CHAPTER SEVEN
“One who is able to change and transform in accord with the enemy and wrest victory is _ termed spiritual!”
SKYBIRD, SKYBIRD, message follows: KILO, THREE, SEVEN, NINER, EIGHT, FOXTROT, ONE…” the U.S. Strategic Command senior controller said over the command net, reading off a long string of phonetic letters and numbers, then repeating the coded message with the phrase “I say again…” In the Eighth Air Force command center, two teams of two controllers were copying the message down, then beginning to decode the message separately, then comparing their results with each other; satisfied, they began running the associated checklist. The checklist would instruct them what message to transmit to the bomber forces under their command. Both sets of controllers composed the new message, then quickly verified it with each other.
Then, while the first set of controllers began reading the new coded message on the command posts UHF and VHF frequency, the second set of controllers copied the message and passed it along to the battle staff operations officer. He in turn decoded the message with another officer, checked their results with the first two sets of controllers — it checked once again. At least four sets of eyes always checked every message and every response to be sure they were accomplishing the proper action. If there was any error anywhere along the line — a nervous or cracking voice, a hesitation, anything — the other controller would slap a piece of paper over the codebook, and the controller reading the message would read, “Stand by,” then start all over again. The stakes were too enormous to leave any ambiguities.
“Latest EAM verified, sir,” the ops officer reported to the Eighth Air Force battle staff. “DEFCON Two emergency action message.” The entire staff opened up their checklists to the appropriate page, as the ops officer began writing updated date-time groups up on the command timing board. DEFCON, or Defense Condition, Two was a higher state of readiness for all U.S. military forces; for the bomber forces, it placed them at the very highest stages of ground alert, just short of taking off. “Message establishes an ‘A hour only, directing force timing for one hundred percent of the force on cockpit alert status, plus fifty percent of available forces as of A plus six hours to go to dispersal locations,” the ops officer went on. “Bases with missile flight times less than twelve minutes go to repositioned alert; bases with MFTs less than eight minutes go to engines-running repositioned alert. The message directs full Reserve and Guard mobilizations.”
Every member of the battle staff reached for telephones as soon as the minibriefing was over. Lieutenant-General Terrill Samson, commander of Eighth Air Force, was on the phone to his boss, the commander of Air Force Air Combat Command, General Steven Shaw. He was put on hold.
Samson sighed but did not let himself become angry. He knew he was already effectively out of the picture — in more ways than one. Steve Shaw didn’t need to talk to Terrill Samson for any important reason right now.
Barksdale’s sortie board was filled with tail numbers and parking areas, but all the sortie numbers and crew numbers were blank. That’s because they were all for B-52H bombers, and the B-52s had all been retired, deactivated. By October, all of them would be flown to Davis- Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Arizona, there to be cut up and put on display so that Russian, Chinese, and whoever else’s spy satellites could photograph the birds and be sure their wings had been clipped for good. Not that Barksdale’s ramps were vacant. Some of the B-lBs from the Seventh Bomb Wing out of Dyess Air Force Base, Abilene, Texas, who were going to become Air Force Reserve bombers in October, had dispersed to Barksdale — they would probably be assigned here full-time when Dyess turned into a B-1B training base.
But all of the heavy bombers that had once been under Terrill Samson’s command were now in the hands of U.S. Strategic Command and Admiral Henry Danforth — and since Samson had opened his mouth and dared to contradict Danforth’s blind preparation for a nuclear war that was not wanted and probably would never come except by some horrible accident, Samson was not even entrusted with commanding his bombers under CINCSTRATCOM. He was a three-star general without a command, without any responsibilities. He still monitored the status of each and every bomber that was formerly under his supervision, but he was not in the chain of command anymore — he was not even in the advice and consultation loop.
The bomber SIOP generation, the preparation for all the land-based B-1B Lancer and B-2A Spirit bombers for nuclear war, was still not going very well. About three-quarters of the force was on alert now — but under DEFCON Three, 100 percent of the bombers had to be on alert. In addition, 25 percent of the force had to be dispersed to alternate operating locations — Barksdale was one, along with Fairchild AFB in Spokane, Washington, Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota, and Castle AFB near Merced, California — but just a few bombers had arrived, and it would take days for them to get on alert with nuclear weapons aboard. All of the alternate fields were former bomber bases, but it had been months, even years, since any of them had any big bombers land there, let alone any bombers with nuclear weapons aboard.
Terrill Samson could offer words of encouragement, or dispense advice, or rant and rave and threaten to kick ass if they didn’t get moving faster. But it meant nothing. His words did not have any authority behind them anymore. Although his stand-down wasn’t officially set until October, it was as if Terrill Samson had already been relieved of command, and retired.
“Terrill, Steve here,” General Shaw said, as he came on the line a few moments later. “STRATCOM wants to put the B-2s on airborne alert. You got something on the shelf that we can give them in the next couple hours?”
“Yes, sir,” Samson responded woodenly, disguising his shock and disbelief. Airborne alert, nicknamed “Chrome Dome” and immortalized in films like Dr Strangelove, hadn’t been done in more than twenty-five years because it was so dangerous to have nuclear-loaded bombers flying around for hours or even days on end — the old Strategic Air Command had lost two bombers and four nuclear gravity bombs during Chrome Dome missions. Now Danforth and Balboa, two Navy pukes, somehow thought it would be a good idea to do it again.
“I expected a slightly stronger reaction from you, Earthmover,” Shaw remarked.
“Would it do any good, coming from me — or you?”
“Probably not, but I’d like to hear it anyway,” Shaw said. “First answer the question so I can give STRATCOM their answer, then talk to me.”
“We don’t have any Beak-specific airborne alert tracks laid out,” Samson responded, “but we can modify a few old B-52 racetracks and give them out to the B-2 crews. We can mate them to B-1B tracks, but we want to be sure we spread them out in case China decides to use nuclear warheads on air-to-air missiles.” Samson wondered why his deputy, General Michael Collier, who was the bomber chief for Strategic Command after Samson had been relieved, hadn’t called in the request directly from STRATCOM headquarters at Offutt. The only explanation was that Danforth, commander in chief of Strategic Command, was disregarding Collier’s recommendations, as he disregarded Samson’s.