Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (16 page)

“How do you know who is arriving from Outpost One?” asked Carlos.

“Thanks to your old computers, Carlos, we record daily identifications and since some guys at McGuire even modified them to accept thumb drives. Thumb drive copies of each day’s identity list are airlifted back into McGuire with the next flight, copied at headquarters and then a copy goes out with supplies the next day. Thanks to you, Carlos, we have quite a good memory program and there are millions of thumb drives everywhere.

“Our third outpost, aptly named Outpost Three, is forty miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee, on Interstate 24. This food point has been running for two weeks now. There are not as many people walking south as the other two, around 600 people per day and growing by a dozen or so a day. Again a mile of highway has been set up for landing a C-130 and has military protection, tents for food, medical, and warm supplies. We have begun to get dozens walking in from the city of Nashville. The area is frozen but with little snow. I don’t know if it is good or bad to be positioned near such a large city, but we treat everybody as equals, enter their information in the database, and they head back to the city with food and medical care. No warm clothing or overnight tents are given to these people.

“Outpost Four is directly on Interstate 35 in Kansas. We have been operating out of there for five days now. This road is busy with thousands of people walking south towards Texas. This food point is 50 miles north of Oklahoma City and approximately 300 miles due east of Outpost Three. Here we have the same system, except that there are over 2,000 people coming through per day heading south and we have two airlifts per day, one from McConnell Air Force Base and one from McGuire.

“Outpost Five has been set up in California on Interstate 5, one hundred miles north of Los Angeles close to a small town called Avenal. This is our newest food point and our slowest. I assume that Californian weather is warmer than here on the East Coast and there is less movement. Edwards is airlifting supplies into Outpost Five and numbers are slowly rising, but to date we are seeing less than 300 people passing through daily.

“Outpost Six will be operational tomorrow and is north of Raton, a small town on the Colorado-New Mexico border. We have been working on this food location for two days now and we have had to erect fencing around our base due to the high number of people already camped out. Soldiers have already been giving out food packs since yesterday and we are planning three loads of supplies per day, enough for 12,000 people. Peterson Air Force Base has good food supplies. It, Edwards, and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas can supply this food location for six weeks before we have to bring in supplies from other bases.

“Several helicopters are already lifting supplies into the major Colorado cities, so we have sent one of our C-130s into Peterson to help out. This aircraft will complete three flights per day. She will start flights into Outpost Six daily from 08:00 am Mountain Time tomorrow. Currently we have three C-130s supplying our outposts, less than 2 percent of our aircraft fleet. Every military base around the country is supplying food and medical supplies into other central or northern areas, and have stocks for a couple of weeks before we need the rations from abroad.”

Mike Mallory got a standing ovation for his work. Most knew that he had planned much of the project himself with help from the trusty Southwest crew that had gone down with him in New York on New Year’s Eve.

General Patterson returned to the podium and began his “future threats” topic. “The President and I believe that any future threats from a major power are virtually impossible for the foreseeable future—and the foreseeable future is the next five to ten years. If you have any ideas, especially you, Carlos Rodriquez, since you are in charge of our satellite program, and anybody else who might know something we don’t, please bring them forward.

“At the moment we believe our only threats are internal at this time. First, we know crime and death will increase. More people are going to die, either from starvation, the elements or crime. There is nothing we can do about the situation more than we are doing right now. Next is the threat of disease once the temperatures rise and the dead bodies begin to decompose. Again there is nothing more we can do. The third future threat is food. We will reach a time when all food stored in the United States of America will be exhausted. We hope fresh crops are harvested before then, but I believe it is going to be close, and unfortunately too late for many. We will continue to use our current system to transport any food stocks around the country. By the end of March, we will have more of the country under a regular delivery system. So, my job and the job of all military personnel in the next thirty days is to secure the living population of the United States of America, and at the same time protect the farms and farmers of the country and aid them in every way we can to produce enough food for our people on a continuous basis. I suggest we all return here in thirty days for updates.

“We are already planning food stocks for next winter, but until we halt the dying, and count how many people actually need to be fed and kept warm next winter, we are purely running around in the dark. Every able person will begin to help in the system in the near future. Money means nothing. Luxuries are few and far between, and all nest eggs, savings, bank accounts are less important to every person here than where the next meal is coming from. We must protect our cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits and any other source of meat products, as well as rich farmland from anybody wanting to hamper our tasks. Our borders need to be protected from hungrier people crossing them to steal food stocks here in our country. Communications must be set up later this year with other countries with which products can be bartered—beef for bananas, pork for chicken—you can understand what I mean. That is all I have for you today. It is now time to hear from our President.”

The room was totally silent, many digesting the vast amounts of information presented over the first hour.

“Ladies and gentlemen of our new country, we are still called the United States of America by all of us, a free country and a country to protect and make safe now more than ever.” A round of applause greeted his opening sentence. “Thanks to you here today I feel less alone trying to run a country of this size, as a single yachtsman trying to cross a large sea with no wind. There is no Congress and Senate. Sometimes that is a blessing.” Several laughed as everybody knew of the intense partisan battles between him and the pillars of power. “Even though it is more peaceful not having Congress around, we, as a country, need to reinstate government. I don’t believe that it is crucial right now and you people are my backups until we form a new government. I hope this will occur sometime this year, or once we have our three major problems under control, as the speakers have described for the last hour. I don’t believe we will rest until we save every citizen we can, feed them and keep them safe. We don’t know where the next security situation will come from but I believe it will come, and we must be ready for it.

