Line of Succession: A Thriller (46 page)

A fusillade of small arms fire peppered the motorcade as five other shooters came to the roof’s edge. One of the black sedans burst into flames and veered off on a collision course with the Eisenhower Building. Two others closed in towards the middle, as if to shield the President’s car from the shooters. One of the M1 tanks followed accordingly.

Raising to one knee, Carver took aim at the missile operator. The enemy had completed the reload and was already lining up the Beast in his viewfinder for a second shot.

Like Ellis, Carver aimed slightly above his target, correcting for distance, and switched his carbine from double-shot bursts to single-shot mode. He exhaled and pulled the trigger.

The soldier leaned sideways, drooping unnaturally as the 5.56mm round ricocheted off his clavicle and lodged within his left lung. The launcher fell from his hands and hung on the roof’s edge. A nearby soldier lunged for it, getting a hand on the device as the others came to his aid.

The replacement soldier managed to launch the missile. It hit the Beast squarely, engulfing the lawn once again in a fiery explosion. Carver feared the worst. There was no way the car could have withstood a second hit.

Judging by the way the Ulysses soldiers were pumping their fists, he was right. Carver wasn’t about to give these bastards a chance to enjoy their apparent victory. Having found his range, Carver now switched the carbine back to fully automatic and let loose with several bursts into the cluster of troops. Two Ulysses soldiers fell immediately and the others melted away from the building’s edge.

Meanwhile, a cauterized M1 tank – it had been grazed in the second hit on the Beast – rolled ever closer, seeming to slouch across the final fifty yards of lawn toward the West Wing. Its unscathed counterpart slowed to its side, as if hoping to draw hostile fire.

Peering through a cloud of dissipating smoke, Carver finally saw a welcome sight – a half-dozen armored SUVs bursting over the South Lawn fencing that the M1 tanks had so effectively crushed. He recognized the plates as those of the uniformed Secret Service, heavily armed units of highly trained White House police officers. Considering that Wainewright had relieved them of duty just thirty-six-hours earlier, Carver was surprised that any of them were sober enough to drive, much less fight.

Even if they had managed to kill Eva, perhaps they had at least repelled a full-scale Ulysses occupation.

It was then that Carver remembered the phone in the Oval Office, and his proclamation that Agent Rios, who at this moment was ready to sabotage the gas piping in the boiler room, should destroy the mansion if he didn’t answer the land line on the executive desk. Unfortunately, Carver knew Rios to be a man of his word.

Carver got to his feet and raced back through the Rose Garden. Even over the roar of persistent fighting on 17th, the phone’s distinctive old-world ring could be heard from well outside the open French doors. Carver rounded the corner, sprinted inside and lunged for the phone. “Carver,” he spat into the receiver as LeBron poked his head out from under the desk. The line was dead.

“
Run!” he screamed at LeBron as he tried to raise Rios on his cell phone. The kid rose up but was paralyzed at the sight of the approaching tanks. “Now!”

LeBron sprinted out to the relative safety of the Rose Garden just as Carver heard the northwest Oval Office door open behind him.

He swiveled around to reach for his M4, which he had laid on top of the Executive Desk. He was too late. General Wainewright stood across the room with an antique Colt .45 pointed straight at him. The
Stars and Stripes
journalists stood wide-eyed behind him.

Wainewright flashed an irritated smile as he spoke. “Step away from the Resolute Desk.”

Carver couldn’t help but laugh. He was obviously about to be shot. God forbid he might bleed on the General’s future desk. “Resolute?” Carver quipped. “You’ve given the desk a name?”

“
Idiot,” Wainewright snapped. “The desk was named in the nineteenth century. Fact: the desk was carved from the timbers of H.M.S.
Resolute
, an abandoned British ship discovered by Americans. Queen Victoria was so grateful for the find that she presented the desk as a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880.”

“
Hayes, huh? I think your obsession with assassinated Presidents borders on unhealthy.”

