Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (37 page)

“Where’s Martie?” she asked. Preston was not the person she,only five years old, was expecting.

“Bad news, Beth. Remember Grandpa Roebels?” Preston asked. Little Beth nodded. “Well, he was Martie’s grandfather and he died a few days ago. Martie and her father, Michael, are very upset, but Martie will be back in a few days.”

Has the grandpa gone to where my mummy is?” she questioned. Preston nodded. “Well, I hope they meet each other up there,” she stated. “Preston, who is that kid looking at me? He is in a wheelchair.” Preston was facing the other way and did not hear Clint come out of the guest room.

“That’s a new member of our family,” Preston explained, “and somebody who needs you to make him feel at home. Shall I introduce you?” Beth was still in his arms and Preston turned to face Clint and put her down.

“Good morning, Clint. Did you sleep well?” Preston asked. “Come here, Clint, and let me have the honor of introducing you to the boss of the family.”

“And you had better remember that, young man!” stated Little Beth, copying how Martie spoke to men. She had her hands on her hips and Clint, although much taller, was the same height as Little Beth when sitting in his chair.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am. Clinton Jefferson Busch at your service,” he replied, wheeling his chair up to her and putting out his hand. His straight-forwardness and polite manner put Little Beth off a little but she responded, not letting a boy get the better of her.

“Glad to meet you, Clinton Jefferson Busch. My name is Beth, but you can call me Little Beth, officially. I don’t have a last name at the moment since Preston hasn’t married Martie yet, but when that happens, I will be Little Beth Strong. Where are you from, Clinton?”

“I grew up in Arizona and now I believe I might be growing up more in North Carolina. You can call me Clint, Little Beth, everybody does. Do you like flying?”

“Oh sure, I have been doing a lot of that lately. If you are going to live here, that’s all the adults ever do at this airfield, apart from having special meetings and drinking beer!”

“Now, now, Little Beth,” laughed Carlos. He sat down on the couch while listening to the two youngsters get acquainted and smiled at the two kids. “We only have special meetings once or twice a month and normally drink a beer or two at night, but it’s true, we normally fly every day. I’ve flown more hours this year already than all my hours in the last five years.”

“Where are you going today, Uncle Carlos?” asked Clint. “Can Little Beth and I come along? At least we can all fit in your aircraft.”

“That’s a good idea, Carlos,” added Preston. Since Michael is using the Pilatus, I think I need to find a long distance family run-around for the wife, kids, dogs, and Smokey the cat, who I haven’t seen for weeks, and whoever else decides to join our family.

“Would you like to meet my puppy, Spot?” Little Beth asked Clint.

“Sure, I love dogs and I would like to meet Spot,” he replied now excited.

“His real name is Spot, but everybody, even the soldiers, call him Puppy. I will push you around. It’s cold, so go and get a thick sweater, and then we can go and find Oliver and Puppy and I can introduce you to my soldier friends.”

As they headed back to their bedrooms Preston shouted orders not to go further than the first runway.

The President of the United States was back in Washington. There were communications by radio and satellite phone and he kept up with all the reports coming in. The White House now had a hundred old Amiga computers set up, recording the numbers of dead, as well as living, identified citizens at the dozens of locations across the country, and any other reports which needed saving. There were no paper files anymore

Each computer was connected to a Hughes Net satellite dish and thousands of messages were transmitted daily through the three Chinese satellites Carlos and Lee had repositioned above the United States for this reason.

The system wasn’t fast, but a hundred times faster than somebody reading the names over radios or satellite phones. Several computer engineers controlled the incoming information which never stopped, and the President, still alone in governing the country, had called a White House meeting with General Patterson and other staff to get up-to-date on the military reports.

“Thank you for coming, General, colonels and members of my staff. Each of you has a very important job to do,” started the President. “I will be here in Washington until our next major meeting at Andrews on April 1st. What are our figures to date? General Patterson, I need some good news, so tell me how our troop movements are doing.”

