The elderly rabbi dropped his hands and looked out at the crowd.
“Tell me, does this sound like terrorism, like maybe biological warfare? God’s weapons of mass destruction, maybe? But God was not finished.” He raised his imaginary cup again and again dipped his finger in it repeatedly.
“Hailstorms, locusts, darkness. And all those horrible actions were not sufficient to save Israel. So what did God the terrorist do next? Talk about weapons of mass destruction. He killed the firstborn son of every Egyptian family.
“Weren’t those all acts of terrorism? Was it speeches or marches or email campaigns that changed Pharaoh’s heart, that forced him to free the Children of Israel from bondage? 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?”
He turned and gestured to his daughter to come to him. She gently held him by the elbow and they walked back to his seat.
Catherine Quaid turned toward Sarah Goldberg, Ben Shapiro and Judy Katz.
“I’m supposed to speak next,” she said. “How in the world do I follow that?”
She paused.
“My husband is going to be very, very pissed.”
CHAPTER 56
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. Casual tourists were scared away.
Four National Park Service police officers were stationed at the base of the monument. They heard the rumble of the loudspeakers a mile away across the length of the mall. The words were too garbled to understand.
The FBI video camera mounted on the observation platform at the top of the monument 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 focus on any face on the speaker’s platform.
The park service officers shivered as a cool breeze blowing off the Potomac River stirred the grass around them. They’d been there since before sunrise. Cold. Bored. Nothing happened. Nobody approached the monument.
The head of the small detail looked up as a National Park Service van negotiated the maze of barrier walls surrounding the monument, coming to a stop directly in front of two steel bollards blocking the drive. The van’s horn beeped. Without a second thought, he told one of the other officers, who stood just outside a small guard kiosk, to hit the button.
The steel bollards lowered into the ground on hydraulic pistons, just as the environmental protection plan for the Washington monument posted online said they would. Finding that website revealed to the three young men the way to get close to the monument.
The van 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. A paper tray with Starbucks coffee cups was handed out. The detail head walked briskly 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.
“I’ll carry these to the guys.” The officer walked from the van without looking back, a broad smile on his face.
“Cops and donuts, you were right about that,” Gimel said to Aleph.
“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 website. Aleph glanced at the map, then looked around outside the van, orienting himself.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s the White House straight ahead across all that grass.” He looked to the right, out the passenger window. “And there’s the Mall that way.”
“Yeah,” said Gimel, “and it’s 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 Capitol.
“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. Get my door right up against the side.”
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 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. Electrical wires ran from each doorbell button around a set of bolts next to the button. The wires were attached to a battery and trailed through the van to the model rocket engines buried in the C4. Each of the three buttons would trigger the explosives. Even if two 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.
They heard the loudest roar yet from the crowd, loud enough so that even the police officer stopped to look toward the mass of people. Aleph jabbed at the radio in the van, turning the power on. It was still tuned to the all-news station carrying live coverage from the march.
“Wait just one moment,” Aleph 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.
“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. 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 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. “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 at him, then turn his head toward the two passengers.
“I’ll count down from three,” Aleph said. “Three. Two. One. Now.”
Three thumbs descended on the 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 was on the side of the Washington Monument facing the Mall. The blast tore a deep gash into the base of the monument, leaving only the 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. That motion slowed as the tower ever so gradually twisted left, leaning sideways toward the center of the grass-covered Mall, and, when it was precisely aligned with the Capitol, crashed in one long piece to the ground, lying down the center of the Mall, pointing an accusing finger directly at the home of the US Congress.