Fail Safe (22 page)

Instantly Khrushchev's voice changed. "What is their target?"

"Moscow."

The silence that ensued lasted almost twenty seconds. It was broken by Khrushchev.

"I will call you back, Mr. President, when we have seen how the fighters do. Keep that second conference line you mentioned ready for use." His voice was opaque, seamless, pitiless, completely unrevealing of emotion. -

The President put down the phone and looked at Buck. Then he stood up. -

"Let's go out and look at the board," he said.

He led Buck into the next room, where his special assistants were gathered before a miniature version of the Big Board in the War Room at the Pentagon. None of the assistants turned to look at the President. They stood up, but they kept their eyes on the board. They knew he was there to watch the consequences of his own acts.

In the five minutes that followed not a word was spoken in the room. Two things happened. The last of the fighter planes shot its rockets in futile pursuit of the Vindicators and went off the screen. The Vindicators came up to and then passed over the light green line which marked the Siberian border of the Soviet Union.

The President waited another minute. He nodded at Buck and they went back into the smaller office.

Buck knew what had happened. The technical conditions of war now existed. An invasion had been made. - -

Now the world was living on two levels. There was an overt public level and a covert secret leveL On the overt level the world's business proceeded serenely, innocently, and in its normal fashion: men worked, died, loved, and rested in their accustomed ways. But alongside this normal world, and ignored by it, the covert world went about its huge task of bringing two war plans to readiness. At that moment the covert, counterpoised world of war was in a waidng stage; its war dance had come to a high level of preparation and then stood arrested, held in a miraculous balance, a marvelous intricate suspension brought about by suspicions, intentions, information, and lack of information.

They waited. They waited in conference rooms, in war rooms, at rocket silos, in combat information centers on aircraft carriers, on submarines lying in muck at the bottom of the ocean, in fighter planes, in ready rooms, at computing consoles. Even men in motion were waiting. Over Russia fighter planes rose in waves, flew toward the edge of Soviet air space.. . and waited. Rockets came up from deep pits. . . and waited. Missiles were trained toward the east. . . and waited. Radar sets were warmed up - - . and their operators waited. Conventional antiaircraft weapons were readied and manned . . . and waited. On two continents

whole armies of men, fleets of planes, scores of bizarre weapons were brought to a hair trigger of preparation and carefully restrained.

Everywhere the military muscles and nerves tightened, came to a hard attention. For some it was an ignorant attentiow thousands of men did a task they had practiced hundreds of times before without the slightest notion of whether this performance was urgent or casuaL Most of the men worked with only a tiny fragment of knowledge. But in a few places there were men who could see the full picture of what was happening, or, worse, what might happen. For these men the waiting was exquisitely painful; - the quiet screamed; the peace was agonizing.

One such place was the War Room at Omaha. Every man and instrument in the War Room was at readiness. The place glowed. The lights from thousands of little dials, the merged loom from scores of scopes, and the light from the big world map on the wall had wiped out the pools of shadow.

General Bogan sat at the desk directly in front of the map. He was aware of the many men who were sitting quietly, but tensely, at desks or in front of consoles or watching the faces of various machines. Now the entire operation was working at capacity. Every machine whirred, every man was attentive, there was a beautiful symmetry to the operation. Only one thing was different. That was the sure knowledge that this was reality, the end of practice, the ultimate point.

General Bogan sat quietly at his desk, his eyes watching the motion of various dots across the world map.

"Let's get a dose-up on Group 6," General Bogan said.

The projection on the map began to change at a dizzy speed, as if a camera were swooping down from some great height. General Bogan marveled at the in-

genuity of the machine's design. Using radar which was housed in one of the satellites launched a few years before, they were able to pick up a radar image of any locality in the world simply by tuning in on different satellites in different locations. This radar picture was then linked to an actual map of the Soviet Union and the progress of runaway Group 6 could be traced.

Group 6 had spread out before the actual penetration of Soviet Russia. To fly too dose to one another would increase the chance of two planes being destroyed by an enemy missile. Now Group 6 was a few miles inside the Soviet border, which was drawn in a heavy red line on the projection.

