Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (19 page)

Both aircraft landed within minutes of each other and parked on the apron in front of the hangar. Preston noticed Maggie in Sally’s right seat. Carlos parked next to her and all three got out at the same time as Air Force personnel wheeled up the weird selection of stairs they had left over the last two months. One was far higher than both aircraft, but it did its job and Carlos used the lower dozen stairs to ground level. Preston was glad to have the extra personnel again as all the aircraft could be left to them to check and refuel.

“Told you we would beat you, lover boy,” laughed Sally as they walked up in flight gear to Preston. Maggie had a picture of bliss on her face; she must have really enjoyed the flight.

“Sally let me fly the Tweet,” she stated to Preston. “It’s wonderful. Carlos, I want one too.”

“You want one of those, so does Martie, so does Jennifer. Those old pieces of Air Force metal used to be called 6,000-pound dog whistles,” Carlos laughed. “Get me an F-4 and I’ll get all you girls one. Maybe you could be called the ‘Tweety Bird Dog Whistle Wing’ of the U.S. Air Force!” Carlos shook Preston’s hand, both men smiling at the joke and Carlos being whacked over the head with Sally’s hand for his cheek to the female sex.

Then a familiar voice came over the radio asking for permission to join the traffic into Strong Field.
“Preston, this is Mike in a Charlie 210, requesting permission to join short finals for Runway 18. Over.”

“Mike, this is Preston. You are number 1 for landing on Runway 18. Zero wind and the apron has room for you.” Preston watched as the 210 swung into line less than 800 yards south of the runway. As Mike Mallory turned in, his wheels came down, and Preston knew that the flaps and landing checks were being completed by a very experienced pilot. The 210 landed gently at the very end of the runway. Mike slowed rapidly to use only half of the runway and turned straight onto the apron.

Pam Wallace got out of the left side once the propeller came to a halt and Mike was in the right seat. From the quality of flying, Preston had thought it the other way around. Pam was flying and Mike was being her copilot. She was a darn good pilot, he realized.

Mike walked up and shook his hand while Pam walked up to the group of ladies and hugged all of them. His radio barked out noises again.

“Preston, this is Jennifer, Charlie-130 incoming from the north and requesting instructions for Runway 18. Over.”

“Temperature 35 degrees, zero wind, you are number 1 to land, zero others in pattern,” replied Preston. It was starting to get busy.

Jennifer came in five minutes later and everybody watched as she expertly brought the much larger aircraft in just as gently as Pam had in the much smaller Cessna 210.

“That’s my girl!” whooped Sally as the usual cloud of dust sprang up from the area in front of the asphalt. Preston reminded himself to get the engineers to extend this runway before they got started on the new tarmac. He could still squeeze out fifty feet of new blacktop from the open areas at each end before reaching his fence line. The second planned runway would run diagonally across the main field and would be 500 feet longer at each end than this extended one once finished. He would have 3,800 feet of runway, enough for the F-4s, he hoped.

There was no real rush. Everyone was dressed for winter on the calm and peaceful morning in North Carolina. The C-130 parked next to the old barn, Jennifer’s usual parking space, and a group dressed in military uniforms walked out of the back together with the Smart family. As is usual with humans, the men and women segregated into two groups to greet each other. In one group were Preston, Carlos, General Patterson, Admiral Martin Rogers, Colonel Mondale, Will and his son Ben, Army General Mark Ward from Fort Bragg, and Colonel Mickiewicz, the Base Commander at Camp Lejeune. In the other group, Jennifer, Maggie and her daughter Oprah went straight up to the group of women waiting to say hello.

Preston noticed that the group of women, with his girl Martie at a little over six feet—a good four inches taller than the rest of them—was an extremely beautiful lot. The girls were all within a few years of age of each other, in their twenties and at the prime of life. Each one had a man in the crowd gathered here and each one was a pilot.

“They need their own Wing,” he stated to Carlos still standing next to him once they had shaken hands with the new arrivals.

“As I said, Preston,” Carlos laughed, “the ‘Tweety Bird Dog Whistle Wing’ of the United States Air Force.” The men hearing this joke for the first time laughed with Preston and the group of women became silent. Ugly looks assailed the male group several feet away.

