Nobody stopped him or questioned him, which was unusual. The W AAF secretaries and stenographers, the sergeants and corporals, seemed just to be sitting around the big rooms, rather stiffly. Hardly a typewriter was going. Outside, beyond the windows, a jet took off, shaking the building. Up above the building, he knew, the radar antenna was circling, the sock was flying in a moderate breeze, the anemometer cups were whirling and the men behind the great blue-glass windows were vigilant. At the door of Control Ops, he was stopped by two soldiers with rifles in their hands and bayonets on the rifles, which was anything but usual. He wouldn’t have got farther if Lieutenant Colonel Wilson, the general’s aide, hadn’t come out to the water cooler while Chuck was arguing with the guard.
“Oh,” the lieutenant colonel said, “Connel. It’s you.”
“Conner, sir.” Chuck smiled a little.
“You’re the Intelligence they sent over from Eames’ outfit?” The Lily cup from which he drank trembled minutely.
“Yes, sir.”
“Your colonel’s notion was sure solid! Might as well come in and watch the shambles.”
In the Operations room, on the left-hand wall, was a huge map of the United States, Canada and Mexico. On the right wall was a large-scale map of the Hink Field region, showing all of two states and parts of four more. Around the big map. in a cluster, between the American flag on one side and the hat rack on the other, were perhaps forty officers. Two of them were moving colored pins and colored flags on the big map. Another was advising them, according to messages he received from headphones.
The group was absolutely silent. Men smoked. One man even blew his nose. But nobody said anything for a long while. The flags moved toward Chicago, Chuck saw, and Indianapolis, Detroit and Toledo. There were scarlet flags on four cities—all of them, Chuck observed, coastal cities and big ones: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia.
Finally General Boyce spoke. Chuck couldn’t see him because he was shorter than most of the other officers and stood closest to the map.
“It appears that the assault from the south is a small wave. Note it seems to have broken into three parts. Nothing coming this way. The northern waves, both of them, split east and west.