Shadows

by Peter J Manos

Unlike marijuana, LSD apparently did not draw people together, but Joe was now euphoric having conquered his fear, and so was Forster. He got his own chair and bottle of beer.

  “Washington found us out,” said Joe without prelude.

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the tests.”

  “Damn it. What’s she going to do?”

  Calderone shrugged, for once not particularly concerned.

  That young man must have been on drugs, thought Edna. His speech was well enunciated. He wasn’t drunk. He wouldn’t look at her. Maybe he didn’t want her to see his pupils, which seemed large to her. He was fascinated with his hands and waved his fingers in the air. It was probably marijuana. And he could launch missiles. She shuddered.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  In order to come to a decision, Makenna knew she needed to talk this out but to her surprise, decided to discuss the matter with Edna O’Hare, of all people. She did not wish to talk to another airman because it was unlikely that another airman would be objective. Oh, and she might, without even knowing it, talk to someone who was involved.

  Edna welcomed her by taking Makenna’s right hand and holding it for a moment with both of hers before inviting her in.

  They sat in the living room, Edna on the long sofa, Washington in a lounge chair facing her. A coffee pot, cups, saucers, spoons, sugar and salt rested on a serving tray on the coffee table between them.

  “So what’s on your mind, dear?” asked O’Hare after they were seated.

  “Forgive me for mentioning it,” said Washington, “but I wouldn’t want you discussing this with anyone.”

  “This thing you want to discuss, it doesn’t concern me, does it?”

  “No. Not at all,” said Washington.

  “This I won’t discuss with anyone.”

  “Some of the missile control officers, are cheating on the monthly proficiency exam. It’s a multiple-choice test and they have the answers. How in the world they’re getting them, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. If I report this, I’ll be asked how I learned about it and who is involved. If I say that I saw someone using a smart watch crib sheet, they’ll ask who it was.

  “If I tell the whole truth one of my colleagues will lose his security clearance, be taken off missile duty, and… I don’t know. He’ll be punished more than that, maybe even dishonorably discharged. And so will the rest of them.”

  “So,” said Edna, “you don’t know if you should report the cheating or not.”

  “I should report it, but my colleague said he’d talk to everyone and that they’d stop it, the launch officers, I mean. Shouldn’t that be enough? These aren’t bad people. It’s the pressure. There’s no chance of advancement without top grades. Some people have fallen behind, I guess.”

  “How would you know if they’ve stopped?” asked Edna.

  Makenna leaned over to take her coffee cup in hand. Until now it had been untouched. She took a few sips and set it down again.

  “I’d have to depend on my colleague to tell me.”

  Edna pursed her lips and nodded weakly, but the meaning of the gesture was unclear.

  “What would happen to you if you reported the cheating but were vague about how you’d learned about it. What if you said it was scuttlebutt, if that’s the word? You know, a rumor.”

  “I’d feel a lot of heat.”

  O’Hare now took her coffee cup in hand. The two drank silently for a short time, understanding that this was a pause so they could think.

  Makenna pointed at the wall of pictures.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Be my guest.”

  Makenna placed her cup on the table and went over to the pictures. One of them showed an unmistakable O’Hare sitting in a chair, holding a baby on her shoulder.

  “Your child?” asked Washington.

  “No, my sister’s. He died shortly after that picture was taken. Meningitis.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Makenna.

  “She never had another child, but she managed. My brother-in-law—” She almost named her brother-in-law, who’d suffered even more, losing an heir to his business.

  Makenna returned to her chair.

  Edna asked, “What happens if the cheating is discovered, and they find out you knew about it and said nothing?”

  “Bad news for me.”

  Makenna returned home, her conscience weighing on her even more heavily than before because, with Edna’s help, she’d clearly laid out the alternatives and could no longer tell herself that action was delayed because she needed to think.

  But she was still undecided.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Makenna rowed as intensely as if struggling against a receding tide in the Bay of Fundy, her strokes on the machine, quick and powerful. She glistened. Her regular work out in the base’s well-equipped gym also included weight-lifting. She could press sixty pounds overhead.

  Watching this powerful woman from the room’s entrance, Charlie Forster, reconsidered what his tone of voice should be when speaking with her. Fortunately she was entirely focused on her work-out and did not see him watching her, which, if she had, might have unnerved him. Or made him angrier than he already was.

  Airman Forster grew up in a poor Kentucky coal mining family, but then how many rich Kentucky coal mining families had he known? The air force had allowed him to escape poverty, while serving his country. His father, who’d died years ago from a particularly severe case of black lung, would have been proud of him. And now his career was being threatened by this woman because he’d provided, for what he considered a fair price, the answers to missile launch officers’ proficiency exam questions.

  He’d just been lucky enough to have had a friend at Warren Air Force Base whose proficiency exam was routinely administered two days before it was administered at Minot. An investigation would reveal him at the center of this mischief, and he would be discharged. Would speaking with her make her more or less likely to spill the beans?

