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I‘ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

11.

Seven minutes before sending Darmity down to Level Twelve, Director Martin Amesley practiced keeping his face blank.

It was a skill he’d developed as a boy, an awkward boy with thick glasses. Skinny. With a slight stammer. He’d found that reacting to bullies and verbal abuse only invited more depredations. Ignoring it, being unmoved by it, wore them down. It was a subtle skill. Not flashy. But satisfying in its own way. It was a skill that had served him well as he’d served to protect increasingly inferior men and women.

Right now it was a skill he was using on a constant basis when dealing with Frank Darmity.

Darmity tested Amesley’s implacability. His trustworthiness was unimpeachable, of course. The man was a patriot, and had served his country well. Had come to his command with the best possible references. The best possible. He was not a military man, which Amesley could easily forgive as he himself was not comfortable with the military type. Capable, bluff men and women who always seemed at ease. But Darmity was also not Secret Service. He was corporate. A mercenary, Amesley supposed would be the right word. A contractor. With vast experience, of course. But Director Amesley disliked working with anyone he had not trained personally.

He had no choice, when it came to Darmity. Darmity had been added to the team via direct order. Amesley had been practicing his Blank Face ever since.

There had been a hundred small infractions, but the altercation with Renicks on the road was the first major mistake Darmity had made. Amesley was not so much worried about the event in particular. It had resolved satisfactorily, albeit more from Secretary Renicks’ professional attitude than from Darmity’s efforts. What worried Amesley was Darmity’s continued belligerence towards Renicks as a result of it. He seemed to expect some opportunity to exact revenge on Renicks for perceived slights and insults.

Darmity was violent and unpredictable. The other members of the detail were uncomfortable with him, and there had already been altercations. Under normal circumstances he would have chosen to keep Darmity separate from the rest of his team. A weapon under lock and key. Amesley had no doubt that Darmity had a skill set that would come in handy under a variety of circumstances, but he would have preferred to deploy him purposefully rather than have him wandering the complex with a chip on his shoulder.

But the technical team that had been working in the facility, shaping lines of communication and plugging the security holes they could, had exited the complex shortly after Renicks’ arrival. As per plan. Which left him with a short detail of agents with half of them engaged in a difficult breaching operation. He could not afford to keep an effective tool like Darmity in a drawer.

Amesley eyed the security monitor. Sighed heavily. Reached over and picked up a walkie-talkie. Made sure it was set to the encrypted channel. Depressed the TALK button.

“Mr. Darmity,” he said crisply. “Please leave those men to their work and report to me in the Security Office.”

He switched off the walkie-talkie and watched Darmity, standing in the hall outside the Executive Suite, pick up his own unit and say something into it. An excuse, Amesley thought. A reason he should be standing in the hall. Waiting for access to Renicks. He watched Darmity speak into the walkie-talkie, frown and adjust the channel, speak again, then finally turn and walk out of the picture.

The second major mistake Darmity had engineered had been the Hallway Detail. He wasn’t Secret Service. He wasn’t familiar with the protocol. He’d pulled the detail and that had spooked Begley. And now they were cutting magnetic locks and racing against time.

Still, Amesley had no intention of punishing Darmity. Amesley wasn’t sure he would be capable of punishing Darmity. Darmity was short, but muscular. Trained. He’d displayed no empathetic response that Amesley could determine. He recognized authority, but not Amesley’s authority. The Director knew that Darmity had been ordered to follow his instructions, but it was only that order which kept him obedient.

Also: Darmity hated him.

Amesley wasn’t alarmed, or surprised. Darmity, as far as he could tell, hated everyone. He had a high school education from a high school of no consequence. He’d come from a broken home of some sort; Amesley had not been moved to investigate too closely. He’d spent much of the next fifteen years outside the country. A contractor. A mercenary. In the past, he would have been recruited into something. The CIA’s less-savory portfolios, perhaps. In the modern age, an age when the United States of America had been bled dry by a series of inferior Presidents, corrupt cabinet members, increasingly stupid members of congress — in such a debased age he had naturally gone to work for a corporation.

“Sir?”

Amesley blinked behind his thick glasses and turned to look over at one of the groups of Agents in the Security Office. It was a large room, filled with banks of equipment: Computers, monitors, televisions, telephones, massive slabs of buttons and switches. There were only four people in it at present. The agent who had spoken was a young blond man, a doughy, breathless-looking man who had trouble keeping his shirt tails tucked into his pants. He was monitoring the security cameras, watching for anything unusual throughout the complex.

“Yes, Agent Killiam?” Amesley said. Face blank.

“One hour,” Agent Killiam said.

Amesley nodded absently. “Do we have an ETA on the package?”

Killiam hesitated, then came to a decision and shook his head. “No, sir. The Grab Teams all report no contact.”

Amesley nodded again. “You did do advance work, Agent Killiam?”

Killiam paled, but kept his composure. “Sir, all research indicated they would be at the main property. We identified possible alternate locations as well, and have Grab Teams at them all. We’ll get them.”

Amesley said nothing. Even if that were true, there was a worsening situation outside the complex, and he wasn’t sure if a team could make it in time, or if they’d be able to approach if they did. Amesley sighed. There were other ways. There was Frank Darmity. “Thank you.”

Amesley glanced at the monitor again. Watched the sparks flying, melting the scene to white over and over again. He suspected it was going to come to that.

His stomach cramped, and he fought to maintain control. An acidic hand grabbed onto his bowels and twisted them, but he sat silently, staring at the security monitor. Drummed his fingers on the surface of the console in front of him. Didn’t move at all.

“Sir,” a female agent from the other end of the room said crisply.

He turned his head and practiced his blank expression on her. She was a plain woman. Late thirties. Square face. Bad haircut. Her name was Wallace.

“We’ve cut the fifth lock.”

He nodded, swallowing bile. There were a few trailing spasms in his gut, and then he was left with just a pounding heart, sweat on his upper lip. Five locks down, seven to go. Another hour, at least.

He glanced over at the wall of monitors and picked out Darmity, riding the elevator. The man appeared to be talking to himself. Lips moving slightly. If Amesley were pressed to offer a guess he would suggest that Darmity was repeating a mantra of some sort.

He would have preferred to have only his own people involved. He would have preferred a lot of things. Begley, for instance. He would have preferred that she not have appeared unexpectedly at the morning conference call, would have preferred Murray had hesitated three more seconds before crossing a street and not been hit by a speeding car.

None of this registered on Amesley’s face. He sat, silent, completely still, and showed nothing.

“Sir?”

Amesley forced himself to turn slowly. Calmly. It was Wallace again. She had received nothing but high marks on all her reports and reviews. He disliked her anyway. Regretted placing her on the detail. But they’d been short of appropriate people.

“I’ve got a security alert,” she said slowly, studying a monitor in front o her. “It’s … it’s strange.”

Amesley’s guts twitched, but he merely tilted his head. “Yes, Agent Wallace?”

She hesitated another second, then looked up at the Director. “According to this, Secretary Renicks is on the eleventh level. Outside the Executive Suite.”

Amesley squinted at her. Then stood up, smoothing down his tie, and stepping around to stand next to her. He bent down and peered at the monitor. The biorhythmic tracking system had picked up Renicks’ signature. It was unreliable tracking people through the complex, but did often indicate a general location. You could not rely on it to show you in real time where someone was, but eventually it would note what level the DS was located on. Sure enough, it showed him on a lower level.

It was impossible. He straightened up and looked at Wallace. Said nothing. She knew as well as he did that it was impossible. There was no point in saying it. He glanced up as Darmity entered the Security Office.

The short man was wearing a Service-issued ballistic vest and carrying a light machine gun that was not Service-issued. A positively huge hunting knife was strapped to his hip. He’d shed his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves up over the elbow. Amesley imagined he’d done this to show off his musculature, which was, the Director admitted to himself, impressive. Amesley thought it likely that Darmity had been just the sort of kid he himself had feared and despised as a child. A bully.

Amesley glanced back at the monitor for a moment. Made a decision. This was the most important day in American History. In World History. He was not going to risk everything because he lacked flexibility of thought. Or lacked the wherewithal to apply the resources he’d been given, however noxious they were.

His face expressionless, he looked at the short, burly man. “Mr. Darmity,” he said clearly. “Make a sweep of the lower levels, starting with eleven. Make sure they are unpopulated.”

Darmity hesitated a second, annoyance flashing across his face. Then he mastered himself and nodded, turning back for the doors.

“Mr. Darmity!” Amesley said in a tone of voice that was precisely one degree louder and more urgent.

Darmity paused, but did not turn around.

“Remember, if you let your temper get the best of you, it is not me you will have to explain yourself to. Understood?”

Darmity stood there another few seconds. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t say anything. Then stepped out of the Security Office. Amesley let his gaze linger on the empty space that had been Frank Darmity for a moment, then allowed himself a single shrug of the eyebrows to convey endless patience. For his own amusement. It was going to be a very long day, he thought, and comforted himself that at least he expected to be dead by the end of it.

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

10.

Twelve minutes before they ran out of things to say, Begley was impatiently picking her way down another concrete corridor, nervously squinting at every sign posted on the walls. Renicks struggled to keep up, limping more noticeably as they progressed. She was willing to grade him a solid B prior to the fall. He didn’t have any training. But he’d remained calm, had thought ahead. Had helped more than he’d hindered. Now he was slowing them down. It maybe wasn’t his fault, but she blamed him anyway.

“Agent Begley,” he said.

She could tell by his voice he had fallen behind, and stopped. “Call me Begs,” she said, turning to look back at him as he caught up. “That’s what my friends call me. And for the foreseeable future, Mr. Renicks, you are my best friend in the whole world.”

“Your only friend,” he corrected, smiling. “And call me Jack. No one does, but I’m trying to start a new trend.”

She couldn’t resist smiling back. She nodded her chin at his foot. “How is it?”

He looked down at it. “Swollen like a balloon and throbbing, but I’ll live. Where are we headed?”

Begley realized he hadn’t been pestering her with questions. Had just followed her lead. Had assumed she knew what she was doing. She liked that. It was a rare personality trait to admit you didn’t know better.

She resumed walking, holding back her pace a bit. “There’s a redundant security office down on this level. Meant to be used when the main one is being refitted, or if it’s damaged in some way. Hasn’t been touched since the last refit twenty years ago. I doubt anyone up there knows it exists.” They haven’t been living in this dungeon for a year like me, she thought. “If it’s still functioning, we should be able to get some idea of what’s going on in here.”

The corridor branched off again, offering three choices. Forward, left, right. She turned left without hesitating. Walked another ten steps, then stopped outside a substantial-looking metal door. The plastic sign read SEC CON SITE D. The letters had once been sharp black, but had faded and chipped. There was a now-familiar unmarked keypad mounted on the wall next to it. She stood for a moment, thinking. The sequence was encrypted on her tablet’s hard drive, but she hesitated to power the tablet on. Even if she prevented it from connecting to the facility’s network its radio might show up on the security matrix.

Renicks waited behind her. Said nothing.

She was surprised at herself; she normally had a good memory for things like this. But she was coming up blank. She had three tries. After three incorrect entries, the keypad would lock up and the door wouldn’t open for twenty-four hours unless the security grid was reset. That would mean an alarm, and the redundant security office wouldn’t be a secret for much longer.

She took a deep breath. Didn’t want to admit to Renicks that she couldn’t remember. Didn’t want to admit to herself that she cared what he thought. She prided herself on being the ultracompetent one in the room, and had always feared moments like this.

She closed her eyes, reached out, and let her fingers work. Muscle memory. The pattern was in her head, she just needed to access it. Seventeen buttons, and when she heard the light ping of success, she opened her eyes and pulled the door open without looking back at Renicks.

The air inside the room was stale and dusty. It wasn’t a large room. The wall on the left as they entered was filled with a bank of instruments and monitor screens, similar to the setup back in the Executive Suite but older, more outdated. There was a thin slab of desk and two large office rolling chairs. Everything was under a sheet of yellowing plastic which had at one time been taped to the floor with blue painter’s tape. The tape had given up long ago and clung to the plastic as it rippled. The plastic and the floor were covered in a thick layer of yellow dust. She decided not to think about what, exactly, formed yellow dust.

There was an old yellow phone mounted on the wall. She snatched it from the wall and placed it against her ear. Heard nothing. She shook her head at Renicks and put the phone back in its cradle.

“Internet?” he asked.

She shrugged, eyes slowly wandering the plastic-covered equipment. “I’m sensing a pattern here. But one way to be sure.”

A gray metal panel on the wall contained the circuit breakers. She pulled it open and shoved the master over to ON. The single bulb in the fixture on the ceiling exploded with a loud pop, and a deep humming noise permeated the air.

“You sure they won’t notice that power-on?”

