One minute to midnight

by Michael Dobbs

  "There is a time to live and a time to die," he mused. "A post-nuclear world would be an extremely unpleasant place to live--even if the radioactivity didn't kill you."

  12:44 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (8:44 A.M. ALASKA)

  Located two hundred miles above the Arctic Circle, Pevek was one of the most northerly, most isolated towns in Russia. The local Chukchi culture revolved around the raising of reindeer and the hunting of walrus. The population density was roughly two people per square mile. In winter, temperatures dropped to 50 degrees below zero. To the Soviet state, the region was of interest mainly for its rich deposits of tin and gold, as a winter refuge for the ships that patrolled the Arctic Ocean, and as a remote military outpost. A squadron of MiGs was stationed at an airfield by the edge of the sea to intercept American bombers heading over the North Pole.

  When the military radar station spotted the intruder plane heading toward the Chukot Peninsula, the MiGs took off from Pevek Airport. The MiGs shot upward in sudden bursts of speed, but the strange plane remained tantalizingly out of reach. Using their supersonic engines, the Soviet pilots could zoom-climb to 60,000 feet in a couple of minutes, but that still left them 15,000 feet short of their prey. The interceptor jets kept up with the intruder for three hundred miles and then roared off in a westerly direction in search of fuel.

  Another group of MiGs took off from the airfield at Anadyr on the Sea of Okhotsk on the other side of the peninsula. They flew north to take over the chase from the Pevek-based interceptors. They almost caught up with Maultsby over the middle of the peninsula and followed him as he turned toward Alaska.

  The interception attempts were being tracked 3,500 miles away in Offutt, Nebraska, in the Operations Center of the Strategic Air Command. By monitoring the Soviet air defense radar net, SAC intelligence officers could follow the MiGs the same way that they followed Maultsby's U-2 once it entered Soviet airspace. They plotted the movements of the MiGs with little check marks on an illuminated screen. As the MiGs turned eastward, SAC asked the Alaska Air Defense Command to scramble a pair of F-102 fighter-interceptors to provide protection for Maultsby.

  Earlier in the week, technicians had removed the conventional weapons from the F-102s stationed at Galena Air Force Base in western Alaska, and loaded nuclear missiles onto the interceptors. This was standard procedure when the squadron moved to DEFCON-3. Armed with a nuclear-tipped Falcon air-to-air missile, a lone F-102 could wipe out an entire fleet of incoming Soviet bombers. In theory, nuclear weapons could only be used on the authority of the president. In practice, an F-102 pilot had the physical ability to fire the nuclear warhead by pushing a few buttons on his control panel. Since he was alone in the cockpit, no one could override his decision.

  One of the interceptor pilots was Lieutenant Leon Schmutz, a twenty-six-year-old recently out of flight school. As he climbed into the skies above the Bering Strait to search for the missing U-2, he wondered what he would do if he ran into the Soviet MiGs. His only means of defense was a nuclear warhead capable of destroying everything within a half-mile radius of the explosion. To use such a weapon was virtually unthinkable, particularly over American territory. The detonation of even a small warhead could result in all-out nuclear war. But to fail to respond to an attack by a Soviet fighter went against a pilot's basic survival instincts.

  1:28 P.M. SATURDAY (9:28 A.M. ALASKA)

  Maultsby made a quick mental summary of his situation. The main plus was that he could no longer hear the Russian radio station. The principal minus was that his plane carried sufficient fuel for nine hours and forty minutes of flight. He had been airborne for nine hours and twenty-eight minutes, having taken off at midnight. Twelve minutes of fuel remained.

  To have any hope of making it back to Alaska alive, Maultsby knew he would have to make full use of his plane's extraordinary gliding capabilities. With its long, billowing wings and exceptionally light airframe, a U-2 could travel up to two hundred miles without power, buoyed by the wind currents as it slowly descended through the earth's atmosphere. It was a glider as much an airplane.

