by James Philip
Chapter 22
07:11 Hours Zulu
Sunday 28th October 1962
NORAD, Ent Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
Planet Earth might have been plunged into chaos overnight but Major Paul Gunther, Head of Security at Ent Air Force Base, Headquarters of NORAD, was only responsible for security inside the gates of the base. For the time being he would let others worry about the big wide world outside.
What remained of it, leastways.
Carl Drinkwater, the Burroughs resident NSCAC - Network Systems Communications Analyst Consultant - who managed the Burroughs Corporation Systems Integration (Peterson Air Force Base) Network Implementation and Testing Team had been panicking about something just before one of his people, Senior Network System Analyst Max Calman, had put him in hospital.
Drinkwater had told the Air Defence Controller at the base - the man who was technically in overall command of the air defence of the entire North American continental mass - that quote: ‘even allowing for the damage sustained to the network from the initial Soviet strikes’ that ‘for SAGE to be degraded to its current operational status something is going on which we do not understand.’ Afterwards, the man with the most comprehensive understanding of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment system which guarded continental airspace and which should have allowed the American people to sleep easily in their beds, had rushed back to his printouts and manuals and one of his closest colleagues had put him in hospital.
Gunther had ordered Max Calman’s cuffs to be removed and called a medic to examine him. Calman had busted a knuckle on his boss’s head, otherwise he was uninjured. Now he sat on the hard chair opposite the Security Chief, wilting under Gunther’s flinty, unblinking scrutiny.
Gunther’s office was in an unhardened building several hundred yards away from the four-storey windowless SAGE blockhouse which accommodated the two one hundred and thirty-five ton Burroughs Corporation mainframe computers, and the bunker control room of the North American Aerospace Defence Command.
Maxwell Lyall ‘Max’ Calman was not the most obviously ‘flaky’ member of Carl Drinkwater’s team; just the one who had seemed the most ‘different’. The Burroughs Corporation people and their IBM overseers were a mix of hard-headed bean counters and gifted mathematicians, physicists and nerdish programmers who inhabited their own rarefied intellectual space at Ent Air Force Base. While they were not exactly archetypal mad scientists - not even the Department of Defence knowingly employed madmen – Carl Drinkwater’s people were to a man eccentric, oddball and did not begin to understand, sympathise with, or know the first thing about military security and to a man honestly did not believe that it applied to them.
Several of Gunther’s guys at Ent had ridden herd on the boffins and eggheads who had built the A-bomb back in the 1940s. Security on the Manhattan Project had been a nightmare, half the top men were foreigners and the only common language at Los Alamos was the fiendishly convoluted equations the ‘mad professors’ were prone to leave in open sight on their big blackboards. The SAGE project was not quite that bad; for one thing it was an American-Canadian deal - the British had their own version, a bargain basement air defence system called ROTOR – and for another the main contractors were paranoid about preventing their commercial competitors stealing a march on them. However, there was commercial security and there was national security. When a man like Carl Drinkwater admitted that he did not understand what had gone wrong with SAGE last night; that automatically became a matter of utmost national security.
Paul Gunther had already talked to his bosses in Washington and the Pentagon was sending a ‘hit squad’ to Colorado as soon as US airspace was reopened. They would crawl over the Burroughs Corporation men, their families, friends, and anybody who had had the misfortune to bump into a team member on the street since 1950. They would be all over the poor suckers like a bad smell for days and weeks.
Especially, Max Calman.
“With Mr Drinkwater in the base infirmary that makes you the Burroughs Corporation’s senior on site systems analyst, Mr Calman?” This the older man half-asked, half-stated in a level, growling voice.
Two Military Policemen remained in the room. If the crazy son of a bitch wanted to beat up on somebody else he could try his luck with the two MPs. Paul Gunther had a creaking back and several small pieces of shrapnel he had acquired on Guadalcanal periodically tweaking here and there in places he rarely discussed in mixed company.
