Rally Round the Flag, Boys! by Max Shulman

Author:Max Shulman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

13

“Tonight,” said the Moderator, “I am going to step down and turn the meeting over to Lieutenant Guido di Maggio of the 992nd Anti-Aircraft Missile Battalion.”

The Moderator left the platform and took a seat in the audience. Guido walked to the lectern. No applause greeted him. There was, in fact, an almost tangible emanation of hostility from the assembly. Except for the di Maggio family and Maggie Larkin, sitting together in the back of the hall, not a friendly face could be seen.

Guido was not dismayed. He had prepared himself carefully for tonight’s test, and he was full of quiet confidence. “Good evening,” he said, not smiling. “I know you people pretty good, and I know you weren’t born yesterday. I’m not going to try to con you with fancy speeches. You ask questions, I’ll give you straight answers. Okay, who’s first?”

The Moderator rose. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been on this side of the platform, so if nobody objects, I’d like to get the ball rolling. Lieutenant, tell us why, with the whole countryside to choose from, the Army decided to put the Nike base smack in the middle of Putnam’s Landing.”

“We had to,” said Guido. “We didn’t want to, sir. We would have much preferred to pick some piece of land that nobody cared about. But you see, we’re part of a ring around Bridgeport—a group of batteries that protect Bridgeport no matter where an enemy attack might come from. It’s all figured out mathematically so that each battery overlaps the next one. You remove any one battery, you leave a great big hole in the defenses.”

“Isn’t it better to have a hole in the defenses,” asked Willard Beauchamp, “than to put nuclear warheads right in the center of a heavily populated residential area?”

“Let me set your mind at rest about one thing,” replied Guido. “It’s true the Defense Department has announced the development of a Nike with a nuclear warhead. But we will definitely not have them at Putnam’s Landing—not for several years at any rate. And when they do come—if they come—there will be adequate safeguards against radiation … But that’s for the future; right now all we’ve got is standard, conventional missiles.”

“Isn’t that bad enough?” asked Rodney O’Sheel. “High explosives, fuming acids—that’s hardly the kind of thing we want in our community.”

“Sir,” replied Guido, “a Nike base is no more dangerous than a gas station. All our explosives are stored deep underground. We have concrete bunkers and earthen walls eight feet thick around the fueling and firing areas. There is no danger whatsoever of injuring any property around the Nike base.”

“No?” said Henry Steinberg. “How about the exhaust flames when you fire the Nike?”

“First of all,” said Guido, “the Nike is never fired except in the event of an enemy attack. There is no practice firing … I’ll repeat that. There is no practice firing. The Nike will never be launched unless enemy planes are overhead—and if it is launched, there is a 500 foot safety zone around the launching site to take care of the exhaust flames.

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