William Tyree - Line of Succession

“Here ya go,” the other soldier said as he mercifully tossed a gym bag at Speers. “There’s a pair of sweats and a t-shirt in there. Go on. It’s okay. Those clothes ain’t been worked out in yet.”

Baltimore

Hamilton Arms Apartment 309

5:35 p.m.

They were going to kill her. Of that, Angie Jackson was certain. She sat tied up with her back against the wall. Mrs. Defense Secretary Dexter P. Jackson wasn’t scared. She was far too angry to feel any fear. Dear God, she thought. Do what you want with me. Make sure LeBron is safe. Do what you want with my husband. He’s yours to judge.

Apartment 309’s windows were covered in tin foil. There was no furniture in the living room except for a couch that had been found in a dumpster outside, and the little TV, which sat on top of a rusted milk crate. CNN played endless live coverage of the crisis, which the network had already branded : A Day of Terror , complete with an animated red, white and blue logo that played the opening notes of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” each time it swooshed onscreen. The tag line: America Mourns.

Elvir sat next to her eating from a can of sardines while Ali slept in the next room with the rest of the crew. Angie sized up Elvir’s lean frame, which was wrapped in a too-tight wife beater t-shirt, and guessed his weight at about a buck sixty. Her eyes searched his arms and shoulders for some recognizable tattoo or mole, but all she saw was black hair. Elvir had to be the hairiest man she had ever seen. She took in all these details and committed them to memory. In the event that God spared her life, Angie vowed do her best to identify her captors and bring them to justice.

The assassin felt her staring. His eyes broke from the TV.

“Hungry?” he said in Bosnian-accented English. Angie nodded. He scooted closer and pulled back the tape covering her mouth. He spooned a sardine into her in a dispassionate, measured rhythm.

They had not planned on taking a prisoner. In fact, the client had said nothing about the Secretary of Defense’s family being aboard the little sport fishing boat. Dex Jackson was supposed to be alone. In the heat of the moment, Elvir had decided to save Angie’s life for fear that he would not collect his money otherwise. In Bosnia, where he had been a teenager during the civil war, there were sometimes financial penalties for inflicting collateral damage.

Besides, his employer had proved to be extremely particular. Given the very unusual nature of the assignment, he felt sure that they would not want Mrs. Jackson to die. He had vague hopes of earning some type of bonus for his heroism.

Suddenly, his prisoner’s face was on live television. The anchor on TV put on a sympathetic face: “ Though our focus has been on the drama of the multiple attacks today, our thoughts at this hour, by the way, are of course with all the victim’s families. In a new development, we have word that Secretary of Defense Dexter Jackson and his son LeBron Thomas Jackson are at Bethesda Naval Hospital being treated for a routine medical evaluation after gunmen attacked their boat in Chesapeake Bay. The White House has confirmed that his wife was killed in the attack .”

Angie recognized the photo of herself. It had been taken at the Foreign Correspondents’ Press Dinner a year earlier.

Elvir turned up the volume. “You see?” he said. “Everyone thinks you are dead.” They continued watching as the anchor eulogized her, detailing her years working as a policy analyst in the Pentagon before meeting and ultimately marrying Dex Jackson. “You should be happy,” Elvir said. “He’s saying such nice things. How does it feel?”

Angie didn’t have to think about her answer. “Like being buried alive.”

Over West Virginia

8:45 p.m.

The Ulysses helicopter approached slowly, uncertainly. The pilot was under strict orders — no running lights, no searchlights and no radio. The sliver of waxing moon illuminated nothing but a vast sea of cornstalks. Dex and LeBron were still in their boating clothes. “I thought you said we were close,” Dex croaked.

“Sorry, Mister Secretary,” the pilot said. “We’re hovering over the coordinates CENTAF sent us, but I can’t see anything.”

Nearly as soon as he spoke a helipad lit up directly beneath them. Thousands of cornstalks fanned as they descended. By the helipad’s dim glow, Dex could make out the outline of a tiny building surrounded by farmland. There didn’t seem to be any roads.

The helipad dimmed as soon as the chopper landed. Two Ulysses soldiers wearing night vision goggles appeared and opened the doors. “Welcome Mister Secretary,” they said as Dex and LeBron exited. In near darkness, the soldiers led them down a short, narrow path lined on both sides by cornstalks. There they entered the concrete structure and stood in front of two chrome elevator doors. There were no exterior buttons. Dex put his hand on his son’s shoulder as they waited. The boy shrugged him off.

The doors opened. General Wainewright stood before them, wearing the same elegantly decorated military dress uniform that he had worn to the White House earlier that day. “Welcome to Rapture Run,” he said.

Dex and LeBron stepped inside the elevator. The soldiers held the pilot back, although there would have been plenty of room for everyone. The doors closed and the elevator began to descend.

Dex braced himself as the elevator vibrated and groaned ever lower. “Where the hell are we?”

“This is Site R.”

“Site R? What happened to Raven Rock?”

“You’ll find that this facility is a major upgrade.”

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.”