“Mr. President, over three days ago we changed from bringing in troops to the aircraft carrying in food supplies. We are still completing one troop flight across to Europe and a second one directly to the Middle East, daily. We have two of the 747 aircraft in maintenance for two days and another two coming in tomorrow. The 747 transporter has taken the cargo route of the two 747s in scheduled maintenance, and this change doesn’t decrease our lift totals very much. As of 72 hours ago, we have 679,000 troops back in the country. We have tallied up the remaining soldiers to get back and our numbers were out by over 190,000 men, once we got our numbers right. We still need to transport 420,000 men which will take more than 60 flight days, once we get back to troop flights in five days’ time. We have to increase our food flights by one extra day per change, to allow us to feed the growing numbers on our side of the pond.”

“I was told by the Chief of Staff in November last year that we only had a million soldiers overseas. Where has this increase come from, General?” the President asked, annoyed.

“I can only assume that you were not being told exact or up-to-date numbers, Mr. President,” General Patterson replied simply.

“Where is my old Chief of Staff?” asked the President, demanding somebody find him.

“His body and that of his wife were found at their home in Houston, Texas, Mr. President,” continued General Patterson. “They had been executed with a bullet in the back of the head. The three bodyguards were found in the front garden with several gunshot wounds. Everybody living on that street was executed. A couple of Texas congressmen, a senator and several military generals lived in the same gated community. The soldiers who were searching the area had a three-day battle with a group of over several hundred men who had ransacked a local National Guard armory and were well-armed. They killed the bad guys but lost several dozen good men in the process. Over a hundred bodyguards had been taken out before our troops arrived. It is believed that this army of men was hitting the more wealthy suburbs, going house to house and executing anybody inside. They did this in three large neighborhoods before the soldiers caught up with them, and it is believed that the gang killed a couple of thousand innocent civilians. Each of the houses had been ransacked and everything of value taken. One of the badly wounded gangsters told the soldiers of their new headquarters, an iron-fenced elementary school in the area. A second firefight ensued with another couple of dozen men. Their leaders, all local gangsters from Texas, were killed. Several had escaped from local prisons. Mountains of valuables were found, and important to us, IDs for the dead people were recovered and sent through to us a couple of days ago. Identifications included the politicians and the military personnel. These guys were doing a total sweep of this wealthy area for a couple of months.”

The President sat down and thought about what he had just heard. “What information do we have so far on other missing members of the government?” he asked General Patterson.

“That was to be my second report, Sir. We have found two more members of Congress alive, both uninterested in returning to Washington. One was holding off a dozen gangsters when the army went to check up on him in Arizona. He had personally killed half of them and he, his two sons and one daughter were ready and well-armed to take on the rest. The soldiers got rid of the gang members in that area and met with Congressman McDonald. He is not leaving his home and will offer his resignation if you order him to return. He said to tell you that he would return once soldiers had cleaned up his entire area. Congressman Broman in Montana has a 300-acre horse ranch and has beaten off three attacks. He said the same: put in a hundred men to protect his family and he would return. We can bring them in when you want us to, Mr. President.”

“What about the rest, General?”

“As of yesterday we have confirmed the deaths of 287 Congressmen and 91 senators. The Vice President and his wife were found dead in their house with both bodies dismembered by a mob. His bodyguards also perished in the attack. His bodyguards had killed a dozen people before they were killed. On the East Coast and northern areas of the country, many of the congressional and senate deaths were due to vehicle accidents around midnight, New Year’s Eve. Gang violence is the main reason for deaths in the south and on the West Coast.”

“It sounds like the whole country is in anarchy,” stated the President.

“I would say that in 90 percent of the country, you are right, Mr. President,” the general replied.

“What about all the police in the country. What happened to them?”