She wasn’t, but saw no purpose in saying she was reasonably sure it wouldn’t be. Nodded crisply as she tore the plastic sheet away from the console. Leaned in and started turning the monitors on, one by one. LED lights were glowing green. She leaned in as one screen resolved into a black and white command prompt. She typed into the keyboard embedded in the desk. Hit return. Glanced up at the screen again and shook her head. Tried to keep the anxiety out of her voice.

“No gateway,” she said. “Let’s see what kind of signals are getting fed to the screens.”

The monitors all began displaying black and white images as they warmed up. Each was split into four smaller screens, with an overlay of white letters at the top right corner identifying the feed.

Most of the images were eerily still. Empty rooms. Empty corridors. Two of the screens showed motion.

The first showed the corridor outside the Executive Suite. The sparks and flashes of light from the door overwhelmed the screen’s contrast balance. The image would resolve to a glimpse of people gathered around the double doors for a second. Looking like a rugby scrum. Then it would flash to white, all the details lost. In one flash she recognized the agent who had driven Renicks to the complex, standing back a little from three others working the doors.

The second showed another control room. Much larger. Filled with monitors and banks of equipment. Filled with people. She recognized Amesley immediately. Standing at ease. No indication of stress, of being a prisoner. He was part of it, whatever it was. There were four other people in the room. Begley couldn’t be sure, but she thought one of them had been among the workers swarming over the complex, sans uniform. Observe, she thought to herself. When collecting intelligence never discount your own observations. She pushed her eyes around the screen, trying to take in every detail.

She froze. “Oh, shit.”

She felt Renicks sink down into the seat beside her. Appreciated the fact that she’d forgotten he was there for a moment, because he was not screaming, or barking orders, or twitching with some horrible nervous tic. He was blasting calm into the air.

“What is it?”

She pointed at the corner of the screen, where something that appeared to be a suitcase sat on one of the consoles. It was open, the lid standing up at a ninety-degree angle. On the screen it was impossible to see in any detail what was inside.

“That,” she said slowly “is the Portable Nuclear Arsenal Authorization and Deployment Platform. Otherwise known as the Nuclear Football.”

Renicks sucked in air. “Shit,” he spat out. “They can’t launch anything, can they?”

She shook her head. Moved her pointing finger a precise number of inches to the left. “But look at that.”

She was pointing at a console where two women leaned down close to a pair of monitors. A blur of text scrolled down one screen. One of the women appeared to be working the keyboard. One was working something out on a pad of paper.

Renicks leaned forward. “They have the launch codes,” he said slowly. “Those are in the briefcase, right?”

She nodded, slightly impressed. “They are. Although some Presidents have chosen to carry them on their person.”

“But not Grant.”

She shook her head. “Not Grant. Grant was a stickler for tradition. Weird about it, actually. Kind of a mania.”

“So what are they doing?”

She took a deep breath. “If I had to guess, I would say they were recalculating target trajectories.”

There was a quiet moment of dull horror shared between them.

“Can they do that?”

“They’d have to. The Brick contains pre-mapped targets for a number of scenarios. The common ones. The ones the Pentagon has run a million simulations on and come out with a 90%-plus likelihood. Russian aggression. North Korea. Iran and Israel. But they don’t have The Brick, and you can never predict every possibility that might land the President on the run, in the air, in here. So sure you can enter new targets, if you can calculate them correctly. If you have time. It’s not easy.”

Renicks pursed his lips. “What happens when they have the new target data?”

“Nothing, unless you’re there. They can’t do anything unless they have the authorized and validated Acting President physically present. You have to be within a foot or so.”

“So that was the idea. Set up new targets, have Gerry Flanagan launch missiles, somewhere.” He smiled humorlessly. “And now I guess the idea is, cut into the executive suite, take me by force. Physically present suddenly sounds kind of scary.”

Begley took another deep breath. Most people who hadn’t been tortured thought they could withstand it. That they were special. She sometimes felt that way, too, but she knew intellectually that it was bullshit. Renicks knew the score, though, and that made her feel a little better. It was difficult to protect someone who didn’t think they needed it.

She half-stood and leaned over towards some of the equipment. “This monitor over here is designed to scan for frequencies on the complex’s feed. I’m going to see if they’re getting anything from the outside. Police transmissions, military channels. If anyone’s beaming television we can get that too.”

“You mean actually know what’s going on?” Renicks said, leaning back in his chair. “Crazy.”

She smiled. Flicked on the monitor and pushed three buttons on the stack beneath it. Green lights. White noise. She put her hand on the big dial and started turning it, slow, careful. Like she was trying to crack a safe.

A moment later, a picture resolved on the monitor. No sound. It was local news.

They both stared at it.

It was strangely normal. The commentator was a middle-aged man with a terrible haircut and a worse suit. Begley thought he should be fired for the suit alone, but the haircut made it a capital offense. After a moment, they cut away to a long shot of the Capitol Building. The title read BOMBING AT STATE OF THE UNION.

“Fuck,” Renicks said from behind. Then he leaned forward, jabbing his finger under her nose. “Hey! The crawl!”

She shifted her eyes down. At the bottom of the screen was a crawl of words, slowly moving from the right edge of the screen to the left. They both leaned forward, reading.

“Grant’s alive,” Renicks breathed.

Begley nodded, frowning. Reading. The crawl had switched to a report about a possible chemical attack in Virginia. No one knew if it was related or not.

“He’s not even badly injured. Stable condition.” Renicks stood up. “Conscious. Jesus Christ, President Grant’s okay. What the fuck am I still doing here?”

Begley was intently reading the crawl. “Because they’ve somehow kept this complex online. They’ve somehow locked out changes, and you’re still in the system.” She turned to face him. “Normally if the all-clear is signaled, this complex goes offline, and you’re taken out of the system as the chief executive. If that signal is somehow blocked, you stay in. They would have to crawl through every node and remove your credentials. It’ll take days.”

He stopped. “Days.”

“That’s not the worst of it,” she added, pointing to the screen. “See here, where it’s reporting that Bluemont, Virginia and the surrounding area are being evacuated because of a ‘potential chemical attack’, possibly related?”

Renicks nodded. “Bluemont’s a few miles from here.”

Begley nodded. “It’s in the blast radius.”

Renicks started to say something, then stopped and stared at her. “They’re going to bomb this place.”

She shook her head. “They don’t have to. This situation’s been modeled, Mister — Jack. Everything’s been modeled. They pay bright people from Ivy League schools to sit in rooms and come up with hilarious scenarios and to plot likely responses to them. This one’s a classic: The Continuity Program gets compromised, a rogue Acting President attempts to launch missiles. So, the whole complex is wired to blow. Charges buried deep below, designed to make this place come down like a pancake.” She pointed at the screen again. “Just in case the engineers got a little too happy with the TNT, they’re evacuating.”

“Jesus,” Renicks said. Begley thought it was becoming his favorite word. “They’re going to blow us up.”

“They can’t know that you’re not cooperating. They have to assuming you’re part of this.”

He looked at her and smiled. It was a gray, ghostly smile. “I can’t even get my ex-wife to give me my daughters’ cell phone numbers, and I’m supposed to be masterminding this?” He shook his head. “How do we know the people we’re running from haven’t cut those lines as well?”

She shook her head. “No lines to cut. It’s all wireless. Satellite feeds. Encrypted.” She paused. Was it possible they had seized control of the charges? Yes, she thought. For people who had done all this, yes, it was possible. No profit from that vein, though.

“All right. How long?”

She liked that. It made her feel like there was something positive to be done. “Based on evacuation pace and the normal chain of command,” she said slowly, reluctant to tie herself to an estimate that had no basis in clear evidence, “two hours. Maybe less.” She hesitated, then decided to pursue a policy of Full Disclosure with Renicks. “If they either crack the football’s security and gain access, or if you come into contact with it and activate the launcher, they’ll know. In Washington. And they’ll blow this place immediately at that moment.”

He nodded, looked back at the screens. They stood side by side, studying them, silent. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say.

PUB | MOBI | PDF

I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

9.

Fifteen minutes before he sprained his ankle, Renicks stood with Begley in the kitchen, staring down at the floor.

“Here,” she said.

He shrugged. “According to the document, yes.”

She looked down at the tile floor. Back up at him. “Ronald Reagan ordered an escape tunnel installed in the kitchen of the Executive Suite in the Secure Facility.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

She stared at him for a second or two too long. The shriek of the magnetic locks being cut was muted, a low buzz. “You realize this would defeat the purpose of a panic room, right?”

He nodded again. “Are you suggesting a President can’t make fucked-up decisions? He’d be in here with his family, if the worst came.” He pointed back over his shoulder. “He imagines the Russian army or some shit crashing through the front door of this place. Corridor fighting, Marines against … against whatever. Bloody, brutal fighting. The slow retreat, the attrition of forces. Then they’re outside the door. Cutting the maglocks, like right now. One lock every fifteen minutes, gone. Your wife, your kids, hugging your legs, screaming.” He shrugged again. “Hell, I can see why you might think a secret escape tunnel wasn’t such a bad idea.”

“But — ”

He smiled. “You didn’t know about it.”

“What?”

He liked her cocky posture, the jut of her hip, her arm akimbo, her back ramrod straight. “You’re worried about the security risks. But if I read this right, this was installed decades ago via executive order using one-time contractors, but you don’t know a thing about it.” He gestured at the floor. “It’s been here for decades, and this is the first you’ve heard of it. Sometimes, security through obscurity works.”

They stared at each other in silence. He could tell she was fighting the urge to smile.

Without a word, she spun and stepped out of the kitchen. He watched her go, then looked down at the floor again. The big tiles, twenty-four inches by twenty-four inches. Huge. Available by special order, certainly, at any home improvement store, but not normal. He studied the pattern. There was a center tile, if you discounted the bottom cabinets. Perfectly center. They must have cheated a little under the cabinets. Half an inch, maybe. Enough to get a perfectly straight line in the center of the room.

A sound made him turn. Begley strode back into the kitchen, lugging the black plastic toolbox from the office closet. She dropped it on the floor and knelt, popping it open and pulling a flat blue crowbar from it. With a shove she sent the toolbox skidding across the floor, crashing into the base cabinets. She stood up. Looked at him, hefting the crowbar like she’d broken into a few cars in her time. Silently, he pointed at the center tile. She nodded and knelt down, pushing the sharp, thin end of the crowbar into the line that separated the middle tile from the one to its left. Tapped the curled top of the bar with her palm a few times, pushing the blade down into the almost-invisible gap.

Renicks admired her efficient, no-nonsense manner. A lot of people, he thought, would have spent a lot of time talking, arguing. Instead of just trying it and putting the matter to rest.

She took a breath and pushed on the bar, giving it just a little force. Frowned. Cocked her head. Then put her back into it with a grunt, and the tile popped up a half inch or so.

“Damn,” she said in a tight, low voice. “It’s heavy.”

He circled around to the other side and knelt down next to her. Put his hands on the bar over hers. Her skin was cool to the touch, smooth. He eased his weight onto the bar and the tile rose upwards. Beneath it was a square opening, about an inch smaller all around. A damp, cool breeze rushed up from it.

“Can you hold it a second?” he asked.

She considered, studying it, then nodded. “For a second.”

He eased up off the bar, hesitated for a second. When she held the tile up, he moved fast, getting his hands under the lip they’d created and pushing. He tipped it up and over. It crashed down onto its top side, cracking the tile under it. The center tile was made of steel, with a coating on top to make it resemble the rest.

Panting, he knelt on the floor and peered down into a narrow tunnel leading straight down. After a second Begley leaned in close as well, producing a small flashlight. With a click it snapped on a bright bluish light, revealing a smooth metal tube that widened out slightly once you got past the twenty-two by twenty-two opening under the tile, with ladder handholds bolted down one side. It looked just wide enough for a man of average build to climb down. Anyone overfond of cheeseburgers was going to have a hell of a time. Renicks and Begley looked up at each other simultaneously.

“You’re not an I told you so type, are you?” she asked.

He sat back and leaned against the base cabinets. “Normally, I am. But I have to confess I didn’t really believe it myself.”

“Right.” She stood up and tore her jacket off. Her white blouse was crisp and neat. Her holster rode high on her hip. She dropped the jacket on the floor, sat down, and swung her legs over the lip of the hole. She looked at Renicks. “Stay here.”

He started to say something, but she put the small flashlight between her teeth and sank down into the shaft, catching a step with one foot and then disappearing from sight.

“Bossy,” he muttered, and stood up.

He walked into the living room. The sparks were halfway down one side. The noise was, if anything, even louder, and he winced, putting his hands up to his ears. Turning away from the door, he picked up his bag and quickly scooped all of his possessions back into it. Picked up the Kimber and stuffed it into his waistband, feeling foolish. Moving quickly, he went back into the office. He pushed the Brick and the towel into his bag, then went to the closet and retrieved two of the walkie-talkies, pushing them in on top of it.

In the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and pulled four bottles of water out, adding them to the bag. Then he dropped the bag and stood over the tunnel entrance. He wondered what he would do if she never came back. He tried to imagine an existence without the constant, high-pitched wine of the maglocks being cut and found it impossible.