“I was number three on the team,” Max Calman replied dully. His face was sallow and his eyes oddly dead. “Solomon is Carl’s deputy.”
“That would be Mr Kaufmann,” Gunther mused aloud, “who was called away to New Mexico a couple of days ago?”
“Yeah. His old man died.”
Paul Gunther hated coincidences.
“You weren’t scheduled to be on the base tonight?”
“My wife thought she was going into labour yesterday afternoon. It was a false alert. You already know that.”
“I know nothing, Mr Calman. I only know what you’ve told me. I’d verify what you’ve told me with your superior, Mr Drinkwater, but he’s...”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s in the hospital! When are you going to let me get on with my work?”
“Burroughs Corporation handed over the latest system modifications and the Air Force signed off on the technical acceptance trials two months ago. You and your colleagues are here in a purely ‘supporting role’. On call. I am unaware any member of the ADC staff has put out a call for your ‘support’?”
The Burroughs man scowled.
“That’s because they’re fucking idiots!”
Paul Gunther had been informed that the rest of Carl Drinkwater’s team had indeed been ‘called in’. Vehicles carrying armed MPs had been sent to collect every member of the team, most of whom were already at work in the Air Control Centre. NORAD’s hierarchy badly needed to get its story straight before the President started asking questions that neither the Air Force top brass nor the Chief Executives of the nation’s premier international computer corporations could presently satisfactorily answer.
He sighed.
“For the time being you will be held in military custody pending ongoing investigation into the attempted murder of Mr Drinkwater. Under the emergency judicial protocols determining the conduct of our business at this place you are not, at this time, entitled to seek legal counsel and you will not be permitted to speak to, or to communicate in any way with any member of your family or with any of your work colleagues until further notice. That is all.” Paul Gunther nodded at the two MPs.
Max Calman would have to explain himself to the Special Investigations Branch and the Federal Bureau of Investigations agents due at Ent Air Force Base later that morning.
He watched the analyst being led away, suddenly feeling very old.
His wife, Rosalita, and his two boys, Paul junior and Theo, aged nine and seven respectively, lived twelve miles from Ent Air Force Base. He had married late, almost as an afterthought and to his astonishment, found peace of mind and enduring joy in his marriage. When the kids had come along he had felt complete. Last night while the ICBMs were coming in over the Arctic he had prayed for the first time in his life – really prayed to a merciful God he desperately hoped existed – for the lives of his family. He did not care about Seattle or Buffalo or Chicago, Houston or Boston; he just wanted Rosalita and his sons to be protected from all evil.
Thus far God had been merciful.
Chapter 23
07:18 Hours Eastern Standard Time
Sunrise on Sunday 28th October 1962
Oak Hill, Wethersfield, Connecticut
Mrs Nordstrom had brought two chairs out onto the porch so that the young people could sit down out of the rain which occasionally splashed, windblown onto the top step up to the house.
Neither Dan Brenckmann nor Gretchen Betancourt had spoken many words in the last hour. She had held his hand and together they had sta
red out into the darkness, listening to the rustling of the trees, and the flurrying of the squalls that swept across the otherwise peaceful Connecticut countryside. The pre-dawn twilight was brightening dully beneath a leaden, threatening overcast that perfectly matched their moods, thoughts and broken hopes for the future.
The man’s brooding was for the family he must have lost in Boston and Buffalo. There was no news on the radio about the West Coast other than the old news about Seattle and some place with the unlikely name of ‘Chilliwack’ near Vancouver just north of the Canadian border in British Columbia. His kid brother Sam – ‘kid brother’ was a misnomer, Sam was half-a-head taller than either of his ‘big’ brothers – had been a beach bum at Santa Monica the last time he had written to Ma and Pa. That was months ago. As for Walt junior; he was torpedo officer on a nuclear submarine, he could literally be anywhere. Here in Connecticut the World had ended with a whimper not a bang.
