Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (49 page)

It was perfect, he said, small and cozy, just like he and the First Lady had wanted. There were three bedrooms, the master with an en-suite and two large bedrooms for the girls with a shared bathroom between their rooms. The open-plan lounge had a stone fireplace with log walls, the dining area and kitchen were simple but effective. He was pleased to find no bodyguard quarters in the house itself, something he had asked for. The only other room was a large office from where he could run the country.

The Officers’ Mess was next door and General Patterson and the two admirals would be staying there with one or two Air Force pilots and the Marine lieutenant.

The new larger building would house any bodyguards the President felt he needed in the future. Here, Mo and Lee Wang and family were invited to stay with Marie, Beatrice and the daughters. There was ample room and would be pretty empty with only a dozen people staying for the party.

Buck and Barbara had already picked out their corner room overlooking the airfield in the front of the building while Michael Roebels, Maggie and Will decided that the rear, forest views were more to their liking. The teenagers picked two of the four rooms on the side facing the road, while Ben and Oprah decided on two rooms facing the Officers‘ Mess. Marie picked the other front-facing corner room and slowly everybody was settled. It took a while, but suitcases and weekend luggage were brought into the rooms.

Carlos and Sally would be in their old room in the hangar and Jennifer and Pam Wallace would stay at Joe’s place as usual. Mike Mallory would be the only single man around. Preston’s handheld made noises and Mike’s voice was heard stating that his Cessna 210 was on final approach for the original runway. Preston went out to greet him and was surprised to see Mike and a lady emerge from the Cessna in front of his hangar. He recognized the lady as one of Mike’s ex-cabin attendants and Mike asked for his favorite room in Preston’s hangar.

Finally everybody was housed. Much of the accommodations were in use and Preston had that motel-ownership feeling. At least there was food and provisions in all the buildings and there weren’t many chores the “motel owner” needed to do.

Little Beth and Clint were also getting ready and he noted that they, too, seemed inseparable. He was very happy about that.

Orders had been given to meet in the Officers’ Mess for drinks at six and then they would move back into Preston’s hangar area for a BBQ dinner.

The Air Force personnel were already getting the charcoal hot as Preston and Martie walked towards the Mess with Little Beth—as usual, wheeling Clint, now smartly dressed—attended by Oliver and Puppy. For the next several minutes, people arrived from everywhere, wearing the best clothes they had for the inauguration of the Mess. This inauguration also was the opening for Preston’s whole new airfield and the President’s new, secret retreat.

Joe, his sons, David, Jennifer and Pam arrived in their best clothes. They were driving Joe’s two rat patrol jeeps, David’s ferrets and even the Saracen. The units were parked outside the Mess as a display.

A few minutes after six, General Patterson stood in front of the crowd, now numbering twenty as a helicopter was heard approaching from the north.

“That must be my father and Uncle Philippe,” stated Carlos to the crowd. “They didn’t want to miss the party.” Preston again wondered if there was enough room for everyone at his motel! The crowd went outside to see a second Huey coming in and, as Carlos had stated, his uncle was helped out of the helicopter by the bodyguards and his father followed right behind.

“Sorry for being late!” shouted Uncle Philippe as he walked up to the President. “We had a little problem with gunfire trying to get out of Washington.”

“Gunfire?” asked the President, shaking the older man’s hand.

“Yes, we have had a lot of trouble in our area of Washington in the last day or two,” replied The Colombian Ambassador. “Your American troops have dispelled the trouble makers, and I think it is quieting down again, but I was told food supplies are becoming harder to find for the population and they are getting nervous.”

“Are there still so many people in your area?” asked the President.

“I’ve been told that the numbers are decreasing daily with the food drops being completed south of the city, but there seem to be the die-hards who want to defend their houses and do not want to leave for the warmer areas,” the ambassador replied.

With the new arrivals and the admiral happy to see his brother, the ambassador, Air Force personnel were asked to show the bodyguards to their quarters on the first floor of the larger building. Once that was taken care of the official ceremony began. Only the adults and certain members of the growing crowd were allowed into the ceremony. Marie, Beatrice, their daughters and all the kids were to mingle outside until the meeting was finished.