She emerged a few minutes later, her hair coming loose from its clips. She was pink and sweaty, and sat on the floor with her legs dangling in the shaft.

“Jesus, it’s not even hidden,” she said, breathing hard. “It leads right into a service corridor. A door, marked Access Corridor. Access Corridor, for god’s sake.”

“You know the service tunnels?”

She nodded, looking up at him. “I know every damn inch of this drafty, stinking place. Or thought I did.” She paused, and suddenly reached out, snatching the Kimber from him before he could react. She studied it for a moment, then looked up at him from under her eyebrows. “My goodness, Mr. Secretary.”

Renicks tried to hide his surprise and embarrassment. “It was a gift from my uncle,” was all he could manage to say. He wanted to snatch the gun back, but felt this would undermine his dignity even further. He didn’t know what to do with his hands.

She felt the weight, her eyes on his. “Have you ever fired a gun, Mr. Renicks?”

He smiled. “A few times. On a range.”

She stared up at him for another moment, then handed it up to him. “Keep the safety on and don’t try to shoot anything while you’re moving, okay?”

He took it back and tucked it back under his belt. “Thanks.”

“One minute.” She left the kitchen. Returned a moment later with her tablet, handing it to him silently. He slipped it into his bag. Pulling her jacket towards her, she threaded one arm into the sleeve. Paused, looking at him. “And don’t point it at me under any circumstances,” she said. “Come on. Keep your jacket. It’s cold as hell.”

The descent was claustrophobic. He could barely extend his arms enough to grasp each small rung in the ladder, and his bag slung over his shoulder cramped him even further. The rungs were slippery and his feet kept sliding free. And Begley was right: It turned freezing just a few feet below the lip of the tunnel. He started shivering almost immediately.

“Just how paranoid do you have to be,” he heard her say breathlessly from below, “to install a panic tunnel in your panic room?”

Renicks chuckled. He was breathing hard, and thought if he’d known what his future held he would have started working out long ago. He’d always thought himself in reasonable shape. He was beginning to question that assessment. “Maybe it’s a series of panic rooms and tunnels,” he offered. “Panic rooms all the way down. Eventually we end up back in the Executive Suite.”

The only light sources he had was the diminishing fluorescent glow leaking down from the kitchen and the scattered, weak bluish light leaking up from Begley. The walls of the tunnel were steel plate. The rungs of the narrow ladder were cold to the touch and his hands were going numb from constant contact with them. He wondered why a panic tunnel out of a panic room would lead directly back into the facility, instead of outside. He broke it down in his head as he worked his way down. A way of distracting himself from the sensation of being stuck, his bag wedging against the wall of the shaft, a surge of tight terror filling him every time.

The answer was simple. If the President is in the Executive Suite in the first place, the worst has come. Nuclear war, massive terrorist attack, plague of some sort. Outside would have to be assumed to not be an option. The escape from the Panic Room, created in secret and not even shared with the group of people charged with protecting the President — the Secret Service itself — was meant to be used in the instance of a revolt. A coup. If the President or Acting President found himself under assault from his own people, he would need a way to regain control of the facility. A secret. A surprise attack, from the rear.

Renicks heard a hissing noise and looked down in time to see Begley slide the last few feet of the ladder, just letting the sides of the ladder slide through her hands. She dropped lightly to the floor.

His left foot slipped from the rung below him, and his legs sailed out into the air. He squawked, a barking noise deep in his throat. Held on with one hand, his right arm wedged suddenly between his body and the wall of the shaft. He held on for a second. Then his numb hand slipped free and he was falling.

It was only a dozen feet or so. Somehow he avoided knocking his head against a rung. He slid down the shaft like he’d practiced it, training for the moment, one arm pressed against his side, one arm raised up. He felt the walls disappear and for a second he was aware of open air, and then his feet hit the floor. His left ankle rolled under his weight, pain shot up his leg, and he fell over, cursing. Landed hard on his ass. Leaned forward and grabbed his ankle, wincing.

Begley was there immediately. “Are you okay?”

He nodded. The pain had already receded to a dull throb. “Help me up.”

She put her shoulder under one armpit and lifted as he pushed himself up. Standing with her for support, he tested the foot. Winced again. But was able to stand. He looked at Begley and nodded in response to her unspoken question. She looked down at his shoes. They were good walking shoes. Sturdy. Comfortable. Were dressy enough for emergencies. No ankle support whatsoever.

They were in an actual tunnel now. Bare rock. Not much light. A damp, sour smell in the air. Cold. He pulled his jacket tighter around him and limped after Begley. Ten steps and she opened a door, dim light flooding in. It was a regular-looking door, the frame set roughly into the rock wall. Begley inspected the hallway beyond it for a second and then nodded, stepping through.

He tried to walk normally. His ankle hurt like hell, but he managed to avoid more than a nominal limp. He wondered if it was pride or the simple urge to not hold them back. Tabled it for later examination, when he wasn’t fleeing from unknown forces.

The corridor they emerged into was lit by a single fluorescent bulb that flickered and buzzed. The silent, yellow emergency lights blinked on and off every six feet. It had been finished in a perfunctory, industrial way. Cold concrete floor. Unpainted drywall on the walls. A thick yellow line had been painted on the floor. About forty or fifty years ago, by the look of it. There were other doors every few feet, some unmarked. The ones that were marked weren’t very helpful, as far as he was concerned. They had signs like CORRIDOR A15 or MECH ACCESS 2.

Jargon Shields, literally. Jargon was designed to keep the uninitiated — the outsiders — in the dark. Signs were usually written in ways that conveyed all necessary information to those who knew the jargon, but kept everyone else mystified. It was passive-aggressive, in a way. Looking around, he thought this facility might just be the most passive-aggressive place in the world.

Begley turned to shut the door behind them. “All right,” she said. “We have an advantage, then.”

He nodded. “They think we’re still in there.”

“Right. We’re deep underground, and in order to get out, we have to go up, through the complex. We don’t know anything. We have no idea what we’d be walking into.”

“We know they’re armed. We know they came prepared. We know they want me.”

She was in charge. He could sense it. Whatever equality had existed between them in the Suite, whatever hesitance she’d felt was gone. She was in her element, and he suspected he would be taking orders from her for the foreseeable future. He didn’t mind. He had to admit she knew more than he did, had been trained for this. All he would be able to do was comment sarcastically on the quality of the signage. He was content to let her lead.

Begley nodded. “And that’s the sum of our information. Come on.” She turned right and started walking.

He fell in behind her. The ankle felt weak and stiff, but he could walk on it, for now. Shock. Adrenaline and endorphins. It would swell and start to ache, become tender, if he didn’t stay on it constantly. He remembered his father, teaching him the “hurry cases” when he’d been in the Boy Scouts. Serious Bleeding. Internal Poisoning. Stopped Breathing. Heart Attack.

He particularly remembered heart attack, because the only instruction had been to make sure the victim was comfortable and wait for an ambulance to arrive. So much for first aid.

“Where are we going?”

She didn’t turn around. “To gather intelligence, Mr. President.”

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8.

Five minutes before he saw it, Renicks was walking through every square foot of the suite. Trying to notice everything. Cataloging resources, familiarizing himself with the layout.

He started in the office space, where Begley had wriggled under the main desk with a small toolbox. Working the plates free from the wall, stripping the wiring of insulation. Trying anything that might patch them through to a live connection. It was a good use of her time, since she obviously knew the wiring and how to manipulate it. He left her to it.

The office was easy enough. Aside from the furniture and computer equipment, there was paper in the fax machine and printer, and a few basic office supplies in the desk drawers. A shallow closet in the back of the room also contained a large plastic toolbox and a set of walkie-talkies in a charger, all operational. He wondered if they were on the same frequency as the one he’d seen Begley use earlier.

There was a loud bang behind him, and then a stream of profanity. Without turning to look, he exited the office. Directly across from it was the small kitchen and one of the bathrooms. The kitchen was a claustrophobic square; full-sized oven, fridge, sink. Insufficient cabinetry. A toaster and microwave ate up half the counter space. Unattractive. Greasy white laminate, blond wood trim. The oven’s finish had been scratched and had lines of rust forming a pattern on it. The floor was tiled in huge, twenty-four inch stone tiles, light gray. The tile had been laid without gaps or grout, right up against each other. The huge tiles just made the room feel smaller.

He opened everything. The cabinets contained a variety of dried and canned food: Vegetables, noodles, pasta, beans. Powdered milk. Powdered drinks of all kinds. Canned meat, sausages and SPAM, tuna in foil packets. There was a full set of dented and rusted pots and pans, chipped plates and dull metal cutlery. Everything you would need to prepare horrifying meals of salt and sugar and botulism, he thought.

The oven was empty. He regretted opening it. When he opened the fridge he paused for a moment, staring at dozens of bottles of wine, water, and beer, placed inside with care, using every available inch of space.

He shut the door slowly, thinking that if they hadn’t figured something out in two hours or so, he was coming back to have one hell of a party.

The bathroom was cheap-looking. It was a standard three-piece: Sink, toilet, plastic shower stall. The medicine cabinet was empty. There were two sets of towels and washcloths, white and thin, laundered a million times. He took one of the towels and tucked it under his arm. Towels, he thought, were always massively useful things.

When he stepped back into the narrow hall, he could still hear Begley cursing in the office, even over the keening noise of the locks being cut. Passing through the entry room, he glanced at the sparks flying. Noted they had shifted downward about six inches. One lock down, he assumed.

On the other side of the suite were the two bedrooms and second bathroom.

At first glance, the bedrooms were identical in size and crammed with bunk beds. Six beds in each room. The beds were modular and could be separated and, he assumed, stored elsewhere. He wondered why the default configuration was to assume he would be bunking down with eleven people, why they wouldn’t leave the extra beds somewhere else until needed. The beds were all made up, with sheets and blankets and thin, unhappy pillows. There was nothing else in the bedroom on the right. No dressers, or chests, or decoration of any kind.

The bedroom on the left had a closet. It was shallow and not very practical for storing clothes in the standard way. Which he assumed the designers had realized, since it was filled with automatic weapons. Rifles. Magazines. He didn’t know anything about automatic rifles, and they seemed to glow with a negative black light, shiny and perfect. Maybe never used. He closed the closet door and wondered if he should report his discovery to Begley. Then realized she must know, this was her house. She’d probably been trained on them. Could take them apart, put them back together.

Then he thought they shouldn’t trust anything they found in the suite. They’d brought something to cut through the door with. Maybe they’d thought to empty the magazines, too. Or replace them with blanks.

He glanced at the towel. Considered it. Then shrugged.

The second bathroom was exactly the same as the first, with the addition of an exciting mold smell. He compared towels and decided to keep the one he had.

Back in the office, Begley lay on the floor under the desk, grunting and cursing. She was pulling plates off the wall and yanking wires free. He rolled the big desk chair a few feet away from her and sat down. Pulled the Brick from his pocket. It lit up as he touched it, coming to life.

“Are you always this calm?”

Renicks glanced over at Begley. She had pushed her head out from under the desk at an uncomfortable angle. Glaring at him. He imagined she was used to contorting herself just to glare at people. He reflected that all the women in his life accused him of being too calm.

“This isn’t calm,” he said. “Should I be running around? I don’t know the systems here; you do. So you’re tearing wires out of the wall. I’ve got this,” he held up the Brick, “which only I can access. So I’m looking through it to see if there’s anything here that can help. There must be something in the classified documents of the President that can help.”

She snorted, pulling herself back under the desk. He allowed himself to admire her lower half for a second.

“I’d feel better if you were running around,” she said.

He nodded and returned his attention to the Brick. It was a remarkable device. It was palm-sized and about as thick as a small paperback book. It was all screen. There were no buttons. No obvious power source. All interaction was through the touch-screen.

When he put it down, it went dark. When he picked it up, it came to life automatically. Somehow it knew when he was holding it.

The interface was graphical, the screen filled with tiny icons. There were no applications that he could see. Just documents and folders. Hundreds, thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. There were dozens of folders, most marked with mysterious acronyms or single words he assumed were codenames. He thought of Amesley and the team of people that would normally be at his disposal. People who could explain everything to him. The Brick was just to ensure he had access to the information the Acting President might need. It didn’t clarify anything.

He thumbed his way through the list of folders, ignoring the unsorted documents. He scanned quickly; despite Begley’s assertion that it would take hours to cut through the locks on the entrance, he was impatient and worried. He didn’t think it was likely that Begley would have some brilliant inspiration and connect them to rescuers.

Two folders jumped out at him almost immediately. The first was named ELIRO. The all-caps title caught his eye and he stared at it for a moment. Hesitated because he thought he’d seen the acronym before. He spent a few seconds running the letters around his mind. He had the buzzing sense that their meaning was locked away in his head. That at any moment it would be illuminated. Maybe a memo he’d seen, or a project he’d discussed with the President.

