. “Okay. Besides you, who could’ve known the flight plan?”

“
Nobody. The flight plan isn’t decided until Marine One takes off. I request a plan, one is randomized from the Pentagon database, and then I communicate that orally to Marine One.”

The Chief had been on Marine One dozens of times, but he had never given much thought to the security procedures regarding flight plans. “What about the decoy pilots?”

“
The formation adapts to the flight plan mid-air. That way, even if an enemy catches onto a codename, there’s no time for them to get in place. We take no chances.”

“
It had to be rigged somehow. Was there anything unusual about today?”

“
I don’t think so, Chief. It worked just like always. I pushed a button and received the plan. But like I said, you didn’t hear the story from me. I’ve gotta get back to work.”

Dobbs opened the door and headed back to the command room. Speers remained seated. His mind filled with more questions. The only thing he knew for sure was that it had only been twelve hours since he’d left the White House Security Council meeting. And in those twelve hours, the nation had come apart.

Fort Campbell, Kentucky

Standing outside the base’s screening room, Agent Carver could hear the voices of twenty-six unhappy contract linguists. On Carver’s orders, the linguists had been rounded up and flown into Fort Campbell under a clause that allowed the Feds to retain any former military employee contractor during a national emergency. Most of them had families that were upset about being uprooted during the crisis.

Carver wasn’t exactly psyched to see them either. They were the same virtual team that had tried and failed to crack the coded transmissions Carver had given them during the investigation. Still, except for Nico, they were all he had.

It had been more than twelve hours since Carver had heard from Speers. Without the benefit of the Chief’s input, Carver had decided to continue pursuing the original investigation. If nothing else, he wanted to explore the possibility that Lieutenant Flynn might have had ties to the assassins.

“
Hello Word Nerds,” Carver said as he entered the room. He held a tiny video projector. “I realize that this isn’t exactly convenient, but frankly, we blew it, folks, and a lot of good people are dead.” The room fell silent as O’Keefe and Nico entered. The skin of Nico’s wrists was red and irritated from wearing handcuffs during transit. “That’s my colleague Agent Meagan O’Keefe. With her is Nico Gold. Yes, the
infamous
Nico Gold. He’ll be working with you on this case. If that isn’t incentive to try harder, I dunno what is.”

O’Keefe dimmed the lights. “This aired on Al Jazeera thirty minutes ago.”

Faruq Ahmed’s brown, clean-shaven face came onscreen. He wore a headscarf and began speaking in Arabic. As he talked, clips of desert training camps played behind him, showing teenage recruits destroying mock U.S. and Israeli targets. In less than three minutes, it was over.

Carver stopped the DVD. “Translation?”

“
It’s a suicide tape,” one of the linguists said. “His name is Faruq Ahmed. He says he represents Allied Jihad. He is from Yemen, has been living in West Virginia for six months, and takes responsibility for masterminding the assassinations of several top leaders, although he gives no specifics. Plus the usual garbage about Muslim youth rising up against the evil empire.”

“
That’s it?”

“
The usual promises of seventy virgins in the afterlife to any martyrs that rise up within the U.S.”

Carver turned his gaze to Nico. “Your thoughts?”

“
The Koran cites seventy-two virgins for holy martyrs, not seventy.”

“
Okay. Is that significant?”

“
I’d say. It means Islam is running low on virgins.”

The linguists laughed. Carver waved his hand dismissively. “Get your Ivy League asses back on those intercepted transmissions. Agent O’Keefe will hand out the assignments.”

The agitated linguists filed out into the next room. Nico remained in his seat. A sly grin spread across his face.

“
What’re you waiting for?” Carver asked him.

“
My Presidential pardon.”

Carver’s expression went blank. He folded his hands on top of his head. “What…You mean you cracked the code already?”

“
About that,” Nico said. “It’s not a code.”

Rapture Run

The elevator wobbled as it descended deeper within the vast subterranean complex. It stopped abruptly between two floors, doors opening to reveal a cold, black nothingness that frightened young LeBron Jackson. The Ulysses MP pressed the D button repeatedly until the door shut and the elevator began moving again.

“
What grade you in?” the MP said. He towered over LeBron’s short, chubby frame.

“
Eighth,” LeBron said.

“
Jesus. World’s going to hell sure as I’m standing here.”

The elevator came to a rest and opened. “Welcome to the dungeon,” the MP said without any hint of humor in his voice. LeBron saw a long row of blue LED lamps that seemed to stretch forever. He felt the cavern’s cool, moist air and heard someone’s cries echoing off the wet rock ceiling.