Fail-Safe

by Eugene Burdick

  Grady, Thomas, and Sullivan, grady thought to himself. No good war novel here. The whole damn crew is Anglo-Saxon. What we should have is a Jew in it and an Italian to give color. He almost came up on the intercom to mention this, but stopped himself short. Because of his seniority, Grady had missed the intensive indoctrination which the younger crew members had gone through at various training centers around the United States. He had noticed that they seemed to have almost no sense of humor about their work, and besides, these boys hadn’t read the war novels. For a moment, a quick piercing slice of time, Grady felt like an old man, part of an older generation.

  In the next moment he forgot everything, for Thomas handed him the clipboard with the information that they were a hundred miles from the Fail-Safe point. At once, with a sense of exquisite control which was very deep in. his muscles and his brain, he began a long sweeping curve which would bring him just to the edge of the Fail-Safe point. He knew without having Thomas check that the other five Vindicators had begun to turn with him. This, for Grady, was why he had joined the Air Force. It was an act of pure artistry and it filled him with a thrill of pleasure. He felt the Vindicator tilt, saw the wings move, felt a slight change in pressure against his harness and knew that they had probably lost 125 miles an hour by their long skidding maneuver movement across the sky. Grady hoped that they would stay at the Fail-Safe point for a few minutes this morning. It was the one time when he could still fly the plane with a sense of independence and autonomy. For at the Fail-Safe point the group commander could fly random patterns at random speeds as long as he did not go beyond the Fail-Safe point, and did not vary his altitude by more than 1,000 feet.

  The sun shone jaggedly on the western horizon. It shot out long rays of bright light which illuminated the high darkness, but left the land black. The outline of distant mountains was etched sharp. Once, by some mirage of refraction, a whole glacier flamed blue-white for a moment and then died. The flash of the glacier reminded Grady that the people on the land were still in darkness and it gave him pleasure. In a few more minutes they would be in first light, but now the great altitude of the Vindicators gave them sole possession of the light. The knowledge of dark and lightness allowed Grady a sense of satisfaction. He knew it was a childlike sense of superiority. It meant nothing. But it was precisely for these seemingly childlike reasons that Grady had wanted to fly. This time his pleasure was short. At once he was thinking of the day when planes would fly themselves; when flying would become a combination of engineering and science and men would be merely spectators.

  Quite reflexively, as if to demonstrate his control, he put the Vindicator into a.sharp turn. The enjoyment of it, Grady thought, can be only man’s. Machines could probably do it just as well, but they would have no sense of excitement, no pleasure at the beauty of the six planes holding their positions while traveling at high speeds. The outboard planes, with longer sweep to cover, would put on just enough speed to maintain the V-shape.

  “Sullivan, how is the group holding formation?” Grady asked over the intercom.

  “Perfectly, sir,” Sullivan said instantly. “Even No. 6 is not out of position by more than five yards.”

  Grady smiled behind his oxygen mask. He must remember to compliment Flynn, the pilot of No. 6, when they landed. The No. 6 plane labored under a special disadvantage. Although she carried no thermonuclear weapons, the No. 6 plane was, paradoxically, the most heavily laden of any plane in the group.

  In every group this was the plane that carried a maximum load of defensive apparatus and devices. It was this plane which could jam the enemy radar gear, receive and analyze and attempt to foil enemy attack, spread decoys throughout the skies, and act, as Grady had always figured in his mind, as a wise but tuskless elephant might do in leading a group of muscular young bulls into action. The No. 6 plane was always flown by specialists who thoroughly understood the incredible intricacy of its weird perceptions, methods of analysis, and means of defense.

