There was no verbal reply but the image on Camera Five went from black to green. It showed very little more than the normal vision had revealed, the intense driving rain was blanking out most of the imagery but what was visible went far beyond any words Cochrane had to describe it. The shadow he had seen was a B-2, picked up by the storm and thrown cartwheeling down the hard-stand. Other shadows could have been the A-10s and F-5s parked there being tossed around with the contemptuous disregard malicious children showed for toys belonging to others. There were other objects as well, Cochrane couldn’t recognize them but they hurtled across the screen before Camera Five too blacked out.

“That’s it Sir. All cameras are gone.” The voice was quiet and awed at the brief glimpse of the destruction on the surface.

“Doppler radar has gone as well Sir.” The meteorologist looked over at General Cochrane, half-expecting to be held responsible for the equipment failure. But who could have expected something like this, F6 tornadoes weren’t supposed to be possible, that’s why the classification for the Enhanced Fujita scale stopped at EF5. Boardman guessed that an EF6 would be added after today,

Cochrane glanced at the viewer, it was still showing the track of the storm front. It was passing Whiteman and closing in on Warrensburg, the small town to the west of the base. It was a favorite for men on leave and now it was going to be gone. No town could survive a tornado that had hammered a base designed to resist nuclear attack so badly. “How come we’re still getting data?”

“Sir, we’re pulling radar data from the Tornado Watch on the Weather Channel. We’ve got a cross-connection, when they sought permission to use input from our radars, we got input from their system in case ours went down.”