“I welcome you all to our modernized airfield and retreat,” started General Patterson. “Preston’s airfield is now a larger fully trainable facility and a place for us to meet and get business done. The reason we are all here is that each one of you, and I include our friends from other countries, Admiral Rodriquez, Ambassador Rodriquez and First Assistant Rodriquez, Mr. Lee Wang and Mr. Mo Wang. You are now part of our planning strategy and will help us regain stability in our country and hopefully in yours. Many of you have been instrumental to our efforts from the very beginning, three long months ago, and I believe that we are about to start our next phase of survival, feeding and defending our nation.

“I had a very long meeting with Mr. Mo Wang yesterday who has kindly given me much needed information about electronic supplies in Harbin, China. He is going to help us to retrieve as much as we can from the Zedong Electronics’ secret base there. He and I have framed a plan to fly into China in 30 days. He has been in contact with several of his ex-employees, shall I say, who arrived in this country last year. As long as they are prepared to assist us, they will be pardoned by the United States. If they don’t want to help, they will be apprehended and brought to justice for any crimes perpetrated during their stays in our country. They don’t have much of a choice and so far they have listened to Mr. Wang. We are expecting two dozen of his men to head towards Fort Bragg to turn themselves in. Once they do they will be trained for their return to Harbin. Mr. Wang and I have decided that the base in Harbin does not know of the defeat of their commander in New York. We are going to fly in with these men and as many of our own Chinese-American soldiers as we can find, dressed in the captured uniforms of the enemy.

“Our two Chinese-American pilots Majors Chong and Wong will lead the flight into Harbin in the China Airlines 747 cargo transporter we captured. The majors are not here today as they are currently flying 747s into Europe and back. Then we will send in Jumbo Jets full of troops. We will also fly over three of our operational Gunships with twelve C-130s. Eight will carry Marines, the others food supplies, and six air tankers will accompany them as backup. All aircraft will take the route General Pete Allen did when he went to China, through Alaska and then into the virtually empty Misawa Air Force Base, Japan. There are necessary food items we need to deliver. Preston and Carlos will join us and will be copilots in two of the Gunships.”

“You want Carlos and me to fly AC-130s?” asked Preston, shocked but excited at the same time.

“Preston, Carlos, you have 29 days to learn to fly an AC-130 Gunship. Captains Powers and Watkins will take over command of the Super Tweet training here at your field instead of at Seymour Johnson. Good news, all you Super Tweet pilots…you are to stay here as well for the rest of April. We are going to drill you until you drop, but you will be super-fit Super Tweet pilots by month-end. You can all learn to fly together.

“Now, to get back to China; our aim is to go into Harbin and load up any aircraft we fly in with all the electronics and anything else of military value we can find. Mr. Wang has told me that he knows of one massive warehouse full of working electronics, enough to fill dozens of aircraft. These will be flown back to California where Michael Roebels and his team of hundreds of engineers will figure out what we have brought back for them and work on implementing the parts into our Silicon Valley engineering and development plants. Our first landing in China will be under the guidance of Mr. Mo Wang who will go into the base with the 747 transporter with our troops and his Chinese troops and take over command of the base. Once he has command, we will fly in the other 747s and begin to load them. The Gunships will be close by as we are sure they have fully working radar and aircraft detection systems at their airfield, and the first job under Majors Chong and Wong will be to take command of all Harbin’s aircraft monitoring systems. All our aircraft can get from Harbin to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii without refueling. We are sending troops to Hawaii to reinforce Hickam, our main base there. From there the four aircraft will fly into Travis in California to offload. During this time we hope that we can nicely order the Chinese troops to leave and that will allow our Marines take temporary control of the facility in Harbin. The Marines and you men in the Gunships will have two days to take complete control before the aircraft return. Then the plan is to empty that base of everything possible, or destroy any weapons we cannot fly back. Any questions?”

“I thought that all our bases outside the U.S. have been emptied of our military personnel,” queried Preston.

“Yes, apart from our one base remaining in Japan, Misawa Air Force Base, a stepping stone we would need if a return to China was necessary this year. The President and I decided to leave the only route to China open for 2013 and we have 2,500 Air Force personnel still stationed there. Necessary supplies including defense artillery, mortars and several platoons of Marines were airlifted into Misawa with one drop last month using the 747 transporter via Hawaii. We have also based one of our AC-130 Gunships there. The base is commanded by an Air Force colonel.”

