83 - Washington, D.C.
The grassy area around the Washington Monument was empty. The National Park Service closed all museums and memorials around the Mall as a security precaution for the duration of the March. The March had scared away casual tourists.
Four National Park Service Police officers were stationed at the base of the Monument. They could hear the rumble of the loudspeakers coming from the podium a mile away across the length of the mall, but the words were too garbled by distance to be understandable.
The FBI video camera mounted on the observation platform at the top of the Monument was operated remotely from the FBI headquarters building, blocks away. Beside it was a television news camera, also remotely operated. Both cameras had long zoom lenses able to narrowly focus on any face on the speaker’s platform a mile away.
The police officers shivered slightly as a cool breeze blowing off the Potomac River stirred the grass around them. They’d been there since before sunrise and were bored. Nothing had happened. Nobody had approached the Monument.
The head of the small detail looked up as a National Park Service van negotiated the maze of the haha walls, coming to a stop directly in front of the retractable bollards. It’s horn beeped once. Without a second thought, he told one of the other officers, who stood just outside a small guard kiosk, to hit the button.
The officers watched as three of the steel posts, part of the ring of identical posts surrounding the monument at a distance of thirty yards from the tower’s walls, silently sank straight down into the ground, lowering on powerful hydraulic rams until their steel top surfaces were flush with the gravel pathway.
The van slowly drove over the tops of the bollards, coming to a stop just feet from the white marble wall of the Washington Monument.
The driver’s window rolled down and a paper tray loaded with Starbucks coffee cups was handed out. The detail head walked briskly up to the van.
“Boss felt sorry for you guys,” the driver said. “Said to send you some coffee. Got these, too.” He indicated two paper sacks filled with pastries.
“Well, that’s certainly a first for her,” the police officer joked. “Thanks a million. We appreciate this.” He barely glanced at the three men in the van, thankful for the hot coffee. Besides, he’d been at the Monument since before his favorite Starbucks’ 6:00 a.m. opening time and he’d had to skip his ritual of a maple walnut scone.
“I’ll carry these around to the guys,” he added, shaking his head from side to side in disbelief. “Wouldn’t have thought she’d do something like this.”
The officer walked away from the van without looking back, a broad smile on his face.
“Cops and donuts, you were right about that,” Gimel said to Aleph.
“OK, let’s get lined up,” Aleph said nervously. “Show me the map again.”
Bet handed him a printout of the National Mall from the National Park Service web site. Aleph glanced at the map, then looked around outside the van, aligning himself.
“OK,” he said, looking straight out through the van’s windshield. “That’s the White House straight ahead across all that grass.” He looked to the right, out the passenger side window. “And there’s the Mall that way.”
“Yeah,” said Gimel, “and its wide open, no people around, for a good long way.” They could see the mass of people on the far end of the Mall, and could make out the raised speakers’ platform beyond the crowd, almost at the Capital Building, a mile down the grassy Mall.
“So move up a little more,” Bet said to Aleph, behind the driver’s wheel. “We want to be in the middle of that side facing the Mall. Careful, get my door right up against the side of the building there.”
The van inched forward, scraping against the marble wall of the Washington Monument.
The windows on both doors were rolled down. The sound of the speaker’s voice rumbled across the Mall, as did the cheers of the crowd.
Gimel reached behind his back into the storage area behind the seat. He removed three small squares of unpainted plywood, six inches on a side. Screwed to the top of each square was an ordinary doorbell button, exactly what would be expected next to the front door of a house. Electrical wires ran from the doorbell buttons around a set of bolts, next to the button. The wires trailed off to the rear of the van.
Gimel handed one of the plywood squares to Aleph and one to Bet, keeping the third for himself. They had devised this detonation system after careful thought. The buttons were identical. Each of the three buttons would trigger the explosives. Even if two of the men lost their courage, so long as any one of them pressed and held his button, the three steel drums feet behind them would explode simultaneously.
The three men exchanged looks. Gimel, glancing past Bet and out the driver’s window, noticed one of the police officers staring at the van, then saw him begin walking quickly toward them, shouting something. His words could not be understood over the sound coming from the Mall.
The loudest roar yet to come from the crowd could be heard, loud enough so that even the police officer stopped to look toward the mass of people across the mall. Aleph jabbed at the radio in the van, turning the power on. It was still tuned to the all-news station from earlier in the morning. The station was now carrying live coverage from the March. The radio powered up quickly and a voice came through the speakers.
Aleph held up his left hand, fingers spread wide. His right held his plywood square, thumb poised over the button.
“Wait just one moment,” he said. “I want to hear what has them so excited.”
The three men sat side by side in the front seat of the van, their plywood squares in their laps, fingers hovering over the buttons, waiting to press them at the exact same instant, as they’d planned. Nobody was to jump the gun, they’d agreed. Credit was due to all of them, not any one alone. The radio spoke.
“The greatest terrorist of them all is God, the Lord,” the Voice said over the radio’s speakers. The three men sat as if mesmerized. The Voice over the radio spoke directly to them and to them alone. They listened in silence as the man, they did not know who he was, held them with the logic of his words.
The officer’s handgun was now in his right hand as he shouted for the men to get out of the van. They ignored him, entranced as they were by the words coming from the radio.
“Was it speeches or marches or email campaigns that changed Pharaoh’s heart, that forced him to free the Children of Israel from bondage?” the Voice asked. “No. It was terror, acts of terror more terrible than the world has seen since. God used this terror to save the Jewish people long ago. If God could take such actions to save his people then, can’t we take such actions to save his people today?”
The police officer was stunned that the three men were ignoring him. Instead, they sat immobile in the van, staring straight ahead through the windshield. The officer felt a quiver run down his spine. He dropped to his right knee, held his handgun straight out in front of him and braced the gun with his left hand.
“Get out of the van now,” he shouted. “Get out right now or I’ll shoot.”
He saw the driver turn his head slowly to look straight at him, then turn his head to his right toward the two passengers.
“I’ll count down from three,” Aleph said. “Three. Two. One. Now.”
Three thumbs descended on three buttons.
The explosion sent steel shards from the van’s thin walls flying in all directions. The three men in the front seat were blown into bloody scraps. The police officer, kneeling on one knee, was decapitated by a spray of flying glass from the van’s windshield.
The location of the detonation – on the side of the Washington Monument facing toward the Mall – was carefully chosen. Just as a forester chops a V-shaped wedge into the base of a tree to direct its fall, the blast from the explosion tore a deep gash into the base of the Monument, leaving only the far wall on the side farthest from the explosion site to support the 90,000 tons of the tower.
The Monument wavered, leaning precariously toward the nearest building, the National Holocaust Memorial, ever so slowly tilting toward that building. That motion slowed, however, as if the Monument itself sensed where it was heading. The tower ever so gradually twisted toward the left, leaning sideways toward the center of the grass-covered Mall and, when it was precisely aligned with the Capital Building, the speed of its fall increased until the 555-foot length of the Washington Monument crashed in one long piece to the ground, lying down the center of the Mall, pointing an accusing finger directly at the Capital Building itself.
The ground shook with a deep basso rumble as the structure hit the ground, then bounced thirty feet into the air before falling to land a second time with a softer thud, to lie, finally motionless, between the National Holocaust memorial and the National Museum of American History.