“You never said where your folks are, Gretchen?” Dan asked.
The twilight was now on the cusp of a dreary New England autumnal dawn.
“They go to Honolulu in the fall lately,” the woman replied, her voice was distracted and vague which was utterly unlike her. “I’m engaged to my cousin,” she added in a similar tone, “well, my cousin two or three times removed. It was sort of agreed between our families about eighteen months ago. His father is a banker. Joseph’s mother is cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt’s. Joseph’s family owns an estate in the Hamptons. My father has known Joseph’s father since before the war,” she corrected this, “before the forty-five war, that is. Our mothers can’t stand the sight of each other but I’m sure they’ll get used to the idea once they have two or three grandchildren to bounce on their knees.”
The man considered what he had just heard.
“I never thought you’d ever be Mrs Brenckmann, Gretchen,” he assured her so lowly he was almost whispering. “Yale is the only time in my life I get to be tarred with an Ivy League brush and I’m okay with that. I just like you, that’s all. I’d have pretended otherwise, but hey, you only live once.”
Gretchen vented a short breath which might have been a cough or a tiny laugh but only she would know which.
“You like me?”
“Yeah. Shoot me now.”
She released his hand and cuffed his arm.
Gretchen had never done that before; it was precisely the sort of spontaneous gesture which risked an intimacy that they had never previously shared.
Dan turned to look at her.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “I like you just the way you are.”
Gretchen folded her arms, hugging herself as if she was even colder than she actually was after sitting out on the windy porch of the last hour-and-a-half.
“Do you think it is really as bad as they say it is on the radio?” She asked. Mrs Nordstrom had ventured out onto the porch at intervals complaining that all she could receive on the television in the front parlour was a screen full of angry black and white static. At least the radio still worked. “So many people must be dead; it is,” she sighed, “so terrible...”
Dan shrugged.
“There are over a hundred and eighty million people in this country,” he said. “From what we’ve heard on the radio I’d guess that better than nine out of every ten Americans is still alive. Most of them will be like us, sitting in undamaged houses in undamaged towns and cities. I daresay a lot of people will be waking up this morning hearing the news and wondering what all the fuss is about. Perhaps, it’s the same some places in Russia. Nobody will know for a while.”
“Is the war over?” Gretchen asked.
That was a big question!
“I hope so.”
Chapter 24
07:31 Hours Eastern Standard Time
Sunrise on Sunday 28th October 1962
The White House, Washington DC
Robert Francis ‘Bobby’ Kennedy, the United States Attorney General flopped into the armchair and wearily acknowledged the nods of welcome from the other members of the ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ gathered in the Oval Office.
“Dean is still at the State Department,” the President’s younger brother explained, apologising for the absence of Dean Rusk. “We think the Soviets launched a full scale strike on targets in northern China at the same time they carpet bombed Hokkaido and hit Sendai on Honshu. It’s weird. The Soviets don’t appear to have targeted either Hong Kong or Singapore or any of our bases in the Western Pacific.”
“China?” The President asked his younger brother tersely. Reports had been trickling in all night and none of the ones about Soviet attacks on China had made any kind of sense.
“The Soviets seem to have blitzed Manchuria and targets all along the Mongolian border as far west as Bayunnur, that’s five or six hundred miles from Peking. The best thing the analysts at Langley have come up with is that the Soviets only had one war plan and it included attacking China.”
John McCone, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was expected to join the conference in the next few minutes. He had been called out of the room to receive a detailed briefing on the secure line to Langley. As if on cue he re-entered the Oval Office.
“We think the Chinese saw the Soviets’ increased state of readiness over the last few days,” he explained, settling on the sofa next to McGeorge ‘Mac’ Bundy, the United States National Security Advisor, “and the Soviets mistook the Chinese response for being something it probably wasn’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe the Soviets weren’t as ready to launch as we assumed they were yesterday afternoon, Mister President.”
