Alas, Babylon Read online

  Mark Braggs mind raced ahead. If an attack came, they could count on no more than fifteen minutes’ warning. If they used every one of those minutes with maximum efficiency, retaliation could be decisive. But Mark feared a minute, or even two, might be lost in necessary communication with Washington. He made a bold proposal. “May I suggest, sir, that we ask for the release of our weapons?”

  This was the one mandatory, essential act that must precede the terrible decision to use the weapons. Under the law, the President of the United States “owned” the nuclear bombs and missile warheads. General Hawker was entrusted with their custody only. Before SAC could use the weapons, the permission of the President—his survivor in a line of succession—must be secured. If an attack were underway, that permission would come almost, but not quite, instantly.

  The General seemed a little startled. “Don’t you think we can wait, Mark?”

  “Yes, sir, we can wait, but if we get it out of the way, it could save us a minute, maybe two. The danger, and the necessity of not having a communications’ snafu, must be just as apparent in the Pentagon, or the White House, or wherever the President is, as it is here.”

  “What do you think, Ace?” Hawker asked.

  “I’d like to have it behind us, sir.”

  The General picked up one of the four phones on Atkins’ desk, the phone connecting directly with the Pentagon Command Post. In this CP, day and night, was a general officer of the Air Force. This duty officer was never out of communication with the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  The General spoke briefly into the phone and then waited, keeping it pressed against his ear. Mark’s eyes followed the red second hand on the desk clock. This was an interesting experiment. The General said, “Yes John, this is Bob Hawker. I want the release of my weapons.” Mark knew that “John” was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Yes, I’ll hold,” the General said. The seconds raced away. The General said, “Thank you, John. It is now eleven forty-four, Zulu. You will confirm by teletype? Goodbye, John.”

  The General reached across the desk and wrote in Ace Atkins’ log: “Weapons released to SAC at 11:44, Zulu.” The Operations log was kept in Greenwich Time.

  Mark said, “I timed it. One minute and thirty-five seconds.”

  “I hope we don’t need it,” Hawker said, “but I’m glad to have it.” The worry lines became less conspicuous around his mouth and eyes. His back and shoulders straightened. Now that the responsibility was his, with complications and entanglements minimized, he accepted it with confidence. His manner said that if it came he would fight it from here, and by God win it, as much as it could be won.

  The General poured himself another cup of coffee. Ace Atkins told the General, “With your permission, I’m going to scramble fifty percent of all our tankers at Bluie West One, Thule, Limestone, and Castle. They’d be sitting ducks for missiles from subs. They’re right under the gun. They wouldn’t get fifteen minutes.” The General nodded. Ace flipped two keys on the intercom and dictated an order.

  Beside Ace’s desk, a tape recorder steadily turned, monitoring phone calls and conversations. The General glanced at it and said, “Do you realize that everything said in this room is being recorded for posterity?”

  They all smiled. On all the clocks another minute flipped. The direct line from NORAD, North American Air Defense, in Colorado Springs, buzzed. Ace picked it up, said, “Atkins, SAC Operations,” listened, said, “Roger. I repeat. Object, may be missile, fired from Soviet base, Anadyr Peninsular.”

  The emergency priority teletype machine from NORAD began to clatter.

  It’s only one, Mark thought. It could be a meteor. It could be a Sputnik. It could be anything.

  The NORAD line buzzed again. Ace answered and repeated the flash, as before, for the General and the tape recorder. “DEW Line high sensitivity radar now has four objects on its screens. Speed and trajectory indicates they are ballistic missiles. Presque Isle and Homestead report missiles coming in from sea. We are skipping the yellow. This is your red alert.”

  The General gave an order.

  Mark rose and said, “I think I’d better get back to my desk.” The General nodded and smiled thinly. He said, “Thanks for the ninety-five seconds.”

