Disorder of Succession, Part 2
This is a continuation of “Disorder of Succession, Part 1,” released (and occurring) 21 February 2017.
The following is a work of fantasy. Any resemblance between our characters and real-world people is imaginary and meant for entertainment purposes only. Any resemblance between events depicted below and events in the real world is surely just your and our imagination.
“I’m telling you, John, it’s bad over there. Mattis and Kelly are the ‘sane’ minority in every room. Two of the most ideological guys we know are sweating through their days in that snake pit. Then again, I don’t know why they expected any different.”
Admiral Richardson knew better than to interrupt a good venting by an old SEAL.
“I asked Mattis if they’d let me clean up the NSC properly, and he was too quick to assure me they would. Trump had learned his lesson with Flynn, he told me.”
“You don’t hear that often,” Richardson said.
“It doesn’t happen often, and it didn’t happen in this case, either. I told Mattis there was no way I’m going to be an advisor to some Pillsbury idiot who thinks he knows better than everyone on national security. But Mattis would not take no for an answer. I could tell something was up from the way he’s, you know, imploring me to ‘just get on the phone’ with Trump. It didn’t sound like he meant I’d suddenly see Trump’s hidden genius. Which had me thinking, the less I know about what the fuck is up, the better off I am.”
“And yet you ended up on a call with Trump.”
“I regret taking it, but Mattis set us both up.”
“You’re just minding your own business, and then you’re on the horn with Trump, who thinks you’re eager to join his demolition derby?”
“That’s about right. And it goes even worse than I expected, of course. It was surreal; Trump is not living in our reality. Anyway, Mattis had made his point.”
Retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward took a sip of something on the other end of the encrypted call. He was in Abu Dhabi, where he’d spent his post-military years running Lockheed Martin’s operations in the United Arab Emirates.
“His point was that the inmates are running the asylum, and he wanted you to keep him company while they tear it all down around you?” Richardson probed.
Harward sipped again. “You’re calling me because you don’t know what’s going on, right?”
Richardson did not respond. Several difficult seconds passed. “John, you’re calling because you have no idea, not because you suspect, right?”
Richardson chose his words carefully. “We’re locked out, Bob, but I’m not saying we don’t suspect anything.” Richardson wasn’t much of a drinker, but ice clinking on the other end of the line made him taste scotch. “I’m not calling because we suspect you of anything, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Mattis told me Dunford wasn’t on board,” Harward said, “and I know Bannon wants JCS out of the picture completely.”
This was not news, but it made Richardson pause. “Dunford’s not on board with what?” Richardson gave Harward time to check his flanks.
“Everything is changing at the speed of sound in Washington,” Harward said.
“That’s the speed of fear,” Richardson said. “You were worried I might be working for the White House.”
“This new administration, they’ve got a lot of things on a lot of people. I don’t know your personal life, John, but Bannon is going to ruin a lot of careers and lives trying to keep his toy rocket ricocheting around the room.”
“Nobody has gotten to me, Bob,” Richardson said, not too strenuously.
“Mattis exposed me to a fucking conspiracy when he brought me in. It’s like the earth shifts beneath your feet,” Harward said, sounding truly shaken for someone who had spent four decades in and out of hardcore combat units.
“Jesus,” Richardson said, still finding it easy to sound alarmed by talk of capital treachery. “So it’s true — Mattis is making a move.”
“I didn’t know for sure until Sunday.”
“You saw him in Abu Dhabi,” Richardson said confidently. The Joint Chiefs had not overlooked the coincidence that Mattis took an unannounced trip to the Persian Gulf region, showing up in the same city where his old protege Harward lived — all just three days after Harward passed up the offer to succeed Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor.
“I think his whole trip over here is cover,” Harward said. “Partly to lobby me in person without raising any attention, and maybe also as an alibi.”
“Someone plotting a coup wouldn’t take off on a trip, right?”
“You have to admit, Mattis running around over here telling the Arabs we’re not actually stealing their oil any more than usual — it’s pretty good cover while things move into place back home. But it also shows his motivation. He’s not going to be able to take many more of these humiliating errands, making excuses for the Commander in Chief.
“Anyway,” Harward continued, “I don’t think he has a very good order of battle. He’s going to try to use outside assets for the op, so he can keep his hands looking clean. It’s going to be messy before it ever gets bloody. Can you imagine the witch hunt that is going to go down if Mattis is involved in a plot that fails?
