Command and Control (56 page)

Only Livingston and Kennedy, Spann said.

“
Let's go, let's get out of here,” people shouted.

Nobody was wearing a gas mask. Clouds of oxidizer seemed to be floating above the complex. A large object by the side of the road was loudly hissing; if it was the propane tank, it could explode at any moment. The place did not look or feel remotely safe. Everyone piled into the vehicles, drove off, and returned to the entry control point. Livingston and Kennedy had been left for dead.

•   •   •

C
OLONEL
M
ORRIS
TRIED
TO
CONTACT
the ambulance, using a radio in one of the security police trucks. But the radio in the ambulance was part of the hospital net. It operated on a different frequency. A radio on the security police net couldn't communicate with a radio on the hospital net. And the radio in the ambulance wasn't working properly. Captain Donald Mueller—the physician assigned to the Disaster Response Force, who was in the ambulance—could speak to the hospital at Little Rock Air Force Base on the radio. But Mueller couldn't hear anything that the hospital said in response.

•   •   •

M
ANY
OF
THE
SECURITY
POLICE
officers and most of the Disaster Response Force were now in the parking lot of the Sharpe-Payne grocery store in Damascus. It seemed like a good place to regroup. Colonel Jones knew that injured airmen had just been found at the launch complex—but he couldn't contact the ambulance, either. Speaking to Colonel Morris over the radio, Jones suggested that the injured should be brought to the grocery store.

•   •   •

C
APTAIN
S
HORT
WAS
FURIOUS
THAT
everyone had left the PTS crews at the site, that the ambulance and the security police were nowhere to be seen. Devlin was in great pain. He kept yelling for water, saying his skin was on fire. Devlin's friends cut the RFHCO suit off him and tried to ease the pain. They didn't have any painkillers or a medical kit. They emptied a cooler and covered Devlin in water and ice.

“
Well, at least I've still got the hair on my arms,” Sergeant James said to Childers, “but what's my face look like?”

Childers thought it wasn't looking too good. It was burned so badly that most of the skin had peeled away.

Fed up with waiting, Major Wallace said the men should be taken to the
nearest hospital. Almost half an hour had passed since the explosion. The injured were placed into a station wagon, a pickup, and a large ton-and-a-half PTS truck. They headed for Damascus.

As the trucks sped south on Highway 65, they passed the ambulance, which was heading north. The PTS truck carrying Devlin and Hukle turned around and drove back to the access road so that a doctor could determine how badly they'd been hurt. Sandaker, driving the pickup, just kept going.

Hukle was put on a stretcher next to the ambulance, and Devlin was examined while lying in the back of the truck. Dr. Mueller thought the injuries didn't look too serious. But the diagnosis didn't satisfy Childers or the members of PTS Team B. They took the station wagon and the PTS truck, departed for the hospital in Conway, about twenty-five miles to the south—and, amid the confusion, left Hukle on the stretcher beside the ambulance.

•   •   •

N
EAR
THE
TOWN
OF
G
REENBRIER
, about ten miles south of Damascus, Sandaker spotted a couple of security police officers. He stopped the pickup and left two injured men—Hanson and Archie James—with the officers. Then Sandaker did a U-turn and drove north. He wanted to get back to the missile site.

•   •   •

T
HE
HOSPITAL
IN
C
ONWAY
REFUSED
to admit the injured men, claiming that it lacked the authority to treat Air Force personnel. Childers demanded that they be treated and took full responsibility for their care. On the way to the hospital, while sitting in the backseat of the station wagon, Joseph Tallman—the PTS technician who'd carried Hukle from the field—had gone into shock. The refusal to admit these injured young airmen, at four in the morning, about half an hour away from another hospital, seemed in keeping with the spirit of the entire night. The hospital finally agreed to treat them, and Childers called the command post in Little Rock to say where they were.