He opened the folder with a tap of his index finger. It expanded to fill the screen. Contained a single text file, also called ELIRO. With a tap he opened the file. The first line was in English:

History will forgive me.

He scanned the rest. The first words in were dum tre longa tempo nun, and it continued from there, nonsense. Or a code.

He closed his eyes for a second and imagined the words. Dum tre longa tempo nun. He’d always enjoyed codes and word games, but these remained meaningless. Thinking that if it was a code there might be a key, so he closed the file and then the folder. With a growing sense of urgency he pushed his eyes past the icon and kept searching, eventually stopping with a start on a folder marked CONT_EX_STE.

Vowels were luxuries. He quickly translated this to continuity executive suit and with a sharp jab of his finger the folder swelled up to take up the entirety of the small screen. It contained a dozen or so subfolders with inscrutable names, and a single unsorted text file called NSDD_E1.

He glanced at Begley’s legs. Tapped the file open. It was a short document, containing just three paragraphs of text in plain English. The first two he skipped quickly. They were legalese. Long sentences citing authority, precedents, and routing procedures.

The third paragraph was only three sentences long. He read it twice, heart pounding. Then he looked up at Begley’s lower half.

“I know how to get out of here.”

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7.

Fifteen minutes before figuring out that they wanted him alive, Renicks was digging through his bag.

Behind him, he could hear Agent Begley having a heated, half-shouted conversation with Director Amesley via the intercom. He listened with half his attention as he searched his bag for the palm-sized Brick Agent Gorshin had given him. He could hear it buzzing.

“Agent Begley,” Amesley’s tinny voice, warped by the small speaker, “this is a direct order: Open the suite’s doors!”

“I’m sorry sir, I must refuse that order,” she repeated, her voice even. “Until I am certain that this facility is secure, my responsibility is to the DS and his safety.”

Amesley started to shout something, but was cut off mid-sentence. He heard Begley moving. She disappeared into the office again. He watched her in his peripheral vision.

The emergency lights clicked on. Clicked off. Begley returned from the office.

“Secretary Renicks,” she said briskly. “Come with me, please.”

“One second.”

He picked up his bag and turned it upside-down, dumping the contents onto the couch. The TV was still spilling snow and white noise into the room. The Brick and gun both bounced onto the cushions. The Brick’s screen was bright. It danced a little each time it buzzed.

Picking up The Brick, he followed Begley into the short corridor that lead to the bedrooms, bathrooms, and office. He was shaking a little. He told himself it was excitement. He found her in the office, typing on the keyboard embedded in the large desk. The desk was placed up against the far wall; behind it were a half dozen large flat screen monitors. Five were blank and dark; the sixth displayed a standard kind of computer desktop with a dock along the bottom and shortcut icons littered everywhere. Instead of a mouse there was a trackball embedded into the desk’s surface. A headset was plugged into a bank of inputs at the back.

Along the other walls were two smaller computer work stations and a small table on which a fax machine and hi-speed laser printer sat, blinking placid and green.

“I don’t have any connections to the facility,” she said as he stepped up behind her. “That’s impossible.”

“That word gets overused. You mean improbable.”

She didn’t turn away from the desk. “This suite is a panic room. It’s meant to be the Alamo if things go very badly wrong — like, an army-at-the-front-door wrong. When the Continuity Program activated this facility and this suite was sealed, all authority and communications should transfer here. So the President or Acting Commander In Chief will have complete control over all networks. The power lines are designed to be redundant and uncuttable. The communication fiber is designed to be redundant and uncuttable.” She tapped a final key, muttered a curse, and turned to look at Renicks. “When I sealed this area, Secretary Renicks, we should have immediately gone live and superseded the control center of the facility.”

“But we’re cut off.”

She nodded. “Somehow. It’s imp — improbable, but somehow I have no tunnel to the outside world from here.”

He looked around the room. Seeing a phone extension mounted to the wall, he stepped to it and picked up the receiver, pushing the TALK button and placing it to his ear. There was no dial tone, and he shook his head.

“Agent Begley,” he said, replacing the phone in its cradle. “Walk me through it.”

She turned and leaned back against the desk, looking down at his shoes. She took a deep breath, her arms crossed over her chest. He liked that. No rushing, no panic. She was panicked, he could tell, but panic was like fear: Everyone experienced it. How you reacted made the difference. Her reaction was to slow down, to think for a second. He was impressed when she looked up at him, her eyes clear, her voice steady. He was trying to decide if she was going to be someone he could rely on. He wasn’t sure, yet. His own heart continued to pound, and his hands were still shaky; he needed to be able to rely on her, because he didn’t know squat about the bunker or the facility or what might be outside the doors.

“I don’t know the details, but the Continuity Program of this facility has been triggered. This facility is online, and you have been elevated from Designated Survivor to Acting Commander in Chief. Protocol states that the four agents outside this suite exchange pass-phrases with the In-Suite — that’s me — and I would grant two of them access to this area. One of them would be carrying the football — the Nuclear Football, the remote launch interface — and you would formally assume control. After that, protocol ends, really. You would be considered the CIC, you would make contact with other entities and departments. Depending on the responses you received, we would proceed from there.”

“But something’s wrong.”

She nodded. He could tell she was thinking this through as she spoke, and that was why he was asking questions, letting her talk, letting her work it out. This was her home field.

“Something’s wrong. The other agents on this detail broke protocol. Director Amesley broke protocol. Something happened at the State of the Union Address, something that triggered the Continuity Program. This program has been in place in its current form since 1963 and has never been triggered before.” She looked around. “That means you are the acting President, Mr. Renicks — ”

“Jack.”

“ — and you should be in complete control. But you’re not.”

He glanced down at The Brick. He remembered Agent Gorshin telling him it had no way to connect to the outside world beyond its activation signal — it wouldn’t be able to access any networks, even if there were some to be found.

Begley stared at him, her eyes steady. He felt her weighing him. She’d known him for an hour, but she had his entire life as sussed out by the best investigator’s in the business at her fingertips. He wondered what kind of impression he’d made.

“All right,” she said in a tone of clipped decision. “When I went to the door earlier to deny Amesley’s request, I saw something. The picture’s pretty grainy, but you get a good view of the whole corridor. Everything looked OK. Amesley looked like he always did. Big glasses, blank face. I don’t know the agents on detail but they looked right. They had the football with them. Except … way down where the hall turns at a right angle towards the elevator. The way we came up. I thought I saw something.”

“Something?”

She frowned. “Movement. It’s hard to make out details on that old screen, but I saw something move. It was as if … ” She looked up at him and shrugged. “As if someone was hiding around the corner. As if someone knew the field of the camera and was purposefully standing in the blind spot.” She looked back up at him. “If I was on the spot I would say it looked very much like a man holding a weapon.”

He thought about that. It felt unreal. Like this was some sort of academic exercise, a spitball session during Paranoid Delusions 101 or something. He was lightheaded and could feel his whole body humming. This is mania, he thought. This is how religious delusions happen. You get worked into a state of delirium with adrenaline and terror, and you start believing things. “Maybe waiting for the door to be opened. Because everything right in front of you looked right.”

She nodded, then suddenly took a deep breath. “Then you have to follow the logic. They’ve triggered the Continuity Program. They’ve broken protocol. You break protocol because it’s the only way to protect your asset, or you break protocol because you’re not protecting your asset. Which it is?”

“Maybe I’m supposed to be dead too.”

“No. If that’s what they wanted, don’t break protocol. I let them in once we exchange pass phrases, they murder us. Or kill you when you walk in the door. They wanted you to be activated as acting CIC. Why?”

Renicks weighed The Brick in his hand. “Like I said, I’m supposed to be someone else. You’re supposed to be someone else. We both get pulled in at the last second, they can’t have expected us. Maybe the people who were supposed to be in here were part of this.”

He looked up and they stared at each other.

“You have every power of the presidency,” Begley said. “They have launch codes and chart books outside.”

“Jesus.”

“You could transmit coded orders to any number of people. Mobilize armies. Scramble fighter squadrons. Order the FBI to detain people. Issue executive orders.”

Renicks pulled one of the workstation chairs over and sat down, his knees almost touching Begley’s. “They want me alive because they want me to do something.”

Begley shrugged. “The system wouldn’t know if the Acting President had a gun to his head.”

“Jesus.”

They sat for a moment in silence. There was such an absence of sound Renicks’ ears began creating white noise, an imaginary sizzling. Renicks held up The Brick.

“The Secret Service Agent in charge of my pickup handed me this. Everything the new Acting President needs to know in one handy phone-sized device.”

Begley smiled thinly. “It used to be six binders of documents and fifty-four CD-ROMs.”

“Progress. I’m going to see if there is anything useful on this. You try and think of any way we can contact the outside world, or at least hook into the bunker’s communication lines.”

She nodded distractedly, tapping her cheek with one finger as she sat. He glanced up. Her profile was fine; he admired it for a second and then sat forward.

“Hey.”

She looked at him without moving her head.

“We’re not supposed to be here, but when we dropped into place, they didn’t cancel anything.”

She didn’t react.

“They must have considered the possible ways everything could go off the tracks, right? Amesley’s the Director of the Secret Service, he must have considered the possibility you’d seal the suite.”

“Probably. Amesley would have known you were being substituted for Flanagan about twenty minutes after the Attorney General died.”

Renicks leaned back in his chair. “If I were him, I’d have thought about how I’m getting in here.”

She considered. “There’s an override code. Only I know it; I set it myself this morning.” She frowned. “If you don’t have that, you’re shit out of luck. You can’t cut those mag locks easily. There are twelve of them, and you have to cut them all to get that door open. He’d need some serious hardware to do that.”

There was another beat of silence, and then a sudden strident, keening noise erupted. They both flinched. Renicks realized he was crouching with his hands curled into fists as the noise penetrated his skull and drilled down. He grit his teeth and forced himself to straighten up as Begley dashed out of the room. One hand on the butt of her still-holstered gun.

He followed at a run, almost crashing into her back in the common room of the suite. She was standing in the midst of the couches, staring at the reinforced steel doors of the entryway. A rain of bright white sparks spewed into the room from the upper left corner of the doorway.

“Cutting the maglocks?” Renicks shouted.

Begley nodded, once, and said nothing.

He watched her for a moment longer. Her facial expression wasn’t hard to decipher: Pissed off was more or less a universal thing.

“How long?”

She looked up at the low popcorn ceiling for a moment. “If we assume they have the best possible tool! A few hours!”

Renicks watched the sparks. He already had a headache from the unrelenting noise. He ticked off the situation: No communication, no way of issuing orders, two handguns between them, and a few hours of time. Not exactly what he’d expected when he woke up this morning, irritated at his fifty-three words.

Begley looked at Renicks, her face an impassive mask. She stepped over to him and leaned in, her smell clean and soapy. “The Acting President has to be in the Secure Facility as long as the emergency status continues,” she whispered fiercely. “If you leave the Secure Facility, you will be logged out of the system and authority will pass to the next link in the Continuity chain.” Stepping back, she took a deep breath. “Secretary Renicks, we have to get you out of this bunker.”

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6.

Twenty minutes before Director Amesley ordered Agent Begley to open the door to the Executive Suite, Renicks stood in front of the television, frozen.

Begley was a whirl of motion, none of it involving him. She disappeared back into the office area. Emerged moments later, made calls on her walkie-talkie. Received no responses. Attacked her tablet computer, hand making sharp, impatient gestures. Disappeared into the office again.

He didn’t know what to do. This was unusual. In his everyday life he was either considered the Expert in the Room by the people around him, or thought of himself as the Expert in the Room privately. Emily had cited this attitude many times as one of his most objectionable personality traits. Most of their late-period arguments had ended with her sarcastic refrain, Well, you know everything, Jack.

He didn’t know everything. He’d had that sudden epiphany thirty seconds before, when the emergency lights started flashing.

Stepping forward, he examined the television, which was still pouring snow into the room with a muted buzz. The only way to combat shock and ignorance was to investigate. He found the recessed panel of buttons along the top of the TV and pushed up on his toes to get a good view of them. Pressed the MENU button. Navigated using the volume and channel buttons until he found the INPUT screen and scrolled through all the choices. None of them resulted in any picture on the screen.

He was still feeling slow and buzzed. Shock, he thought. Endorphins and adrenaline dumped into the bloodstream. An automatic reaction to perceived danger.

Stepping over to the wall, he picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d even seen a landline, but the amusement he’d felt towards it when speaking on it before had disappeared. He put it back in the cradle. Pulled out his cell phones. Just being thorough; he didn’t expect a signal and wasn’t disappointed.

Begley stormed in and out of the room within a ten-second period. He had no idea if he could offer her any help, and left her alone.

