by T I WADE
The Chinese electricians had always expected to have a direct HD-feed in from headquarters, but now they relied on the lesser quality equipment aboard the naval ships by pointing their dishes at the nearest satellite location. They had also lost control of the three satellites. Lee Wang and Carlos now controlled them after cracking the communication codes imbedded in them.
Once the main communication from the Headquarters buildings had been terminated as a result of General Allen’s bombardment, the three-satellite system in space had asked for continued control directions. And, after two days of work, Carlos and Lee had finally cracked the codes to take over control of the satellites.
New York Harbor hadn’t been repaired yet. The 200 engineers were still working on getting the airports ready, but there was a growing operation to the south. Dozens of old bulldozers from all the naval bases between Norfolk, Virginia and New York were beginning to clear the scrap metal of broken trucks and cars off I-95.
General Allen had met with Vice Admiral Rogers twice since the beginning of the year, and just before the general’s trip around the world. The vice admiral, a little embarrassed about how few ships the U.S. Navy could get operational, had offered up his Navy Seals and any naval motorized vehicles he could get mobile. The Norfolk Naval Station started work immediately, and had already cleared 20 miles of the northbound strip of I-95 highway beginning on the southern Virginia border. He had also communicated with several of the Naval bases further north, and a dozen northbound clearance operations started on the 8th day of the year to open the vehicle supply route from the south.
This was going to help the convoys like Colonel Grady, now leaving Fort Bragg and stopping next in Apex, North Carolina. Preston was in for a shock—he had a couple of visitors coming to visit.
*****
The President of the United States was helping out as much as he was allowed to by his bodyguards in the business of distributing food in the neighboring states. The only aircraft he was allowed to catch a ride in was Lady Dandy, currently on her third flight into a small town of 2,000 people just across the North Carolina border in Tennessee.
All six of the aircraft had worked hard for the last two days—Lady Dandy, Sally’s Pilatus, the FedEx Cargomaster, the 210, and the two Cessna 172s—and it was on the evening of the ninth day when everybody met up again at Preston’s airport.
They all flew in just before dusk after each completing three flights out of Pope and Seymour Johnson. That day alone, over 2,900 more people had been delivered a two-week supply of food, and it was time for a cold Yuengling for everybody. Cold brown bottles were being popped everywhere. Even the president had a couple in his hand, one for him and one for his tired wife, when Preston got a radio call from the guard at his gate. A Colonel Grady from Alabama was there at the gate wanting to visit, and hundreds of military vehicles were waiting in a line for miles down the road behind him.
“Let him in,” replied Preston. “Nobody is flying in tonight. I’ll disconnect the lights. Tell them to drive in and park next to each other along the length of the runway. It will be easy for them to get out in the morning.”
One-by-one, the large trucks towing the howitzers drove in and were directed by Air Force soldiers. They drove along the runway towards the south end, turned in, and parked across the width of the tarmac.
It took 30 minutes, but finally the whole length of the 2,700 foot runway was full of hundreds of vehicles facing the house and hangar. It was a powerful sight in the setting sun.
The aircraft in the hangar were being pulled outside with the tractor so that as many of the 800 plus men who had arrived could sleep on their field mattresses on the cement in the warmer building. It wasn’t summer, or even spring yet! The doors had been opened several times that day, but 50 degrees was better than the 30-degree temperature outside, the beer was reasonably cold, and the hangar would soon heat up with all the bodies arriving.
The three dozen porta-potties were still at the airfield and would now come in handy. They were in a line behind the old red barn, now full to the brim with ammo and other military supplies ready for any more attacks. Many of the Air Force troops had already shipped out with the C-130s to several locations, and there was now only the minimum guard of 30 soldiers and Captain Pierce protecting the farm.
Colonel Grady came over to shake Preston’s hand and got the shock of his life when the U.S. President and his whole family came out of the hangar to wonder at the massive amount of Army vehicles, which had just arrived.
“Is he…… the real…..?” Colonel Grady asked, his hand frozen in Preston’s and his mouth open as the president walked up to the growing group of men as if he owned the place.
“Attention!” shouted the colonel, and every single man who was moving stood to attention and saluted in the direction of the president.
“At ease, gentlemen,” the president shouted, smiling as he and the First Family came over to greet the colonel. “It’s good to see that the U.S. Army still has some fire power,” the president said to the colonel, shaking his hand.
“It’s not much yet, Mr. President, sir, but we are growing in size with every army barracks we visit. Your official letter sure helps the commanders get their act together,” he drawled in his very southern accent. “This is just the vanguard of our total forces. I didn’t want to wait for the colonel at Bragg. He’s 24 hours behind us and I left 400 men to help him prepare for travel. He has the same amount of these older troop carriers we have here. We have also cleared the road up to here from Fayetteville, and he’ll catch up with us once he gets on I-95.”
“Good news, Colonel,” said Preston. “The Navy had dozens of bulldozers on the northbound side of I-95 and they are clearing a lot of highway miles per day. You are going to have to use your bulldozers to clear up to the North Carolina-Virginia border and then it should be plain driving from there. They have squads all the way north to New York. Over a dozen naval stations are clearing a path for you.”
