Read Online Operation Damocles by Oscar L. Fellows - Free Book Online
Authors: Oscar L. Fellows
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want field commanders informed—they are to call me if anything important happens and they can’t reach their superiors. I want the Chiefs of NORAD and Space Command to issue orders that nobody is to be punished for circumventing their chain of command in an emergency.”
“Do you think that’s wise, sir?” Tanner frowned. “It will piss off a lot of command people.”
“I don’t give a damn who it pisses off,” said Vanderbilt, bluntly. “If those people sneeze, I want to know about it the instant after it happens, and I don’t want it filtered through a bunch of prima donnas who have to weigh the personal benefits of every bit of information that they pass up the chain. Make it plain to them, Harold. They had better play ball with me on this. I can’t afford to fumble, especially not if those bastards actually do knock out a city. A few hundred thousand dead voters won’t get me any roses, and if it looks like a bunch of inept bunglers in my administration let it happen, I’m going to come looking for some sacrificial goats. I’ll let you guess where I’m going to look. Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Mr. President,” Tanner said, frowning at the floor.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Vanderbilt said dismissively, walking away. “I’ll expect your first progress reports by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” He smiled over his shoulder at the troubled countenances of his bureau chiefs. He enjoyed making them worry.
VIII
On July 20, in Indianapolis, on the local, late-evening TV talk show Perspective, Dr. Harrison Taylor, a local college professor of psychology, was being interviewed regarding the Eidermann incident. Nothing more had happened during the ten days following the destruction of the base, and this interview mimicked dozens of others across the United States, and perhaps hundreds around the world, ostensibly trying to make sense of the event.
In reality, as was to be expected, the media was capitalizing on it to boost viewer ratings and ratings-share. During the first week following the incident, one couldn’t turn on a TV set without seeing the same aerial video images of the destruction at Eidermann, or hearing someone, in every conceivable show format, discussing the event. The residents of Twentynine Palms were questioned about every nuance—remembered or imagined—from personal injuries to the psychological trauma to their pets, while TV news cameramen irritated the at-home viewers as usual, by panning full-frame nostril shots and eyeball views of tears rolling down the cheeks of the discomfited.
In spite of the obvious pandering by the media, the public was eager to hear each tidbit of speculation, and to hear the demands from the terrorist tape reiterated and reevaluated, again and again, from every possible perspective. There was no shortage of self-proclaimed experts willing to go on television and theorize, or make profound assertions.
Once the pool of “expert” guests dried up, newscasters resorted to interviewing each other, repeatedly analyzing the message on the tape for the viewers who had just heard it for themselves, by talking to one another in the standard formula. “Well, Wally, what do you think they meant by that?” “Well Don, I think . . . blah, blah, blah.”
“There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, from the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base and the Eidermann storage depot, or what’s left of it, I’m Don Wallingford, JGN World News.”
The tabloid shows had had everybody on, from defense experts to flying saucer proponents and end-of-the-world religious fanatics. The daily torrent of irrationalities ranged from the sublime to the utterly stupid; from meek acceptance to hysterical, impotent rage. The initial public shock had dulled somewhat, the novelty guests were becoming rare, and in an effort to lure the channel surfers to their spot, shows were beginning to drift into the realm of the “my boyfriend left me because of
“Do you think that’s wise, sir?” Tanner frowned. “It will piss off a lot of command people.”
“I don’t give a damn who it pisses off,” said Vanderbilt, bluntly. “If those people sneeze, I want to know about it the instant after it happens, and I don’t want it filtered through a bunch of prima donnas who have to weigh the personal benefits of every bit of information that they pass up the chain. Make it plain to them, Harold. They had better play ball with me on this. I can’t afford to fumble, especially not if those bastards actually do knock out a city. A few hundred thousand dead voters won’t get me any roses, and if it looks like a bunch of inept bunglers in my administration let it happen, I’m going to come looking for some sacrificial goats. I’ll let you guess where I’m going to look. Do you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Mr. President,” Tanner said, frowning at the floor.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Vanderbilt said dismissively, walking away. “I’ll expect your first progress reports by ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” He smiled over his shoulder at the troubled countenances of his bureau chiefs. He enjoyed making them worry.
VIII
On July 20, in Indianapolis, on the local, late-evening TV talk show Perspective, Dr. Harrison Taylor, a local college professor of psychology, was being interviewed regarding the Eidermann incident. Nothing more had happened during the ten days following the destruction of the base, and this interview mimicked dozens of others across the United States, and perhaps hundreds around the world, ostensibly trying to make sense of the event.
In reality, as was to be expected, the media was capitalizing on it to boost viewer ratings and ratings-share. During the first week following the incident, one couldn’t turn on a TV set without seeing the same aerial video images of the destruction at Eidermann, or hearing someone, in every conceivable show format, discussing the event. The residents of Twentynine Palms were questioned about every nuance—remembered or imagined—from personal injuries to the psychological trauma to their pets, while TV news cameramen irritated the at-home viewers as usual, by panning full-frame nostril shots and eyeball views of tears rolling down the cheeks of the discomfited.
In spite of the obvious pandering by the media, the public was eager to hear each tidbit of speculation, and to hear the demands from the terrorist tape reiterated and reevaluated, again and again, from every possible perspective. There was no shortage of self-proclaimed experts willing to go on television and theorize, or make profound assertions.
Once the pool of “expert” guests dried up, newscasters resorted to interviewing each other, repeatedly analyzing the message on the tape for the viewers who had just heard it for themselves, by talking to one another in the standard formula. “Well, Wally, what do you think they meant by that?” “Well Don, I think . . . blah, blah, blah.”
“There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, from the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base and the Eidermann storage depot, or what’s left of it, I’m Don Wallingford, JGN World News.”
The tabloid shows had had everybody on, from defense experts to flying saucer proponents and end-of-the-world religious fanatics. The daily torrent of irrationalities ranged from the sublime to the utterly stupid; from meek acceptance to hysterical, impotent rage. The initial public shock had dulled somewhat, the novelty guests were becoming rare, and in an effort to lure the channel surfers to their spot, shows were beginning to drift into the realm of the “my boyfriend left me because of
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