He considered the possibility that he was actually the Acting President of the United States. It was impossible to believe, because he was standing by himself, locked in a place that felt like a pricey hotel room. Ever since receiving the Continuity orientation after his confirmation hearing, he’d occasionally imagined actually becoming the Acting President. In his imagination there had been a whole team of people. He’d actually wondered how he would handle Generals and Admirals, CIA Directors — men and women with vast experience and expertise who would push him one way or another. How he would handle strong personalities who knew much more than he did about every situation. How he would assert himself and avoid being a puppet.

Not once had he imagined he’d be standing in a room by himself, trying to get the fucking television to work.

Renicks shook himself and started moving.

He stayed in the living room for the moment. He sensed he was in Begley’s way — it was not a comforting thought, but he trusted it and decided the best thing to do, at least for the next few minutes, was to let her do her job. He stepped sideways and ran his eyes over the bookcases. The top shelf held the government of the United States in written form: The annotated Constitution, the most recent congressional record, the entire United States Code in gorgeous leather-bound volumes, The Code of Federal Regulations.

The rest of the shelves were filled with DVD-ROMs. The first two replicated the entire first shelf in digital format. He scanned the others: State law codes, Supreme Court transcripts. Encyclopedias. CIA Fact Books going back to the 1960s.

He pushed himself into the small gap between the end of one bookshelf and the wall. Tested the gap between the back of the shelves and the wall. Tried to push the bookshelf. He didn’t expect it to move and it didn’t. He didn’t expect secret passages, hidden niches, a battalion of soldiers hidden in a crawlspace below the floor.

The emergency lights clicked on. Clicked off.

He checked the other bookshelf. It was also firmly attached to the wall. Turning to the coffee table, he examined the decorative glass baubles sitting on top. Weighed them in his hands as potential weapons. Pictured the scene like a panel from a comic book: Acting President hurls paperweights at Captain Socialism, locks himself in bathroom.

Grimacing to stifle a peal of inappropriate, shock-induced laughter, Renicks knelt down and pulled open the small drawer set into the table. It was empty. He shut it and knelt there for a moment.

Agent Begley entered the room again. She was frowning. The way she held her hand up to her face and twisted her mouth to the side made him think she’d had long hair up until recently, and had been in the habit of chewing on it when thinking. Their eyes met for a second. She nodded and put her hand up, miming give me another moment.

He nodded back. Decided Begley was someone whose advice he could take.

They stood there, ten feet apart, for another few seconds. The emergency lights clicked off. Clicked on again. Then the intercom on the front door dinged, and they both jumped a little.

“Agent Begley.” Director Amesley’s voice, tinny and small.

Begley crossed to the door immediately. Leaned in to peer at the tiny screen. Toggled the intercom.

“Director Amesley,” she said.

“Agent Begley, I need access to the Executive Suite. Something’s … happened.”

Renicks frowned. Something’s happened seemed like the least appropriate phrase possible.

Begley hesitated, then turned away and looked back at him for a moment.

“Secretary Renicks,” she said. “Join me in the office for a moment.”

A thrill of excitement shot through him. He hurried after her. She led him into the office and turned to face him.

“First,” she said immediately, with an air of authority he liked, “let’s establish we’re on the same page. As far as we know based on the data available to us, something has happened to trigger the Continuity Program and therefore we must assume you have been elevated to Acting Commander in Chief.”

She stared at him. Her face was impassive. After a second he realized she was waiting for him to say something. He nodded.

“Sure,” he said. He immediately felt foolish. Sure.

She nodded. “My role here is to interpret the security status of your person and your immediate area, apprise you of my assessment, and then await your instructions. Do you understand?”

He nodded again. “I do.”

She started to pace. “I don’t like this,” she said flatly. Sounded irritated. “We have no information. The agents that under no circumstances are ever supposed to leave their post are not in the hall. Right there, protocol states I keep this suite sealed until we have more information.” She stopped. Turned. Looked back at him directly. She had beautiful green eyes. “My recommendation is that we keep the suite sealed for the time being. Not even Director Amesley gets in.”

He studied her face. Forced himself to think for a moment before responding. Behind him, he could hear the muffled, flimsy voice of Amesley through the intercom. “What do you think is happening, Agent Begley?”

She shook her head immediately. “I have no idea. This may be an exercise, for all we know. What’s our data? What did you see on the TV?”

He thought back. “I was only half-watching. I saw motion. I heard a yell. Then a crowd noise, when a lot of people get excited all at once. Then people were moving around Grant. Secret Service, Senators, someone else — I don’t know. Then the screen went blank.”

“We don’t know anything. Except something happened and the Continuity Program was activated. And my team has broken protocol. Dr. Renicks, we profile everything. We simulate everything. We have terabytes of data about every conceivable scenario, so that every agent will at least have some plan of action no matter what happens. I can’t cite a specific simulation, but I can tell you that under the general category of your team fails to follow protocol, every single simulation starts off with sealing the Executive Suite and maintaining control of your asset — that’s you — until you do know what’s going on.”

He thought about it. It made sense. The second the TV had gone to snow all the old rules had been suspended. The protocol was in place to provide new rules when that happened. If the protocol had been ignored, he thought, she was absolutely right to assume all rules were off.

“I agree,” he said. He tried to make it sound firm and resolute.

She nodded and stepped past him. He followed her back into the main living area. The intercom buzzed as they entered, and Director Amesley’s voice sparked into the room.

“Agent Begley, I am ordering you to open these doors immediately.”

Begley took a deep breath. Glanced at Renicks. He gave her a quick nod, and felt like they were in conspiracy together. He liked the idea, being teamed with her.

She toggled the intercom, hesitated a moment, then paused again, leaning forward suddenly to peer intently at the video screen. The intercom open, capturing her breathing. Then she snapped to attention, looking down at her shoes for a second.

She saw something, Renicks thought. Something that bothers her.

Finally she looked back up and leaned forward again. “I’m sorry, Director Amesley,” she said clearly. Slowly. “I am afraid I have to disobey that order.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

5.

Fifteen minutes before checking the video screen installed above the keypad, Begley sat in one of the overstuffed easy chairs across from the couch, working her way through her Inbox, half-listening to the TV. The usual bloviating from commentators speculating on the State of the Union. She was not politically minded, which made her typical of the Secret Service. Disinterest made it easier to risk your life for whoever had the job that week.

She looked up at Renicks. He was sitting on the couch with his shoes off, talking on the landline phone — there was no cell signal at all once you went underground — while he watched the TV. She tuned in his conversation from time to time without really meaning to.

“I don’t know. A few hours. I brought plenty, but I’m playing hooky. Don’t tell anyone.”

It was strangely cozy. The suite had a sealed feeling, cut off from the world. It always reminded her of her parents’ basement when she’d been a kid. She would sneak down to sit on the musty old couches and watch the ancient television, separate. Sometimes she’d pretend the world had ended and she was living in the basement, and she’d catalog her survival strategy: Water in the boiler. Big bags of dog food piled up. She’d even kept a cache of dolls and books hidden in the basement, in case she ever had to shelter there.

“She is, actually. It’s stressful, being on good behavior. There probably is, but that’s not a good idea.”

She glanced at Renicks again as the fanfare began on the TV. Mister Speaker, The President of the United States! She was surprised by how relaxed he was, compared to some of the previous Designated Survivors she’d had. He wasn’t barking into the landline, going through cell phone withdrawal. He hadn’t yet treated her like a flight attendant or waitress. He didn’t seem filled with self-importance, and not only hadn’t he tried to impress her with all the people he knew on a first-name basis, including, of course, President Grant himself, he had not actually spoken much to her at all.

Turning back to her tablet, she surreptitiously brought up Renicks’ background file. She was already pretty familiar with it. She just hit the highlights. Mother killed in botched robbery at a supermarket when he was eight. Father had been a small town doctor, dead of a heart attack when Renicks was nineteen. Some indication of a small-town scandal indicated by a flurry of footnotes attached to the main report, but she didn’t drill down into them. If she’d been doing the profile she would have flagged him as a possible risk for foreign recruitment: Bright, no close family ties, no clear political beliefs.

Tunneling down some links, she found that an on-the-ball agent had in fact flagged this, but further reports had minimized that concern.

Father’s brother Richard Albert Renicks, a.k.a Richie The Rail, was the only dark spot in the family tree: Ties to organized crime, sixteen arrests, a total of fifteen years served in various state and federal prisons. Thief, mainly, although a person of interest in two homicides. Black Sheep of the family, certainly, but there were clear indications the Secretary had maintained a friendly relationship with his uncle up until the latter’s death in East Jersey State Prison.

Madam Speaker, Vice President Mallory, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans.

She glanced up at the screen in time to see a brief flash of the Vice President. Elizabeth Mallory was a regally tall black woman. She looked fantastic in a sober dark blue dress, her hair up in a businesslike bun. Begley always had the impression that Vice President Mallory would be a terrifying boss.

“Hey sugarbooger! How was school today?”

Begley glanced at The Secretary. Sugarbooger, she thought, smiling slightly. Renicks had the dopey smile of the doting father. She glanced at the door, at the small video screen next to it. The door was locked but not sealed, and could be opened by any authorized key card. That was protocol; you only sealed the suite in the event of imminent threat inside the facility. She couldn’t make out the video screen from where she was. She considered getting up to visually check the hall outside — four agents were on duty at all times by the doors — but decided it could wait a few minutes. She looked back down at her tablet.

Education started getting impressive after his father’s death. Degree in English from Rutgers College. Masters from Johns Hopkins, Cognitive Science with a side program in Education Administration. Doctorate shortly after, his dissertation on the subject of language techniques to aid in absorption and comprehension in children from low-income backgrounds and challenged school systems. The dissertation had been widely published and made a stir in the sorts of circles a 300-page document with that sort of subject matter might actually be read. He’d also published an article about Esperanto’s potential as a universal documentation markup language that had gotten a bit of attention in academic circles. Begley spent a few seconds trying to think of something more boring than Esperanto, and failed.

She glanced at the TV. President Grant, white hair, tan skin, white teeth. She’d forgotten just how unnaturally tan the man was.

Renicks stood up and placed the receiver back in its cradle, pushing his hands into his pockets and standing near the television. She looked at him for a moment, then closed her open apps and put the tablet aside.

“Disappointed you’re not there?”

He smiled a little without looking at her. “Absolutely not in the least.” He turned to look at her. “What about you? Disappointed that you’re here?”

“Disappointed is the wrong word.”

I do not stand before you tonight unaffected by these past few months. I do not deny the challenges this administration, this country has faced. But I do tell you that a change is at hand.

He nodded. “You want to be kicking in doors and hauling in counterfeiters. Babysitting politicians is not what you want to be doing.”

She cocked her head and kept her face blank. No sense in doubling down on being an open book. “No?”

He hesitated a moment, and then ducked his head, pursing his lips. “You’re efficient and very good at your job. You stick to protocol like its a flotation device after you’ve gone overboard. And every time any little detail goes wrong, your first reaction is superficially identical to excitement. I think you wish something would go wrong, so you could have some fun.” He shrugged. “Besides, you use weak modifiers when you describe anything having to do with this bunker or your duties. You use strong modifiers when you talk about anything else.”

She made her smile very bland as she tried to recall the words she’d used when going over everything earlier. He was right, and she didn’t like it, being read so easily. “You’re kind of smug, aren’t you?”

“Smug — or right?”

It should have been irritating, but he said it with such obvious cheer she smiled. “All right,” she said. “I’m bored to death in this tomb. What’s your excuse?”

“Fifty-three words.”

I stand here tonight and tell you, we as a country remain —

They both paused. There was a second of perfect silence from the television, and then shouts of confusion. She turned towards the TV in time to see a glimpse of people moving around the president, and then the TV went to snow with a pop.

For another second, they both stood there.

“Did you see that?” Renicks asked.

She spun away, heart pounding, and crossed to the door. She ran her protocol in her head. Check your perimeter. Contact your upteam. Be sure of your weapon.

She reached across herself and patted the holster snapped to her belt. Didn’t draw the weapon. You only drew a gun when you expected to fire it.

At the front door she pulled her transceiver from her pocket and toggled it as she leaned in to the video screen.

The hallway outside was empty.

There were supposed to be four agents outside at all times. The gray, empty hallway on the screen was all wrong.

“Station One status.”

There was a moment’s white noise, then an unfamiliar voice. “This is Station One. All green, Station Gold.”

She froze for a second. Weighed the possibilities. She had not seen anything explicit on the TV, but there had been a disruption. The TV had lost signal. Something was wrong. And there were no agents outside the suite.

Her transceiver crackled into life again. “Agent Begley, this is Director Amesley. On my way to you. Stand by.”

“Director, what’s going on? Why is the Hallway Detail gone from their posts?”

There was no response. Just the white noise of an open receiver.

She stared down at the tiny walkie-talkie, so small it fit in the palm of her hand. This was a complete deviation from protocol. It was also a direct instruction from her superior. For a second she stood chewing her lip, unsure. Heart pounding. She could not reconcile all green with Director Amesley making a personal visit to the suite.

