Authors: Dan Simmons
T
he area northeast of Cheyenne, Wyoming, was the type of western landscape that made some people rhapsodic and gave others instant agoraphobia. Once the state road left sight of the interstate, forty miles of driving afforded views of endless grasslands, windblown snow fences looking dwarfed and forgotten against great expanses of prairie, occasional ranches set back miles from the road, buttes to the north and east rising like massive keeps, an occasional stream huddled about with cottonwood and brush, hesitant clusters of antelope, and small groups of cattle looking unworthy of their millions of acres of grazing land.
And the missile silos.
The silos were as unprepossessing as any man-made thing could be against that expansive landscape; small, square, hurricane-fenced plots of gravel, usually set fifty to a hundred yards from the state road. The only visible indications that the fenced squares were anything but a natural gas pumping station or empty lot were the metal weather vane, the four pipes with reflecting mirrors, and the low, massive concrete roof set on rusting rails. The last details could be seen only if the viewer approached on the gravel ruts close enough to see the signs that read NO TRESPASSING— U.S. GOVERNMENT PROPERTY—
use of deadly force authorized beyond this point
. There was nothing else to see. There was no sound except the wind across the prairie and the occasional lowing of cattle in the fields beyond.
The blue air force van left Warren Air Force Base at 6:05
A.M.
, returning with the last of its squadron personnel at 8:27
A.M.
, in the interim dropping members of the next shift at their appointed command stations. In the van that morning were six young lieutenants, two for the SAC missile wing control HQ eight miles southeast of Meriden, and four for the bunker thirty-eight miles farther toward Chugwater.
The two lieutenants in the backseat watched the passing landscape with eyes dulled by routine. They had seen satellite photographs showing the six thousand-square-mile area the way the Soviets saw it— ten rings of silos, circles with an eight-mile diameter, each of the sixteen silos in each circle loaded with an MRVed Minuteman III missile. In recent months there had been talk of the vulnerability of these aging silos, discussions of the Soviet “pin-down strategy” that could keep a nuclear warhead exploding above these grasslands once a minute for hours, and whispers of hardening the silos or filling them with newer weapons. But these were policy issues of little direct interest to Lieutenant Daniel Beale or Lieutenant Tom Walters; they were simply two young men commuting to work on a chilly spring morning.
“Tom, you with it today?” asked Beale. “Yeah,” said Walters. His gaze did not shift from the distant horizon. “Out partying with those tourists ’til late last night, man?”
“Uh-uh,” said Walters. “In by eight.”
Beale adjusted his sunglasses and grinned. “Yeah, I bet.”
The air force van slowed and turned left onto two gravel ruts rising above the highway up a gradual slope to the northwest. They passed three signs demanding that unauthorized personnel stop, turn around, and leave. A quarter mile from the control station, they stopped for the first gate and sentry. Each man showed his ID tag while the sentry radioed ahead. The pro cess was repeated at the entrance to the main complex. Lieutenants Beale and Walters walked along the fenced corridor to the vertical access building while the van turned around and parked facing downhill. Its exhaust floated upward in the cold morning air.
“So did you get in Smitty’s pool?” asked Lieutenant Beale as they waited for the elevator cage. A bored security man with an M-16 stifled a yawn.
“No,” said Lieutenant Walters. “No kidding? I thought you were eager to get your money in.” Lieutenant Walters shook his head and they stepped into the smaller cage and descended three stories to the launch command center. They passed through two clearance checkpoints before saluting the duty officer in the anteroom outside the missile control room. It was 0700 hours.
“Lieutenant Beale reporting for duty,
sir
.”
“Lieutenant Walters reporting for duty,
sir
.”
“Your identification, gentlemen,” said Captain Peter Henshaw. He carefully compared the photographs on their identification tags to the two men even though he had known them for over a year. Captain Henshaw nodded and the sergeant slipped a coded security card into the lock box and the outer door hissed open. Twenty seconds later the inner door cycled and two air force lieutenants stepped out. The four men saluted each other and grinned.
“Sergeant, log it in that Lieutenants Beale and Walters relieved Lieutenants Lopez and Miller at . . . 0701.30 hours,” said Captain Henshaw.