“Funny you said that, Carlos,” stated General Patterson. “You won’t believe what we found at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas a day or two ago.”

“Super Tweets?” Carlos and Preston asked together.

“Yep,” replied General Patterson, “six of them, single-seaters though, otherwise they are close copies of the Colombian A-37B you brought back with you. All will be fully operational within a week.”

“Do they have the in-flight refueling points?” asked Carlos.

“As I said, they are close copies so yes, they do, which gives them a valuable combat range for us. They are the AT-37E/STOL version, like yours with the short take-off and landing configurations added. Since they are single-seat models they have more fuel weight for their more powerful engines. Carlos, the J-85-GE-17A model’s a little more powerful than your Colombian version. They are important to us as they can cross the U.S. with in-flight refueling nonstop in ten hours. They are having their directional equipment and modern radar systems exchanged for older ones, which we had kept at McConnell in storage. They are already equipped with a Minigun each. I also asked the armory to look in the old Vietnam-era warehouses at McConnell late last night as I know they have, or had a dozen or more Miniguns taken out of older aircraft as they had been dismantled there over the last couple of decades. We have dismantled many aircraft at McConnell over the years, and of course the Super Tweets were made just a couple of city blocks away at Cessna headquarters in Wichita. I also liked the Tweets and flew them often. They did a great job in Vietnam, but never got any credit for their achievements. General Allen, I believe, kept them alive and in one piece as he enjoyed flying one whenever he visited Kansas.”

“So as the favor you said you owed me, General,” continued Carlos, “could you add another request from me and form the ‘Tweety Bird Dog Whistle Wing’ for the six lady pilots over there? Since they are single-seat, we could use all six aircraft for the girls and the Air Force can get them all prettied out with decals in girly-pink and stuff with say the cartoon, Tweety Bird on the side and the grand lady’s bulldog, I can’t remember his name, but the bulldog could be blowing a dog whistle.”

“Hector,” added Admiral Rogers smiling at the idea.

“Just like the girl pilots in the James Bond film
Gold Finger
,” added Preston.

“Turn those aircraft into pretty pink-decaled jets for our girls and you won’t owe me anything else, General,” suggested Carlos to General Patterson, smiling a sweet smile. “Get the Tweety Bird cartoon cat,
Sylvester
decaled on my Colombian one and I will be Wing Commander and work for you for free forever.

“And the seven Gunships, and arming the whole Colombian Air Force for you? What about those favors already asked by you and your extended family?” replied the general, trying to look serious.

“Preston, this is Buck One,”
stated Buck’s voice over Preston’s radio.
“We are several minutes out and request landing instructions. Over.”

“Thirty five degrees, zero wind and there is a space for
Baby Huey
in front of the hangar. We are all out on the apron waiting for you. Over.”

“Roger that,”
replied Buck.

Baby Huey
came in from the north and landed in the space provided. Once the rotor had stopped, the President’s kids jumped out first and rushed over to the Smart kids, now together and waiting for their friends. The President helped his wife out. There were no Secret Service men to be seen, just two armed Air Force soldiers. Buck and Barbara got out of the pilot doors and everyone went over to greet the newcomers.

“Now our six Tweety Pie pilots are together,” stated Carlos to the group of men walking over. “Let’s keep this a secret for now, guys. It will be a rush to see them get their aircraft delivered here. We will need a scheduled day to get everybody here. Air Force pilots from McConnell can fly the newly-painted aircraft in. The girls can use my dual-seat A-37 for training. What do you think, General?”

He nodded. “It will be fun and a new Wing of aircraft would be a good and powerful addition to the current tiny United States Air Force.”

“Joe, David, this is Preston. Your lady friends Pam and Jennifer have arrived and you guys are late. Over,” he stated into his handheld after changing to Joe’s CB radio frequency.

“David and I are coming through your front gate,”
replied Joe.
“We are in the Saracen and my boys are bringing in two tractor-trailers to help feed the ladies and all those aircraft I’ve heard coming in. Tell Buck he nearly blew off the roof of my shed with his rotors, he was so low.”

Meeting at Preston’s Airfield – March

Initial greetings over, the crowd regrouped in the hangar for the meeting. Preston did not really know why it was being held, but was glad to have visitors using his airfield again; it had been getting pretty quiet with no visitors.

