Ryne Pearson - Capitol Punishment

“Chuck’s out. You want to leave a message?”

“Uh, this is Billy in research. Mr. Heidell wanted me to pull any stories on a specific address for him. He wanted to see any accompanying photos, I guess. But I don’t know where the house is.”

“Billy…are you new here?”

“Yes…”

“I thought so, because if Chuck ever heard you calling him mister he’d eat you for lunch.”

“Oh. Okay. I didn’t—”

“Yeah, all right. So you need, what, an address?”

“Yes. He said it’s the secretary of state’s house.”

“Hang on.”

It was that simple? Stanley wondered if he could bluff his way into the White House. His dad would love that. Probably.

“You got a pen.”

“Yeah,” said “Billy.” Stanley copied the address onto the margin of the Post and thanked the photo desk. He was back in his car and heading across the Roosevelt Bridge ten minutes later, this time going north on the GW Parkway to the Lee Highway. Falls Church, Virginia, was eight miles distant.

Hillsborough Drive curved off of Lee Highway just past the Leesburg Pike. Stanley slowed the cream-colored Toyota as he entered the residential street, both because of the speed limit and to admire the beautiful homes. Fashionable , they were called, but the younger Barrish boy had no point of reference for comparison. He’d never lived in, or near, houses like those he was passing. They were huge, many with red brick facades that seemed calming somehow. At least he thought so.

He was not there to admire, though, and such idle thoughts would only remove focus from his task. He was there to look for one house. Just one.

But he almost missed it, the address placard blocked by a phone company truck parked facing the wrong way. Stanley passed the address, noticed he’d skipped a number, then backed up, stopping just feet from a phone company worker at the back of the open van. Phone Company? He looked up at the fine Tudor-style house beyond the natural carpet of green. Number 695. Mr. Secretary’s house. And some phone trouble to boot… Or, maybe…

“Hey, buddy.”

The phone worker looked left to Stanley. “Yeah.”

“My folks live down the street,” Stanley lied. At least this one didn’t require that a false name be used. “Is there phone trouble?”

“Nah. Just adding some lines here.”

Stanley nodded, and as he did a second workman emerged from number 695 Hillsborough Drive, coming down the meandering walk to the truck. A smile joined the nod. “Great. Thanks a lot.”

Adding lines? I wonder why they’re doing that? Stanley asked himself as he steered the Toyota back toward Lee Highway. He didn’t have to think long to convince himself of the answer.

Almost two weeks it had taken. Now, though, they were ready for final assembly.

“Give me the cylinder,” John said.

Toby handed the small tank of destruction to his father with one hand. John accepted it with two and slid it into the padded skeletal frame he’d carefully constructed from the lightest, strongest metal he could get his hands on: titanium.

Weight. That had been the determining factor in how to do it. The plan was simple enough; get the cylinder of VZ into Vorhees’s leg and he’d unknowingly get it into the State of the Union for them. A timer would do the rest after that. Predicting when a speech would start and end was not that difficult in the era of network television. The president would start at a certain time, or reasonably close to it, and word had already leaked out that the chief executive, a debater from his college days, was going to break the one-hour mark with this speech. It was backwards determination. Pick a time somewhere in the window of opportunity and subtract a hundred hours — the maximum length of the digital timer they’d chosen — and the “package” would go off at the appointed minute. There were other considerations, such as how to get the good congressman to switch limbs, but that had been taken care of…or would be very soon. All would work as planned.

Getting to this point with the package, though, had been a test of skill and ingenuity. The prosthetic limb Toby had acquired weighed in at six pounds even, the majority of which was the inch-diameter steel support column running from the metal ball joint — or ankle — to the cup in which the stump rested. This steel column was concealed in a hollow plastic form that approximated the shape of the human calf. That was cut away carefully for later replacement, giving access to the column. The first problem was this steel rod. It was in the way, making it impossible to fit the cylinder of VZ in the limb. The other consideration was weight. Even if there were room, the added mass of the cylinder would surely convince the congressman that something was amiss.

The only solution then was to replace one with the other. The rod, as severed just below the cup connector and above the ball joint — leaving three quarters of an inch on each as a base for connection — weighed in at three pounds and four ounces. The cylinder of VZ and its associated timing and release equipment tipped the scales at two pounds and twelve ounces. An eight-ounce difference. John figured they could afford an extra half-pound without changing the feel of the limb too much. Vorhees, after all, had probably not worn it since getting his newer, lighter limb thirteen months earlier. It would be somewhat unfamiliar even to him.

Sixteen ounces. One pound. That was what John had to work with to replace the structural service of the support column, while providing room for the cylinder of VZ. He first considered actually using the cylinder as part of the new support column, but discarded that thought after being unable to convince himself that it would not damage the workings of the release and timing mechanisms. He knew all this should have been thought of before Kostin chose the cylinders and filled them, but that was the past. He now had to make the best of what he had. And he finally came up with a solution. It came to him while staring at, not out, a window.

As any carpenter worth his salt knows, when one wishes to place a window in a previously untouched wall, there is the consideration of load that must be addressed. Walls in general home construction are made of a series of studs that run vertically, parallel to each other about sixteen inches apart. These studs form part of the support system of the structure, transferring the load of the roof or stories above to the foundation below. When cutting a window into a wall, several of these studs have to be removed to make an opening of the desired size. This leaves the top portions of the studs hanging, unable to transfer their share of the load to the foundation, and the bottom portions jutting up uselessly. It is the top portions that are critical, though, and the solution to the problem is something called a header. Simply, it is a horizontal piece of lumber, running between the complete outer studs and connecting to the dangling studs, allowing the weight they carry to be transferred to the foundation through the full studs supporting the header. The header allows the load to be transferred around the empty space.

Why not in his mini-construction project? John had thought. No reason at all , was the answer.

To achieve the transfer of load from the cup to the ankle he chose to create a metallic header of titanium that would curve over the top of the cylinder, looking much like the skeletal framework of a dome. This “dome” header then would mate with a skeletal tube, also of titanium, that had a slightly larger interior dimension than the outer dimension of the cylinder. The tube’s bottom was a slightly less curved “foundation” of titanium that was mated to the ankle joint. The design simply took the load around the cylinder as a header and studs carry it around a window opening.