“Yes,
sir
.”
The two tired men handed over their bolstered sidearms and two thick three-ring binders.
“Anything?” asked Beale. “Communications check showed some trouble with the land lines at 0350,” said Lieutenant Lopez. “Gus is on it. We had a standup at 0420 and a full run at 0510. Terry had a wire alert on Six South at 0535. Checked it out.”
“Rabbits again?” asked Beale. “Faulty pressure sensor. That’s about it. You awake, Tom?”
“Yes,” said Walters and flashed a grin. “Don’t take any wooden PC-380s,” said Lieutenant Lopez and the two men left.
Beale and Walters closed both airlock doors behind them as they entered the long, narrow missile control room. Each man strapped into one of the blue, heavily cushioned chairs that ran on rails along the control boards on the north and west walls. Working efficiently, occasionally talking to men in other parts of the command center through headset microphones, they ran through their first five checklists. At 0743 there was an Omaha command link check through Warren and Lieutenant Beale handled the twelve-channel ac know ledg ments. When the phone was set back in its blue box, he looked over at Lieutenant Walters. “You sure you feel OK, Tom?”
“Headache,” said Walters. “Got some aspirin over here in the kit.”
“Later,” said Walters.
At 1156 hours, just as Beale was breaking out the thermoses and brown bags, a full stand-up order came through Warren Air Force Base. At 1158 hours, Beale and Walters unlocked the red safe below console two, took out their keys, and activated missile launch sequences. At 1210:30, missile launch sequences were completed except for the actual arming and launch of the sixteen missiles and their 120 warheads. They received a “well done” from Warren and Beale was beginning the two-minute stand-down sequence when Walters undid his shoulder harness and began walking away from his console.
“Tom, what are you doing? We’ve got to get this back to El Con Two before we eat,” said Beale.
“Headache,” said Walters. His face was a sick white, his eyes glazed. Beale reached for the medkit on the shelf that held his Thermos. “I think there’s some extra-strength Anacin in here . . .”
Lieutenant Walters removed his .45 automatic and shot Lieutenant Beale in the back of the head, making sure that the trajectory was down and to the side so an exiting bullet would not strike the console. The bullet did not exit. Beale spasmed once and slumped forward against his harness. Hydrostatic pressures caused blood to pour from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Within seconds of the shot, two yellow intercom lights began blinking and a telltale showed that the outer airlock door was cycling open.
Walters walked unhurriedly to the inner door and fired two bullets into the electronic lockbox. He walked back to Beale’s console and threw the switch that put the self-contained missile control room on one hundred percent reserve oxygen. Then Walters returned to his own chair and studied the manual for several minutes.
Frenzied pounding was just barely audible through the thick steel door as Walters stood up, took seven paces to Beale’s seat, took the long ignition switch key from the dead man’s pocket, and inserted it in the proper panel. He threw the five switches to arm the missiles, did the same at his own console, and inserted his own key.
Lieutenant Walters flicked the intercom switch on. “. . . the hell are you doing, Lieutenant?” It was the voice of Col o nel Anderson from the command center at Warren. “You know it takes two men on the key. Now open that door
immediately
!”
Walters turned off the intercom and watched the digital clock back through ninety seconds and continue to drop. According to the operations manual, the huge concrete silo cover explosives would be arming at this time, preparing to blow the 110-ton silo doors a quarter mile across the grasslands and expose the slick steel pits and nose cones of the inert Minutemen. At ignition minus sixty seconds, air horns would blast at each site, ostensibly to warn any repair or inspection crews at the location. In reality the shrieks would alarm only rabbits, nearby cattle, and the occasional rancher passing by in his pickup. The Minuteman missiles were solid-fueled, awaiting only the electronic match to light them. Targeting instructions, guidance programming, gyroscopes, and the electronic accessories to launch had been powered up during the drill segment of the launch sequence. At ignition minus thirty seconds the computers would halt the sequence and wait for the twin-key launch activation signal. Without the turn of those two keys, the hold would be indefinite.
Walters looked over at Beale’s console. The two keys were sixteen feet apart. They had to be turned within one second of each other. The air force had gone to great lengths to insure that it would be impossible for one man to activate his own key and then race to the other within the necessary time interval.
