March 3, 1970 – Tucson, Arizona, USA
“Man, I knew you must be the old man’s nephew or something,” said Lieutenant Roland Morris to Lieutenant Tommy Vernal. “He’s gotta be breaking every rule in the book for you to be promoted this fast.”
Tommy returned a wide, friendly smile full of teeth. “I can’t help it if I’m so good looking. Maybe he wants me to marry his daughter or something.”
“Well, don’t get ahead of yourself,” said Lieutenant Morris. “It’s not like Launch Control Officer comes with a raise. All it comes with is a better chance to screw up.”
“Then why did you apply?” replied Tommy in a teasing voice.
“So I wouldn’t have to listen to you,” replied Lieutenant Morris. His grin was friendly, but there was an unmistakable edge of jealousy in his voice.
Lieutenant Morris was not the only one in the 390th Missile Wing who was peeved by Tommy’s quick rise through the ranks. But Tommy was too likeable for people to act mad at him to his face. He remembered everyone’s name and was quick to bring people coffee and ask about what they did on their days off. And he looked very non-threatening with the way his ears stuck so far out from his buzz-cut head. The enlisted men liked him, his fellow lieutenants liked him, and the commanding officers obviously liked him.
Tommy pulled off an easygoing, “ah shucks” vibe, but he was also ambitious. He had decided he could adapt to everything about the Air Force and he was going to make a career out of it. And he figured he might as well be running things. He was happy to share his plan to eventually run the base and then the entire Air Force. His colleagues and his superiors jokingly called him “Colonel Vernal,” behind his back and to his face.
“So did you learn anything at LCO training?” Lieutenant Morris asked Tommy.
“Oh, the usual stuff.” Tommy began speaking in a mock, bossy voice. “Pay attention here. Put the codes there. As long as you do everything exactly right every time, you’ll be fine.”
Lieutenant Morris and Tommy had reached the end of a long hallway with polished floors. They were in the main building used for briefings at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Tommy opened the door at the end of the hallway and stepped into a room full of officers and airmen dressed in uniform. Some were casually chatting, but most were sitting at rectangular tables only long enough for three people. Tommy and Lieutenant Morris knew their assignment and walked toward Table 6.
As Tommy walked past them, many of the officers said things like, “Congrats Colonel Vernal. First time in charge of the hole.”
Tommy smiled and slapped his well-wishers on the back as fast as they could slap him.
Lieutenant Morris was trying not to pay attention to all of the attention showered on Tommy. He was now far enough into the room to see who was already seated at the #6 table.
“Looks like we got Sandoval,” said Lieutenant Morris over his shoulder, trying to get Tommy’s attention.
“You know him? He’s never been in my rotation,” replied Tommy.
“He’s alright. Doesn’t say much. Just wants to get in and out.”
Tommy and Lieutenant Morris found their seats at Table 6 and greeted Sergeant Sandoval. As the designated leader of the three-man team, Tommy sat on the right side of the table. Lieutenant Morris, the acting Communications Officer, sat in the middle, and Sandoval, the equipment technician, on the left. There were a total of 18 similar teams and tables in the room. Bright bulbs hung from the ceiling, illuminating the light-gray walls, but there were no visible windows. Two ceiling fans spun at high speed even though the temperature was a very pleasant 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
From one of the side doors, a senior officer walked in, followed by an assistant. Everyone jumped to their feet and the room went quiet.
“I don’t need to remind you to be exact and vigilant,” the officer announced loudly, addressing the room. “Today, even seemingly trivial mistakes can have catastrophic consequences.”
The officer went on and on. Tommy had heard it all many times before and was imaging giving a similar speech himself, sometime in the future. When the senior officer was finally done, his assistant stepped forward holding several pieces of paper. He unfolded the papers, which were taped together, and unveiled eight seemingly random letters from the alphabet.
As the Launch Control Officer, Tommy’s first duty had now begun. He grabbed one of the strips of paper and pencils lying on his table and copied the displayed letters. Lieutenant Morris watched him write. As instructed, both of them purposely avoided memorizing the letters.
“You’ve got the worst chicken-scratch handwriting I’ve ever seen,” Lieutenant Morris whispered to Tommy.
“You sound like Mrs. Whipple, my third-grade teacher,” Tommy whispered back. “What does it matter, as long as I can read it?”
“Can you read it?”
“Sure I can.”
Lieutenant Morris grinned skeptically. “I guess we’ve found your weakness.”
“If I have to have a weakness, I don’t mind it being handwriting,” said Tommy. “You know who else has messy writing? Doctors. You can’t read anything they’re scribbling on a prescription pad. But no one chooses a doctor based on handwriting.”
“If you say so,” replied Lieutenant Morris.
The assistant at the front of the room stopped displaying the letters and announced they were being relayed via radio to the missile sites. The teams were then dismissed to start on their way.
The Launch Control Officer was in charge of driving the jeep that would take the team into the desert. With Tommy at the wheel, Lieutenant Morris took the front passenger’s seat and Sandoval took the rear. They started on the paved highway leading directly south from the base, and after half an hour, turned onto an unmarked dirt road. By the time they got to the missile site, the paved road was no longer visible. Amid the cactus and shrub brush, the only sign of civilization was the ten-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire.
Visible inside the fence was a concrete stairway leading underground. Beyond the stairway was a gigantic steel door set parallel to the ground. The door was painted the same desert tan as the surrounding landscape and casual onlookers might not even notice it. But Tommy and his team knew that under the chunk of steel was a Titan II missile capable of vaporizing whatever city it was programmed to hit.
Tommy and his team got out of the jeep and Tommy removed the key from the ignition. On the same keyring was a key which electronically opened the fence. As soon as it was activated, Tommy had less than two minutes to execute the next stage in the entry procedure.