“To date reports in from all 50 states show identification of over 500,000 of the country’s deaths were policemen and 65 percent of these deaths were from violence. We assume gangs, or police-haters in those areas knew where the officers lived and went after them. In one town in Oklahoma, a prison of 400 inmates got loose and wiped out the local town. Over 3,000 deaths before the army went in and terminated all of the jail breakers. Ten percent of the deaths were policemen or prison wardens and their families.”

“How is the troop importation helping your numbers, General Patterson?” asked the President, sober and uneasy with all the bad news.

“We were getting in 10,000 per day and shipping out the same number of troops who had arrived a few days earlier, having been given a few days’ rest. The incoming troops were resting and being rearmed at the airport terminals in New York and at Andrews and McGuire. The really good news, Mr. President, is that Amtrak is back on track. The railways got their first train all the way through to Los Angeles from Washington yesterday. It completed the Midwest, Northeast and the Midwest California routes in ten days, having to wait to have snow cleared in the Chicago area for a day, and for about two hundred miles over the mountainous areas. It was an older engine, from the 1980s, and retired five years ago, and which was found still operational in an Amtrak storage facility. We called it the California Express and she took 4,500 soldiers, dropping off 100 soldiers in over thirty small towns where there weren’t any. The train was shot at a dozen times but apart from one train derailment outside Albuquerque where the attack occurred and where bulldozers were already clearing the undamaged tracks, she got through. Engineers had to shunt several other trains onto secondary rail lines with older engines and bulldozers. By the end of April we hope to have three trains a day leaving Washington in three different directions: one daily to Los Angeles, the Texas Eagle to Dallas, and Midwest South down to New Orleans. As the snow clears, we can get more of the northern routes cleared. The railways reported yesterday that they now have Hughes Net satellite dishes working across the country at many of the major railway stations, all protected by armed soldiers, Mr. President. The railways predict that twenty trains will be running by mid-year, transporting men to all the southern areas, 15,000 a day, and trains crisscrossing the country in both directions. Our latest plan is to take pressure off our aircraft and use the railways for troop movement until spring and then food distribution once all our men are stateside and relocated.”

“Things are looking up for once,” remarked a slightly happier President. “There should be dozens of goods train available in the near future. I understand the trucking industry is done for, except for a few percent of trucks still operational. They can collect from railway stations and transport into smaller outlying areas, just like in the early days of the country.”

“Our plan exactly, Mr. President,” replied General Patterson. “We need to remember that any ground movement needs protection and we have twenty heavy box wagons being retrofitted with armored sides and these will be placed on each train. At least two of them will have rocket launchers, a Mutt jeep or two, mortars, and ammo, and the boxcars will have sleeping and eating quarters for the soldiers. Their roofs will slide open and their sides slide down so that they can fire from the wagon, or have the protection up with slits to fire out of.”

“Sounds like an old cowboy movie,” suggested the President.

“We are thinking of calling them Wells Fargo Wagons, Sir,” replied the general.

“OK, the bad news, please; deaths and the living.”

The general asked the two colonels in charge of recordings to give their reports.

“My name is Colonel Sinter, U.S. Marines, Mr. President. I’m in charge of recording the deaths. As of yesterday morning, total deaths countrywide, not including Hawaii and Alaska is 87,510,450 bodies with identification. Without identification, we have approximately 22,200,500 bodies, or body parts which can represent a body. We might double-count parts of the same body, but we do our best to at least take a fingerprint if it is possible. I believe that our accuracy figures are within 15 percent on body parts. We have covered 70 percent of the northern areas, but expect there are untold millions in cities that we still need to dig out.” The President nodded his thanks. One third of the country’s total population dead and still he knew that they were in for many more ghastly surprises.

“How far have you got into Manhattan and Chicago?” the President asked the colonel.

“We have covered about a third of Manhattan and half of the surrounding area. In Brooklyn and areas around Chicago, with busy airport hubs where planes fell out of the sky, there is absolutely nothing left, Sir. In these areas alone we believe that we will never find remains of up to two million people. The Chicago area around the railway station is now clear for a dozen blocks and also many of the more southern suburbs.”