A single blast of an alarm, a deep angry buzzing, made her jump. Flashing emergency lights came on immediately after, silent and yellow. On the plush chair where she’d left it, her tablet beeped insistently.

“Holy shit,” Renicks whispered.

She turned and looked at Renicks. He was standing right where she’d left him, alert and attentive. Watching her. The Designated Survivor. In her charge. They stared at each other for one, two, three seconds, the only sound the sterile clicking of the emergency lights.

She nodded to herself. Protocol. “Stay back.” Turning back to the door, she reached up and tapped seventeen buttons on the keypad, rapidly. The magnetic locks on the suite’s only entrance slammed into place. She felt their impact through the floor, through her shoes. She took half a step back before catching herself.

Calm down, she thought, furious. You’ve been trained for this.

Except it had never been live. And in her mind, it had never been like this. Protocol broken, nothing proceeding according to the clear path outlined by the Continuity Plan. Which she had memorized. In her mind, in all the exercises, if nothing else the first step of the protocol — making contact with the Hall Detail and securing the Portable Nuclear Arsenal — had always been executed.

Instead, she had seen — what exactly had she seen on the television? A second’s confusion, nothing more. A second’s confusion, then a loss of signal. And then the Executive Suite had come online. Which only happened if the Continuity of Government program had been activated.

Which only happened if every single person in the line of succession above the Designated Survivor was believed to be dead. Which made Secretary Jack Renicks the Acting President of the United States.

Turning around, she tried to look confident and calm. Behind her, Director Amesley toggled the intercom again. Renicks raised an eyebrow.

“Are we okay, Agent Begley?”

She took a breath. Boil it down to basics, she thought. What’s your core mission? To keep him safe. “Until we know what’s going on, Secretary Renicks,” she said slowly, “we have to keep you in this bunker.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

4.

Thirty seconds before he got off the elevator, Renicks was trying to do three things at once.

One, he was purposefully avoiding looking at Agent Begley, who was so attractive in her perfectly-tailored, sober, gray suit the idea of spending several hours locked in a room with her was terrifying. Two, he was picturing the teams of workers outside the building and trying to pin down what bothered him about them. Three, he was formulating his approach to speaking with Director Amesley about Agent Darmity, which, based on his impressions of Director Amesley, was probably a bad idea.

Despite his efforts, Begley floated in front of his thoughts. Well-off, he thought. Way above her pay grade, at least; her suit was Chanel and had been tailored to fit her perfectly. Her watch was modest and not decorative at all — a serious field watch, nothing fancy. But her shoes flashed bright red soles when she walked, and the slender gold bracelet around her other wrist was expensive stuff. She was either from a rich family or she had thirteen credit cards in a block of ice in her freezer. She had the impassive expression of someone very used to keeping their thoughts to themselves, and had not looked at Director Amesley once since he’d walked into the lobby. This is someone who doesn’t want to be here, he thought, and blames her boss for it.

He knew perfectly well that he had to be validated; it was clearly stated in his orientation docs that he was required to submit to DNA and voice print analysis (and any other validation process offered by duly appointed representatives of the Secret Service, The Central Intelligence Agency, the White House Staff, the United States Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or their duly assigned proxies — and, he assumed, just about anyone else who happened to have a fingerprint scanner and a copy of his voice print file).

He found himself thinking of Agent Begley’s neck as it emerged from the fabric of her flattering white blouse, and forced himself to study Director Amesley intently while the elevator sank.

Amesley was older, past the mandatory retirement age, but he carried it well. He was short and slender, his thin white hair cut almost to a crew-cut, his scalp pink beneath it. He wore huge plastic glasses with thick lenses, a man who did not have vanity but wanted you to know he had no vanity so he underscored the ugly, perfunctory fashion decisions he made. Behind the lenses his eyes were brown and flat, without warmth or humor. He spoke in the declarative, short bursts of a man used to being obeyed — a type Renicks thought he might as well resign himself to meeting over and over again that night. Amesley’s suit was sober blue and invisibly normal, modest without being cheap, new in the sense of not having been worn much. He did not wear a watch, which Renicks found strange, but held his cell phone in his hand in a casual way that hinted he always carried his cell phone in his hand, because he was that busy. His shoes were old-fashioned wingtips, in good shape but also not new.

Based on the fact that his suit was at least four or five years old but still fit perfectly, Renicks assumed the Director was one of those small, wiry men who had not changed much physically since their school days. He would probably still fit in the various uniforms of the private schools he’d attended as a boy.

There was a tiny American Flag pin on Amesley’s lapel, and Renicks studied it. He wasn’t sure what conclusions to draw from an American flag pin, aside from the fact that Director Amesley considered himself a patriot, and wanted everyone to know this as well. He looked at Amesley’s tie – phenomenally ugly – for a moment before turning to Agent Begley and smiling.

Begley ignored him, but glanced at Amesley. A glance which should have frozen the Director into an ice sculpture. Renicks found himself wishing the Director would be staying with them in the suite, simply for the entertainment value. He wondered if the time had come to date again. The divorce was five years old, the girls were in junior high. Maybe too soon to have a live-in, sure, but a few dates? He watched Agent Begley for a few seconds, pondering the possibilities. He liked the way she smelled. He didn’t know the perfume, but he knew it was expensive.

Based on her carriage — shoulders back, ramrod straight, balanced and easy — he figured she was the sort of girl who walked around abandoned parking lots without a moment of fear.

He was impressed at how well the entrance to the elevators was hidden, but he didn’t give the building a very high score for secrecy. It was too small. You walked in, the lobby was eighty percent of the place. You had this nifty reception desk, but there was no room for offices or anything. If you thought about it for ten seconds you realized everything that made this building necessary was underground, and if you thought about that for ten seconds you realized the entrance to the Secure Facility, as the agents were fond of calling it, had to be inside.

He’d made sure he was behind everyone in the elevator, and studied them. Darmity stole a glance back at him and then snapped forward, red in the face again. Renicks had decided to hold off trying to complain about Agent Darmity; he looked like he was having a terrible day and Renicks had sloughed off the earlier tension and was willing to let bygones be bygones, for the moment. Maybe Agent Darmity had woken up to a personal hell and was barely holding it together. He’d had bad days himself, as an ex-wife would gladly attest.

The elevator ride took no time at all. His stomach pressed up against his diaphragm for a few seconds, his ears popped, and then the doors snapped open and he was following Agent Begley down what looked like a hallway in a nice hotel: Thick carpet, red and blue striped wallpaper on the walls, brass sconces every few feet. They walked in a muffled silence, the carpet absorbing every noise. He noticed the little black bubbles every few feet on the ceiling; cameras, probably aimed in order to eliminate any possible blind spots. At the end of the hall was an impressive set of double doors. They were plain white metal doors with big polished nickel handles like huge staples inserted into them; a larger black bubble was mounted at the center of the lintel, a keypad with an astounding number of unmarked buttons was mounted in the wall to the left — not simply a plate screwed into the studs, either, but actually part of the wall as if it had been manufactured as one sheet and installed. Renicks guessed it would be very difficult to cut into the wall to get at the wiring of the keypad. Above it was a small video screen which was displaying the Great Seal of the United States in flickering faded colors.

“How is the retrofit going?” he asked in a tone of idle conversation as they approached the doors, thinking about the teams of workers up above when he’d arrived with Agent Darmity, men and women wearing blue overalls.

Director Amesley turned slightly as he walked, so that Renicks had his profile. “This facility is undergoing renovation and retrofit. Nothing to be alarmed about! The facility is fully operational and security systems are all green and online. The workers are actually leaving the premises right now, as per protocol.”

The cheer in the Director’s voice felt forced to Renicks, but he couldn’t be sure if this was because the Director was lying when he said nothing to be alarmed about, or because cheer was an expression that did not come naturally to him.

Begley turned slightly to smile back at him. “It’s been more than a decade since the last upgrade of systems here. That’s pretty much forever in terms of computer systems and security measures.”

Renicks nodded, picturing the workers he’d seen, chewing over the memory. Nine men, three women. Too clean, though maybe they hadn’t started working yet. Every single one of them carrying what looked like identical tool bags, brown canvas, but not a tool to be seen, everything tucked neatly away — no hammers in loops, no screwdrivers in back pockets.

He was being paranoid. CIA everywhere, because he was, for one night only, next in line to become President of the United States. Emily, had called it his “always on” mode; he got distracted — obsessed — by little details and kept circling them. Emily had always told him this made her want to slap him in the face, and that had been when she’d still told him I love you on a regular basis.

At the double doors Begley stepped forward and punched a complex series of the unmarked buttons. A pattern, Renicks figured. No numbers or letters to remember and divulge. More like a combination to a safe. It had to be changed on a regular basis, so he was impressed with the easy, automatic way she entered it. There was soft click, and she immediately pushed one of the doors inward and stepped in, blocking the entrance for a moment as she scanned the interior. Making sure nothing had changed, that there was no sign of trouble. After a moment she stepped back out, pushed the other door inward, and gestured them in.

“The Executive Suite,” she said as he stepped past her. “Basically a panic room. All communications and control can be routed here in the event of an outer breach of the facility. Eleven hundred square feet, designed to house eight people comfortably and twelve uncomfortably.”

He looked around. It was like a pricey hotel room. There was a small foyer marked off by white tile on the floor and tiny table pushed up against one wall, a set of the saddest fake flowers he’d ever seen in an unremarkable blue vase. The tile ended three feet in and became more of the deep, industrial carpet: A living room. Two couches, a deep, plush-looking easy chair, a coffee table facing a wall of bookshelves with a mid-sized flat screen television hanging between. The wall opposite the TV, behind the couches, sported a glittering bar, piled with bottles and glassware. Renicks considered it the suite’s most attractive feature so far. A set of curtains covered the far wall. Renicks was certain he would find cinder blocks and mortar if he pulled them aside, but they supported the illusion he was in a Holiday Inn somewhere for a convention. He was certain he would discover a mini bar in the main bedroom.

He glanced at the doors again. The handles were the same as those on the outside. If Uncle Richie had been with him, he would have said they were perfect for slipping a broomstick or metal rod through if you wanted to keep people outside. Renicks thought there was plenty of technology doing that job, but wondered for a second if those kind of emergency considerations had been part of the design. Security of the Last Resort, Richie would have called it.

Begley walked in like a Realtor. “Full kitchen through there. Two full bathrooms, though I have to warn you the fixtures are old and the showers both flood. Ten years is a long time between refits. Two other small bedrooms, and the office.”

Renicks nodded, dropping his bag on one couch. “Twelve people?” he asked, turning to look at her.

She smiled. The first genuine smile he’d gotten from her, he thought. “I said uncomfortably,” she reminded him.

He winked. “You sure did.”

Amesley cleared his throat. The space felt dry and tight, sealed off.

“If we can, Mr. Secretary, we need to have you validated in the Continuity system prior to the speech.”

Renicks nodded. He felt cheerful. He’d been dreading the speech: Standing and sitting, applauding constantly, keeping his face blank when Grant got to the education paragraph, probably whittled down to forty-three words by now. Given enough time he assumed The President would get that down to simply pointing at him and giving him a thumb’s up, no words needed. The thought of being able to sit in this gloomy bunker with a cocktail, trying to impress the pretty Agent Begley with his witty remarks was undeniably more attractive.

Amesley smiled a twitchy smile and gestured at Begley, who stepped forward, tapping her tablet.

“Mr. Secretary — ”

“Call me Jack.”

“ — we will perform the voice print analysis first,” she said without breaking stride or looking up from the screen. She was good at ignoring men, he thought. “During your orientation you supplied a pass phrase which was digitized and kept on file. If you cannot remember — ”

Renicks recited, “John Renicks. Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.” He shrugged, looking around the room again. “Ronald Reagan.”

There was a soft happy ding from her tablet, and Begley glanced up at him with a raised eyebrow. “You have a good memory, Mr. Secretary.”

He nodded. “It’s easy. There’s only six individual concepts in the phrase. The rest is unnecessary modifiers and grammatical artifacts.”

Her eyes shifted to the side as she considered that. Then she offered him a bland smile. “I’m afraid we’ll need to validate your DNA as well. A blood sample and simultaneous injection of a temporary transmitter into your bloodstream. The complex employs a simple biorhythmic algorithm to establish your presence or absence from the site.”

He remembered this from the orientation, but hesitated anyway. “My bloodstream?”

She nodded. “Don’t worry. It will be flushed out of your system in a few days. It doesn’t closely track your movements.” There was a beat. “That’s my job.”

He eyed her tablet for a moment. “So you won’t be able to see if I try to slip out the back, huh?”

She smiled again. “It’s not that precise. The biorhythmic tracking is mainly used to determine that you are inside the complex. If you become Acting President and this complex goes online, it will check for your presence on a constant basis. If it fails to detect your vital signs, it will assume you have died and go offline, transferring authority to another complex, or back to the White House, as appropriate.”

“Agent Begley,” Amesley complained. “Can you please continue Dr. Renicks’ education later?”

