On General Bogan’s desk was a “touch” phone which had not been operated in all the time that he had been at Omaha. One operated it merely by touching a button, and out of a small square box the voice at the other end of the line came out magnified and enlarged.
This particular “touch” phone was reserved for the possibility of direct communication with any potential enemy military leaders.
A peculiar aura surrounded it. It was like a piece of contaminated equipment, oddly disconcerting, unnerving, contradictory. The men who tested it did so with distaste. While almost every other piece of equipment in the room was associated with some man, was his “personal” equipment, no one wanted to be associated with the touch telephone. It was almost like the physical presence of the enemy in the War Room. Everyone knew that the phone could not actually overhear them, that it had to be passed through a number of careful checks before it was actually operative, but even so it was a totem of the enemy, awesome, ill-regarded.
Several minutes before, General Bogan had received a call from one of the President’s aides telling him to activate the touch phone as arrangements were being made for direct radio communication with Soviet tactical officers in Russia. Now the light below the touch button glowed red. General Bogan quietly reached forward and pushed the button. There was utter silence in the room. Even those men who were out of hearing range watched tensely.
“General Bogan, Strategic Air Command, Omaha, here,” General Bogan said.
There was a slight static, then a voice spoke in flawless English.
“I am the translator for Marshal Nevsky, Soviet Air Defense Command,” the voice said. “Marshal Nevsky sends his greetings. He tells you that reception here on our end is five by five. How do you read us?”
“We read you five by five,” General Bogan said. “I have no instructions on what we are to discuss. Have you received instructions, Marshal Nevsky?”
The translator spoke Russian very rapidly. An even strong voice replied.
“We have received no instructions, General,” the translator said. “Only that we should set up communications with your headquarters.”
Then there was silence. Colonel Cascio moved his eyes from General Bogan’s face to the touch phone. He seemed mesmerized, fascinated, by something enormously seductive, but also revolting. The red phone rang.
“General Bogan, this is the President and I should like you to put this call on your intercom so that everyone in the room can hear what I say,” the President said. “I should also like you to open your touch phone to the Soviet Air Command so that they also can hear me.”
“One moment, Mr. President,” General Bogan said. He turned to Colonel Cascio and gave instructions. The arrangements took only ten seconds.
“Mr. President, when you speak your voice will be heard by everyone,” General Bogan said.
“Gentlemen, this is the President,” the President began and his strong young voice rang through the room, drowning out the endless hum of the machines. The men had, quite unconsciously, all come to attention, their thumbs neatly lined alongside the seams of their trousers, their eyes staring straight ahead. “What I am saying can be heard by the Soviet Air Command, Premier Khrushchev’s personal staff in the Kremlin, our Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon, our SAC group in Omaha, our Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and the Soviet delegate to the United Nations. Whatever orders I give to American military or civilian personnel are to be considered as direct personal orders from the Commander in Chief. They are to be obeyed fully, without reservation and instantly.”
The President paused. General Bogan looked around the room. He had a sense of unreality, a kind of smoky twisting in his mind, a surrealistic sense of things dissolving. The whole thing was dreamlike, but it was iron hard and inescapable. There was no possibility of awakening to something else.
“We are caught in a desperate situation,” the President said slowly and emphatically. Over the touch phone General Bogan could hear small hushed Russian voices translating. “By some sort of error, probably mechanical, a group of American bombers has penetrated Soviet air space. It is our best estimate that they will try to press home an attack on Moscow. Each of the bombers is equipped with two 20-megaton bombs. Though all of the planes are under heavy attack from Soviet defenses, in all probability at least two of these bombers will get through. This is a tragic mistake. It is not, I repeat, not, our intention to engage the Soviet Union in warfare. Premier Khrushchev is, at this moment, en route to a headquarters located outside of Moscow. When he again contacts me I will do everything in my power to persuade him of our sincerity.”
Again the President paused. When he resumed speaking his voice was so slow that each word seemed to dangle.
