by T I WADE
An hour later, Will and Maggie returned for their second trip to find the original line down by half, but another twenty people had lined up behind the tractors. There were mumblings as the Smarts began refilling their twelve containers, but it stopped when Will explained to the line that it was thanks to them they were going to get fuel at all.
The Smarts returned for their third refill as the second tractor with three families and 20 five-gallon containers had just filled up, and the first new person in the queue invited the Smarts to refill in front of him; he was an older man with a wife and three containers.
“Can we tell what’s left in the tank?” Will asked the engineer, and the man replied that it wasn’t possible. It could go dry at any time.
“I would assume that it could have been filled just before the problems,” he suggested. “We have taken out about 500 containers, 2,500 gallons, and if it was full, there could be the same amount still to go.”
It lasted another 120 canisters after Will had filled theirs for the third time and was about to fill them again for the fourth time just before dusk. It actually ran out of gas on the last container before his first one. A line of another fifty families had carted off their canisters and now there were well over a hundred people still in line.
“Sorry, everybody,” Will shouted to the growing chorus of laments. “Where is the nearest gas station to this?” he asked the crowd.
“Palmdale Boulevard!” shouted dozens of voices at the same time.
“I know three of the five gas pumps at the station were destroyed by a crashed aircraft, but I think one pump is still usable like this one,” someone shouted.
“OK,” replied Will, “we will meet there tomorrow morning at 08:00 hours The Air Force personnel will bring their generator again and we will try to give you guys some gas. Please don’t tell everybody, I’m sure we can only help a few hundred people, as there is only so much gas in these tanks. OK?”
There were again mumbles and Maggie suggested to Will that some of these people would probably walk there, start the line and spend a freezing night waiting for gas. She hoped it would work.
It did. A crowd of nearly a thousand people were waiting in line when the Smarts arrived at daybreak the next morning. Even though the temperature was a few degrees above freezing, it looked like a line for tickets to a ball game or concert. People stood with dollar notes in their hands at the ready, whole families carried dozens of containers and sometimes just a lone person on a lawn tractor waited with one or two containers.
The line was orderly and anxious faces waited as the men worked the best looking gas dispenser first to see if they could get it to work.
An Air Force engineer understanding this time what to do had the dispenser running and was about to allow the first person to place their canisters on the ground for filling when an old truck came speeding up to the gas station, screeched to a halt next to the front of the line and an overweight man got out and rushed over to the group standing around the dispenser.
“Who gave you authority to steal my gas?” he shouted to the group arrogantly. “I’m going to call the police. You are stealing my gas. This is my gas station and my gas. How dare you dispense it without my authority? Who is going to pay for the gas you steal?”
“We will!” shouted the first dozen or so people in the line.
“Then you can buy it for twenty dollars a gallon,” continued the owner, breathing hard, “or I will call the cops and get you and your soldiers thrown out of here.” Will Smart stepped forward, pulled out his detective badge and showed it to the man.
“Now you are price gouging,” Will stated calmly. “That is a State offense, so I will have to take you down to the precinct, or you can take the money in the hands of the people. They are prepared to pay and that is what you will get for your gas, or the soldiers here will throw you off your property. Take it or leave it, and by the way I don’t think dollar bills are worth anything anymore. There is virtually nothing you can buy with them. Barter them, yes, but value? I don’t think there is a lot you can do with them. But yes, you will receive payment for what these people take, and I’m sure they are paying you more than those prices still up on your sign on the corner.”
“And if I don’t want to sell the gas?” questioned the man angrily.
“Then I think the soldiers and I will leave and you can take it up with this line of people here. I’m sure they would persuade you pretty quickly that they would like gas, especially the mean-looking man with the sawed-off shotgun. You see him? About number ten in the queue? He’s been standing here since last night and I’m sure he’s in a foul mood.”
The owner slowly acknowledged the number of people in the queue and grabbed the money out of the first man’s hand and allowed him to continue. The first man had three containers, fifteen gallons and Will Smart noticed two twenties and several one dollar bills while the owner counted it. The still-angry man didn’t complain.
One family had ten containers and three hundred dollars passed hands, the next, an old woman with one container, handed over a ten dollar bill. The owner shouted at the old woman to get going, she didn’t have enough. Will grabbed the owner by his collar and read him the riot act.
“You have taken in more money than the fuel is priced at, and now you want to tell this poor old lady that she’s not paying enough? Soldiers throw this man off his property and tell him he is now unwelcome here.”
Two soldiers came up and forced the man back to his truck, ordering him to get moving. They left him there and returned to the gas dispenser.
The owner, pointing his finger, was about to yell at the soldiers when the first large rock landed on his truck roof and he looked to see where it had come from. When the second missed him by inches and hit his windshield hard he jumped into the truck and pulled the door shut just as a larger rock hit his cab roof making a good-sized dent. He looked at the group in front of him and Will sensed that he was going to ram the gas dispenser. He ordered the three soldiers in attendance to aim their rifles at the truck and the man quickly changed his mind, spun his steering wheel around and headed back the way he had come.
