by T I WADE
“General Patterson, my Uncle Philippe asked that you turn his seven C-130s into Gunships.” The general nodded. “Do you have enough equipment to do this?”
“Yes, we have more than a dozen 105mm howitzers in the latest, grounded AC-130 Gunships worldwide, which are at least a decade away from being active again. We have already salvaged what we could out of three of the 130s in Japan and another two in Korea. We are gutting three in Europe and bringing what is usable back stateside. These aircraft skeletons have been, or will be destroyed once cleaned out. So is most of our now defunct equipment overseas. The U.S. Air Force has over a hundred teams looking at all of our 3,000 aircraft over there and will dismantle anything worth keeping. Within a month or two, all of our defunct military equipment in unsafe countries will be destroyed. Back to the AC-130s, they all have the same systems Blue Moon is fitted with. We also can fit your Colombian aircraft out with Vietnam-era infrared scopes and a complete range of the Vietnam-era electronics we have in Blue Moon. General Allen’s Ghost Rider had the same equipment. We will have salvaged enough gunship equipment to equip the seven Colombian C-130s as well as five of our own aircraft. I’m sure we will find more and more equipment as we look deeper into storage warehouses around the country and overseas.”
“How many future 130 Gunships are we going to have and can our country depend on the Colombians as back up if we need them?” asked the President.
“A dozen, Mr. President,” replied the general. “And we will have them to back us up if needed. Carlos, as to your requirement for Miniguns, we have already salvaged 45 complete units from our overseas bases; we believe there are at least another 1,800 or more in the grounded overseas aircraft that we haven’t touched yet and at least another 200 on defunct aircraft inside the U.S. I would think that the Air Force alone has another 500 or more units stashed away. What are your estimates for the Army and Marines, gentlemen?”
“Unconfirmed numbers; I would say 500 or more nationwide and we are also bringing Miniguns back on the jumbo jets when we can; I’d say another 1,500 over there,” replied General Ward.
“About 100 here, General, mostly on older jeeps and another 500 overseas,” added Colonel Mickiewicz.
“So Carlos, your uncles may have 100 Miniguns and ammunition from us. What are we going to get in return?” asked the general.
“My uncles were thinking of loaning the U.S. Navy three Light Frigates and all you give us in return is back-up for any attacks the U.S. might incur in the future,” Carlos replied. “It depends on our bordering countries, also potential enemies of the United States, General, countries like Venezuela. We will keep an eye out for Colombia as well as the U.S.”
“I like that idea, General,” stated the President. “We need all the friends we can get. Do you have anything to add to what Carlos has just brought up?” Carlos sat down and General Patterson returned to the podium.
“I think that a friendly army and air force as backup is a very positive idea. Admiral Rogers needs more ships, and we do have some ideas ourselves to increase our shipping. Admiral Rogers, will you come up and tell us your new projects?”
“Remember those five massive container ships we captured in New York harbor?” Everyone nodded as the Admiral started. “All the food is unloaded and all the full shipping containers are on dry land. It certainly is a large amount of food and we have 3,000 people packing necessities like rice, flour, and canned meats and vegetables. We divided the food into two-month cases for people and have been giving them out in New York, Boston, Philly, Trenton and Hartford for a month now, as well as a couple of other smaller cities for further distribution into smaller airfields since last week. These food rations have taken the strain away from our military MRE ration packs in these areas and will do so for several more weeks. Many of the containers are now empty and we are turning the 20-foot and 40-foot containers into single family accommodations in a new refugee camp we are building in the Burlington, New Jersey area.