  He needed to save some fuel for an emergency, and also wanted to conserve his battery power. He made a final call in the clear to announce that he was going off the air. "A sense of despair set in" as he reached out to the control panel in front of him and shut down the plane's single Pratt & Whitney J-57 engine. He settled into a gentle glide.

  By switching off the engine, Maultsby had also disabled the cockpit pressurization and heating system. The capstans in his flight suit inflated with a whoosh from the emergency oxygen supply to compensate for the loss of cabin pressure, preventing his blood from exploding into the thin air. He looked like the Michelin man. A single phrase kept running through his exhausted, sleep-deprived brain as he glided through the stratosphere at a height of seventy thousand feet, unsure of his location and unable to communicate with anybody.

  "This is a fine mess you've got yourself into, Charlie."

  1:41 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (9:41 A.M. ALASKA)

  The latest message from Khrushchev had only confirmed the worst suspicions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military brass was convinced that the Soviet leader had no intention of taking his missiles out of Cuba. He was merely playing for time, dragging the United States into an endless round of pointless bargaining. By the time Kennedy realized what was happening, it would be too late. The missiles would be mated with nuclear warheads, pointed at America and ready to fire.

  The way the Joint Chiefs saw it, any conciliatory words or gestures from Moscow were merely a feint. A top Marine general warned the chiefs that "Khrushchev, like every doctrinaire Communist before him, is a slavish follower of Sun Tzu." To prove his point, he cited several aphorisms from the venerated Chinese military strategist, drawing parallels between the Middle Empire in 512 B.C. and the Soviet Empire of A.D. 1962:

  * Speak in humble terms, continue preparations and attack;

  * Pretend inferiority and encourage the enemy's arrogance;

  * The crux of military operations lies in the pretense of accommodating to the designs of the enemy.

  The chiefs were meeting in the Tank, their Pentagon inner sanctum dominated by a huge map of the world. Seated around the polished wooden table, they debated the latest intelligence from Cuba, including evidence of nuclear-capable FROG missiles and many more Soviet troops than previously suspected. Curtis LeMay dominated the session as usual, even though he spoke in monosyllables and refused to engage in discussion. The Air Force chief wanted his colleagues to recommend execution of a full-scale air strike against thousands of military targets in Cuba, followed by a ground invasion in seven days. At LeMay's insistence, the generals began drafting a document to send to the White House accusing Khrushchev of "diplomatic blackmail."

  "Delay in taking further direct military action toward solving the Cuban problem is to the benefit of the Soviet Union," the chiefs warned. "Cuba will be harder to defeat. U.S. casualties will be multiplied. The direct threat of attack on the Continental United States by Cuban-based nuclear missiles and nuclear capable aircraft will be greatly increased."

  The chiefs were discussing the timing of the initial attack on Cuba when McNamara walked into the Tank. Having come straight from the ExComm meeting, he was preoccupied by the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, easy targets for the Soviets if the United States attacked Cuba. One way to reduce the temptation to Khrushchev to "knock out" the Jupiters would be to station a Polaris nuclear submarine off the coast of Turkey, and let Moscow know it was there. The invulnerable submarine, with sixteen Polaris ballistic missiles on board, was a much more effective deterrent to a Soviet attack on Turkey than the vulnerable Jupiters. Sending a nuclear submarine to Turkey would also pave the way for the withdrawal of the obsolete Jupiters.

  The defense secretary instructed the chiefs to prepare a plan for redeploying at least one nuclear sub to the eastern Mediterranean. He also wanted to know what exactly they had in mind when they talked about "early an
d timely execution" of the air strike plan against Cuba.

  "Attacking Sunday or Monday," LeMay replied gruffly.

  The generals made little secret of their impatience with McNamara. They had clashed with him repeatedly over the purchase of new weapons systems, and suspected him of "pacifist views." After McNamara vetoed the new B-70 bomber and insisted on limiting the Minuteman to one thousand missiles, LeMay asked his colleagues whether things could be "much worse if Khrushchev were secretary of defense." He found such squeamishness difficult to stomach. When McNamara asked whether it was possible to bomb Soviet missile sites without killing many Russians, LeMay looked at him with amazement. "You must have lost your mind."