Jack Kennedy’s face wore the grey ashen hue of a man trapped within a nightmare. He saw that the Director of the CIA had passed two sheets of paper to Bundy.
“Mac was about to update us on the latest damage assessments,” he declared in a voice that was very nearly broken. He had been waiting all night for the flash in the sky above the White House that would mercifully release him from the purgatory of knowing that he had personally unleashed the fiery hounds of thermonuclear death and devastation on his nation’s foes. “What’s the latest, Mac?”
McGeorge Bundy’s high, professorial brow furrowed.
“The Chiefs of Staff are still ‘uncomfortable’ about your decision to indefinitely defer the execution of War Plan Alpha Zero-Two, Mister President,” he reported, as he was duty bound to so do. However, as the minutes ticked by without a further Soviet ICBM launch both men, and everybody else in the Oval Office, was beginning to feel, if not vindicated, then at least a little more ‘relaxed’ about the President’s ninety minute old ‘Executive Order’ to recall all bombers in the air and to unilaterally reduce the war alert status of all United States armed forces from DEFCON1 to DEFCON2. NORAD remained in independent operational command of the air space above the North American continent but all authority to deploy and release nuclear weapons by the Joints Chiefs of Staff and commanders in the field and at sea had been unconditionally rescinded. “The Chiefs of Staff have requested that the Polaris boats and at least one wing of B-52s be placed on DEFCON1 alert...”
“NO!” John Fitzgerald Kennedy snarled angrily. He was about to vent more than a little of his pent up despair, but stopped himself just in time. “No, Mac. The war is over. We won,” he shook his head. “Or perhaps, we all lost. Either way, I will not kick a beaten enemy when he is down. Carry on with the latest situation report please.”
“Yes, Mister President.” The US National Security Advisor took a brief moment to organise his thoughts. “I can confirm that although there was Soviet air activity over Alaska early in the exchange that no Alaskan target has thus far been attacked. Presumably, because the Soviets were preoccupied with targets higher up their priority list.”
He shuffled papers on his lap.
“Canada,” he prefaced briskly. “I told you earlier about the Chilliwack strike. NORAD is now putting this air burst in the two to three megaton range. The Canadians believe there will be at least one hu
ndred thousand casualties. There was also a very large air burst over Picton, that’s in King Edward County, Ontario. We have no idea what the objective of this strike - thought to be in the five to six megaton range - was. There are no casualty figures yet but fortuitously the area is relatively sparsely populated. We have two further reports of large explosions in Alberta. Neither were anywhere near centres of population. Many Soviet bombers were brought down over Canadian air space and several may have jettisoned their weapons before they crashed or turned back. We are sending specialist teams to Canada to assist with the location, inspection and safe decontamination of several potentially radioactive locations.”
Nobody said a word.
“Washington State,” Bundy went on. “It is too soon to speculate about casualty numbers for Seattle. However, Governor Rosellini’s office indicates that a substantial part of the centre of Seattle and the eastern metropolitan area and suburbs of that city have been raised to the ground and that currently, several very large conflagrations are burning out of control in the ruins.”
“Remind me what the population of Seattle is?” Bobby Kennedy asked, dry-mouthed. “Sorry, I mean, was?”
“Over half-a-million for the city, the same again in the surrounding metropolitan area,” Bundy responded flatly. He cleared his throat. “Indications are that the Hanford works was also targeted by an ICBM, the warhead of which failed to initiate or was damaged during its flight.”
The National Security Advisor glanced around the room.
There were no questions.
“Nebraska. Grand Island, population of around twenty-five thousand people,” a deep breath, “was destroyed by a three megaton air burst. NORAD assumes that the target may have been SAC Headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base. If so, the missile missed its target by nearly one hundred and fifty miles. Another incoming ICBM was tracked until it disappeared somewhere between Freemont and Lincoln, Nebraska. Another misfire, we think.”