Eric Schlosser - Command and Control

But Leavitt had changed his mind. He decided that they should wait and allow the fuel vapor to dissipate before sending anyone near the missile. And he asked everyone on the net to discuss what had happened at 4–7, from the moment the socket was dropped.

JEFF KENNEDY LAY ON THE GRASS atop a low hill. Silas Spann, a member of PTS Team B, sat beside him. Spann was one of the few African Americans who worked in missile maintenance, and he stood out in this part of rural Arkansas. Whenever he walked into one of the local shops, people looked surprised. Kennedy and Spann could see the launch complex down below. A thick white cloud still floated from the vents. The two men wondered what would happen if the missile exploded. Would the blast doors and the silo door hold, would they fully contain the blast? Both agreed that the doors would. They had faith in those big fucking doors. It was a warm, beautiful night with a slight breeze and plenty of stars in the sky.

DON GREEN WAS AT LITTLE ROCK Air Force Base, guarding the weapons storage area, around midnight, when a new set of officers came on duty. Green was told that he could go home. Before leaving, he stopped by central security control to see if anybody needed help. He bumped into another security officer, Sergeant Jimmy Roberts, who’d come there for the same reason. Roberts worked across the hall from Green, and the two were friends. They both felt like being useful; it was a busy night. A third security officer walked into the office and asked for a map. He was supposed to escort a flatbed truck carrying an all-terrain forklift to Launch Complex 374-7 but didn’t know how to get there. The job sounded pretty urgent: they needed the forklift to haul light-all units onto the complex, so that the PTS team could see what they were doing.

Green and Roberts said they’d be glad to escort the flatbed. They knew the way and could get the forklift out there fast. Instead of going home and getting into bed, they got into a pickup and headed to Damascus.

COLONEL MOSER LEFT the Missile Potential Hazard Net and used the Security Police Net to speak directly with Morris. It was almost one in the morning, and a decision had been made. He told Morris that three airmen should put on RFHCO suits. A checklist had been prepared, and Moser wanted him to copy it down, word for word.

Morris grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and, while sitting in the front seat of Brocksmith’s truck, copied down the instructions.

It was the same checklist that the command post had prepared two hours earlier, except that the 200 ppm fuel vapor limit had been raised to 250 ppm.

Morris spent fifteen minutes listening carefully and writing down exactly what Moser said. They finished — and then Moser paused, told him to stand by, and signed off.

Morris sat in the truck, waiting. Twenty minutes later, Colonel Moser was on the radio again. There was a slight change of plan: instead of entering the silo, the two airmen in RFHCOs should enter the control center.

Moser stressed that the men should avoid passing through any fuel vapor. He didn’t want anyone to get hurt. And he passed along General Leavitt’s instructions that no electrical switch should be turned on or off without permission from SAC headquarters.

Colonel Morris left the truck, gathered the members of PTS Team B, and read them the final checklist. He went through every step. And he said, we don’t want any heroes out there. We’ll do exactly what’s on the paper, and that’s all, and then we’re all going to come back.

“Colonel, this is unreal,” Jeff Kennedy said. Kennedy could not believe that this was the plan. It was insane. It made absolutely no sense to send men into the launch complex through the access portal, instead of the escape hatch. The access portal was a much more dangerous route. If you went through the escape hatch, the trip to the control center would be quick and direct, and you wouldn’t have to open any blast doors with a goddamn hand pump. If you went through the escape hatch, you’d be protected by the blast doors, not impeded by them. And the escape hatch was on the opposite side of the complex from the missile. The access portal was a lot closer to the missile. Why send anyone in there? Of course you’d have to sample for fuel vapor every step of the way; you’d be in danger every step of the way. To reach the control center, the men would have to pass through the blast lock — and it was full of fuel vapor six hours ago, when PTS Team A opened the door a crack, took a peek, and then had to slam it shut. Why send anyone down the longest, most dangerous, most likely to be contaminated route? Kennedy thought this checklist must have been written by somebody who’d never set foot on a Titan II complex. Of course you can fit a man in RFHCO through the escape hatch, Kennedy argued. He’d just been through the escape hatch, so he ought to know.

Kennedy, this is the plan, Morris said. This is the plan that’s come down, and that’s it. End of discussion.

Sergeant Hanson had selected the three men who’d enter the complex and the three who would wait in RFHCOs, halfway down the access road, as backup. Kennedy wasn’t one of them. Kennedy and Hanson didn’t get along. Hanson wished Kennedy had returned to the base with the rest of PTS Team A. As team chief, Hanson was in charge of this operation. He didn’t think you could fit through the escape hatch in a RFHCO. He liked the checklist, and if Kennedy didn’t, that was too bad.

David Livingston, Greg Devlin, and Rex Hukle, a farm boy from Kansas, climbed into the back of a pickup truck, wearing their RFHCOs. Colonel Morris got into the front seat, along with Hanson and Captain George Short, chief of the field maintenance branch at the 308th. Before the truck drove down the road to the complex, Jeff Kennedy jumped into the back.

Outside the gate, Livingston, Devlin, and Hukle drew straws to see who would be the first to go in. Walking over to the exhaust vent, alone, as fuel vapor poured out of it, seemed like a brave thing to do. All of them were willing, but this felt like the best way to choose.

David Livingston drew the short straw.

Before anyone could enter the launch complex, a hole had to be cut in the chain-link fence. The gate was still locked, nobody had the key, and climbing over the fence in a RFHCO could tear the suit. Morris, Hanson, and Short spent about fifteen minutes making a hole with bolt cutters. They finished at two in the morning. Livingston put on his helmet and his air pack and prepared to go in. Although the pack was designed to hold an hour’s worth of air, the command post had instructed that it should be used for just half an hour. The air packs were considered unreliable — and running out of air amid a thick cloud of fuel vapor could kill you.

Hanson and Morris got into the front seat of the truck. Morris would stay in touch with the command post on the Security Police Net, and Hanson would talk to Livingston on the radio network at the launch complex. The two radio systems were incompatible. If General Leavitt wanted to give Livingston an order, Leavitt would have to tell Moser, who would have to tell Morris, who would have to tell Hanson, who would have to tell Livingston. Although Hanson had brought along a repeater to strengthen the signal, reception on the complex was spotty.

Carrying a flashlight and a vapor detector, Livingston went through the hole in the fence. He saw a cloud of white vapor streaming from the silo’s exhaust vents, like steam from a boiling kettle. He entered the complex, crossed the gravel near the hardstand, and approached one of the vents. Hanson had told him to get the vapor detector as close as possible to the cloud, without getting engulfed in it if the wind shifted. Livingston stuck the probe into the mist, and the needle on the gauge shot all the way to the right.