“Those of us on this hookup are the only people who can save the world from an atomic holocaust,” he said. “We must all do everything possible to prevent our planes from attacking Moscow. At the same time, we must make it absolutely clear to the Russians that this is an accident and in no way part of or prelude to an American attack. Already I have done everything I can by myself to achieve these two goals. Recall of our planes has proved impossible, but it has been constantly attempted. All other American offensive and defensive forces have been withdrawn from Condition Red. This the Russians were able to verify on their monitoring systems. The Russians now concede that their Air Defense Command may not be able to intercept our Group 6. They have a momentous decision to make: should they order a retaliatory attack against the United States? Premier Khrushchev tells me that some of his military leaders favor such an attack.” The voice paused or faltered and then came on again. “This is understandable.”
Colonel Cascio listened, immediately understood, and was filled with a terrible confusion. He knew that in the position of these outraged Russian officers he would feel the same way. Cascio glanced around the room. Everyone was immobilized by the strangeness of the situation.
The President’s voice continued, “Premier Khrushchev has behaved as I believe I would under similar conditions. He has delayed retaliation. And I think he believes that this is an accident. But we must convince him, and his chief advisers, that it is. I order every American to cooperate fully with Soviet officers in whatever attempts they make to shoot down our invading bombers. This is a firm and unalterable command. You are to give whatever information the Soviet officers may request of you. Let me emphasize that any hesitation, any withholding of information, may have the most tragic consequences. Are there any questions?”
The President paused. There were no questions.
“Gentlemen, I wish you success,” the President said. “This is a difficult situation for all of us. I expect you to conduct yourselves as patriots and to carry out my orders without hesitation.”
The President’s line clicked dead.
General Bogan turned to look at Colonel Cascio. Cascio’s eyes were green and they had a hard glow in the dim light.
Suddenly a voice came up on the “touch” phone. It was the voice of the Russian translator in the Soviet Union.
“Does the Bloodhound have both infrared and radar homing capabilities?” he asked. “A number of our fighter planes have been destroyed by a missile which seems to home not on the infrared source, but the radar transmitter. Is that possible?”
“Colonel Cascio will answer your question, sir,” General Bogan said. He nodded at Cascio.
Colonel Cascio looked at General Bogan. Even in the dim light General Bogan could tell that the blood had drained from Cascio’s face. His eyes rolled slightly in his head. Then his throat began to work as if the muscles were out of control, seized by a convulsion. It was the throat of a man sobbing, but no sound came from Colonel Cascio’s lips. He shook his head. His hand reached for the button below the “touch” phone and then, his finger only an inch from the button, he went rigid. His entire body seemed frozen, gripped by a spasm of immobility. He did not tremble, he did not speak, he simply arched into a posture that ached with tension.
General Bogan felt nausea rise in his stomach. He was not an emotional man, he knew he lacked intuition. But he understood perfectly the awful thing he was watching. For years Colonel Cascio had been trained to guard information, to be secretive, to be suspicious of the Soviets. For half his life he had carried in his mind facts that bore the words TOP SECRET, and, with a tireless and unending diligence, he had locked them into a private part of his brain. And now he was asked to reverse all these reflexes, to shatter the training of a lifetime. But he had also been trained to obey orders, any orders which came from legitimate superiors. All of this was too much and Colonel Cascio was locked in a dilemma so cruel and sharp that he could not move.
General Bogan reached out and touched Colonel Cascio’s arm. It was like touching marble. With his other hand General Bogan punched the “touch” button.
“Answer the question, Colonel,” General Bogan said. He spoke in a firm imperative voice. “The Soviets are listening to what I am saying.”
Around the War Room the tension became a pressure on the eardrums.
“That is a direct order,” General Bogan said.
Colonel Cascio’s mouth opened. The lips came back from the teeth. He swung his unseeing eyes toward General Bogan.
“A direct order,” General Bogan repeated softly.
Colonel Cascio made a sound. It was low, primitive, agonized. It was a growl of despair. His body relaxed. He shook his head.
“Marshal Nevsky, the Colonel who is our expert on this subject has suffered some sort of seizure,” General Bogan said. The translator spoke and over the “touch” phone there was a muttering of voices that grew in volume as Bogan listened. “We have prepared for such situations. Each of the men in the War Room has a stand-by who possesses the precise information which the active-duty man possesses.” General Bogan paused. He looked around the room. Lieutenant Colonel Handel was there, Cascio’s understudy. But Handel’s eyes were glued on Cascio. They were close friends.
