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had noted what others did not yet acknowledge or see: “There is a tidal wave coming, a political tidal wave as powerful as the one that hit in 1932, when an era of Republican dominance gave way to the New Deal.”

No Lone Zones
    A t the predeparture briefing, Childers and his crew learned that “major maintenance” was scheduled at Launch Complex 374-5 that day. The missile was being taken off alert so that the reentry vehicle containing its warhead could be replaced. For an instructor crew, major maintenance was a waste of time. Lieutenant Serrano was training to become a deputy missile combat crew commander, and he needed to practice routine tasks in a control center. Captain Mazzaro found a commander who would switch complexes. Instead of 4-5, the instructor crew would go to 4-7, outside Damascus. The change of plans solved the training issue but delayed the departure of both crews. Entry codes had to be swapped, duty orders rewritten and authenticated. The only important difference between the two launch complexes was their distance from Little Rock Air Force Base. Four-seven was a lot farther away, which meant Childers and his crew probably wouldn’t be getting home until noon the next day.
    Mazzaro, Childers, Holder, Fuller, and Serrano tossed their bags into the back of an Air Force blue Chevy Suburban, climbed into it, and began the hour-long drive to Damascus. Within a mile, the Suburban’s alternator light came on. So they had to turn around, go back to the base, find a new vehicle, move their gear, and fill out paperwork before leaving again. The day was not getting off to a smooth start.
    The eighteen Titan II missile complexes in Arkansas were scatteredthroughout an area extending about sixty miles north of Little Rock Air Force Base and about thirty miles to the east and the west. The missiles were dispersed roughly seven to ten miles from each other, so that in the event of a surprise attack, one Soviet warhead couldn’t destroy more than one Titan II silo. In the American West, ICBMs were usually set amid a vast, empty landscape, far from populated areas. In central Arkansas, the Titan II complexes were buried off backcountry roads, near small farms and little towns with names like Velvet Ridge, Mountain Home, Wonderview, and Old Texas. It was an unlikely setting for some of the most powerful nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. The decision to put ICBMs in rural Arkansas had been influenced bypolitical, as well as military, considerations. One of the state’s congressmen, Wilbur D. Mills, happened to be chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee when Titan II sites were being chosen.
    To reach Launch Complex 374-7, the crew drove west through the towns of Hamlet and Vilonia, then north on Highway 65, a two-lane road that climbed into the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Slavery had never reached this part of Arkansas, and the people who lived there were overwhelmingly poor, white, hardworking, and self-sufficient. It was the kind of poverty that carried little shame, because everyone seemed to be in the same boat. The local farms were usually thirty to forty acres in size and owned by the same families for generations. Farmers ran cattle, owned a few pigs, grew vegetables in the backyard. They were patriotic and rarely complained about the missiles in the neighborhood. Most of the income generated by the 308th was spent in the area around Little Rock. Aside from the occasional purchase of coffee and doughnuts, the missile crews passing through these rural communities added little to the local economy. For the most part, the airmen were treated warmly or hardly noticed. Despite the poverty, the feel of the place was bucolic. In early fall the fields were deep green, dotted with round bales of hay, and the leaves on the trees—the black gums, sweet gums, maples, and oaks—were beginning to turn.
    The population of Damascus was about four hundred. The town