‘We have?’ Johnson queried.
‘Yes, sir. It was assumed that attacking the British carrier group covering operations in the Abadan Sector would leave the British with no alternative but to step back and accept a State Department brokered armistice in southern Iraq, and on the Abadan front.’
Lyndon Johnson had not said another word on the short journey as Westmoreland reported the loss of the USS Kitty Hawke and the ‘gutting’ of global US Naval power in the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean.
There was pandemonium on the steps of the White House as the Vice president’s cavalcade drew up. There was an M-60 tank blocking the carriageway, two M113 armored personnel carriers drawn up at the foot of the steps, flashing police blue lamps and ambulance reds. There was the stench of raw panic in the air as Johnson clambered out of his vehicle.
“It’s the President, sir!”
“He collapsed… ”
“They had to work on him for several minutes before the ambulances arrived… ”
Johnson had marched grimly into the huge, vaulted lobby of the former Girard Trust Corn Exchange Bank Building — a building he had personally recommended as the Philadelphia White House on grounds of its grandeur and proximity to City Hall — soon after the decision was taken to relocate the Federal Government to Pennsylvania the previous winter.
His entrance coincided with the gurney carrying the stricken President of the United States of America rolling out of the basement lift to be instantly surrounded by heavily armed Secret Servicemen and Marines. Medics were holding saline drips high in the air, there was a spider’s web of tubes leading down into the inert, apparently lifeless body on the trolley. A man in scrubs shouted and the emergency team halted; immediately he began pumping Jack Kennedy’s chest.
Beside the gurney the President’s younger brother was watching, horrified in his helplessness.
Johnson stopped to put a fatherly arm around the Attorney General’s shoulders.
“You go with Jack, Bobby,” the tall, craggy-faced Texan said. “Talk to me when you get to the hospital.”
The Situation Room was crowded.
Johnson strode in, his bodyguards parting the crowd.
“Anybody who doesn’t need to be here ought to be somewhere else!” He declared. “What the fuck is going on in the Gulf, Curtis?” He demanded as the room cleared.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was the coolest man in the room, the freshest and the hardest eyed.
“The Brits hit us with all they got,” the veteran bomber leader reported. He sighed and for a moment Johnson thought he was lost for words. “And then they went straight back to fighting the Russians.”
“What about Sixth Fleet?”
Curtis LeMay straightened to his full height, squared up to the Texan.
“Clarey surrendered the fleet.”
“Jesus!” The Vice President groaned. “Somebody tell me that we’re talking to the Brits?”
McGeorge Bundy, his illness-wrecked face a gaunt mask raised a feeble hand from where he had sunk into a chair after Johnson’s arrival.
“Fulbright has been on the phone to the Embassy off and on for the last couple of hours. Lord Franks and his people are very polite but they’re not in the mood for talking. Lord Franks told Bill that a de facto state of undeclared war exists between the UK and the US.” He forced a ghastly grimace. “You need to hear what Premier Thatcher told the President after the attack on the Centaur battle group… ”
Johnson swung on Curtis LeMay.
“General, remove anybody from this room who doesn’t need to be here!”
Presently, the Vice President settled in the Commander-in-Chief’s chair.
“Play it!” He ordered gruffly.
There was a short interregnum which Johnson employed to fix his face against all evil.
‘Mr President, I will not let this stand! Do you hear me?’
A woman spurned, humiliated and so angry she literally did not care what happened next.
‘Do you hear me, Mr President?
Jack Kennedy’s voice was that of a man who has no defense. His was the disorientation of a man who had been caught with his pants down around his ankles on top of another woman and he knew the affair was going to end badly.
‘Yes, I hear you, Prime Minister… ’
“This will not stand.’
Lyndon Johnson resisted the urge to shut his eyes and to bury his head in his hands.
‘Be assured that I will use every gun, every bomb, every bullet, every weapon that I have at my disposal… ”
JFK heard this the day before the Brits sank the fucking Kitty Hawk and he honestly believed he was still calling the shots?
‘Every weapon that I have. I swear I will avenge this betrayal one day. Do your worst. I will fight you with my own eye teeth if I have to! My own eye teeth! May you rot in Hell!”
Johnson was suddenly looking hard at Curtis LeMay.
The Vice President might not have had the stellar ‘good war’ back in the 1940s that his President had enjoyed; he had been that much older, and consequently served higher up the food chain than the young tyro who lived off those heroic PT-107 days ever since. However, unlike JKF, Johnson had worked on the staffs of the real movers and shakers of the Pacific War, thereby acquiring an invaluable insight into the minds of top military men.
“What operations are presently in hand in the Middle East, General LeMay?” He asked bluntly.
The airman seemed relieved to be able to make his confession.
“In accordance with undertakings given to the Soviets six aircraft of the 319th Bomb Wing are in the air within one hour’s flying time of its failsafe point over the Black Sea, sir. Pre-positioned KC-135 Tankers of the 7th Air Refueling Squadron will rendezvous with the 319th’s birds in approximately ninety minutes, sir.”
Johnson took several seconds to make sense of this.
“You’re telling me that SAC B-52s are flying ground support operations for the fucking Russians?”
“Yes, sir,” Curtis LeMay confirmed disgustedly.
KC-135’s based in Spain had been scrambled to top up the B-52s over the Western Mediterranean, landed and followed the bombers east. The 319th Bomb Group had been tasked to fly to the Middle East at such short notice SAC was making up the operation plan as it went along.
Without being consciously aware that he had stood up Lyndon Johnson discovered he was on his feet with his clenched fists resting on the Situation Room conference table. The red mist descended, his heart pounded hurtfully in his chest.
“No!” He spat angrily. “Not while I live, gentlemen!”
Chapter 55
Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin, the re0instated Ambassador to the United States of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics rose to his feet as Lyndon Johnson swept into the first floor room overlooking the crowds gathering on Market Street and 15th Street, and in the open areas in front of City Hall. Yesterday’s storms had blown through, cleared the air promising a warm, balmy afternoon.
The Russian had not met the Vice President since before the October War, their previous encounters being brief, terse affairs.
Hands were shaken perfunctorily.
Johnson made no gesture inviting his guest to take a seat.
“Let’s cut to the chase, Ambassador,” the towering Texan declared, folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t give a goddam what you people concocted with JFK’s boys. Because of those mistakes,” he snarled angrily, “what we have on our hands is a situation which could go nuclear at the drop of a hat.”