INVASION USA (Book 2) - The Battle For New York (44 page)

They couldn’t see what was happening on the eastern side any more, as the weather was coming in, but his job with the fully-loaded 747 transporter was to get it off the ground. Explosions started happening to his right as his jumbo jet, now on full power, began to gather speed and he could just see another 747— “the seventh,” he thought to himself—on the other side begin its slow climb into the sky and into the lowering cloud base at the end of the eastern runway, over a mile away.

Suddenly, there was a massive explosion by the terminal several hundred yards to his right as a massive fireball flew into the air. The explosion was so big that his jumbo vibrated as the shock of it hit the aircraft. He watched as Ghost Rider flew directly over him at a couple hundred feet, lines of tracers from the gunship firing into anything mobile around the terminal now to his east.

A truck exploded a couple hundred yards in front and to the right of the strip of tarmac on which he was taking off, halfway between the feeder runway he was on and the western side of the terminal. Then, the tower itself disappeared as a second massive explosion hit directly underneath it literally enveloped the tower and disintegrated it.

There was only one thing that was that powerful an explosion. An aftershock hit his aircraft hard again, and by his time he was accelerating through 95 knots and it vibrated the whole aircraft. The gunship was blowing up fully fueled 747s.

Another 747 climbed away on the other side of the airport as he came abreast of the burning truck and saw two jeeps trying to cut him off a couple of hundred yards ahead of him and speeding abreast of his piece of asphalt which was about to run out.

One suddenly exploded and the second one blew up less than a second later.

The transporter was now approaching take-off speed and needed another several seconds to get airborne. The engines were screaming, not used to taking off at absolute maximum power when he felt another massive explosion way behind him and some sort of rocket, or missile passed pretty close by, several feet above his aircraft.
“Thank God it wasn’t a guided ground-to-air missile,”
he thought as he gently pulled back on the controls, felt the front wheel lift, watched the computers aboard begin to work the heavy aircraft off the ground and saw less than a couple of hundred yards of tarmac in front of him.

He was still a knot or several under take-off speed as he pulled back harder on the stick, and he shouted to his co-pilots to switch controls to manual override and hauled back on the controls hard as he pulled the aircraft off the ground with only yards of taxiway left. The heavy and groaning transporter now climbed at an attitude that would have made any passengers sick if it was a passenger flight.

“We have nine in the air so far,” reported Major Patterson to Captain Wong as he wrestled with the aircraft for height. “We are number ten and I’ve lost visual. The 11th one was still halfway down the eastern side and the last one is a couple of hundred yards behind it— far too close for survival. He’s going to get into dangerous turbulence. Meanwhile, Ghost Rider is breaking up the airport buildings, and it looks like two or three 747s are burning fireballs down there.”

Captain Wong brought the aircraft engines down to normal take-off power, he pushed the controls forward to lower the nose and cleaned up the aircraft’s wings, bringing in the flaps. The aircraft slowed her high climb rate, and he watched the ten aircraft on the radar screen as the 11th one left the eastern runway behind him, immediately turned right and climbed hard to get out of the area. The airport was long out of visual range, and the 747s which had taken off before him began to form a line in front of his, climbing up to cruise altitude and slowly turning into the direction for the U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey. Captain Wong didn’t have orders, and he circled above Shanghai gaining height. He was expecting the general to send them somewhere else once he was done down below.

It took a couple of minutes before the general came back on the radio.

“How did you get that last aircraft got off the ground, pilot? I just don’t know, the turbulence must have been darn crazy!”
everyone heard General Allen communicate with the last aircraft.

“I didn’t think we were going to get off the ground, so I let her run another 200 yards to the end of the runway and took her off underneath the dirty air of the aircraft in front and since she banked away to starboard, I stayed straight. She’s okay, sir—a little beaten up, and the galleys must be a mess, but we are joining the end of the line for our destination,”
replied an Air Force pilot.

“Well done, pilot,” said General Allen. “I’ll buy you a drink when we get home. Guys, head to our designated destination. I’m heading on and will be several hours behind you. I’ll call you with more details on the phone. Our cover is blown and they are listening to us on this radio frequency. Radio silence from now on. Out.”

“Good job, Wong. Remind me to give you and Chong a promotion to Major. Tell Patterson if I get lost before this is all over. Wong, you alone will set a course for McGuire. You are on your own, I’m afraid,”
the general continued, now using his secure satellite phone.

“Go the Bering Sea route. Refuel at Elmendorf and that will give you at least an hour of reserve fuel into McGuire. Well done, now hand me over to Patterson please.”
The pilot handed the phone over.
“Colonel Patterson. Your promotion is also secure. Just remind me when we get back to McGuire. I’ll relay your three promotions over to Andrews right now and call you back in a few minutes.”

Captain, soon-to-be Major, Wong had been given his orders and went to work setting a course, with the several new radio beacons at his disposal for a lengthy flight north over the Bering Sea.