“The new camp is on 40 acres just south of Trenton. Families walking down I-95 and I-295 are directed to the new camp which is starting to get new occupants daily. We have 300 livable containers completed and occupied to date. There are 100 new septic tanks going in every week and we are building separate shower and toilet facilities per 12 containers. Currently families with children or older pensioners are given a 20-foot container, one container per family. The 20-foot containers have bunks for four and the larger 40-foot, bunks for larger families of five to eight people. Insulation, a door and three windows are being added to the walls of each unit. A V-shaped metal roof is being built over the container for rain, snow and heat in the coming summer and lastly, basic army furniture is added—a table, chairs, carpeting, a gas oven and a simple kitchen without washing facilities. All washing up, cleaning and water-related needs are done in the central washrooms, much like a camp site. Finally we have placed a large military or civilian generator outside the wash room with a line going into each house for light, one generator per 12 houses and the washrooms. It’s very basic, but livable and some of the first houses are small, cozy and warm. We have 20,000 containers from the ships plus another 30,000 from the surrounding docks ready for modification. Modifications to the containers are being completed at the docks themselves and a couple of Navy Bases close by. The completed containers are moved without their new roofs by a dozen still-operational container trucks between dock areas and then are airlifted by two Jolly Green Giants to the camp. Here, the roof is added, the container mounted on a leveled piece of ground, connections made and then it’s ready for a family. Each container takes 48 hours from start to finish and we are lifting a dozen per day per helicopter. I have 500 engineers and ship-repair workmen working on the project. Are there any questions?”
“How many other empty shipping containers are there in the harbors further afield, and are they meant to be permanent camps or new towns?” asked Mike Mallory. “It sounds great, but surely all the containers available would never be enough for all the people migrating south.”
“Correct, Mike,” replied Admiral Rogers. “We are not getting thousands of families heading south on I-295 and I-95 as yet. I think most of them are heading your way, to your food points further west. That’s good until we have more containers to give to people. The 50,000 containers we have collected so far are for only 50,000 families, and that is just the start of the project. I believe that there could be up to a million empty shipping containers around the country and the next project is to start a camp, Mike, where you believe one is needed. Next is camp security. We have 100 soldiers on guard duty in towers around the camp. Unfortunately these guard towers make the camp look like an old World War II Concentration Camp and will be taken down once all troubles are ended. We believe that with a possible one million empty shipping containers around the country we—the Navy—plan to turn them into hundreds of camps in the safer, middle areas of the country, within a year. These camps could house 40 million people if needed and could be permanent camps for as long as the country needs them. OK?”
There were no more questions. “Back to the ships themselves: We have checked out two of the five massive container ships. All five ships went totally dead on us once we captured them. Somebody aboard each one must have had some sort of device to destroy certain electronics aboard each vessel. Luckily, and thanks to Lee Wang working with a couple of the Chinese Marine Engineers, we found supplies of the destroyed electronic parts, mostly fuses, control panels, resistors etc., in our Chinese stores. We then realized that the five other container ships we were told about by that Mo Wang fellow in January, could still be docked in Shanghai, still full of food and awaiting orders. We phoned Mo Wang in Panama. He was extremely helpful and immediately asked for asylum here in the U.S. I told him that I would speak to the President himself. I didn’t know if asylum is still a word in our new age. Lee Wang is not sure whether we should allow him in, but told me that Mo Wang is an excellent engineer and Lee thought he would be us
eful. Thinking about our Chinese Plan yesterday, I’m sure he could fit into our plans well, he knows China and hopefully where to source more products we need. He then telephoned the Zedong Electronics Harbor Command Center in Shanghai and was told the five ships were still waiting for orders to leave port. We told Mo Wang to get the ships to leave port and head towards Hawaii and anchor in safe waters off one of our islands and wait for further orders.”
“How is our old friend Mo Wang?” asked Carlos.
