Hammond stopped and opened a small door to his right, which was much better lit.
“I’m afraid these are your quarters, sir. It’s not much, but I’ll get you some clean clothes.”
Dex went inside, regarded the four walls, bunk, the small desk with a chair on either side, the video screen and the airplane-sized bathroom. He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. He was exhausted, but for the first time in his life, he feared sleep. Dex knew that when he closed his eyes, he would see his wife Angie flailing in the Atlantic.
“Dex,” someone said. It was General Wainewright, standing in the doorway. “Got a sec?”
The room seemed much smaller as the General shut the door behind him and sat in the plastic desk chair. Dex had never been alone with the General, and he was awed by how much oxygen his presence seemed to require. The four stars on each shoulder of Wainewright’s uniform did not seem nearly enough.
“I’m concerned about LeBron,” Wainewright said without preamble. “He’s blaming you for Angie’s death.”
Dex thought on this. “Well of course he is.”
“That’s between you and your conscience. Bottom line, we can’t let him go on record saying you left Angie for dead.”
We can’t let him go on record. Dex thought about that statement for a few seconds. He didn’t understand who the General meant by “We” — the Joint Chiefs? The Pentagon? And Dex took offense at anyone but him trying to parent his child. Still, this was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs he was talking to. And for now, Wainewright seemed positively Czar-like. America didn’t know it, but Wainewright was running the country from a secret bunker that he didn’t even know the coordinates of, and he could do anything he wanted. This was no time to pick a battle.
“Don’t worry,” Dex said. “I’ll talk to LeBron.”
“Do yourself a favor,” Wainewright said. “Let him sleep it off. Then let the chaplain or the staff psychologist have a crack at him. You’ll have your hands full here with us.”
Wainewright slapped Dex on the back and stepped into the corridor, where he spotted the glowing cherry of General Farrell’s cigarette. He grabbed the smoke from Farrell’s mouth and stomped it into the floor. “Don’t be such a dinosaur,” he chastised him.
They walked down the four-foot wide corridor single file. As always, Wainewright walked in front. He had been one year Farrell’s senior at West Point, and had remained one step ahead of him his entire career. The nation’s second-most powerful military man was happy in his friend’s shadow. Farrell regarded himself as merely a great military mind, but thought Wainewright to be a true visionary, as evidenced in the way he had deftly outmaneuvered the President and DOD to feed Ulysses USA, his very own private army. Over the next week, they would have their chance to return America to its former greatness.
“The Allies are demanding communication with the POTUS,” Farrell said. His voice was raspier than usual from shouting orders in the command room.
“Soon,” Wainewright said confidently. He had planned out every eventuality of the operation months earlier, storing them in a virtual decision tree that he updated on his mobile device every hour. So far, they were doing remarkably well. The fact that Eva Hudson was alive was the only significant glitch. But even that was something that could be remedied in short order.
His counterpart wasn’t satisfied with Wainewright’s pat answer. “The general public is starting to panic,” he said. “They’re already stockpiling food and gas in Los Angeles and there are reports of militias on alert in Michigan and Texas. Some people on the East Coast are already lining up outside banks.”
Wainewright took Lincoln’s opera glasses from his pocket and clutched them as he walked.
“These remind me of what not to do,” Wainewright said.
“What’s that?”
“Deviate from the plan. Fact: after Booth shot Lincoln, he jumped from the Presidential box onto the stage. He was shouting ‘death to all tyrants.’”
“He was showboating.”
“That too. But at the core he was deviating from the plan.” Wainewright stopped as he imagined the scene at Ford’s Theatre a hundred and fifty some-odd years earlier, closing his eyes as he spoke. “Booth broke his leg with that stunt. He should have escaped out the back. It was dark and there was a horse waiting for him. Nobody would’ve seen his face. He could’ve led the resistance, just as he’d envisioned, and taken over Washington while the Union was reeling from the loss. All the pieces were in place. Security in the Capitol was light. Secretary Seward was incapacitated from his own stab wounds. Johnson was a closeted Confederate and was ready to take power. The timing was right. If only…” The General opened his eyes and stared at his shoes as he thought about his own plan. He looked up at Farrell, who had turned to listen to his ramblings. “You see where I’m going with this?”
Farrell was operating on too little sleep to indulge the civil war allegory. “No.”
They resumed walking. “My point is that we need to stick to the plan,” Wainewright said. “Dex Jackson is the next POTUS, just as we discussed. But we have to swear him in before the politicos can get organized.”
“Speers made quite the case for Eva Hudson today. That bitch will be warming the President’s desk before the devil knows he’s dead.”
”Relax. I’ve come to an understanding with Justice Dillinger. If we say Dex Jackson is our guy, the Court will bless it.”
“Dex is a wreck. We need at least a day to get him straightened out. Then there’s the matter of security.”
“So we buy a day. ”
Farrell stopped. “You mean the video?”
“Damn right the video. Call the networks.”
PART II
“The next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics."
Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Fort Campbell
Monday, 3:03 a.m.
Seventeen hours after the car bombing in Charleston, Eva Hudson’s cell phone echoed in the command post ladies’ room. She crouched low to look under the toilet stalls. She was alone. “Hudson,” she answered in an unintentionally husky voice. It was her Under-Secretary calling from her house in suburban Maryland. The President was going to be on NBC in five minutes.
Worries lifted. Her heart soared. If the President was going to be on TV, that meant he was alive.
But as Eva washed her hands in the sink, her mood quickly swung back to outrage. Seventeen hours since the Monroe bombing. He hadn’t even bothered to call. Forget the fact that they were in a serious relationship. She was a cabinet-level secretary who, incidentally, had nearly been assassinated yesterday. He was punishing her for not going to Camp David, she decided. Letting his personal feelings get in the way of national security. There was no other explanation.
She wiped down her phone’s keypad and used a paper towel to open the restroom door. As she walked toward Colonel Madsen’s office — he had a TV — she speed dialed the President’s personal cell phone. It went immediately to voicemail.
She remembered the rules she and the President had set for themselves: Don’t put anything to the President in writing, because even if the tabloids didn’t get hold of it right away, it would eventually be public — framed in the Isaac Hatch Presidential Library ten or twenty years from now. More importantly, don’t leave the President personal voicemails. Considering the circumstances, this was a rule she was ready to break.
And after the beep, she tore into him: “It’s me. I can appreciate that we are in crisis mode, but denying me entry to the executive bunker is a violation of Security Council protocol and regardless of your personal feelings, I will not stand for it. I expect to hear from you.”