The corners of Tom Walters’s mouth twitched up. He walked over to Beale’s console, slid the seat and corpse out of the way along the rail, and withdrew a spoon and two lengths of string from his pocket. The spoon was a regular dinner spoon, filched from the officer’s mess at Warren. Walters tied the bowl of the spoon to the flange of the key, bringing the handle down at right angles, and knotted the longer string to the end of the handle. He walked over to his own panel, pulled the string taut, waited until the clock reached 30, turned his own key and tugged hard at the string. The spoon provided enough leverage to turn Beale’s key.
The computer acknowledged launch-activation signal, verified the launch code he and Beale had programmed in during the drill, and proceeded with the final thirty seconds of the launch sequence.
Walters pulled a memo pad over and wrote a brief note. He looked at the door. A section of steel near the lock handle glowed cherry red from the acetylene torch they were wielding in the airlock. The metal would take at least two more minutes to burn through.
Lieutenant Tom Walters smiled, strapped himself into his chair, set the muzzle of the .45 in his mouth so the sight touched his palate, and pulled the trigger with his thumb.
Three hours later, General Verne Ketchum, USAF, and his aide Col o nel Stephen Anderson, walked away from the control center complex to get a breath of fresh air and to view the chaos. Almost a dozen military vehicles and three ambulances filled the parking area and spilled down the hill beyond the inner security zone. Five he li cop ters were parked in the field beyond the west perimeter and Ketchum could see and hear two more throbbing in from the southwest.
Col o nel Anderson looked at the cloudless sky. “Wonder what the Russians think is going on.”
“Fuck the Rus sians,” said Ketchum. “Today I’ve had my ass chewed by everybody up to the vice-president. When I go back in, he’ll be on the line. Every one of them demands to know how it happened. What do I tell ’em, Steve?”
“We’ve had a few problems before,” said Anderson. “Nothing like this. You saw Walters’s last psych report. Just two months ago. The man was moderately intelligent, unmarried, reacted well to stress, was ambitious only within the ser vice, obeyed orders to the letter, was on the winning team last fall in the Vanderburg launch competitions, and he had all the imagination of that piece of sagebrush over there. Perfect profile for a missile jock.”
Ketchum lit a cigar and glowered through the smoke. “So what the fuck
happened
?”
Anderson shook his head and watched the chopper coming in. “It doesn’t make any sense. Walters knew that the final missile activate sequence had to be done in tandem with two other keys in a separate control center. He knew that the computers would hold at the T-5 second mark unless there was that verification. He killed himself and Beale for nothing.”
“You have that note?” growled Ketchum around the cigar. “Yessir.”
“Give it to me.”
Walters’s last note had been wrapped in plastic although Ketchum could not see the sense of that. They sure as hell did not have to dust it for fingerprints. The writing was clear enough through the plastic:
WvB to CAB
King’s pawn to QB6. Check
Your move, Christian.
“Some kind of goddam code, Steve?” asked Ketchum. “Does this chess shit mean anything to you?”
“No, sir.”
“You think the CAB is the Civil Aeronautics Board?”
“It doesn’t make much sense, sir.”
“And what’s this Christian crap? Was Walters born again or something like that?”
“No, sir. According to the base chaplain, the lieutenant was a Unitarian but never attended ser vices.”
“The W and B could be Walters and Beale,” mused Ketchum, “but what’s the v in between?”
Anderson shook his head. “No idea, sir. Maybe Intelligence or the FBI people can figure it out. I think that green chopper’s bringing in the FBI guy from Denver.”
“I wish to hell they didn’t have to be brought in,” grumbled Ketchum. He removed the cigar and spat.
“It’s the law, sir,” said Anderson. “They have to be.”
General Ketchum turned and gave the col o nel a look that made the younger man look down and become suddenly interested in the crease in his trousers. “All right,” Ketchum said at last, flicking the cigar toward the perimeter, “let’s go talk to these civilian hotshots. What the hell, the day isn’t going to get any worse.” Ketchum swiveled on his heel and strode toward the distant delegation.