Fade Out (61 page)

‘Do you think I ought to stay here or go to Camp David?'

‘Camp David,' said Fraser.

At 5:30 A.M. Firebreak One and Two climbed to forty thousand feet over the New Mexico desert, lined up on the flares, and made several bombing runs over the dummy target. Before each run-in, a black card panel
was clipped over the normal flight instruments and all electrical systems were shut down to simulate, as far as possible, the conditions they would encounter when they flew into the cutoff zone that blanketed Crow Ridge.

The first bombs fell some two hundred yards off target, and, as anticipated, the error was mainly due to the inaccuracy of the old type of altimeter and air speed indicator. The practice bombs were retrieved by helicopter and flown to the nearby Holloman AFB to be reloaded into the B-52s. While the planes were being refuelled, the pilots and bombardiers studied the results with General Allbright and his SAC controllers.

Like cars, nuclear bombs can be ‘customized' to fulfil a specific tactical requirement. For a successful attack against a ‘hard' target – such as an underground missile silo, or Crusoe – the weapon has to explode at ground level. The critical factors are the CEP – Circular Error Probability – linked to the accuracy of the weapon delivery system and the energy yield. A high energy yield ground-burst produces a nice, big, satisfying hole and an explosive, pulverizing blast that reduces reinforced concrete to confetti. With Plutonium 239, the lethal radiation yield is low, reducing to a residual one per cent seven days after the blast.

Using the eloquent equations of the nuclear wargamers, it had been calculated that a weapon with a fifty-kiloton yield, delivered with a CEP of five hundred feet against a Minuteman silo hardened to withstand a pressure of three hundred psi, produced a Single Shot Kill Probability of 82 per cent. The CAMPFIRE bomb was designed to produce a shock wave ten times more powerful, a colossal three thousand explosive pounds of pressure per square inch. But Crusoe had proved to be harder than any construction the Air Force had been able to devise. For the operation
to have any chance of success, everyone knew the destructive effect of the bomb had to be maximized – and that meant going for a direct hit, or the nearest of near-misses.

The crews looked glumly at the diagram that plotted the fall of their bombs around the target and waited for Allbright to deliver his verdict. It wasn't long in coming.

‘A CEP of six hundred feet is unacceptable, gentlemen. Go back up there and try again. I want that error cut in half by midday.'

Connors and his Crow Ridge reconnaissance party returned to the base camp to find Harris, Cameron, and the rest of the cadets still there. Larsen had brought the two diesels back from Jordan, with their twenty-foot trailers piled high with flare canisters.

‘Where the hell did they come from?' asked Connors.

‘General Allbright, sir,' said Larsen. ‘He had them flown into Glasgow Air Force Base, and they ferried them down to us in Jordan.' Larsen produced an envelope from the cab of the diesel. ‘This came in with the flares. It's addressed to you. I've given the instructions and layouts to Cameron and Harris.'

Connors read the letter. It was telegraphic and to the point. ‘Dear Bob – Have learned of local problem and manner in which you have coped. Regret I must delay final evacuation still further. Air Force urgently needs flare pattern around Crow Ridge to provide aiming mark. Cameron and Harris have full instructions and will organize cadet element to place flares. On completion, I would appreciate you ensure evacuation of main party and provide ignition teams with adequate means of transport
to clear fire zone, Tuesday 25th, 14:00 hours latest. Best wishes, Mitch.'

‘Major Jessup sent you a message as well,' said Larsen. ‘He's received an urgent signal requesting you and Mr Wedderkind to contact the White House.'

‘Thanks…'

Connors explained the situation to Wedderkind and Rizzik. ‘I think the best thing to do is to move out the rest of the research group and your base camp team, Rizz.'

‘Don't you think it would be better if we stayed and helped?' asked Rizzik. ‘The job would get finished a little quicker.'

‘Yes,' said Wedderkind. ‘I'm sure Davis and the others will want to help too.'

‘Arnold, this is ridiculous. There's no need to start a mass epidemic of heroics.'

‘Don't worry, I'll make sure everyone knows they have a clear choice.'

‘All right…' Connors looked at his watch. 7:45 A.M. ‘I'm going down to Miles City to see Colonel Reese, then I'll come back and pick you up. Be ready to leave for Jordan at ten.'