  Grady moved the yoke and the Vindicator leveled off. The slight strain on his harness relaxed. He glanced around his limited arc of sky and saw it turning from a crystal gray to a deep endless blue. Then he received two signals which made his body go rigid even before his mind understood fully what had happened. In his earphones there was a sudden beeping noise repeated in short staccato bursts. Automatically he looked down at the Fail-Safe box which was installed between him and the bombardier. For the first time in his flying career the bulb on top of the box was glowing red. Then his intellect caught up with his reflexes: this was the real thing. Both he and Thomas looked up from the Fail-Safe box simultaneously. Thomas’ eyes seemed nonchalant. Grady’s response was unhesitating. He reached for the S.S.B. radio switch. This would put him in direct contact with Omaha. It was the Positive Control double-check. mediately, Grady knew, he would hear from Omaha the reassuring “No go.” Something had gone wrong with the Fail-Safe box. It would all be corrected. He flipped on the S.S.B. switch. A loud, pulsating drone filled his ears. No voice signal was possible.

  “Request permission, sir, to verify,” Thomas said crisply.

  “Permission granted,” Grady said automatically.

  To his own ears Grady’s voice sounded small and chilled. He was stunned at the tonelessness in Thomas’ voice, the expressionless look in his eyes.

  Grady reached into the map case beside his seat and took out a pure red envelope which bore in black letters the words “Fail-Safe--Procedure March 18.” Thomas was taking out an identical envelope from his map case. As Grady’s fingers tore open the envelope he Looked at the face of the Fail-Safe box. There were six apertures, each of them about an inch square. Always, until this moment, the apertures had been blank. Now in bold white figures there were three letters and three numbers: CAP-SI 1. The Fail-Safe box was an intricate machine made up of a radio receiving device, plus six wheels, each of which contained either all the letters of the alphabet or the numbers from 1 through 9. When the radio receiver within the box was activated by a direct signal put into the machine by the Intelligence officer on each base and unknown to any crew member,

  letters and numbers would appear in the aperture.

  Grady got his envelope open and took out a thick white 8-by-8-inch card. On the top line was the date and below it were the words and letters CAP-811. He held the card directly over the machine to make sure that he was not mistaken. Thomas, in the meanwhile, had taken out an identical card which he held next to Grady’s. They both confirmed that the machine was showing the correct code sequence for the day.

  “Request permission to authenticate on the secondary channel, sir,” Thomas said.

  “Permission granted,” Grady said.

  Thomas removed a red plastic cover from a dial which was labeled FAIL-SAFE ALTERNATE CRANNEL.

  Without a moment’s hesitation he. turned the dial to the right. Instantly the red light and the beeping stopped. The letters and numbers disappeared from the apertures in the Fail-Safe box. Grady scanned the sky again, felt his musdes bulging against the tight harness. His mind was utterly blank. In three seconds the beeping started and the light went on again. The Fail-Safe box was now receiving its signal on a different channel. When Grady looked at the six apertures they again said “CAP-811.” Again Grady held his card directly over the apertures and Thomas held his card next to Grady’s. They checked.

  Grady felt a spasm of doubt, a kind of upwelling of disbelief. It had never happened before, it could not be happening now. He thought of alternatives: he could not radio General Bogan at Omaha. He could keep circling at Fail-Safe, hoping for some other form of verification. And then he looked at Sullivan and Thomas. They were looking at him casually, their eyes unblinking and unquestioning. They were innocently implacable.

  Grady felt as if his vertebrae had suddenly fused together. His hands did not shake but he felt all bone and muscle and cartilage. He was aware that Thomas was looking at him with something like puzzlement in his exposed eyes.

>   Grady felt that something had happened to the vital living parts of his body-the heart, brain, eyes, ears, and tongue had died. He felt for a moment that he would not be able to speak. He ordered his tongue to move, to speak the words he knew he must say.

  “I read it as CAP-811,” Grady heard his voice say. This was the procedure in which they had been drilled thousands of times, but the voice did not sound like that of Grady. It seemed to come from somewhere in the intercom system, to be a mechanical and inhuman voice.

  “I verify your reading as CAP-811,” Thomas said.

  “We will now both open our operational orders,” Grady said, and again the voice did not seem to belong to him.

