Eyeball to Eyeball (Final Failure)

by Douglas Niles

  Khrushchev waved away that reminder. Like most Russians, he didn’t feel as though the West had exerted any great effort to defeat the Nazis. The credit for that victory belonged to the Red Army, and to the people of the Soviet Union.

  “What was in this message from their embassy, besides a warning?” the chairman wanted to know.

  “They included some audacious instructions. The American navy intends to use simulated depth charges against our Foxtrots when they are located. These are intended as a warning, a command for our submarines to surface. They request that we inform the submarine commanders of this tactic, in order to avoid a misunderstanding.”

  “Bah!” Khrushchev snapped, insulted. “Who do they think they are, to give us orders! Our submarine captains have their orders, from the Soviet government. We will leave it to them to follow those orders!”

  “I agree, Comrade Chairman,” Malinovsky said, hesitantly. “But there are some admirals in the Undersea command who feel that we should at least give our submariners advance warning of the tactic the Americans claim they will use—”

  “I told you, we will take no orders from the Americans!” the chairman shouted, his eyes bulging. “Let them take their chances with our ships!”

  “And what about the missiles? The weapons of mass destruction? Do you want to clarify our instructions in any way?”

  Khrushchev thought about that. “Yes. Send an order to Pliyev. He is not to employ those weapons, under any circumstances, without explicit orders from the Kremlin.

  “It shall be done,” Malinovsky promised. “What about the rest of the ships, the ones still approaching the blockade line?” he asked, changing tacks.

  “I will need to think about this,” the supreme leader replied, brooding. “We have until tomorrow morning before the blockade goes into effect. I will decide by then what we are going to do. In the meantime, make sure the Alexandrovsk gets word. I want those warheads in Cuba, not floating on the open sea!”

  24 October 1962

  0940 hours (Wednesday morning)

  Cabinet Meeting Room, the White House

  Washington D.C.

  The tension in the ExComm thrummed like a steel wire stretched taut. With twenty minutes to go until the quarantine went into effect, there had still been no direct response from Moscow. The latest reports, from the dawn surveillance flights, indicated that all Communist Bloc ships bound for Cuba were still making headway. Though only about a quarter of the ships were under direct observation, they were still enough to convince the American leaders in the White House that the matter had not yet been decided.

  The President and his brother were in attendance, as well as DCIA McCone, NSA Bundy, former ambassador Thompson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Defense Secretary McNamara—though the latter planned to drive over to the Pentagon soon to confer with Admiral Anderson in the Navy Flag Headquarters. He wanted to be directly on scene with the admiral when the first potential confrontations occurred.

  As usual, the meeting began with a report from McCone—“Saying Grace,” Bobby had dubbed this part of the routine, in a nod to the Catholicism the Kennedys shared with the director, as well as his rather flat, droning delivery. “We have confirmation of twenty-two Soviet-controlled merchant ships, including ships flying other flags that are carrying cargoes embarked from Soviet ports. Two of these, the Kimovsk and the Yuri Gagarin, are drawing very near to the quarantine line. There’s been a lot of chatter on the radio waves, mostly signals coming from Moscow, but the ships aren’t replying—probably trying to observe radio silence. Still, they’ve clearly been getting instructions.

  “The former is of particular interest,” McCone continued. “She’s Finnish built, designed for hauling timber. But she’s got deck hatches nearly a hundred feet long, practically tailor-made for loading and unloading missiles.”

  “What are we planning to do about those ships?” the President asked.

  “The Navy is sending a destroyer to stop the Kimovsk, first,” McNamara interjected. But we’ve also located two of the Soviet subs. One was spotted refueling from a Russian tanker—it dived as soon as the plane was observed, but our men got a good look at it. The second was tracked on sonar, and it seems to be right between those two freighters.”

  “Dammit!” snapped JFK. “I don’t want a sub to screw up our first intercept!”

  Before anyone could reply, a knock drew their attention to the door. At the President’s call, Secret Service Agent Morris looked in. “Excuse the interruption, Mr. President, but there’s a Navy courier here, from the Pentagon.”

  “Send him in!”

  The uniformed officer, a lieutenant commander, almost jogged into the room. He was out of a breath, and as he nervously snapped a quick salute—unnecessary, since he was indoors, in addition to the fact that none of the men in the room was a uniformed superior officer. Obviously, he could barely stand still.

  “What is it, man?” snapped the Secretary of Defense.

  “Word from our reconnaissance aircraft, out of Bermuda and Puerto Rico, Sir. They have eyes-on contact with five Soviet or Bloc vessels approaching the quarantine line. Sir, two of those ships have stopped dead in the water. A third has turned around 180 degrees and seems to be heading back toward Europe.”

  A brief, elated cheer broke out from the men at the cabinet table. “You did it, Jack!” Bobby said, slapping his brother on the back.

  The President held up his hands. “That’s good news, officer. But what about the other two?”

  “One is a tanker, another a Greek freighter contracted to the Soviets, out of Odessa. They are continuing toward Cuba.”

