Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (25 page)

“There is a second, smaller working freezer in the laundry room,” she stated to Mo. “It still works, but is currently empty. We could use that to store more fish.”

The slab he asked to be cut into steaks and it weighed in at forty pounds by the time it was cut and bagged. There was a fresh octopus also on the market table. It was quite large and steamed octopus was Mo’s favorite meal. He purchased the octopus and again asked it to be cut up by the fisherman into edible portions. The bill came to close to $500 and Mo received a few local notes in change and the four of them, plus the extremely happy fisherman, carried the more than a dozen large shopping bags to the rear door of the minivan.

Next stop was the produce market. Here they bought a large variety of vegetables and salads. The bill was far less and Pedro, the driver paid for it in local currency since Mo needed to exchange money. The third stop was a bank which was open; here Mo exchanged a hundred dollar bill into local currency, paid the driver what he was owed and the final stop was the only supermarket in town.

The shelves were mostly empty. There were several large twenty pound bags of rice, which Mo packed into the first shopping trolley. He then packed in the several cuts of beef and pork that remained, several commercial tins of beans, tomatoes and anything else which looked edible and paid for the four trolleys at checkout. All the beer and wine was gone and Pedro said that there was another smaller store along the shore road which still might have stocks on their shelves.

It took an hour to get back to the villa, unpack everything, and then Mo and Pedro by themselves headed out to check on all the stores on the island. Pedro told him that the whole coast road was about 70 miles long and there were three or four stops where they could find a store.

“Are there any guns to purchase on the island?’ Mo asked the driver going down the dip past the Villa and into new territory.

“No guns legal on island,” Pedro replied in his broken English. “Farmers have shotguns sometimes for protection of farm animals, but I heard that the big boat has guns on it.”

Mo asked which boat he was talking about and found out that it was the yacht moored at the villa. It sounded like the villa owner was in a business authorities might want to question, pretty normal in China. He asked if there was a shotgun he could buy and Pedro took him to a farm several miles down the road. They drove off the tarred road on a dirt strip for a mile and came to an old farmhouse with several children on the porch looking at them.

“My father’s house, our family house,” Pedro told Mo. An introduction was made and Pedro told the older man who came out to meet them, in Spanish, what Mo wanted. He was guided back into the house to a back office and was shown three pretty new shotguns and an old American hand gun, a .45 caliber World War II piece in perfect condition.

“Like you, Senor Mo, we need money to buy fish, so my father is happy to sell a shotgun to you. He has three boxes of shotgun ammunition and you can have it all for two hundred dollars.”

“How much is the pistol?” Mo asked. The older man did not seem to want to be relieved of his pride and joy, but relented and brought out a dozen boxes of .45 caliber Remington ammo, years old and looked Mo straight in the face. He stated something in Spanish to his son and his son translated $500 to Mo including everything that was on the old desk. Mo paid the man six one-hundred-dollar bills understanding that the poor man, several years older than he, was losing something of value to him. He had also realized that this amount of money would mean a lot more to this family than to him.

The old man bowed and thanked Mo Wang for his generosity and Pedro and Mo gathered up the two weapons, put the ammo in three plastic bags and left the villa.

For three hours they searched for more provisions, Mo thinking the whole afternoon about the yacht at the villa’s pier. Slowly a plan was coming to him.

They filled the minivan mostly in West End, the second largest town on the island, as well as several other out of the way locations, with everything they could find which would have a decent shelf life, Mo paid out another thousand dollars and the overloaded minivan slowly made its way back to the villa. This time all five girls helped unload the provisions and Mo kept the weapons out of sight.

Once they were finished he paid Pedro with the last hundred-dollar bill in his wallet, showed him the empty wallet and explained to the happy driver that his money was now spent, that he wasn’t worth robbing in the future, and closed the gates behind the departing vehicle. He never trusted anybody who knew he had money.