  Chapter 5

  At first Randy thought someone was shaking the couch. Graf, nestled under his arm, whined and slipped to the floor. Randy opened his eyes and elevated himself on his elbow. He felt stiff and grimy from sleeping in his clothes. Except for the dachshund, tail and ears at attention, the room was empty. Again the couch shook. The world outside still slept, but he discerned movement in the room. His fishing rods, hanging by their tips from a length of pegboard, inexplicably swayed in rhythm. He had heard such phenomena accompanied earthquakes, but there had never been an earthquake in Florida. Graf lifted his nose and howled.

  Then the sound came, a long, deep, powerful rumble increasing in crescendo until the windows rattled, cups danced in their saucers, and the bar glasses rubbed rims and tinkled in terror. The sound slowly ebbed, then boomed to a fiercer climax, closer.

  Randy found himself on his feet, throat dry, heart pounding. This was not the season for thunder, nor were storms forecast. Nor was this thunder. He stepped out onto the upstairs porch. To his left, in the east, an orange glow heralded the sun. In the south, across the Timucuan and beyond the horizon, a similar glow slowly faded. His sense refused to accept a sun rising and a sun setting. For perhaps a minute the spectacle numbed reaction.

  What had jolted Randy from sleep—he would not learn all the facts for a long, a very long time after—were two nuclear explosions, both in the megaton range, the warheads of missiles lobbed in by submarines. The first obliterated the SAC base at Homestead, and incidentally sank and returned to the sea a considerable area of Florida’s tip. Ground Zero of the second missile was Miami’s International Airport, not far from the heart of the city. Randy’s couch had been shaken by shock waves transmitted through the earth, which travel faster than through the air, so he had been awake when the blast and sound arrived a little later. Gazing at the glow to the south, Randy was witnessing, from a distance of almost two hundred miles, the incineration of a million people.

  The screen door banged open. Ben Franklin and Peyton, barefoot and in flannel pajamas, burst out onto the porch. Helen followed. The sight of war’s roseate birthmark on the sky choked back their words. Helen grabbed Randy’s arm tightly in both hands, as if she had stumbled. Finally, she spoke. “So soon?” It was a moan, not a question.

  “I’m afraid it’s here,” Randy said, his mind churning among all the possibilities, including their own dangers, seeking a clue as to what to do, what to do first.

  Helen was wearing a flowered kimono and straw slippers, booty from one of Mark’s inspection trips to the Far East. Her chestnut hair was disheveled, her eyes, a deep and stirring blue, round in apprehension. She seemed very slight, in need of protection, and hardly older than her daughter. She was, at this moment, less composed than the children.

  Ben Franklin, staring to the south, said, “I don’t see any mushroom cloud. Don’t they always have a mushroom cloud?”

  “The explosions were very far off,” Randy said. “Probably a lot of haze, or other clouds, between us and the mushrooms. What we see is a reflection in the sky. It’s dying, now. It was much brighter when I first came out here.”

  “I see,” Ben Franklin said, satisfied. “What do you think they clobbered? I’d guess Homestead and the Boca Chica Navy base at Key West.”

  Randy shook his head. “I don’t see how we could get rocked from that distance. Maybe they hit Palm Beach and Miami. Maybe they missed and pitched two into the Glades.”

  “Maybe,” Ben said, not as if he believed they had missed.

  It was so quiet. It was wrongly quiet. They ought to hear sirens, or something. All Randy heard was a mockingbird tuning up for his morning aria.

  Helen released
her grip on his arm. Thoughts seemed to parallel his, she said, “I haven’t heard any planes. I don’t hear any now. Shouldn’t we hear fighters, or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Randy said.

  Ben Franklin said, “I heard ’em. That’s what first woke me. I heard jets—they sounded like B-Forty-sevens-climbing. Traveling that way.” He showed them with a sweep of his arm. “That’s southwest to northeast, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Randy said, and at that instant he heard another aircraft, whining under full power, following the same path. They all listened. “That one will be from MacDill,” Randy decided, “heading across.”

  Before its sound faded they heard another, and then a third. They all pressed close to the porch screen, looking up.

  High up there, where it was already sunlight, they saw silver arrows speeding and three white contrails boldly slashed across morning’s washed blue sky.

  Ben Franklin whispered, “Go, baby, go!”

