The War Cloud

9

More than 200 students from the Presidential Classroom for Young Americans crowded beneath the rotunda around the gold display showcasing the U.S. Constitution. Their teacher read from the archives literature.

“Every night at closing time the documents are lowered into a fifty-ton vault designed to protect them from fire, shock, heat, water and nuclear explosion,” Mrs. Chan recited. “The vault was dedicated in 1952 by President Harry Truman, who called it ‘as safe from destruction as anything that the wit of modern man can devise.’”

Suddenly, from down the corridor came a shout.

“Away from the glass!”

Sergeant Wanda Randolph, head of the Capitol Police’s special reconn and tactics or RATS squad that patrolled the underground tunnels the U.S. Capitol Complex, sprinted across the rotunda’s marble floor, waving her 50 caliber sniper rifle at the screaming, fleeing kids.

She tried to radio her man at the Pentagon as she ran, “Omar!”

“We’re on it, boss,” Omar’s voice crackled in her earpiece. “Get yourself some cover!”

“I got a hole to crawl into,” she said. “Just one more thing.”

Using whatever speed was left from her days as a track star at Howard University, Randolph ran the race of her life toward the display, knocking over two kids.

“Hey!” Mrs. Chan yelled.

Randolph hurdled three kids crouched in front of the display in one jump. She unlocked a switch and breathlessly watched the display case sink into the floor and drop hundreds of feet down its shaft.