Joseph Heller - Closing Time

All present were reminded that the plane was a second-strike weapon designed to slip through remaining defenses and destroy weapons and command posts surviving the first strike.

"Now, everything you see in these pictures is absolutely right," continued Milo, "except those that are wrong. We don't want to show anything that will allow others to counter the technology or copy it. That make sense, General Bingam?"

"Absolutely, Milo."

"But how will any of us here know," objected the fat man from the State Department, "what it will really look like?"

"Why the fuck must you know?" countered Wintergreen.

"It's invisible," added Milo. "Why must you see it?"

"I guess we don't have to know, do we?" conceded a lieutenant general, and looked toward an admiral.

"Why do we have to know?" wondered the other.

"Sooner or later," fumed the skinny Strangelove partisan, "the press will want to know."

"Fuck the press," said Wintergreen. "Show them these."

"Are they true?"

"What the fuck difference does it fucking make if they're fucking true or not?" asked Wintergreen. "It gives them another fucking story when they find out we lied."

"Now you're talking my fucking language, sir," said the adjutant to the commandant of marines.

"And I applaud your fucking honesty," admitted a colonel. "Admiral?"

"I can live with that. Where's the fucking cockpit?"

"Inside the fucking wing, sir, with everything else."

"Will a crew of two," asked someone, "be as effective as a fucking crew of four?"

"More," said Milo.

"And what the fuck fucking difference does it fucking make if they're fucking effective or not?" asked Wintergreen.

"I get your fucking point, sir," said Major Bowes.

"I don't."

"I can live with that fucking point."

"I'm not sure I get that fucking point."

" Milo, what's your angle?"

There were no angles. The flying wing allowed the aircraft to be fabricated with rounded edges in material deflecting radar. What was being fucking offered, explained Wintergreen, was a fucking long-range airplane to roam over fucking enemy territory with only two fucking fliers. Even without midair refueling, the plane could go from there to San Francisco with a full load of bombs.

"Does this mean we could bomb San Francisco from here and get back without more gas?"

"We could bomb New York too on the way back."

"Guys, get serious," commanded the major general there. "This is war, not social planning. How many refuelings to China or the Soviet Union?"

"Two or three on the way in, maybe none coming back, if you don't get sentimental."

And just one M amp; M bomber could carry the same bomb load as all thirteen fighter-bombers used in the Ronald Reagan air raid in Libya in-in-April 1986.

"It seems like only yesterday," mused an elderly air force man drearily.

"We can give you a plane," promised Wintergreen, "that will do it yesterday."

"Shhhhh!" Milo said.

"The Shhhhh!?" said the expert on military nomenclature. "That's a perfect name for a noiseless bomber."

"Then the Shhhhh! is the name of our plane. It goes faster than sound."

"It goes faster than light."

"You can bomb someone before you even decide to do it. Decide it today, it's done-yesterday!"

"I don't really think," said someone, "we have need for a plane can bomb someone yesterday."

"But think of the potential," argued Wintergreen. "They attack Pearl Harbor. You shoot them down the day before."

"I could live with that one. How much more-"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," begged someone else among several now stirring rebelliously. "How can that be? Artie, can anything go faster than light?"

"Sure, Marty. Light can go faster than light."

"Read your fucking Einstein!" yelled Wintergreen.

"And our first operational plane can go on alert in the year and give you something really to celebrate."

"What happens if we get in a nuclear war before then?"

"You won't have our product. You have to wait."

"Your bomber, then, is an instrument for peace?"

"Yes. And we also have a man we'll throw in," confided Milo, "who can produce heavy water for you internally."

"I want that man! At any price!"

"Absolutely, Dr. Teller?"

"Positively, Admiral Rickover."

"And our instrument for peace can be used to dump heavy bomb loads on cities too."

"We don't like to bomb civilians."

"Yes, we do. It's cost-effective. You can also arm our Shhhhh! with conventional bombs, for surprise attacks too. The big surprise will come when there's no nuclear explosion. You can use these against friendly nations, with no lasting radiation aftereffects. Will Strangelove do that?"

"What does Porter Lovejoy say?"

"Not guilty."

"I mean before his indictment."

"Buy both planes."

"Is there money for both?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I wouldn't want to tell the President that."

"We have a man who will talk to the President," volunteered Milo. "His name is Yossarian."

"Yossarian? I've heard that name."

"He's a very famous artist, Bernie."

"Sure, I know his work," said General Bingam.

"This is a different Yossarian."

"Isn't it time for another recess?"

"I may need Yossarian," muttered Milo, with his palm sheltering his mouth, "to talk to Noodles Cook. And where the fuck is that chaplain?"

"They keep moving him around, sir," whispered Colonel Pickering. "We don't know where the fuck he is."

This ten-minute recess turned out to be a five-minute recess in which six MASSPOB guards paraded in with a mulberry birthday cake for General Bernard Bingam and the papers promoting him from a brigadier general to a major general. Bingam blew out the candles on his first try and asked jovially: "Is there anything more?"

"Yes! Definitely yes!" cried the stout man from the State Department.

"I'll say there is!" cried just as loudly the slim one from National Security.

Fat and Skinny had a race to make the most of the fact that a number of features in the M amp; M Shhhhh! were identical to those of the old Stealth.

"Sir, your fucking ejection seats were originally in plans for the fucking old Stealth. Our reports show these fucking seats were shredding dummies in tests."

"We can supply you," said Milo, "with all the replacement dummies you need."

Fat fell down and broke his face.

"He was concerned, I believe," interposed the Dean of Humanities and Social Work at the War College, "about the men, not the fucking dummies."

"We can supply as many men as you need too."

Skinny was muddled, and Fat was struck dumb.

"We are inquiring as to their safety, sir. Your machines, you say, can stay aloft for long periods, even years. Our machines with men aboard must be able to come back."

"Why?"

"Why?"

"Yeah, what for?"

"Why the fuck do they have to come back?"

"What the fuck is wrong with all you fucking idiots anyway?" demanded Wintergreen, with a disbelieving shake of his head. "Our plane is a second-strike weapon. Colonel Pickering, will you talk to these fucking shitheads and explain?"

"Certainly, Mr. Wintergreen. Gentlemen, what the fuck difference does it make if the fucking planes come back or not?"

"None, Colonel Pickering."

"Thank you, Major Bowes, you fuck."

"Not at all, you bastard."

"Gentlemen," said Skinny, "I want the record to show I have never in my life been called a shithead, not since I was a young boy."

"We're not keeping a record."

"Shithead."

"Asshole."

"Prick, where would they escape to?" asked Wintergreen. "Most of everything here is gone then too."

"Permit me," snarled Skinny, leaving no doubt he was bitter. "Your fucking bombers, you say, carry nuclear bombs that will penetrate the fucking earth before exploding?"