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17
Clarissa’s Manolo Blahnikboots were not made for walking long distances across DC, not that she had any choice. Her feet rapidly escalated from aching to seriously annoying, almost as irritating as the Nancy Sinatra song itself.
No point hiking the mile and a half to the White House, the Secret Service still had the entire building on lockdown. Drake had promised to get her some answers about the investigation of the two dead bodies found at Joint Base Andrews, but he hadn’t called back yet.
Out of any brilliant ideas of her own, she and Rose had followed Jeremy’s desperate desire to deliver the Gulfstream’s black box recorder to the NTSB headquarters. It was little farther to walk from the George than going to the White House would be, southwest across the core of DC instead of west. Perhaps the stand-still snarl of the immense traffic jam would be easing out there on the periphery of downtown.
For now, they were walking along the National Mall along with everyone else trying to hike out of the city at midnight. The droves of abandoned, fuel-starved vehicles would keep the city’s impound crews busy well into tomorrow.
Groups were sitting on their car hoods with beer or wine from one of the local stores and watching the fire still visible in the distance. A thousand faces all aimed in the same direction like brainless Congressmen blindly following the party line.
Radios blared from cars in a cacophony of stations. Rock and roll, classical, and jazz mixed in the night air.
But the main theme were the news channels. Pundits discussing the:Biggest Fire in DC Since the British Burned the White House in 1814.She could hear them hitting every word with a punch.
The pundits also didn’t know anything. Many of them were so clueless.Kitchen fire, arson,andillegal cigarette smoker who fell asleep in hotel roomwere only a few of the speculations. In the back of a pickup, someone had rigged a large tablet and was running theIndependence Daymovie. They had gathered quite a crowd, and a round of cheers went up when DC was destroyed by an alien laser blast.
Taz and Jeremy laughed. Rose smiled with light amusement. Clarissa wanted to take away their voter privileges…forever!
Only a few pundits were calling it an attack, but those stations were, typically for their standard fare, blaming eitherforeign actorsor, on the loudest played stations,renegade Democrats seeking to overthrow the rule of law.
If ever there was a country in need of a littlelessfreedom of speech, it was her own. They should at least have to pass an intelligence test before being allowed near a broadcast microphone.
It was a long and very annoying walk to the NTSB headquarters building.
