William Tyree - Line of Succession

*

The scent of spoiled meat permeated the West Wing kitchen. A row of salads had been left on the countertops in mid-preparation. Flies buzzed around a piece of cut blood sausage. Hundreds of tiny bugs swarmed over a vat of creamed corn that looked about as appetizing as a bucket of vomit.

“Looks like the staff was expelled in a hurry,” Carver whispered.

Rios nodded. “Just like Mary said.”

He opened the door to the Butler’s Pantry. “Let’s see if anyone’s home.” Once upon a time, the Butler’s Pantry had been stocked with the President’s favorite foods and wines. In the late 2000s, it had been transformed into a security monitoring room full of surveillance video cameras and corresponding remote controls for each. Except for bedrooms and the Oval Office itself, there was virtually no nook or cranny in the White House that couldn’t be seen from the pantry.

Rios powered up the system and began scrolling through hundreds of camera views. Carver’s phone buzzed. It was Ellis. “I’m conferencing you with FBI Director Fordham,” she said.

Carver didn’t have time to ask questions. He closed the pantry door and spoke in a quiet but stern voice, explaining that Ulysses had surrounded the White House in advance of a military takeover, and that within the hour, General Wainewright would be in the Oval Office. “The first thing we have to do,” Carver explained, “is convince Ulysses that they’re not going to get out of this without a fight.”

“Let me get this straight,” Fordham said. “You want me to commit FBI agents to fight our own people?”

“Not people ,” Carver asserted. “A rogue corporation that’s acting against the interests of the United States.”

Director Fordham was silent for a few seconds. “Call it what it is. You’re talking about killing Ulysses employees,” he said. “That means killing Americans.”

Carver realized the magnitude of what he was asking. The FBI had managed to lose fewer than fifty agents in the line of duty during the Bureau’s entire history. It had done that, in part, by sticking to its core mission, and that mission didn’t typically involve urban combat. But the stakes were higher now than they had ever been. “Call it what you will,” Carver said. “But if you don’t help us, there won’t be a White House to defend. And that’s a promise.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s a vow. If the rightful President can’t occupy this house, then nobody will.”

The Director sighed heavily. “Look, I’m not sure how many agents are even on the premises right now. Maybe a hundred.”

“It’s a start.”

“Ulysses has heavy weapons. How are we supposed to deal with that?”

FBI Headquarters — otherwise known as the J. Edgar Hoover Building — was only a few blocks away. Carver had only been there once, in the mid-90s, to see a weapons demonstration the agency put on to attract recruits. The demonstrators had pulled guns from a large cache of confiscated criminal weaponry, including a large number of assault rifles that had been taken from gangs, terrorists, Mafia families and militias throughout the ages. He had even laid eyes on one of Al Capone’s Tommy Guns.

“You still have that gonzo criminal weapons collection?” Carver asked.

“It’s still there,” Fordham confirmed.

“Open the entire collection up to any field agents that are willing to fight. Let them choose their weapon and all the ammo they can carry. Then get your people on the rooftops along 17th Avenue and start picking off these corporate knuckle-draggers.”

Carver hung up. Behind him, Agent Rios toggled through screen after screen of surveillance cameras. “Cavalry coming?” Rios said hopefully.

“You’re not off the hook yet. Let’s move.”

“Five minutes,” Rios said. Mary had said that LeBron Jackson was being held in the White House. The kid’s life was in jeopardy because of him. No way was he torching this place with an innocent inside. But he had nearly exhausted the six stories, 132 rooms, thirty-five bathrooms and eight staircases covered by surveillance.

Finally, Rios detected movement on the camera. “There,” he whispered. “Second floor. The residences.”

The camera zoomed in on two Ulysses soldiers sitting in chairs outside one of the bedrooms. They had pulled an antique side table between them and were playing a game of Hearts.

“Bored-silly babysitters,” Carver quipped.

“The kid’s gotta be in that room.”

Rios stood. Carver pushed him back down. “I’ll go,” Carver said.

“There’s two of them.”

“Let me worry about them. You know this place better than anyone. Figure out how to blow it up.”

Burlington, North Carolina

11:39 a.m.

As Madge snoozed in the bedroom, Nico watched MSNBC’s coverage of the events in Washington turn ugly. A camera crew had been booted off the top of the Treasury Building by hostile Ulysses troops. A reporter had fallen to his death.

Nico was no fan of Eva Hudson, but the idea of enduring Ulysses’ brand of military rule was unbearable.

He set to work on the Ulysses USA firewall.

Less than five minutes went by. Bingo. He received a pixel flare from a slave machine within Ulysses’ headquarters confirming that the hack was successful.

So he was in. Now what? It wasn’t like he had time to develop some killer malware that would wreak major havoc in their mobile combat systems. Nico knew nothing about the security giant’s internal operations. He needed someone to tell him how to throw a wrench into the machine.

“Nico?” Madge’s disappointed voice floated up behind him.

Nico spun around in his chair and absorbed the reality of Madge in the morning. Tracks of dried drool caked the corners of her mouth. Hair pulled back into an unflattering bun. She wore the bed comforter as a makeshift robe.

“How’d you sleep, sweetie?” Nico managed. He backed his chair up against the monitor in hopes of obscuring the screen. But Madge had already seen enough to know what he was up to. “Madge,” he began backpedaling, “Babe, I can explain this.”

Her disappointment morphed into palpable anger. “Nico, I told you to wake me if the old urges came back. This is my house! This is God’s house! I can’t have this in here!”

“God?” Nico said. “Madge, you’re wrong. God would totally approve of what I’m doing. Can you please sit down? Please?”

She sat at the dining table. “I didn’t listen to the radio in the car yesterday,” she started. “I didn’t want to know why you were out. I wanted to believe.”

“I’m legitimately out of jail,” Nico said, “and that’s the truth. I’m just not legitimately out of custody .” Madge sobbed. “Sweetie, just listen, please. I made a deal with two intelligence agents right after the bombing in Monroe.”

“From what country?”

“What country? Ours! The National Security Agency. The N-S-A!”

An excited gleam twinkled in Madge’s eyes. “Are you telling me you helped the government catch the terror cell in Yemen?”

It would have been easy to let Madge believe this. But, Nico decided, it was time for total honesty. “No, no, no. It’s not like what you’ve seen on the news. There is no connection with Yemen. That’s a big lie perpetrated by the Pentagon brass. I helped them find the terrorists, all right. Turns out, they’re right in our own government.” Nico stopped, waiting for Madge’s response. She didn’t blink. “I’m saying that Americans planned this. People in the Pentagon, Madge! After the President was assassinated…”

The rims of Madge’s eyes grew red. “What?”