Marshall Chain of Command

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-9849070-6-9
Verlag: Stairway Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 312 Seiten

The road to the Oval Office is paved in blood...the simultaneous assassinations of the President and Vice President catapults the Speaker of the House into the White House as the first female President of the United States. Evidence points to a former Navy SEAL as one of the assassins. Young journalist McKenzie McClendon must unravel a dangerous web of lies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Marshall, Colby

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE
Zero Hour California His heart rate never rose above sixty as he looked through the scope of his .50 caliber sniper rifle at the unfortunate soul caught in his crosshairs. He kept his breathing even. He inhaled deeply, slowly, so he could hold his breath as long as it took when the moment came. Then, he controlled his exhale equally. Hold. Breathing when he pulled the trigger could affect the shot’s precision. He had done this a time or two. Actually way more, but this one was different. This one he knew. Still, no reason to worry. Stick to the protocol. He fixed on the target’s head in the center of the scope. The perfect kill shot. Just the way the United States military taught him. Beside him sat a cell phone, the prepaid kind you could pay cash for in any discount store so it couldn’t be traced. Only one person had the number to this phone. He sucked air into his nostrils, noting the feel of the air temperature as he watched the glowing face of the phone, the clock flicking in time from 8:59 to 9:00 PM. The phone vibrated against the cement. He turned it on and listened in his earpiece. “You good to go?” “Yep, have to go now. Target locked.” “On my three,” said the voice. It was important their shots go off at exactly the same time so the message would be unmistakable. He heard the voice count it off at the other end of the phone. “One…” His finger tightened on the trigger. His eyes bored into the skull of the man he was about to blow apart. He was lucky he still had a clear shot, but then again, the plan was perfect. Amazing something so incredible and horrible could be counted off in the same manner as ripping a Band-Aid off of a five-year-old kid’s knee. “Two…” His finger tensed just the right amount and held there, ready to fire. “Three.” As he squeezed the trigger, he heard the shot at the other end of the line. A blast right on top of my own. That’s a new one. Even as the recoil slammed his frame backward, he was already back on his feet and disassembling the rifle. He thrust the pieces into his case in less than thirty seconds, then ran down the stairwell, calm but rushed. And he was right to be in a hurry. He’d not only just heard the gunshot that killed the President of the United States. He had just executed the Vice President. Day 1: Early Morning Washington D.C. The phone rang. The shrill cry of her mockingbird ringtone crowed in the air demanding an answer. Try as she might to ignore it, it wouldn’t stop. “All right, all right!” Fifty-three-year-old Elaine Covington rolled over in her bed and pulled the receiver to her ear. This had better be good. “What?” she barked into the phone. The numbers on the clock beside her four-poster bed read 12:44 AM. Who the hell would be calling at this hour, and what was so important they felt it warranted waking her? “I’m sorry for the lateness of the hour, Madame Speaker,” said the voice on the other line, tension seeping through his tone. His first words were too fast, his last too slow, as if he didn’t know what to call her. “But it’s an emergency. This is Bert Royal.” She knew him, though her staff spent more time with him than she had. There weren’t many occasions when her position required her to interact with President Seymour’s Chief of Staff. Elaine clutched the phone tighter as Bert spoke. “The president and the vice president have been shot. Both are dead. Madame Speaker, you’re the first Congressperson, um, former Congressperson to know.” Through the white hailstorm in her mind, the lists of what to do, what to say, in what order, and to whom battled for dominance. She had to get dressed, had to get out of this room, out of bed, damn it. “Give me ten minutes. No, make it fifteen. Get that new bimbo press secretary we just hired. Meet me at the office.” “No, Madame Speaker. I’m sorry. I’ve got orders to send a car with a special detail to take you to a secure place.” She swore. What her exact words were she doubted she’d remember. She agreed to be ready within the hour. Knuckles still white from clenching the phone, she dropped her cell back on the nightstand. Elaine lay back on her pillow. Surely she was in the