U. S. AIR FORCE ICBM BASE, PLEASURE, MONTANA

Sitting alone in the eerie silence of the missile control room, Colonel Norman B. Granger calmly checked his watch and took another sip of water. For that was about all there was left for him to do, unless of course, he finally received an order to launch. Yet somehow, even now, he found it hard to believe that any of this was really happening. But then the enemy’s acetylene torch began gnawing at the control room door again and he knew that it was all very much for real.

Hidden deep within the American heartland, his missile base was supposed to have been impregnable. For the base was safely nestled among the nation’s vast northern plains, endless miles of flowing brown grasses completely absorbing it with their whispering sighs. Whether it be the hot dry summers or the brutal icy winds of winter, its isolation was always total and complete, the only real company being the ever present stars of clear and untainted western skies.

As if the base’s sheer isolation wasn’t enough to keep its weapons safe, it was constructed using state of the art technology, its security system the world’s cutting edge. The missiles were protected by twenty foot thick concrete hardened silos and the control bunker itself lay deep beneath the ground. The base was even capable of absorbing a direct hit from an enemy nuclear attack and still rising from beneath the ashes to launch a counterassault. For as the country’s last line of defense, the base had been built to withstand the enemy’s worst.

But who in their worst nightmare would have ever expected this. That anyone would dare to carry out such a commando raid so deep inside American soil. Even now the Colonel couldn’t help but admire the sheer nerve of it. Imagine confronting the world’s most deadly weapons with mere foot soldiers attacking on the ground.

Yet the assault had been perfectly timed to coincide with the base’s shift change, the guards taken completely by surprise. Before anyone knew what was happening, their outside perimeter had been breached and only seconds later the enemy had forced its way inside. All so fast he simply had to believe that the enemy had been aided by an inside source. But what difference did that make now. The time for worrying about internal security leaks was already long since past.

Once the complex had been breached, the base personnel’s years of sitting behind computer terminals was simply no match for the enemy’s well trained assault force, the end result being, that the battle for the inside of the complex was necessarily short and sweet. In fact, as the last living defenders, he and Captain Thomas J. Murphy had just barely managed to shut themselves off in the launch control room. Tom giving his life on the threshold rather than ever let the enemy inside.

Glancing back at the control room’s double steel door, the Colonel saw the first flash of bright orange sparks, the hot blue blade of the enemy’s torch racing hungrily to complete its first cut. Yet as he swept his eyes across the rest of the control room, he still couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride. For even now, cut off and isolated, he stood ready and waiting to see his mission through.

The funny thing was that he still found it hard to believe that all of this could have happened in such a short time. But then again, hadn't everyting happened so quickly? Hadn't it all just moved so fast, right from the very start?