Now the world was living on two levels. There was an overt public level and a covert secret level. On the overt level the world’s business proceeded serenely, innocently, and in its normal fashion: men worked, died, loved, and rested in their accustomed ways. But alongside this normal world, and ignored by it, the covert world went about its huge task of bringing two war plans to readiness. At that moment the covert, counterpoised world of war was in a waiting stage; its war dance had come to a high level of preparation and then stood arrested, held in a miraculous balance, a marvelous intricate suspension brought about by suspicions, intentions, information, and lack of information.
They waited. They waited in conference rooms, in war rooms, at rocket silos, in combat information centers on aircraft carriers, on submarines lying in muck at the bottom of the ocean, in fighter planes, in ready rooms, at computing consoles. Even men in motion were waiting. Over Russia fighter planes rose in waves, flew toward the edge of Soviet air space… and waited. Rockets came up from deep pits… and waited. Missiles were trained toward the east… and waited. Radar sets were warmed up… and their operators waited. Conventional antiaircraft weapons were readied and manned… and waited. On two continents whole armies of men, fleets of planes, scores of bizarre weapons were brought to a hair trigger of preparation and carefully restrained.
Everywhere the military muscles and nerves tightened, came to a hard attention. For some it was an ignorant attention: thousands of men did a task they had practiced hundreds of times before without the slightest notion of whether this performance was urgent or casual. Most of the men worked with only a tiny fragment of knowledge. But in a few places there were men who could see the full picture of what was happening, or, worse, what might happen. For these men the waiting was exquisitely painful; the quiet screamed; the peace was agonizing.
One such place was the War Room at Omaha. Every man and instrument in the War Room was at readiness. The place glowed. The lights from thousands of little dials, the merged loom from scores of scopes, and the light from the big world map on the wall had wiped out the pools of shadow.
General Bogan sat at the desk directly in front of the map. He was aware of the many men who were sitting quietly, but tensely, at desks or in front of consoles or watching the faces of various machines. Now the entire operation was working at capacity. Every machine whirred, every man was attentive, there was a beautiful symmetry to the operation. Only one thing was different. That was the sure knowledge that this was reality, the end of practice, the ultimate point.
General Bogan sat quietly at his desk, his eyes watching the motion of various dots across the world map.
“Let’s get a close-up on Group 6,” General Bogan said.
The projection on the map began to change at a dizzy speed, as if a camera were swooping down from some great height. General Bogan marveled at the ingenuity of the machine’s design. Using radar which was housed in one of the satellites launched a few years before, they were able to pick up a radar image of any locality in the world simply by tuning in on different satellites in different locations. This radar picture was then linked to an actual map of the Soviet Union and the progress of runaway Group 6 could be traced.
Group 6 had spread out before the actual penetration of Soviet Russia. To fly too close to one another would increase the chance of two planes being destroyed by an enemy missile. Now Group 6 was a few miles inside the Soviet border, which was drawn in a heavy red line on the projection.
The few men in the War Room who were talking fell silent.
“Put the Soviet fighter planes on the projection,” General Bogan said.
A fleck of small white blips appeared, all of them meticulously grouped on the Soviet side of the red line.
“This is Enemy Defense Performance Desk, General Bogan,” a mechanical voice said. The desk was keyed to come on with an interpretation when its information was projected onto the Big Board. “The No. 6 plane, which carries only defensive equipment and devices has moved into the lead. Apparently it has already launched some masking devices for, as you can see, the Soviet fighters are not grouping at the point where Group 6 crossed the border. On their radars the targets probably appear spread over several hundred miles and they are starting to get blips on a good number of objects without being able to determine which are real and which are decoys.”
“Have they launched missiles of any kind?” General Bogan asked.
“Not yet,” the Enemy Defense Desk said.
At that moment the Soviet fighter command ordered its planes into action. Instantly the Big Board began to blossom. Blips raced up the board, homed on decoys, raced relentlessly down their electronic tracks and then detonated themselves in little mushrooming blips which quickly disappeared.
“The little dots that appear suddenly and then disappear are missiles,” the Enemy Defense expert said. “The largest blips are fighter-bombers which are probably equipped with their own radar and air-to-air missiles. So far none of the antiaircraft shots have been nuclear. They are the conventional warhead. As you can see, our diversion and evasive devices are working well. The No. 6 plane which is now angling away will probably drop a new set of window.”