Connors walked over to the base camp office. As he passed the canteen, he saw Volkert outside with his face buried in a hamburger.

‘What's the situation in Cohagen?'

The small township lay just beyond the evacuation area. Connors had planned to observe the explosion from the top of a tall grain silo west of the town. But now, Cohagen was marooned fifteen miles inside the expanded cutoff zone.

Volkert transferred the hamburger to his other hand and licked the ketchup off his fingers. ‘It's okay. Everythin's under control. The state agency people an' the
Army went in an' smoothed everythin' over. Just hope this all works out okay. Some of them ain't too pleased with the Rooshians.'

‘How is everybody making out?'

‘They're gettin' by. Thing you city boys have to remember is that this is high plains country. Folks out here are used to roughin' it. Shit, this was one of the last parts of the West to be settled. Lot of folks don't realize that. Most people are ridin' around in pickups now but they're still cowboys at heart. Country folk draw together when there's trouble.'

‘That's good to know,' said Connors. He pointed to the leaking hamburger.‘Better eat the rest of that before it gets cold.'

Connors went into the base camp office. Cameron, Harris, and Rizzik had the plans for the flare layouts spread out on the table. Connors glanced over the details. Four fifteen-hundred-yard strips bracketing the Ridge with linked clusters of flares every twenty-five yards. The run-in and run-out lines each called for an additional ten clusters set five hundred yards apart, forming a broken line, running east to west through the long axis of the Ridge. It looked like a lot of work.

‘How long do you think this is going to take?' asked Connors.

‘Most of the day,' said Harris. ‘But don't worry. We can handle it.'

‘Now that these trucks will be leaving empty, do you want to use them to move the horses out?'

‘No, sir,' said Cameron. ‘The diesels can't go everywhere. When we start putting down these flares, we're going to be spread out. We'll need the horses to keep in touch with the work groups.'

‘Okay. I'll get out of your hair.'

It was just before nine as Larsen drove Connors down the hill past the airport. There was an Army roadblock at the northern end of the bridge across the Yellowstone.

Recognizing the yellow truck, the soldiers lifted the barrier and waved them through. Larsen paused to ask the way to the Armory, then sped across the bridge and into town, slowing to the regulation fifteen mph as they crossed over the Milwaukee Railroad tracks on to Seventh Street.

The two converted diesels loaned to Colonel Reese were parked outside the Armory. Connors was pleased to see that both of them had armed cadets sitting in the cabs. While Larsen's squad brought them up to date on the latest situation, Connors went in to see Colonel Reese. Reese had been up all night, and was in the middle of shaving.

Connors told him to go on shaving and sent for the officer in charge of the National Guard. He and Reese confirmed that their units had finally managed to move all the evacuees out of the cutoff zone, and had set up new roadblocks around the blacked-out area. Connors told them that there was a possibility that it could expand again – to a radius diameter of 691 miles.

Reese cut himself. ‘Holy Moses…' The National Guard colonel sat down heavily. ‘Do you realize the impact that could have on this town? There are nearly ten thousand people here.'

‘You think that's a problem?' Connors ticked off the towns on his fingers. ‘It's going to black out Helena, Butte, Billings, and Great Falls, Bismarck in North Dakota, Rapid City, South Dakota, and Sheridan and Caspar in Wyoming, and Regina, north of the border in Canada. But I must emphasize, it is
only
a possibility, and that information is top secret.'

‘What the hell's causing it?' asked Reese.

‘I don't have time to go into that now,' said Connors. ‘But it's linked with the fade-out.'

‘Do your people know when it might happen?'

‘No. It could be any time between now and five A.M. on Wednesday morning.'

‘Sheee-itt… For how long?' Reese abandoned his shave.

‘We don't know,' said Connors. ‘Maybe not for long. Maybe not at all.'

‘But what the hell can we do?' asked the National Guard commander.

‘Sit tight,' said Connors. ‘You'll get immediate assistance from Washington.' There was no point in telling them that if the cutoff zone went to 691 miles, it might spread even farther. If it did, Washington wouldn't be able to help anybody. That kind of news could wait until Tuesday evening. ‘How well do you know the editor of the
Miles City Star?
'

‘Pretty well. Been on a couple of fishing trips together.'

