Twenty minutes later, the naval officer phoned again and reported that his men were being attacked and in some cases wounded or killed by mob members who grabbed away their guns and bayonetted them.
Boyce ordered the shooting.
A cluster of men in a variety of uniforms, backed into a corner of the airport, fired at an advancing, howling horde of citizens, killing and wounding many, including children. They had time for two more volleys before they were over-swarmed by a wave of madmen who yelled,
“Gestapo.” Their weapons were wrested from them and turned upon them. Most were slaughtered.
On Highway 401 the carnage came sooner because the marine colonel in command ordered shooting at the first signs of a failure of his attempt to halt traffic. The shots stopped cars and big trucks and blocked the road. Cars and trucks behind broke through a farmer’s barbed-wire fence and drove around. When they were again shot at, some drivers leaped upon their assailants in pure frenzy. Others drove cars through them. Shortly, the remnant of the colonel’s men were in hiding, behind a rise of ground, watching the maniacal hordes pour north—the flame, smoke, radiation and hell of River City hot on their backs.
Chuck Conner had not been sent out on any of these patrols because orders for him to stand by had arrived from his home base. Colonel Eames had signed the orders personally, it appeared, and although Chuck protested that he knew River City and Green Prairie better than most of the men sent in to assist, they stuck to protocol, assigning Chuck to the Operations room, pending the availability of transportation which would make it possible to carry out Chuck’s orders. So Chuck saw the fire storm from a distance of many miles. But his knowledge of the two burning cities helped in shaping plans for reconnaissance and for air-drops.
He was aware, as the night progressed, that General Boyce held himself to blame-and himself alone—for the local delay in using the sirens. Chuck remembered the discussion in the afternoon, as if he were remembering something that had happened a year or two ago; he knew that the mayor of River City was responsible for the delay, if anyone could be held blameworthy.
“The old man,” a captain said to Chuck as they studied the wall map and the incoming reports, “is in poor shape. I never saw him so quiet. He thinks he lost the people in the shopping crowds.”
“That’s foolish!” Chuck answered, staring at the map, wondering if the K. and C.L. railroad embankment would make a firebreak of any lasting value. “Because, if the sirens had let go, they’d have just traffic-blocked themselves and been penned under Ground Zero all the same!”
“You sound mighty calm about it all, Lieutenant!”