“Happy, and as I said ready to help us at any time,” replied the admiral. “Our two now fully-functional container ships will leave New York Harbor within forty-eight hours to head to ports in England and France where we can drive tons of equipment aboard the ships’ main decks and even into the empty holds, if the Army, Air Force and Marines need them in the future. There isn’t much else these types of ships can do and container ships are pretty useless at anything other than carrying containers, or bulk troops or military machinery. Their holds are full of container-packing attachments, so they are not the best holds to pack large amounts of equipment into, but better than nothing. The Air Force can divert the 747s during the seven days of troop hauls to a nearby airport to the ships and we do have operational trucks to carry equipment to the harbor. We are lifting about twenty useable civilian dump trucks from here aboard the ship to help in Europe. Both ships have their own davits to off-load and on-load up to twenty tons at a time if none of the harbor lifts work over there. The idea is to bring anything worthwhile back by ship, a slower route but two loads will save months of flights and should transport all that we have over there. There are large stockpiles of usable ammunition, housing sections, barracks, tents, and dozens of other important and mobile equipment we will need returned here at some stage. With regard to a future reserve or backup army, these ships will be pretty useless after that until trade is established around the world, so we could uplift thousands of men and machinery aboard one of these from Colombia and, say, transport them to New York, or Houston, or anywhere we want them. They can travel at a decent speed and be anywhere in the world within a month.
“A second team of engineers with an army of 10,000 Army soldiers and Marines will be underway with the third container ship in about a week’s time. General Patterson and I want the Panama Canal under our control and we are going to fight to get it back. Mo Wang told us that there were Chinese troops stationed there who were to stay there indefinitely, as far as he knew. He reckoned on a couple of thousand or even more. A destroyer will join the container ship as protection, and, Carlos, this is where your Colombian Light Frigates could help—we need to get control of the canal to pass shipping through. That is what the Navy is currently working on with the President and others.” General Patterson returned to the podium as Admiral Rogers got a good hand of applause.
“We are looking forward to getting the Panama Canal back under our control. It seems from what we have discussed at the two meetings yesterday at Andrews and this morning in North Carolina that there is a good possibility of more attacks on our country, and they will likely come from our southern border with Mexico. Who agrees?” Everyone in the room nodded their agreement. “Let us look at all the possibilities. We should discuss a Blue-Water Ocean Attack on our shores. Who could attack us in the next decade?”
For several minutes there was discussion and the results always came up the same. Based on information General Allen relayed back on his flight around the world before his death, there was little chance that any country or organization could mount such an attack, even though the U.S. Navy couldn’t actually do anything to defend itself. They then looked at an air or space attack.
General Patterson in charge of the U.S. Air Force agreed with everybody that no air attack was possible. The world’s only operational aircraft carrier they knew of was destroyed in the last attack in New York. No modern bombers could make the long journey to U.S. shores without having to refuel somewhere en route, or on the return. No country within a thousand miles had any aircraft that could bomb the hell out of an area of the United States and return to base, with the exception of the northern countries of South America, where Venezuela came up as the only possible air threat.
Everybody agreed that the U.S. controlled space with the four satellites operational for a short while. There were no possibilities that anybody had any hardware working up there.
Germ or biological warfare was next and after a short discussion and due to very little information, this was recorded as a possible future threat.
“Lastly,” began General Patterson, but the smell of cooking meat outside wafted through the air drawing everyone’s attention. Some hadn’t tasted freshly cooked meat for nearly a month now, living mostly on MRE rations. “OK, guys, Joe and his guys are going to end this meeting quicker than expected, but let us finish. Lastly, is there any way we can get electronics working again and then have them terminated for the second time?” The answer was simple. The enemy control had died in the attack, and their headquarters was in ruins in Nanjing, China. The only way to find out was to go over to China and make sure there was nobody left to push a button or something.
