Command and Control

Holder followed them into the tunnel. He’d fought hard against evacuating the place, but now that it was time to go, he couldn’t wait to get the hell out. Upstairs in the control center, the intruder alarm went off. Fuller must have reached the surface and pushed open the grate, interrupting the radar beams aimed at the air shaft. The tipsie unit had detected the movement and activated the alarm, as though someone was trying to get into the control center, not out of it.

Childers went through the hatch, leaving Captain Mazzaro to go last. The tunnel was dank and dark, like a drainage pipe, and he had to crawl through a pool of rusty water to the air shaft. Childers was terrified. The rungs of the ladder were on the far side of the shaft, you had to reach across to grab them, and it was incredibly dark. Childers was breathing hard in the gas mask as he climbed and couldn’t see the ladder. He raised a hand and felt above his head for each rung, anxious to move as fast as possible, afraid of slipping and falling to the bottom of the shaft. The control center had felt safe — now they really were vulnerable and unprotected. At the top of the ladder, Holder and Fuller pulled him from the air shaft onto the gravel. The three waited for Mazzaro, lifted him out, and started to run.

The wind seemed to be blowing to the east, carrying the white cloud from the exhaust vents toward the entry gate. So the men headed west. The PTS crew had already found the breakaway section of the fence, removed the quick-release pins, and pushed it down. Mazzaro, Childers, Fuller, and Holder followed them through the gap in the fence, trying to circle the site and reach the front gate without passing through the cloud. The masks would protect their lungs, but fuel vapor could be readily absorbed through their skin. The crew made it about three quarters of the way around the fence before the wind changed direction, blowing the white mist right toward them. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Holder thought, ready to be miles away from this place.

When Sergeant Thomas A. Brocksmith arrived at the access road to the complex, he noticed that some law enforcement officers and reporters were already there. He introduced himself to the Van Buren County sheriff. Brocksmith was the on-scene supervisor, responsible for Air Force security at the site. The sheriff asked what was going on. The only information we have, Brocksmith replied, is that there’s a possible hazard on the complex, but there’s no need for an evacuation at this point. About twenty minutes later, Brocksmith was ordered by the command post to drive toward the complex. He put on a gas mask, guided his pickup truck down the access road, and could see that something was seriously wrong. Gray smoke was billowing about fifty feet into the air and drifting over the entry gate. He parked the truck in the clear zone surrounding the fence. The complex was empty, quiet, and still. He looked around for anything out of the ordinary. Aside from the smoke, nothing about the complex seemed unusual. And then someone pounded hard on the passenger door of his truck, yelling, “Get out of here, get out of here.” The noise scared Brocksmith, who looked at the door and saw ten men in the dark wearing gas masks and Air Force uniforms. Somehow, they all crowded into the pickup, and he drove it out of there fast.

In the abandoned control center, the hazard lights flashed, the intruder alarm rang, the escape hatch hung wide open, and water slowly dripped from the tunnel onto the concrete floor.

PART TWO MACHINERY OF CONTROL

The Best, the Biggest, and the Most

Hamilton Holt’s dream of world peace finally seemed within reach. For decades he’d campaigned with one civic group after another, trying to end the perpetual conflict between nations, races, and religions. A graduate of Yale from a wealthy family, he’d worked closely with Andrew Carnegie at the New York Peace Society before the First World War. Holt championed the American Peace Society, the World Peace Foundation, the League to Enforce Peace, the League of Nations, the Conciliation Internationale, and the American Society of International Law. He was also a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He edited a reform newspaper, ran for the U.S. Senate in 1924, lost by a wide margin, became the president of Rollins College the following year, and created a unique educational system there. Lectures were eliminated, and faculty members were hired by the students. College life didn’t end his work on behalf of disarmament. During the 1930s, Holt erected a Peace Monument on the Rollins campus in Winter Park, Florida. The monument was a German artillery shell from the First World War set atop a stone plinth. The inscription began: “PAUSE, PASSER-BY, AND HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME…”