  McNamara's feelings about his Air Force chief were more ambivalent. Their relationship went back to World War II. The brilliant statistician from Berkeley had served under LeMay in the Far East, plotting ways to maximize the devastation caused by the bombing of Japanese cities. McNamara considered his former boss "the ablest combat officer" he ever knew. LeMay was brutal, but he got the job done. He thought in the simplest of terms: loss of his own crews per unit of target destruction. McNamara had helped LeMay make the calculations that led to the burning to death of a hundred thousand residents of Tokyo--men, women, and children--in a single night. But his admiration for the general was mixed with revulsion. McNamara had been prepared to accept the fire-bombing of Tokyo. A nuclear war with the Soviet Union that could result in millions of American casualties was a different matter.

  "Who will win such a war?" he would ask the Air Force chief, when they debated the subject.

  "We will, of course," LeMay would reply. "The country that ends up with the greatest number of nuclear weapons wins."

  "But if we lose ten million people, what's the point of winning?"

  McNamara was tired. The last few days had been a whirlwind of meetings, conference calls, and hundreds of decisions. He slept on a cot in the dressing room of his third-floor Pentagon office overlooking the Potomac. He had only managed to get home for dinner once, on Friday evening. He ate most of his meals at a card table in his office. He rose by 6:30 a.m. and worked as late as 11:00 p.m. or midnight. His sleep was often interrupted by calls from the president or senior officials. His only relaxation was the occasional game of squash in the Officers' Club in the Pentagon basement. His mind still worked like a computer, but he was losing some of his trademark sharpness and no longer dominated ExComm meetings with his crisp analyses and multipoint options.

  In the midst of this strained conversation, McNamara received an urgent message, passed on to him by LeMay. He looked through it quickly.

  "A U-2 has been lost off Alaska."

  It had taken SAC commanders an hour and a half to report the loss of the plane to civilian authorities, despite strong evidence that Maultsby had strayed over the Soviet Union. The initial reports were fragmentary. The Pentagon told the White House that the pilot "got off course" after developing "gyro trouble," and was picked up by a "high frequency direction finder" off Wrangel Island. "Then seems to have overflown, or came close to, Soviet territory. Not clear at this time exactly what cause was. Russian fighters scrambled--ours too."

  The first reports were alarming enough. An American spy plane had probably overflown Soviet territory at a time when both countries were close to nuclear war. It had almost certainly run out of fuel. McNamara rushed out of the room to call the president. The logs of the meeting show that it was 1:41 p.m.

  Worried about shutting down his engine, Maultsby had neglected to pull the cord that prevented his helmet from rising after his pressure suit inflated. The lower part of the helmet was now blocking his vision, and he had "a helluva time seeing the instrument panel" in front of him. He struggled with the helmet until he finally got it back in place.

  Shortly afterward, the windshield fogged up and condensation appeared on the faceplate of his helmet. Maultsby pushed the faceplate as close to his mouth as he could. By sticking his tongue out, he was able to lick away enough of the condensation to see the instrument panel.

  The altimeter continued to show a height of seventy thousand feet. Maultsby assumed that the needle had gotten stuck, but then he realized that the aircraft was still flying at that height, even without any power. It took at least ten minutes for the U-2 to start its slow descent. He told himself that all that remained for him to do was "keep the wings level, maintain a rate of descent for maximum range and hope my guardian angel wasn't taking a nap."

  The throbbing noise of the engine had given way to an otherworldly silence. The only sound that Maultsby was able to hear was his own labored breathing. His most pressing physical need after nearly ten hours in the air was to urinate. Under normal conditions, relieving himself in a U-2 involved laboriously unzipping his partial-pressure suit, peeling away several layers of undergarments, and aiming into a bottle. A maneuver that was complicated enough at the best of times became virtually impossible when the pressure suit was inflated, almost filling the cockpit.