  Terror departed Helen’s eyes. “Could we go up on the captain’s walk?” she said. “I want to watch them. They’re mine, you know.”

  Ben and Peyton sprinted for the ladder. “No!” Randy said. “Wait!”

  Ben stopped instantly. Peyton ran on. Her mother said, “Peyton! That was an order!”

  Peyton, her hand on the ladder, went no further. She said, “Shucks.”

  “You might as well start learning to obey your uncle Randy, just as you obey your father, right now!”

  Peyton said, “Why can’t we go up on the roof?”

  Randy had spoken instinctively. He found it difficult to put his objection into words. “I think it’s too exposed,” he said. “I think we all ought to be underground right now, but there isn’t any cellar and it’s too late to start digging.”

  Ben Franklin said, “You’re right, Randy. If they laid an egg close, we could get flash burns. Then there’s radiation.” The boy looked at the weathercock on the garage steeple. “Wind’s from the east, so we won’t get any fallout, anyway not now. But suppose they hit Patrick? We’re almost exactly west of Patrick, aren’t we? Patrick could cook us.”

  “Where did you learn all that stuff about fallout?” Randy asked.

  “I thought everybody knew it.” Ben frowned. “I don’t think they’ll hit Patrick. It’s a test center, not an operational base. Patrick can’t hurt them, but MacDill and McCoy, they can hurt them. And, brother, they will!”

  Randy, Helen, and Ben Franklin were facing the east, where the missile test pads on Cape Canaveral lay, and where the fat red sun now showed itself above the horizon. Peyton, nose pressed against the screen, was still trying to follow the contrails of the B-47’s. A stark white flash enveloped their world. Randy felt the heat on his neck. Peyton cried out and covered her face with her hands. In the southwest, in the direction of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota, another unnatural sun was born, much larger and infinitely fiercer than the sun in the east.

  Automatically, as a good platoon leader should, Randy looked at his watch and marked the minute and second in his memory. This time he would know the point of impact exactly, using the flash-and-sound system learned in Korea.

  A thick red pillar erected itself in the southwest, its base the unnatural sun.

  The top of the pillar billowed outward. This time, the mushroom was there.

  There was no sound at all except Peyton’s whimpering. Her fists were pressed into her eyes.

  A bird plunged against the screen and dropped to earth, trailed by drifting feathers.

  Within the pillar and the cloud, fantastic colors played. Red changed to orange, glowed white, became red again. Green and purple ropes twisted upward through the pillar and spread tentacles through the cloud.

  The gaudy mushroom enlarged with incredible speed, angry, poisonous, malignant. It grew until the mushroom’s rim looked like the leading edge of an approaching weather front, black, purple, orange, green, a cancerous man-created line squall.

  They shrank from it.

  Peyton screamed, “I can’t see! I can’t see, Mommy. Mommy, where are you?” Her eyes were wide, her face tear-stained and mottled. Arms outstretched, she was moving across the porch with tiny, stiff, uncertain steps.

  Randy scooped her into his arms. She seemed weightless. Helen opened the door and he rushed into the living room. Talking to her, saying, “Easy, Peyton, honey! Easy! Stop rubbing your eyes. Keep your eyes closed.” He stretched the child out on the couch.

  Helen was at his side, a wet towel in her hands. She laid the towel over her daughter’s eyes. “This will make you feel better, baby.”

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes.” This was the first time, since she was six, that Peyton had used Mommy instead of Mother.

  “All I can see is a big white ball. I can see it with my eyes closed. It hurts me, Mommy, right through my head.”

  “Sure, just like a big flashlight bulb. Lie still, Peyton, you’re going to be all right.” Now, with fear for her child’s sight supplanting all other fears, Helen steadied. Again she was composed, able, efficient, and she knew the moment of panic would not return. She told Randy, calmly, “Hadn’t you better call Dan Gunn?”

  “Of course.” Randy hurried into his office. Dan had two phones in his suite in the Riverside Inn. Randy dialed the private number. It was busy. He dialed Riverside Inn. Again, he heard the impersonal busy-beep. The inn had a switchboard. All its lines shouldn’t be busy. He tried the clinic building, although he knew it was most unlikely that Dan, or anybody, would be there at this hour. It was busy. He dialed operator. The same beep sounded in his ear. Once again, Randy tried Dan’s private number. The infuriating beep persisted. He gave up and announced, “I’ll have to drive into town and bring Dan out here.”

