“My Presidential pardon.”
Carver’s expression went blank. He folded his hands on top of his head. “What…You mean you cracked the code already?”
“About that,” Nico said. “It’s not a code.”
Rapture Run
The elevator wobbled as it descended deeper within the vast subterranean complex. It stopped abruptly between two floors, doors opening to reveal a cold, black nothingness that frightened young LeBron Jackson. The Ulysses MP pressed the D button repeatedly until the door shut and the elevator began moving again.
“What grade you in?” the MP said. He towered over LeBron’s short, chubby frame.
“Eighth,” LeBron said.
“Jesus. World’s going to hell sure as I’m standing here.”
The elevator came to a rest and opened. “Welcome to the dungeon,” the MP said without any hint of humor in his voice. LeBron saw a long row of blue LED lamps that seemed to stretch forever. He felt the cavern’s cool, moist air and heard someone’s cries echoing off the wet rock ceiling.
An MP got up from a chair and came to greet them. The metal of his rifle glowed blue in the lamp light. “What’s this?” he said, looking at LeBron.
“This is SECDEF Jackson’s kid,” the other MP said. “General Farrell wanted him brought down here.”
“What’d you do?” the MP said, still looking at LeBron. “Stay out past curfew?”
“He ain’t done nothing,” the other MP said. “General said it’s for his own safety.”
The MP grunted. “Okay. Number nine then.”
As they walked past several occupied isolation cells, LeBron heard someone crying softly. The MP kicked the door and the noise stopped. They came to the ninth cell. There was no light in the cell — only the dim blue glow from the lamp in the corridor. LeBron could make out four walls, an exposed toilet, a floor mattress and nothing else.
“This is home, kid,” the MP said.
“Does my Dad know about this?”
The MP gently pushed him in and closed the cell door behind him.
*
Speers stood next to Major Dobbs and gazed up at the tremendous, awe-inspiring monitors in the operations room. Touch-screen maps tracked real-time enemy troop movements worldwide. One showed an aerial view of a truck convoy tracked by satellite. A descriptive overlay read: YEMEN. SUSPECTED ALLIED JIHAD CONVOY. TARGET SPEED 46 MPH. CONFIDENCE 70 %.
Speers looked around in wonder. This place was a veritable Death Star. And it had been built right under their noses.
Suddenly, General Wainewright’s talking head appeared on every monitor in the command room and every screen in the Rapture Run complex. “This is General Wainewright. We are now moving to DEFCON Two,” he said. “Fact: the last time we saw DEFCON Two? Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. The Soviets opened up torpedo tubes on us.”
All work stopped. All eyes went to the General’s image onscreen. “Momentarily,” he continued over the internal broadcast system, “Martial law will be declared across the U.S. The last time that happened? 1865. The Civil War.”
Wainewright signed off without further elaboration. Monitors cut back to normal. The Ulysses command personnel went back to their work without a word.
Corporal Hammond came to fetch Speers and Dobbs. “You’re needed in the NCA meeting,” he said, referring to the National Command Authority. Dobbs again handed temporary CENTAF command to his junior officer and followed Corporal Hammond to a large conference room. Speers recognized many of those seated at the table. The Secretary of the Interior. The head of the House Foreign Intelligence Committee. Several high-ranking generals. The junior senators from Texas, Florida and Utah.
Hammond pointed Speers and Major Dobbs to chairs at the back of the room.
As Dex Jackson walked in, the brass stood and applauded. “Mister Secretary,” they said in near unison. Speers, who hadn’t yet heard of Dex’s surviving an assassination attempt, and who had only that morning advised the President of his possible role in weapons disappearances, wondered what the Defense Secretary had done to become so popular.
The room got quiet as Dex sat in the lone remaining chair at the big boy’s table. Hammond closed the door behind him and, with a touch of a button, frosted the glass separating the conference room from the command center.
Wainewright broke the ice: “Our condolences regarding your wife, Mister Secretary.”
“Noted and appreciated,” Dex replied. “Is the POTUS en route?”
Everyone looked to Wainewright, who broke the news: “It’s my solemn duty to inform you — and anyone else who hasn’t yet heard — that the POTUS has been killed.”
The news hit Speers square in his chest. His stomach was empty, but he nevertheless felt the urge to vomit.
“But the radio…” Dex said. “There was nothing about it on the radio.”
“We’re delaying the news cycle,” Wainewright said. “The public only knows the half of it and people are already losing their shit.”
Dex looked around the table. ”Where’s Number Two?” he said, meaning the Vice President.
Again, the room turned to Wainewright, who said, “He was attacked in Wyoming.”
Dex jerked upright, his chair clapping to the floor behind him. “Christ almighty! Will someone just tell me who’s in charge?”
“We’re calling the shots,” Wainewright said coolly.
Dex paced alongside the table. Speers wiped the perspiration from his brow in the suddenly close room. General Farrell lit a cigarette and offered the rest of his pack, but there were no takers amongst the obsessively fit, gum-chewing leadership. Speers took a lollipop from his pocket, unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth.
“Get the Secretary of State on the phone,” Dex growled at Corporal Hammond. No sooner had the corporal picked up the wall-mounted phone than Speers took it from him and placed it back on the receiver.
“The Secretary of State was born in Australia,” Speers said from the back of the room. “She’s not eligible to assume the Presidency.”
Jackson stopped pacing and cast his full eyes onto Speers. “With all due respect, Chief, I’m of the opinion that your job died with the POTUS. You shouldn’t even be here.”
Speers wasn’t having it. “Not so fast,” he said. “In the event of Presidential assassination, the President’s personal staff, including the Chief of Staff, remains intact until the succeeding Commander-in-Chief relieves them of duty.”
“Well I don’t mean to be presumptuous, Chief. But if the Secretary of State is ineligible, I’d say you’re looking at the new President.”
“I’d like to challenge that,” Speers said. He stood and went to the whiteboard on the far side of the room. He grabbed a blue marker and wrote POTUS, with a flow chart arrow to the word VEEP. “The line of Presidential Succession is as follows…” he began as he illustrated an org chart several layers deep. “If the President is deceased, the Vice President ascends. If the Vice President is deceased, power falls to the House Speaker. Next in line, the President pro tempore — the late Senator Thomas.”
Dex had no patience for this. “As we’ve heard, those four leaders are deceased. That means leadership falls to the Cabinet Secretaries.”
“Right. But the order of ascension for Cabinet posts is State first, then Treasury…and then Defense.”
General Wainwright looked like he had just taken a gut punch. Dex’s eyes turned a deeper shade of red. “Eva Hudson outranks me?”
Speers drew a red circle around Eva’s place on the flow chart. “Yes sir,” he replied. “Looking at this in a historical context, you can see why. Until 2003, the Treasury Department was a fixture of National Security, directing both the Secret Service and NSA.”
General Wainewright cleared his throat. “But that was before Homeland Security was created. The old line of succession doesn’t make a lick of sense now.”
Dex wanted back into the debate. “Show me where in the constitution it says that Treasury trumps Defense,” he demanded.