Each of the planes was equipped with radar-jamming and obscuring devices which were called “window” and were advanced developments from the older strips of foil designed to produce false images on enemy radar screens. The Vindicators also carried other decoys, some of which could be launched by small rockets, and antimissile missiles and automatic devices to detect and identify approaching enemy missiles and compute the precise time for firing the antimissile missiles.
“Right now the Soviet radar is probably picking up some hundreds of blips and they are running each of them down systematically,” the voice went on. “On the scope that you see the decoys have not been projected. Our equipment is programmed to ignore signals from our own window. On the Soviet projection the only thing they are sure of is the location of their own missiles and fighter planes. For the Soviets it is a pretty difficult task, General, trying to follow a couple of hundred blips and vector their own planes in on them over air space of several million cubic miles.”
General Bogan felt an odd mixture of pride and helplessness. For years every man in the room, every piece of machinery, had worked and drilled and practiced for the first terrible moment of action. Now it had begun. But there was a bewildering difference. When this magnificently balanced mechanism was being perfected, no one had ever contemplated that it would be used to counter some terrible mistake. Even so, General Bogan could not restrain a sense of admiration for the efficiency with which the Vindicator bombers were feinting, fighting back, and pushing on the attack.
He could not put down a sense of guilt. If the attack had been legitimately ordered the Vindicators would be receiving help. A B-52 especially equipped with jamming equipment and more elaborate decoys than the Vindicators could carry would be accompanying them. Jamming and masking devices located around the borders of the Soviet Union would have gone into action. But these parts of the mechanism had been ordered to stand down. The Vindicators were fighting through entirely on their own. General Bogan also felt a deeper uneasiness. If he were able to give the Soviets the information he had, their chances of shooting down the Vindicators would be greatly increased. But he forced the idea down into some black recess of his mind.
“How much of their defensive armament have the Vindicators had to fire so far?” General Bogan asked.
“So far they have been following standard operating procedure with No. 6 plane firing air-to-air missiles at any missile or plane that is closing a real target,” the mechanical voice said. “No. 6 has run through 55 per cent of her armament. The other planes each have a full load of air-to-air missiles.”
On the screen one of the Soviet fighters suddenly altered direction and started to fly directly at the lead plane in the Vindicator formation. The two planes were closing on one another at a combined speed of over 3,000 miles per hour. General Bogan felt his chest go tight. His viscera warred with his mind. His mind willed that the Soviet fighter would be successful. His viscera, conditioned by years of training, was knotted in a desperate sympathy with the Vindicator.
Suddenly the decision was made. A small blip fell away from the No. 6 plane, hung suspended for a moment, and then, like a meteorite trailing a miniature phosphorescent tail, it began to speed toward the Soviet fighter. It was a Bloodhound and General Bogan estimated that its speed was over 1,500 miles an hour. The Soviet fighter suddenly began to zigzag in the air as some mechanism aboard the plane sensed the rush of the missile. Finally, when the Bloodhound was only a few miles from the Soviet bomber, the Soviet fighter itself dropped an air-to-air missile which turned in the direction of the Bloodhound. It was too late. In the next second there was a great mushrooming blotch on the scene. The warhead of the Bloodhound had gone off. The Soviet air-to-air missile and fighter and Bloodhound all disappeared in the blotch. The American bomber veered away from the blotch, which spread out like a green, dangerous fungus growth. Then abruptly it dimmed and the blotch disappeared.
“Jesus, I’ll bet the crew on that Vindicator got a shaking up,” a voice said in the rear of the room.
North of the Vindicators another Soviet fighter suddenly altered course and was joined by a second. They both ran down their electronic tracks, stalking the invisible targets. No. 6 plane veered toward them, but at that moment each of the Soviet fighters released two air-to-air missiles. They streaked, amoebalike but at great speed, toward the closest Vindicator. The attacked Vindicator and No. 6 simultaneously loosed a total of six air-to-air missiles toward the two fighters. The four Soviet missiles came at a much slower speed. The Vindicator missiles sped toward the Soviet missiles, wavered a moment, and then went on toward the larger targets.
“Oh, Christ,” Colonel Cascio whispered. “They went right by the missiles.”
Two seconds later the two Soviet fighters went up in a rolling green blip. But their four missiles continued to bore in. The attacked Vindicator began to jink in the air, rapidly altering course and altitude. It also shot off four more missiles. But the Soviet missiles were too close. They closed on the Vindicator, seemed to converge and then the Vindicator disappeared in the explosion.