She looked at the Director for a second, then back at Renicks, still smiling. “That clear?”

He nodded. He thought, she’s pissed.

She held the tablet towards him, and he saw a slight indentation in the top of it, the perfect shape to slide his thumb into. Without any further prompting he did so. After a second there was a click, a sharp pain, and then another happy ding.

Begley took the tablet back and glanced down at the screen, nodding as he pushed his thumb into his mouth and sucked. “Very good, Mr. Secretary. Congratulations,” she added, looking back at him with a smile he decided was friendly. “You are now officially the Designated Survivor for the next seven hours.”

He winked again. “Call me Jack,” he said around his thumb.

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

3.

Ten minutes before the Detail arrived at the Secure Facility, Special Agent Marianne Begley was riding the elevator up to the surface. The ride up took twenty-seven seconds. Twenty-three seconds going down. There were fifteen buttons on the panel, but only two worked under normal conditions; the others could be used to enter codes to modify the behavior of the elevator. There were escape panels in the ceiling and floor of the cab that could be released manually; the outer doors of each floor were wired into a numerical keypad on the inside of the elevator shaft and would open in response to the correct code.

Agent Begley knew this because she had ridden the elevator, based on her own bitter calculations, over one-thousand times.

She was a slender twenty-eight year-old woman with clear skin the color of light coffee, her dark hair in a neat bun carefully pinned to stay up under even the most physically stressful conditions. She held a tall cup of coffee brewed in the huge, industrial kitchen on the ninth level, light and sweet enough to make most people gag, and a thin tablet computer containing all the files she would need for the day’s work. Most of it had to do with the Secure Facility itself, and she didn’t need any of those files, really, because in the thirteen months since she’d been assigned to Continuity she’d spent most of her time getting to know the old bunker complex better than she’d ever wanted to. It was huge, it was empty, it was a place designed for a series of events every sane person in the world fervently hoped would never come to pass.

It was like working in a sewer: No one ever wanted to think about how it worked or who was down there, making the magic happen.

Thirteen months. She’d spent fifteen months working vice, out of the academy. It had occurred to her how unfair it was that any female cop with a BMI under 25 almost automatically been assigned to vice in the mid- to large-sized cities, condemned to walk around in hot pants enticing middle-aged men to proposition them, or go into clubs wearing something short and skimpy, trying to make drug deals. But at least there had been a clear timeline: Vice was unpopular, and thus everyone got a tour through it for a time, usually one year. Then she’d spent three years working Major Crimes in Baltimore, which was like seven years working Major Crimes in any other city. Then she’d been recruited into the Secret Service and she’d seen herself running alongside Presidential limousines, smashing counterfeit rings, a good mix between easy posts and real action.

Instead, she’d gotten Continuity, and she’d been underground ever since. She’d had three live Survivors stay a total of sixteen hours in the facility, stuck with them down in the suite. All the other thousands of hours had been spent studying the place inch by inch. Ostensibly so she would know the place better than anyone, so she could do her job better. In reality it had been a desperate attempt to stay sane.

The elevator doors snapped open and she stepped into the bland, short corridor leading from the elevator bank to the entrance of the above-ground complex. She glanced down at her tablet to check the time and started walking briskly. Too soon, but people were, shockingly, sometimes a little early.

Today was number four: The Secretary of Education, a man she’d never thought about much until she’d gotten her Alert Bulletin four hours ago. John Renicks, Ph.D., who had gotten about as much attention as any previous Secretary of Education, which was to say none at all. She liked his photo, was impressed by his C.V., and sincerely hoped he was not a chatty person. Bunker duty with the Designated Survivor was bad enough without hours and hours of small talk.

She also hoped he was not the type to make passes at women required by their jobs to be in an enclosed space with them. She would hate to be reprimanded again because it was apparently not acceptable to put cabinet members into submission holds until they apologized for things. That had probably bought her a whole second year of Continuity. She didn’t want to buy a third.

Her shoes, comfortable flats that, she hoped, straddled some indefinite line between style and utility, made no noise on the cold cement floor as she walked, thumbing through screens and noting last-minute details. There were already five more emails since she’d last checked before stepping onto the elevator half a minute before; the Service did not like it when things changed at the last minute, even if the change was due to an Act of God like a heart attack.

At the end of the corridor was a steel maglock door with a keypad mounted on the wall next to it. A blast door. Thick steel. Lock bolts embedded deep in the concrete and extending into the door itself. Impossible to open once engaged. She absent-mindedly entered seventeen digits into the keypad and the door unlocked with a deep thunk she could feel through the soles of her shoes. Passing through the doorway, the air temperature dropped a good five or six degrees as the sense of constricting space fell away. Behind her, the door swung shut on spring-loaded hinges and melted back into the wall, invisible to a casual glance and difficult to detect even under intense examination. The building that housed the only entrance to the lower levels was small, covering just about a thousand square feet. It had a few offices, a lavatory, and a storage closet, and a large lobby area with a front desk. Anyone who did find their way into the building, which had no sign on the outside, would be politely directed wherever they were actually going by the smiling person behind the desk.

Or, if the small unassuming building turned out to be their intended destination, arrested.

The lobby was nothing special. It had high ceilings and a large piece of modern art hanging against the back wall, but otherwise was just an oversized room with a reception desk. Standing in front of the desk, apparently staring out into space, was Director of the Secret Service Martin Amesley.

“You’re early, Agent Begley,” he said without turning to look at her. “I like that.”

She nodded and said nothing. His presence at Continuity Events was not common. He might like promptness, but he did not like her, she knew. Evidence being her continued purgatory in the bowels of the bunker, cataloging air ducts, shortcuts, corridor lengths, and the long list of empty, unfurnished rooms. She’d even taken a few trips to the old mine shafts the complex had grown out of, a century old and smelling like rotting garbage. Amesley was taciturn and gruff and was well known to be of the opinion that the world in general, the United States of America in particular, and the younger agents of the Secret Service in specific had long been in a lamentable decline. She had the impression that no success on her part would convince him that she was not irreparably a member of an inferior generation. Inferior to his own, of course.

They stood in awkward silence.

The Secretary of Education was not considered a volatile asset by the Service; Begley wasn’t sure why Amesley was there, and it made her nervous. Normally the Director of the Secret Service would be with the President at the State of the Union, overseeing the security detail. Amesley had a reputation of trying to be unpredictable to keep his people on their toes, though. Whatever the reason, his presence made her anxious.

There was a flash on her tablet, and she glanced down at her alerts. “Seven minutes, give or take.”

Amesley grunted.

The front doors opened, and three maintenance workers started to enter. There were dozens of them crawling around the complex, engaged in what seemed like an endless retrofit. Trying to bring the systems into the current century. The workers noticed the two of them standing there, paused in surprise for a moment, and then backed out apologetically. She watched them go, keeping her face impassive. She felt uncomfortable with all the workers, for reasons she found difficult to articulate. They had all been cleared by the Service, so perhaps it was the invasion; as much as she disliked admitting it, she owned this complex. It was hers. She knew everything about it, and she ran the show when a Designated Survivor was assigned. The workers were contractors, not under her authority, and were delving into her secrets. Her property.

They settled back into a stiff silence. Director Amesley checked his watch, crisply.

She went through a mental checklist. The Executive Suite on the Twelfth level had been prepared. The one-way lock on the door was operational and she had the current code, generated on her own tablet and input by her own hand. She’d cleaned and rebuilt her weapon the night before, it was loaded with a full magazine and she had a second mag in her pocket. She had her ID and access card.

Outside, police cars and a black sedan pulled into the circular driveway.

Begley watched the scene unfold. The cop cars idled, lights still flashing. The driver’s side door opened and an agent climbed out. She didn’t recognize him; he was short and burly and kind of unkempt, like he’d been sweating for a while. She thought it likely that Director Amesley would have something to say to him about the grooming and appearance guidelines issued by the Service.

Before the agent could open the passenger door, it opened on its own, and the Secretary of Education stepped out. She recognized him immediately from his photo, and while there would be several identity checks while working through the protocol, she reminded herself that the initial visual confirmation should never be discounted. It was easy to over-rely on technological checks when your gut was usually right.

She watched Renicks through the glass. He and the agent spoke a few words to each other and it looked a little heated based on the body language: Renicks stiff and unbending, the agent with his shoulders ducked like he wanted to tackle him. Then the cop cars were pulling away and Renicks was walking towards them. She approved of his packing: He was wearing a dress shirt, a pair of tan pants, sturdy-looking shoes, and a sports jacket, and carried a single manageable bag, deep and square. They sometimes arrived packed for a six-month trip to a deserted island, and she certainly hadn’t signed up for the Service in order to be a bellhop.

Renicks and the agent entered the lobby simultaneously. The agent let Renicks move ahead of him, glowering behind as they advanced. The Secretary stopped a few steps away from her and dropped his bag, extending his hand to Amesley. She ignored the fact that he automatically introduced himself to the man first. She was used to ignoring such things.

“Jack Renicks,” he said. Begley realized he was chewing gum, and allowed herself a slight smile.

Amesley looked down at the hand for a moment just shy of rude, and then took it in his own and shook. “Secretary Renicks,” he said, his voice deep and authoritative, gruff from the thousands of packs of cigarettes even ten years of not smoking couldn’t erase. “This is Special Agent Marianne Begley. She will be your In-Suite Agent during your time here.”

Renicks shook her hand with a smile. “I’ll try not to be any trouble,” he said, sounding friendly.

She nodded. “You won’t be.”

He tilted his head a little, still smiling, and then nodded, turning back to Amesley. “Director, do you have a moment?”

Behind him, Begley noticed the agent redden, his hands twitching at his sides. Something had happened on the drive over. She let her eyes linger on the driver for a few seconds. She didn’t like the look of him, and wondered how he’d gotten this detail. Amesley personally approved all assignments for Continuity, and he didn’t look like the sort of man Amesley would put his trust in.

Amesley looked at his watch. “Actually, things are running behind, Mr. Secretary. The refit of this complex — that is why there are so many workers running about — I am sure you understand. I will stop by the suite later, however.” He gestured at Begley. “Right now, if you don’t mind, I would like to validate you as John Renicks, Secretary of Education, Designated Survivor.”

Begley jumped, but before she could speak, Renicks was talking.

“Validate?”

He was smiling a little. Begley liked his smile. It was kind of crooked. His teeth were good, but not perfect; he had a chip in one of his front incisors he hadn’t bothered getting filled. For some reason she decided not to explore, she found this charming.

Amesley smiled back, disconcerting Begley. He was a man who’d been born already fifty years old, scowling owlishly around the Delivery Room, and never meant to smile.

“Mr. Secretary, we employ a dual validation process to ensure that you are, in fact, Secretary John Renicks, and thus the duly appointed Designated Survivor today. A matter of DNA — a pinprick on your thumb — and a voice print analysis. Agent Begley can — ”

Begley cleared her throat loudly. Amesley was her boss’s boss’s boss, but the Secure Facility was her pond, and she was not going to let him piss in it.

“Director, I must insist protocol be followed. The DS is not supposed to be validated until installed in the Executive Suite and confirmed safe. The reasons for this precaution are — ”

Director Amesley turned his smile on her. It was a terrifying husk of a smile, something that hadn’t been too healthy to begin with and should have been carried away and buried. He was a short man, wiry, his head too large for his body. His hair was a brilliant white, cut short against his scalp. He wore large, thick glasses that sat on his small, slender nose like he’d accidentally taken the wrong pair at the gym or something. The glasses seemed to be part of him, as if his eyes had grown out of his face, forming a bony framework that looked like glasses.

“Agent Begley is, of course, correct,” he said. The icy tone of his voice made his lingering smile even more horrifying. “I should know, I helped write the protocol. You’ll find her to be very dedicated to the letter of the protocol, Secretary Renicks.”

Renicks grinned at her. “I wouldn’t want my Doppelganger running amok in here either.”

Begley nodded, glanced at the glowering Amesley, and thought, well, that probably bought me another three months down here.

Renicks suddenly gestured at Director Amesley. “I love your tie, Director,” he said.

Begley kept a frown from her face by force of will. In her limited experience with Martin Amesley, she predicted this conversation was not going to go well. Amesley had old-fashioned ideas about — about just about everything, she thought. Men’s suits, the quality of younger generations, women working field details, and certainly, she thought, about the proper look and behavior of a member of President Grant’s cabinet. Begley was certain of two things: One, Renicks did not fit Amesley’s requirements for the position, at least not visually, and two, in Amesley’s opinion that was not President Grant’s fault. Director Amesley thought Grant’s election was the sole beam of light during the country’s otherwise disturbing decline.

Thinking it was too bad for the old man that the rest of the country increasingly disagreed with him, she smiled noncommittally at Renicks.

“What?” Amesley appeared to ponder the situation for a few seconds, frowning, and then fingered his tie. It was dark blue and had red lines criss-crossing it. “Ah, yes. Ah, thank you.”