Yuma

March brought slightly warmer weather for the first half of the month. The day after the two-day meeting at Preston Airfield, Oliver and Puppy made their usual rounds of the runway before dawn. Hundreds of new smells from many humans they didn’t know penetrated the areas where aircraft had stood the day before. The entire airfield was empty of aircraft, except for Sally’s little two-seat jet with its unusual camouflage design, looking slightly lonely. All the other visitors including Carlos had headed off, mostly north to Andrews and McGuire to resume their jobs.

The hangar was closed down tight to keep out the cold wind from the north which was keeping temperatures to a degree or two over freezing. To the dogs it didn’t matter as they sniffed everything until the area was checked and analyzed.

Preston, his head still a little thick from two nights of partying, worked himself awake and headed to the kitchen to make coffee.

Over breakfast an hour later, Martie and Preston, joined by Maggie and Sally from the hangar, discussed what they wanted to do. Will and the Smart kids had already hitched a ride home with the Edwards Base Commander in a C-130 loaded with three new John Deere lawn tractors for the kids to turn into generators, and a Colombian baking oven for bakery needs on the base.

“Since our trusty Sergeant Perry has returned for the umpteenth time and is scheduled to stay for at least another week, Martie, I think we should join Sally and Maggie and fly into Yuma early tomorrow and see some different countryside for a change. What do you think?” asked Preston.

“Yippee!” responded Martie. “Then we can fly north and visit my father and Grandpa at the wine farm.

“Where are you planning to refuel?” Preston asked Sally.

“First, McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas,” answered Sally factually. “I can just make it if my tanks are full and if the extra drop tanks are also completely full, and if Maggie and I don’t breathe too hard, and if we have no head wind,” she somewhat sarcastically replied. “I also want the Super Tweet serviced and totally checked over from tip to tail by U.S. Air Force personnel before I feel completely safe to fly this Colombian Air Force jet any further; that will take about seven hours. Then we can head over to Hill Air Force Base, which is the same distance. We could stay the night with Carlos in Salt Lake City and then head straight down into Yuma the next morning, the shortest stretch. What about you, Little Beth? Are you able to fly on these longer flights?” asked Sally.

“It’s too far for me. I’m happy to stay with Sergeant Perry, Oliver and Puppy,” Little Beth explained seriously. “Martie and I have already spoken about long flights, and Uncle Carlos or Uncle Buck can take me in their bigger planes when they go. Uncle Buck’s big plane has a toilet I can use.”

“Little Beth is just as happy here and her best friend is Sergeant Perry,” added Martie. “They spend a lot of time together. The poor man had a daughter Beth’s age, until she and her mother died in a car crash in 2009.”

“He says that I’m as nice as his real daughter was, and he misses her a lot,” Little Beth added seriously. “He needs me and Puppy to look after him.”

Early the next morning, March 7th, as the two dogs returned and declared the airfield safe, the hangar door rolled open. Outside, Sally and Maggie pre-inspected their A-37 Super Tweet for flight. Maggie was quickly learning the hundreds of checks required to get a jet airborne, far more than a propeller aircraft. Also she would be flying most of the way in the right-side seat. This long trip would certainly add to her instruction time and who better than one of her best friends to be instructor? Martie was totally jealous.

The plan was to adopt a low cruise speed across the country of 300 knots, or about 325 miles an hour, to conserve fuel, which would be a medium to high cruise speed for the Mustangs. The Mustangs, also equipped with permanent drop fuel tanks under the wings, had a third further reach than the jet, and could easily make McConnell Air Force Base and then Hill in Salt Lake City. Each leg would take four hours and Sally would have about a twenty-minute fuel reserve in her tanks.

It was windier than the previous days. Their tanks filled to capacity, the two Mustangs warmed up their engines, headed to the northern end of the airfield and took off to the south, directly over a grey and windswept Jordan Lake, white caps breaking the surface of the water below them.

Sally and Maggie still had several checks to complete before leaving North Carolina and caught up with the Mustangs cruising at 25,000 feet an hour later.

All three aircraft were on autopilot. They chatted over the airways until somebody, usually a C-130 or a food-carrying FedEx Cargomaster, heard them and called to give their positions, altitude and direction, usual for aircraft without ground traffic control.