“We have diluted their fleet by 12 aircraft and, unfortunately, I destroyed a couple beautiful birds down there. I counted 29 747s and five Airbus 380s before we helped ourselves, is that correct?”
asked General Allen, calling the transporter back on the satellite phone.

“That’s what I counted,” replied the now Colonel Patterson. “I assume they had 30 passenger 747s, but we already have one and now they have only 15 or 16 of the passenger 747s left plus the five Airbuses. I know the Israelis filled one up with over a thousand passengers at one time, but they were women and children. I think that they could get at least 500 fully armed troops into each one and over 600 in the Airbuses. If they are going to send in troops to JFK, then now they can only fly in a maximum of 12,000 troops on any one flight instead of 20,000.”

“I hope they still come over,” replied the general. “I want the remainder of those aircraft. But I’ll call the president and let him know that we can start transferring a minimum of 6,000+ troops back to the States per day now, until we acquire some more aircraft.

At least we can get all our men back within eight months. Colonel Patterson, you and Majors Wong and Chong will now set up a trap at JFK and the other airports around New York after Major Chong flies you guys into McGuire in about 15 hours. You will have to refuel at Elmendorf in Alaska. I believe that we have 11 days left to set up a plan to capture their troops and get the rest of their aircraft. Remember guys, this is our whole American air transportation for many years to come and I felt really bad blowing up those aircraft. But, I needed to create a diversion and I just hope the fire did not spread to any of the other aircraft, but we will see in a few weeks. I’m off to Beijing and then Turkey and Iraq to work on getting our troops home. If anything happens to me, Patterson, I want to give you the rest of my battle plan and will do so on my flight into Beijing. I’m going in to Beijing in Ghost Rider alone. I have set the others on a course for Omsk and then Turkey, and I don’t want to take any other aircraft with me. For some reason, I have a weird feeling that there could be a something wrong in Beijing. If there isn’t, then I’ll see you in Turkey and I’m sure tired of travelling. I’ll call you in a few minutes, but need to chat with Carlos first. Out.”

The Beginning of the End

Over a period of days, and with another few inches of snow and negative temperatures, the three New York airports were made ready for arrivals and departures. The C-130s worked nonstop out of McGuire, Andrews, Seymour Johnson, and Pope Field, bringing in troops, supplies, electrical equipment, and necessary food for the ever-growing number of civilians collecting food each day around the airport’s outer-perimeter fences.

Six radio-transmitting beacons had been modified so far, transported and activated. Three of the beacons were now working at JFK, La Guardia and Newark. The next three were slightly south at McGuire, Andrews, and Seymour Johnson, and the seventh radio beacon was being installed at Preston’s airfield.

The single large incoming Air China 747 was the first to have modern directional technology available again— descending from 37,000 feet and using the frequencies located on the radios from as far as 900 miles out over the North Atlantic. She landed back at JFK 24 hours after leaving on her first flight for Incirlik Air Force Base to pick up American soldiers. The 747 landed with 650 tired and dirty American soldiers aboard.

They were immediately moved into one of the three modified JFK terminals ready with beds to house 1,000 troops per terminal. The turnaround on the jumbo jet took six hours; she was refueled, prepared, and left empty for her second trip—this time nonstop into Baghdad over 3,600 miles away. She could complete a return trip in a 24-hour window and could refuel in Germany if there was no fuel available in Iraq, or make the entire trip without refueling at all.

Beds, bedding, generators, porta-potties, rations, and clothing were being flown into the three New York airports on a 24-hour basis with every aircraft not assigned to food distribution. Unfortunately, the rations would not be enough to feed the rapidly growing civilian population around the fences as well as the military soldiers, but the transporter piloted by Captain Wong and an extremely tired crew arrived at McGuire on the ninth day; it was off-loaded, refueled, and reloaded with 100,000 meals. The aircraft, with a fresh crew on board, was flown the short distance into JFK. The 747 transporter could lift as much as all the C-130s together and the 130s were rediverted into other bases once the food supplies became low at McGuire.

Nobody knew the exact date of the attack on New York Harbor— Zedong Electronics hadn’t made it official yet—but Carlos and his 30-year old computer could see any attacking sea force as soon as the ships came into view. The Chinese satellites were much higher up. They did not have telephoto or zoom camera lenses and he tried as hard as he could but he could not see any ships on the screens from their far more modern digital download footage. The view from Navistar P was far better, and he believed that he could see a large ship sail into the 175-mile view around the United States.

Carlos had brought the satellite 100 miles lower over the United States to get a better view, and he tried hard to see the incoming 747, but it was still too small for such an old screen. None of the American aircraft used their transponders in case they could still be seen from wherever the Zedong Electronics personnel were viewing the screens. He did not know that the blowing up of the building in Nanjing had made the enemy virtually blind. Nobody on that side had thought to upgrade any of the satellite receiving equipment on the ships and the pictures they were seeing were about the same quality Carlos was viewing.

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.