William Tyree - Line of Succession

Carver’s phone buzzed. He answered without thinking and found himself on the line with Eva Hudson. She sounded pissed.

“I give you credit for ingenuity,” Eva started, “but unless you clue me into what’s going on right now, I’ll have Colonel Madsen order the Green Berets to take you and O’Keefe into custody.”

He considered faking a bad connection. He couldn’t risk having her stop the operation now. They were too close.

“If you hang up, the next person I dial is Sergeant Hundley.”

Carver was cornered. He checked his watch. It had now been nearly forty-four hours since he’d heard from Speers. That was far too long. He was likely dead. It was either clue Eva in and accept her authority, or risk the operation.

Carver spotted a pay telephone across the street. “I’m calling you on a land line,” he announced. The public phone wasn’t exactly secure, but it was probably safer than his lightly encrypted cell phone. He went to it and called Eva. He gave her the sixty-second version of how the President himself — through Speers — had ordered him to investigate Ulysses.

“And there’s something else,” Carver added. “Someone from the Bureau called O’Keefe and asked us to back off of the investigation of the Monroe bomber, Faruq Ahmed.”

“That shouldn’t surprise you. Typical FBI territorialism.”

“But it wasn’t. I made a few calls. Right after the attacks, Ulysses evacuated the West Virginia field office. The person who supposedly called me hasn’t had basic phone service since the attacks. He hasn’t even been able to log into the network since yesterday morning.”

“You’re swimming in deep waters,” Eva said.

“All I know is that I need to get to Elvir Divac before they do.”

“I’ll give your operation my blessing, but I’ve got a mission of my own. I’m prepared to offer Nico Gold a pardon when this is all over if he solves one riddle.”

“But we’re about to mobilize,” Carver protested.

“Then mobilize. Have someone get him in front of a computer. Then have him call me. The future depends on it.”

Carver hung up, checked his watch, and turned to O’Keefe. “Eva wants to use boy wonder to check something out. It can’t wait.”

“Guess I’m with baby,” O’Keefe said cheerfully.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“I’m a thinker,” O’Keefe said, “Not a fighter.”

Rapture Run

The enlisted barracks was a cool, wet limestone cavern some 200 feet below ground and 50 yards southwest of the bunker’s subterranean command center. It was linked to the main complex by a stone floor hallway with real stalactites hanging from the ceiling. The Army Corp of Engineers had not yet wired the barracks for electricity, so battery-operated LED lanterns were spaced every twenty yards along the treacherous walkway. In the barracks themselves, two hundred bunk beds were arranged in clusters of eight. Buckets collecting dripping groundwater sat everywhere.

Julian Speers slept on a bottom bunk in the middle of the cavern. Something woke him and he shot up, smashing his head against the metal bed frame. A large hand covered his mouth as he cried out. “Shhh,” a Ulysses soldier whispered. “My turn to sleep.” Speers focused, recognizing the soldier as his designated bunk buddy. Rapture Run was overcapacity, and the White House Chief of Staff had been asked to share a bunk with the rank and file.

Speers slowly pulled himself upright. The exhausted soldier wasted no time in sliding under the still-warm wool blankets. Speers rubbed the growing knot on his head and stood in the middle of the barracks, getting his bearings.

He had been dreaming about Eva Hudson. She was the rightful next in line, and the way the Joint Chiefs were operating, she’d never find out. He had to contact her. How he would do this was another matter. Not only had Corporal Hammond confiscated his work phone, but he had also been denied use of the facility phones.

After a few minutes of searching, he eventually found Hammond’s empty bunk. With bed space at such a premium, Speers found it odd that Hammond wouldn’t have given someone else a chance at his shift. Speers ambled down the slippery lamp-lit limestone corridor until he came to the Command Room. It was still fully-staffed, even at this early hour. The officer on watch was the junior officer, a Second Lieutenant, in Major Dobb’s CENTAF unit. He busied himself by reviewing a list of DEFCON 2 communication protocols.

“Excuse me,” Speers said. “I’m looking for Corporal Hammond.”

“Check his bunk,” the Lieutenant said.

“Hasn’t been slept in. Last time I saw him, he was on his way to see General Wainewright. But that was hours ago.”

The officer didn’t look up.

“Mind if I check the exit logs?” Speers pressed.

“Don’t bother. Nobody’s left the facility.”

“Sure about that?”

“Nobody gets out without a signed authorization from General Wainewright. And nobody’s presented one on my watch.”

Speers grabbed the file folder and flipped through them. Among the pile, he found a series of blank authorization forms signed by the General himself. Speers waited until the duty officer was distracted. As he turned to answer a question from a fellow officer, Speers slipped one of the pre-signed forms into his jacket pocket in case he needed it later. Even if he could locate his phone, he’d need to get out of the bunker somehow to get a signal.

Somewhere across the command room, two men were arguing. Speers couldn’t see them, but it sounded intense. “Gotta call my family,” someone was shouting. “Gotta call my family. Gotta call my goddamn family.”

As if tossed by a giant, a metal file cabinet came crashing across the command room. Then an officer in a short-sleeve khaki uniform flew into the air. Speers saw him smash spine-first into a large monitor. He collapsed to the ground like a sack of oranges. Blood pooled around his head.

Speers ran to an aisle and, looking down the row of workstations, saw an enraged, acne-scarred Ulysses soldier whose biceps were so massive that Speers wondered how the man could wipe his own ass. “I got a family, man! Gotta call ‘em! Gotta call ‘em!”

It had been only a matter of time before someone snapped. The crew at Rapture Run was hundreds of feet beneath ground level, in a facility that only a small handful of outsiders knew about. They bore the burden of being the only people on the planet that knew that the POTUS was dead. They alone watched Iranian tanks as they moved unchecked toward Israel.

An MP appeared in the doorway behind the crazed soldier. He leveled his rifle and filled the soldier’s chest with a quick burst of lead. The shots echoed throughout the cavernous former nuclear missile silo, bringing all activity to a stop.

General Farrell burst into the room and walked toward the scene. All eyes were on him. There was absolutely no sound, and when the General stepped in a puddle of urine — it was pooling from the pant leg of a communications officer — everyone stopped breathing. Farrell looked at his shoes once, but did not single out the offender. He calmly proceeded toward the gory scene and said, in a measured voice, “Good enforcement, soldier. Now let’s clean it up.”

Everyone returned to their stations. A sense of normalcy — or at least Rapture Run’s extreme version of it — slowly resumed.

Speers wasn’t cut out for the kinds of things he’d seen in the past forty-eight hours, starting with Lieutenant Flynn’s interrogation in Georgetown, the car bomb in Monroe, and now this. He stumbled back down the long corridor to the enlisted barracks cavern. His senses felt muted. A growing numbness came over him. He wondered if this was what post-traumatic stress disorder felt like.