freight trains from the Norfolk Southern Railroad. Everyone wanted to help the animals, though the Baltimore baseball management balked when a young Madison Bank zealot demanded they turn the 48,000-seat Oriole Park at Camden Yards into a bear pit.
By the afternoon, the evacuation of the Zoological Park was well under way. And all over the city there were even more poignant reminders of the horrors to come. The historic statues, by special order of Admiral Morgan, were being removed and shipped out to the Maryland hills.
This had caused the first real friction of the entire operation, because the National Parks official, who administers to the historic sculptures and their upkeep, decreed the task to be utterly impossible.
“What do you mean impossible?” rasped the voice from the Oval Office. “Get the Army Corps of Engineers in here with heavy lifting gear, cranes, and trucks.”
“It simply will not work, sir. The sculptures, in almost every instance, are too heavy.”
“Well, somebody put ’em up, didn’t they? Someone lifted them.”
“Well, yes, sir. But I imagine those people are all dead. And you can’t fax the dead, can you?”
Arnold did not have the time for “smartass remarks from fucking bureaucrats.” “Guess not,” he replied. “You better try E-mail. But get the statues moved at all costs.” At which point he banged down the telephone.
Within hours, the Army Corps of Engineers was on its way from Craney Island, at the head of the Norfolk shipyards, up the Potomac with barges full of the necessary hardware. By dusk, the great Theodore Roosevelt Memorial was being lifted from its island in the middle of the Potomac.
And the 78-foot-high Iwo Jima Marine Corps Memorial, one of the largest sculptures ever cast, was being raised by crane, together with its black marble plinth, 500 yards from the Potomac at the north end of Arlington National Cemetery. The sight of the memorial being removed attracted a large, sorrowful crowd, watching the apparent conclusion of America’s most touching tribute to the courage of the U.S. Marines.
“Don’t worry about it,” called one young soldier. “We’ll have this baby right back here by the end of the month.”
Officers from the Engineering Corps were already inside the classic domed rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial, which houses the 19-foot-high statue of America’s third President, gazing out towards the Tidal Basin. It was a difficult task, but not impossible. Outside, there were four different-sized cranes and fifty troops to do the job, all experts in their trade.
A young Lieutenant, under strict orders, used his mobile phone to call the White House.
“We got it, sir. The Jefferson will be on a truck by midnight.”
“That’s my boy…How about the Oriental cherry trees around the outside?” replied Admiral Morgan.
“Gardeners say no, sir. They’ll die if we move ’em.”
“They’ll sure as hell die if they get hit by a fucking tidal wave,” said Arnold.
“Yes, sir. I did mention that to the gardeners. Well, words to that effect. But they said the trees could be replaced. It was a waste of time.”
“Glad to see those gardeners are thinking, right Lieutenant?”
“Right, sir.”
The Lincoln Memorial, Arnold’s favorite, presented an even bigger challenge. Another 19-foot sculpture, this one of solid marble — Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President, seated on a high chair, overlooking the Reflecting Pool of the mall, surrounded by his own immortal words carved in stone.
It was considerably heavier than the sculpture of Thomas Jefferson, but the Engineering Corps was undaunted. As darkness fell, they began moving two cranes through the twelve towering white colonnades along the front of the building.
There were dozens of others, some of which would be designated to take their chances, while others would be lifted and moved, like the Ulysses Grant Memorial and the bronze casting of Andrew Jackson on horseback, made from British cannons captured at the Battle of Pensacola in 1812.
The eternal flame, which burned in a bronze font at the grave of the thirty-fifth President, John F. Kennedy, in Arlington National Cemetery, could not be extinguished, and Admiral Morgan and Senator Teddy decreed that a new flame would be lit from the original and transported to another military cemetery.
They ordered the flame, which had burned without interruption since the President was laid to rest in 1963, to be extinguished the moment that the new one was relocated in consecrated ground. The entire grave site and Memorial were then to be sealed immediately in steel and concrete, in readiness for the relighting when the floodwaters subsided.
Senator Kennedy was uncharacteristically shy and reserved about his late brother’s memory. But Arnold said precisely what was on his mind…“I’m not having some goddamned terrorist snuffing out the Eternal Flame at the grave of a truly great man. If it’s going to be extinguished, the Navy will attend to it. And the Navy will relight it at the proper time. Just so its light never dies, right here on American soil. And Teddy’s with me on that.”
America was a nation that honored its heroes, and one of the largest memorials to be removed was the solemn 500-foot-long gleaming black marble wall that immortalizes the men who died, or remain missing, in the Vietnam War. Thousands of pilgrims visited here each year, just to reach out and touch the stone, just to see a name. Arnold Morgan ordered it to be removed “
And there was already a company of Army Engineers in Constitution Gardens, carefully wrapping the long line of angular black marble tablets that bear the names of every last one of the 58,156 soldiers who were lost. The Memorial was set less than 300 yards from the stern, giant figure of Abraham Lincoln, who, perhaps above all other Americans, would have understood the cruel perversity of that distant battlefield.
Admiral Morgan ordered an evacuation of the Peace Memorial erected to honor Navy personnel lost at sea during the Civil War and he asked someone to remove and store the statue of Benjamin Franklin, which depicts the old statesman in his long coat, holding the 18th-century Treaty of Alliance between the United States and France.
“He probably could’ve got the goddamned satellite shut down a helluva lot quicker than us,” added Arnold.
Cranes, the armies of workers, the endless roar of the huge evacuation trucks made up the steady stream of traffic bearing its citizens to the high ground of the northwest. The University was now closed and the streets in Georgetown were thinning out.
Fortunately, the nation’s capital wasn’t home to much large-scale commercial business and industry, but at the banks, there was intense activity, with customer records, cash, and safety deposit boxes being shipped to outlying branches.
On this Sunday, the banks were open until 10 P.M., allowing customers preparing to flee the city at first light Monday morning to withdraw funds or remove valuables. Many law firms, lobbying companies, and stock brokers were moving one large truckload of documents apiece out of the offices and generally heading for the hills.
Almost all other commercial operations not involved in transportation or in assisting the government with emergency procedures were already closed down, having removed as much stock and hardware as possible. Theaters and cinemas too had locked their doors.
But Washington’s local television and radio stations were instructed to keep transmitting for as long as possible, under the control of the Pentagon, and, from time to time, they were watched with a beady eye by Admiral Morgan. They would turn off the power only upon the certain information that the Cumbre Vieja volcano had blown itself into the Atlantic Ocean. That was the official time to leave. Nine hours.
The evacuation of the hospitals was a long and laborious operation. Every ambulance in the city had been running nonstop since Friday, ferrying not-too-sick patients home to leave the city with their families, and driving very sick patients to other hospitals inland, wherever beds could be located. No new patients were being admitted, except for victims of accidents, and other emergencies. The situation was getting extremely difficult, because so much of the best medical equipment had already gone into military storage for safekeeping.
Any hospital with any spare capacity within 100 miles of Washington was accepting patients from the city. No one wanted to move very sick patients any farther than was absolutely necessary, but the Pentagon had ordered all patients to be out of all hospitals by Wednesday evening. That would entail every ambulance driving well outside the city at the time Ben Badr launched his SL-2s. Admiral Morgan had made it clear he did not intend to lose any ambulances whatsoever, no matter how great the flood.
For the final forty-eight hours, the Military would provide reserve medical units, out of Fort Belvoir, the
