“You heard, Mr. Shaba.”

“Adjusting, Captain.”

“Fire as you bear, Mr. Shaba.”

“Aye, sir.”

Buried in the seventeen-hundred-ton steel turret, black South African gunners sweated and loaded the gaping breeches, shouting and cursing in tune with the clanging hoist machinery, while five decks below, the magazine crew sent up the shells and the silk bags containing the powder. First the conical-nosed twenty-seven-hundred-pound armor-piercing projectile was shoved into the breech’s throat by a power rammer, followed by the powder charge, weighing six hundred pounds. Next the huge downswing carrier breech was twisted shut, providing a gas-tight seal. Then, on command, the great gun spat its devastating vehemence and recoiled four feet into its steel lair.

Fourteen miles away, Donald Fisk was attending the injured truck driver as the incoming freight thundered down from the sky and smashed into the Lincoln Memorial. In one thousandth of a second the hollow ballistic cone on the projectile disintegrated as it crashed into the white marble. Then the heavy slug of hardened steel behind punched its way deep into the memorial and exploded.

To Fisk it seemed the thirty-six Doric columns peeled outward like the petals of a flower before crumbling to the manicured landscape. Then the roof and inner walls collapsed as great chunks of marble bounced down the steps like children’s wooden blocks and a violent burst of white dust spiraled heavenward.

The Iowa 243p>

As the rumble of the explosion trailed off across Washington, Fisk slowly rose to his feet in numbed bewilderment.

“What happened?” shouted the blinded truck driver. “For God’s sake, tell me what’s happening!”

“Don’t panic,” said Fisk. “There’s been another explosion.”

The driver grimaced and clenched his teeth in agony. Nearly thirty splinters of glass had buried themselves in his face. One eye was filled with congealing blood; the other was gone, sliced through to the retina.

Fisk took off his sweatshirt and pressed it in the driver’s hands. “Twist, tear, or bite it if you must to stand the pain, but keep your hands away from your face. I’m going to leave you for a few moments.” He paused as his ears caught the distant sound of approaching sirens. “The police are coming. An ambulance will be right behind them.”

The truck driver nodded and sat on the curb, wadding the shirt in a ball and squeezing the cloth until his knuckles turned ivory. Fisk ran across the traffic circle, strangely ill at ease without something to cover his naked chest. Dodging the jagged chunks of marble that littered the memorial’s stairway, he trotted up to what had once been the doorway facing the mall’s reflecting pool.

Suddenly he stiffened, and stopped in astonishment.

There, amid the vast pile of rubble and the settling dust, the figure of Abraham Lincoln sat virtually unscathed. The walls and roof of the structure had somehow parted as they crumbled, crashing around, but not upon, the nineteen-foot statue.