79 - Washington, D.C.
President Quaid’s speech dispelled any doubts the three young men may have had about the righteousness of their intended action. They gathered in Aleph’s motel room early Friday morning and prayed together one final time. They chose to skip breakfast, tacitly acknowledging they were each too nervous to eat.
The stolen National Park Service van cruised the streets of Washington. Bet held the printout of their route through the city they’d downloaded from Mapquest.com before leaving Maine. The radio in the van was tuned to an all-news station.
The reports on the decreased attendance at the March caused by the President’s threat to bring in National Guard troops, especially the report that the crowd only filled half of the National Mall, pleased the three men. They agreed that whatever they did, they did not want to kill Jews, at least not intentionally.
That was no longer a problem. They navigated closer to the target until, after a left turn onto 15th Street, they saw it directly in front of them, thrusting upward, 555 feet of granite and marble, the Washington Monument.
They’d studied the Monument as if it were a research project assigned by their high school civics teacher. They’d studied it the only way people of their generation knew how to do research, sitting in front of their home computers. They assumed that every fact they would want to learn was available simply by reading enough web pages returned by Google.
They weren’t disappointed by what they learned about the Washington Monument.
The Monument was built in the shape of an Egyptian obelisk. The exterior is white marble. The interior is granite. The walls at the base are fifteen feet thick, tapering to a thickness of eighteen inches at the top. At the time of its construction it was the tallest building in the world. It remains the tallest masonry construction.
An elevator runs up its hollow interior to take tourists to an observation deck at the top.
The men were especially interested to read about an incident in December 1982 when the Monument was held hostage by a nuclear arms protester for ten hours, claiming he had explosives in a van he drove to the Monument’s base. Police shot the man dead and found his van was empty.
Bet discovered a post-9/11 report from the General Accounting Office concerning the security of government buildings. The report, posted online by the GAO, said a seven-pound explosive charge set off inside the hollow core near the top, where the walls are the thinnest, would bring down the Monument’s entire facade.
That was good news for them.
They were discouraged, at first, to read about the $15 million security renovations that were done to the Monument after the World Trade Center attack. That turned out to be a disguised blessing, however. Their greatest online discovery was the 68-page environmental impact statement, in PDF format, posted by the National Park Service detailing every step of that security construction. This document described the installation of concentric rings of 30-inch-high granite walls, called “haha” walls after similar walls built in Medieval Europe to keep cattle from wandering. These walls, although low enough to step over, were solid enough to stop a truck from ramming through.
Besides the haha walls, the environmental impact report described the ring of steel bollards, large round posts, that surround the monument, also barring vehicles from approaching the tower’s base.
Aleph spent hours scouring that document. Just the night before they were to head for Washington, he called to his partners and pointed out a paragraph in the environmental report and a map showing locations of the steel bollards.
“Here,” he said, pointing at a spot on the map, “this is where there is an opening in the haha walls. It works like one of those maze puzzles we did when we were kids. You drive through this opening in the outermost wall, then halfway around the circle to the right, between that wall and the next one in, where there is another opening. Then you go left after that opening a quarter turn to the next opening and then you’re inside the walls.
“I knew they had to get vehicles up to the base somehow, you know, like if they had to fix the elevator or something.”
Gimel, the third man, pointed at the map.
“Yeah, but then there’s that ring of things.” He squinted at the screen and read the 8 point print. “Bollards,” he said. “Look at that, man, steel tubes filled with reinforced concrete, designed to stop a truck. They go ten feet into the ground.
“And there’s no opening in that ring. Just look.” He jabbed a finger at the map, tracing the complete circle of bollards.
Aleph smiled. He scrolled down two screens and pointed.
“You’ve gotta read the fine print, brother,” he said, reading, “Bollards at locations marked 21, 22 and 23 can be retracted hydraulically to permit vehicle access. The hydraulic fluid utilized shall be inert and nontoxic in case of a leak. All hydraulic tubing shall be metal-jacketed to further decrease the chances of leakage.” He smiled, then continued.
“There,” he pointed at the three bollards, depicted as small circles on the map. “There’s the vehicle entrance to the Monument’s base. We can drive right up to it.”
They were so pleased with their Internet skills.
The van stopped as the towering monument came into full view. This was the first visit to Washington for each of the men. The Monument was far more impressive in the flesh than on the Internet. Aleph, who was driving, turned to the other two men, who were sitting on the bench front seat beside him.
“Any doubts, any hesitation?” he asked.
“It’s our time,” Bet answered.
“If not now, when?” Gimel said.
“OK then,” Aleph said. “One last stop before we go in.”
He pulled the van away from the curb and drove straight for two blocks. There, just as Mapquest.com had told them it would be, was a Starbucks.
Aleph parked in front of the coffee shop and got out of the van.
“A dozen or so coffees ought to do it, right?” he asked.
“And get pastries, a real mix, donuts, cakes, cookies,” Mr. Bet said. “There’s gonna be a lot of cops, Park Police, there.”