The Black Widow

“We’re checking, Mr. President.”

So was every other principal, deputy, and aide in the room. It was the director of the CIA, thirty seconds later, who informed the president that two loud sounds, possibly explosions, had been heard in the McLean — Tysons Corner area, near the intersection of Route 123 and the Beltway.

“Heard by whom?” asked the president.

“They could hear the explosions at CIA Headquarters, sir.”

“A mile away?”

“More like two, sir.”

The president stared at the blank video screen. “What just happened?” he asked again, but this time there was no answer in the room, only the concussive thump of another explosion, close enough to rattle the White House. “What the hell was that?”

“Checking, sir.”

“Check faster.”

Fifteen seconds later the president had his answer. It came not from the senior officials gathered inside the Situation Room but from the Secret Service agents stationed atop the Executive Mansion. Smoke was pouring from the Lincoln Memorial.

America was under attack.

61 THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL

HE HAD ARRIVED ON FOOT, a single man, dark hair, about five eight, wearing a bulky woolen coat against the evening chill and carrying a backpack over one shoulder. Later, the FBI would determine that a Honda Pilot SUV, Virginia plates, had dropped him at the corner of Twenty-third Street and Constitution Avenue. The Honda Pilot had continued north on Twenty-third Street to Virginia Avenue, where it made a left turn. The man with the heavy woolen coat and backpack had headed south, across the far western end of the Washington Mall, to the Lincoln Memorial. Several U.S. Park Police officers stood watch at the base of the steps. They did not challenge or even seem to notice the man with the backpack and the oversize coat.

The monument, built in the form of a Greek Doric temple, was aglow with a warm golden light that seemed to radiate from within. The man with the backpack paused for several seconds on the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King had delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, then proceeded up the final steps, into the memorial’s central chamber. About twenty tourists were gathered before the nineteen-foot statue of a seated Lincoln. Equal numbers were in the two side chambers, before the towering engravings of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. The man with the oversize coat placed his backpack near the base of one of the ionic columns and, drawing a mobile phone from his pocket, began taking photographs of the statue. Curiously, his lips were moving.

In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful. .

A young couple, in broken English, asked the man whether he would take their photograph in front of the statue. He declined and, turning abruptly, hurried down the steps toward the Reflecting Pool. Too late, a female Park Police officer, twenty-eight years old, a mother of two, noticed the unattended bag and ordered the tourists to evacuate the memorial. An instant later the policewoman was decapitated by the circular saw of ball bearings that flew from the bag at detonation, as were the man and woman who had asked to have their photo taken. The bomber was blown from his feet by the force of the explosion. A tourist from Oklahoma, sixty-nine years old, a Vietnam veteran, unwittingly helped the murderer to his feet, and for this benevolent act was shot through the heart with the Glock 19 pistol that the man pulled from beneath his coat. The man managed to kill six more people before being shot by the Park Police officers at the base of the steps. In all, twenty-eight would die.

By the time the bomb exploded, the Honda Pilot was braking to a stop outside the main entrance of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. One man climbed out and entered the Hall of States. His coat was identical to the one worn by the man who attacked the Lincoln Memorial, though he carried no backpack; his bomb was strapped to his body. He made his way past the visitor center to the main box office, where he detonated his device. Three more men then emerged from the Honda, including the driver. All were armed with AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifles. They slaughtered the wounded and the dying in the Hall of States and then moved methodically from the Eisenhower Theater to the Opera House to the Concert Hall, killing indiscriminately. In all, more than three hundred would die.