•   •   •

A
FEW
HOURS
EARLIER
, at about one in the morning, after escorting a flatbed truck with light-all units to Launch Complex 374-7, Jimmy Roberts and Don Green had asked if there was anything else they could do to help. They were security police officers with a pickup truck. Devlin and Hukle had not yet broken into the complex with crowbars. Everybody was still waiting for instructions from SAC headquarters.

Sergeant Thomas Brocksmith, the commander of the security police at the site, asked Roberts and Green to drive along the roads surrounding the complex and check on the security officers who were manning the roadblocks. Brocksmith wanted to make sure that all the officers knew how to use their gas masks—in case anything went wrong. Roberts and Green got into their truck and drove along the roads surrounding 4-7. They chatted with security officers at the roadblocks, showing them how to use the masks. Most of the officers didn't know anything about the Titan II or the danger of its propellants.

At about three o'clock, Roberts and Green were on a road about half a mile southwest of the silo.

The sky lit up.

“
Man, ain't that pretty,” Roberts said, not realizing what had just happened.

A moment later the blast wave shook the pickup so hard it almost went off the road. Roberts and Green quickly put on their gas masks. They had a clear view of the launch complex, and it looked like the fireball extended all the way to Highway 65. They couldn't reach anybody on the radio and thought that everyone at the complex was dead.

We may be the only two left, Green said.

They decided to evacuate nearby homes—and then heard Sergeant Brocksmith on the radio, calling from the grocery store in Damascus. He told them to evacuate the homes south of the launch complex. They drove east, reached Highway 65, got out of the truck, banged on the doors of small farmhouses and mobile homes, told people to leave at once. Despite the disturbing, early-morning sight of two men in battle fatigues and gas
masks standing at the front door, most of the homeowners were grateful for the warning. But one man opened the door, pointed a handgun at them, and said, “
I'm not going to leave.” They didn't argue with him.

Roberts and Green were about a mile north of Damascus when they heard the following exchange over the radio:

“
Help! Help me. Help me! Can anybody read me?”

“
Yes, we can hear you.”

“Help me!”

“
Where are you?”

“This is Sergeant Kennedy.”

“
Where are you, Jeff?”

“
Colonel Morris, I'm down here by your truck, please help me . . . my leg's broke and I'm bleeding.”

“Where are you?”

“
I'm down here in your truck!”

Roberts and Green had assumed that they were the only people anywhere near the launch complex. Neither of them had ever met Jeff Kennedy, and they didn't even know who he was. But they weren't going to leave him out there. Green turned the pickup truck around and floored it, driving all out, pedal to the metal.

About a minute later, the pickup died right in the middle of Highway 65. It had run out of gas. They got out and pushed it to the side of the road. A passing Air Force truck refused to stop for them, even after they chased it, yelling and waving their arms. The driver of a civilian vehicle swore at them and kept going, when they tried to flag it down. Roberts spotted a Cadillac parked in the driveway of a nearby home, ran over to it, broke one of the windows with a rock, and started to hot-wire the car.

Green was impressed, but not surprised, that Roberts knew how to do that.

A pickup truck approached at high speed from Damascus. Roberts and Green left the Cadillac and stood in the highway, blocking both lanes. They figured: if the truck runs us over, to hell with it.

The truck stopped, and they commandeered it. The driver, Jim Sandaker, insisted on coming with them to the launch complex.

They said, Fine, but get in the backseat.

Green floored it, and the three set out to find Jeff Kennedy.

•   •   •

O
NE
MOMENT
K
ENNEDY
HAD
BEEN
looking at the ground in front of the access portal, getting ready to sit on the curb. And the next moment he was soaring through the air, spinning head over heels, like an acrobat from a trapeze. And then he blacked out.

When Kennedy opened his eyes, he was lying on his back, and his legs were pointing toward the sky, propped against a chain-link fence. Fires burned all around him. He screamed and yelled for help. But nobody answered.

After lying in that position for a few minutes, wedged against the fence, something inside Kennedy clicked. The choice became clear: he could get up and go—or stay there and die.