  “All right. I’m guessing the ones continuing on are carrying civilian cargos. I think we should let them through.”

  “I agree, Mr. President,” McNamara said. “The worst thing we could do is disable some freighter, and then find out it’s carrying a load of baby food or something.”

  “But I’m still worried about that submarine,” JFK brooded.

  McNamara replied with a reminder of the procedure that had been established, with “practice depth charges” used to signal the sub to surface. “I think the Navy has a good handle on that possibility, Sir. And we’ve signaled the Soviets on our hailing procedures. The submarine captains should know we’re not trying to sink them, just force them to the surface.”

  Kennedy did not look convinced, but he waved at McCone. “Do you have anything more for us, John?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. We’ve gotten some low-level pictures from Operation Blue Moon,” McCone reported. “They increase our detailed understanding of the missile sites significantly. If it comes to an air attack, we’ll have a much better idea of our targeting priorities, too.”

  “That’s good,” JFK acknowledged. “Those fliers must have some balls, to fly over those places at 1,000 feet!”

  “They’re good men, veterans and experienced,” McNamara said. “The commander of the squadron at Key West, Ecker, is the best the Navy has. Admiral Anderson had him fly up to Washington yesterday, after his recon mission. He reported directly to the Chiefs while his film was being developed over at NPIC. I gather that they fly over so fast that the troops on the ground are caught with their pants down—literally, in one case. It seems that Russian latrines don’t always have roofs on them.”

  That remark provoked a round of nervous laughter, and a solid chuckle from the president, before the director continued. “And speaking of that, there have been some disturbing elements in these new pictures,” McCone noted, quickly bringing the mood back down to earth. “We’re still working on the analysis, but it looks like there are more Soviet ground troops in Cuba than we had expected to find. So far, we’ve got pretty good evidence of two motorized rifle divisions, one each in the vicinity of San Cristobal and Sagua la Grande.”

  McNamara nodded. “These are formidable combat units, sir, roughly equivalent to an Army brigade. A little more emphasis on combined arms and armor than an American un
it of similar size. Very self-sufficient, with modern tanks, heavy artillery, fully mechanized ground troops.”

  “Damnit! Khrushchev’s really going all in on this, isn’t he?” Kennedy snapped.

  “And thank God we found out before they finished the job,” Bobby chimed in.

  “Also,” noted the Secretary of Defense, “It would appear that all of the SAM sites are fully completed. They have transporters present and launchers installed. I think we have to assume that the transporters are loaded with missiles, so it’s just a question of when they decide to use them.”

  “Well, they haven’t so far…that’s an encouraging thing,” JFK mused.

  “I agree,” McNamara said. “But the chiefs have asked for a contingency, and I think it makes sense. The Air Force has a squadron of light bombers at MacDill AFB, Florida. They want to arm those with a mixture of ground-attack ordnance, napalm, and fragmentation bombs, and keep them on standby. Their request is that, if one of our planes gets shot down by a SAM, this squadron be launched immediately to make a reprisal raid against that battery.”

  The President exhaled, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. “I hope to hell it doesn’t come to that, Bob,” he said, finally, sitting up and regarding the Secretary with a level gaze. “But it might. I think it makes sense, and it’s a good, measured response—if they take down one of our planes, we take out the battery that did it. But we go no further without discussion and authorization. Can you make that clear to the Chiefs?”

  “Yes, Sir, I’m sure that I can.”

  “All right,” the President summarized. “We will assume those two ships that are still inbound are carrying goods that we will allow to pass. We made it a point to specify only offensive weapons would be turned back, so for now, it looks like the plan is working.”

  “That would seem to be the case,” Dean Rusk agreed, wiping his bald head with a handkerchief.

  “Thanks for this news,” JFK said to the courier. “But we know there are a lot more ships out there—twenty or so by last count. Please make sure that Admiral Anderson keeps up the effort to locate them, and bring us more information as soon as you have anything to report.”

  “Aye aye, Mr. President—I certainly will!” With another salute, this one tinged with elation, the Navy officer left the room, while at the same time another courier came in and handed a note to the Secretary of Defense. Bob Morris remained at the door until he could close it behind the second departing messenger.

  “Here’s another news flash, Sir,” said Secretary McNamara, reading the note. “General LeMay has just ordered the Strategic Air Command to go to DEFCON 2—that is, one step short of war.”

  “Nice of him to let us know,” JFK said curtly, sarcasm dripping from his words. “That wasn’t part of the plan, was it?”

  “Actually, Sir, we left it to the discretion of the Air Force.”

  “Bob, you’d better keep a tight leash on that cowboy. He’s too eager to launch his bombers. That guy always gave me the creeps, talking about burning cities and nuclear exchanges…‘acceptable casualities.’ How the hell can he think we’d have won a war where twenty million Americans get killed? I tell you, he’s starting to scare me even more than he did before.”

  Five: DEFCON 2

  “We were eyeball to eyeball and the other fellow just blinked.”