  Grady reached down for the envelope in the map case. For a brief second he saw Sullivan looking at him. Again he had the impression of blankness, the eyes without the mouth and with the exposed flesh squeezed tight by mouthpiece and helmet, told nothing. If the masks and helmets were off, Grady thought, would Sullivan’s face be filled with terror? Somehow he doubted it. Sullivan looked back at his tubes and analyzers. Grady began to open the operational plan.

  Squarely on the middle of the envelope containing the plan and in small red block letters were the words Top SECRET. In smaller black letters in the lower lefthand corner was a sentence which said TO BE OPENED ONLY AT SPECIFIC ORDERS AND UNDER CURRENT OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS. In the lower right-hand corner were the words DESTROY BEFORE CAPTURE OR ABANDONMENT OF AIRCRAFT. The flap closing the envelope was sealed at three places. The envelope was well designed to accomplish two purposes: it could not be opened without detection, but it could be opened easily.

  Grady broke the seals and looked at the familiar format of the operational plan. It was all contained on a single stiff piece of paper. The rest of the enclosures were alternative plans, escape mutes, survival techniques, a cellophane-wrapped card which Grady knew gave the names of possible American agents within Russia and which would dissolve into a shapeless piece of cellulose the moment it touched water, even the amount of moisture that one had in his mouth.

  The top line of the plan said: “Target: Moscow.” The second line said “Approach and penetration,” and described the altitude and speeds at which they were to fly. No. 6 plane was to take the lead. There were detailed instructions on what to do under varying conditions of fighter plane, missile, and antiaircraft attack.

  On another line there were instructions as to bomb placement and settings. Under optimum conditions twelve bombs would be laid symmetrically over Moscow to explode at an altitude of 5,000 feet, Vindicators to bomb from an altitude of 60,000 feet.

  In some unguarded and unclassified part of Grady’s mind there was a stunning montage of old motion pictures of bombs exploding at Eniwetok and Los Alamos and Bikini. The twelve great fireballs would gently touch and then feeding upon one another would gradually mold into a huge shuddering second-long unbearable white and heloid shimmer of pure heat. Deliberately, and aware that this vision was part sensual. Grady snapped off the picture. Thomas’ large cool blue eyes were looking at him.

  “Do you want to come up on the TBS, sir?” Thomas said.

  The TBS was a very low-powered radio which would carry only a few miles and was designed for communication between the planes in the group. Its signals were deliberately designed so that they could not be heard beyond a short radius.

  “Just a minute, Thomas,” Grady said. He felt a strong necessity to do something more but was not dear what. A dread sense of lonely helplessness engulfed him. He knew there was only one explanation for his jammed radio and the “go” order on his Fail-Safe box: the Russians had started an attack. Further hesitation might play into Russian hands. He must follow his orders. This was what all his years of training had been about. No time now for doubt& He shook his head clear.

  Grady looked into the eyes of the two strangers-the two magnificent technicians who might have been hundreds of other anonymous experts. Behind his mask he licked his lips. The four eyes rested lightly on him. They were without accusation. He imagined them to be burning with certitude, glowing with an innocent assurance. Indeed, why shouldn’t they be? The machines were with them. Somehow, in a way he could not understand, the four cool eyes soothed the nerve in Grady’s mind. He felt the surety of command flow back into him. When he spoke, his voice was for the first time his own and it was confident.

  “Switch on the TBS, Thomas,” Grady said. With utter confidence he picked up the microphone and began to give penetration orders to the group.

  There was a sergeant standing at the door of the conference room. He saluted Black as he approached.

  “General, they have moved the conference to the Big Board room,” the sergeant said. He shrugged before Black asked the question. “I don’t know why, General. Scuttlebutt is that the Secretary of Defense is going to be there. That draws the flies, so they needed more room.”

  Black smiled at the ramrod-straight sergeant’s jazzy lingo (probably a college boy “doing his time"), turned and almost bumped into General Stark. Stark had heard the sergeant. The two men started off for the elevator which would drop them down into the suspended concrete cube hundreds of feet below the Pentagon.

  “I think Swenson wants to see Wilcox in action,” Stark said. “I hear that he doesn’t think Wilcox was the best choice for SecArmy, so he may be along to roast him a bit.”

