The private gulped down some air and saluted Maj. Christian Teare with a trembling hand before rushing from the room.
Teare rose, his massive frame effectively blocking projection of the rest of Casablanca and replacing it with his silhouette on the screen. The room was empty now, save for the projectionist.
“Private,” Teare addressed him, “I want a note on my desk tomorrow requesting more first-run movies. These old black-and-whites are startin’ to get on my nerves.”
The private started rewinding. “Casablanca’s a classic, sir.”
“Yeah, well I ain’t never been there and I don’t take much of a fancy to a guy who talks out of the side of his mouth like he has marbles inside.”
The private shrugged.
Capt. Jared Heath, operations chief for Bunker 17, appeared in the small auditorium’s doorway and made a quick salute.
“Be with ya in a minute, Cap,” Teare told him. “How ’bout we get The Sting again?” he asked the projectionist.
“We’ve had that eight times in the last nine months, sir.”
“Just what I thought. We’re overdue for another showing.”
“Yes, sir,” the projectionist agreed reluctantly.
Teare turned to Captain Heath. “Let’s get to it, Cap.”
The two men moved into the brightly lit but antiseptic corridors sixty feet below ground level in the foothills of Montana. The flashing red lights would have stung almost any normal set of eyes. But the men — and three women — of Bunker 17 had grown accustomed to them.
“Let’s have the operations report,” Teare requested.
Heath gazed down at his clipboard. He was a medium-size, well-built black man, still a dwarf next to Teare, with a tightly sculptured afro. As operations chief of the bunker, he served as second in command to the major, with responsibilities in the area of organizing all Red Flag procedures. Eyebrows had been raised when Heath had been assigned here as exec — a former civil rights protester linked with a southern redneck — but they hadn’t stayed up for long. Heath and Teare had become fast friends and Bunker 17’s consistent drill proficiency reflected that.
“All systems are running green, Major,” Heath informed him, as they continued down the wide, circling corridors which might have been lifted right off the Starship Enterprise. “Tracking, weapons, com-link, security systems — everything is go.”
“Launching sequence will commence in one minute,” a dull, preprogramed voice droned over the loud speaker.
Captain Heath checked his watch. “Right on schedule,” he informed Teare.
Sixty feet above them, four-feet thick steel doors had slid across all access areas within the agricultural station that served as their ground cover, denying unwarranted entry into the base. Once on Red Flag alert, the bunker was effectively sealed from the outside world. Even all air terminals were closed tight to prevent possible chemical contamination by enemy forces. Bunker personnel were now getting their air from huge tanks located at the core of the complex. The supply would last seven days. As an added precaution, armed guards were posted at all possible routes of escape and exit. Teare had chosen the commandos himself, all men he could look right in the eye.
“Launching sequence will commence in fifty-five seconds….”
Captain Heath and Maj. Christian Teare had passed three guards standing at attention at their posts before they turned into the first silo to make a spot check.
“Warhead armed and ready, Major,” the sergeant in the terminal room reported. “All systems go. All board lights green.”
“Launching sequence will commence in fifty seconds. …”
Bunker 17 contained thirty-six silos in all, spread out over a nearly half-mile radius. Once the final launch sequence commenced, these too would be sealed with triple-plated lead and steel, but not so much for security as protection. The heat of the missiles’ initial ignition and blast-off stretched into the millions of degrees. Without the blast shields, irreparable damage might be done to the base proper, thus throwing off continued launchings. It was a matter of microinches and milliseconds. The men — and three women — of Bunker 17 could afford nothing else but total accuracy. Hence, the drills, which came in various forms and levels, sometimes occurred as frequently as four times a day. If nothing else this served to break the often maddening routine. Living in a nuclear installations bunker was, at best, a waiting game. Personnel were rotated on a basis similar to that used for the crews of submarines and the effects of long duty were not dissimilar.
Uniformed figures rushed by Teare and Heath the whole length of the station.
“Launching sequence will commence in forty-five seconds. …”
“Well, Cap,” said Teare, “let’s make our way to the Disco.”
The Disco was Maj. Christian Teare’s term for Launch Control, the very heart of Bunker 17 where any or all missiles were sent from their silos. Teare called it that because all the flashing lights and different colored knobs and consoles reminded him of the discos he had always done his best to avoid.
They paused at the entrance to Launch Control while a hazy blue light scanned them. The bulb atop the steel-plate doors flashed green but entry was still refused until Teare inserted his command ID into the proper slot. In the event of an actual Red Flag alert, the Disco would be totally sealed inside and out. All intercom and voice contact would be broken off to prevent any chance of electronic jamming, subliminal suggestion, panic by someone at the base, or contact from a possible saboteur or spy. Even Teare, command card and all, would be unable to gain entry or achieve voice contact. During a drill, though, observation was mandated so a slight exception in the actual procedure was made. Actual procedure also dictated that once the base went to Yellow Flag, all direct line contact with the outside world would be terminated, replaced entirely by a computer relay into the SAFE (Systems Attack Fail-safe Evaluator) Interceptor, which for all intents and purposes became commander.
The Interceptor was a direct communications link with NORAD in Colorado and the President in Washington. Its purpose was to guard against someone outside the system ordering a nuclear strike. It accomplished this by analyzing the coded sequence a hundred different ways to insure it was genuine. It worked on a binary system with codes that were changed, incredibly, every quarter hour.
In addition to guarding against accidental nuclear attack, the SAFE system took the uncertainties out of the loop by eliminating as much of the human element as was possible. People would still launch the missiles but the order to go to Red Flag could come only from the computer through the Interceptor, and once it came everything on the base became automatic, the chance of human error being substantially reduced by obviating the need to make decisions. Men like Teare had been against the change from the start, but no one was really asking them. Other heads, saner it was thought, had prevailed, deciding that the best American defense was one which let computers do as much of the work as possible down the line, thereby reducing error potential along the way. Teare knew, then, that he would be powerless to act at a time when his decision-making skills would be needed more than ever. Strange how the high command thought.
The slot swallowed Teare’s command card and spit it back out. The heavy, blast-proof door slid open. Major Teare led Captain Heath inside.
The Disco was lit in a dull shade of red, color code for the sequence. It wasn’t a tremendously large room. Longer than it was wide, its windowless dolor contributed to its apparent vastness. The far wall contained a grid design of the bunker’s outer rim on which computers could monitor the constant status of all thirty-six silos. So long as the lights denoting each silo flashed green, the missiles were tied into central launch control in the Disco. If the light showed yellow or red, the line was rerouted and the fail-safe system activated to make it impossible for that missile to be launched.