William Tyree - Line of Succession

Now the drone of a low-flying helicopter cut through the otherwise silent evening. The memory of Dobb’s final moments in West Virginia was all too recent. Speers crouched behind a hedgerow.

He could hardly believe his eyes when the ghost ship flew directly overhead. The VH-71 Kestrel skimmed the Arlington Hills at about 90 miles per hour, and Speers, who had often been a Marine One passenger, recognized the helicopter’s unmistakable profile against the night sky.

His hands balled up into fists as he watched the Kestrel land between the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. The thought of someone other than the President requisitioning Marine One for personal use was maddening.

A fleet of vehicles pulled around the National Mall. They looked like Ulysses Bradleys, but it was hard to tell from this distance. Soldiers scrambled from the vehicles and began setting up a security perimeter.

Speers got to his feet again. His exhaustion was all-consuming, but so too was his curiosity. He would have to take a closer look.

*

A homeless couple munched potato chips and leaned against one of the Lincoln Memorial’s 38 fluted columns. Behind them, the nineteen-foot, 175-ton white marble statue that deified Abraham Lincoln was surrounded by dozens of homeless families. The luckiest of them were in tents that had been supplied by the National Park Service. The less lucky squatted on blankets donated by a local shelter.

On the mall below, the convoy of Bradley personnel carriers four-wheeled across the grass. In the middle of the 2000-foot long Reflecting Pool, Ulysses contractors erected enormous scaffolding.

The VH-71 Kestrel came in low and loud over the Lincoln Memorial and touched down in the narrow strip between the steps and the Reflecting Pool, sending miniature tidal waves across the shallow water. Ulysses troops scrambled out of the Bradleys and formed two receiving lines. The soldiers saluted as General Wainewright, General Farrell, Dex Jackson and his son LeBron exited the chopper.

The entourage made its way to the base of the Memorial, where two Secret Service agents escorted Dex and LeBron into a waiting car. Wainewright and Farrell, with soldiers in tow, marched up the ninety-eight steps to the top. The cadence of stomping boots gradually woke the hordes sleeping near Lincoln’s throne.

As he finally reached the top, Wainewright found himself winded and grumpier than usual. There he came face-to-face with a Forest Service employee who failed to salute. “What’s all this?” Wainewright snarled.

“This is what martial law looks like,” the Forest Service employee said as he gestured at the dozens of families behind him. “Last night your mercenaries shot a homeless family of four right over there on Pennsylvania Avenue. They’re all dead. Even the two kids.”

“The eight o’ clock curfew is not complicated,” Wainewright said. “We broadcast the rules in seven languages.”

“The shelters were full,” the Forest Service employee explained. He gestured toward the people gathered around Lincoln’s statue. “We had to put these people somewhere.”

“Cram ‘em into Roosevelt’s memorial,” Wainewright said, nodding in the direction of the far humbler monument to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the distance. “This one is reserved.”

*

A black armored SUV pulled up to 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, where two Ulysses MPs stood with loaded M4s at the front entrance to the Willard Hotel. The taller of the two MPs stepped forward to open the rear door. Dex and LeBron Jackson exited the SUV as the soldiers all but shouted, “Good evening, Mister Secretary, sir!” Dex put his hand in the small of LeBron’s back and ushered him past the MPs without so much as looking them in the face. They had no bags except for a single military issue duffel.

For the past 150 years, it had often been said that the Willard Hotel was the nation’s actual seat of power. An easy walk to the White House, the hotel had long been the de facto lodging for visiting heads of state. Abraham Lincoln himself stayed there — under tight security — in the days before his inauguration, as death threats poured in from pro-slavery Southerners.

The Willard’s lobby, with its high ceilings and gilded crown moldings, was one of Dex’s regular haunts. He had taken to meeting foreign dignitaries in its lounge, where Ulysses Grant had enjoyed cigars and cognac.

But there was no time for leisurely pleasures tonight. The Secret Service agents hurried him and LeBron through the lounge and past the bar, where a large flat screen TV broadcasted CNN. Dex broke away and entered the lounge to see what was on television. It’d been three days since he’d seen any news that wasn’t filtered by Wainewright’s screeners.

A crowd of tense-looking hotel guests stood around with cocktails as the CNN anchor remarked, “ Next we’ll show you how local volunteers are pitching in to save animals displaced by the Monroe bombing .”

“What is this Mickey Mouse feel good crap?” someone said. “Turn on the BBC.”

The barman switched to the BBC, where the screen filled with images of the war zone developing in Eastern Galilee. The anchor read from a teleprompter: “ Our correspondents in Jerusalem are seeing a heavy barrage of incoming Iranian artillery. The Israeli government is calling for the U.S. to honor the terms of its NATO alliance, but the American government has yet to respond .”

The Secret Service Agent tapped Dex on the shoulder. “Mister Secretary.” Dex didn’t budge. “Mister Secretary, we need to move.”

The TV suddenly reverted to CNN’s feel-good animal story. The crowd glared at the barman, who threw up his hands. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “I didn’t even change the channel.”

“Mister Secretary,” the guard intoned. “For your sake, sir, let’s go.”

Dex and LeBron followed the security detail to the elevators. Inside, the senior agent pushed the fourth floor button.

“Top floor,” Dex corrected him. “The Presidential Suite’s on the top floor.”

”You are correct, Mister Secretary, sir. But General Wainewright has reserved the Presidential Suite for himself, sir.”

Dex swallowed his pride and adjourned to the fourth floor hallway, where another member of the detail held the room door open. It was a junior executive suite with a single bedroom and a small kitchenette. “You still have time to catch a few winks before the inauguration, sir. We’ll be outside if you need anything.”

The door closed. Dex and LeBron were alone together for the first time in months. Neither one looked at the other. LeBron went straight to the TV and flipped it on, searching for the BBC. It was nowhere to be found. The CNN broadcast was on every channel.

“What’s going on?” LeBron asked his father.

“It’s one of the little improvements General Wainewright has in mind for the country,” Dex said. “It’s called state-run TV.”

*

All was clear at the Jefferson Memorial, where two National Guardsmen reclined near a Patriot missile battery, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and listening to club remixes of mariachi classics. Every fifteen minutes, their unit commander would check in over the radio — speaking only in Spanish — to make sure they were still awake.

Speers crept up the back steps of the neo-classical monument toward a row of public telescopes with views overlooking the National Mall. He popped a quarter into one of the telescopes and focused in on several hundred people leaving the Lincoln Memorial. It would have been an odd sight on any night, but it was especially curious during martial law. The telescope’s magnification told the story — Ulysses was marching a horde of homeless people toward the Roosevelt Memorial.