Target Manhattan

You mean people were getting rattled.

Getting more rattled. We’d been rattled all day, for God’s sake. (Laughter) Anyhow, by this time everybody was talking at once and nobody much was listening. I remember particularly General Adler was yelling at nobody in particular about a survey he’d worked on. It chilled me right down to my toes.

Adler (Cont’d)

Yes, that’s right. It was some years ago we did the survey, of course, but I don’t think much has changed since then, for practical purposes.

This was an Air Force survey?

No. It was conducted by the Civil Defense office. I participated in it as liaison from Air Force-I was doing a tour of duty at McGuire, so this must have been nineteen fifty-eight. Back when the cold war was some hotter than it became later on.

What was the nature of the survey, General?

They were drawing up Civil Defense contingency plans. What to do in case of enemy attack. This particular survey was a study on various evacuation plans for New York City.

And the conclusions of the study?

Hell, I told them what the conclusions would be before they even processed the raw data. Anybody with half an eye could see that. Of the five boroughs of New York, the Bronx is the only one that’s not on an island. Evacuate four densely populated island boroughs? Think about it. How many tu

It’s a distressing thought, I admit.

We were supposed to recommend the most efficient plan. The minute I walked in I told them there wouldn’t be enough difference between the most efficient plan and any other plan to fit up a gnat’s ass. Bomb shelters and evacuation routes. For God’s sake. Nuclear war? Christ, you take your losses and you hit back. What else are you going to do? Evacuate? But they had to do their goddamned survey.

And what was the conclusion?

To evacuate New York City and the metropolitan area to a radius consistent with then-existing mega-to

No. What was it?

Two weeks.

Grofeld (Cont’d)

Two weeks minimum, he was saying. To get people out of New York in case of emergency. And here we had a threat that was measured in minutes!

That was why nobody had suggested trying to clear the streets?

I’d had a brief conversation with Deputy Commissioner Toombes about that earlier. We’d decided against it. Complete news blackout. Of course most of the news agencies around the city had been calling the department, asking what the hell that plane was doing up there. We’d kept a lid on it. Given out vague stories about a publicity stunt, some Hollywood promotion. We couldn’t very well make the truth public, Mr. Ski

Let’s get back to the chronology of events. Ryterband broke down and begged forgiveness-when, about two thirty?

Roughly, yes.

Then what happened?

As I said, everybody was talking at once. Voices were rising, and so were tempers. Mr. Azzard was buttonholing people, trying to convince us we ought to take a chance and try shooting him down over the East River and hope he’d go down in the drink instead of hitting Brooklyn or one of the bridges. That time of day traffic piles up pretty heavy on those bridges, and some of them carry subway trains. Mr. Toombes and Mr. Rabinowitz were over in a corner arguing with General Adler at the tops of their lungs, trying to talk him out of his idea of shooting the plane down over Harlem.

What were you doing?

Listening to Sergeant O’Brien and Mr. Harris. They were the only ones in that room who were making any sense.

Harris (Cont’d)

If you’re looking to find a hero in this mess, you’d have to pin the medal on Captain Grofeld. He was the only one doing anything constructive.

It was you and Sergeant O’Brien who proposed a plan of action, though, wasn’t it?

Man proposes, the authorities dispose. We could have proposed a dozen ideas. O’Brien’s only a sergeant, and I’m a complete outsider-a civilian carping from the sidelines. Hell, I had no business there. They let me stay, but that was accidental. Nobody was clearly in charge. Nobody had time for details like that. Maybe they were afraid I’d have broadcast the news to the press if I left the room. Maybe I was qualified to stay merely because I’d had a close-up look at the plane. Who knows? Anyway, neither I nor O’Brien had any clout to set things in motion. Grofeld had the clout-and the imagination. I mean it was outrageous, what we suggested. Nobody else would have Could we try to take it in order, Mr. Harris? I think that would make the record easier to follow.

All right, sure. We-O’Brien and I-went over to Captain Grofeld and pried him loose of where he and the banker were listening-angrily-to all the shouting. Most of the shouting was coming from Azzard and General Adler. It was becoming clear to me that it wouldn’t be long before one or the other of them was going to take the bull by the horns. I didn’t know exactly how much authority Adler had, but it was conceivable he had the power to order those jet fighters to attack at any time. It wasn’t until later that we figured out what the chain of command was.

The jet fighters were in the air at the time?

Yes. They’d been scrambled from some National Guard outfit at Floyd Be

At what time had they been launched?

Evidently they’d been in the air since about one thirty. Keeping tabs on the bomber from about four thousand feet. Craycroft knew they were above him, of course, but I guess he’d anticipated that. They weren’t making any threatening moves.

Do you know by whose authority they had been launched?

Adler had called somebody. Some major general.

Would that be General Hawley?

You got me. All I knew was, there were three F-104 Starfighters zipping around up there. There’d been some pretty heated talk about their armament. They were armed with two kinds of weapons, those planes. They had six-barrel Vulcan guns in the nose-that’s a high-speed twenty-millimeter ca

Why?

They’re heat-seeking projectiles. Suppose one of them missed Craycroft’s plane? It’d head for the nearest crosstown bus, or the incinerator-chimney on an apartment house roof. Christ.

I see what you mean.

Anyhow, we didn’t know how soon Adler might break a wire and try to order those fighters in to attack. Actually we didn’t even know whether he had the authority to order an attack, but we had to assume he did. He was talking real loud about dumping the debris all over central Harlem. He seemed to get a big charge out of that idea. His face was getting very red-he’s a classic case of hard-drinking high blood pressure-and there was no way to know he wouldn’t go berserk. So we were contending not only with Craycroft, but with Adler, too. Things didn’t look very bright. I think it was the Adler threat, more than the Craycroft threat, that persuaded O’Brien and me to put that crazy idea to Grofeld.

Go on, please.