“I didn’t realize the dismantling was this far along,” she says.
“Dismantling’s not the right word. We’re blowing the damn things up.”
“That’s required under START II, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, all fifty PK silos will be history. Plus about 300 Minutemen II’s, and a helluva lot more. ‘Course nobody asked my opinion of the whole disarmament deal. Not that they asked me in ‘91 when they took all ICBMs off alert or when they reprogrammed the Command Data Buffers so the missiles are no longer targeted. And not that they asked me when they folded up SAC in ‘92, and don’t you think General Curtis LeMay was turning over in his grave when they pulled that one?”
“I’m sure you’re right. ‘Bombs Away’ LeMay wouldn’t have approved.”
The captain’s eyes narrow into slits. “That’s what you east coast, left-wing intellectuals might have called him, but in the Air Force, he was known as ‘Old Iron Pants,’ and if you don’t know why, you’ve never flown a bombing mission.”
“Have you?”
“What’s that got to do with it?” the captain asks, sharply. He turns his attention back to the silo, and after a moment, says, “Yeah, the bureaucrats changed everything. Closed down SAC, moved the missile program into Air Combat Command, and when that didn’t work, they shoved it into Space Command with the satellite folks. Didn’t ask my opinion of that, either. Hell’s bells, does anyone know what’s going on?”
“What is your opinion about dismantling the silos?”
“Same as my opinion about having to babysit a lady shrink. Both are about as welcome as a carbuncle on my butt.”
“Sort of a double whammy for you today.”
“Triple. A delegation of Nu-clear Non-pro-lif-er-ationists from the U-nited Nations are here, and they’re so tickled they’re wetting their pants.” He shoots a look at her. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s nothing personal. I just wish the Congressional committee that sent you out here would get tested, too.”
A thirty-two wheel flatbed truck called a transport erector pulls across an intersecting road, headed down valley. Lashed to the truck, like Gulliver in the land of Lilliputians, is an impotent LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile. Pukowlski gestures toward a Humvee on the ridge just below them where five men in suits watch the truck leave. “There the U.N. boys now. I would have asked them to join us, but I’d hate ‘em to see a grown man cry.”
Susan Burns studies Pukowlski, who appears truly anguished. “If it’s so painful, why insist on being here? Why punish yourself?”
“You asking that in your professional capacity?”
“Would the answer be different if I were?” she asks.
“Nah, I just wanted to lie down on a couch, that’s all. ‘Course if I raise hell about destroying the Peacekeepers, you’ll write me up for being a warmongering psycho.”
“We’re still deploying Minutemen III’s and Polaris missiles, and we’ll still have thirty-five hundred nuclear warheads even after START II is fully implemented, so what’s the problem?”
He doesn’t answer, but instead points toward the silo where workers in hard hats are stringing cable around the perimeter of the open hole. “I hate to see anything destroyed, much less anything this beautiful. We’re talking about man’s greatest achievement, the ability to launch a hundred ninety-five thousand pound vehicle straight out of the ground and send a tin can filled with ten independently targetable warheads halfway around the world at eight times the speed of sound and then hit a bullseye on the Kremlin.”
“And that’s our greatest achievement?” Dr. Burns asks, astonished.
“Do you have any idea the technology that’s gone into this? The autonetics, the aerodynamics, the ballistics, the nuclear weaponry?
“I think I have a rough idea.”
He raises his voice. “Then what is there to compare with it? Run-proof panty hose?”
Susan Burns bristles. “That is completely uncalled for, captain, and makes me doubt your ability to fairly command a unit of both men and women.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. It’s hard to teach an old dog like me. I remember the first time I saw one of these big cocks — pardon me again, Doc — shooting out of the ground at Vandenberg in a night launch. Jesus, it was like God himself pulled the trigger and lit up the sky. So, I’m serious when I say, what is there to compare with our nuclear technology?”
“Many things. The discovery of antibiotics, the U.S. Constitution, Mozart’s Requiem Mass — anything but this.” She motions toward the hole where the men have finished laying the cable.
“This,” Pukowlski says, “has kept us strong and free.”
“We’re losing focus here, captain. It’s not the technology that I deal with. I’m concerned about the combat readiness of the men and women who will work in the remaining missile squadrons. What’s their attitude now that the Cold War is over? Are they alert? Are they disciplined?”
They watch as the men in hard hats head away from the silo at double time. The last of the trucks has pulled onto the road. A siren wails from a Quonset hut several hundred yards away. Then… KA-BOOM! The sound echoes off the ridges as the silo implodes. Concrete crumbles, and steel rods break. A cloud of dust drifts skyward.
Susan is distracted by something on a distant ridge. Squinting into the sun, she strains to make it out. “Who’s that?” she asks, turning to the captain.
“Where?”
She turns back, but no one is there.
“I could have sworn I saw a man wearing buckskins on a horse, right up there,” she says, pointing.
The captain barks out a laugh. “Little Big Horn’s due north of here just over the Montana line, and a lot of folks report seeing old General Custer wandering around, looking for his men. ‘Course, most of those folks have spent their afternoons on a stool at the Old Wrangler Tavern. So if you’re seeing cowboys or Indians on horses, doctor, I’m gonna have to write you up.”
Below them, there is activity once again. Like grave diggers covering a coffin, bulldozers begin pushing mounds of earth into the hole.
Captain Pukowlski starts up the Humvee and pulls away. “Those questions of yours aren’t hard to answer. I can’t speak for the whole missile group, but my squadron’s bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and combat ready twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year. In the 318th, we do it by the book, doctor. I guaran-goddamn-tee it.”
Deep in the hole, Airmen Owens and Riordan have their heads buried in blue loose-leaf binders emblazoned with the Air Force insignia and the words, “Technical Order.” Owens turns a page and unfolds a color photograph. It’s Miss September, nude from her red toenails to her cascading blond hair.
“Tawny’s favorite book is ‘Bridges of Madison County,’” he says. “Ain’t read it myself, but it’s okay with me. I do great with intellectual girls.” He resumes reading. “Uh-oh. She likes men who work outdoors, have great tans, and drive convertibles. That leaves us out, Billy.”
Billy Riordan turns a page in his thumb-worn Bible, tucked inside his binder. “Fallen!” Billy nearly shouts. “Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.”
“Good, Billy. That’s very good,” Owens says, not even disguising his contempt. “You are the fucking missileer from Mars. Now, I’m gonna read the Playboy Advisor to see what brand of condoms are the silkiest and slipperiest, and you’re gonna shut the fuck up or you’re gonna have to be reborn again, ‘cause Billy, I swear, I’m gonna kill you!”
They both return to their studies, every few minutes looking up at the bank of video monitors. One shows the missile in its silo, steam rising from the idling launch generator; another displays the perimeter of the above-ground facility. A third monitor, aimed at the sentry post, suddenly goes a hazy white, and they both stare at it, uncomprehending.