The few men in the War Room who were talking fell silent.

'Put the Soviet fighter planes on the projection," General Bogan said.

A flock of small white blips appeared, all of them meticulously grouped on the Soviet side of the red line.

"This is Enemy Defense Performance Desk, General Bogan," a mechanical voice said. The desk was keyed to come on with an interpretation when its information was projected onto the Big Board. "The No. 6 plane, which carries only defensive equipment and devices has moved into the lead. Apparently it has already launched some masking devices for, as you can see, the Soviet fighters are not grouping at the point where Group 6 crossed the border. On their radars the targets probably appear spread over several hundred miles and they are starting to get blips on a good number of objects without being able to determine which are real and which are decoys."

"Have they launched missiles of any kind?" General Bogan asked.

"Not yet," the Enemy Defense Desk èaid.

At that moment the Soviet fighter command ordered its planes into action. Instantly the Big Board began to blossom. Blips raced up the board, homed on decoys, raced relentlessly down their electronic tracks and then detonated themselves in little mushrooming blips which quiddy disappeared.

"The little dots that appear suddenly and then disappear are missiles," the Enemy Defense expert said. "The largest blips are fighter-bombers which are probably equipped with their own radar and air-to-air missiles. So far none of the antiaircraft shots have been nudear. They are the conventional warhead. As you can see, our diversion and evasive devices are working welL The No. 6 plane which is now angling away will probably drop a new set of window."

Each of the planes was equipped with radar-jamming and obscuring devices which were called "window" and were advanced developments from the older strips of foil designed to produce false images on enemy radar screens. The Vindicators also carried other decoys, some of which could be launched by small rockets, and antimissile missiles and automatic devices to detect and identify approaching enemy missiles and compute the precise time for firing the antimissile missiles.

"Right now the Soviet radar is probably picking up some hundreds of blips and they are running each of them down systematically," the voice went on. "On the scope that you see the decoys had not been projected. Our equipment is programmed to ignore signals from our own window. On the Soviet projection the only thing they are sure of is the location of their own missiles and fighter planes. For the Soviets it is a pretty difficult task, General, trying to follow a couple of hundred blips and vector their own planes in on them over air space of several million cubic miles."

General Bogan felt an odd mixture of pride and helplessness. For years every man in the room, every piece of machinery, had worked and drilled and practiced for the first terrible moment of action. Now it had begun. But there was a bewildering difference. When this magnificently balanced mechanism was being perfected, no one had ever contemplated that it would be used to counter some terrible mistake. Even so, General Bogan could nQt restrain a sense of admiration for the efficiency with which the Vindicator bombers were feinting, fighting back, and pushing on the attack.

He could not put down a sense of guilt. If the attack had been legitimately ordered the Vindicators would be receiving help. A B-52 especially equipped with jamming equipment and more elaborate decoys than the Vindicators could carry would be accompanying them. Jamming and masking devices located around the borders of the Soviet Union would have gone into action. But these parts of the mechanism had been ordered to stand down. The Vindicators were fighting through entirely on their own. General Bogan also felt a deeper uneasiness. If he were able to give the Soviets the information he had, their chances of shooting down the Vindicators would be greatly increased. But he forced the idea down into sOme black recess of his mind.

"How much of their defensive armament have the Vindicators had to fire so far?" General Bogan asked.

"So far they have been following standard operating procedure with No. 6 plane firing air-to-air missiles at any missile or plane that is dosing a real target," the mechanical voice said. "No. 6 has run through 55 per cent of her armament. The other planes each have a full load of air-to-air missiles."

On, the screen one of the Soviet fighters suddenly altered direction and started to fly directly at the lead plane in the Vindicator formation. The two planes were dosing on one another at a combined speed of over 3,000 miles per hour. General Bogan felt his chest go tight. His viscera warred with his mind. His mind willed that the Soviet fighter would be successfuL His viscera, conditioned by years of training, was knotted in a desperate sympathy with the Vindicator.