An hour later the tank was dry and a second dispenser in the second line was started and it too ran dry another hour later. A third one was connected up on the other side of the station and it ran for two more hours before it ran dry. By this time Will had refilled his containers and most of the first line of people had gone through, most having only two or three canisters. The line was much shorter with only a dozen or so people and Will shouted to them that it was over and that they would try another one tomorrow, but he didn’t know where.
He and Maggie invited the three soldiers and the engineer back for a late lunch at their ranch and they gladly accepted.
Over lunch of a dozen tins of food and some fresh rolls Maggie baked from flour received from a neighbor a week earlier, they had an afternoon of eating and chatting about what the future held for the area.
The soldiers were happy to be there and had orders to do whatever Will and Maggie wanted them to do. The rest of the men were hard at work loading aircraft with rations back at Edwards Air Force Base. The base commander was now the Smart family’s best friend.
Chapter 3
Carlos and Colombia – February
Carlos sat in the copilot’s (right) seat as Blue Moon cruised down to Bogotá, Colombia at 15,000 feet. His father and uncle Philippe, the Colombian Ambassador to the United States, sat behind him with all four of their bodyguards, Manuela, Mannie, Dani and Antonio. The eleven other AC-130 crew members and six Marines sat in or around their transport, an old jeep especially equipped with two 2,000-rounds-per-minute Miniguns, one facing forward and one on a pole at the rear. The whole jeep was set up for three passengers: one driver and two gunners. All three positions were protected by armored panels and the heavy vehicle carried an extremely high quantity of ammo. The jeep took up most of the room in the AC-130’s small rear compartment. Every inch ha
d weapons of some sort crammed into it and the heavy weight could be felt by Sally, the pilot, on takeoff.
Another six Marines and their commander, Lieutenant Buff Moore, were in the second AC-130 Gunship, Easy Girl, on Sally’s left wing. They carried a second jeep identical to the one in Blue Moon. Both were recently modified by the armaments division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and had been picked up en-route. Jennifer was in flight control of Easy Girl which had the C-130 tanker, Mother Goose, on her left wing. They were in loose formation and heading straight towards Bogotá, out of MacDill Air Force Base just outside Tampa, Florida.
The flight into Bogotá from MacDill was seventeen hundred miles, eight hours at a slow, fully-loaded cruise speed. Mother Goose was to refuel the two Gunships before they reached the South American coastline and again before she would turn back. The refueling would make sure that they had enough to return from Colombia to American soil, but she would hang around Cuba for their return just in case.
The AC-130 Gunships were not very practical aircraft for the food distribution now in operation by every other flyable transporter aircraft in the U.S. Over 137 older aircraft of all sorts had been found at air bases and civilian airports since the end of the invasion ten days earlier. Three more AC-130 Gunships, two C-130 Tankers and thirty older C-130 Transporters were being stripped of their more modern and useless electronics to have older, still-working electronics fitted at their bases in Florida and northern California. The balance of all military aircraft except a few Coast Guard 130s, were electronic pieces of junk and would not be flyable until new parts were produced, which could take decades.
The 130s would be ready within a month or so, many having completely reconditioned older engine models installed, since their more modern engines’ electronics were fried.
“We still have fifteen minutes before we start refueling Patterson Key,” stated Sally to the freshly promoted General Patterson back at Andrews Air Force Base. She was speaking over her handheld satellite phone, still the only form of long distance communications. Because aircraft radios could only transmit so far, Carlos and Lee had set up several phones to enable conference calling. General Patterson, Sally, Jennifer and the tanker pilot Major Wong each had one, as did the President, Buck, and Ambassador Philippe for this trip. Another one would be given to Preston once he decided that his two-week vacation was over.
They were a couple of hundred miles south of Jamaica and about the same distance to the Colombian coastline.
“I assume many of you are listening and since I assume we are the only ones on this channel, we can talk semi-freely,” stated the general. “I have good news since you departed yesterday. The three sister aircraft of yours, the Charlie-130 Gunships, will be ready in three weeks. We also found several semi-operational Vietnam-era Hueys at a couple of our small air bases and that will put our Hueys force up to twenty. We have de-mothballed four more F-4 Phantom jets and, as you know, have the other four fully operational. The second group of four jets will take another month to get flying again and that will give us a wing of four defense jets on both sides of the country. We have now searched through every Air Force base in the world and have located three old 1970s-era 707s, semi-operational tankers in a hangar at Ramstein, Germany and another two in northern England with three of the older version C-130s we had loaned to the RAF a decade ago. I’ve heard that one more could be in Scotland.
We have teams of engineers heading out on the Jumbo Jets. They will go through these old birds and check them out. Another several operational FedEx Cargomasters have been found in Alaska and they are currently flying home to be used in the expanding food operation. Our aircraft fleet is growing in numbers, and there are still several places, mostly civilian, to check. Over a hundred more civilian aircraft have searched us out on their radios and we are having a fly-in at the next big meeting here, beginning of March. You guys are expected to be back before then. Carlos, thank you for enabling this conference call facility over the satellite phones. Lee asked me to tell you that your observatory in Utah is up and running again. I owe you.”
“My pleasure. We are all listening to you,” replied Carlos.
