Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [89]
The Strategic Air Command had five levels of war readiness called defense conditions, or DefCons. In peacetime, with no trouble brewing, SAC ticked over at DefCon 5. The numbers dropped as things hotted up. DefCon 1 was imminent nuclear war. At ten o’clock on that Wednesday morning, General Thomas Power ordered his forces to adopt DefCon 2. An hour later, he descended into his underground command bunker near Omaha, Nebraska, and broadcast a message to SAC bases and missile stations around the world. He emphasized “the seriousness of the situation this nation faces” and assured his listeners — unnecessarily, one might think — that “we are in an advanced state of readiness to meet any emergencies.” But Power wasn’t speaking only to his own people. He’d chosen to broadcast on a high-frequency radio network that he knew was monitored by Soviet intelligence. He wanted to make sure that his message was heard in Moscow. He wanted the Reds to know that they were knocking at the doors of burning perdition.
Chairman Khrushchev’s reply to Kennedy came through to the White House late in the evening. It had clearly been written by him personally, because it was an erratic combination of threat and persuasion, bombast and reason, indignation and pleading, all awkwardly wrapped in the language of international diplomacy. Essentially, though, it came down to this: What you’re doing is illegal; it’s piracy. You don’t own the seas. We and Cuba are sovereign nations, and you have no right to tell us what we can and can’t do. Imagine if we had done this to you. Would you have said okay? No. Our ships will sail where they want to. Do you really want to start a nuclear war over this issue? Oh, by the way, what about those nuclear weapons you’ve got in Turkey?
The American low-level flights over Cuba continued into the next day. A plane piloted by Lieutenant Gerald Coffee took photos of things the Americans hadn’t previously known were there: Russian battlefield weapons, nuclear battlefield weapons known in the Pentagon as FROGs. They were mobile, quick to arm, and had a range of twenty miles. Fired from a Cuban hilltop, they could destroy anything within a thousand yards of their target. Such as a sizable chunk of an American fleet. Or an invading army heading for the beach in fragile boats.
When the glossy American planes streaked overhead, the Cubans and their Russian guests assumed that they were Cuban planes. The white stars on their fuselages were the insignia of both air forces. When it dawned on him that these aircraft were American, Fidel Castro was outraged. He called a meeting with the Russians and his own air defense people.
“There’s no reason of any kind,” he told them, “why we should not shoot down Yanquis that fly over us at three hundred feet. When those low-level planes appear, fry them.”
The Russians looked edgy. They took their orders from Moscow. But those orders took a long time to arrive. Much longer than it took an American plane traveling at five hundred miles an hour to fly the length of Cuba.
With his eyes on the telly, George poured HP sauce onto his helping of Ruth’s tragic cottage pie.
The same map of the Caribbean with the circles on it.
“. . . conflicting reports of Soviet shipping movements . . .”
Meaningless footage of surging American warships that might have been filmed anywhere, at any time.
Harold bloody Macmillan in front of 10 Downing Street, shaking hands with somebody.
Noisy protestors in Grosvenor Square with placards. NO WAR ON CUBA! USA OUT OF CUBA! YANKS GO HOME!
“Much ruddy good that’ll do,” George muttered through a mouthful of gray mince.
Something about an emergency debate at the United Nations in New York. “Meanwhile, in Washington . . .”
Ruth concentrated on her food, which seemed strangely tasteless. It had happened