William Tyree - Line of Succession

Eva entered and bid them all good morning. Just as Dex Jackson had predicted, President Hatch arrived some sixty seconds after Eva’s entrance, and he was indeed tucking his shirt in. Wainewright reached across the table and slid the two hundred dollars into Dex’s waiting hand.

The cabinet secretaries stood out of courtesy until the President sat down. The Joint Chiefs no longer bothered.

“Appreciate you all giving up your Sunday morning,” President Hatch began. “It’s August. Congress is already in recess and Number Two’s already on his way back home. Let’s make this a quickie. Dex, whadda ya got?”

“NSA is monitoring several suspected terrorists cells. There’s an unusually large amount of chatter, but nothing we can move on.” Dex’s crow’s feet flexed with each utterance. “I recommend we go to Code Orange during the recess.”

The President, who had made no secret of regarding Jackson as the politico who cried wolf, shrugged. “But you said yesterday you have no hard data. Nothing specific.”

“I hear CIA has something. But frankly, without a Homeland Security chief to facilitate intel coordination between agencies, cooperation hasn’t been that great. I’m left to speculate.”

“Fine. Put some Guard units at the ports. And be quiet about it.”

Wainewright cut in. “What Guard units? I don’t know how many different ways I can say this, Mister President, but even my reserves are on their fifth tour overseas. Our only option is to ask Ulysses what it would cost to get some coverage there.”

It was Eva’s turn to push her agenda. “I don’t know if you’ve looked at the defense budget lately, but I think we’re into Ulysses for about all we can afford. Frankly, I think the level at which we’re outsourcing our security is getting out of hand.”

“All due respect,” Dex cut in, “Ulysses is hardly the problem. We’ve had two domestic bombings in the past year, and our Army is in three war zones. That’s not counting covert ops. I’d like to reiterate my proposal to begin strategic pullouts from several of our bases. We need help here at home.”

The previous year, a young Islamic fundamentalist had exploded a Chevy Trailblazer on Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade on a sunny Saturday afternoon, killing 170 people. The scene repeated itself in Seattle’s historic Fish Market, killing another 75. In both cases, the Allied Jihad — an extremist network borne out of the ashes of Al Qaeda — claimed responsibility. The Allied Jihad demanded that the U.S. close American bases in the Middle East, stop supporting Israel and “Zionist” organizations worldwide and cease military and intelligence operations in several predominantly Islamic countries.

In response to the terror attacks, Dex had recommended pulling back U.S. troops — or at least pretending to — while covert Ulysses units systematically located terrorist leaders and eliminated them at various global hotspots. The basis for reasoning was his firm belief that terrorist organizations could not be defeated through conventional warfare.

President Hatch had disagreed vehemently. He wanted to make a statement. Within eight hours of the second bombing, he ordered the Pentagon to immediately invade several Indonesian islands where Allied Jihad cells had taken control from the central government. Ten months later, American forces continued to fight a fierce insurgency that had spread to more islands. Indonesia was the new Iraq.

Now General Wainewright took the opportunity to drive the issue home. “Dex is right,” he said. “We’re just threadbare here at home. The Allied Jihad’s whupping us in Afpack. They’re whupping us in Indonesia. We’ve got twice as many combat-ready forces in the vicinity of Israel and Lebanon than we do stateside. We should start by pulling out of all those areas.”

“Hold it,” Eva clucked. They had been over and over this. Wainewright’s repeated insistence that Israel go it alone was enough to convince her that he was an anti-Semite. “Iran will be in Israel so fast,” she said, “it’ll make the holocaust look like a warm-up round.”

General Wainewright glared at her. “Madam Treasury Secretary, I suggest you stick to counting nickels and dimes.”

“If the Pentagon hadn’t misappropriated eight billion dollars last year,” Eva struck back, referencing an accounting nightmare reported by the Washington Post, “I might have a few dimes to count.”

The President tapped his pen against his drinking glass. The room quieted. “I’ve trimmed the Council size before,” he cautioned, “and I’m prepared to go smaller until we find a group that works harmoniously together. None of you have tenure.”

“Yes, Mister President,” Speers and Carver said in unison from the back of the room. Nobody else responded.

“I expect everyone to bring cool heads after Labor Day. You are dismissed.”

The Council wasted no time gathering their things.

“Wait,” Eva asked in a voice loud enough for the entire room to hear her. “Was there anything to discuss on Iran?”

The President shot her a glare that was both wicked and intimate. “No,” he said. “We’re done for the day.” Eva grabbed her attache and left without another word.

The scarcely perceptible moment didn’t escape Agent Carver, who elbowed Speers in the ribs.

Carver’s cell phone buzzed as the room adjourned. It was O’Keefe. She began spewing something about Lieutenant Flynn. “Slow down,” Carver said, retreating to a corner of the room.

“Flynn’s dead,” she said, only slightly slower.

“Dead? How can he be dead?”

“I went out to pick up breakfast, and when I came back…They came in through the upstairs window. I was only gone fifteen minutes, so they must’ve been watching the place.”

Carver wasn’t entirely surprised. Ever since the home’s alarm system had gone unrepaired, Carver had been warning his superiors that something like this could happen. You couldn’t keep a field house a secret forever, and you certainly couldn’t keep one safe without minimum security measures.

“He was garroted,” O’Keefe continued. “Looks like they used the sleeve of his own uniform. I’ll get the lab out here to confirm it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Carver said. He had handled situations like this at CIA. It was better to cut a few corners and contain the damage. “If anyone finds Lieutenant Flynn, or finds out that we were holding him, this could blow up in our face and go all the way up the chain.”

“I’m not sure what you want me to do.”

Carver didn’t respond. He couldn’t risk anyone linking this to Julian Speers or the President. He was going to have to dump the body. But he didn’t want to get into that now. He had to make sure he got all the facts while O’Keefe’s mind was still fresh. “Just tell me everything you see.”

As he listened to O’Keefe describe the crime scene in greater detail, the main question in Carver’s mind was who could possibly know that they were even holding Lieutenant Flynn. Only Speers knew about Flynn’s detainment, and Carver trusted him completely. It was evident from his meeting this morning that even the President didn’t know the details of the operation’s day-to-day activities. “I got a callback from my contact at MobiKomm,” O’Keefe added. “Are you sitting down? Flynn put in sixteen calls to Congressman Bailey in the past week. And they were more than just crank calls. The calls lasted nearly two minutes on average, so clearly there was some conversation taking place.”

“Bailey? As in Speaker of the House Bailey?” Bailey was an unabashedly redneck five-term Republican Congressman from West Virginia.

“One and the same.”

Carver hung up, pulled Speers aside, and explained the situation. The Chief of Staff dashed out into the hallway, racing after the President. “Mister President,” Speers said as he caught up with him, “Wait. There’s been a development.”