“Mr. Ambassador, are you there?” asked General Patterson.
“I’m here,” replied Uncle Philippe.
“Mr. Ambassador, what are you expecting to find at your destination?” continued the general. “Am I right you haven’t been back for quite a while?”
“Correct, young man. I haven’t been back for a couple of years now, but before the atrocities, I was in contact every day with my government and military leaders, separately. To answer your question: We had searched out fresh infiltrations of the drug cartels into new government positions, mostly back in 2010. I’m sure that we did not get everybody. I believe that even the higher echelons of certain military departments are also infiltrated, but the old sections I control are still safe as none of my senior staff has defected in four decades. They are mostly family and I grew up with them. Like me, they are far past retirement age, but there is no way we can relinquish our control, especially not now.
“I have been in contact with my second-in-command through the satellite phone you got for me last week. Much is the same as in the U.S., but conditions are not so cold. The attacks on the armed forces are increasing rapidly and there is quite a bit of hunger in the cities. Two days ago the main government offices were attacked in our capital and there was a small attack on the international airport. I have increased the ground patrols around both areas and replaced all the soldiers with my men.”
“Can you give me an idea of numbers of your armed forces and what percentage is loyal to you?” asked the general.
“As you know, we have three departments, Army, Navy and Air Force; total 150,000 men plus another 110,000 in the country’s police force. To date a third of our Colombian army soldiers—around 20,000—have deserted or disappeared from their barracks, I assume to travel to their homes and look after family members. More are disappearing every day. Most of the army weapons equipment is older and still operational. Our Air Force has fared better than yours, also being older. We still have many of our transporters and attack craft in operation including our old Douglas AC-47 Gunships and A-37 Dragonflies, called Super Tweets in the U.S. Several need to have their modern electronics thrown out but we Colombians never threw away the old stuff. I’m going to see how long it will take to get our Air Force fully operational, our fuel supplies secured and our army strength as high as possible. Unfortunately we have nothing as powerful as what I’m sitting in now but our remaining Colombian Air Force is good for what we need. We also have 20 of our fighter/bomber IAI Kfirs operational, although many of them had modern electronics installed and need to be changed. Three of them, the ones currently operational, will be joining us to escort us in with my pilots once we arrive in our destination’s airspace. Our fuel stocks have been given massive protection and I believe our navy is sitting idle but still fully operational. To answer your second question, I have the entire Air Force, a third of the Army and a third of the Police Force under the direct control of my staff, a total of 100,000 men. I could vouch for more, but I need to find out what is happening.”
“Bon voyage and I wish you luck, guys,” replied General Patterson. “Carlos, look after my pilots and get them home. I will expect reports on a daily basis.” And with that the conversation was over.
Sally set up Blue Moon to top-off her tanks first, which would take twenty minutes. Forty minutes later and fifty miles from the Colombian coast they said goodbye to Mother Goose who turned away and headed back to MacDill.
Immediately Uncle Philippe was in radio contact with his friends in Spanish. Within ten minutes of flying over the coast three Israeli-made IAI Kfirs climbed up to meet them and guide them into El Dorado International Airport.
“Just for your information,” stated Uncle Philippe to everyone listening in the aircraft as well as the crew in the second gunship, “Catam Air Force Base is in the
actual buildings at El Dorado International Airport. My pilots told me that they were attacked again last night, from the outskirts of the large airfield by mortars and snipers. The grounds are extensive and the attack was beaten off. They are expecting another attack tonight. The civilian area of the airport has been cleared and there are armed guards in every building. The gangs out there are growing and their theft of military firepower has increased. They are now believed to have a couple of artillery weapons and even a few shoulder rocket-launchers. Only the most powerful weaponry can actually reach the buildings from the perimeter and we have several aircraft flying over the airfield 24/7. The altitude is over 8,300 feet. Be prepared. I need to spend 72 hours with my soldiers and we will leave on time, but from where, I don’t know. We have limited fuel reserves at this air base but I’m hopeful that we won’t need any.”
They went in steeply from high altitude, landed on Runway 2 and were guided by a military jeep into a large, empty hangar. Both aircraft were towed in by a tractor, and the doors were closed after them once the engines had died. The tractors turned the aircraft to face outwards. The large fluorescent lights made the inner hangar as bright as day, once it was sealed from outside eyes.
There had been hundreds of military personnel down the length of the runway as they taxied towards the terminals, with the three Colombian Air Force jets high overhead and fully armed for action.
A group of about twenty senior army brass was there to meet the visitors. Mannie and his sister disembarked first, saluted to the generals in the welcoming committee, and walked around the hangar before signaling to the aircraft that all was well.
Uncle Philippe was helped out of the small hatch first, followed by Manuel and Carlos. There were hugs of greeting and friendship from the welcoming committee as the three walked up to them. The American forces stayed in the aircraft until Carlos returned to advise that all was well. He stated that the two jeeps would stay, and the Marines would be left in the hangar to guard the aircraft. The Air Force personnel would find accommodations in the next hangar and there were showers, food and beverages waiting. He asked Sally to stay with the group until he came to get her, and asked her to change into civilian clothes.
