INVASION USA (Book 2) - The Battle For New York (38 page)

Once the bulldozers were in, the area was checked for any vehicles in the many parking garages around the airports. Airport parking garages were usually full of motor vehicles and they searched for anything that would start. The ones that worked were driven out to the areas of the airport where engineers went about using all the power inverters they could find to turn the engines into mobile generators to light and heat critical areas. Over 70 vehicles were found in the JFK garages alone—mostly old American cars with large gas guzzling engines; perfect for generating electricity.

It took two car engines to power up the landing-light system on the already cleared runway. The system was fed from the motor vehicles into a large inverter they brought in from McGuire, which fed raw energy to the lights themselves and cut out all malfunctioning electronic-control systems. It took several hours of retrofitting the electronics, but the lights came on when someone started the cars stationed at each end of the long runway. Now equipment could be carried into JFK at night.

One large car engine could run several small electrical heating units, blowers, and electrical bar heaters found in stores. The Air Force flew these in by the hundreds. A second car engine could run the terminal lighting systems and any available propane tanks could get the stoves working in the terminal’s restaurants and feed the workers.

By the end of Z-Day Eight, JFK was lit and semi-heated so people could work and sleep. Military camp beds had been brought in and porta-potties dotted the outside areas next to the walls of the terminals, inconspicuous and hidden from anyone landing.

The aircraft themselves changed inside. Several teams pulled out the seats and made them into living quarters where less lighting and heating were needed to make them warm and comfortable. A beautifully painted Quantas 747 became a warm, cozy home with fully stocked kitchens and bars for 100 people, once the unnecessary seats had been placed in warehouses out of the view of anyone flying in unannounced.

The five bulldozers worked 24 hours a day. Snow hadn’t fallen for a day now, and JFK’s runways were still clear, but the other three airports could hardly be seen under the snowdrifts. Only white shapes in the snow, aircraft wrapped in heavy layers of frozen precipitation and the snow-bound terminals showed the outline where runways hid under feet of winter weather. The large lifting helicopters moved the bulldozers into La Guardia and soldiers began clearing its main runway.

Once the bulldozers had been moved, men again went in search of old vehicles in the parking garages, got inside, and hotwired them. They were driven outside the garage towers where the helicopters picked them up and carried them over snow drifts and placed them where the engineers needed them. It would take 24 hours to clean the runway and the same would be necessary for Teterboro Airport, which was next. Newark would be last. Teterboro would be the deployment airport for troops into the other three airports when needed, and all seven of the operational troop-carrying C-130s could ferry in 100 troops each at a time to wherever they were needed.

The third job of the always-working helicopters was then to bring in food and supplies for the troops and an ever-growing number of locals who had seen or heard the action. Once the runways were cleared, the C-130s flew in from Air Force bases that had warehouses full of stored meals for the overseas troops, and were flying in 5,000 meals at a time on pallets. There were only five C-130s available for this work since the other two were down in North Carolina doing the same thing, but they started hauling 25,000 meals per day into the four airports and the supplies were stored in the empty hangars.

By the third day of work, the bulldozers were working on Newark’s runway. With the increased activity at the airports, children began to venture out foraging for food and pushing their faces up to the high security fences to beg the armed soldiers stationed around the perimeter for anything edible. It would take an entire week to get the airports ready for the incoming attack, before they could even start on the harbor area. Between that work and distributing food, the troops were working 24-hour shifts.

*****

Carlos and Lee were exhausted. They had worked nearly 20 hours a day for several days in a row, and in a few days there would be renewed satellite phone communications around the world. The stolen 747 had flown into McGuire Air Force Base at 9:00 am that morning, as had all the important electrical equipment being airlifted in from JFK.

Once the small pallet of remaining new phones had been offloaded and opened, Carlos and Lee started a phone directory file on the computer, listing the numbers for distribution to all the phone users to ensure that nobody spoke to the enemy by mistake.

Both Carlos and Lee had an operational Commodore computer linked up to be able to log in all the numbers, and a really old black and white printer that could print copies, and they issued the first phone number list for transfer with the HC-130 tanker being refueled for its world trip. Each phone—all 25 of them that now had an international delivery destination, as well as another 50 for the Air Force bases around the country—were recorded on the list. Each phone was numbered, and its projected destination was typed onto the sheet. Another 20 phones were added as extras, and blanks were added where the new owners’ names could be written in. The list would be updated once the aircraft returned from deliveries.

Carlos had prepared ten phones for the 747’s first flight over to Europe. Six were for the Air Force bases in Europe. The first phone was for the commanders at Ramstein and Spangdahlem Air Force Bases in Germany, and a third for Aviano in Italy. The two Air Force bases in Britain, Mildenhall and Lakenheath, were to be issued one each, and the sixth one was for Incirlik Air Force Base in Turkey. Another four were reserved for front-line battle commanders in Iraq.

The first HC-130 fuel tanker, the one General Allen had loaned to Preston, flew in from the North Carolina airfield and was being refueled to take a satellite phone over to the Air Force base in the Azores. From the Azores, and with its extended range, the plan was to fly her directly into Turkey or Baghdad and help ferry a platoon of troops at a time from the front lines into one of the safer bases.

Very few items were needed overseas, but several 5,000-watt military generators, a complete field hospital, and 1,000 gallons of gasoline in five gallon canisters was loaded aboard the 747, as well as blankets, beds, and anything else anybody thought might be needed over there. Carlos, studying the world’s weather two hours after receiving the phones, printed out three copies of the world’s weather on a flat printed map of the Earth—exactly what was being transmitted onto his simple screen—and then gathered the phones for the 747.