Over Tennessee they communicated with six aircraft heading into different areas with food or troops, mostly out of McGuire. Sally knew a couple of the pilots and well wishes were sent. Other than that, the weather was clear at their altitude. Full cloud cover was far below them. The sun, behind them, heated up the backs of their helmets.

“Do you think we have a head wind, Sally?” asked Preston.

“Maggie’s doing a great job, checking the gauges,”
replied Sally.
“She is in her element and I don’t think she will allow me to decrease altitude for McConnell. The wind from the south has gone. It looks like we have something coming in from the west, but my directional beacons from Edwards and Hill are showing that we are not being pushed north or south. If we have a headwind, I think it’s not a very strong one yet. I’ll be able to get hold of traffic control at McConnell in about thirty minutes and get a wind speed from them.”

Thirty minutes later and halfway across Missouri, Sally gave the radio frequencies for McConnell Air Force Base to Martie and Preston, and they each reset one of their two radio dials to the new frequency.

“McConnell, Power Key, do you read? Over.”

“Power Key, McConnell. Over.”

“Power key, Alfa Charlie 37, incoming from the East with two friends in Pa Pa 51s, approximately 500 miles out from November Charlie (North Carolina) and heading for you. Need wind direction and temperature. Over.”

“McConnell, wind speed from the west three knots, temperature 31 degrees, no other aircraft in our area and will have you on radar as you enter our state. Over.”

“Roger that. Out,
” replied Sally and switched over to the second radio on the first frequency to talk to the other two aircraft.

The ground was clear of snow as they came in from the northeast, Sally going in first. A jeep appeared and showed them where to park and in a line; they allowed the engines to come to a halt and the cold, icy air hit them as they opened their canopies.

Sally’s aircraft was towed into a hangar and two small fuel tankers arrived to refuel the Mustangs before the pilots had even dropped to the ground.

The base commander met them. They had met the colonel three days earlier at the meeting at Andrews and he seemed to be a good friend of Sally’s, giving her a big hug. “My old flight trainer when I was training in C-130s,” she commented by way of introduction, as the colonel, Preston and Martie shook hands.

They enjoyed a good lunch and then toured the gigantic warehouses where forklifts moved pallets of food into sections ready for the next delivery aircraft to arrive. There were at least a hundred men working and readying the food cases for delivery. Preston noticed tent bags and small generators in the loads and, looking around, he estimated there were a couple of weeks’ worth of rations left, if the ready loads were all today’s loads.

Finally, with three hours of daylight left, they took off for the four and one-half hour flight into Hill Air Force Base. This flight would be shorter by twenty minutes as they would be flying much higher and using oxygen masks at 28,000 feet, and at this higher altitude, no headwind was expected. The cold front had passed.

Just as the sun had warmed them hours earlier, it grew colder and colder in the cockpits as the evening shadows caught up with them. This time they could feel the chilly fingers of night on the backs of their helmets.

The view of the Rockies, stretching out hundreds of miles in every direction, was breathtaking at this height. The control tower at Denver International was operational as they flew into Colorado and with the reduced equipment the tower had operating, they heard reports from a few other C-130 pilots about calmer, cleaner air above 30,000 feet. The three aircraft had used oxygen masks throughout the flight and as the chill began to envelope them from outside they turned the internal heaters up and climbed even higher.

Hill was experiencing a little snow as they came in from the east. It was getting dark and visibility was down to a couple of miles. Sally went in first, and Martie and Preston spaced themselves out behind her. Keeping Sally on their radar screens, they stayed a mile behind each other.

The base runway lights could be seen at a thousand feet above ground as they flew through low clouds. They all landed as softly as possible so as not to skid, especially the two Mustangs; being rear-wheel tail draggers, they could easily start slipping and sliding on an icy surface. The ground was white except for the runway which had just been cleaned and they were directed to park in front of a large hangar where tractors were waiting to wheel them in backwards.