“That will help us get there a little quicker. I thought the Navy used boats, not bulldozers,” laughed the colonel. “Preston, we all have MREs with us and the men can sleep next to the vehicles tonight.”
“How many do you have here tonight, Colonel?” Preston asked.
“Just over 800 men,” Colonel Grady replied.
“If you set up your guard positions,” continued Preston, “I’m sure most of the men can sleep in the warmer hangar tonight. There should be enough room if they bed down in lines and the best part is that we have enough beer to go around—at least two beers per man, as long as you allow them to have a couple of drinks, Colonel.”
“I’m sure the men will appreciate that, Preston, Mr. President, but we don’t want to take all your stocks,” Colonel Grady replied.
“We already had enough here and then the Air Force brought in a pallet of beers. Actually, you guys are drinking on the hospitality of the U.S. Air Force tonight, Colonel,” replied Preston.
“Well, if that’s the case, I’m sure my men could easily stomach a few Air Force beers.”
“What do we have here, Colonel Grady?” the president asked, looking over the long line of vehicles and still holding his first beer in his hand.
“Oh yes! Mr. President let me give you a tour. Let us walk.”
The colonel ordered the men to form up and continued talking to the president while his soldiers got into formation in front of their vehicles. “Preston, we have grown since you and I first met in Alabama two days ago. This group is the vanguard, or the lead group. You told me to get up there as fast as possible and that’s why we are here. We now have 22 155mm howitzers and 28 105mm howitzers, all pulled by those trucks at the southern end of the runway.” The colonel showed the walking group the first 50 large trucks with the large howitzers towed behind them. They had now been joined by everybody on the farm, including Joe and David, who had heard the racket.
Introductions were again made, and the colonel continued walking down the long
line with men in formation saluting the president as he came up to each group of men. The First Family was excited to meet as many of the troops as they could, and Preston was handed the president’s beer so that he could give a return salute to the troops.
“Colonel Smith at Bragg is getting another six 155mm howitzers behind six of his trucks—all museum pieces and as bad as mine— and he has two old M-103 heavy tanks still on their original tractor trailers. They are beauties, Mr. President. They have the bigger 120mm guns with armor-piercing projectiles. Seventy of their projectiles are armor-piercing, and he also has two operational older M1 Abrams with the smaller 105mm guns. Unfortunately, their tractor trailers don’t work and the Abrams are going to have to get up there under their own steam. So far, we have a total of 189 troop carriers, nine fuel tankers, and 15 old jeeps, of which eight are Mutts. The Mutts have TOW missiles, anti-tank and armor penetration to about five or more inches with ‘normal’ armor. ‘Hardened armor’ is another matter, but the TOWs don’t mind if they hit tanks or ships— they will just go where they are aimed. Then we have 27 old trucks, of which several used to be garbage trucks and are now carrying ammunition. Then we have 15 ammunition-filled trucks pulling large 88mm mortars, one rocket launcher vehicle (post Vietnam-war), and a hospital tractor trailer.
“That’s 230 trucks standing in front of you, and another 120 getting mobile. There are another 2,200 men ready to move in from Fort Bragg, but they are still searching for enough vehicles to transport them. The Fort Bragg commander is filling another five 10-ton dump trucks with all types of guns, ammo, mortars, flares, and all sorts of nasty surprises for anybody wanting to attack us. He has another couple of fuel tankers he will need refueling bases along I-95 every 100 highway miles or so. Mr. President, we have built a small army, and we have enough firepower to sink anything that gets within three miles of the U.S. shoreline.”
“I believe you, Colonel,” laughed the president, impressed at the 30-year old vintage trucks with the extremely modern-looking soldiers standing in front of them. The picture just didn’t look right, but at this stage who cared.
The night grew cold, but the hangar was warm. Much of the snacks from Preston’s large stocks had already been handed out to the soldiers—chocolate bars, packs of jerky, several bags of peanuts and potato chips, as well as 200 cases of all types of beer, much from the gas station’s supplies Joe had bought. A line was formed, and each soldier received three cold beers each, enough to have a party.
*****
Mo Wang was still baffled as to why the plan was not going according to what the Politburo had expected. The chairman, he had realized, had been blinded by his own sense of power and that he could not handle a disruption in his power breakdown. Mo was quite shocked that the man who had designed this master plan could not accept that things could, or would go wrong. Mo knew little about the unwinding of the master plan, but he tried to work out the possibilities.
First, the termination squads in North Carolina disappeared. The same little airport which seemed to be in the middle of the turmoil was attacked for the second time, and 200 of his best troops suddenly stopped communicating with their satellite phones. Then, this voice is heard, this voice of Lee Wang who says he is Bo Lee Tang from the past, which leads him into a false sense of security. Then the Headquarters Building in Nanjing is bombed, with aircraft coming out of nowhere.
Mo thought about the situation for a long time, but could not piece the little airport in North Carolina together with the bombing in Nanjing. There was no way a little airplane out of a little airport in America could suddenly fly across the world and accurately bomb a building several thousand miles away, with no method of communication and no directional satellites to lead it precisely into an attack. Then it hit him hard!