  1:45 P.M. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27 (9:45 A.M. ALASKA)

  It had been a hectic morning, but the president was determined not to miss his regular swim. He usually went twice a day, just before lunch and again before dinner, with his aide, Dave Powers. His doctors had prescribed swimming exercises for his back, but it was also a way of relaxing. Originally built for Franklin Roosevelt as part of his treatment for polio, the indoor pool in the West Wing basement had been refurbished with a mural of a glorious sailing scene in the Virgin Islands donated by Joe Kennedy, Sr. The two friends engaged in light banter as they swam breast-stroke up and down the fifty-foot pool, which was kept at a constant ninety degrees.

  Returning from his swim, Kennedy passed by the Oval Office before heading up to the mansion for a light lunch. The phone rang at 1:45 p.m. It was McNamara, with news of the U-2 missing off Alaska.

  A few minutes later, the chief of intelligence from the State Department came running up the stairs from Bundy's basement office. Roger Hilsman had just heard about the scrambling of Soviet and American fighter jets. Having gone two days without sleep, he was exhausted, but instantly understood the significance of what had happened. "The implications were as obvious as they were horrendous: the Soviets might well regard this U-2 flight as a last-minute intelligence reconnaissance in preparation for nuclear war."

  Hilsman was expecting a furious outburst from the president, or at least some sign of the panic he himself was beginning to feel. But Kennedy broke the tension with a short, bitter laugh and a truism from his Navy days.

  "There's always some sonofabitch who doesn't get the word."

  The calm exterior belied a deep frustration. Unlike other members of his family, particularly his brother Bobby, Kennedy turned quiet when he was angry. His closest aides feared his gritted teeth more than his occasional explosions. When he was truly beside himself, he would tap his front teeth with his fingernails or grip the arms of his chair so hard that his knuckles turned white.

  He was discovering the limits of presidential power. It was impossible for a commander in chief to know everything that was being done in his name. There were so many things he would never find out until "some sonofabitch" fouled everything up. The military machine operated according to its own internal logic and momentum. The Pentagon assured him that the air-sampling flights to the North Pole had been planned and approved many months in advance. Nobody had considered the possibility that a U-2 might end up over the Soviet Union on the most dangerous day of the Cold War.

  It was not just the extent of his own ignorance that disturbed Kennedy. Sometimes, he would ask for something to be done and nothing would happen. An example of this phenomenon, at least in his own mind, was the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. He had wanted to get them out of there for months, but the bureaucracy had always found a compelling reason to override his wishes. He had voiced his exasperation during a walk in the Rose Garden with Kenny O'Donnell earlier that morning. He told his aide to find out "the last time I a
sked to have those damned missiles taken out of Turkey. Not the first five times I asked for their removal, just the date of the last time." It turned out that the president had instructed the Pentagon to look into the removal of the Jupiters in August, but the idea had been shelved for fear of upsetting the Turks. Bundy later insisted that he never received a formal "presidential order" to remove the missiles, and the archival record appears to confirm his recollection.

  Removing the Jupiter missiles had become even more complicated now that Khrushchev was attempting to use them as a public bargaining chip. But Kennedy was sure of one thing: he was not going to go to war over a few obsolete missiles. As a young naval officer in the Pacific, he had concluded that "the people deciding the whys and wherefores" had better have a convincing motivation for going to war because otherwise "the whole thing will turn to ashes." That pretty much summed up the way he felt twenty years later, now that he himself was determining the whys and wherefores.

  But the drama that Saturday afternoon had little to do with the wishes of either Kennedy or Khrushchev. Events were moving faster than the political leaders could control.

  An American spy plane had been shot down over Cuba. Another had gone astray over Russia. A Soviet cruise missile battery had taken up position outside Guantanamo, ready to carry out Khrushchev's threat to "wipe out" the naval base. A convoy of nuclear warheads was on its way to one of the R-12 missile sites. Castro had ordered his army to open fire on low-flying American planes and was urging the Soviets to consider a nuclear first strike.