Suddenly the decision was made. A small blip fell away from the No. 6 plane, hung suspended for a moment, and then, like a meteorite trailing a miniature phosphorescent tail, it began to speed toward the Soviet fighter. It was a Bloodhound and General Bogan estimated that its speed was over 1,500 miles an hour. The Soviet fighter suddenly began to zigzag in the air as some mechanism aboard the plane sensed the rush of the missile. Finally, when the Bloodhound was only a few miles from the Soviet bomber, the Soviet fighter itself dropped an air-to-air missile which turned in the direction of the Bloodhound. It was too late. In the next second there was a great mushrooming blotch on the screen. The warhead of the Bloodhound had gone off. The Soviet air-to-air missile and fighter and Bloodhound all disappeared in the blotch. The American bomber veered away from the blotch, which spread out like a green, dangerous fungus growth. Then abruptly it dimmed and the blotch disappeared.

"Jesus, I'll bet the crew on that Vindicator got a shaking up," a voice said in the rear of the room.

North of the Vindicators another Soviet fighter suddenly altered course and was joined by a second. They both ran down their electronic tracks, stalking the invisible targets. No. 6 plane veered toward them, but at that moment each of the Soviet fighters released two

air-to-air missiles. They streaked, amoebalike but at great speed, toward the closest Vindicator. The attacked Vindicator and No. 6 simultaneously loosed a total of six air-to-air missiles toward the two fighters. The four Soviet missiles came at a much slower speed. The Vindicator missiles sped toward the Soviet missiles, wavered a moment, and then went on toward the larger targets.

"Oh, Christ," Colonel Casdo whispered. "They went right by the missiles."

Two seconds later the two Soviet fighters went up in a rolling green blip. But their four missiles continued to bore in. The attacked Vindicator began to jink in the air, rapidly altering course and altitude. It also shot off four more missiles. But the Soviet missiles were too close. They closed on the Vindicator, seemed to converge and then the Vindicator disappeared in the explosion.

There was utter silence in the War Room. It was the first time that most of the men had "seen" a plane destroyed. For General Bogan it was not. In World War II he had seen planes destroyed on radar and with his own eyes. Now, he knew, was the time to establish the mood of the War Room. He turned on the intercom so that everyone in the room could hear him.

"Apparently the Soviets have a very slow missile which compensates by a long range," be said distinctly. "That is a longer range than we had calculated their missiles possessed. The computing systems built into our air-to-air missiles detected the four Soviet air-to-air missiles, but 'calculated' that they were moving so slowly that they must be drones or reconnaissance planes, and so they ignored them and continued toward the Soviet fighters. You can't win 'em alL"

Instantly he was aware of the unintended irony. The

Vindicators must lose, must all be destroyed, or God knew what might happen. But all his deepest reflexes were with the Vindicators. They were his. He felt slightly sick, torn by cross-currents of loyalty and of logic.

"General, it's going to get worse before it gets better," someone said to him.

He turned and it was Raskob standing with his legs apart, a dead cigar in his mouth, staring at the board. Even in the dim light, General Bogan could see that Raskob was very pale.

"You'reright, sir, it's going to get much worse," General Bogan said.

"Will all our men hold firm?" Raskob asked. "Not just the ones here, but the ones in the air? After all, those are our men getting killed out there and it's tough just to stand by and watch it. Is anyone likely to rack?"

"Not likely, Congressman Raskob," General Bogan aid. "They've been screened, tested, rehearsed, and hilled until they can't be sure what's a drill and what's for real."

"I hope you're right, General Bogan," Raskob said. 'I don't know what the President is doing, but whatever it is he'd better be right. Khrushchev isn't going o sit around forever and watch those planes move in on Moscow. The whole thing rests on the President's Lbility to persuade Khrushchev it was an accident. If ie doesn't, then we're going to have all-out, 100 per :ent, slam-bang, hell-bent war. That's right, isn't it, eneral?"