Command and Control

Elsewhere at Little Rock Air Force Base, the Disaster Response Force was getting ready to depart. Its commander, Colonel William A. Jones, was also the base commander and head of the 314th Combat Support Group, a squadron of cargo planes stationed there. Jones was new to Little Rock, having arrived just two months earlier. He had not yet taken a disaster control course and didn’t have much experience with Titan II missiles. His cargo planes were part of the Military Airlift Command, the missiles were part of the Strategic Air Command — and although both commands shared the same base, their missions rarely intersected. The Disaster Response Force was supposed to handle any military emergency, large or small, that involved units at Little Rock. During his brief tenure as its commander, the only emergency that Jones had faced was a search for the missing tail gunner of a B-52 bomber. The tail gunner had ejected from the plane by mistake, afraid that it was about to crash. The B-52 landed safely, as did the tail gunner, whose parachute was easily spotted floating above the Arkansas River.

After hearing about the problem at 4–7, Jones decided not to recall the entire Disaster Response Force. In his view, a disaster hadn’t happened yet. The force didn’t pack any gas masks, toxic vapor detectors, radiation detectors, or firefighting equipment. Jones did, however, bring a press officer to deal with the media and a judge advocate general (JAG) to process any legal claims filed by neighbors of the missile site.

At about nine o’clock the dozen or so members of the force left the base in a small convoy. A few of them rode in the mobile command post, a pickup truck with two rows of seats and a camper shell. A bioengineer traveled in a van that carried equipment to monitor the vapor from a fuel leak. A physician and two paramedics followed in an ambulance. And the press officer joined Colonel Jones in the base commander’s car, along with the JAG, who brought his disaster claims kit.

* * *

Sid King stood in the dark beside the Live Ear. It was parked on the shoulder of Highway 65, overlooking the entrance to the missile complex. A camera crew from KATV was on the way, and reporters from the other Little Rock television stations and local newspapers weren’t far behind. Nothing much seemed to be happening. The white cloud was still rising from the complex, but nobody appeared to be dealing with it. About a dozen men in Air Force fatigues were hanging around a blue pickup at the end of the access road. A security policeman sat in the cab, talking to the command post on the radio. And a helicopter hovered overhead, shining its spotlight toward the ground, looking for someplace to land.

The missile combat crew was glad to be outdoors, with a good half a mile between them and the silo. The night was warm, help was on the way, everybody had made it out of the complex safe and sound. The problem with the missile hadn’t been solved, but the mood was calm. Then Rodney Holder looked up and saw that the helicopter was about to hit some power lines. The pilot couldn’t see them in the dark, and the chopper was descending straight toward them. Holder started to yell and wave his arms, and then Mazzaro, his commander, noticed, too. “Tell the helicopter not to land,” they both shouted, frantically, to the security officer in the pickup. “Tell it not to land!” In an instant, Holder had gone from feeling chilled and relaxed to being absolutely terrified, convinced that the chopper was going to hit the power lines, spin out of control, and explode. It didn’t. At the last minute, the pilot saw the wires, dodged them, and landed safely in a field near a farmhouse on the other side of the highway.

Morris and Kennedy climbed from the copter and joined the men waiting on the access road. While Mazzaro spoke to the colonel about the accident, Kennedy and Holder discussed what should be done next. Kennedy didn’t think much of Mazzaro and couldn’t believe that his crew had abandoned the complex. But Kennedy got along with Holder. The two had taken some college classes together at the base and felt a mutual respect. They disagreed now, however, about whether there was a fire in the silo. Kennedy decided to see for himself. He asked Colonel Morris for permission to enter the site — and to bring David Powell, the airman who’d dropped the socket, with him.

Powell was one of Kennedy’s closest friends in the Air Force. When Kennedy was a PTS team chief, Powell served as his right-hand man. Kennedy could count on Powell to do just about anything. He used Powell to train new PTS technicians, and Powell hoped to become a team chief himself, maybe a noncommissioned officer. Powell was always calm and reliable. But now he seemed anxious, agitated, upset. After the helicopter landed, Powell had run up to him and said, “Jeff, I fucked up like you wouldn’t believe.”