  Or was there another way to discourage her from speaking about this with anyone. Good judgement prevailed. Forster left the room brooding.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Karen, having re-read Edna’s flyer several times, each time more carefully than the last, and having used the internet to easily identify experts who agreed with the flyer’s arguments—the woman’s arguments—was now herself convinced that land-based missiles were not merely unnecessary but threatening in the extreme. It would be more than just lax to do nothing, it would be immoral. This line of thinking made a visit to Mrs. O’Hare a necessity.

  She asked her mother for O’Hare’s phone number.

  “I suppose it’s none of my business,” said Amy, “but do you mind my asking why?”

  Without revealing her brand new and surprising opposition to land-based missiles, she said that she had some questions about them and wanted to speak with “the lady.” That she wanted to speak with “the lady” face-to-face she neglected to mention.

  Will Larrabee opened the door.

  “Oh,” said Karen Haugen, surprised. “I came to see Mrs. O’Hare.”

  “I know. She said you were coming. Come it.”

  They introduced themselves to each other and Will offered her a seat. Karen tried wishing away a not-unpleasant lightness in her chest.

  “She’s upstairs. I’ll get her.”

  This was the boy—the man—who’d intrigued her when she’d first seen him standing by Mrs. O’Hare at the bottom of the steps to Old Main. And here he was again with that smile and odd-ball hat. Or maybe it was only odd that he was wearing the hat indoors in the summer. What was that all about?

  Two minutes later Edna, with Will behind her, slowly descended the stairs.

  “Oh, Karen, so nice of you to visit,” she said, extending her hand formally.

  “Can I get you kids something to drink? Kids. Forgive me. I know you’re not kids. I’m a little old fashioned in some areas.”

>   “But not in others,” said Will.

  Edna carried in a tray of three glasses of fresh lemonade and placed it on the low table before them, then joined Karen on the sofa. Will took his glass in hand and stood.

  “I’ll give you two some privacy. Thanks for the lemonade, Edna.”

  “Oh, no,” said Karen. “That’s not necessary. It’s about the rockets.”

  “You sure?” said Will.

  “Yes. Please join us,” said Karen.

  She had read the flyer and searched the internet. She’d become convinced that Mrs. O’Hare’s assessment of the danger was correct, which frightened her. She spoke of her fear’s tangled strands: fear of the missiles themselves; fear of how her conviction would affect her; and fear of how her father would react when he learned of her conviction.

  “I am no Greta Thunberg,” she said, feeling foolish as soon as she made the non-comparison, “but I can’t just twiddle my thumbs when the weapons right here in my back yard threaten the whole world just like global warming does.”

  She hoped she didn’t sound self-congratulatory, sound like the brave little engine that could, but no matter, it felt good to speak up. Ordinarily she might have talked to her mother about her feelings, but it seemed this would be like asking her mother to hold her end of a rope in a tug of war between her and her father.

  “Oh, dear,” said Edna. “I’ve sidetracked Will, who was on his way to see his troubled mother and who knows what kind of trouble you’ll be in if you join our little…what shall I call it? Protest? Demonstration? Resistance movement? No, that last one is a bit too grandiose. So you’d like to do something?”

  “Yes,” said Karen.

  “All right. Listen to this.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Northrop Grumman Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent delegation was holding what it called industry day at the Grand Hotel on Saturday. Sam Clayton, a former commander of a missile wing, and now member of the Northrop Grumman GBSD team, would lead an open meeting. Later that day the Northrop Grumman representatives would meet with various Minot businesses that might supply services and materials when the new missiles were installed along with new infrastructure.

  As Karen had explained, it frightened her to think of what the aftermath would be once her father learned of what she’d done, but doing the right thing was a moral imperative. And now, thank goodness, she was not going to do it alone.

  The conspirators spent several hours discussing and then making the poster they would use to make their case graphic, lucid, incontrovertible. This was added to the picket sign and flyers.

  The Grand Hotel was surrounded by a parking lot, the lobby entrance marked by six white columns. Business and town people would be coming and going all day, but the main presentation and the panel discussion began at 9 a.m. The three decided that inside at the meeting was not the venue in which to publicly challenge the need for land-based missiles. Instead, at 8 a.m., to the side of the lobby entrance so as not to impede traffic, they set up their three-by-four-foot poster on a makeshift scaffold that Will and Karen had made in Edna’s workshop.

  They’d discussed how the poster should be headed. Will, happy at his newly established friendship with Karen, offered, “Silos for silage? Take the bullseye off Minot? Time’s up for the Minuteman?”

  Karen allowed herself to be entertained, for she had no doubt about Will’s seriousness, nor about his anxiety, as he reduced his own tension through humor. Amusement in no way reduced her seriousness either.

  Edna had decided on a two-part heading: No to Land-Based Missiles: Submarines and Airplanes are Deterrent Enough.

  The poster was divided into three parts, the first about atomic submarines and their ballistic missiles; the second about airplanes and their capacity to hit targets with nuclear weapons; and the third about how superfluous and dangerous land-based missiles were. They had also made cards with a website reference to the arguments against the GBSD.