“They’ll come looking for everyone who knew anything about it,” Richardson said, hoping his response didn’t sound like he’d thought long and hard on the same matter.
“Now here I am exposing myself over this technology designed by kids who were trying to hide from us, and we’re the ones hiding from the whole damn state. So, yeah, I’m a little paranoid lately.”
“How did you leave it with Mattis?” Richardson asked.
“I disappointed him, but what was he going to say? I mean, he was asking me to attempt regime change, in the homeland, with insufficient assets in place. If I can’t bring my own team in, I can’t execute the kind of plan Mattis has in mind any more than I could fix up a National Security Council that the president doesn’t even want to exist.”
“What kind of plan does Mattis have in mind?”
“I didn’t ask, but you have to imagine it’s the kind I get brought in for.”
“Fast and decisive,” Richardson said, “with all the bases covered.”
“Multiple simultaneous events in different environments, possibly involving assets of different kinds all around the world,” Harward added. “You know what he had me doing at CENTCOM.”
“So, definitely not a single sniper,” Richardson ventured.
“I wouldn’t think so. But we didn’t actually go into it, since I wasn’t on board. The less I knew…”
“I understand,” Richardson said. “But it sounds like you only turned it down because it’s impractical.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, John. I think our country needs a way off this runaway train, or we’re headed for wars that our children’s grandchildren may still be fighting, in whatever is left of civilization. I can read between the lines of those strategic threat reports we’ve been looking at for years. It was going to be real bad even if some yahoo didn’t come in and fuck it all even worse. Any way I try to play it out looks bad. Pence, Ryan — those guys filling the vacuum left by a demagogue? None of this is any good.”
“I’d have to agree with that,” Richardson said cautiously.
“But here’s the thing: when I put it like that to Mattis, he agreed as well. He doesn’t want some politician or one of Trump’s cabinet dwellers taking over, either. He has somebody else in mind; I think he just didn’t have the balls to tell me he thinks it should be him.”
“Are you saying you think soon we’ll either have a President Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, or we’ll have a President Trump with a mandate to clean out the military and intelligence communities, and God knows what else?”
“You’re not using your imagination. Depending where the plot goes awry, you could have a President Pence or a President Ryan, and a country in absolute turmoil. Neither of those guys can step up. Who’s after Ryan — Orrin Hatch? Are you kidding me? Then start in on the cabinet. Mattis knows he can’t fully control anyone in line, and he won’t have a second chance to spin that wheel. He’s going to do it all in a single hour — that’s my guess.”
Richardson found himself checking the screen of his iPhone, almost superstitiously, to make sure the call was still encrypted. He was dying to loop his old friend into the other plot, but every new conspirator introduced significant risk. He could be condemning himself and the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to death if he misread Harward and spooked him inadvertently. Harward was closer to Mattis than any of the JCS members were. So if Harward did not buy into their bigger vision of installing Powell and fixing government, he would not be on board with doing whatever it might take to neutralize Mattis, a natural claimant to the throne once enough politicians and department heads were eliminated.
“If I were you, I’d sit this one out,” Harward told the stateside sailor. “ It’s unnerving, to…”
Richardson gave Harward time to rejoin but realized his friend was having trouble completing the thought. “What’s unnerving, Bob?”
“All those deployments and operations, sometimes against bad odds… no matter how bad the situation, we always had a chance to fight for our lives. We were never helpless.”
It was still afternoon in Virginia, but Richardson had acquired ice from the freezer and dug out a bottle of scotch.
Harward continued, “Now I’m supposed to be retired, but again my life is at the mercy of history. Except this time I can’t fight my way out. What, am I supposed to run? I’m not Jason Bourne. If Mattis fucks this up and they come for me, suddenly my private sector world is replaced with a cell in some black site that looks just like the places I used to manage in fucking Afghanistan. And I rot my last years away there.”
Richardson sipped his drink. His old friend was waxing wishful about regime change, whether he realized it or not. Harward just had not seen the opportunity the way the Joint Chiefs had.
“Or maybe you just need to get your hands dirty and see this through,” Richardson said. “Sitting it out sure doesn’t suit you.”
Over the course of a long, quiet moment, Harward belly-crawled from his lonely foxhole to the Joint Chiefs’ bunker. “Son of a bitch, John. You’ve been holding out. What are you guys up to?”
Ready to see this through? The story continues in Part 3. Follow us on Medium or sign up to receive updates about Disorder of Succession, the story of a parallel present serialized in real time.
