The enemy had stabbed in with four planes. Not three, as the first report had stated. One had carried the bomb. Cohen got it, died with it, too late. One plane had either been strictly reconnaissance or had turned yellow. It had vanished to the west, at any rate, right after the bomb. The other two, going fast, had run around the perimeter of the city, time and again, pursued by fighters that couldn’t catch them. They’d taken their time and ultimately dropped parachute-borne aerosol-spray germ bombs. After that, one plane had calmly landed in Gordon Field and the crew had tried to surrender to the airport police. It was found that one of the crew members could speak English, just before a civilian had snatched a Tommy gun from a cop and shot the whole crew.
The other plane had been brought down by Lieutenant Pfeffer, in a jet fighter. Pfeffer had come back from that feat alive.
General Boyce had ordered his Crash Plan into effect.
He had stripped the Base to send food and medical supplies, hospital corpsmen and medical officers into the cities. He had sent all the Base fire-fighting equipment. He had called up every enlisted man and every noncommissioned officer, paymasters, bandmasters, cooks, bakers, dental hygienists—every man in uniform except the regular guard. To these he had added the mixed service personnel who had reported to him, since his was the only military establishment in the region: marines and gobs, naval officers, WACS and even WAVES, many veterans, and all the National Guardsmen who showed up there, when they learned they had no armories left. He broke out every weapon and all the ammo. He started officers organizing rescue and aid squads, emergency military police, technical-assistance squads. He sent all the communications and signal people he could spare to the Green Prairie CD authorities: he couldn’t raise anybody in River City who would accept that kind of help.
He put some of his technical staff to work on bomb determinations. He sent out his two helicopters, with special observers to swing around the stricken areas and spot and report rescue needs. He sent light planes in, and two bombers, to reinforce that mission. He prepared parachute bundles of water and food for quick air-drops into the areas where people were trapped by fire and debris—parks and playgrounds, golf courses, reservoirs, playing fields. He got volunteers, three hundred, all he needed-though most were without experience—to jump as required into such beleaguered areas.
He kept Colorado Springs fully informed as to the situation, civilian and military. He knew about the western and the northern stampede of the panic-driven people of River City before the first cars and trucks began to pass Hink. He had a road block set up and the people cared for as fast as they arrived. However, he was aware that two main refugee groups—perhaps a hundred thousand people in each-were following Route 401 which led eventually to Kansas City, and along Elk Drive toward Gordon Field, the civil airport. He sent a heavy guard to the airport to try to stop the stampede there and another, the first members of which were air-dropped, to block Highway 401 if they could.
Straggling, secondary mobs were moving west along the river valley and south from Green Prairie; General Boyce let them go: there was only the empty country ahead, but he hadn’t manpower enough to try to protect it.
He did not realize how futile such efforts would be until the account of what happened at Gordon Field came in by military phone. When his motley troops arrived there, several thousand people had already reached the airport and most had gone on past, but hundreds had turned in.
They were without control or meaningful plan—fear-maddened men and women and children who rushed indoors, promptly looted the airport concessions, smashed the furniture, insanely demolished the ticket counters, rushed out on the field, entered waiting planes, got themselves hit on runways by service equipment and, in general, turned the airport into headless hell. They were reinforced by persons arriving from the main highway at a rate of a hundred a minute or more.
A naval commander with an ice-cold voice soon requested permission to shoot. General Boyce refused it.