Line of Succession: A Thriller (9 page)

*

Speers felt the church blast in his rental car from five blocks away. His windshield filled with white light and the car bounced on its shocks. A cloud-like expanse of black smoke billowed before him.

He stepped out of the car. A piece of insulation hit him in the forehead. It felt more like a brick than a four-ounce piece of cauterized foam.

“
C’mere,” someone said. A liver-spotted hand gripped his bicep. Speers touched his own forehead and felt blood. The next thing he knew, he was standing in a storefront doorway next to an elderly man in a white suit. Chunks of smoking debris fell around them.

“
That’s my church,” the man said. “That’s my church.”

Speers’ face fell even further. “That’s Holy Grace? Congressman Bailey’s…”

“
Yessir. The Speaker hisself. I saw his car pass by just a minute ago.”

As Speers ran back toward the rental car, he held a newspaper over his head to shield himself from the ensuing particle rain. Once back inside, he switched on the windshield wipers to clear the ash from his view. He flipped a U-Turn and drove back down Main Street, honking as he drove through the fast-gathering crowd.

Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina

11:02 a.m.

Major Cleveland Dobbs was halfway through his shift at CENTAF, the nerve center for the Eastern U.S strategic air defense. The burly, mustachioed officer sat at his terminal at the top of the CENTAF command room, an amphitheatre-shaped room about the size of a movie theatre. It was here that Dobbs supervised eighteen air traffic controllers who in turn coordinated over a hundred coastal fighter patrols in a single shift. Since 9/11, fighter aircraft were constantly in proximity to every major U.S. airport. Keeping them clear of mid-air collisions in the increasingly crowded skies was a tough job. Dobbs spent most of his day actively monitoring the work of his rather green staff. At a cost of between thirty and fifty million dollars per aircraft, there was no room for error.

His headset crackled as the Secret Service special agent aboard Marine One – the President’s personal helicopter – hailed him. “CENTAF, this is Dynasty requesting a flight plan.” For security reasons, it was protocol for the duty officer to manage Marine One and Air Force One personally. Marine One departure flight times were strictly classified; they happened unannounced, and flight plans were randomly generated by CENTAF on the fly. Helicopters, even the latest VH-71 Kestrels that Marine One flew, were simply too easy to shoot down to risk any security leaks.

“
Copy that, Dynasty,” Dobbs replied over his headset. “Verify destination.”

“
Red Zone,” the Secret Service agent said, giving the current destination codename for Camp David, the longtime Presidential retreat in Frederick County, Maryland. The flight between the White House and Camp David was a short one, and there were eight randomized flight paths varying between nineteen and twenty-six minutes in duration. The algorithm by which the CENTAF computers determined the route was a mystery, even to Major Dobbs. He had simply been trained to log into the Marine One application, list “Red Zone” as the destination, and click a button marked “GENERATE.” The computer would chew on it for less than one-tenth of a second and display the route to Dobbs.

The codename appeared on his screen. “The flight plan is Slasher,” Dobbs said. “Slasher.”

“
Copy that CENTAF,” came Marine One’s reply. The pilots had each of the routes committed to memory. No written or electronic flight plans existed.

Flight plan Slasher took Marine One due north, where it would be joined in mid-air by three identical VH-71 Kestrels all bearing the Marine One paint and insignia. These helicopters were decoys. The choppers flew in a pattern that was similar to cards shuffling in and out of a deck. From the ground, it was virtually impossible to tell which chopper carried the President.

Precisely one minute later, Dobbs tracked a pair of F-35s launched out of Langley to enforce the six-mile no-fly radius that was enforced around Camp David when the POTUS was in residence. A former combat chopper pilot himself, Dobbs viewed this as critical, since there were typically dozens of civilian aircraft that unwittingly penetrated Camp David airspace each year. From the moment the escorts joined the group, it would be only minutes before the entire group cleared the I-495 beltway and flew at low altitude over the rolling hills of Maryland.