“I have heard from a number of elected officials, eleven Congressmen and nine Senators to be exact. They got word through military bases close by. All said that they are in their homes protecting themselves and their families. That is important for them, and none of them said that they would be returning to Washington in the near future. Many others are dead and many we will never know what happened to. I do know of dozens from both houses who were in flight over New Year’s Eve. So I have disbanded Congress and the Senate and will fill it again with new people when we have the free time to do so.

“I agree with General Patterson, who is my new Chief of Staff for all our military departments, since I know his ability and since many of the military commanders are also unaccounted for, or still busy with troop withdrawals in other parts of the world. All top military personnel currently in the United States are in this room, apart from Four Star Army General Max Wood in Washington State who had both his legs amputated due to a car accident on December 31st. I’m sure there are several people trying to communicate with me, but you, the people in this hangar, are the ones who are going to help me get this proud country back to the best we can make it.

“Before I finish, I would like to ask Wolfgang Roebels and his son Michael up here to share their understandings on the electrical situation in this country. Four weeks ago I asked them to study what they could on our current situation. Gentlemen, please.”

Michael wheeled Martie’s grandfather up to the podium.

“If you don’t mind, Mr. President,” stated Michael into the microphone, “I would like to be the voice here as my father’s voice is not as strong as it used to be. Many of you know we started in San Diego decades ago and sold our company to Raytheon, which up to last year was one of the leaders in all types of mobile directional technology. My father and I did not stop work once we were bought out years ago. Work and our love of designing electronics is what we always talk about. After the sale we also had several old ideas from the 80s which we had time to play with.

“Yes, we had purchased some of these now useless electronic parts made in China, and yes, we also replaced older U.S. parts with these more modern chips, fuses, etc. Luckily, we had a habit of not throwing anything away. So in the last four weeks, we have placed our older stored parts in an aircraft radar system—a directional system using radio waves, much like our older aircraft are currently using—and, more importantly a more modern computer system than Carlos made operational in January. Of even greater importance is an out-of-date analogue dial-up computer-communication system we can restore in the next few months which will utilize the electrical lines crossing the country. There are several other systems we are still working on with new teams of men and women in Silicon Valley. We have had three meetings with electrical engineering crews at the old electrical production plants in Silicon Valley and the RTP area in Raleigh North Carolina.

“I will start with our project in Silicon Valley. There are only skeleton teams working at one manufacturing plant which made guidance systems for our latest missiles. There are now twelve engineers working on a new project, out of 300 who used to work there. We still hope that more of the missing will arrive. The Marines from Camp Pendleton have set up a defensive perimeter around seven blocks of Silicon Valley’s main buildings so these engineers, if or when they arrive, will join safe environments which are peaceful and good places to work. We are taking in skilled workers who can prove that they have built electronic systems and they are invited to join our new little town where accommodations, food and drink are being made available so they can work in peace. Many housing systems, mostly where engineers lived, have been cordoned off by wire and security gates and are places where these workers can live a normal life.

“As of today we have three projects moving forward. First: radar screens, approach and landing guidance systems for all aircraft which need one. Computer boxes are being emptied of their useless insides and the new radar systems are coming off the assembly line three per day. Carlos, Mr. Lee Wang and I will be working on getting satellite guidance from what we have still operational in space. ‘Project Radar,’ as we call it, could have satellite guidance by the end of this year.

Second: ‘Project Electricity.’ We are repairing the electrical systems in the manufacturing plant’s local grid to become live. We started with the basic wall plug and worked backwards to the control box and then outside to the nearest junction point in the streets around the compound. Yesterday we began to go through every part in the area junction station, one of those fenced-off electrical stations in every suburb in the country. So far we have listed over fifty pieces of equipment we need to copy and reproduce. It is all possible, but will take time. Just to build a prototype and produce the machinery to build them will take a year. The same is true with all production. Once we build a manufacturing line and get it powered by electricity and implement a system of organization, we can pump out large numbers.

“Third is ‘Project Nuclear Power,’ a study of the nearest nuclear power station to Silicon Valley in California. We will then start a duplicate project here in North Carolina, once Preston Strong had visited the plant again in New Hill. The plant is to be cordoned off with a military barrier against any unauthorized entry. The engineers there are to be identified and work started to get the plant operational again. It is quite simple to get any nuclear power station running, once we have all the necessary electrical communication and control parts working. That will also take time, but once we get Project Two and Project Three completed, then we can mate them up and hopefully deliver power along electrical lines. Estimated time is six to twelve months before we can join these two projects together. Up until then we are on generator power. Any questions so far?” Michael asked.

“Project One,” asked Martie, who hadn’t had much chance to speak to her father for a month. “Your revamped radar systems which, with Carlos’ help, could one day give us guidance, how are they going to work compared to the old Navistar system and how accurate will they be?”

“The system will be as good as any system in use today from the 1980s. The screens will be black and white, not color, to begin with as we don’t have very many color-screen working parts, but we can reconstruct these black and white screens into color once we build their needed modifications and set up a line of manufacture. From our side, the manufacturing side, there are millions of products for which we need to build and manufacture new parts. Many will be never built and we will wait for new innovations to give us new and better machines, like the all vehicle engine-management systems of which billions are sitting in piles of junk on the highways around the country. I believe electric power vehicles are now the way to go. No more combustion engines will ever be built, I can see that now. And, since money has no value now, hydrogen-powered engines and naturally-powered engines, which did not prove to be financially positive in the past, are all feasible now. It doesn’t matter anymore what they cost. On the satellite side, Carlos has been briefed on what he is allowed to say to you. Carlos, please come up and answer Martie’s space topic. That is all from us. Thank you.”