With the fence open, he walked quickly, but not urgently, toward the concrete steps that led underground. Two minutes gave them plenty of time and Tommy wanted to enjoy a last view of the outside. March was an amazing month to be in Arizona and the late morning air smelled fresh, like a thunderstorm was blowing in across the desert.
Tommy was the first to the steps and he bounded down them two at a time. Under the concrete overhang, a light was shining. Underneath it was a telephone receiver.
“So far, so good,” said Lieutenant Morris, who had descended right behind Tommy.
“Alright, let’s get down the hole,” said Tommy with a smile.
Tommy picked up the receiver and pressed the only button on the body of the telephone. A voice on the other end of the line answered. According to procedure, the voice belonged to the Launch Control Office of the team they were replacing. The team inside had been awake in the silo for the past 24 hours and now it was Tommy’s team’s turn.
“Roger. Systems are green. Over,” said the voice.
“Replacement team requesting access. Over,” said Tommy.
“Go for access code. Over,”
Tommy pulled the strip of paper from the front pocket of his uniform. He began reading out the call signs for the different letters, pausing after each one. “Alpha . . . Foxtrot . . . Whiskey . . . Tango . . . Juliett . . . November . . . Yankee . . .” As Tommy read the last few letters, his confidence wavered. He was not so sure he had them right. He paused at the final letter. Was that an F or a P? “Foxtrot,” he finally said.
“Say again. Over,” said the voice on the telephone.
This meant Tommy had made a mistake. His eyes grew wide as he looked over at Lieutenant Morris. His colleague shrugged his shoulders. He was not allowed to say anything even if he knew how to help. Tommy looked again at the strip of paper. Now all the letters appeared blurry. Tommy’s heart started to pound. He blinked hard and tried again.
“Alpha . . . Papa . . . Whiskey . . . India . . . Juliet . . . Mike . . . Yankee . . . Papa.” There was no answer. The phone line simply went dead with a soft CLICK. Tommy raised his head and said to the others, “I think I screwed up.”
Immediately, a siren began to whine and previously camouflaged lights began to flash.
“Oh, this is bad. This is really bad,” Tommy said with a low groan.
Lieutenant Morris’s immediate reaction was to chuckle because Tommy could not read his own writing. But then he realized the hassle he was about to go through. “I wish somebody else would have been with you during your first try as LCO,” he said to Tommy.
“Man, this is going to mess up my whole week,” cried Sergeant Sandoval. “I had plans to see my sister. Now I’ll get moved to a whole other rotation.”
The three men climbed up the cement staircase with their heads down. When they reached the ground level, they stood in sight of the jeep and open fence and dropped their weapons onto the dirt. The pulsing of the siren already pounded in Tommy’s brain. His first day and he could not even get past the first door.
This would be a stupidity record never to be broken. It was such a silly thing. So what if he could not read his own letters? But he knew that the silly things made all the difference to the Air Force. In the distance, he could see the dust cloud being kicked up by the line of Military Police vehicles that were headed their way.
It seemed to Tommy that a hundred armed airmen showed up at the gate and they all pointed their guns at him.
“Get down on the ground!” multiple people shouted.
Tommy and his team obeyed and laid with their faces in the dirt. A couple hundred boot steps pounded the ground. Tommy felt a knee pushed into his back. Then his hands were clamped into handcuffs.
When he was pulled to his feet, Tommy recognized some of the military policemen around him. They refused to react to Tommy’s smile. They did not get to arrest people very often and they wanted to savor the experience as thoroughly as possible. Tommy and his team rode in silence back to base. The armed guards in their truck frowned the whole way.
The interrogation of the team took the next twelve hours. Tommy was interviewed alone and then together with Morris and Sandoval.
“It was all a mistake. Blame my handwriting,” Tommy kept repeating.
“I told him it was going to be a problem,” added Lieutenant Morris. “I couldn’t read any of his letters.”
The base commander stopped by to say what a shame the situation was. He and the police investigators had to conclude that no one on Tommy’s team was working for the Russians or any other unsavory organization.
“Dumb mistake. But you never can be too careful,” remarked the commander.
Tommy and his team were released in the middle of the night and told not to leave the base for the next three days.
After what came to be known as the “chicken scratch call,” Tommy was not only stripped of his new Launch Control Officer position, he was removed from silo rotations entirely. He was assigned to tasks none of the other officers wanted, like spare parts inventorying and staffing the mess hall. When his fellow lieutenants saw him, they avoided eye contact and did not want to be seen starting up a conversation. They still called him “Colonel Vernal”, but now it was only behind his back and always with a laugh.
One officer who stayed friendly was Lieutenant Morris. Tommy confided to him that he was planning to quit the Air Force as soon as his term was up.
“There’s nothing here for me now,” said Tommy bitterly. “I’ll probably just go to school or something.”
Soon after that, Tommy disappeared. No one heard from him and the “chicken scratch call” became a legend on the base. None of the new officers believed it actually happened.
And then, seven years later, Lieutenant Morris was having dinner in a Tucson restaurant. Tommy walked in. His ears and smile made him instantly recognizable, despite his longer hair.
Lieutenant Morris could not resist calling out, “Hey, Colonel Vernal!”
They exchanged friendly greetings and Tommy asked his old teammate if he was still in the Air Force. “You still Lieutenant Morris?”
“Now you can call me Major Morris. What about you?”
“I guess you can call me Doctor Vernal. I just finished medical school.”
Lieutenant Morris was obviously surprised. “Are you serious? Wow. Good for you. How did that happen?”
“Well, after the Air Force, I figured I didn’t have much of a choice. I knew my handwriting wasn’t getting any better. I figured being a doctor is about the only thing I’m qualified for.”
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