  “Maybe,” Black said, but he doubted it. Swenson would size up a new man but not roast him.

  The. briefing was for Wilcox, the new Secretary of the Army, but beyond that Black did not try to follow Stark’s logic. Stark was a contemporary of Black’s, they were both young generals on the way up, but they were very different. Stark had made his way politically.

  He was quick, but he relied on the brilliance of others to form his career. Black had concluded that Stark would have made general on his own talents, but he enjoyed the Machiavellian role. He traded in gossip, inside dope, and a prescience for what would happen in the future. Stark’s being political was not because of laziness or doubts of his own ability. Indeed he worked with great energy and had ability, but he loved the intricacy of personality conflict, was fascinated with the struggle between powerful men. Had he been dull, he would have been a superb manager of prize fighters. Being brilliant, he was a manager of men with ideas. Stark had discovered Groteschele and had managed his career beautifully. As Groteschele became famous Stark became a general officer.

  “I read your memo on counterforce credibility the other day,” Stark said to Black. He paused. “I don’t think Groteschele is going to discuss that today.”

  Black nodded. It was Stark’s way of requesting that a subject be ruled off-limits. He was meticulous in mentioning these informal limitations. Stark played a hard and very tough game, but he played by the rules. Once when he was a chicken colonel a classmate had leaked an item to Drew Pearson. Stark, Black realized, was really morally outraged. He had systematically and with the certitude of a Torquemada broken the colonel’s career.

  “O.K., but what I said in the memo about credibility still holds,” Black said. “It’s damned nonsense to spend billions of dollars to develop a ‘military posture’ which might or might not be credible to the Russians. Who needs more muscle now? Neither side. It gets down to a guess in a psychological game, Stark. This thing of piling bombs on bombs and missiles on missiles when we both have a capacity to overkill after surviving a first strike is just silly.”

  “All right already, O.K., O.K.,” Stark said and laughed. “But let’s don’t argue it today.”

  “Not in front of the Big Brass,” Black said bluntly.

  “Oh, my God, Blackie, you’re so damned hard-nosed,” Stark said.

  They smiled at one another. The ground rules for the day had been laid down.

  The Big Board room was dominated by the huge illuminated board which occupied an entire wall. The room had the same information-receiving capacity as the War Room at Omaha, but it lacked the array of desk-consoles. This
was a room where the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense would gather in case of war. They would make decisions which would be implemented by other centers around the world. This was a room for strategy. Omaha, and all its counterparts, was a place for tactics. This was the room where the decisions were made. They were carried out elsewhere.

  The Big Board room showed its character. It was a mixture of the executive suite and a military headquarters. Stark and Black were early and the technicians were testing the Big Board. In a random casual way they ran over various systems, cut in on streams of information, threw various projections onto the screen. At the moment, it was tuned in only to the SPADATS system, a shorthand phrase for “space data analysis.” The headquarters for SPADATS was located in Colorado Springs, but the information was projected onto the Pentagon screen with a clarity that was uncanny. As General Black watched, SPADATS switched to a Samos III satellite orbiting high in the stratosphere. Words began to crawl across the bottom of the board.

  “SAMOS III #15 is moving 20,000 miles an hour, 800 miles above the earth, and has just been instructed to commence photographing the transmitting pictures,” the words said. “It is making a routine scan of a part of Russia which includes a Soviet ICBM site. Selective discrimination follows.”

  The screen dissolved and then hardened up. The picture was different from the ordinary Mercator projection. This was an actual picture of a vast reach of land and lacked the hard lines of longitude and latitude. There was a range of mountains, black on one side, for it was dusk and the eastern side of the range was in shadow. There was the great twisting course of a river and the countless smaller tributaries that flowed into it. The rest of the landscape, seen from so high up, was brown and featureless, bathed in the soft magenta of sunset. In some parts of the screen there were great white clouds and Black estimated that the largest of them was actually a storm front over two hundred miles long.