William Tyree - Line of Succession

Abrams wasn’t wearing a Ulysses uniform, but he was holding an M4. “Mister President?” Abrams said in perfect English.

The President relaxed and let his head hang. “Thank God,” he said upon hearing Abrams’ decidedly American accent. “What happened to the others?”

“You’re the last of ‘em,” Abrams replied.

Always the politician, President Hatch thought carefully about his response. He imagined this moment would be re-enacted in a movie someday. “Well I hope you’re a Democrat.”

“No sir,” Abrams replied, “I’m not.”

He waited until the President strained his neck to look up again. Then he shot him twice in the face.

Chesapeake Bay

11:09 a.m.

The blue marlin leapt into the air, shaking its mighty head in hopes of freeing itself from the barbed hook in its mouth. It seemed to drift in mid-air for a moment before falling tail-first back into the Atlantic.

“You see that?” Dex Jackson said. A toothpick stuck out the corner of his mouth. “He’s fading. Another half hour and he’s dinner.”

His son, LeBron, didn’t seem so sure of that. The obese 12-year-old was strapped into a game fishing chair on the back of his father’s Predator sports boat. LeBron was no outdoorsman, and the marlin was diving hard, taking up slack, whipping the rod tip around with supernatural force. The reel was actually smoking as the thick line spun out at more than ten feet per second. Dex trickled some bottled water over it to cool it off.

LeBron’s palms were bleeding. “Dad,” he said, “Can you take it? Please?”

“This ain’t no video game,” Dex said. “C’mon, boy. You can do this.”

This summer, the 56-year-old Defense Secretary had vowed to get his youngest child off his soft video-gaming ass and into the great outdoors. LeBron was one hundred percent nerd. He was already on his fourth set of ever more powerful prescription glasses, a fact that Dex attributed to his all-nighters staring at game monitors. It was classic — LeBron had even gotten beaten up by jocks just before the summer break. When Dex asked the school’s Vice Principal why it happened, he showed Dex his notes from the head bully: “We jumped LeBron cuz he’s such a fat pussy.”

Dex blamed himself. His own childhood had been 180-degrees from LeBron’s, having racked up a 45-3 amateur boxing record prior to entering West Point, from which the structural integrity of his nose cartilage had never recovered. But since going into politics after a stellar military career, he’d let his work take over his life and left LeBron to a life of shopping with his mother and long nights of video gaming. But now he was going to change all that. The kid needed to build some muscle, see a few sunsets and breathe some air that hadn’t been breathed before.

Angie Jackson was twenty years her husband’s junior and many times more sympathetic. She stroked LeBron’s forehead. “I’ll get you some gloves, baby.”

Something caught Dex’s eye. A boat in the distance. He grabbed his binoculars.

It was a powerboat. He saw three men in black wetsuits, but they didn’t look like recreational divers. They sure as hell didn’t look like anglers.

Angie held the rod for LeBron as he quickly slipped the gloves over his lacerated hands.

Dex’s phone rang. “ESC,” the Executive Support Center within the Pentagon, came up on the ID. Shit. He’d been on vacation less than two hours, and his staff was already pinging him. He answered. It was General Wainewright’s assistant, Corporal Hammond.

“We’re evacuating to Site R,” Corporal Hammond said without elaboration. “A Coast Guard vessel is en route to escort you back to shore.”

“Are they in an unmarked boat?” Dex said, but Hammond had already hung up.

“Everything okay?” Angie said.

Dex picked up the binoculars again. The powerboat was coming straight for them. He looked at LeBron. The boy was finally getting into it, getting some leverage over the fish. Dex saw his boy changing before his eyes.

Then he looked out again at the boat and knew he had to stop thinking so much. That sure as hell didn’t look like any Coast Guard patrol he’d ever seen.

“Let the fish go,” he said.

LeBron was incredulous. As much pain as he was in, he wanted the fish. He wanted to prove something.

“Let it go, boy,” Dex said. “I’m not asking you.”

Martha’s Vineyard

11:10 a.m.

Eva Hudson’s plastic oversized sunglasses covered nearly half her face. She peered into the window of an upscale boutique in Edgartown, a quintessential Martha’s Vineyard village — complete with an old red brick lighthouse — that had remained largely unchanged for more than a century. She walked past the famous Whaling Church, with its white Greek columns and fortress-solid structure that had been crafted by shipbuilders one hundred and fifty some-odd years earlier. After a bit of shopping, she planned to take in the 11:30 a.m. church service. Nothing in the world left her feeling more centered than an hour with a hundred strangers praying in unison.

She loved Edgartown’s white picket fence sensibility. It was a bit more upscale than Oak Bluff, the island village that former Presidents and several notable rap stars liked to frequent. Last year, she and the President had stolen away from the watchful eyes of his security detail and squeezed into a local tour of the historic homes of long-dead whaling captains. After a couple years of sneaking around the White House, the unsupervised three-hour tour had felt as good as a prison break.

She lifted her sunglasses and leaned into the storefront glass, getting a good look at her face. Damn. That tanning salon had gotten her way too orange. And the crow’s feet were back. She’d have to make another appointment with the dermatologist. It was well known that Presidents aged visibly — and quickly — during their time in office, but she swore this term had been harder on her than on Hatch.

As her eye traveled downward, she found that she was much happier about the rest of her. The Treasury Secretary had been running seven miles a day for the past month in hopes of having a bikini-ready bod for her planned weekend sneak-away with the President. Now that the President was going to Camp David instead, Eva was more determined than ever. Her fantasy for this morning was to buy a skimpy swimsuit, have someone take a photo of her in it, and make the President insanely jealous.

It would never happen. The paparazzi would prevent her from actually wearing it on the beach. Upon her arrival at her private rental two hours earlier, the maid had spotted the tabloid press boats already gathering about one hundred yards off the shoreline.

All the fuss was a bit stunning. Without advance reservations, Martha’s Vineyard was relatively hard to get to in the summertime. The island’s airport was tiny. Flights were expensive and booked solid from June through September. The ferries were fully booked months in advance. Eva figured the photo bug vermin must have boated in from New York’s Fire Island or maybe Providence. She tried to convince herself that it was just as well the President hadn’t come.

This was daily life since Vanity Fair had dubbed her the World’s Sexiest Fed. Suddenly, her professional image had seemed to melt away, and she appeared in the same gossip rags as Hollywood actresses. It got worse when one of the President’s nannies had come forward, selling a story to the New York Post that she and the President had a romantic relationship when serving together in the Virginia Governor’s mansion.

Eva heard a car slow behind her. Fearing paparazzi, she looked up, using the boutique’s storefront glass as a rearview mirror.