“Are all our points of interest in China within range from Misawa?” asked Carlos.

“Yes,” answered General Patterson. “We picked Misawa due to the peaceful nature of the Japanese people—we have had few problems to date—and its proximity to China and the Koreas.

“We have heard of much fighting in Korea, mainly South Korea with starving North Koreans stealing whatever they can find to eat. There are millions of North Koreans heading south to find food and warmth. From Misawa, the AC-130 has made weekly passes over both Koreas and Mainland China. They have had radiation-sensing equipment on board for the last two weeks and have been flying as far as it was safe towards Beijing. They can’t get to within 400 miles east of Beijing without getting dangerous readings. The radiation is slowly moving eastward and we believe the dangerous readings will decrease as the radiation clouds spread. Our nuclear engineers believe that the cloud will reach Harbin within eight to ten weeks. We have also flown over Shanghai at high altitude and the radiation cloud will reach that city at about the same time. Also, the radiation from the two other blasts is growing. We couldn’t get within 500 miles of Taiwan or Hong Kong before readings made us turn back. Shanghai should have slightly higher levels of radiation from all three blasts within 10 to 12 weeks and these levels could be strong enough to harm humans. Nobody can verify what a human body can actually take in radiation, so we plan to be gone from Chinese territory long before our troops are in any danger.”

“Could the radiation get as far as Hawaii, or even the West Coast?” asked Maggie Smart.

“Much of what we learned from the Japanese nuclear disaster in 2011,” replied General Patterson, “is that the oceans help decrease the levels and we don’t expect any problems. Misawa will be emptied once we feel that it is no longer needed and the levels of radiation rise above normal there. By that time we hope to have all our troops home and all the large civilian aircraft will be available at a moment’s notice. We hope, ladies and gentlemen, with this mission we can increase our working electronic stocks a hundredfold and also get millions of working parts to begin making replicas. I’m hoping that we can light and power up our whole engineering development plant, the whole of Silicone Valley, so that we can speed up the development of our goal to become an electrical country sooner than anticipated. That is our meeting for today. Now I would like to open this Officers’ Mess and allow the first drinks to be on the Air Force. The bar has been stocked from our supplies at Andrews Air Force Base for this meeting, so please join the President and me for a drink. Since money doesn’t seem to be of importance to anybody anymore in this world, we might as well enjoy the stocks we have.”

Everyone laughed at that comment and the doors were opened to allow the others in.

For the next couple of hours drinks and food were served and the guests got to know the regulars at Preston’s airfield.

“So, what are your plans for the future, Mr. Wang?” asked Preston. He and Carlos had finished eating and they were sitting in a corner seating unit of the Mess with Mo, Beatrice, Lee and his wife.

“I have the wish to keep my ship, the one we found at the villa belonging to this Senator Calderón,” began Mo. “Admiral Rodriquez wanted to take the ship back to Colombia until I showed him the official ship’s papers verifying the ship to be registered in Panama. The ship’s log showed voyages around Panama, Honduras, the United States and the Caribbean, but it seemed that the senator’s ship has never entered Colombian waters. Also, the company that owns the ship is a coffee company based in Honduras and Panama, and not in Colombia. So the admiral cannot legally find any paperwork that the ship is actually owned by the Colombian Senator Calderón and he has absolutely no jurisdiction on the vessel. Also the weapons were purchased in Panama and fitted to the ship in the United States, in Charleston, South Carolina, by a legal ship repair company working out of the old Charleston Naval Station, which I was told shut down nearly a decade ago. Where the weapons came from nobody knows, but official-looking American paperwork shows the additions to be legal. Since nobody can now dispute the legality of the paperwork, I have declared salvage rights. Admiral Rogers explained to your uncle, Carlos, that Colombia has no jurisdiction and if there were any, the United States would have jurisdiction since we are currently in U.S. waters. Admiral Rodriquez asked me, Beatrice and Lu to be ready to attend any court case in Bogotá for any future trials against Senator Calderón and we agreed. Since then Admiral Rodriquez has lost interest in my ship.”