Begley glanced at Renicks and he winked at her. She blinked, startled, and then settled herself. A joker, she thought; just what she needed. She downgraded him from charming with a little regret. It was going to be a long night.

“If you’ll follow me, Secretary Renicks, I’ll get you situated.”

Amesley and the other agent followed them, which Begley didn’t like. She could think of no legitimate reason to exclude them from the elevator ride down, however, and so silently waved her magnetic ID card at the hidden door in the rear of the lobby, enjoyed the slight gasp of surprise it elicited from Renicks, and stood aside as the three men entered the small elevator cab. She checked the hall behind her before entering the elevator, and let her eyes stick on the floor and ceiling of the cab for a moment, looking for anything unusual.

She didn’t find anything, and let the doors slide shut. She pressed the lowest button on the panel, an unmarked white piece of plastic, and the elevator began moving.

“By the way,” Director Amesley said in a quiet, almost gentle voice. “I understand this was supposed to be a vacation day for you, Agent Begley. I’m sorry you had to come in to work this detail.”

She blinked at her blurry reflection in the stainless steel elevator doors. Unsure how to respond, because she was unsure of her own motivations. Her first vacation in years scheduled, booked, double-checked, paid for. Her, delighted to be free of the mountain for a few weeks, to actually miss a State of the Union Continuity Event! Delighted.

Then Murray landed in the hospital. Car accident, intensive care, random flex of the universe, and the scheduled In-Suite Agent was off the roster. When she’d seen the alert, she’d volunteered to cancel everything and go back to the mountain. Volunteered. Scrambling to cancel two flights, two hotel rooms, a rental car, a bikini wax, a half-marathon she’d already paid for, and six separate lunch and dinner dates with parents, stepparents, siblings, stepsiblings, and two college roommates.

Volunteered. She didn’t want to think too hard about her motivations. Didn’t want to imagine that the Secure Facility had become her home, that it had gotten a hand on her.

She looked at Amesley without moving her head. Murray had been one of the Director’s Favorite Sons, one of a group of agents the Director tended to assign to his own details over and over again. She imagined Amesley hadn’t been pleased to see her name slotted in for the evening instead, too late for him to make any other arrangement without jeopardizing preparations. Maybe made the Director angry enough to use harsh language. The idea of Amesley cursing amused her, and she struggled to contain a smile. Amesley had seemed irritated at her presence all day. No sense in making things worse.

“That’s all right, sir,” she replied with careful politeness. “That’s the job.”

“Well,” Renicks said cheerfully as the elevator began dropping into the earth, “that makes two of us: I’m not supposed to be here, either.”

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I’ll be posting one chapter of my novel Designated Survivor every week throughout 2022. Download links below.

2.

Seven minutes before threatening the driver, Renicks glanced up from The Brick and studied the back of his head. The car felt substantial and safe. It glided along the highway like it was on a pocket of air, almost perfectly silent. They were doing eighty-five, weaving through traffic with police cars around them, red and blue lights swirling. The agent behind the wheel knew how to drive. More importantly, he knew how to drive in formation, keeping an impressively steady distance between his own vehicle and the police escort. Renicks thought the man had experience driving under pressure situations, but wasn’t comfortable in the driver’s seat. He looked hunched and tight, and kept turning on the windshield wipers by accident. Renicks thought he was used to driving bigger things. Hummers, trucks. Ex-military, maybe, or ex-contractor in a hot zone.

Renicks smiled at his own vanity. Or maybe he’d been a garbage collector, he told himself. Like Emily said, you don’t know everything.

He turned and stared out the window. Emily and the kids were just a few minutes away. Watching the other cars flash by, he was pierced by a sudden yearning to see them all. Even Emily, who would be unsmiling and unamused at an unannounced visit. When gripped by the darkest frustrations earlier in the day he’d fantasized a form of pleasant professional suicide wherein he skipped the State of the Union and spent the evening with Emma and Jen, watching bad television and eating cereal.

The last time he’d had the girls he’d listened to their chatter about friends at school and the swim team and shows on television, and realized he didn’t know most of the names they tossed back and forth, didn’t know most of the activities they discussed. He was losing his girls. he’d been too busy, too preoccupied, too divorced to stay on top of things.

He suddenly felt like he was being driven away from them, not just to an unpleasant professional task.

Gorshin and the other SUV had peeled off the moment the cops had taken them on for escort, and they were heading off the big main highways onto the smaller rural routes, heading towards County Road 601. Renicks thought they were going too fast; the police cars were struggling to keep up. He didn’t think it was necessary, but it was another thirty minutes to their destination, and he didn’t want to spend it having a pissing match with his driver.

He looked back down at The Brick. It looked like a smartphone: A small screen, a stylus, a power button. It was lifeless and hadn’t responded to anything he’d done. Gorshin had called it The Brick like that was supposed to mean something. Told him it would remain inactive until the emergency succession of the Designated Survivor inside one of the fifteen Secure Facilities that formed the United States’ Continuity of Government system. The Brick. Renicks figured it was some sort of Secret Service jargon.

“It only accepts a signal on a specific channel, and only a single instruction is accepted: Activate,” Gorshin had said as they’d walked towards the car. “If the worst-case scenario happens, Mr. Secretary, you’ll find everything you need here. Eyes-only, the President of the United States — which will be you, sir, if this thing turns on.”

He turned The Brick over; the back was embossed with the Great Seal of the United States, in fine detail, every feather of the eagle clearly etched. Renicks was amused. He was wearing khakis, a wrinkled old white Oxford, and running shoes; he was showered but not shaved, and as he worked his way through coffee cup number six he became increasingly aware that he should have insisted on a bathroom break while he’d been executing his smug little End of the World plan. He did not feel like Acting Presidential material.

At the moment, The Brick was basically a paperweight. He slipped it into his bag and returned his attention to the driver. Renicks sat there staring at the back of his head, his shoulders, his hands on the wheel.

The back of the driver’s neck was red, the square back of his haircut sharp and immediate — a recent cut. His suit was old, the collar showing some signs of fraying, the shoulders shiny. One of the mock buttons on the right sleeve was a mis-match, a slightly different shade of gray from the others. When he’d climbed into the driver’s seat, he’d spent thirty seconds struggling with the steering wheel, adjusting the angle, grunting in frustration as he worked at it. Renicks recalled the lingering look Gorshin had given the driver back at the house, and concluded he was a recent addition to the detail — perhaps just that morning, after Flanagan had passed away.

Christ, Renicks thought. There would be a funeral. He remembered Gorshin saying a widower, with no children. He pictured Gerry again and felt a surprising pang of grief. They hadn’t been close, hadn’t known each other long or well. But Gerry had been funny, and for all his one-note dedication to Grant’s policies he’d had his own mind and had a tired, sloppy series of facial expressions that made him seem like an exhausted grandpa more than a powerful man whose political beliefs differed sharply from his own.

He looked at the driver’s wrist. His watch was more subtle then Gorshin’s; instead of a macho monster, it was a simple old face, silver, analog, a wind-up model. Heirloom, probably inscribed on the back. A graduation gift or something. Not an anniversary as there was no ring, although Renicks had to admit that wasn’t reliable. He glanced down at his own wedding ring, still there after five years, and smirked at himself.

His eyes shifted a little. The driver’s knuckles were scabbed, as if he’d been in a fight recently.

As he considered this, his cell phone rang. Fishing it from his pocket, he glanced down at the screen. Stan Waters. He was thinking that it was probably best to let it go to voicemail. The driver looked up at the rear-view mirror.

“You shouldn’t answer it.”

Renicks looked up, noted with surprised irritation that the mirror had been angled so that it showed him, not the road behind them, and felt a stab of the old familiar defiance. This is what got you into fights in high school, he thought as he tapped the screen and held the phone to his ear.

“Stan.”

“How does it feel to be sixteenth in line for the presidency, mi amigo?”

“I think I just got a taste for how little respect the position gets me. What’s up?”

“I’m calling to put in an early bid on being named ambassador to someplace cool when you come into power. How about Fiji?”

Renicks laughed. “Considering the only way I’m coming into power is if the world goes boom tonight, Mr. Waters, you might want to reconsider your definition of someplace cool.”

“Oh, I know it. We’re Bunker Buddies tonight, buddy. I’m in the goddamn Situation Room under the Capitol, all set up just in case only half the world goes boom and POTUS has to hide down in the basement for a while. Sometimes I think the CIA can kiss my ass. When they recruited me in college they never said anything about sitting in a damn basement all night, playing solitaire.”

“They probably did. Based on the stories I heard — from you — about being found in the bathroom with your head lodged in the toilet, I’m not surprised you don’t remember everything.”

“Ha! Every time my roommates came in to try and get me to go to bed, I said no, I don’t want to drink any more!”

Renicks laughed. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and there’ll be a disaster just big enough to entertain, but not big enough to keep you down there for years, eating army rations.”

“Holy Christ, RTEs! That’s a nightmare. You’ve given me nightmares tonight. Congrats, Jack.”

“Consider it payback for all the times you’ve used me as an unofficial, unpaid linguistics expert in your Field Reports.”

“Your code name is Bastardo Gordo.”

Renicks laughed. This, he thought, was the price you paid for making friends with a guy from the CIA who specialized in languages. He’d met Stan at a convention, spent it drinking in the hotel bar with him having conversations in several languages at once until they could no longer speak. He pictured him: Shaved head, ears sticking out like wings, sarcastic smirk. Laughed again.

“I should go. Listen, you do what the CIA does best, champ: Absolutely fucking nothing.”

“Remember: Ambassador Waters, okay?”

The phone went dead. Renicks reflected that Stan Waters was the only person he knew who ended phone conversations like they did in the movies: He just hung up.

The driver was still studying him in the mirror. Renicks set his phone to silent with a few practiced moves of his thumb.

“You want to watch the road?”

The driver’s eyes remained on him for a long moment. Renicks stared back, feeling an unwarranted flush of temper, until the driver looked away. Renicks kept his eyes on the mirror for a moment more, then returned his attention to his phone. He should call Emily, he thought. The divorce had receded enough that courtesy had become important, and he didn’t know if he’d be able to make calls once he was installed underground. He might be out of contact for several hours at minimum on a night she expected him to turn up on television in his best suit. He hit her autodial and put the phone to his ear, his eyes jumping back to the driver.

Voicemail. Emily’s familiar twang. Her outgoing message far too long, as always, rambling on and on.

His eyes flicked from the driver’s collar to his hands on the wheel. White knuckled. He glanced past them at the speedometer. They’d hit ninety-five.

He rattled off a quick, no-nonsense message and ended the call.

“Slow down, please,” he said.

The driver’s eyes in the rear-view again. He didn’t say anything. Looked away. The car didn’t slow down.

Anger surged. Renicks controlled himself and fished in his memory for the man’s name. Found it and fell back on the old psychological trick of using it. Letting him know he knew it.

“Agent Darmity,” he said evenly, “slow down.”

The eyes in the mirror again. The car didn’t slow down. “We’re on a schedule,” the driver said.

Renicks stared back in irritation. Reminded himself that he only had to deal with this man for a short while; then he’d be ensconced in a bunker, probably with a whole other bunch of irritating Secret Service Agents. He dropped his eyes back to the phone. Pretended to work it.

“You know I fill out QA forms every time I have a Secret Service assignation, right?” he said flatly.

The driver said nothing. After a moment, Renicks glanced up. No eyes in the mirror. The car hadn’t slowed at all. He swayed this way and that as they dodged through traffic. He looked at the steering wheel again. The man was gripping it like it was the only thing keeping him from crashing through the windshield, sailing off into space.

Renicks hesitated another moment. He heard Emily’s voice, telling him to leave it alone, telling him that his insistence on being minded always got him into trouble. Then he reflected that Emily had divorced him, and put him on a schedule to see his own daughters, and that meant he was done worrying about what she thought of his behavior. He nodded and held up his phone. “Agent Darmity, during my orientation after confirmation, I was given several 24-hour emergency phone numbers. One of them will connect me to the local field office of the Secret Service wherever I am. Via GPS. Ease your foot off the goddamn gas in the next five seconds or I’ll be on the phone with your Field Supervisor in another five discussing your career. You understand?”

The eyes returned to the mirror, and Renicks held them. His heart was pounding, making his head ache. He didn’t enjoy being a hard ass. He’d found you had to be, sometimes, and he’d gotten good at it ever since rising to the President’s Cabinet: Washington was like High School, sometimes, with people almost eager to snub you if you let them, eager to demonstrate their power over you. He didn’t know if the driver was having a bad day or what, but he knew he didn’t want to be the first person in the line of succession to die on the way to the bunker.

Two seconds clicked by. The eyes flicked away. The car slowed down.

“I apologize,” the driver said. There was a beat of silence. Two. Then: “Sir.”

Renicks sighed, slipping the phone into his pocket. He hoped the rest of the day got easier.

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