Wainewright took aim and pulled back the revolver’s lever.

The floor trembled. The old mansion let out a moan. Carver smelled gas. Pipes rattled within the walls. Dust fell from the ceiling. Special Agent Rios had come through after all. Carver smiled, knowing that even if he died, he would take the General with him.

The floor bucked beneath the General. Losing his balance, he groped for the journalists. Both braced themselves against the room’s north wall. The floor rippled again, sending a ten-foot stretch of copper pipe jutting up violently through the floorboards. An eruption of yellow and blue flame gasped from the fractured pipe, setting fire to a wall tapestry and both journalists’ uniforms.

The sprinkler system instantly sprang to life, emitting bursts of water from the ceiling so powerful that they stung Carver’s neck and face. Rios had grossly underestimated the mansion’s ability to protect itself from sabotage. The fire was doused immediately, and everyone and everything in the Oval Office was drenched. The General held onto the chaise as the building shuddered once again and the room filled with smoke. Carver seized the opportunity, grabbing the M4 from the desktop. Holding the weapon at his hip, he fired as Wainewright lost his balance on the hardwood floor, felling both of the fire-bitten journalists standing behind him.

He turned the muzzle toward Wainewright, but the wet carbine jammed. Carver found himself looking down the barrel of Wainewright’s Colt .45. The General squeezed off a round at close range that grazed Carver’s neck, unleashing a geyser of blood. The wounded agent vaulted over the desk and tackled the General.

As tiny aftershocks rumbled throughout the mansion, and the sprinkler system streamed bruising ropes of water from above, Carver kneed the general in the solar plexus and immobilized his shooting hand by stepping on the soft underside of his right forearm. Wainewright rocked his legs up under him and sent the more agile but smaller Carver head-first into an exposed piece of pipe.

The mansion’s sprinkler system finally let up. Carver dropped to the soggy carpet and swung his legs clockwise, sweeping the old warhorse off his feet. Lincoln’s opera glasses slid from his pocket onto the glass coffee table as he fell. Carver followed up with a left-right combination to Wainewright’s face. Crimson blood sprayed from the General’s broken nose.

A hard heel to the chest knocked the General’s wind from his body, and he remained on his back trying to get air into his lungs. Carver grabbed his right arm and pulled it straight back toward him, out of its socket. He stepped over Wainewright and did the same to his left arm. Wainewright’s upper limbs fell to his sides like wet noodles.

The General had no more fight in him, but Carver wasn’t content to let him live. A man like Wainewright was always dangerous. Even if the ragtag alliance of forces outside were able to defeat the Ulysses troops, and the military fell in line behind Eva’s successor, Wainewright could still brew up a world of trouble from a prison cell. He would still have the sympathy of thousands of officers in key positions across the military.

Carver removed the damaged glass top from the coffee table and held the jagged end vertically over Wainewright’s neck – an improvised guillotine. “Don’t!” Wainewright rasped. Carver raised the sheet of heavy glass four feet into the air and let it fall. A wave of warm blood drenched Carver’s pant leg as the General’s severed head rolled to the side.

Intermittent explosions and gunfire on the surrounding streets and rooftops slowly crept back into Carver’s consciousness. He heard boots on the paved walkway just outside the Oval Office and turned to see uniformed Secret Service units running past the south-facing windows.

He exited the east door and walked out into the Rose Garden. Smoke was gradually clearing on the South Lawn as SWAT units replaced Ulysses soldiers atop the Treasury Building. At the edge of the Rose Garden, uniformed Secret Service pulled the crew from the M1 tank’s charred turret.

His heart jumped as he recognized the first figure to emerge from the tank. It was Julian Speers, followed by a very alive Eva Hudson. She never had been in the Beast. It had been the decoy all along.

Carver felt pain shoot up through his groin. He limped through it. His shoulders were full of knots and his neck was stiffening badly. He was bleeding, but he didn’t know where the blood was coming from.