The route now set, Major Dobbs removed his headset and looked over his crew. He frowned at the less than bumper crop of controllers. Most of these recruits had been in less than a year. Some were trainees that had no business here. All the experienced controllers were either on duty overseas or aboard aircraft carriers and AWACS planes. Still others had left to work for Ulysses. CENTAF was stretched thin, just like everyone else in the military.

Dobbs’ red phone rang. He knew immediately from the urgent voice on the other end that this wasn’t a drill. He listened wordlessly, hung up, and turned to the room of controllers.

“
Car bomb in Monroe, West Virginia,” he barked. The controllers stared back at Dobbs blankly, unsure what a car bomb had to do with airspace security. “Assume threat level red,” Dobbs said. “Keep the first shift patrols up,” he said, referring to the fighter planes that, since 9/11, had been timed with the early a.m. wave of passenger jets rolling out of Regan National Airport, Dulles, BWI, Boston Logan, Newark, JFK and LaGuardia. The idea was to have a critical mass of fighter jets on the east coast in case of attack. They were prepared, if necessary, to intercept hijacked planes at the times of heaviest traffic. “Scramble the second crew to fill the gaps.”

The controllers got on the radio and began notifying their patrols. Dobbs put on his headset and radioed the news to Marine One, advising them to pick up their airspeed and watch their altitude.

Frederick County, Maryland

11:07 a.m.

The forest was dead silent save for a very distant rumble of road noise that appeared only as gusts of breeze blew from the southwest. Chris Abrams and his four-man USOC crew were positioned roughly twenty yards apart, high in the canopies of beetle-ravaged hickory trees. The men had backpacked into the Maryland woods the night before, dressed as average weekend warriors looking for a trout stream and a place to camp. But in actuality their packs contained cordless drills, tree stands typically marketed to deer hunters, climbing spikes, MREs and, most importantly, shoulder-fired Stinger missiles. At an awkward five-foot long and thirty-six pounds each, the missiles were carried in hard shell fly rod cases that had been substantially enlarged and elongated for the mission.

Abrams listened intently for the sound of rotors. At a quarter past the hour, flight plan Slasher was due to bring the President’s helicopter directly overhead. With five shooters and four helicopters, Abrams had eliminated the need to identify Marine One from its decoys. They would simply destroy all of them.

At six-foot-six, Abrams was easily the crew’s tallest member. And as his sleeveless vest revealed, he also appeared to be the most ripped. But in actuality, Abrams wasn’t as healthy as he appeared. His body fat was perilously low, and in addition to adjusting the medication that kept the HIV virus in check, his doctor had just put him on a ten thousand calories-per-day diet – as much as some Olympic athletes. He was one of the few 34-year-old men in America for whom dessert was a necessity.

A Carolina Wren landed in the tree next to Abrams and launched into a loud, looping melody. Abrams shook his head and rubbed his shaved scalp. A reasonably quiet forest was essential to the mission. The rust-bellied, notoriously high-decibel wrens had pumped out a bumper crop this year all over the Southeastern U.S., and Abrams had brought a pump-action air pistol specifically for this reason. He pulled it out for the sixth time this morning, pumped it several times, leveraged it at the wren’s white eye stripe and fired a pellet deftly into it. The songbird tumbled from the tree, gasping and fluttering on its way to rest in a heap of feathers beside the others that Abrams had killed that morning.

At exactly 11:10 a.m., Abrams pulled out a cocktail of HIV and metabolism-slowing medicine. He swallowed the four pills without water and pulled out a protein packet, knowing it might be at least two hours before he would have time to eat again. He was already thinking about his next meal. He wanted to celebrate. He wanted short ribs from Rocklands Barbecue over on Wisconsin Avenue, where the smoke coming off the grill was so powerful that you would smell like barbecue for two days. It was the best barbecue in D.C. The best anywhere.

