Arc Light (26 page)

“Jack Sims, the emergency director of FEMA, is on the line, sir,” the now familiar voice of the female communications officer said.

“Mr. Sims,” Thomas said, speaking more loudly.

“Uh, yes . . . ”

A terrible screech cut off the rest of his sentence.

“Oh, my God, not again!” the President gasped, jumping out of his seat, a look of horror in his eyes.

Over the phone in the background the Vice President's voice could be heard shouting, “Close that door!” The phone fell silent, and then the Vice President said, “Sorry. Must've gotten some feedback or something. Jack's right next to me and our doors are open. It should be fine now.”

Everyone waited for the President, who slowly settled back into his chair, looking down at the table in front of him.

“Mr. Sims,” General Thomas said, eyeing the President, “we just got your report and the President was asking for an explanation.”

“Oh, Mr. President,” they heard from the speakerphone, “this is Jack Sims. You were asking about, what, the Civil Situation Report?”

The President gave General Thomas a lost look. “No,” General Thomas said, “the Glass Eye Report.”

“Oh, yes, uh, I'm sorry,” Sims said. “We're working on so many reports. Our computers' resource data catalog has millions of items of data—every grain silo, bank, hospital, television station, retail store, mine, cave, et cetera, and over two million buildings and their fallout-protective characteristics—all broken down by sixty-five thousand geographical subdivisions. Every one has a vulnerability number associated with it and its exact longitude and latitude. Our
READY
program will—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Sims,” Thomas said, “but the President was asking about the Glass Eye Report.”

“Yes—yes,” Sims said over the speakerphone. “The fallout is preliminarily estimated by our radiological defense officers. At noon and midnight every day, one hundred thirty-four National Weather Service weather stations—well, now it's one hundred eleven—release balloons and take other meteorological measurements and feed the data into our computers.”

An air force sergeant brought a stack of papers in and handed them to the captain, who distributed them.

“Are we doing reconnaissance over Russia too?” the President asked.

“We have the Strategic Reconnaissance Plan,” Starnes said, “which is a part of SIOP. That's what that major we were talking to over Cheyenne earlier was operating under.”

Lambert looked down at his copy of the report. The first thing that jumped out at him was the map. Circles dotted the map of the country like a pox, each one a target. Next, and most ominously, huge sweeping tails swung out of some of the holes, lashing out at the countryside beneath.

“The map shows the targets,” Starnes said, “and the estimated casualties from the direct effects and fallout.”

“Right over Norfolk,” Admiral Dixon said, shaking his head. “We've still got San Diego untouched, Mr. President, but this fallout on Norfolk is gonna wreak havoc on our Atlantic operations.”

“The damage is really remarkably light,” Sims said. “Of course, it's terrible at the target sites, and the fallout is bad, but if this thing had happened ten or twenty years ago back before the reductions and when most of the weapons were older ‘dirty' models that—”

“My God,” the President said. “How . . . how accurate are these figures?” He was clearly in a state of shock. He looked like a trapped animal, his eyes darting and wild, unable to focus.

“For any given target area, Mr. President,” Sims answered, “the direct-effects numbers could be off by as much as fifty percent. The fallout numbers are even more uncertain, maybe seventy-five percent. But for the aggregate casualties, it's going to be pretty close, maybe plus or minus fifteen or twenty percent. We'll get better data when we get reports from local Civil Defense Weapons Effects Reporting Stations. There's one for every hundred square miles in rural areas and every nine in urban areas.”

The huge tail sweeping down the coast from Pennsylvania caught Lambert's eye.
Right over D.C.,
he thought.
That one goes right over D. C.!
As everyone looked over the report, the first giving any estimates of damage, Lambert tried to imagine what was happening in his neighborhood, in the homes of his friends and acquaintances.
Death,
he realized.
Dying and death. Everybody. The doorman at my building. My maid and her family. My secretary and her husband and kids.
Lambert jammed his eyes shut, the concept too much for him. But the pictures would not go away.
They're alive now, but they will die. They're already dead, for all intents and purposes. What are they doing?
he wondered.
Do they know? Are they busy, stuffing wet towels under doors and wearing bandannas around their mouths and noses to keep from ingesting the particles? Or are they just sitting there, too depressed to move as they wait to die?

“So you're saying that—what?” the President flipped pages until he found what he was looking for. “Something between four and a half and seven million people just
died?”

Everyone in the room looked at the President, and the speakerphone grew silent.
He's cracking up,
Lambert thought, resuming his close attention to the fallout pattern over the map of the Virginia-West Virginia border.

“Well, that's the right number including fallout deaths, which are measured out to sixty days,” Sims said.

“Mr. Sims,” Lambert said, his eyes on the stricken Livingston. “What about the long-term casualties?”

“A million or two more, as you can see from the report,” Sims said, “will die from a higher incidence of blood disease and cancer in the next five years. We don't have enough data to take the estimates out any farther—the long-term cancer rate, for example—but it's bound to be higher, statistically. Based on a 1979 study by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the 649-megaton attack by the Russians on us, and the 1,092-megaton attack by us on the Russians, together should roughly produce an increased incidence of cancer deaths worldwide of between 350,000 and 3,500,000 and of genetic defects between 600,000 and 6,000,000.”

Lambert looked back up after determining that Snowshoe, West Virginia, where Jane and her parents would be, was clearly not inside the contaminated area. His parents in New York and his brother in Boulder, Colorado, all appeared to be out of danger also. But
his friends around the Washington area . . . He just wanted to lie down. He wanted it to be over. The fatigue he felt was extreme.