General Bogan struggled to keep control, to think clearly. He must quiet what he guessed was a rising suspicion in the distant Soviet headquarters. There could be no chancing a repetition of Cascio’s behavior. His finger started down a list of names. He skipped over Handel and stopped at the master sergeant who backed up both colonels.
“Sergeant Collins, report to the Commanding General’s desk at once,” he said.
A door at the side of the War Room opened and a sergeant, rotund and middle-aged, came trotting toward the general’s desk. He came to a stiff halt.
“Sergeant Collins, does the Bloodhound have both an infrared- and radar-seeking capacity?” General Bogan said.
“Yes, sir, it has both capacities,” Collins said, a cherubic smile on his face.
“Can the radar-seeking mechanism be overloaded by increasing the strength of the signal?” the Russian translator said quickly. The voices in the background of the Soviet headquarters had died away.
General Bogan felt his body sag. Apparently they had decided to believe him.
“Yes, sir, it can be overloaded by increasing the transmission power output and by sliding through radar frequencies as quickly as possible,” Sergeant Collins said. He was still smiling his anxious cherubic smile, quite unaware of the other men in the room staring at him, quite oblivious that he was unwittingly playing the role of Judas. “What happens is that the firing mechanism reads the higher amperage as proximity to the target and detonates the warhead.”
“Thank you, General Bogan,” the translator said quietly. “We have already communicated the information. We have rearranged our communications net so that tactical defensive maneuvers are controlled from this room.”
General Bogan realized with a quick simple insight that with the new communication network his War Room was actually directing the defensive operations of the Soviets.
The new information was reflected almost instantly on the Big Board. Two Soviet blips began to move toward one of the Vindicators. When they were five miles distant the Vindicator dropped two tiny blips and the Bloodhounds hung almost motionless as their rockets began to ignite. They had barely separated from the bigger blip of the Vindicator when they were detonated by the information which Sergeant Collins had transmitted. Instantly the green funguslike splotch on the Big Board enveloped the Vindicator. Then the ugly blip exploded into enormousness. The two Soviet fighters were caught in the spreading blast and disappeared.
The light on the “touch” phone went off. Sergeant Collins turned and walked slowly from the room, seeming to deflate as he went.
General Bogan looked at Colonel Cascio. The recovery was unbelievable. The man seemed relaxed, the hard glitter gone from his eyes. He appeared perfectly normal and spoke apologetically about what had just taken place.
“I am sorry, General,” he said. “I just could not do it. I don’t quite remember what happened. The back of my eyes seemed to turn white and I couldn’t see anything or say anything. I think I am all right now.”
“Colonel, it could happen to anyone,” General Bogan said. He knew this to be untrue, as did Cascio. Actually General Bogan was watching his colonel carefully. He considered the possibility of replacing him with Sergeant Collins. In theory Collins knew as much as Cascio about technical details. But Colonel Cascio, by a combination of training, intuition, and skill, was a much more valuable person. General Bogan knew he would have to keep him on the desk. He was turning away when Cascio grabbed his arm.
“General, I think it is a Soviet entrapment,” Cascio said tensely. His voice was tight but under control. “We’ve known for weeks that they have been fooling around with our Fail-Safe mechanism. I think they wanted this to happen. I think we should tell the President that we think it is an entrapment, that the Soviets are using the time to ready their ICBMs and to fly their bombers to advantageous position for a second strike.”
“But we do not have any evidence that they are moving their bombers,” General Bogan said sharply.
“But, General, they might be flying bombers in the grass,” Cascio said with urgency. “For all we know they might have hundreds of planes, already over the Arctic and heading for us. Also they may have fired ICBMs and put them in the trajectories of the known and identified satellites. Remember, sir, we computed that problem and decided that satellites could be used to mask ICBMs.”
“Maybe, but I am not going to report anything that I do not know for sure,” General Bogan said.
“I think we should recommend a full-strength strike immediately by all airborne units to be followed by other strikes as soon as ICBMs and stand-by units can be activated,” Colonel Cascio said.
“That decision rests with the Pentagon and the President,” General Bogan said slowly.
