like that. We’ll cut it out of the tape and squeeze in another commercial at each break. That should cover the time.”
“You don’t understand,” Jake said. “The contract Herm rammed down our throats doesn’t allow us to edit. The show’s a package—all or nothing. Besides, the whole show’s like that.”
“All like that? What do you mean, all like that?” Jake squirmed in his seat. “Those guys are . . . well, perverts, B.D.,” he said.
“Perverts?”
“They’re . . . well, they’re in love with the atom bomb or something. Every number leads up to the same thing.”
“You mean . . . they’re all like that?”
“You got the picture, B. D.,” Jake said. “We run an hour of that or we run nothing at all.”
“Jesus.” I knew what I wanted to say. Burn the tape and write off the million dollars. But I also knew it would cost me my job. And I knew that five minutes after I was out the door, they would have someone in my job who would see things their way. Even my superiors seemed to be just handing down The Word from higher up. I had no choice. There was no choice.
“I’m sorry, Jake,” I said. “We run it.”
“I resign,” said Jake Pitkin, who had no reputation for courage.
T minus 10 days . . . and counting . . .
“It’s a clear violation of the Test-Ban Treaty,” I said.
The Under Secretary looked as dazed as I felt. “We’ll call it a peaceful use of atomic energy, and let the Russians scream,” he said.
“It’s insane.”
“Perhaps,” the Under Secretary said. “But you have your orders, General Carson, and I have mine. From higher up. At exactly eight fifty-eight p.m. local time on July fourth, you will drop a fifty kiloton atomic bomb on the designated ground zero at Yucca Flats.”
“But the people . . . the television crews . . . ”
“Will be at least two miles outside the danger zone. Surely, SAC can manage that kind of accuracy under ‘laboratory conditions.’ ”
I stiffened. “I do not question the competence of any bomber crew under my command to perform this mission,” I said. “I question the reason for the mission. I question the sanity of the orders.”
The Under Secretary shrugged, smiled wanly. “Welcome to the club.”
“You mean you don’t know what this is all about either?”
“All I know is what was transmitted to me by the Secretary of Defense, and I got the feeling he doesn’t know everything, either. You know that the Pentagon has been screaming for the use of tactical nuclear weapons to end the war in Asia—you SAC boys have been screaming the loudest. Well, several months ago, the President conditionally approved a plan for the use of tactical nuclear weapons during the next monsoon season.”
I whistled. The civilians were finally coming to their senses. Or were they?
“But what does that have to do with—?”
“Public opinion,” the Under Secretary said. “It was conditional upon a drastic change in public opinion. At the time the plan was approved, the polls showed that seventy-eight point eight percent of the population opposed the use of tactical nuclear weapons, nine point eight percent favored their use and the rest were undecided or had no opinion. The President agreed to authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons by a date, several months from now, which is still top secret, provided that by that date at least sixty-five percent of the population approved their use and no more than twenty percent actively opposed it.”
“I see . . . Just a ploy to keep the Joint Chiefs quiet.”
“General Carson,” the Under Secretary said, “apparently you are out of touch with the national mood. After the first Four Horsemen show, the polls showed that twenty-five percent of the population approved the use of nuclear weapons. After the second show, the figure was forty-one percent. It is now forty-eight percent. Only thirty-two percent are now actively opposed.”
“You’re trying to tell me that a rock group—”
“A rock group and the cult around it, General. It’s become a national hysteria. There are imitators. Haven’t you seen those buttons?”
“The ones with a mushroom cloud on them that say ‘Do it’?”
The Under Secretary nodded. “Your guess is as good as mine whether the National Security Council just decided that the Horsemen hysteria could be used to mold public opinion, or whether the Four Horsemen were their creatures to begin with. But the results are the same either way—the Horsemen and the cult around them have won over precisely