Twelve minutes later Mark entered the War Room, fifty feet underground. Blinking in the brilliant but shadowless artificial sunlight, he glanced at the map panels. Nothing startling. He walked on to the offices of A-2, Intelligence. In the inner office Dutch Klein, Deputy A-2 and a buck general in his early forties, waited for his relief. An electric coffee maker steamed on Dutch’s desk. Two ashtrays were filled with crushed cigarette butts. Dutch had been busy. Dutch said, “I guess you’ve heard the news.”
“I caught it on the radio. It’s not true, is it?”
“It’s fantastic!” Dutch touched a sheaf of pink flimsies, decoded priority messages, on his desk. “Two hours ago Sixth Fleet scrambled fighters to intercept a jet snooper. An ensign from Saratoga—an ensign, mind you-sighted the bogy and chased him all the way up the Levant. He closed at Latakia and fired a bird. Whether it was human error or an erratic rocket isn’t clear. Anyway, everything blew.” Dutch, a muscular, keg-shaped man with round, rubbery face, groaned and sank back into his chair.
Automatically the fortifications of the port area of Latakia came into focus in Mark’s mind. “Large stores of conventional mines, torpedoes, and ammo,” he said. “They usually have four to eight subs in the new pens and a couple of cruisers and escort vessels in the harbor.” He hesitated, thinking of something else, worse. “The fire and blast could have cooked off nuclear weapons, if they were in combat configuration. That could well be. What do you make of it?”
“Worst foul-up on record,” Dutch said. “Glad it’s the Navy and not us.”
“I mean, how do you think the Russians will react?” Mark asked the question not because he thought Dutch could give him the answer, but as a catalyst to his own imagination. Intelligence wasn’t Dutch’s primary interest. On the way up to two stars and command of an air division, Dutch had been forced to assimilate two years of staff, part of his education. To Mark, the Intelligence job, with all its political and psychological facets, was a career in itself. He had a feel for it, the capacity to stir a headful of unrelated facts until they congealed into a pattern arrowing the future. Dutch said, “Maybe it’ll throw them off balance.”
“It might upset their timetable,” Mark agreed, “but I’m afraid they’re all set. It might just give the Kremlin, a cases belli, an excuse.”
Dutch lifted himself out of the chair. “I leave it with you. The C in C was here until a few minutes ago. He said he had to get some sleep because it might get even hairier tomorrow. If there are any important political developments you’re to call him. Operations will handle the alert status, as usual.”
For thirty minutes Mark concentrated on the pile. of flimsies, the latest intelligence from NATO, Smyrna, Naples, the Philippines, Eastern Sea Frontier, and the summaries from Air Defense Command and the CIA. When he was abreast of the situation he crossed the War Room to Operations Control.
The Senior Controller on duty was Ace Atkins, a former fighter pilot, like Mark an eagle colonel. He was called Ace because he had been one, in two wars. Because of proven courage and absolute coolness, he was at the desk now occupied, with the red phone a few inches from his fingers. One code word into Ace’s red phone would cock SAC’s two thousand bombers and start the countdown at the missile sites. It would take another word, either spoken by General Hawker or with his authority, to launch the force.
Ace, slight and wiry, looked up and said, “Welcome to Bedlam!” The Control Room, separated from the War Room by heavy glass, was utterly quiet.
Mark said, “I’m worried. I wish Washington would come forth with a complete statement. As things stand now, most of the world will believe we attacked Latakia deliberately.”
“Why don’t the Navy information people give out?”
“They want to. They’ve got a release ready. But they’re low echelon and you know Washington.”
“Not very well.”
“I know f it well,” Mark said, “and I think I can pretty well guess what’s happening. Everybody wants to put his chop on it because it’s so important but for the same reason nobody wants to take the responsibility. The Navy PIO probably called an Assistant Secretary, and the Assistant Secretary called the Secretary and the. Secretary probably called the Secretary of Defense. By that time: the Information Agency and State Department were involved. By now more and more people are getting up and they are calling more and more people.” Mark looked at the clocks, above the War Room maps, telling the time in all zones from Omsk to Guam. “It’s two A.M. in Washington now. As each man gives his okay to the release it turns out that somebody else has to be consulted. Eventually they’ll have the Secretary of State out of bed and then the White House press secretary. Maybe he’ll wake up the President. Until that happens, I don’t think there’ll be any full statement.”
Ace said. “My God! That sounds awful.”
“It is, but what worries me most is Moscow.” “What’s Moscow saying?”
“Not a word. Not a whisper. Usually Radio Moscow would be screaming bloody murder. That’s what worries me. As long as people keep talking they’re not fighting. When Moscow quits talking, I’m afraid they’re acting.” Mark borrowed a cigarette and lit it. “I think the chances are about sixty-forty,” he said, “that they’ve started their countdown.”
Ace’s fingers stroked the red phone. “Well,” he said, “we’re as ready as we ever will be. Fourteen percent of the force is airborne now and another seventeen percent on standby. I’m pre pared to hold that ratio until we’re relieved at 0800. How’s that sound to you, Mark?”
As always, the responsibility to act lay with A-3. Mark Bragg, as A-2, could only advise. He said, “That’s a pretty big effort. You can’t keep the whole force in the air and on standby all the time. I know that, and yet “ He stretched. “I’ll trot back to my cave and see what else comes in. I’ll check with you in an hour.”
On his desk, Mark found copies of three more urgent dispatches. One, from the Air attach, in Ankara, reported Russian aerial reconnaissance over the Azerbaijan frontier. Another, from the Navy Department, gave a submarine-sighting two hundred miles off Seattle, definitely a skunk. The third, received by the State Department from London in the highest secret classification, said Downing Street had authorized the RAF to arm intermediate range missiles, including the Thor, with nuclear warheads.
In an hour Helen’s plane would touch down in Orlando. In two hours, if the plane was on time, Helen and the children would be in an area of comparative safety. Mark prayed that for the next two hours, at least, nothing more would happen. He held fast to the thought, so long as there was no war, there was always a chance for peace. As the minutes and hours eroded away, and no word came from Moscow, he became more and more certain that a massive strike had been ordered. He diagnosed this negative intelligence as more ominous than almost anything that could have happened, and determined to awaken General Hawker if it persisted.
At three-thirty in the morning Randolph Bragg waited in Orlando’s air terminal for Helen’s flight. With only a few night coaches scheduled in from New York, plus the non-stop from Chicago, the building was almost empty except for sweepers and scrubwomen. When he saw a plane’s landing lights, Randy walked outside to the gate. On the other side of the field, near the military hangars used by Air-Sea Rescue Command, he saw the silhouettes of six B-47s, part of the wing from McCoy, he deduced, using this field in accordance with a dispersal plan. The military hangars and Operations building were bright with light, which at this hour was not usual.
The big transport came in for its landing, approached on the taxi strip, pivoted to a halt before him, and cut its engines. He saw that only a few people were getting off Most would be going on to Miami. He saw Peyton and Ben Franklin come down the steps, Ben incongruously wearing an overcoat, Peyton carrying a bow, a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. Then he saw Helen and she waved and he ran out to meet them.