Alas, Babylon

For a moment, they were both silent. On the other side of the flight-line fence, three ground-crewmen were throwing a baseball. Two were pitching, an older sergeant, built like Yogi Berra, catching. The plate was a yellow parachute pack. The ball whirred and plopped sharply into mitt. “That tall boy has a lot of stuff,” Randy said. Again, he felt he moved in the miasma of a dream. Something was wrong. Either Mark shouldn’t be talking like this, or those airmen shouldn’t be throwing a baseball out there in the warm sunlight. When he lit a cigarette, his fingers were trembling again.

“Have a bad night, Randy?”

“Not particularly. I’m having a bad day.”

“I’m afraid it’s going to get worse. Here’s the tactical part. They know that the only way they can do it is knock off our nuclear capability with one blow-or at least cripple us so badly that they can accept what retaliatory power we have left. They don’t mind losing ten or twenty million people, so long as they sweep the board, because people, per se, are only pawns, and expendable. So their plan-it was no surprise to us-calls for a T.O.T. on a worldwide scale. You get it?”

“Sure. Time-on-target. You don’t fire everything at the same instant. You shoot it so it all arrives on target at the same instant.” Mark glanced at his watch, and then looked up at the big jet transport, still loading fuel through four hoses from the underground tanks. “That’s right. It won’t be Zero Hour, it’ll be Zero Minute. They’ll use no planes in the first wave, only missiles. They plan to kill every base and missile site in Europe and Africa and the U.K. with their T-2 and T-3 IR’s. They plan to kill every base on this continent, and in the Pacific, with their IC’s, plus missiles launched from subs. Then they use SUSAC – that’s what we call their Strategic Air Force-to mop up.”

“Can they get away with it?”

Three years ago they couldn’t. Three years hence, when we have our own ICBM batteries emplaced, a big fleet of missile toting subs, and Nike-Zeus and some other stuff perfected, they couldn’t. But right now we’re in what we call `the gap.’ Theoretically, they figure they can do it. I’m pretty sure they can’t we may have some surprises for them-but that’s not the point. Point is, if they think they can get away with it, then we have lost.”

“I don’t understand.”

“LeMay says the only way a general can win a modern war is not fight one. Our whole raison d’etre was deterrent force. When you don’t deter them any longer, you lose. I think we lost some time ago, because the last five Sputniks have been reconnaissance satellites. They’ve been mapping us, with infrared and transitor television, measuring us for the Sunday punch.”

Randy felt angry. He felt cheated. “Why hasn’t anybody everybody been told about this?”

Mark shrugged. “You know how it is-everything that comes in is stamped secret or top secret or cosmic or something and the only people who dare declassify anything are the big wheels right at the top, and the people at the top hold conferences and somebody says, `Now, let’s not be hasty. Let’s not alarm the public.’ So everything stays secret or cosmic. Personally, I think everybody ought to be digging or evacuating right this minute. Maybe if the other side knew we were digging, if they knew that we knew, they wouldn’t try to get away with it.”

“You really think it’s that close?” Randy said. “Why?”

“Two reasons. First, when I left Puerto Rico this morning

Navy was trying to track three skunks-unidentified submarines-in the Caribbean, and one in the Gulf.”

“Four subs doesn’t sound like enough force to cause a big flap,” Randy said.

“Four subs is a lot of subs when there shouldn’t be any,” Mark said. “It’s like shaking a haystack and having four needles pop out at your feet. Chances are that haystack is stiff with needles.” He rubbed his hand across his eyes, as if the glare hurt, and when he spoke again his voice was strained. `they’ve got so blasted many! CIA thinks six hundred, Navy guesses maybe seven fift y. And they don’t need launchers any more. Just dump the bird, or pop it out while still submerged. The ocean itself is a perfectly good launching pad.”

Randy said, “And the other reason?”

“Because I’m on my way back to Offutt. We flew down yesterday on a pretty important job-figure out a way to disperse the wing on Ramey. There aren’t enough fields in Puerto Rico and anyway the island is rugged and not big enough. We’d just started our staff study when we got a zippo – that’s an operational priority message-to come home. And two thirds of the Ramey wing was scrambled with flyaway kits for-another place. I made my decision right then. I just had time to arrange Helen’s reservation and send the cables.”