Miranda nodded.
The crowd around her suddenly parted.
Martin Luther King shook hands with his friend Ivan Allen. The leader of the movement’s wife, Coretta exchanged kisses with Louise Allen, and then pausing to size up Miranda for a moment, smiled before enveloping her in an embrace. Dr King was more circumspect, he shook Miranda’s hand with something akin to solemnity.
“Dwayne died because he dreamed of this day,” he said, gripping her hand in his and looking her in the eye. “Today and on Saturday, we change history, Miranda.”
Miranda had very nearly swooned the first time she had met Martin Luther King. He was — literally — like no other man she had ever met. It seemed almost cheap to call whatever he had ‘magnetism’, or even ‘animal magnetism’. The word ‘presence’ did him scant justice. The man was simply magical; when he walked into a room that room became his room. It was hardly surprising women threw themselves at him. It was not that he was overwhelmingly handsome — he was but in an impressive way, not the superficial movie star way of so many of her parents friends and associates in Hollywood — but more in the timbre of his voice, the empathy in his eyes and the way he seemed capable of effortlessly infusing one with a belief in the rightness of things.
Miranda had come to terms with her prom night infatuation with King.
To be in the man’s thrall was only natural.
Soon the whole World would be under his spell.
Miranda lost herself in the man’s gaze.
“I will always be there for you,” she heard herself saying.
Chapter 46
Curtis LeMay stormed into the subterranean hub of the US Navy’s worldwide operations room in a Biblical rage. The 5136th Bomb Wing had lost two B-52s overnight and reports were coming in about another ‘blue on blue’ screw up which had wiped out a company of the 3rd Marines at Eau Claire, the last blocking position along Interstate 94 between the rebels and the bridges across the Mississippi at Minneapolis.
It was early afternoon on a scorching day and already there were confirmed accounts of organized and armed bands of ‘rioters’ attacking the ‘March on Philadelphia’ in the National Mall in Washington, of shots being fired and worse, the big networks had finally got their acts together in refusing to permit military censorship of the horrific pictures now coming out of DC.
And twenty minutes ago he had been handed a crazy message sheet about a new, potentially monumental FUBAR coming out of the Persian Gulf.
“What’s going on in the fucking Gulf?” He demanded of Admiral David McDonald, the Chief of Naval Operations. His tone was very much that of a man asking: ‘And what fine mess have you gotten me into now!”
The other man had been leaning over the global map table with his hands resting on its surface. Slowly, very slowly her straightened, shot his cuffs and took a deep breath. The blond Georgian had the look of a man about to commence his lonely walk to the scaffold.
“Carrier Division Seven has engaged ships of the Australian, British and New Zealand Persian Gulf Squadron. Things are unclear at present. Specifically, whether the engagement is ongoing and or,” he shrugged, tight-lipped, “all or part of the ABNZ force has been destroyed.”
Curtis LeMay came to a staggering halt two paces away from the Navy man. For perhaps the first — and only — time in his adult life at that moment a five year old child wielding a very small feather could have floored the rambunctious veteran airman with a simple waft of his downy weapon.
He regarded the CNO with frank disbelief for several seconds.
“What… ” He muttered, his lower jaw momentarily hanging slackly.
McDonald took a deep breath; around him staffers were shrinking back into the shadows of the Map Room.
“Responding to the British adopting a threatening operational posture,” he explained, clearly not really believing — or rather, not wanting to believe — what he was actually saying. “Carrier Division Seven engaged the ABNZ battle group based around the carrier HMS Centaur… ”
LeMay was tempted to ask somebody to kick him.
This had to be a bad dream.
He needed to wake up!
But David McDonald was still talking.
The problem was that hardly any of the words coming out of his mouth made sense.
“We are also receiving confirmed reports of nuclear detonations over central Iraq… ”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs felt like he had been jabbed with a cattle prod. Suddenly, he had shaken off his brief incredulity like a bear shaking off the freezing waters of the river in which he has been hunting migrating Salmon. When next he spoke it was as himself, fully in control, The Big Cigar, the man who had talked about bombing the Soviet Union back into the Stone Age.
“Who used nukes? Was it us?”
McDonald shook his head.
“No, sir.”
Okay, so it was the British!
The Russians did a lot of dumb things but they were not about to drop nukes on their own territory.
LeMay’s mind immediately turned to specifics.
“Has the President been informed?”
“Yes, sir. All incoming command signals are being copied to the White House Situation Room in real time.”
LeMay joined the Chief of Naval Operations to study the ‘table’.
“What else has gone wrong?” He demanded brusquely.
When the shit hit the fan something else always went wrong.
“Kitty Hawk has sustained underwater damage.”
LeMay had mistakenly imagined he had got a grip.
Now he exploded: “How the fuck does the biggest carrier in the World sustain ‘underwater damage’ in a fight with some pissant little World War Two flat top a quarter of its size, David?”
“I don’t know,” the CNO confessed angrily.
Curtis LeMay’s entourage was hovering in the background keen to keep well out of the line of fire.
Their chief looked over his shoulder.
“Send to Grand Forks,” he barked. “The 319th is to go to DEFCON TWO.”
He forced himself to slow down.
This was what had happened on the night of the October War; everything had seemed to be calming down and then things had started moving faster and faster…
“Is Carrier Division Seven still actively engaged?” He asked coolly, sternly in command without a trace of anger.
“Possibly, sir. We’re waiting on reports from Kitty Hawk’s airborne early warning and control birds confirming ground zeros for the two suspected nukes… ”
“Just two? Over central Iraq?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Air bursts?”
“Probably, why?”
Curtis LeMay sighed.
“We supplied the Brits several one megaton bombs before the October War for their Blue Streak missile program. Airburst those eggs at the right altitude they’d put out big EMPs. Maybe big enough to take down the Soviets’ communications net across the whole of Iraq for several hours.”
McDonald was still not on the same wavelength as the airman.
This was entirely understandable given that he was wholly preoccupied unraveling the ongoing conundrum of why exactly the Kitty Hawk and her escorts had elected to swat a part of the ABNZ Persian Gulf Squadron into oblivion. A couple of A-4 Skyhawks circling overhead would have immediately curtailed the Centaur’s flight operations; and any one of Kitty Hawk’s screening cruisers or destroyers could — at any time in the last twenty-four hours — have sailed up to the British carrier and basically persuaded it to stand down.