Randy knew that Bubba Offenhaus had been picked to head
Civil Defense because he owned the only two ambulances, which with the addition of black scrollwork doubled as hearses, in Fort Repose. “Did you talk to him about fallout?” he asked.
“Well, no, I didn’t,” Bill said. “Mr. Offenhaus said they sent him some booklets from Washington but he’s not passing them around because they’re too gruesome. Says why worry about something you can’t see, feel, hear, or smell? Says it’s just as bad to frighten people to death as kill them with radiation, and I must say that I agree with him.”
Lavinia said, “If it came I suppose we’d have rationing like last time and all kinds of shortages. Bill, don’t you think we ought-no, I won’t think of it. Please, let’s not talk about it any more. It’s horrid.” She dabbed at her eyes and tried to smile. “Randolph, when your sister-in-law comes won’t you bring her over for dinner? Afterwards, we could play bridge. Perhaps you’d like to play a rubber now? I now you’re going to stay up to meet the plane, and I’m too overwrought to sleep.”
“I’m sure Helen will be delighted to come to dinner,” Randy said. “As for bridge, I’ll take a rain check. I still have some things to do at home. Good night, Lavinia. Sorry I upset you.”
Lib came out to the car with him. “Didn’t get very far, did I?” he said.
“You started Dad thinking. That’s far.”
Overhead he heard multi-engined jets. On that night there was three quarters of the moon. He looked up, and seeing nothing, knew the jets were military aircraft, too high for their running lights to show against the bright sky. On any night, if you listened for a while, you could hear the B-52’s and 47’s and 58’s, but on this night there seemed to be more of them.
“Where are they from?” Lib asked. “Where are they going?” “I guess they’re from McCoy and MacDill and Eglin and Homestead,” Randy said, “and I don’t think they’re going anywhere much. They’re just stooging around up there because they’re safer up there than on the ground. When you can hear them floating around like that, high, you know you’re all right.”
“I see,” Lib said. For the second time, he kissed her good night.
When he reached home it was almost midnight. He made coffee and, yawning, turned on the radio and tuned an Orlando station for the late network news. The first bulletin jerked him wide awake:
“From Washington-The official Arab radio, in a broadcast from Damascus, claims that American carrier planes are conducting a violent bombing attack on the harbor of Latakia. This news broke in Washington just a few minutes ago. There has been no reaction from the Pentagon, which at this hour of night is lightly staffed. However, it is reported that high Navy and Defense Department officials are being summoned into emergency conference. We will give you more on this as we receive it from our Washington newsroom. Here is the text of the official Arab broadcast: `At about six-thirty o’clock this morning’-please remember that it is morning in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is seven hours ahead of American Eastern Standard Time-`low-flying jet aircraft, of the type used on United States aircraft carriers and bearing United States insignia, brutally and without warning bombed the harbor area of Latakia. It is reported that civilian casualties are high and that many buildings are in flames.’ That was the text of the Arab broadcast and that is all the hard news we have at the moment. Latakia is the most important Syrian harbor. Within the last few years it has been heavily fortified, and there has been extensive construction of submarine pens under the direction of Russian technicians. It is generally regarded as one of the most powerful anti-Western naval bases in the Mediterranean. It is known that units of the United States Sixth Fleet are now in the Eastern Mediterranean, and that these units have been shadowed by fast, unidentified aircraft. . . .”
The network announcer went on to other news, and Randy’s phone rang.
He picked it up, irritated. It was Bill McGovern. “Did you hear the news?” Bill asked.
“Yes. I’m trying to get more of it.” “What do you think?”
“I don’t think anything, yet. I want to hear our side of it.” “Sounds to me like we’re starting a small preventive war,” Bill said.
“I don’t believe that for an instant,” Randy said. “You don’t prevent a war by starting one.”
“Well, we’ll see who’s right in the morning.”
Mark Bragg missed the first news flash on Latakia. At that moment he was straightening up the house before driving to Offutt to assume direction of Intelligence analysis in the Hole. He had been recalled from the Puerto Rico mission because SAC’s Commander in Chief, General Hawker, felt that in this newest crisis senior members of his Operations and Intelligence staffs should maintain a round-the-clock watch. An attack is rarely planned to conform to a victim’s five-day, forty-hour week so Hawker divided his most experienced officers into three shifts covering the whole day. As SAC’s third-ranking Intelligence officer, junior to the A-2 and his deputy, both brigadiers, Colonel Bragg naturally drew the most onerous hours-midnight to 0800.
At eleven P.M., Omaha time, while the Damascus broadcast was being repeated around the world, Mark was in the children’s rooms, feeling like an intruder. It was the silence that discomforted him. He found himself tiptoeing, listening for the missing sounds. The house was still as northern woods in winter, when all the creatures are gone.
Ben Franklin’s room looked as if it had been ransacked by a band of monkeys rather than that a thirteen-year-old boy had packed. Mark closed dresser drawers and picked up ties, clothes—hangers, and shoes and socks, never in pairs. He supposed all boys were like that. Peyton’s room looked no different than if this had been an ordinary day, as if she had been invited to a slumber party at the home of a friend and would return in the morning. Her bedspread was uncreased, and the furry toy animal that held her pajamas rested precisely in its center, as always. She had forgotten it. Her doll collection, carefully propped up on a tier of shelves, formed a silent audience to his silent inspection. Peyton hadn’t asked to take her dolls to Florida. Perhaps she was outgrowing dolls. Or perhaps she didn’t realize; when she left them, that it might be forever. Her desk was neat, pencils aligned as if at squads right, schoolbooks stacked in a pyramid. He picked up the books and took them downstairs. He would mail them from Offutt in the morning, after he was off duty. Peyton was a tidy and thoughtful little girl, in looks and temperament much like her mother. He loved her. He loved them both. They had been very satisfactory children. The house was intolerably quiet. In the whole house the only sound was the ticking of clocks.
Driving toward Offutt, and his job, Mark felt better. When he turned into the four-lane highway that ran south to the base he saw that it was eleven-thirty and flipped on the car radio. It was then that he heard the Arab charge that Latakia had been bombed by American planes and, in addition, a rather strange statement from Washington. “A Navy Department spokesman,” the newscaster said, “denies that there has been any intentional attack on the Syrian coast.”
Mark stepped down on the accelerator and watched the speedometer needle pass seventy-five. On a turn the back wheels weaved. Ice. He forced himself to concentrate on his driving. Soon he would know everything that was known in the Hole, which meant everything that was known to American Intelligence, and the world-wide news networks, everywhere. Meanwhile it was pointless to guess, or end up in a ditch, a useless casualty with no Purple Heart.