But Rocklands was off-limits now. Earlier in the year, Abrams had eaten there every time he went to the city to meet his Pentagon contacts. The last time, the server had surprised him by asking to put Abrams’ picture on the wall. He said that the staff had taken to calling Abrams “Trip,” short for “Triplicate,” because he always ordered and ate three courses. But Abrams didn’t let them take his picture. He wouldn’t even tell them his name. He just took his three bags and got the hell out of there. After that, he never visited anyplace more than once, no matter how good the food was.

Now the faint mechanical humming – like a thousand far-away bees – registered in Abrams’ eardrums, growing louder by the second. To Abrams’ trained ear, it was the unmistakable sound of four VH-71 Kestrel helicopters flying in formation. They were slightly ahead of schedule. He stuffed the granola bar in his pocket and readied himself.

“
I hear rotors,” Abrams said in Muskogee into the Bluetooth on his lapel. He repeated the phrase to make sure there were no misunderstandings. His four-man crew each knew only about fifteen hundred words of Muskogee, and he was far from fluent himself.

While these woods were typically unbearably thick with foliage in summer, this area had been chosen specifically for its thin canopies, the result of a beetle blight the year earlier that had killed off about half the area’s hickories. Abrams had been assured that Marine One would fly directly overhead. They were just outside the six-mile no-fly zone, so they were unlikely to be spotted by patrolling F-35s.

Abrams listened closely, timing the growing decibel level of the rotors with his watch. “They’re coming too fast,” he said in broken Muskogee. He and his men had trained in these very woods during two previous Presidential fly-overs. During those sessions, the President’s airborne convoy had flown 120 mph at most. He could only assume that some other part of the operation, which he had been in the dark of, had tipped Marine One off.

The rotor sound grew loud enough for all five men to hear it. Timing would be critical. Given the choppers’ low altitude and relatively high speed, they would have a second or less for the Stinger to lock onto its target, emit its distinctive high-pitched buzz, and pull the trigger. Plus, they would have to fire at roughly the same time, ensuring that all four VH-71s were destroyed. There would be no opportunity for second chances. Should one missile strike a target too early, the other heat-seeking Stingers could converge on the exploded target, or worse, the real Marine One could release its anti-SAM countermeasures and escape amidst the mid-air fracas.

He stashed his air pistol, pulled out his field scope and watched as his men took the Stingers out of their five-foot long tubes, rose on their tree stands, placed the Stingers on their right shoulders, and pointed them skyward. Abrams’ was like all the others, except for one detail – he had a tiny camera mounted on his scope.

“
Get ready boys,” Abrams growled in Muskogee. “Here they come.”

Aboard Marine One

11:07 a.m.

“
This is Santa Monica and Seattle all over again!” President Hatch complained into his skyphone. He had just learned of the bombing in Monroe. Dressed in a tweed blazer and dark denim jeans – Camp David attire was decidedly informal – the President sat aboard Marine One en route to meet the Iranian Ambassador. They were accompanied by three identical VH-71 Kestrels flying in an inverted V formation. To minimize their exposure, the pilots were maxing out at 190 mph and flying so low that they practically skimmed the tops of the power lines.

The unlucky bureaucrat on the receiving end of the President’s rant was Homeland Security Deputy Director Devon Davis. Davis was on vacation in Fort Lauderdale, and had only learned of the incident seconds before the President himself. Davis’ boss had been fired after the Seattle car bombing earlier in the year, and Davis was the Acting Director until a replacement was found.

“
Mister President,” Deputy Director Davis said as he tried to get off the phone, “I’ll call you as soon as I have details.”

“
You’ve got a helluva nerve. Don’t you dare cut it short on me at a time like this.”

“
Sorry, Mister President. It’s just that –“

“
Any intel pointing to Iranian involvement in this?”

“
Not that I know of, sir. Do you have reason to believe they did? “

“
Let’s just say the timing is odd,” the President replied, thinking of the sudden, out-of-nowhere request by the Iranian Ambassador. So far, Eva was the only cabinet member whom he’d alerted about the meeting with the Iranians, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to explain it to the very green Davis now. He hung up and looked out the window as Marine One banked at high speed.