“Look, General, those people at the Pentagon don’t know the situation the way we know it,” Colonel Cascio said. “They have secondhand information, they are not trained to evaluate an enemy who knows every trick in the book. They are in the political game. So is the President. We, those of us in this room, we are in the war business. We know it better than anyone else. If we move now and decisively we can still save the situation. Even though we’ve backed down from Condition Red we have enough bombers in the air to launch a crippling first strike. As you can see on the Big Board, the Soviets don’t have anywhere near the defensive capacity we thought they might have.”
General Bogan’s head ached. He felt as if the neurons of his brain had begun to burn, like filaments that were overburdened with electricity. He stared at the Big Board and the blips and signs seemed like enormous and threatening mysteries. By a single action, one command, he could simplify everything. He sat down.
Colonel Cascio went on talking, but General Bogan did not hear the precise words, only the sound of persuasion.
General Bogan felt an odd and sudden companionship with Colonel Cascio. He was bitter toward an undefined authority, toward the “they” in Washington who had overburdened him. He turned in the chair. He felt smaller, more secure, more elemental. His fingers knotted into fists, his mouth opened slightly and gasped for air. He felt a terrible self-pity, an infantile sense of being asked to do too much. His body curled in the chair, he felt saliva gather in the corners of his mouth. He had the sensation that he could remember nothing of what he had just heard. His memory stopped and was only a second long. With a sense of relief he felt a sensuous sliding away into irresponsibility, into numbness, into something primordial. He felt a gurgle begin in his chest, a kind of primitive and very comforting voice. He felt warm, enclosed, removed. The sound reached his lips.
Then Colonel Cascio turned and looked at him full face. That look was enough. For a change had taken place. The hard, fixed stare was back in Cascio’s eyes. Colonel Cascio was mad, crazy. The heat was gone from General Bogan’s mind. Slowly he came to an upright position. He smiled the smile of a civilized man at Colonel Cascio.
“Colonel, you may not be aware of it, but you are talking mutiny,” General Bogan said quietly. “One more exchange like this and I will have you taken from the War Room.”
Colonel Cascio nodded, but his expression remained rigid.
The President’s voice flooded back into the room, “General Bogan, will Group 6 break radio silence as they approach Moscow?”
“Yes, sir, just before they get within lob-range of their target they have instructions to open regular radio communications.”
“And when will that be?” the President asked.
General Bogan calculated quickly, “Well, sir, it should be just about any time now.”
“Very well,” said the President, “make arrangements for me to talk personally with the commanding officer of Group 6 as soon as he reopens radio communications.”
“Very well, sir.” Bogan pointed a silent order to Lieutenant Colonel Handel, who rushed from the room to make the necessary arrangements.
The light on the “touch” phone went on. A voice spoke quickly in Russian, the translator overriding the Russian, translating even as the other voice spoke.
“This is Marshal Nevsky in Ziev,” the voice said. “We recently developed a radar-masking device which is installed on all our bombers. It picks up enemy radar signals and automatically distorts them. When your radar signal comes back it has been skewed anywhere from five to one hundred miles. We assume your planes have similar devices. Does your detection apparatus also pick up an incorrect location?”
“No, sir,” General Bogan said. “On our plotting boards we have the correct latitude and longitude of our planes because of a compensating device on our radar which automatically corrects the radar signal which comes back from our planes.”
General Bogan knew what the next question would be.
“Can you give us the longitude and latitude of the three planes left in the air?” Marshal Nevsky asked.
“We can do that, but we cannot give you their altitude,” General Bogan said. “We have not been able to correct our altitude-determining radar to compensate for the distorting signals from the planes.”
“Will you please give us the position of the three planes?” Marshal Nevsky asked. “We can fly fighters at various altitudes once we know their approximate position.”
General Bogan felt weary. He leaned forward to push the lever which would open the intercom to the appropriate desk-console. Suddenly there was a stunning pain against his skull, a ringing in his ears; the room reeled and he had the quixotic impression that electricity had suddenly poured out of the telephone into his head. He was on the floor staring up at the lean contorted face of Colonel Cascio. And Cascio was talking in a firm and authoritative voice over the War Room intercom, the heavy crystal ashtray with which he had hit General Bogan still in his hand.