‘Could he get something printed in secret?'

‘Yeah, I would think so. He knows how to work every machine in the place.'

‘Okay, I suggest you get him to run off a few thousand leaflets setting out the situation. Maybe you could include a map. Make absolutely sure no one else sees them. Lock 'em up here. If the cutoff zone spreads and blacks you out, start distribution and use the diesels to get copies to Glendive and Billings. Ask them to reprint and pass the information on to the other cities affected. We'll take care of Glasgow. If you get the signal to stand down, burn them. Is that clear?'

‘Yeah…'

Connors headed back up Highway 22 feeling he had one less problem on his mind. The idea of ten thousand
people suddenly finding themselves immobilized, deprived of all electric power – and with no means of finding out what the hell was going on – had been disturbing him. And yet their plight was piddling compared to the larger cities of Montana, Helena, Great Falls, Billings, and Butte, the big mining town. If the air pumps stopped, if the mine cages froze halfway down the mile-deep shafts… Connors shuddered at the thought. It was insane to go on trying to keep it secret any longer. The President would
have
to go on the radio and tell everybody what might happen…

Connors stopped at the base camp and picked up Wedderkind. Everyone else had disappeared. Connors looked eastward out of the cab window. ‘Shouldn't there be some people working out there?'

‘There are, but they're still on the run-in line about three miles away. The plan is to start at the outside and work in. That way, everyone will be close together when they get through. It'll mean a quick getaway.'

‘Neat…'

Larsen put his foot down and drove north past the empty houses at Broken Mill.

Before leaving for Miles City, Connors had dispatched a diesel to Jordan to arrange for a plane to pick them up and fly them to Glasgow, He meant what he'd said to Arnold about not flying again, but it was a hundred and eighty miles from Jordan to Glasgow AFB by road, and in the present state of the railroads, about three days by train…

After calling Allbright to confirm that the flares would be positioned in time for the attack, Connors and Wedderkind both spoke to the President and gave him their
firsthand assessments of the situation. Connors told him about the last-minute delay over the flares, and urged him to consider making a radio address to the nation. Their conversation ended inconclusively, but Connors did manage to extract an assurance that the President would ask Press Secretary Jerry Silvermann to make immediate arrangements to relay a broadcast from Camp David. During and after the last three-week fade-out, there had been a lot of press comment about the lack of any direct pronouncement by the President on what was deemed, by many, to be a critical situation. The brunt of the questioning had been borne by Jerry, who had remained mercifully in the dark, spokesmen from the Defense Department, and NASA's Manned Flight Director Chris Matson.

Connors and Wedderkind lunched with General Golubev, Grigorienko, interpreter Dan Chaliapin, and the members of the research group who had gone to Glasgow AFB to brief them on the project, then took off for Jordan at 2:15 P.M. This time, their flight path went right over the Fort Peck reservoir. Connors, convinced that lightning never struck twice in the same place, closed his eyes, and pretended to go to sleep.

Larsen was waiting at the airstrip alongside the second backup diesel. Connors and Wedderkind climbed aboard and settled back for the fifty-mile drive to Crow Ridge.

By the middle of the afternoon, the President still hadn't left for Camp David. He stood at the curved window looking out on to the White House lawns, struggling to find the words that would, without creating panic, alert the nation to the dangers it faced. The President suddenly found himself wishing he'd ordered Connors to fly back
to Washington. He picked up the phone and asked to be put through to Major Jessup, the project link man at Glasgow AFB. As the operator went to switch the call through to the President, the line went dead. Repeated attempts over the next two minutes failed to re-establish the connection. A few seconds later, a call from SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, confirmed the breakdown. Every circuit in SAC's specially strengthened landline communication network is checked electronically every three seconds. The SAC report that zipped out of the high-speed teleprinter in the Pentagon at the rate of over six thousand characters a minute confirmed that all contact had been lost with Glasgow AFB, the Minuteman 3 missile complexes at Great Falls, and Malstrom AFB, Montana, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, and Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota. The cutoff zone had expanded – not in ninety hours as anticipated, but in
thirty.
The progression was now clear. In ten hours, it could expand again.