“Somehow they were using Zedong Electronics’ satellite system to direct some special type of aircraft across the planet. That’s why nobody speaks to me,” he suddenly realized. “They are using code to speak on our captured satellite phones to each other. Lee Wang pops up from nowhere, the squad sent in has not terminated him, and he joined forces with somebody who can fly aircraft across the world.” It was the only explanation Mo Wang could come up with.
“Somehow how they have cut into the continuous feed coming from the three satellites ….” and then the big one hit him. “If they are seeing everything the satellites can see, they could be tracking our ships and our attack force. They know we are coming and they will be ready for us with a far bigger force than we expect!”
For the rest of the day and well into the night on the second full day aboard the aircraft carrier he pondered the situation and what he could do about it. He slowly pieced together parts of what had actually happened, in the same way Carlos and Lee Wang had done days earlier. Mo managed to get through to 15 of the termination squads, now in convoy and still on their way across America from the West Coast. He warned them about a possible surprise attack against them, and that they should be careful when they entered New York. He wanted them to get into position and survey the airports, reporting back to him what they found at the three airports, and then check out the harbor.
It was now dawn on the third day aboard the aircraft carrier, and the convoy was in the middle of the Pacific—1,000 miles from China and halfway to reaching the Panama Canal where resupply ships were waiting to refuel and restock the ships and men on board. From there, they would set sail for the final part of the journey into New York Harbor, now only 11 days away. Something had to be done, and he bravely went up on deck as the sun climbed into the empty horizon. There was nothing visible apart from the ships around them sailing at 18 knots, and he knew what he had to do.
The sun was fully over the horizon 20 minutes later when he went in search of the chairman’s rooms. He had wanted to view the sun rise, an hour ahead of Shanghai, since it could be his last.
He knocked and was surprised to find the chairman dressed and having a breakfast of tea, noodles, and strips of fried pork.
“Come in, Wang, I’ll get some breakfast and tea ordered for you,” the chairman stated when he saw who was at the door. “It looks like you have been up all night.”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman. I have been trying to work out what has happened around the world in the last couple of days,” Wang replied bowing and entering the large set of rooms behind the portly chairman.
“Well, I suppose I’d better hear your results of a full night of thinking,” the chairman replied, showing Wang a chair at the table and ordering his man-servant to get breakfast for his guest. “It is so nice to get up one hour earlier, thinking that one is refreshed and fully awake while others in Shanghai are still asleep or trying to get the drowsiness out of their systems.”
Over breakfast, Mo Wang told the chairman his worst fears, everything he believed could have happened in America— Lee Wang, the satellite phones, the satellites they had lost control of, which he believed were now controlled by the Americans. He had been speaking for 20 minutes when the chairman’s own satellite phone rang. He picked it up off the dining table and answered it.
He listened for several seconds and then Wang saw the chairman’s face go red as he replied angrily into the phone. “What do you mean that I should have a nice flight into Beijing, Colonel Wee? Have you lost your marbles or something? I’m not at Pudong Airport. I’m here on our aircraft carrier 1,000 miles away from Shanghai. What do you mean that a man like me is dressed and entering an aircraft! That’s not me! That’s an imposter! Send out the guard and stop any aircraft from taking off. Go upstairs to the control tower and find out who the men are that spoke to the traffic controllers! Do it now, Colonel Wee, or you will be reverted to a private, you stupid man!” he shouted into the phone. “Somebody is trying to steal our aircraft in Shanghai,” the chairman stated to Wang. “Do you hear that? Imbeciles are trying to steal our troop aircraft!”
“It must be the same Americans who have been causing our problems,” answered Mo Wang. “I hav
e all the termination squads heading for New York to find out the truth at the Kennedy Airport, what happened there, and what happened to our passenger aircraft that supposedly went down with engine failure.”
“You and those damn Americans!” replied the chairman angrily. “Those stupid Americans are not worth worrying about. They have always been the most stupid people on this planet and I promise you, Comrade Wang, they are not clever enough to beat an attack from me, which has been thirty years in the making. They couldn’t even win their wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, or Afghanistan, and how many more! They have actually never won a war, unless you consider their Civil War a war. Wang, I’m sick of your stories about Americans. America is the most useless nation I have ever known! They always push their beliefs and views into every other country’s daily life and blend reality with their Hollywood-film rubbish. America, its politics, and its people are nothing more than a massive wave of insecurity, totally destroying themselves with fake beliefs and their fake lives of plenty. I’m doing the survivors of America a favor by taking them over. First, I’m going to turn every American into a hard working slave—a slave who will wish for nothing more than to have died when we turned out their lights.”
The chairman stopped. He was trying to catch his breath. His anger was getting away from him and he sat down and wiped his brow. “Nothing in my whole life has ever gone wrong. Why would it go wrong now?” he thought.
“I bet that when Colonel Wee returns, he will tell me who the real antagonists against Zedong Electronics are and that they are going to pay for their atrocities against me and my powerful new order. Believe me, Comrade Wang, they are going to pay.”