A team of ERTs met him at the lawn’s edge. Carver told them that there was a gas leak in the mansion. He told them there were armed Ulysses soldiers on the lower levels. He said that Special Agent Rios was inside and was likely in need of a coroner.

He heard none of their questions. He felt none of their hands as they probed his injuries. He just kept lurching through the wisps of smoke that swept like dirty fog across the lawn. He glimpsed Dex Jackson, then lost him in the haze. His eyes roamed the grounds for a soft, shady place to lie down, vaguely aware that the sound of gunfire on the surrounding streets was growing more sporadic. A light breeze blew, sending a welcome chill through his blood-soaked clothing.

The U.S.S. Ronald Reagan

The Mediterranean

An explosion lit up the night sky just 100 yards from the U.S.S. John Kerry, one of four destroyers floating between the Ronald Reagan and the hundreds of Israeli vessels carrying refugees. Captain White saw the flash in the distance out the bridge observation windows. Only an hour earlier, White and his direct reports had been listening to the VOA news coverage from the Lincoln Memorial. But the broadcast had been suddenly interrupted with commercial-free classic rock.

Captain White turned the radio down as the Kerry’s CO, Commander Deke Perkins, hailed the Rear Admiral on the radio: “Fishing boat just rammed the ferry closest to us. It’s listing to stern. Tons of passengers are jumping overboard.”

“
Copy that, Kerry
,” came the Admiral’s response. “
Monitor and keep your distance
.”

“
Negative,” Perkins said. There was a small boat circling and shooting the survivors. “This is a rat kill.”

“
Repeat, monitor only.
”

“
Negative,” Perkins replied.

“
You’re disobeying a direct order
?” came the Admiral’s retort. “
You better get your dress whites out, Commander Perkins. I’m penciling in your court martial, son.
” There was no response from Perkins, who turned the Kerry and began steaming toward the floating inferno.

Less than two minutes later, the ship’s radio sounded again. White answered, expecting an earful from the Admiral. The voice on the other end was unfamiliar to him. “Captain White,” the voice said, “this is President Eva Hudson. I’m with Defense Secretary Jackson.”

“
Captain, the Admiral has been relieved of duty,” Dex said. “The President is directing our armed forces to provide immediate military assistance to Israel. You are to engage the Iranian air and ground units with indiscriminate force. Do you understand?”

When White issued the directive over the ship’s PA, the crew’s elation could be heard from every corner of the ship. Operation Wailing Wall was a go.

NINE MONTHS LATER

Eastern Cape, South Africa

6:45 p.m. local time

Carver drove through scattered rain over twisting one-lane mountain roads. The rental car’s GPS was useless, and his phone hadn’t gotten signal since leaving Johannesburg early that morning. He stopped for directions often. This was not only because there were so few road signs in the rural Eastern Cape. It was also because most of the people he asked for directions had never been more than 20 miles from home.

As night fell he listened to African pop music to stay awake. The highway became a series of mesmerizing canyon switchbacks that hugged steep cliffs without so much as a single guardrail. Ten hours after leaving Johannesburg International Airport, he got petrol in Stutterheim, a sleepy little town in the heart of farm country, and went on through the hilly, golden boondocks toward the backwater village of Kei Mouth on the eastern shore.

The last terrestrial radio station fizzled out as he entered the former Transkei, land of the Xhosa tribe. Xhosa children bartered beaded necklaces for candy bars as he waited twenty minutes for a single-car ferry to take him across the Kei River.

Carver entered the village two hours later. There were few services in town, and the few that existed had posted signs saying CLOSED FOR WINTER in English and Afrikaans. Business windows – all of them – were dark. Finally he spotted the sign that read BED AND BREAKFAST that had been included in the intel report. He turned down a spooky-looking street that led to a gray cement building. This was supposed to be the place. It had better be, Carver thought. He had come a very long way from Washington under completely unreasonable time constraints.