Carlos stated the obvious answer. “If we manufacture new parts here in the U.S. from scratch, there is no way that anybody can control them. We do not have the Internet anymore, so no more Internet viruses. I don’t believe the Internet will ever function again until we get our electronics up and running again in this country, which I believe could be as long as twenty to thirty years. The Internet and all we as humans played with last year is history. Facebook and Social Media, text messaging, Kindles, iPads, iPhones, AT&T and the other networks, and everything so important to electronic personal device-conscious people will be long forgotten. All these gadgets were controlled by a small group of companies, which also no longer exist. I’m sure Apple and others are already long forgotten out there in the real world. I don’t know what teenagers are going to do without texting a million times a day or checking Facebook, but I would assume they are going to learn survival skills they never thought important. We are going to produce new equipment from this year and hopefully will not use fossil fuels, or dirty our world with toxins like we did up to last New Year’s Eve.” Carlos got a sound applause of agreement. He was right on the button and put the new world they lived in into a greater perspective.
General Patterson agreed, adding that it was time for lunch and that the meeting would resume for a future discussion once everybody was ready. There wasn’t as much of a rush in the new world as there had been in the old. Rome wasn’t built in a day!
Joe’s sons were cooking up a storm outside. When the group walked out of the warm hangar into the colder air, Preston checked the large temperature gauge on the wall of the hangar and noticed that it was just over forty degrees. Both BBQs, converted from a 44-gallon metal drum cut in half, had used five or six large bags of charcoal.
“You have a pile of charcoal, I assume, Joe?” Preston and the President walked up to his neighbor hugging his new girlfriend Pam Wallace. At around forty-five Joe was at least fifteen years older than Pam. Joe was rugged and pretty good-looking, and had never been overweight, just a bear of a man.
“Remember our gas station deal last year?” he answered and Preston nodded. “Well, I knew that you used gas to grill, so I kept the stocks of charcoal for myself. We have used them several times this year; it takes a lot to feed my five boys and David. I think we counted around three hundred bags when I collected them and we are down to about 260 bags, enough for a year of good old-fashioned charcoal BBQ.”
“And the meat?” asked Preston.
“After getting back yesterday from Andrews I checked in my reefers and pulled out a hindquarter of beef, which wasn’t cut up. I was waiting for enough people to use the whole thing. I also thawed a dozen packs of chicken parts from the most recent reefers we found last week and several packs of pork chops. It all thawed out overnight in my sauna. I turned on my reserve generator and power
ed the sauna up to about a hundred degrees and by this morning everything was thawed and ready to cut. We have your new baker’s oven full of bread rolls and have a dozen commercial tins of good old-fashioned ex-President-named baked beans on your house stove. A meal fit for the current President and First Family,” Joe ended, smiling at the President.
“It sounds like it was certainly worth coming, Joe. I really appreciate the thought, and of course we are going to enjoy the food,” replied the President, eyeing the large BBQs full of meat. Three of Joe’s sons were turning the large portions of steak.
The lunch, eaten in the hangar, was excellent. The meat was tasty and the fresh bread rolls a luxury; even though there were three or four large rolls per person, not one was left over. Every person on the farm partook in the meal, nearly a hundred very hungry people. Even the guard duty was called in and told to take the time off. There wasn’t much to guard as no people had been seen around the farm for days, and the engineers and men about to begin work on the airfield hadn’t arrived. They had told Preston that they were getting sand, stone and equipment ready and that they would arrive in full force in a day or two.
Oliver and Puppy had never seen so many bones offered to them at one sitting and the engineers would be digging up steak bones for weeks, once they started on the airfield.
Three hours later the second phase of the meeting started, with people challenged to stay awake after the heavy meal.
“Thank you to all of you who gave us the best meal so far this year. I have looked around at your supplies, Preston, and think that you guys will be well stocked for several years to come!” joked General Patterson.
Everybody laughed as there were several mountains of supplies in the hangar. Nearly a third of the hangar was taken by hundreds of pallets stocked with every sort of food and snack possible; the beer section—over thirty full pallets—was impressive, and the four hundred odd cases of liquor were protected by the food pallets in the rear corner. Preston still needed to sort out what their future needs and this was what this part of the meeting was all about, plus he had to get the latest perishable stocks transferred into the hangar with the forklift borrowed last year and never returned.
