85 - Washington, D.C.
President Quaid fumed as he listened to the old man on the television ticking off the ten plagues on his fingers. He stood with his back to the television, standing at the three windows behind his desk, facing the South Lawn, the Ellipse and, in the distance the Washington Monument. His arms were crossed across his chest. He was literally stamping his right foot in anger.
He did not know whether it was the speaker’s words themselves or the exuberant roars that met them that brought him to the limit of his patience. Finally, as the speaker was finishing, the President had enough.
“No more,” he said, surprisingly softly, still standing at the window. “This is sedition. He’s calling for terrorism. General Paterson. It’s time to send in the troops.”
The President turned to face the people in the room, his back now to the window, Carol Cabot seated on the sofa facing him. President Quaid was surprised to see the sudden expression on his legal counsel’s face. Her eyebrows shot up, her mouth opened soundlessly. Her right hand rose to cover her face. She appeared to be looking past him, however, past him and out the windows.
The President quickly spun around to see what had so surprised Cabot. Before he could turn fully back to the window, however, the White House building shook from side to side and a rumbling sound came up through the floor. The doors to the Oval Office flew open. Men rushed in, surrounded the President and ushered him rapidly out the door, lifted off his feet by the nearest men in the ring formed around him.
The people remaining in the Oval Office ran to the window in horror and watched as the lower half of the Washington Monument was covered with a cloud of dust rising from its base. Conditioned by hundreds of repetitions of the image of the World Trade Center towers being similarly surrounded by dust and smoke and then settling straight down upon themselves into the ground, the observers from the perspective of the White House were stunned to see the Monument topple like a tree, accelerating as it moved through forty-five degrees before slamming to the ground with a thudding noise that reached them several seconds after they saw the tower hit the ground, bounce upwards and land again.
Gen. Paterson was the first to speak. He walked quickly to the telephone on the President’s desk, lifted the receiver and spoke quickly.
“This is General Paterson,” he said. “I am speaking with the full authority of President Quaid.”
“Send in the troops. Take everybody they find on the Mall into custody. Nobody from the platform at the head of the Mall gets away. Hold everyone.”
Attorney General Harrison stood at the window, staring at the cloud of dust settling into the empty space where the Washington Monument had stood. Still facing the window he spoke, to no one in particular.
“This changes everything,” he said. “Everything.”