  Most people entering the hotel that morning merely ignored them and their poster. It appeared that there would be no drama, maybe not even discussion. Perhaps they should have parked their poster “smack dab” in the middle of the lobby, said Edna, knowing of course, that they would then have immediately been escorted off the premises.

  At 8:35, dressed in a dark business suit, Amy Haugen, in her capacity as reporter for the local daily newspaper, walked from her car to the hotel entrance.

  On seeing her mother, Karen briefly considered hiding behind a parked car, but by then Amy had spotted not only her, but Edna O’Hare wearing a black outfit and a tall black conical hat, and a young man wearing a cowboy hat.

  “Good morning, Edna, Karen,” said Amy, perplexed. “What are you doing here?”

  “Morning, Mom,” said Karen.

  “Hello, Amy. This is Will Larrabee,” said Edna.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Haugen,” said Will.

  “Hello,” said Amy Haugen before turning to the poster.

  “Oh, my goodness. What do you…?” She fell silent, then resumed.

  “How long will you be here?”

  “All day,” said Edna.

  Amy said, “There’s a morning talk scheduled, which I can’t miss. I’ll talk with you later.”

  After her mother entered the hotel, Karen, face flushed, said, “I should have thought of that. She’s reporting for the paper. At least she didn’t tell me to go home.”

  A few people stopped to look at the poster but had no questions. A heavy-set man in pressed khaki pants and long-sleeved red plaid shirt read the poster and then matter-of-factly said, “Do you know what would happen to Minot if they cancelled the replacement program?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “No, you don’t.”

  Amy Haugen appeared again at around 9:45.

  “I just heard General Clayton give a talk about the GBSD project. I know how Edna feels about this, but do you kids think you know more about this than he does?”

  In this very public space she spoke in a professional, measured cadence as if interviewing someone for a story. She seemed more surprised by their presence than angry.

  “Not everyone agrees with him, Mom.”

  “Well, everyone in this town does. Everyone I know does.”

  The three of us disagree with him, thought Karen.

  “Are you going to write about us, Amy?” asked Edna.

  “I have to go back in.”

  As Amy Haugen walked away the three turned to gaze at a passenger plane in the eastern sky approaching the airport. For a second, Karen imagined it being a missile.

  Several people, presumably taking a break, exited the lobby. A handsome, fit-looking, white-haired man, immaculately dressed in a hound’s tooth suit, and an ebullient young woman in a red jacket and dark skirt approached.

  “Don’t talk with her,” said Claudia Cummings. “You’ll be giving her a spotlight.”

  “I’m curious and they’re harmless,” said the general. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”

  Amy, who was about to leave, stood aside.

  Clayton smiled, said good morning, and read the poster and then began reading the flyer. He was nothing if not thorough. You can’t be responsible for hundreds of hydrogen bombs if you were not thorough.

  Claudia Cummings looked at the protesters. Her appraisals of people unusually shrewd, she was gauging their earnestness and energy.

  The young man wearing a hat intrigued her. He appeared to have trouble standing still, raising himself on his toes from time to time or walking a few paces and returning to the same spot. Plenty of energy and nice looking, though perhaps a little cuckoo. Was that his girlfriend? Cummings doubted that there was anything to their protest other than what was there for all to see. No conspiracy. No hidden motives. No moneyed backer. No political—in the sense of elections and electioneering—motives. No large following.

  It might be fun though to perform, if that was the word, a little espionage, Mata Hari-like. She smiled at the young man an
d he smiled back.

  Will examined Cummings in return. That she was good looking he put out of his mind by looking at Karen and then at the general when he had finished reading and began to speak.

  “It’s good having people interested in current affairs, but I’m afraid this information is incorrect. We would be a lot less secure without the new missiles and the ones we have now have prevented war—nuclear war—for over half a century.”

  Karen and Will looked to Edna.

  “This is a complex matter, but the experts all agree we need these weapons,” continued Clayton.

  “With all due respect,” said Edna nervously, “the experts don’t all agree. William Perry, former Secretary of Defense, one of the experts I’m sure you’ll agree, said it was safe to scrap our land-based ICBMs. He said they were dangerous and wasteful, and that the US submarine force alone was deterrent enough and he wrote a letter to the president saying so.”

  The sight of a general arguing with an old woman dressed like a witch, began to draw people to O’Hare’s table. By this time Amy Haugen had returned and was taking pictures with her cell phone. Will and Karen stood next to each other, smiling and excited. Will squeezed her hand and let it go.

  Clayton was now explaining that missiles around air force bases in Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota would act as a missile sponge since two Russian rockets would likely be aimed at each of the silos and this would deplete the Russian stock of warheads by nine hundred.

  “And what’s the Midwest going to look like after nine hundred hydrogen bombs explode overhead?” And how about the states getting the fall-out?”

  Before Clayton could prepare an answer for that question, Edna continued, her voice shaky, but louder.

  “And after the sponge does its work the Russians will still have seven hundred fifty warheads to destroy the rest of the United States.”