  Secretary of State Dean Rusk

  24 October 1962

  24 October 1962

  1100 hours (Wednesday morning)

  Headquarters, Strategic Air Command

  Offut Air Force Base

  Omaha, Nebraska

  General Thomas Power had been the hand-picked replacement as the Commander in Chief of SAC, when the previous—and founding—commander of the unit, General Curtis LeMay, had been promoted to Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Like LeMay, Power was a dedicated anticommunist, and a veteran of the strategic bombing campaign against Japan during World War II. And like LeMay, he chafed over the restraints placed upon his hugely powerful force by the realities of politics and, especially, politicians.

  Together, they had turned the Strategic Air Command into an organization unlike any other in history. It was an empire, with first LeMay and now Power, as emperor. It could carry more destructive power in the payload of a single bomber than had ever been unleashed in all the wars ever fought. It sucked massive amounts of money from the federal government because, in the era of the Cold War, any politician who was not willing to grant SAC everything it wanted would be called “soft on communism.” And because of the single-minded determination of both of its leaders, SAC exerted an incredibly strong pull on American military planning and operations, such that traditional forces like the Army’s ground units and the Navy’s surface fleet had to fight for every crumb they could get.

  In point of fact, and the President’s misapprehension notwithstanding, it was Power, not LeMay, who had authorized the increase in SAC readiness to DEFCON 2—one step short of war. But the CINC-SAC wasn’t done yet. As he made his way to his command post, three floors underground in Building 500, he was formulating a plan that he expected would drive icy knives of fear into the hearts of the Soviet military commanders. That was a prospect that gave him a great deal of satisfaction.

  The general took long strides as he descended, following a spiraling ramp through the first two underground levels. At each passage, a heavy steel blast door rolled open to let him through, then rolled back into its standard locked position. When the doors were closed, as they almost always were, the command post was hermitically sealed from the outside world. Many layers of filters scrubbed all the air that was forced down here by massive fans.

  Even three floors underground, behind a triple barrier of blast doors, Power knew that his command post was not proof against Soviet nuclear attack—and he, and everyone who worked for him down here, knew that this base, and even this particular building, would be important targets for any enemy strategic missile attack. To this end, the general had made sure that command responsibilities would not be neglected in the event of his, and his command post’s, obliteration.

  Somewhere over the United States, at every moment of every day, an EC-135 aircraft—a military version of the Boeing 707—was in the air on the “Looking Glass” mission. The airborne command post always carried an Air Force general and was equipped with the most advanced mobile communications facilities in the world. In the event that SAC HQ was destroyed, control of the strategic bomber and missiles forces would automatically pass to the Looking Glass flight, and the prosecution of strategic nuclear war would theoretically continue uninterrupted.

  Once he reached his control room, General Power studied the strategic situation as it was displayed on an impressive array of television screens and maps. Clocks recorded the time in Omaha and Washington, but also in several Soviet cities—including Moscow—that were prominently featured on the target list. Around the nation, three B-52 Stratofortresses, each armed with four thermonuclear bombs, took off every hour.

  The massive bombers, affectionately called Big Ugly Fat Fuckers, or BUFFs, by their crews, were the most powerful and deadly aircraft in history. With the DEFCON 2 order, many of these bombers had begun to move north, gathering over Canada and the Artic Ocean. There they circled, ready, waiting for orders either to stand down or to continue on to pre-designated targets in the Communist bloc.

  More than 400 refueling tankers were available to SAC, and many of these were also airborne. With virtually unlimited fuel available, it was not unusual for a BUFF and its crew to remain aloft for twenty-four hours; the crews even included an additional, third, pilot so that the men flying the plane could get some rest.

  At the same time, missile complexes in the central United States also went to full alert, with strategic rockets fueled and crews standing by. The brand new Minuteman missile, of which only ten were currently in service—and those activated only in the last month—could be launched at literally a moment’s notice, since they we
re fired directly from their silos. But even the solidly reliable Atlas and Titan rockets needed only about a ten-minute warning, since the missiles needed to be lifted up to the surface by gigantic elevators. As soon as they had fully emerged, however, they too would be ready for launch.

  Farther out across the globe, on bases as far-flung as Italy, Morocco, Spain, and Scotland, older B-47 bombers stood on stand-by, awaiting orders to take off and fly toward targets in the Communist Bloc. They had shorter ranges than the B-52 but could also carry immensely powerful payloads. Crews slept in their flight suits, and the planes were fueled and armed, ready to take off on Power’s command.

  As of now, within an hour of the order to go to DEFCON 2, Power had more than 900 bombers and 130 intercontinental ballistic missiles ready for action at a moment’s notice, with more coming online at all times. The attacks, when they began, would initially target more than 200 high priority sites, called “Task 1 Targets.” Many of these were remote airbases and military complexes where much of the Soviet nuclear arsenal could be found. But at least a few were important headquarters and communication networks, which were invariably located in large cities. One of the primary targets designated for immediate destruction—by at least four one megaton bombs—was the Kremlin, in the heart of Moscow, Russia’s largest city.