William Tyree: Line of Succession

Carver pulled a tiny ear microphone out of his pocket and placed it in Speers’ right ear. “You’re the boss in there,” he said, “but I’m going to be talking to you.”

The Chief of Staff entered the ten-by-eight-foot soundproof cell. He approached Flynn apprehensively, like a toddler working up the courage to sit on Santa’s lap. The last time Speers had been this close to a naked man was in his high school P.E. class, and the stench of Lieutenant Flynn’s body odor — twenty hours of nervous perspiration and indigestion — hit hard.

In the observation room, O’Keefe sat down to watch the spectacle through the two-way mirror, resting her feet on a two-drawer file cabinet. Carver sat beside her, talking into the microphone, his voice crackling in Speers’ ear: “Get closer,” he urged. “He might bite, but he’s not poisonous.”

“Who’s there?” the blindfolded Lieutenant Flynn rasped. Speers knew better than to answer fully. It was important that the President have full immunity. So far, he hadn’t even disclosed the details of the ongoing investigation to the President so that the Chief Executive could never be held personally responsible for the team’s actions.

“I’m a federal attorney,” Speers told the soldier. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it also wasn’t a lie. Speers hadn’t practiced law in years, but he was still technically a member of the Virginia State Bar.

Flynn’s pectorals quaked as he trembled. “You gotta help me,” he begged. “They can’t hold me like this. I’ve got a wife and kids.”

“Lieutenant Flynn,” Speers said with sudden empathy in his voice, “I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing the darker side of intelligence operations. You don’t look like someone who could survive it.”

Flynn mumbled through quivering lips.

Speers went on: “I’ll have to fight to even get permission to notify your family that you’re in custody. A battle that I’ll probably lose, by the way. From the looks of you, we should start with getting a doctor to make a house call, just to make sure you’re okay, maybe dispense something for the nerves. If I can talk them into letting you sleep, I can see about contacting your family. But I can’t convince these guys to give an inch unless we have something to offer.” Speers could practically see the cogs in Flynn’s brain smoking. “Now gimmie something I can sell.”

The Lieutenant swallowed hard. “Rapture Run.”

“Rapture Run?” Speers repeated. “Sounds like a death metal band.”

“Forget it,” Flynn said. “Forget I said it.”

Carver spoke into Speers’ ear microphone. “Stay on that,” he said. “That key phrase has been floating around the intel database for a few months, but we can’t get any context. Ask him where he heard it.”

“Come on,” Speers told the Lieutenant. “Tell me what Rapture Run is, or where you heard it, and I’ll go back in and fight like hell for you. Promise.”

Flynn’s next utterance came up like a blast of vomit: “SECDEF Jackson.”

SECDEF was military jargon for the Secretary of Defense. “Jackson?” Speers said. “As in Defense Secretary Dexter P. Jackson?”

“You heard me,” Flynn said. “There was a supply order for Rapture Run with his signature. Worth billions.”

“And what is Rapture Run?”

Flynn shook his head. “I dunno. Has something to do with USOC. Something they’re building. Really skunkworks stuff. I’m not sure what.”

“USOC?”

Flynn laughed. “Ulysses Strike Operations Command.”

“And USOC does what?”

“Covert assassinations. Now help me, dammit!”

A smile broke across Speers’ face. Over the past year, Secretary Jackson had become a hostile force within the President’s cabinet, but the President didn’t have the political capital to oust someone so popular with the Pentagon. “Thank you, Lieutenant. You did well. I’ll see what I can do.”

Speers rejoined Carver and O’Keefe in the observation room. The Chief was jumping out of his skin with excitement. “The Lieutenant just implicated a sitting cabinet secretary,” he gloated. He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face. He turned to Carver. “We’ve gotta wake the President.”

Monroe, West Virginia

5:30 a.m.

The first hints of sunrise rose over Monroe Gatlin Raceway. Tiny shards of glass and metal, crushed into the asphalt by so many local hot-rods, shimmered like a hundred thousand tiny emeralds. The grandstands had long been sold off and weeds had sprouted on the sun-cracked drag strip. Faruq Ahmed, needing a private avenue to practice his mission several weeks ago, had gained access with nothing more than a bolt cutter.

Now the 29-year-old Yemeni got out of the Ford F-450 commercial-grade truck and knelt toward the eastern sky. Even at this early hour, his face felt the heat of the rising sun. The ribbed tank top he wore was soaked with perspiration. He prayed silently for several minutes, rocking back and forth on his knees. Then he got back into the vehicle to focus on the matter at hand. This was his final opportunity to practice. Later today, he would do the real thing.

He laid the loaded Smith amp; Wesson.38 revolver in his lap. A Koran rested in the glove compartment. It was important that his practice conditions simulate the real thing. Accordingly, the truck bed was full of oversized tires that weighed about seven hundred pounds collectively, or about the same as the combination of ammonium nitrate and explosive putty that he would replace them with.

He clutched a small stopwatch close to his chest, took a deep breath, and then clicked it.

Twenty-four seconds elapsed before he laid the stopwatch next to him and stepped on the gas. The super-duty rig wasn’t exactly race-worthy, especially since Ahmed had let some of the air out of the driver-side wheels. But the V-8 under the hood managed to get up to 45 mph by the time he was halfway down the quarter-mile drag strip.

He drove toward a four-foot-high construction barricade at the opposite end of the strip. Next to it was a homemade ramp that he had fashioned out of concrete. At the last moment, he jerked the steering wheel sharply to the left with his left hand, while simultaneously working the parking brake. On cue, the truck began to “ski” — balance on the partially deflated driver-side wheels only — on the ramp just as his passenger-side wheels lifted high enough to clear the barricade. Releasing the parking brake, he tilted the steering wheel slightly to the right and was back on four wheels again.

He skidded to a stop and drummed the wheel happily. It was the twelfth time in a row he’d managed to clear the barricade. He was ready.

Ahmed’s smile faded as he spotted the police patrol car entering the gates with its roof lights swirling red and blue. He clutched his firearm in his lap, switching off the safety. He had to carry out his mission in less than five hours. Nothing could stop that.

The officer was alone. He parked several feet away and got out, a barrel-chested man with a mustache as thick as a caterpillar and a sidearm so big and heavy that his pants hung dangerously low on his hips.

“That’s some drivin’,” the officer said, looking up at Ahmed in the jacked-up rig. Ahmed smiled at the small-town officer, who could not see the gun in his lap. Ahmed knew he was lucky to be in a rural place where the police were inexperienced. In any big city, the officer would have kept his distance and demanded that he step out of the vehicle.

“You some kind of stunt man?” the officer asked.

“Yes,” Ahmed said, smiling as he looked down. It was half-true. He had arrived in a cargo container from Yemen via Hamburg three months earlier. His contact had met him at the Port of Long Beach and driven him to Burbank, where he was treated for dehydration, given a studio apartment, a fake California driver’s license and enrollment in a local stunt driving school. After the stunt driving program was over, he was immediately offered a job as an extra in an Arab exploitation film during which he would have had to drive a sports car down a staircase into a crowd of people. The irony of the situation amused him, but he had no time to indulge himself. He was already due in West Virginia to prepare for his mission.