What is going on?
Walter Brenckmann tried to roll deeper into the sheets when the alarm went off seemingly inches from his head. He and his wife, Joanne, had turned in early ahead of their planned early start in the morning. Tomorrow was their twenty-eighth wedding anniversary and Walter had taken several days off so they could drive down to Cape Cod. Joanne groaned, shrugged closer to her husband and for some blessed moments, neither of them was fully awake. Since the kids had moved out — the last, nineteen year old Tabatha, just a month ago to head up to New York State where she was boarding with Joanne’s sister’s family in Buffalo — Walter and Joanne had been struggling to get used to having the big house next to the MIT campus to themselves again. The quietness and the emptiness of the place had spooked them at first, now they’d reached the point where they were learning how to enjoy and fully appreciate the peculiar privacy which had returned to their lives for the first time in over a quarter of a century.
They’d married in 1934, the year Walter had finished law school at Yale. He’d been twenty-five and Joanne had been twenty-eight, a month short of her twenty-ninth birthday. Both families had been quietly scandalised by the age difference which seemed very odd looking back. Joanne had helped pay Walter’s way through law school, as a typist nine to five through Monday to Friday, and waiting tables at night. They’d started having babies as soon as could be decently arranged. Walter junior had been born nine months and three days after the wedding. Daniel fourteen months later, Samuel within another thirteen months. Tabatha had been an afterthought; an accident many years later. Sam’s birth had been difficult and the doctors had warned Joanne not to have another baby. What did doctors know?
Walter Junior was in the Navy, in the Submarine Service of all things! A lieutenant (senior grade), the newly minted Torpedo Officer on the Skipjack class nuclear attack boat the USS Scorpion. Daniel, after various stops and starts had been persuaded to follow in father’s footsteps to Yale where he’d knuckled down to his studies and was in his last year. Sam, to be different because he’d been born with a contrary streak a mile wide had dropped out of college, thrown his guitar in the back of his beaten up Chevy and headed west last year. Sam had inherited his musical itch from Joanne’s side of the family. Joanne’s uncle Saul had been in Glen Miller’s orchestra in the war and made a living playing clubs and bars and halls across the North East ever since. Tabatha had always been closest to Sam but thank God, she retained every ounce of horse sense she’d been born with. She’d wanted to be a teacher so she’d gone to New York State to study English Literature and Geography. Neither of her parents understood how that combination of subjects worked but what parent’s ever understood anything about their offspring!
The alarm seemed very loud.
Walter Brenckmann rolled onto his back.
22:29.
The screeching, wailing noise was coming from outside, penetrating the battened down bedroom windows.
“Walter?” Joanne groaned. “What’s…”
Back in 1940 when Walter and Joanne had realised that — sooner or later — war was coming Walther Brenckmann had put himself forward for Officer Selection to the Navy. If he was going to have to put on a uniform it was not going to be that of an infantryman. They’d reasoned, his thriving downtown law practice notwithstanding that it would be for the best if he got into the military early. Yes, there had been ways of dodging the draft. And yes, they’d explored them, cursorily. But every time they’d walked through the options, the Navy recommended itself. Walter’s father had been on the battleship the USS Arizona in the Great War. He’d never fired a shot in anger and come home a hero; nobody in the Navy was going to order Walter to climb over a parapet and walk into a hail of machine gun fire. Hell, nobody was likely to ask him to even personally handle a weapon in the Navy. All the clever money said the Navy would most likely post him straight to the Judge Advocate’s Department in the Pentagon. Washington wasn’t that far away, was it? Of course, things hadn’t worked out that way. By the end of the war Walter had ended up in command of a destroyer escort in the North Atlantic and returned home in 1946 with a Lieutenant-Commander’s commission in the US Navy Reserve. When the Korean War came along they promoted him full Commander and given him a Fletcher class fleet destroyer. So much for the best laid plans…
Suddenly, Walter realised what he was hearing.
The problem wasn’t his hearing, it was his brain.
There were warning sirens every few blocks in metropolitan Boston, fewer in the suburbs and once a year the authorities fired them up with a long anticipated fanfare. What never happened was somebody deciding to wind up the infernal banshee horns at…
He glanced at the alarm clock a foot from his head on the bedside table as the minutes hand clicked onto the half-hour. His ears still didn’t want to believe the rising pitch of the spine-tingling screech outside the house.
“Basement,” Walter croaked, throwing off the sheets. “We’ve got to get down to the basement, Jo!”
“What are you talking about, Walter?” His wife complained testily, burrowing under the sheets.
“That’s the attack alarm,” he told her calmly.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Walt,” she retorted sleepily, sitting up. “I know things are a bit tense with the Russians over this Cuba thing, but…”
“It is illegal to sound the alarm without twenty-four hours notice unless the attack is already under way, Jo!” He snapped, irritably, knowing he was somewhat embellishing the truth. “Bring blankets and grab some warm things. We’re going down to the basement until the all clear sounds.”
“You really think…”
“I do. I’d rather look stupid than be dead or seriously injured, okay!”
Chapter 4
Commander David Penberthy felt naked on the bridge of HMS Talavera. His feeling of nakedness had nothing to do with the fact his ship was unarmoured, or because his magazines were empty. Even if his magazines had been overflowing with 4.5 inch rounds and Sea Cat surface to air missiles he’d have felt just as naked. His was the nakedness of a man who knows, with utter certainty, that the world around him has gone mad.
“This is the Captain,” he announced, swallowing hard. Painfully aware that he was clasping the microphone so hard his hand was twitching with spasms of cramp he forced himself to relax a fraction. “About half an hour ago CIC became aware of unusually intense unscheduled aerial activity over East Anglia and of what appeared to be a concerted, multi-frequency electronic jamming effort. Fifteen minutes ago we observed, visually, what appear to be the blooms of two large thermonuclear detonations. The first was on a bearing consistent with an explosion in the vicinity of the Medway Estuary. The second appeared to be in the vicinity of London. We have subsequently observed at least ten further strikes in a wide arc taking in probable V-Bomber and American air and missile bases in East Anglia, all the way south to the capital. We are picking up regular General War Order broadcasts and a large amount of emergency operational communications traffic from Allied forces. Until the situation becomes clearer Talavera will stand out to sea. I know that many of you will be worrying about family and friends ashore,” he paused, his mouth dry, “but all we can do for the moment is stand to our stations and do our duty to the best of our abilities. I give you my word that I will pass on any further information I receive as soon as is practically possible. Captain, out.”