"Right."
"No, Paul. There was nothing monstrous about it. You know what that sound meant? I’ll tell you. It meant peace on earth."
Chapter 9
"There are only two alternatives," General Steele said. He paused and looked round the long table. The President, at the head of the table, was inclining slightly forward to listen. The Secretaries of State and Defence were at his right and left hand respectively, and between them and the service chiefs the intervening seats were occupied by the heads of Atomic Energy Commission, Central Intelligence Agency, Civil Defence, and F.B.I.. It was almost, but not quite, a full meeting of the National Security Council. Only two or three members were missing, and they were out of Washington.
"The first of these," Steele went on, "seems at this moment to be impossible of fulfilment. It is that the eight forty-third wing be recalled. I am not going to suggest there is not the slightest chance of doing this. We may, by some lucky break, hit on the right letter combinations. But the odds against that, in the time remaining to us, are in the order of a hundred to one. For the moment anyway.
"I use the expression ‘for the moment’, because General Keppler has suggested a way in which we might be able to establish personal contact with the commander at Sonora — a contact which so far he has refused to prolong beyond his bald statement that the wing were attacking on his personal orders. I will revert to this suggestion after examining the second of the alternatives."
"One moment," the President broke in. "I think I’d like to hear about it before you pass on to the second alternative."
"Very well, sir. It so happens the Seventy Fourth Infantry Division are on tactical dispersal training in the immediate vicinity of Sonora. General Keppler has suggested they be ordered to penetrate Sonora Base, to establish contact with the commander and with any other officer who was present when the crews were briefed. Only those officers would know the code group which the commander gave the crews at the briefing."
"Would it be necessary to use force to achieve this, er, penetration?"
Steele glanced at Franklin, who was standing in the group surrounding the table, and motioned him forward. "General Franklin, the commander of SAC, is here, Mr. President. With your permission, he’s the best man to answer that question."
The President nodded. "Well, Franklin? Would force be necessary?"
"Most certainly," Franklin said bluntly. "I’ve been thinking what I’d have done in Quinten’s place. I’d know that the attack orders would be monitored, so my first concern would have been to seal off the base. I feel sure Quinten has brought the base to warning red conditions, which means all non-combatants are now below ground, and the defence teams will be in their battle positions. No doubt he has instructed them to fire on anyone or anything that tries to penetrate the base unless he personally orders them not to. Any force which tried to penetrate would surely come under fire. There would be heavy casualties on both sides."
General Keppler said pleasantly, "Not so many as you may think. With respect to your defence teams, General, they’re not infantry. They’re airmen and technicians with a smattering of training in the operation of defensive weapons. The seventy-fourth is one of our Ranger divisions. They’ll brush the defence aside without too much trouble."
The President saw Franklin’s face slowly darken. In the few weeks he had been President he had already experienced one major inter-service row and three or four minor squabbles. Now the foundations of yet another dispute were being laid for the future. If there was going to be a future, he thought grimly. Before Franklin could reply he intervened. "How long before they can move in, General Keppler?"
An aide stepped forward and whispered to Keppler. The burly general smiled. "They’ve got there pretty fast, Mr. President. The second battalion is in position five hundred yards off two sides of the fencing now." He looked at Franklin, grinned, and carefully laid an inch of ash from his cigar in one of the massive glass ashtrays which were ranked down the middle of the table.
The President did not miss the by-play between Keppler and Franklin. He noted it, but it did not engage any large part of his conscious attention. He was considering the situation. Somewhere on that base there must be an officer who knew the code group. Perhaps the commander himself would pull back when he heard what the President had to tell him. Inevitably, there would be casualties. Possibly heavy casualties, though Keppler should know the capabilities of his troops. But the situation was such that casualties must be accepted. The few would have to suffer for the sake of the many. He made his decision.
"Send them in," he said quietly. "I want the minimum in casualties, but they are not to let the necessity of inflicting casualties deter them from taking the commander alive at the earliest possible time. Instruct the battalion commander he is to institute an immediate search for any officers who were present at the briefing."
Keppler turned in his chair. The aide stepped forward, listened, then turned and hurried from the room.
"Now, General Steele," the President said. "Please continue."
The Air Force Chief of Staff began to speak again. "The Joint Chiefs have come to the conclusion that the only course open to us is to follow up Quinten’s action. That is the second of the alternatives. It is a fact, Mr. President, that the eight forty-third will probably be able to hit each of the priority one targets. We think, furthermore, they will take out these targets before the Russians are able to get any effective retaliatory force off the ground. Provided the eight forty-third is followed by a sufficiently strong attack, delivered by at least eight wings, the Russians will not be able to retaliate on the American continent at all. We cannot guarantee the integrity of targets in Western Europe, but we think there is a good chance the Russians will be so concerned in fighting off our attack and trying to scrap together resources for a counter they will probably not be able to mount an effective attack on those targets.
"We considered also the possibility of a retaliatory strike by submarines firing guided missiles from off our coasts. The Chief of Naval Operations is satisfied we can defeat this threat. Our main concern in the past has been the huge sea areas we have to cover to guard against attacks on the SAC bases in the South and South-west. But once our main attacks have been delivered, we can afford to abandon those bases. Our sea defences can then be concentrated on comparatively short and narrow belts of water opposite the East and West coasts. We feel we can then ensure missiles from submarines will not hit our coastal and near-coastal cities.
"Our conclusions can be summarised thus. Accepting we cannot recall the bombers of the eight forty-third wing, there is an absolute military necessity to follow up their attack as hard and as fast as we can. Any other course of action will inevitably mean that we lose cities, and take casualties. Not just a few, but millions of them. In anticipation of your decision, ten SAC wings are already heading for their X points. They can put in their attack between two and seven hours after the eight forty-third. Mr. President, the Joint Chiefs unanimously recommend that a full scale attack on Soviet Russia be launched immediately."