“What about the fallout?” the President asked, fingering the swooping tails on the map. “Are we going to evacuate those areas?”

“Well, sir,” Sims said, “we're cordoning off the areas with as many police and National Guard troops as we can get our hands on. It's obviously a massive job, though, and I'm not sure we can control the flow.”

The President cocked his head and asked, “Are you or are you not going to evacuate those people?”

“Why . . . well, n-n-no, sir,” Sims stuttered. “No, no, no. We couldn't begin to do that, and it wouldn't be the wise thing. Without exception, even in the fringe areas, the best thing is for people to stay indoors.”

“What did you mean by ‘control the flow'?” the President asked, clearly confused. Lambert had noticed it before. A briefer would come to the end, and the President would focus momentarily to ask a question, really just latch on to words that his brain had recorded, and then he would drift off to wherever he had been before.

“Well, obviously a lot of people are not going to follow our instructions to stay put,” the FEMA official said. “The roads are already clogged, out of every major city, not just out of the contaminated areas. We're trying to get control of the contaminated areas first and stop those people before they just drive off, radioactivity and all. Mr. President, one car coated with fallout that's driven out and left in a parking lot can make a whole lotta people sick. We're just trying to isolate the contamination; that's the plan.”

“So what will you do?” the President asked, more focused this time. “Stop these people at the edge of the contaminated areas and do what with them?”

“Well, we'll quarantine them,” Sims said, “long enough to confiscate their property and wash ‘em off. We're setting up displaced persons camps to house and treat them. It's all set out in our plans, Mr. President.”

The President just stared off into space, not saying or doing anything.

General Thomas, who had been watching the President's distracted stare, said, “Thank you, Mr. Sims. We'll get back to you later.”

“Oh,” Sims said, “while I've got you, Mr. President, we've got some paperwork that we need you to sign. We need a national emergency declaration so that the CEFR, the Code of Emergency Federal Regulations, becomes effective. Otherwise, what we're doing is . . . well, technically it's illegal.”

“Okay,” the President said. “Fax whatever you need. Do we have a fax machine on board?”

General Starnes nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Sims said, “but you've already got it. It's in the football.”

The military liaison officer who had sat silently at the end of the table with the football, his duty now done, suddenly sprang to life and rummaged through his case until he found some papers in a side pocket. He brought them down to the President.

“There's a document in blank in there,” the FEMA man said, “that declares a national emergency.”

The President looked distractedly at the papers and then shoved them across the table to Lambert, who began to look for the paper that Sims was continuing to describe.

“Have you found it?” Sims asked over the speaker.

“This is Greg Lambert,” Lambert said to stall while he continued his search. “There's a—it says ‘Declaration of War' at the top, and it says ‘The United States of America hereby declares war on'—and then there's a blank.”

Sims said, “No, no,” and went on to describe the document.

Lambert interrupted, “Got it. ‘Declaration of National Emergency.' It has a blank for the areas and a blank for the date.”

“Mr. President, I'd say ‘All fifty states plus the District of Columbia' and put in, let's see, I guess today's date,” Sims said.

Lambert looked at the President, who nodded, and then printed the information as neatly as possible in the blanks. When he had finished, the President signed it and said, “Okay. It's done.” Sims thanked him and asked for a copy before he hung up.

As Lambert collected the small pile of forms—one for succession after incapacitation of the National Command Authority, one for the appointment of new Cabinet officers, others for various similar emergencies—he saw again the first form that he had come upon. He picked up the single sheet of paper and held it in front of him delicately with both hands as he reread it.

The President stood to leave, but Lambert looked over at the Secretary of Defense across the table and then said, “Mr. President.” President Livingston stopped where he stood at the head of the table, looking at Lambert and waiting. “On a different subject, sir, it occurs to me that you ought to consider calling Congress back into Special Session.”

The President looked at the Secretary of Defense, and then down at the piece of paper in Lambert's hands. The military men remained silent, aloof. This was a matter for the civilians—a political question.

“SRAM fuel cell warmers?” the copilot asked.

“On,” the bombardier-navigator, or Offensive Weapons Officer, replied.

“Position data dump?”

“Indicates complete.”

“Front bay doors?”

“Setting to open.” Captain Edgar Solomon, the B-1B's Defensive Weapons Officer, felt the drag of the opening doors on the extremely aerodynamic B-1B and the jarring thud through his feet as they locked. After over an hour of low-level flight had alternately washed blood away from his head and flushed it full as the giant bomber's terrain-following flight system hugged the earth on the
HARD
setting, Solomon was physically exhausted and relieved to reach the first weapons release point. Down the list the other crewmen went. In his mind, Solomon could see the plastic-covered sheet of paper with the questions and correct responses. He could see in his mind's eye that they were on the last page.

“Front bay door indicator?”

“Indicator light is green.”

The second rumbling and thud that Solomon felt, all normal and expected, was the lowering of the rotary missile launcher to its firing position. At seventy-five miles from the mobile radar facility, which guarded the inbound approaches to Kozelsk Missile Field—the target of the B-lBs that followed several hundred miles behind—the rotary launcher would fire one AGM-69A Short-Range Attack Missile, or SRAM, and then rotate one eighth of a revolution to prepare to fire a second at a stretch of the main highway between Moscow and Orel that was being used as an interceptor base. Streaking off at Mach 3, the SRAMs would be on target in two and a half minutes, detonating their Mark 12A 350-kiloton warheads and knocking out their targets with kilotonnage to spare. After that, the rotary launcher would retract into the bomb bay and the doors would close, “slicking up” the B-1B for the flight to its third target, a nuclear weapons plant in western Russia that was on their way home.