Fail Safe (26 page)

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 air-borne units to be followed by other strikes as soon as ICBMs and standby 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 per.

suasion.

General Bogan felt an odd and sudden companionthip with Colonel Cascio. He was bitter toward an un

defined 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 Casdo 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 insu&ictions to open regular radio communications."

"And when will that be?" the President asked.

General Bogan calculated quiddy, "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 Casdo was talking in a firm and authoritative voice over the War Room intercom, the heavy crystal ash tray with which he had hit General Bogan still in his hand.

Group Commander Grady flew in total blackness, broken only by a single glowing scope. This scope combined both range and altitude radar results in such a way that it gave a stereoscopic image of the terrain ahead of them. At this altitude and speed the eye could not perceive a hill or tree or power line or smoke stack in sufficient time to take evasive action. But the scope picked out even the smallest raised obstades and projected them blackly on the screen so that Grady merely had to lift the plane at the indicated spots to clear.

Occasionally when the scope showed fifty or sixty miles of dear terrain ahead, he glanced out of the windows into the quiet Russian night. He could see the lights of villages. Trucks and cars moved along highways. Occasionally the lights of a factory would glow in a great complex. Somehow the sight of normal activity disturbed Grady. He knew that a blackout was no protection against a nuclear bomb but it was also clear that the Russians were making no attempt to go to their bomb shelters.

Grady was beyond the point of rational analysis. The stress of fighting off the Soviet attacks, the bitter and blunt fact of watching his own planes go off in great smears of blast and light-all of this had reduced him to a tough, skeletal, and very single-minded person. He knew only one thing: get to the target.

"How is No. 2 plane doing?" he asked the Defensive Operator.

"She is hard to track so low but occasionally I can catch her," the operator said. "She's about fifty miles away and at nine o'clock. I think she may be losing a little speed and might be damaged."

"In a few minutes we will be at lob range. Let me know five minutes before we get there," Grady said. "We can come up on the TBS and find out what shape she is in then."

At lob point the Vindicators could elevate their noses, turn to afterburners, and "lob" their bombs onto the target. The "lob" distance could, dependIng on speed and missiles, range up to fifty miles. If they broke radio silence before that time there was a possibility that the Soviets would launch rockets designed to run the reciprocal of a radio beam and home in on the Vindicators. Once they approached the lob range, however, SAC headquarters wanted to know it, for it was virtually a certainty that the bombs could then be delivered and an evaluation made of the American strike. Past the lob-range point the planes were also free to communicate with one another if they desired.

"Six minutes to lob point," the navigator said. On the terrain scope a long, low range of hills came up slowly. They were twenty miles away and they would be reached in approximately forty seconds. Grady began to lift the nose of the Vindicator slightly.

"We are five minutes to lob point," the navigator

said triumphantly.

• "Turkey 2, Turkey 2," Grady spoke into the TBS

microphone. "This is Turkey 6. What is your condition?"

"Turkey 6, this is Turkey 2," a voice said with remarkable distinctness. "We have suffered some slight wing damage because of shrapnel, but all it has done is

reduce our speed. We are down to 1,350 miles an hour and the drag seems to be even."

"Turkey 2, our condition is excellent," Grady said.

"As far as I know we have not been hit. We are now four minutes to lob point and I am going to report to base."

Grady reached forward and picked up another microphone.

"Ultimate No. 2, Ultimate No. 2." Grady said

crisply. "This is Turkey 6. Do you hear me?"

"We read you five by five," a dear voice said in his ear. "We have a message for you."

"I am not authorized to receive messages," Grady said. "I am merely reporting that we are approaching the lob point and are undamaged."

A new voice broke in over Grady's radio. He recognized it immediately. An involuntary shock went through his body. The voice he heard was that of the President. But it could not be. He glanced at the FailSafe box. The "go" signal was clear and reassuring.

"Colonel Grady, this is the President of the United States, your Commander in Chief. The mission you are flying has been triggered by some mechanical failure. I order you and the other planes under your command to return to your base immediately."

Grady sat stunned, disbelieving. He did not speak. His hand moved toward the radio toggle switch, stopped three inches short. He looked at it. The hand dropped to his knee.

Grady looked at the navigator and then at the defense operator. They had also heard the message. Their eyes were fixed coldly upon Grady. He felt helpless. He was sinking. He wished he were somewhere else-anywhere else. He wanted to cry. His mind moaned a piteous complaint and abdicated; subconscious emo. tions were welling up within him and he was in their

control. He reverted to childlike thoughts. He wanted God. He was a little boy who needed his mother. He wanted to dose his eyes-to dose out this nightmare and open them again as that little boy. He tried. He dosed his eyes. He opened them. No, it was true. The voice came back over the radio at him.

"Colonel Grady, I repeat. This is the President."

Again the distinctive New England accent bored into Grady's consciousness. But this time it had the opposite effect. His mind focused. He saw dearly it was an enemy ruse. How easy the President's voice was to mimic, he thought, remembering the many briefing sessions in which this possibility had been discussed. His nerves steeled. He interrupted the voice briskly: "I am not authorized to receive tactical alterations by voice once past Fail-Safe. What you are telling me I have been specifically ordered not to do."

"I know that, damn it, but this is-" Grady had reached forward and flicked off the radio, leaving the remainder of the President's frantic plea dangling in space.

The War Room was frozen in mid-action like a collection of children stopped rigid in a game of "Statues."

"Gentlemen," said Cascio, ignoring the body of General Bogan at his feet, "I am taking over command of this post at the specific order of the President of the United States. He has long been aware that General Bogan is psychologically unbalanced and he specifically warned me to observe him closely. The negotiations which General Bogan has been conducting with Marshal Nevsky are not authorized by the White House áistl are the acts of a madman. By the direct authority of the President of the United States I now authorize you to take all orders from me."

General Bogan felt a strange sense of wonderment. it was true, he realized dully, that the madman had a great advantage over the sane. Having only moments before walked up to the edge of lunacy himself, Bogan had an almost fatherly appreciation of Cascio's sure intuition. The colonel was performing beautifully, with the marvelous sensitivity to audience which marked the great actor.

General Bogan climbed to his knees, then carefully came to an upright position. He moved slowly, careful not to provoke Cascio into striking him again. General

Bogan looked around the room. There was a balance so delicate that it was almost palpable. Over the months General Bogan had come to know the personalities of the various officers and enlisted men in the War Room. Some of them already had the red of hatred and rebellion in their eyes. They would be willing to follow Cascio. The middle range, the officers who would serve long tenures as light colonels and retire as full colonels, were vacillating. The brighter of the officers, that small fraction destined for a rapid rise and a generalship, had already started to move. They were moving toward Cascio and against him.

But their movements were unnecessary. Out of the gloom of a far corner appeared two Air Force enlisted men wearing brassards and .45-caliber pistols. General Bogan had known that they were there, he had known it for months, but today he had forgotten them. They bad become like furniture. He watched with an awed regard for their capacity to remain silent and invisible for months and then to move with such relentless stalking skill. They came like ballet dancers doing a piece of practiced choreography. They flowed by each chair and desk and person as if this were a daily routine. They came up behind Cascio quietly and with an enormous confidence.

One of the airmen tapped Colonel Cascio on the shoulder. He turned and saw the brassard and at once started to turn his head and to scream into the speaker, but his hand was empty. The other airman, with a blow that was swift and precise, had chopped at Cas. do's wrist. The speaker had flipped neatly into the airman's hand. Cascio was screaming into an empty palm.

"Colonel, if you speak another word, our orders are to render you unconscious," the first airman said, and