There was utter silence in the War Room. It was the first time that most of the men had “seen” a plane destroyed. For General Bogan it was not. In World War II he had seen planes destroyed on radar and with his own eyes. Now, he knew, was the time to establish the mood of the War Room. He turned on the intercom so that everyone in the room could hear him.
“Apparently the Soviets have a very slow missile which compensates by a long range,” he said distinctly. “That is a longer range than we had calculated their missiles possessed. The computing systems built into our air-to-air missiles detected the four Soviet air-to-air missiles, but ‘calculated’ that they were moving so slowly that they must be drones or reconnaissance planes, and so they ignored them and continued toward the Soviet fighters. You can’t win ’em all.”
Instantly he was aware of the unintended irony. The Vindicators must lose, must all be destroyed, or God knew what might happen. But all his deepest reflexes were with the Vindicators. They were his. He felt slightly sick, torn by crosscurrents of loyalty and of logic.
“General, it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” someone said to him.
He turned and it was Raskob standing with his legs apart, a dead cigar in his mouth, staring at the board. Even in the dim light, General Bogan could see that Raskob was very pale.
“You’re right, sir, it’s going to get much worse,” General Bogan said.
“Will all our men hold firm?” Raskob asked. “Not just the ones here, but the ones in the air? After all, those are our men getting killed out there and it’s tough just to stand by and watch it. Is anyone likely to crack?”
“Not likely, Congressman Raskob,” General Bogan said. “They’ve been screened, tested, rehearsed, and drilled until they can’t be sure what’s a drill and what’s for real.”
“I hope you’re right, General Bogan,” Raskob said. “I don’t know what the President is doing, but whatever it is he’d better be right. Khrushchev isn’t going to sit around forever and watch those planes move in on Moscow. The whole thing rests on the President’s ability to persuade Khrushchev it was an accident. If he doesn’t, then we’re going to have all-out, 100 percent, slam-bang, hell-bent war. That’s right, isn’t it, General?”
“Yes, sir, that is right,” General Bogan said.
He felt a sudden sympathy with Raskob. He was a tough man, quick at making calculations and then at facing up to them. It was the first time that General Bogan had faced the fact that everything now rested with the President. Barring some miracle, one or two of the bombers would get through. And if the Soviets did not believe the attack was innocent or made in error they would be forced to respond.
“No notion of how it happened, eh, General?” Raskob asked.
General Bogan felt an odd fuzziness, a thin coating of confusion, slide over his mind.
“No, sir, not the slightest,” he said. “They told us that the system was foolproof. Oh, some parts might break down from time to time, but the whole system would check itself out, they told us.”
“They told you,” Knapp said and there was wonderment in his voice. “Always that unknown they. Those of us who manufactured the gear, who had some notion of what it was being used for—we never told anyone that it was infallible. But somewhere in Washington they had to say it was perfect, that it couldn’t make a mistake. General, there is no such thing as a perfect system and they should have told you that.”
“Look, friend, in Washington you don’t get appropriations and bigger staff and more personnel by saying that what you’re doing is not perfect,” Raskob said roughly. “You stand up in front of the Appropriations Committee and you convince yourself that the system is perfect and then you tell the Committee it is perfect. And there isn’t a mother’s son on that Committee who can say you nay. Because we just ain’t boy geniuses at electronics and all this stuff. So we give them the dough. What the hell else can we do?”
“Nothing, not a thing,” Knapp said. “Except listen to the right people. Look, for years there has been a fellow named Fred Iklé, who has been working with the Rand Corporation and the Air Force on how to reduce war by accident. He has found flaw after flaw in the system, at just the same time that the newspapers were saying it was perfect. Kendrew over in England has talked about accidental war for years—loud and clear. So have dozens of others. Most of us, the best of us on the civilian side,” and he spoke without pride, “we knew that a perfect system is impossible. The mistake was that no one told the public and the Congress.”
“What should we have done?” Colonel Cascio said suddenly, and his voice held a kind of baffled anger. “Just sit on our duffs while our enemy goes ahead and arms to the teeth and finally gets to a position where he can tell us to surrender and we know we have to do it?”
“No, son, we had to do what we did,” Raskob said wearily. “In politics if you sit still you are dead. I guess it’s the same in the military game. But maybe we should have recognized that past a certain point the whole damned thing was silly.”