Kennedy pulled his legs off the fence, stood up, and immediately fell down. He saw that his right leg was broken, and the rest of him felt bruised and cut up. His helmet was gone. His face was bleeding. After falling down, Kennedy said to himself, “
I am not going to die on this complex.”

Using the fence for support, Kennedy pulled himself up and tried to get his bearings. The launch complex was nothing but rubble and flames. It took a little while, but he figured out where he was. The blast had hurled Kennedy about 150 feet through the air. He'd landed upside down against the fence in the southwest corner of the complex. He decided to follow the fence east, toward Highway 65, and then north, hoping to find the hole they'd cut in it. The fence gave Kennedy some physical support and a sense of direction, but it also imprisoned him inside the complex. He couldn't climb over it, with a broken leg. Until he could find a way out, he was trapped there amid the fires and debris and toxic smoke.

Every few steps, Kennedy fell down. The RFHCO suit was heavy and cumbersome, and without the helmet, it no longer served a useful purpose. It was slowing him down. Kennedy sat on the ground, took off the air
pack, and got his arms out of the RFHCO. But he couldn't pull the suit off his broken leg. He searched the ground, found a jagged piece of metal, and cut the RFHCO suit off above his boots.

Kennedy walked and fell, walked and fell, tripping over debris, looking for the hole in the fence. From somewhere in the darkness, he heard Livingston's voice, crying out.

“
Oh, my God, help me. Please, somebody help me. Please, God, help me.”

“
Livy, I'm going for help,” Kennedy shouted.

Livingston didn't seem to hear him.

“Oh, my God, help me,” Livingston repeated. “Please, somebody help me.”

Kennedy had no idea where Livingston was. The only sign of him was his voice, calling out.

“Please, somebody help me.”

Kennedy kept walking, falling, and getting back up, aware that both of their lives were now at stake. The pain in his leg became excruciating, and he didn't think he could walk any farther. He started to panic. He thought about his children, his wife. He didn't want to die on this launch complex. He shouted for help, but nobody answered. And then he told himself to shut up and walk.

In the distance, Kennedy spotted the flashing hazard lights of the pickup truck that Colonel Morris had parked near the gate. The truck was about a hundred yards away—on the other side of the fence. But it gave Kennedy a target, a goal, a destination to reach. Walking and falling, walking and falling, he got close enough to hear chatter on the truck's radio.

The explosion had knocked over a section of the fence. Kennedy lay on top of it and rolled over it to the other side. He got to the truck and picked up the radio.

•   •   •

C
OLONEL
M
ORRIS
AND
C
APTAIN
S
HORT
were sitting in the mobile command post, parked at the end of the access road, talking to Little Rock
on the radio. The mobile command post was a pickup truck with two rows of seats in the cab and a camper shell over the back. They both heard a voice on the radio say,
“Help,” and then realized it was Kennedy's.

English and Rossborough jumped into the backseat of the truck, and it took off. Short was driving, Morris giving the directions. He knew exactly where Kennedy was.

The four men in the mobile command post were the last ones at the site who could retrieve Kennedy—and Colonel Morris looked like hell. Dr. Mueller and a medic, Reginald Gray, were in the ambulance on Highway 65, taking care of Hukle. Everyone else was apparently at the grocery store in Damascus, manning roadblocks or en route to the hospital in Conway. English was eager to go back and find this young airman. Rossborough seemed fearless, but this was only his second visit to a Titan II launch complex. His first, about fifteen minutes earlier, had been to rescue Hukle and Devlin.

Short navigated around a deep crater in the road and then stopped the truck. The road was blocked by the slab of concrete that had almost crushed Devlin. They found Kennedy in the battered pickup near the fence and carried him out. He told them that Livingston was still alive, somewhere on the complex, and then asked Short to do him a favor.

“Captain,” Kennedy said, “you have to call my wife.”

Short promised that he would.

Kennedy looked pale. His face was covered with blood. He was having trouble breathing. None of the men were wearing gas masks, and they could smell oxidizer in the air. They had to get Kennedy out of there before searching for Livingston. They lifted Kennedy into the back of the pickup and drove back toward the highway.