Schedule Counter Blast was the worst wet firecracker in military history. The evolution was beautifully worked out and the drops were made simultaneously just at midnight, zone five, on over ninety-six hundred communication points—newspaper offices, block controls, relay stations, and so forth. The raiding squad were the cream of our sky-borne forces, mostly veteran non-coms, and with them, technicians to put each communication point back into service.
Whereupon the President’s speech and the visual display would go out from each local station; Schedule Bare Back would take effect all through the infected territory; and the war would be over, save for minor mopping up.
Ever see a bird hurt itself by flying into a glass window? The bird is not stupid; he simply did not have all the data.
By twenty-five minutes after midnight reports started coming in that such-and-such points were secured. A little later there were calls for help from other points. By one in the morning most of the reserves had been committed but the operation was clearly going well—so well, indeed, that unit commanders were landing and were reporting from the ground.
That was the last anybody ever heard of them.
Zone Red swallowed up the task force as if it had never existed—over eleven thousand military craft, more than a hundred and sixty thousand fighting men and technicians, seventy-one group commanders and—why go on? The United States had received its worst military setback since Black Sunday. Not in numbers, for there was not a city bombed, but in selected quality.
Let me make it clear that I am not criticizing Martinez, Rexton, the General Staff, or those poor devils who made the drop. The program was properly planned, it was based on what appeared to be a true picture, and the situation called for fast action with the best we had. If Rexton had sent any but his best boys he would have earned a court martial; the Republic was at stake and he had the sense to realize it.
But he did not know about the seven apes.
It was nearly daylight, so I understand, before Martinez and Rexton got it through their heads that the messages they had gotten back about successes were actually faked, fakes sent by their own men—our own men—but hag-ridden, possessed, and brought into the masquerade. After my report, more than an hour too late to stop the raids, the Old Man had tried to get them not to send in any more men, but they were flushed with success and anxious to make a clean sweep.
The Old Man asked the President to insist on visual checks of what was happening, but the operation was being controlled by relay through Space Station Alpha and there just aren’t enough channels to parallel audio with video through a space station. Rexton had said, “They know what they are up against; quit worrying. As fast as we get local stations back in our hands, our boys will patch back into the ground relay net and you will have all the visual evidence you want.”
The Old Man had pointed out that by then it would be too late. Rexton had burst out, “Confound it, man!—I can’t stop soldiers in action to have them take pictures of bare backs. Do you want a thousand men to let themselves be killed just to quiet your jitters?”
The President had backed him up.
By early morning they had their visual evidence. Stereo stations in the Central Valley were giving out with the same old pap; Rise and Shine with Mary Sunshine, Breakfast with the Browns, and such junk. There was not a station with the President’s stereocast, not one that even conceded that anything had happened. The military dispatches tapered off and stopped around four o’clock and Rexton’s frantic calls were not answered. Task Force Redemption of Schedule Counter Blast ceased to exist—spurlos versenkt.
I got this not from the Old Man but from Mary. Being the President’s little shadow who went in and out with him, she had a box seat. I did not get to see the Old Man until nearly eleven the next morning. He let me report without comment, and without bawling me out, which was worse.