General Bogan sensed that Knapp was in a terrible agony. His hunched and hard-driven body, his burning eyes, his ravished face, looked like a statue of anxiety. General Bogan could guess the reason: much of the machinery in that room had been developed and manufactured by Knapp and he had carried the burden of knowledge within him that it was far from foolproof. Right now he was wondering why he had not spoken out.
Only Raskob, the politically toughened man, could see the other side. His eyes remained glued on the board and when he spoke his voice was a mixture of pity and hard-bitten reality.
“Well—that’s one bomber gone. If those Soviet fighters start shaping up a bit maybe we can avoid the worst.”
The small group felt rather than saw Colonel Cascio turn in his chair. His eyes burned up at Raskob. He was oddly bent as if his body were undergoing an invisible physical torture. He did not speak, he only stared with hatred at Raskob.
Raskob looked down at him without emotion.
“There can be much worse things than the loss of six bombers, son,” Raskob said. “It’s a pity that those eighteen men have to fight their way in and probably get killed in the process. But think a minute about all of the people, millions and billions of them, all around the world, walking around in total ignorance that they might be killed in the next few hours. Do you ever think about them? Well, that’s what politics is all about and that poor guy in the White House who has to make the big decision knows that.”
Colonel Cascio’s eyes did not change. He blinked once and then turned back to his controls.
The remaining five Vindicators were now widely scattered, but in a carefully calculated dispersion. Each was at the maximum range at which they could protect one another and be protected by the No. 6 plane. Still they were so dispersed that no single Soviet shot could down two of them.
“How are the Soviet fighters doing?” General Bogan asked, still on the intercom.
The Enemy Defense Desk responded at once.
“Apparently, General, they are badly confused by our masking and window,” the voice said. “They have not yet started to concentrate on Group 6. They are still scattered, chasing decoys.”
Somewhere in the War Room a voice cheered and instantly was joined by a score of others. General Bogan felt a kind of exultation start in his own throat, but quickly repressed it. There was a strange perversion about his feelings, a heightened sense of paradox. Again the thought flicked in and out of his mind that he, standing before the board in the War Room, could help the Russians distinguish between plane and decoy. When he spoke there was a hard lash in his voice.
“Let’s knock that off,” he said. “This is no God-damned football game.” There was instant silence. “Remember that. It might get hard in the next few hours.”
He looked around and saw the glint of resentment in a dozen eyes, shoulders hunched with anger. They were well trained, but not for this sort of incredible game.
“How much of her defensive gear does No. 6 still have?” General Bogan asked.
“Twenty-five per cent,” the voice said. “She is slowing down the rate of defensive fire, apparently to conserve missiles for the run on Moscow.”
On the southern flank of the Vindicators a Soviet fighter began to firm up on an intercepting course toward the closest Vindicator. The Vindicator turned away, but the Soviet blip also altered course. They would still make an intercept.
“Fire, fire,” a voice said very close to General Bogan. He looked over and saw it was Colonel Cascio. He was half out of his chair, his teeth wet and prominent, his lips drawn back. “Fire before the bastard gets one of those long slow ones off at you.”
“Colonel, if you say one more word like that I will throw you out of this room and have you court-martialed,” General Bogan said in a low voice.
No one else in the War Room had heard the exchange.
Colonel Cascio whirled in his half-bent posture, like a boxer badly hurt and covering. He stared at General Bogan and then his eyes cleared. He sat down.
The Soviet fighter was joined by three other fighters and they formed a long box formation as they ran down their intercept. The Vindicator jinked once more. So did the Soviet fighters. Instantly the Vindicator fired four missiles. The Soviet planes each fired a single missile and continued to speed toward the Vindicator. At the same moment their detection gear told them they were fired upon and the Soviet fighters turned sharply away. It was too late. Five seconds later all of them were destroyed. But their four missiles ran with an agonizing slowness toward the Vindicator. It turned and ran, but was not fast enough. The missiles came in remorselessly. Again there was the merging, again the slow, exploding, engulfing blip.
General Bogan felt his fingertips shaking against his trousers. He felt for a moment as if he were being exposed to some strange torture; some spikelike split of his allegiance; some rupturing of his life. He yearned for the bottle of whisky in a faraway office.
As if by order, the breaths of two-score men were released from their lungs. It made a weird contrapuntal chorus of sighs. Congressman Raskob muttered something to himself. It sounded like “Four more to go.”