middle of a dream. A nightmare. Congress would assemble; she’d have to preside for hours over a debate about whether or not to attack the country responsible. Suddenly, her eyes flew open. She sat up straight in her bed. She hadn’t been asked to show up at the Capitol. She had been told she’d be taken to an undisclosed location where she would be debriefed. It was as if she’d been slapped across the face the same way her grandmother smacked her once when she talked back to her at age ten. President Seymour was dead. Vice President Tifton was dead. The Constitution dictated the next person in line. Elaine Covington blinked twice. She was now the President of the United States. Elaine’s heart pounded as she was ushered into an unmarked black sedan. It sped through town without yielding to a single traffic light or stop sign and pulled into an underground parking garage. Other than that, Elaine couldn’t tell where they were. She’d tried to follow the maze of turns the car made from the moment the Secret Service closed her inside, but she’d lost track. She only knew they hadn’t driven too far, so they must still be in DC. Two Secret Service agents hustled her into a dark corridor. The men on either side of her were supposed to make her feel safe, but somehow they only put her on edge. Sweat seeped into the silk blouse she’d thrown on underneath her charcoal gray suit. She fought to breathe evenly. To present a calm facade. As she came to the end of the tunneled hallway, low lights streamed into the corridor from one side. The agents steered her inside the room, where she found herself standing face to face with President Seymour’s Chief of Staff, the president’s National Security Advisor, the Secretary of Defense, and a handful of other people she didn’t recognize right away. A rip tide of whispers surged around the space. Nervousness crept up her neck like a wild electrical current threatening to catch fire. Another person standing in the room caught her eye, though he was off to the side and not part of the general buzz of conversation. He stood next to the wall in his Navy uniform, alert. The briefcase he held was handcuffed to his wrist. Elaine’s chest clenched, but somehow she swallowed the moan that threatened to escape her lips. The nuclear “football” was a forty-five pound briefcase that held, in essence, the ability of the President of the Unites States to unleash a nuclear response to any threat to the nation. The briefcase, always handcuffed to a high-ranking military officer, was never more than a few feet from the president at all times. And now, the power to detonate those weapons was in this room, only a few feet away from Elaine Covington. This was no dream. No action movie scenario. This was real. The briefcase still held Elaine’s attention when a voice reminded her others were in the room. “Madame President,” Ronald Garrety, the National Security Advisor, said. The silver hair receding from Garrety’s round face swam in Elaine’s vision. Some part of her understood his words addressed her, but hearing him refer to her this way made it harder to pay attention to what followed. “I know this must be a difficult evening for you, but we have much to discuss.” He gestured to a chair across the table. “Please.” “Of course,” she said, straightening her jacket. “Ladies. Gentlemen.” She sat down, giving a nod to the two other Cabinet members who’d not yet spoken to her. Elaine licked her lips. What would a president say? “Do we know anything?” As soon as the words tumbled out of her mouth, her face burned with how stupid she sounded. Bert Royal slumped in his chair. The short, dapper man looked for once like he had dressed in the dark, thrown on whatever clothes he’d worn the previous day. Bert had not only worked as President Seymour’s Chief of Staff; he was also a good friend. This couldn’t be easy for him, having to continue to do his job and act as if his emotions weren’t all over the place. The National Security Advisor shot a glance toward Royal, but then quickly returned to facing Elaine. “Not a lot yet,” he said, “but our people are on it, covering it from every angle. Vice President Tifton was killed as he was leaving an auditorium at the University of California, Berkley, where he spoke to some college students. President Seymour was shot getting into his car. He’d just returned to Washington from his trip to visit the region in Alaska hit by the earthquake.” Garrety’s eyes once again flicked toward Bert Royal, then back to Elaine. “And other than that?” “That’s all we know. We know it was professional. Deliberate. The timing was too precise to have been a coincidence, so the two shootings must be connected. We’re going to have to wait for further investigations to yield some results. At this point we have no...