Punching in the numbers, Lowery looked down at the phone while he was waiting for it to be answered on the other end, knowing that every eye in the room was riveted on his back. When the phone was picked up, an operations duty officer at Harrison's headquarters identified himself. Wanting to get the duty officer's attention and cut straight through to Harrison without long-winded explanations, Lowery used the code word reserved for the loss of aircraft bearing nuclear weapons. 'This is General Lowery at Sembach. Inform General Harrison we have a Broken Arrow and I must speak to him immediately.'
Without hesitation the duty officer said, 'Yes, sir,' and transferred the call to Harrison's quarters. Roused from a fitful sleep, Harrison's response was groggy and gruff. 'Harrison.'
Despite the fact that time was pressing and he felt the urge to blurt everything out, Lowery knew Harrison's mind would be clouded by sleep and would need a few seconds to comprehend what he had to tell him. Therefore, when Lowery spoke, he did so slowly and deliberately. 'This is Lowery at Sembach. I have just been informed by the commander of a German parachute brigade that his brigade is deployed in and around Sembach with orders to seize the nuclear weapons here at Sembach, by force if necessary.'
Harrison, wide awake now, shot back, 'Did he say who gave him those orders?'
Lowery, hunched down over the phone, shook his head. 'He claims to be acting on behalf of the German Chancellor.'
'Have you been able to check this out?'
Shaking his head, even though Harrison couldn't possibly see this, Lowery responded as he looked at his watch. 'There isn't time, General. The German colonel here claims that his assault units are in position and ready to strike within the next five minutes.'
From behind, Haas corrected Lowery using perfect English. 'Three minutes, Herr General.'
Spinning in his seat, Lowery shot Haas a look that could have killed. 'Three minutes, sir. We have three minutes.'
'Jesus Christ, man, is he serious?'
Lowery, still facing Haas, glanced down at the manner in which Haas cradled his automatic weapon. 'I do not believe, General Harrison, that this officer is bluffing.' Then, Lowery asked the question that Harrison was expecting. 'What, General, are your orders?'
With less than three minutes to go Harrison knew there was no time for consultation with anyone, not even his own staff. In a heartbeat he knew he had three choices. He could tell Lowery to stand fast and call the German's bluff. If it was a bluff, nothing would happen. If it wasn't a bluff, then Harrison would be responsible for unleashing a chain of events that neither he nor Lowery would be able to control. Not knowing exactly what and who was involved, this would be a blind crapshoot of the worst kind. Though he could have justified making such a call, Harrison had no way of knowing what forces such a bloodletting would unleash.
The second choice would be to tell Lowery to stand his guard force down, let the Germans have the weapons, and allow the diplomats in Washington and Berlin to sort this out through negotiation. Though the thought of turning nuclear weapons over to a foreign power without firing a shot was against everything American commanders had been taught, Harrison tempered this position by reminding himself that these were Germans. Given the fact that the Germans were an ally, and there had been arrangements in the past to issue German nuclear-capable forces nuclear devices under certain conditions, Harrison could see little danger here. The Germans, after all, were a civilized and friendly power.
The final choice was to leave the choice up to Lowery. This, Harrison knew, was both an acceptable one but one that was a cop-out. Lowery was Military Airlift Command, a transporter. Operational decisions of this magnitude were not normally his to make. Harrison, on the other hand, had always prided himself on his ability to make swift and decisive decisions. As a combat commander, trained to think fast and react, decision making was second nature to him. In the past, his decisions had been good ones. Now, faced with perhaps the greatest single one, Harrison reacted in the only manner in which he could.
There was, he suddenly realized, no choice at all. 'Lowery, you are the senior commander on the spot. You must use your judgment and do what is best. I recommend that you pull your guard force back and do not resist the Germans. Try to keep them from removing the weapons from Sembach, but not by force of arms.'
Troubled by Harrison's comment 'I recommend,' Lowery's response was cautious. 'Sir, am I to interpret this as an order?'
Angered as much by his own attempt to pawn off the final decision to Lowery as by Lowery's question, Harrison shot back, 'Yes, General Lowery, that is an order. Turn the weapons over to the Germans now.'
Taking three deep breaths in an effort to compose himself, Lowery replaced the receiver and turned to his aide seated at a desk behind him. 'Jim, get me Major Harkins on the phone immediately.' Then, turning to Haas, Lowery informed the German of the decision. 'I am ordering my guard force and ready reaction force to stand down. Please order your men to hold their fire.'
Though pleased, Haas hid his relief that force had not been necessary. Looking over to Maier, Haas called out in English, 'Dial 026 on your telephone, Colonel Maier. A Major Kessel will answer. Tell him Case White is in effect.' Turning back to Lowery, Haas saw the look of bewilderment in his eyes. While Maier complied, Haas explained. 'We have, General, tapped into your base phone system. I thought it would make it much easier to run this operation.' What Haas didn't tell Lowery was that the five-minute limit had been a bluff. Major Kessel and the assault force were under strict orders to hold their positions until either Haas ordered them to move or they heard shooting or a commotion coming from the base command and control bunker.
Captain James Wilks, the aide-de-camp to Lowery, automatically picked up the receiver of the phone in front of him and began to punch up the number for Major Harkins, the commander of the security forces on Sembach, then stopped. Looking up at Lowery, then at Haas, Wilks thought about what he was about to do. It suddenly dawned upon him that his boss, a man that he greatly admired and whom he had looked to as a means of furthering his own career, was about to surrender over one hundred nuclear weapons to a foreign power. Without so much as a show of resistance, Wilks thought, Harrison and Lowery were prepared to violate one of the most basic principles that the United States Air Force had operated under since becoming a nuclear power, which was to safeguard those weapons at all costs. That, coupled with the thought that such a move would make Germany, the nation that had started two world wars in pursuit of world domination and had murdered over twelve million men, women, and children in concentration camps, a nuclear power, seemed too much to accept.
Though he suspected, like everyone else in the command booth, that resistance would probably be pointless, the idea of simply throwing his hands up and doing nothing to stop the Germans was unthinkable. Such a decision, he believed, should not be made by Harrison or Lowery, regardless of how many stars they had. Slowly Wilks replaced the receiver on its cradle and stood up.
Dumbfounded, Lowery looked at Wilks for a second before he realized what Wilks was doing. Recovering from the shock of his aide's insubordination, Lowery repeated his order. 'Captain Wilks, I am
Wilks said nothing. Instead, he simply stepped back away from his desk and assumed a rigid position of attention. Even when Haas reached for his automatic weapon and trained it on him, the young aide stood his ground.
Incensed at his aide's insubordination, pushed to the breaking point by the tension of the moment, and galvanized by Haas's hostile reaction, Lowery jumped to his feet and began to yell.
Below the command booth, several of the officers in the rear rows of the operations center, hearing Lowery's muffled shouts reverberate through the thick glass window of the command booth, turned to see what had gotten their commander so upset. Unaware of what was going on, they watched wide-eyed as Lowery lunged across the command booth and bodily pushed Wilks out of his way with one hand while grabbing a phone with his other. After punching up a number and while he waited for the person on the other end of the line, the staff officers in the operations center could see Lowery glaring at Wilks, still standing at attention, and clearly hear Lowery yelling at him, over and over, 'Damn you, Captain. Damn you to hell.'
Charley Mordal didn't even give Jan a chance to say hello before he blurted out, 'Jan, you were right! You were the only one who saw it coining.'
Though she was used to being called like this in the middle of the night at her Gaithersburg, Maryland, home, Jan's reactions were far from automatic. Where her husband, Scott, could jump out of bed and be fully alert before
