“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.”
John McCone raised his right hand to interject.
“A number of the later strikes failed, or hit targets of no apparent tactical or strategic importance. It may indicate that only a proportion of the Soviet Strategic Missile Force’s inventory was actually at immediate launch readiness prior to our first strikes. Later launches may have been so hurried that the crews made mistakes configuring inertial guidance systems. For example, programming in the wrong numbers to compensate for the distance the Earth rotates between the launch time and the time of impact.” The Director of the CIA grimaced. “But that’s just a guess. I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is if you’re a Soviet missile technician standing on top of the gantry of a hundred foot tall rocket with nukes lighting up all around the horizon how good are you going to be making slide rule calculations in the dark?”
McGeorge Bundy nodded.
“Illinois,” he murmured. “There was an air burst in the five to six megaton range approximately five miles north of Evanston. This community was destroyed and widespread damage has been sustained across the northern suburbs and north central Chicago. The air burst occurred at a distance of approximately eighteen miles from the centre of the city. It was the first of a two ICBM attack on the Chicago area. There was a second very large air burst within a mile of the centre of Elgin, some forty miles east of city. This strike destroyed Elgin and caused widespread damage in the eastern suburbs of Chicago. The population of Evanston was about eighty thousand, and that of Elgin around fifty thousand, most of whom will have become casualties. I have no estimate of casualties for the Chicago metropolitan area but we must expect the toll to be high.”
This was an obscene understatement and all the men in the room knew as much. Some three-and-a-half million people lived in Chicago and at least half the city was wrecked. The United States National Security Advisor did not linger overlong on the Windy City’s torment.
“Michigan. There was a ground burst estimated to have been of the order of perhaps one hundred kilotons — possibly a bigger weapon whose guidance and initiation sequence partially failed — some twenty-five miles west of Grand Rapids. The ground burst was on the coast in a sparsely populated area.”
Bundy looked briefly to a new page and went back to the one he had been reading from.
“Ohio. Something similar seems to have happened near Cleveland. A weapon in the low hundreds of kilotons range detonated in Lake Erie some five miles offshore. The nearest settlement, Avon Lake, escaped significant damage. Just a few windows blown in, that sort of thing. This detonation was about twenty-three miles approximately west-north-west of Cleveland.”
Nobody looked at the President.
Jack Kennedy was on the verge of tears. The man who had treated the Presidency like a licence to party; the playboy chief executive in whose company no woman between the age of twenty and fifty was safe; the man who had been the bane of his Secret Service minders constantly putting himself at risk in crowds and in his unscheduled lascivious assignations; who had concealed his chronic illness — Addison’s disease — from most of the senior members of his Administration; who had kept himself going by bringing in quack doctors who were no better than latter day snake oil salesmen to pump him full of steroids, and uppers and downers, now faced the horrific consequences of what he suddenly regarded as his personal moral, intellectual and physical failure to do his duty as the thirty-fifth President of the Republic. Tens of millions were dead and the buck stopped with John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The party was over. How soon would it be before his weaknesses, his predatory sexual predilections and the disastrously inappropriate company he had kept in the last few years became public knowledge? He had partied, bestrode the World stage as if he really was some modern Arthurian reincarnation building Camelot anew in the shadow of Capitol Hill. Last night that dream had died and all that was left was the sickening stench of the fires in the smashed cities and the foul, corrupt taste of ashes in his mouth.
“New York State,” McGeorge Bundy went on. “Previous reports of a five to six megaton airburst directly over Buffalo have now been confirmed. The Canadians are reporting massive damage across most of the Niagara Peninsula…”
Bundy paused at the sound of the President of the United States of America retching uncontrollably. Avoiding looking directly at the Chief Executive he threw a burning glance at the Attorney General. Bobby Kennedy shrugged, got up to go to his older brother who shook off his arm angrily.
Not for the first time in the last twenty-four hours the United States National Security Advisor regretted the absence of the Vice-President as the crisis had deepened in recent days. That was Bobby’s fault. Lyndon Baines Johnson and the younger Kennedy sibling detested each other and LBJ knew anything he said in front of the Attorney General would be undermined five minutes after he left the room. Mac Bundy had never thought he would think it — he was not quite yet ready to say it aloud — but he could not help feeling that his country would not have been in this mess if the wily Texan former ringmaster of the House of Representatives, had been in charge rather than the two spoiled rich kids who had actually been calling the shots the last two years.
Half-a-million people had lived in Buffalo this time yesterday. Half-a-million men, women, children, babies in arms, and now they were most likely, all dead or dying. Outside the city the carnage would have spread for mile upon mile, tens of thousands more would have died, or been horrifically burned, or would presently be ingesting lethal doses of radioactive fallout with every breath they took…
“Massachusetts,” Bundy said, the word choking in his throat. “The Boston suburb of Quincy was destroyed by an air burst estimated to be in the low one to two megaton range. Southern Boston has suffered significant damage. Structural damage to buildings and loss of life has been reported as far from ground zero as Cambridge and the main Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. Casualties are likely to be in the high tens of thousands, probably in the low hundreds of thousands.”
The President of the United States of America leaned forward and resting his elbows on his knees buried his head in his hands and began to weep inconsolably.
Chapter 25
The woman’s feet pattered on the bare boards, the bed creaked and she snuggled against the man again. She had thrown on a cotton nightdress when she went downstairs to check that all the doors and windows were locked.
“There’s electricity again,” she sighed, pressing against Sam Brenckmann.