But if he doesn't and I am forced to give the strike order, I want it very clear to everyone that what we will be conducting is, in a real sense, a police action. Every effort has been made to control and contain the scope of this mission. We do not want war with the Soviets. We do not want a nuclear exchange. But we must face the fact that the existence of the laser facility and the Soviet Union's Policy of a peacetime quarantine of Asia will (ventually cripple our ability to defend ourselves against attack or to mount a second strike in reprisal. We must, it seems, take this action now, with its inherent risks, to avoid the certainty of far greater risks later… General Curtis, go over the fail-safe procedures again.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs stood. "Sir, we need a direct order from you to launch the two bombers, a second one to allow them to proceed past the established SNOWTIME arctic exercise orbit area they usually operate in, and we need a third, separate order to allow the bombers to cross the fail-safe point and prearm their missiles. The third message is their authorization to strike.
"Bombers will continuously monitor SATCOM and HF radios for coded recall or termination instructions, and they can be recalled at any time. They cannot proceed on their missions unless they have two one-hundred-percent operable missiles and an aircraft that meets their tactical doctrine specifications.
Our communications satellites will be programmed to automatically transmit a recall message every half hour unless we instruct them not to. So if communications are disrupted the mission will automatically terminate."
The President nodded, looked around the room. No one else offered any comment or suggestion. After an unendurably long moment, the President reached down and opened the redcovered folder prepared for him the day before. He broke the sea] and reviewed the document inside authorizing the first step of Curtis' plan.
DREAMLAND
Patrick McLanahan was sitting alone in the semidarkness of his cramped, rickety wooden barracks room when he heard a faint knock on the door.
He smiled and opened it.
Standing in the doorway, wearing a dark gray flight jacket, fliehtsuit and insulated winter flying boots just like his own, was his partner, Dave Luger. Luger had his hands thrust in his pockets and was scuffling the sand around with his toes.
"Ready to go, Muck?" he said, still poking around in the dirt.
McLanahan glanced at his watch and looked at the sky. "Oh seven-hundred hours," he asked. "You're a bit late, aren't you?" Luger checked his watch and shrugged.
"What difference does it make?Last two days, there hasn't been any reason to be on time. All we've been doing is sitting on our behinds.
McLanahan had turned to pick up his jacket, which was slung over the bedpost behind him. "Wait a minute," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "What am I hearing?Is this the same guy who has been bitching for the past two months about the hours we've been putting in?
The same guy who every night for three weeks threatened to strangle me for arranging it so he'd be brought here to Dreamland?"
Luger fell into his ever-familiar gunfighter's slouch. "Yeah, well, I still don't have fond memories of Lieutenant Briggs barging in on me while I was with Sharon to say that I was going to be taking a little trip. And having that prima donna Anderson on my ass fourteen hours a day hasn't been any picnic either. But ever since those B-1s lit out for Ellsworth two days ago, it's been boring as hell. I mean, what the hell is there to do if you're not in the simulator or out on a training jaunt?"
"Not a damn thing," McLanahan said as he closed the door to his room and locked it. Actually, that wasn't true, he thought. He had been able to spend more time with Wendy these past couple days, and was thankful for that. It was the first real chance he'd had since she came back with the other civilians working on the project to get past that stony facade she put up and find out what she was about. Before these past two days, even in their late-night study sessions together, she had stayed detached. Now, after spending some relaxed hours with her, he understood better the reason for her detachment.
She wanted first and foremost to be accepted as a professional, as someone who could step into any man's role and perform with maximum efficiency. He guessed she'd had a tough time in this male-dominated Air Force world, and that concealing a part of herself-the part that was soft and feminine-had after a while become an automatic defense.
He couldn't help comparing her to Catherine, whose privileged upbringing had made her much more self-assured and outgoing and yet well, less interesting…
"Hey, Pat," Luger said as they walked to the briefing shack, why do you suppose Elliott called a meeting this morning?
Think he's going to give us our walking papers?"
"Maybe it's more than that."
"What do you mean?"
McLanahan continued walking. They were nearing the women's barracks.
"Well, it seems to me that we wouldn't have spent all that time testing out that equipment on the Old Dog, and then installing equivalent systems in those B-1s, if the B-1s weren't being used for something.
Maybe something big. Take that terrain cartridge we were testing before the B-1s left. Well, Bill Dalton, the nav for Zero-Six-Four, said something about it corresponding to an area over the Sarir Calanscio Desert in Libya. That's complete bull. Those planes will be flying through the mountains," Both men were silent for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. "Hey, there's Wendy and Angelina," Luger said, spotting the two coming out of the women's barracks. He waved to them and the four joined up a few yards short of the briefing shack.
"See we're not the only ones who're late," Angelina Pereira said with a smile. She was the only one of them not wearing a flightsuit. Nice lady, McLanahan thought to him self. Nice and tough.
She reminded him a little bit of his mother. He nodded toward Luger.
"Dave here had to get his beauty sleep. Good buddy that I am, I decided to wait for him."
Wendy looked worried. "Pat," she said, "do you have any idea why General Elliott called us together?"
McLanahan shrugged. "I expect we'll find out soon enough," he said as he opened the door to the shack.
General Bradley Elliott removed a pair of sunglasses and looked out over his captive audience. He wore a thick green nylon winter-weight flight jacket over a set of standard starched Air Force fatigues with subdued green and black name tags, a subdued Strategic Air Command patch, and subdued black stars on his collar. He propped himself on a desk at the front of the room and twirled his sunglasses absently.
"Well, I'm glad that all of you have seen fit to put in an appearance," Elliott asked. "Even if a bit late. "He looked at the four stragglers who had just entered the room.
"I've called all of you here," he said, "to provide some explanation for the events of the past two days, and of the past few months. As most of you have surmised, the improvements and modifications we made in those two Excaliburs were not implemented on the off chance that they might prove of use at some future date. They were carried out with a definite purpose in mind. "Elliott paused to stare at the faces around the room. Directly in front of him, Colonel James Anderson sat straight in his chair. To his immediate left was Lewis Campos, his forehead shiny with sweat. At the back of the room, Patrick McLanahan sat staring at the floor, his legs straight out.
"Ladies and gentlemen "Elliot said, 'approximately twenty-five minutes ago two B-1s-the B-1s you've worked on these past few months-took off from Ellsworth Air Force Base. They are launching as part of a possible strike force on an area in the Soviet Union."
There was a collective gasp from those in the room.