Simon Gaylord was finishing installing a new coil on the walk-in fridge when he heard the squeak of hydraulics coming from the parking lot. Wiping his hands, he stepped out of the kitchen area to the sight of three tour buses opening their doors, disgorging dozens of passengers, who gathered by the side of the buses as they waited to get their bags.
“Looks like you’re going to have a full house tonight,” he quipped to the lady managing the desk.
She tapped a few keys on her computer and shrugged. “We still have a lot of rooms left,” she said. “We’ve been busier.”
Outside, the drivers were opening the luggage compartments. Simon saw one man, who was balding — yet had enough hair in the back to be knotted into a bun — push his way through the throng toward the front, grabbing a backpack and a duffel and then forcing his way back out.
“Some people got no patience,” Simon clucked. “Gotta be the rudest duck in the whole bird pond.”
“The what now?” the desk manager asked absently, her focus on the soon-to-be-entering guests. But before Simon could answer, the passengers all began elbowing through the automatic sliding doors, jockeying for position to get their room keys and a shower.
Everyone except for the rude fellow with the man-bun. He was nowhere to be seen, having set off on foot around the corner and down the street.
Simon Gaylord shrugged, helped himself to a seven-dollar slice of cheesecake and a three-dollar cola from the guest pantry, and enjoyed the rest of his “long lunch,” while the desk manager did her best to cope with the deluge of check-ins.
· · ·
Craig Lafferty slipped his arms through his backpack and slung his duffel bag over his shoulder. His reservation could wait; he was in no hurry to spend any more time jostling with the mass of pretenders and fakers who were only there to make a quick buck.
Marissa Meyer deserved better than that, and his mission was to see that she got it.
He wanted to reconnoiter the site in advance, in order to assess the best approach. He already had done the preliminary math, calculating the forces and trajectories involved.
Lafferty was an Ammunition Specialist, trained by the U.S. Army. Since entering civilian life, he had grown a patchy beard and a paunch, and somehow had acquired two cats, which were now being looked after by his sister. He could not do twenty pushups these days, or hike twenty miles, but his primary skills were all mental, and as sharp as ever.
The explosives were going to do most the heavy work, anyway.
The twelve-block walk left him panting, and he sat down at a bench to catch his breath. The Moonstags across the street looked tempting. He was craving a soy latte. Maybe on the way back, he promised himself.
Around the corner, he saw the gate, a brown, carved archway inscribed with verse:
On Fame’s Eternal Camping Ground
Their Silent Tents are Spread
And Glory Guards with Solemn Round
The Bivouac of the Dead
Craig Lafferty stroked his whiskers and adjusted his square-rimmed glasses. Then he reached back and unclipped the fake bun from the small ponytail that held it on, and tucked it in his duffel.
Standing straight, he saluted briefly, then made his way through the McClellan gate into Arlington National Cemetery.
Several minutes later, he was at ground zero: the tomb of Moses Ezekiel, Lieutenant Harry C. Marmaduke, Captain John M. Hickey, and Brigadier General Marcus J. Wright.
As far as Lafferty was concerned, the thirty-two-foot tall Confederate Memorial was a blight on the nation. It praised the efforts of the racists and white supremacists who had taken root in this great country, and who had been given safe harbor to come out of the shadows by a President who would never have been elected if the popular vote had been followed, like it should have been.
One person, one vote. That only made sense, and everyone wins.
Lafferty began circling the monument, drawing detailed diagrams of its angles, carvings, and protuberances. He made particular note of the monument’s northeastern base, where he would be planting his most critical charges. The explosives in this quadrant would ensure that the monument wasn’t just blasted to smithereens, but was instead launched into American history.
“Isn’t it lovely?”
Lafferty turned sharply, surprised by the sudden appearance of an elderly lady beside him. She was ninety if she was a day; hell, she may have known some of the Confederate soldiers buried in concentric circles around the memorial.
“It had a good artist,” Lafferty conceded. Even if he didn’t care for the subject matter, Moses Ezekiel’s carving of the gods of war was exquisite.
“All those brave boys, gone so tragically,” she croaked out in a refined southern lilt. The hand on her cane quavered as she craned her neck to look up at the reliefs carved into the sides.
He smirked. “Bit ironic, if you ask me,” he said. “It’s not often that those who betray their country are remembered so fondly.”
She looked at him as though he had farted in church. She set her lips in a thin line. “Well, bless your heart,” she said softly.
Lafferty’s cheeks heated up. Even he knew what that meant under these circumstances. To show how little he cared, he squatted down to take an irreverent seat on one of the surrounding tombstones, only to leap back to his feet with a yelp.
The dowager chuckled. “That’s why all the Confederate markers have points on the top,” she drawled. “To keep damned Yankees from sitting on them.” She turned and hobbled away, her shoulders shaking with a very satisfied laugh.
Lafferty fumed. The sooner he could rid the world of this reminder of the past, the better, he thought. It was going to take a few nights to plant that many explosives, and he would have to be extremely vigilant to avoid being seen, but his benefactor had informed him where he could hide out, and substantial windows of opportunity would be afforded by the night guards’ schedule of rounds.
He would start tonight. Come the night of the march, everyone would see a spectacle they could tell to their grandchildren.
Well, the ones who survived the blast, anyway.