“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 cent, slam-bang, hell-bent war. That’s right, isn’t it, General?”
“Yes, sir, that is right,” General Bogan said.
He felt a sudden sympathy with Raskob. He was a though man, quick at making calculations and then at icing up to them. It was the first time that General
Bogan had faced the fact that everything now rested with the President. Barring some miracle, one or two of the bombers would get through. And if the Soviets did not believe the attack was innocent or made in error they would be forced to respond.
“No notion of how it happened, eh, General?” Raskob asked.
General Bogan felt an odd fuzziness, a thin coating of confusion, slide over his mind.
“No, sir, not the slightest,” he said. “They told us that the system was foolproof. Oh, some parts might break down from time to time, but the whole system would check itself out, they told us.”
“They told you,” Knapp said and there was wonderment in his voice. “Always that unknown they. Those of us who manufactured the gear, who had some notion of what it was being used for-we never told any. one that it was infallible. But somewhere in Washington they had to say it was perfect, that it couldn’t make a mistake. General, there is no such thing as a perfect system and they should have told you that.”
“Look, friend, in Washington you don’t get appropriations and bigger staff and more personnel by saying that what you’re doing is not perfect,” Raskob said roughly. “You stand up in front of the Appropriations Committee and you convince yourself that the system is perfect and then you tell the Committee it is perfect. And there isn’t a mother’s son on that Committee who can say you nay. Because we just ain’t boy geniuses at electronics and all this stuff. So we give them the dough. What the hell else can we do?”
“Nothing, not a thing,” Knapp said. “Except listen to the right people. Look, for years there has been a fellow named Fredikle, who has been working with the Rand Corporation and the Air Force on how to
reduce war by accident. He has found flaw after flaw in the system, at just. the same time that the newspapers were saying it was perfect. Kendrew over in England has talked about accidental war for years.- loud and clear. So have dozens of others. Most of us, the best of us on the civilian side,” and he spoke without pride, “we knew that a perfect system is impossible. The mistake was that no one told the public and the Congress.”
“What should we have done?” Colonel Cascio said suddenly, and his voice held a kind of baffled anger. “Just sit on our duffs while our enemy goes ahead and arms to the teeth and finally gets to a position where he can tell us to surrender and we know we have to do it?”
“No, son, we had to do what we did,” Raskob said wearily. “In politics if you sit still you are dead. I guess it’s the same in the military game. But maybe we should have recognized that past a certain point the whole damned thing was silly.”
General Bogan sensed that Knapp was in a terrible agony. His hunched and hard-driven body, his burning eyes, his ravished face, looked like a statue of anxiety. General Bogan could guess the reason: much of the machinery in that room had been developed and manufactured by Knapp and he had carried the burden of knowledge within him that it was far from foolproof. Right now he was wondering why he had not spoken out.
Only Raskob, the politically toughened man, could see the other side. His eyes remained glued on the board and when he spoke his voice was a mixture of pity and hard-bitten reality.
“Well-that’s one bomber gone. If those Soviet fighters start shaping up a bit maybe we can avoid the worst.”
The small group felt rather than saw Colonel Casdo turn in his chair. His eyes burned up at Raskob. He was oddly bent as if his body were undergoing an invisible physical torture. He did not speak, he only stared with hatred at Raskob.
Raskob looked down at him without emotion.
“There can be much worse things than the loss of six bombers, son,” Raskob said. “It’s a pity that those eighteen men have to fight their way in and. probably get killed in the process. But think a minute about all of the people, millions and billions of them, all around the world, walking around in total ignorance that they might be killed in the next few hours. Do you ever think about them? Well, that’s what politics is all about and that poor guy in the White House who has to make the big decision knows that.”
Colonel Cascio’s eyes did not change. He blinked once and then turned back to his controls.
The remaining five Vindicators were now widely scattered, but in a carefully calculated dispersion. Each was at the maximum range at which they could protect one another and be protected by the No. 6 plane. Still they were so dispersed that no single Soviet shot could down two of them.
“How are the Soviet fighters doing?” General Bogan asked, still on the intercom.
The Enemy Defense Desk responded at once.
“Apparently, General, they are badly confused by our masking and window,” the voice said. “They have not yet started to concentrate on Group 6. They are still scattered, chasing decoys.”
Somewhere in the War Room a voice cheered and instantly was joined by a score of others. General Bogan felt a kind of exultation start in his own throat, but quickly repressed it. There was a strange perversion about his feelings, a heightened sense of paradox. Again the thought flicked in and Out of his mind that he, standing before the board in the War Room, could help the Russians distinguish between plane and decoy. When he spoke there was a hard lash in his voice.
“Let’s knock that off,” he said. “This is no Goddamned football game.” There was instant silence. “Remember that. It might get hard in the next few hours.”
He looked around and saw the glint of resentment in a dozen eyes, shoulders hunched with anger. They were well trained, but not for this sort of incredible game.
“How much of her defensive gear does No. 6 still have?” General Bogan asked.
“Twenty-five per cent,” the voice said. “She is slowing down the rate of defensive fire, apparently to conserve missiles for the run on Moscow.”
On the southern flank of the Vindicators a Soviet fighter began to firm up on an intercepting course toward the closest Vindicator. The Vindicator turned away, but the Soviet blip also altered course. They Would still make an intercept.
“Fire, fire,” a voice said very close to General Bogan. He looked over and saw it was Colonel Cascio. He was half out of his chair, his teeth wet and prominent, his lips drawn back. “Fire before the bastard gets one of those long slow ones off at you.”
“Colonel, if you say one more word like that I will throw you out of this room and have you court-martialed,” General Bogan said in a low voice.
No one else in the War Room had heard the exchange.
Colonel Cascio whirled in his half-bent posture, like a boxer badly hurt and covering. He stared at General Bogan and then his eyes cleared. He sat down.
The Soviet fighter was joined by three other fighters and they formed a long box formation as they ran down their intercept. The Vindicator jinked once more. So did the Soviet fighters. Instantly the Vindicator fired four missiles. The Soviet planes each fired a single missile and continued to speed toward the Vindicator. At the same moment their detection gear told them they were fired upon and the Soviet fighters turned sharply away. It was too late. Five seconds later all of them were destroyed. But their four missiles ran with an agonizing slowness toward the Vindicator. It turned and ran, but was not fast enough. The missiles came in remorselessly. Again there was the merging, again the slow, exploding, engulfing blip.
General Bogan felt his fingertips shaking against his trousers. He felt for a moment as if he were being exposed to some strange torture; some spikeike split of his allegiance; some rupturing of his life. He yearned for the bottle of whisky in a faraway office.
As if by order, the breaths of two-score men were released from their lungs. It made a weird contrapuntal chorus of sighs. Congressman Raskob muttered something to himself. It sounded like “Four more to go.”
