The Atlantis Prophecy

49

THROUGH THE SIGHT of her sniper rifle atop the National Archives, Sergeant Wanda Randolph watched the tail end of the Independence Day parade march down Constitution Avenue. She scanned the crowds for any sign of Conrad Yeats. America's most wanted criminal was presumably still on the loose after yesterday's Presidential Prayer Breakfast.

More than 22 government agencies, including the U.S. Capitol Police, U.S. Park Police, and Washington Metropolitan Police Department, were coordinating security: There were jets overhead, chemical sensors in the subways, Coast Guard boats on the Potomac, and more than 6,000 cops and troops on the streets.

Members of the 49th Virginia Infantry Regiment Civil War reenactment group now marched below to the cheers of onlookers, from babies to grandparents. It had been a morning of high school and military bands, and the Civil War types prompted as many smiles as the group that usually followed them.

Wanda could hear them now-the roar of thousands of Harley Davidsons revving down Constitution, their riders in jeans and leather jackets. Rolling Thunder was a motorcycling group that supported veterans. Today they had come out in full force, headlights blazing and American flags extending from the back of their bikes.

Her eyes followed them down Pennsylvania as they turned onto Constitution, one oddball biker in sunglasses after another. Several times she had to look away from the glare of the sun bouncing off the medals on their vests and the chrome on their bikes.

One neon yellow-and-chrome chopper with two riders caught her eye, and she followed it to the turn when another glare off the chrome blinded her for a split second. When she caught up with the chopper again on Constitution, it had only one rider.

What happened? Where'd he go?

She jerked her rifle back to the parade turn at Pennsylvania and Constitution and scoped the crowds. Nothing. And then she saw the small pump station building behind the crowd.

Dang, it was him, she thought. It had to be. Conrad Yeats.

She wanted to believe that Yeats was one of the good guys, but regardless of which hat he wore-white or black-he was about to get himself picked off by her or another sniper unless she could bring him in safely.

"Code red," she yelled into her radio. "Pump station."

She scrambled off the roof and out the National Archives, ran a block to the station and burst inside. Two Metro cops were down, knocked out, and a hatch to the sewer was open. Six FBI agents, plainclothes types from the crowd, swarmed in as she pulled out a map.

"The SEAL will pick him up in the sewer," one of the agents said.

But the SEAL swimming up and down beneath Constitution reported nothing. "He may have gone deeper," crackled the radio, the voice of a SEAL breaking up. "Shit, he's in the Tiber."

Long after the hill beneath the U.S. Capitol had ceased to be called Rome, the river upon which ships ferried marble from the White House to the Capitol retained the name Tiber Creek. And to this day the Tiber still runs beneath Constitution Avenue along the northern edge of the National Mall.

Conrad sloshed through knee-high water in the ancient sewer built of brick masonry. About 30 feet wide and ten feet high, the old sewer ran along the upper portion of the bed of the old Tiber Creek. Conrad could feel its rotting floor planks give way under his shoes and prayed he wouldn't step into a hole and get sucked into the bog, never to return to the surface.

He remembered the Tiber from a consulting gig when the feds asked him how to preserve downtown D.C. as the ancient Egyptians had preserved the pyramids. The Tiber, like the Nile, ran in front of the Capitol and through the Smithsonian.

The whole Mall, in fact, was one giant flood plain. The east wing of the Natural History museum, Conrad had discovered, was already sinking and pulling away from the main building because the Tiber still coursed beneath the Mall. Only a carefully built and even more carefully camouflaged levee kept the Mall from being under water. The feds did a great job planting trees on it to hide it. Only by lying down on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and looking out toward Constitution Avenue could you see the levee with the naked eye.

Inside the old Tiber Creek sewer, however, there was very little to see. Conrad looked around the battered side walls and the stone arch ceiling over the river channel, which had seen better days. The brick was crumbling and refuse from the more modern sewer line-cut in the 1930s-was raining down on him.

The sewer emptied out near the Washington Monument, where the east branch of the Potomac used to be before the feds filled it in. It was here Conrad started his search for a planned tunnel that may or may not have ever been built to the monument.

The "Capitol Fourth" concert was just getting underway on the National Mall when Max Seavers arrived at the Washington Monument, which was closed to the public today due to security concerns as well as a very special "private function"-a White House reception for Chinese Olympic officials.

Seavers checked his cell phone GPS, which confirmed that the aerosol canister containing his bird flu was in place and activated. Once everybody was inside the elevator, he'd speed dial the silent detonator and the revolution would be over before anybody even suspected it had started. The very thought that he could kill billions with the push of a button gave him a special kind of thrill, but not nearly as much as the knowledge that his vaccine would make him a savior to the rest of the surviving world.

He slipped the phone back in his pocket, next to the folded Newburgh Treaty.

"Dr. Seavers!"

Seavers turned to see the enthusiastic head of the Olympic delegation, Dr. Ling, walk up with a smile. "I saw you yesterday at the president's prayer breakfast. Very moving."

Seavers smiled, assuming Dr. Ling was being polite and that the Chinese had learned from the mistakes of the former Soviet Union when its leaders allowed a Polish pope and a cowboy American president to undermine their entire empire and bring it to collapse. The only reason he didn't release the virus at the prayer breakfast-his first choice-was that it was too easy to trace back to him as "ground zero." This plan was much simpler: The Chinese Olympic delegation would go up to the observation deck to enjoy the fireworks and by the time they came back down they'd be infected with the weaponized bird flu virus. The virus would incubate for 28 days until it made its day-and-date world premiere at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing. From there it would fan across the world. And everybody would blame the Chinese.

Genius, he thought.

"Well, if you liked the breakfast, Dr. Ling, just wait until you see the fireworks! The National Symphony Orchestra plays Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture' for the finale. The piece is accompanied by live cannons-four 105mm Howitzers set off by the U.S. Army Presidential Salute Battery."

Seavers led a delighted Ling and the small line of Olympic officials to the monument's new elevator. The glass cab held 25 passengers, and would take 70 seconds to go up to the observation deck at the 500-foot level. Special panels in the doors were timed to turn from opaque to clear at the 180-, 170-, 140-, and 130-foot levels, allowing passengers to view the 193 commemorative Masonic stones that lined the interior of the monument. Seavers, however, knew from a secret DARPA report filed during the Griffin Yeats regime that there were really 194 stones. He had yet to figure out which stone was omitted from the official count, let alone unlock its significance. But at this point, he concluded none of that Masonic nonsense mattered anymore.

As the group stepped inside the glass elevator, Dr. Ling shook his head. "My wife is never going to believe this."

"Don't worry, I'll take your picture," Seavers said, holding up his cell phone camera as the doors closed and the elevator began its ascent.