The little river called the Anacostia guided them. At Filevich’s word, Gribkov turned west before it joined the Potomac. As soon as the bomb fell free, he swung north and jammed the throttles past the red line. There’d be enough delay to let the Tu-4 get clear…if everything went well.
Unlike his crewmen, he’d been through atomic explosions before. He rode out the hideous flash and the shock waves, then went east, back toward the Atlantic, again. “They’re going crazy, Comrade Pilot!” Ikramov told him. “Crazy!”
“Good,” Boris said once more. “If they don’t come to their senses till we’re out over the water, we may even get away with this.” A submarine from the Red Fleet was supposed to be waiting at a precise point of latitude and longitude. If it was, if he could ditch this Tu-4 as he had the other after bombing Seattle, he and his crewmates might see the rodina again.
Seven and a half minutes after they bombed Washington, another great flash of light came from behind them. “Bozhemoi!” Anton Presnyakov exclaimed. “What was that?”
“Another dose of the same medicine,” Gribkov answered. “Can’t be anything else. The imperialists gave Moscow three. Washington deserves at least two.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” the copilot agreed. “I didn’t know another plane was on the way, though.” He laughed a shaky laugh. “Security!”
“That’s right. Security.” Boris hadn’t known, either. The other blast might have knocked down his Tu-4-or he might have taken out the other one. But neither mischance happened. Both planes carried out their missions. Now they had to live through them.
25
Sometimes Harry Truman could sleep on the Independence despite noise and turbulence. When you were flying nonstop from one coast to the other or crossing the Atlantic, you had to be able to do that. For a trip from Buffalo home to Washington, the President didn’t feel like making the effort. He’d sleep after he got to the White House.
Or so he thought. The Presidential airliner was about fifteen minutes-say, fifty miles-from landing when an aide came back from the direction of the cockpit. “Excuse me, Mr. President, but Major Pesky says there’s some kind of flap about the airspace over Washington,” the man said. “We’ve been asked to divert to Richmond.”
“I don’t think Richmond is even slightly diverting,” Harry Truman said. The aide winced, which was what puns were for. Truman continued, “Some kind of flap, you say? Does the pilot know what’s going on?”
“Sir, I told you as much as he told me,” the man said.
“Well, go back up and find out why they’ve got their knickers in a twist,” Truman said. “I don’t want to head for Richmond unless we’ve got to.”
The aide had just started up the aisle again when sudden harsh glare burned away the night and blazed in through every window on the DC-6, swamping the airliner’s lighting system. Truman sat frozen in his seat. He knew-knew too well-what that flash had to mean. Somehow or other, the Russians had got through.
That was his first thought. His second one made him bury his face in his hands. Bess and Margaret hadn’t come to Buffalo with him. His wife and daughter were waiting back at the White House.
Or they had been. He couldn’t let himself contemplate his own troubles, though. The country had just taken an uppercut to the chin. Truman stood. He pushed past his aide and stuck his head into the cockpit. “Major Pesky, don’t take me to Richmond. If you can’t land in Washington, go to Baltimore. That’s close enough so I can get to Washington in a hurry-by helicopter, if I have to.”
Without looking back at him, the pilot answered, “Sir, I’d rather not. They may hit Baltimore, too, while they’re less likely to go after a smaller city like Richmond. Since I don’t know how bad the casualties are in Washington, I’m obliged to keep you as safe as possible. I may do best just to circle as long as I can.”
He made more sense than Truman wished he did. Was Alben Barkley still alive? How much of the Cabinet was left? What about Congress? Only this political junket had kept Truman from being in Washington. He might have lived through the blast. He probably would have, in the bomb shelter in the White House basement, had he got any warning. Had Bess got any? Had Margaret? Had anyone?
“What are you hearing on the radio?” Truman asked.
“They’re scrambling fighters, sir,” answered Captain McMullin, the copilot. “The Pentagon is directing-” He broke off. “Mr. President, I’m getting reports of a blinding flash in New York City. It-” He stopped again, and swore loudly and fluently. “Boston, too, damn them.”
“Christ!” Harry Truman said. Marshall had assured him the Russians couldn’t reach the East Coast. Even the august and brilliant Secretary of Defense didn’t know everything there was to know. Truman hoped Marshall had survived the attack. He’d help pick up the pieces better than anyone else was likely to.
If there are any pieces left to pick up. Truman had had that thought before. What brought it on this time was another flash ahead. They were closer to Washington for this one. It seemed fiercer and brighter than the first. Something buffeted the Independence, as if a big dog were shaking a mouse.
Pesky and McMullin both cursed. They fought the DC-6 back under control. “Pentagon just fell off the air, Mr. President,” McMullin said. “Everything’s going to hell, sounds like.”
The Tempest tolled in Truman’s mind like a funeral belclass="underline"
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
What had Will known? How had he known it? Washington’s proud towers were capped by clouds, all right-mushroom clouds.
Pesky’s thoughts ran on more pragmatic lines: “Sir, I am going to stay airborne as long as I can. I have fuel for another couple of hours. That should give us some kind of chance to sort out what’s going on.”
“Do that, then,” Truman said heavily. “If you get…any word of how things are at the White House, please pass it on to me.”
“Of course, sir,” pilot and copilot said together. McMullin sent a sympathetic glance over his shoulder.
“We’ll make the Russians pay for this,” Pesky said.
“Oh, yes.” Truman nodded. But Stalin had been making America pay for what B-29s did to the Soviet Union. Where did it end? Did it, could it, end anywhere except with both sides too battered and devastated to throw any more haymakers, as if two weary pugs in the ring knocked each other out at the same time?
Slowly, reports filtered in as the DC-6 droned through the sky. A Superfortress that had to be a Bull in a lying paint job was said to have gone down outside of Philadelphia. No one had shot it down. It was flying so low, it clipped something tall and crashed in flames. If it was carrying an A-bomb, which seemed a good bet, the infernal device hadn’t gone off. Philadelphia lived.
Truman stayed by the cockpit, hoping to hear something about his wife and daughter. He didn’t. News came in from the outskirts of both Washington blast areas, stories of fires and burns and wreckage. Plainly, the White House wasn’t on the outskirts of either. Truman ground his teeth. His dentist would have clucked. He cared nothing for what his dentist thought.
“If you land in Richmond when we run low on gas, Major, can I get a helicopter or a light plane to take me over Washington after sunup so I can see what’s happened to it?” he asked the pilot.
“Sir, I don’t think you’d be helping the country right now by going up in anything with only one engine,” Pesky said. “That goes double for those newfangled flying eggbeaters, but it holds for Piper Cubs and the like, too. If you want, though, we can refuel there and I’ll take you over myself.”