William Tyree - Line of Succession

Just as Elvir has instructed, Ali turned to walk away, but the man grabbed him around the neck from behind and shoved a gun into his face. The click of the gun’s safety switch releasing was audible over the radio.

“Tell me where Elvir is. I’ll make you rich. Or you can die. Your choice.”

Elvir put pressure on the trigger of his sniper rifle, but he hesitated. Killing the man meant they might never see the last payment. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted two more men get up from park benches and walk towards the van. Why hadn’t he spotted them before?

Ali saw them too. “Okay, okay,” he said. He was cracking. And they hadn’t even hurt him yet.

No, Elvir thought. No, Ali. Don’t make me do this. Just stay still long enough for me to pick these guys off.

Elvir found the man’s face again in the rifle scope. His finger found the rifle’s trigger. “It’s an apartment,” he heard Ali say. “Third floor.”

There was no alternative now. He moved the scope one-eighth inch to the left. That was all it took to put Ali’s chest in the scope’s crosshairs. “I forgive you.” He took the shot, blowing a hole through Ali’s right lung. The armor-piercing bullet went straight through Ali’s slight 130-pound frame and into his attacker and through the van, lodging into one of the park’s mighty oak trees.

Elvir’s second shot missed. He repositioned for a third, trying to target one of the other goons, but the familiar flash of an enemy muzzle stopped him. He ducked just as returning fire blew brick fragments into his eyes. The former Army sniper scrambled away from the roof’s edge, temporarily blinded, retracing his steps to the fire escape on the other side of the brownstone.

Fort Campbell

Carver hated meetings. Or at least the kind that he and O’Keefe had just been summoned to. It was always the same. A bunch of Washington bureaucrats wanted thousands of case hours boiled down into a 60-second oral report and a 200-page written report that would never be read. On the basis of that, the bureaucrats would make a decision that would affect the fate of the operation. Nine times out of ten, they ended up killing it.

Eva Hudson was the new sheriff in town, and it seemed that she wanted to get her mitts on Carver’s investigation. There was no way that was going to happen. Julian Speers and the President had requested that the operation stay off-the-grid, and it was going to stay there until they said otherwise.

He and O’Keefe made their way down the hallway toward Colonel Madsen’s conference room. They had spent all morning going over Nico’s assessment of the Muskogee translations. The news wasn’t good. They were dealing with a bunch of nameless suspects that had been careful not to give up their locations or contacts in any of their transmissions. Carver felt strongly that the key was finding the language geek who had taught them Muskogee in the first place. It wasn’t like Muskogee experts were a dime a dozen.

His phone buzzed. It was Madison, the receptionist at the K Street office. “Madison,” he said. “How are you today?”

“Terrible,” she said. “I’m all worried about what’s been going on. Couldn’t sleep. How are you, Mister Danforth?”

Madison was still under the impression that Carver and O’Keefe were consultants. She had never asked what kind. She was young, unambitious, preoccupied with her social life, and completely uninterested in the services that the company performed for its clients. She was one of those people who just wanted to punch in and collect a paycheck and get health care. A perfect fit for a front company.

“We’re on our way to a client meeting,” Carver told her as he winked to O’Keefe. “What’s up?”

“I heard on the news that lots of companies are closed today because of the attacks. And I was wondering…”

“Stay home,” Carver said. He was trying to be practical. And since the Georgetown field house had been compromised, he knew that they could expect a break-in on K Street as well. They wouldn’t find anything, but there was no reason to put Madison in harm’s way. “And don’t worry about coming in the rest of the week. We’re on the road anyhow.”

“Uh, okay, but I don’t want to use up all my vacation time. I’ll still get paid, right?”

For God’s sake. Carver was trying to save the country from further attacks and he had to worry about some receptionist’s paid time off. He had told Speers from the start that these elaborate dummy aliases were more trouble than they were worth.

*

The markets were due to open shortly. The Treasury Secretary walked with an attache in one hand and her phone in the other. On the receiving end of Eva’s call was the Federal Reserve Chairman, who sat in an office high above the New York Stock Exchange trading floor, where nervous stock runners talked incessantly into cell phones to anxious brokers who feared the worst.

This wasn’t the 72-year-old Fed Chair’s first rodeo, and he was predicting a massive sell-off that might send the already troubled economy into a tailspin.

“Mister Chairman,” Eva said, “I think that if we can manage the message before the opening bell, the markets should open as usual.”

“Eva,” the Fed chair countered, “in my neighborhood there was a line a hundred deep outside Bank of America. And that was at five a.m.”

“And you think closing the markets will make them any more confident?”

Eva knew that the President had fantasies about forcing the old man’s resignation, but the Chairman was an institution, having survived twenty-two years and four different administrations. Eva liked the old codger. He was a little conservative for her taste, but there was something to be said for someone who worshipped fundamentals. His favorite book remained Graham’s The Intelligent Investor , and to Eva’s mind, everyone needed a cynical old coot like that in their camp. If the Vice President was truly dead, God rest his hateful soul, Eva wished the President would call her and make her the Veep already. As the mere Treasury Secretary, her relationship with the Fed Chair was little more than one friend talking another down from a suicide jump.

“If you close the markets,” she explained patiently, “and you cut people off from their investments, it’s only going to make it worse.”

“How about early closure?”

“No. Just listen to me. Call the major analysts. Get them to go on the networks advising a strong buy on any defense contractor and aerospace. You also pitch high-tech, natural resources, and precious metals.”

“Those sound like protracted war investments. Are you trying to tell me something? Should I be thinking about war bonds?”

“You must’ve seen the Allied Jihad tape by now,” Eva said. “If I know the President, he’ll open up another front on those barbarians before the week’s out. Point is, if we can get the talking heads invested in the idea that more fighting is good for the economy, we might avoid a crash today.”

She hung up just as she entered Colonel Madsen’s conference room and sat at the head of a cheap fiber-board table. Colonel Madsen and his senior staff sat at her flank. The American flag, the Kentucky State flag and the Army flag hung in a row behind her.

Agents Carver and O’Keefe came in just as Colonel Madsen began addressing his staff. “I’d like to inform everyone that Treasury Secretary Hudson is using this base as a temporary command post for a joint investigation into yesterday’s events.” He waited a moment for the officers to absorb the idea that the Secretary of the United States Treasury had effectively taken over command of the base. “And as Garrison Commander, I’m prepared to do anything in my power to see that she has our full cooperation.”