  At that moment the ground-conducted shock wave rocked the house.

  Peyton cried out, in her sightless terror. Helen pressed her down on the couch, murmuring reassuring mother words. Randy noticed that Ben Franklin was missing from the room.

  The blast and sound wave covered them, submerging all other sound and feeling. Again the kitchenware and glasses and china danced. A delicate vase of Viennese crystal crumpled into powder and shards on the mantle. The glass protecting a meticulous and vivid still life, a water color by Lee Adams, shattered in its frame with a loud report.

  Randy looked at his watch, marked the time, and did the flash-and-sound arithmetic in his head.

  Helen, watching him while soothing Peyton’s tense body with her fingers, watching and understanding, said, “What was it?”

  “What was MacDill,” Randy said. “Six minutes and fifteen seconds. That means seventy-five miles, just right for MacDill.”

  “MacDill means Tampa,” Helen said.

  “And St. Petersburg. You’ll be all right until I get back?”

  “We’ll be all right.”

  Randy banged into Ben Franklin on the stairs. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Opening up the windows and doors downstairs. Just made it. Not a window broke.”

  “Smart boy. Now you go on up and help your mother take care of Peyton. I’m going for the Doctor.”

  “Randy—”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to fill up all the pails and sinks and tubs with water. That’s what you’re supposed to do, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.” Randy put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “But if that’s what you’re supposed to do, go ahead and do it.”

  Randy ran outside in time to see the Golden Dew Dairy truck careen past on River Road, headed for Fort Repose. The milkman was always a little late with his Saturday deliveries, since orders were heavier than on weekdays. He must have barely begun his route when the first blasts illuminated the sky in the south. Now he was racing home to his wife and children.

  As Randy reached his car he heard the undulating tocsin of the siren atop Fort Repose’s firehouse. A little redundant, he thought. Still, there was no sound quite like a siren wailing its air
-raid alarm to spur people to constructive action—or paralyze them in fear.

  Randy caught and passed the milk truck before the turn in the road. A minute later he saw a big, new sedan overturned in the ditch, wheels still spinning. He slowed, and saw that the sedan’s front end was telescoped, its windshield shredded; that it bore New York plates. On the shoulder of the road lay a woman, arms outstretched, one bare leg grotesquely twisted under her back. Pallid flesh showed under blue and yellow checked shorts. Her upturned face was a red smear and he judged she was dead.

  In this second Randy made an important decision. Yesterday, he would have stopped instantly. There would have been no question about it. When there was an accident, and someone was hurt, a man stopped. But yesterday was a past period in history, with laws and rules archaic as ancient Rome’s. Today the rules had changed, just as Roman law gave way to atavistic barbarism as the empire fell to Hun and Goth. Today a man saved himself and his family and to hell with everyone else. Already millions must be dead and other millions maimed, or doomed by radiation, for if the enemy was hitting Florida, they would hardly skip SAC bases and missile sites in more densely populated areas. Certainly they would not spare Washington and New York, the command posts and communication center of the whole nation. And the war was less than a half hour old. So one stranger on the roadside meant nothing, particularly with a blinded child, his blood kin, dependent on his mission. With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan.

  And yet Randy stopped. He touched the power brakes and burned rubber, swearing, and thinking himself soft and stupid. He backed, got out of the car, and examined the wreck. The woman was dead, her neck broken. She had been traveling alone. Examining the marks and a shattered cabbage palm, he deduced she was driving at high speed when the explosion at MacDill—he could see an orange patch in the southwest, probably fire storms consuming Tampa and St. Petersburg—unnerved or blinded her. She had swerved, hit the tree, and catapulted through the windshield. In the car were several pigskin bags, locks burst by the impact, and a pocketbook. He touched nothing. He would report the wreck to a road patrolman or deputy sheriff, if he could find one and when there was time.