Preston began, “Good morning, everyone, it seems that Phase Two of our meetings is here at the farm this week. General Patterson ordered this meeting and he can tell you why. My neighbor Joe and family, including friend David, have brought us over some “road kill” they found on the highways over the last week. I hope it’s not real “road kill” so it won’t destroy our flying abilities. Joe, come up here and tell us what you have, and why you brought over your two big BBQs.”

“Hi, y’all. Martie usually insults me when I bring stuff over and this time my friend Preston does it to me. If you can’t trust your neighbors who can you trust?” stated a smiling Joe to much laughter. “Best quality ‘Highway Road Kill’ is quickly running out on the highways, neighbor Preston, and thanks to your trusty neighbors and friends, we can all eat well for another several months. The highways are pretty orderly and we haven’t seen much violence. People are still polite, standing in line and helping each other at dozens of damaged tractor-trailers scattered everywhere. Unfortunately, I think the worst is yet to come as the supplies out there dwindle down. We have been out for several trips now and so far we have brought back two working Bobcats…”

“Those sound delicious!” interrupted Martie, getting in her five cents of insults.

“Depends how hungry you are, young lady,” Joe replied straight faced. “Those Bobcats will sure come in handy at my farm and you can come over and eat them any time you want!” Joe waited for the laughter to die down. “We also found two full and still frozen reefers of meat, and about forty tons of pre-packed pork and chicken. We thought both trailers had the same contents, but one was pork and one was chicken. I brought one of the reefers here, mixed up the meat into half pork and half chicken and will leave it with you. You still have about three tons of beef, so that should fit in nicely. Like the other reefer outside, this one runs on diesel and the tank needs to be checked every couple of days. We collected one and a half trailer loads of beer; one was a crashed Budweiser truck and the other a Yuengling tractor-trailer which had absolutely no damage, other than it had careened off the highway and was hidden in a forest of trees. Unbelievably, the whole rig, with no driver inside, missed every tree in the forest! The Yuengling trailer is a pretty-colored trailer; you can have the beer, Preston, but I want the trailer. We’ll off-load it sometime in the future. The trailer was totally untouched since it had been in the forest and is three quarters full. I don’t like Yuengling as much as a good Bud, so I will pack the beer in one of my many new trailers and bring it over here. It’s not a reefer, but it is insulated against freezing conditions. I suggest you keep it here in the hangar.” Preston nodded, winking at his friend to thank him.

“How did you know that I’m partial to a Yuengling or two now and again, Joe?” asked the President.

“I didn’t know that, Mr. President, but I will keep it in mind on my highway travels,” replied Joe. “To continue, while driving through a small town somewhere north of Smithfield we found an ABC delivery truck behind an ABC store which had high fences and heavily chained locks. Anyway the truck was dead, but once we broke the chains to get in, the back was full of bottles of booze. There are one hundred and forty boxes of fancy liquor I will load into the trailer with your Yuengling beer, Preston. I will keep the bourbon, moonshine and brandy; you guys can have the fancy Scotch and the other stuff.”

“Is that maybe stealing?” asked Admiral Rogers. “It was in a secure compound, wasn’t it?”

“I would agree with you, Admiral, except that the ABC store itself was empty, semi-burned, still had smoke coming out of it and was totally trashed. People, mostly grownup kids, scattered when we arrived and they would have either torched the truck or broken it open as we did. Nobody had climbed the prison-style fence into the secure rear delivery area by the time we arrived, or maybe they just thought nobody in their right mind would leave a truck full of liquor outside. Anyway, after this lot is finished we may all have to become teetotalers because there won’t be anything left to drink in the beer and liquor department. We also hitched up two Walmart trailers, one nearly empty and one totally full. The full one was on a desolate part of Highway 264 and miles from any town. It was also on an off-ramp and we nearly missed it if it hadn’t been for David’s good eyesight. The trailer is full of supermarket goods, flour, crackers, canned foods and other items Walmart stocks. The other one contained much the same. Tomorrow we will split up the Walmart goods and will deliver a shopping basket to your door, including cans of dog and cat food, Ms. Martie Roebels,” stated Joe sarcastically and bowing to her.