Each phone and a charger had already been packed up into a plastic zip-lock bag with the new owner’s name on it, and he headed out to the giant Air China 747 sitting on the runway and Carlos saw that the fuel tankers were already clearing themselves away from the aircraft. He climbed up the steel stairway to the front of the aircraft and went in.

A guard of six fully armed men would stay with the aircraft through-out its journey. They had already gotten comfortable in the First Class area. Seats had already been made into beds and it was weird to see a machine gun, rocket launchers, and cases of ammo ready for use in the aisle of the very luxurious aircraft.

The Air Force pilots were waiting for him. They were handed their own satellite phone, and Carlos could guide them if weather was going to be an issue. Right now, the only weather issue was in Germany where it looked like a snow storm was blanketing the area north of the Alps. Carlos had several timed prints of satellite photos for them showing the last 24 hours of the storm’s movement.

Since they were heading straight into Ramstein, the runways were expected to be clear, but they had more than enough fuel to fly into Aviano, Italy if the weather closed the two central German bases. From there, the jumbo jet was to hand over the satellite phones for further distribution with the HC-130 which would arrive 12 hours later. Once the phones were distributed, more accurate weather conditions could be relayed to pilots from the bases they were flying into.

In the last 12 hours, Lee had worked on getting a dozen old fashioned military mobile radio beacons working again and had been waiting for parts to be brought in on the transporter. Many of the old military mobile beacons were in metal containers about three-feet square and two feet high, and could be moved around on a forklift with a small generator inside the unit as its power source. Much like a normal radio frequency, an aircraft’s radio could look for the beacon’s transmitting noise and then home in to the location where the beacon originated. These units were sent mostly into forward areas with dirt airstrips to bring in supplies. Due to the electrical outage, these simple and antiquated directional systems were the only choice available, and the 747 was about to be loaded with six of these units in her cargo hold.

The HC-130 bound for Hawaii and Japan would have another six aboard in an hour or two, and once these were distributed, any aircraft would be able to direct its auto pilot onto the homing beacon from up to 1,000 miles out.

Carlos and Lee were happy to finally see the 747 take off at mid-day on the eighth day, fully fueled but still very empty for such a large aircraft. She turned eastwards and headed out over the Atlantic for Europe and the Middle East. They realized that the massive aircraft, light on luggage, could bring back more than 750 troops at a time, and it would take at least 24 hours for every round trip.

General Allen called Carlos. It was 1:00 am in China, and an hour after the attack in Nanjing. He gave Carlos the good news: the attack had gone well. Mrs. Wang had showed them the right buildings, and thanks to her the Zedong Electronics headquarters was now a pile of broken rubble. He had also seen the lights in Nanjing go out.

Carlos told him that the whole of the rest of the world had gone dark, including North Korea, Iran, and even the entire area the General was flying out of several minutes after the actual attack time. There were several small areas of lights to his south, around a Shanghai airport and the city’s harbor area, he believed. He had seen a faint light of the fires in Nanjing on the screen a few minutes earlier, but had left to deliver the radios to the 747, which had just taken off for Ramstein.

“Carlos, ask Lee to use one of the satellite phones and call the red number. I want to see if that number is still operating,”
instructed the general. Lee did, and after several seconds an engaged tone was heard by Carlos and he relayed the information.
“I’ve been thinking about our upcoming attack,”
continued the general.
“Carlos, please hand Lee the phone.”

“Harrow, Mr. Allen Key,” said Lee into the phone.

“Hallo, Lee. Your wife is okay and asleep at the rear of the aircraft. I’m heading into Beijing and should be in the area in about an hour. I was thinking about these 747 aircraft. Where do you think Zedong Electronics has them stationed?”

“It can only be Shanghai Pudong International Airport, Mr. Allen Key. There are two airports in Shanghai, but Pudong is further out of the city and I would think that they have them all at this airport ready to carry the Red Guards into New York. There are two very faint lights in that area—the only ones left in the whole world.”

“How many aircraft does Air China own, Lee?”
asked the General.
“Civilian aircraft are not my specialty.”

“I don’t know for sure, but they must have a lot of the 747s like the Air China one that left a few minutes ago. Also, they have purchased some of the big new European ones in the last couple of years, Mr. Allen Key,” Lee replied.

“Thank you, Lee. Please hand me back to Carlos.”
Lee did.

“Carlos, I want you to cancel that flight—the HC-130 flight into the Azores and then Turkey,” stated the general. “You still have the Marines at McGuire? The ones who arrived from North Carolina an hour or so ago? Also are there two Chinese-speaking pilots, Captains Wong and Chong? They were with Joe Patterson in JFK. I need to speak to the chief of the Marine detachment, Patterson, the two Chinese-speaking pilots, and the crew of the HC-130 immediately.”

“I’ll call you back in ten minutes, Pete,” replied Carlos.

Carlos gave orders to three men standing by, ready to help him at any point, and they ran off to go and get the personnel the general wanted. This gave the general, a pretty fast thinker in his old age, a few minutes to work out a beauty of a plan. Joe Patterson’s brave actions at JFK had given him a fantastic idea.

They were still waiting for Major Patterson and the two Chinese pilots when a soldier returned and told them that they would be several more minutes. Carlos told the soldier to go out to the aircraft and stand by. He also phoned General Allen back and told the general about Lee repairing the 12 mobile beacon units, and that six were already on their way to Europe and the Middle East. General Allen was ecstatic, and thanked Lee profusely for the idea. It made his day to know that a real plan was coming together in his absence and also, within a couple of days international flying could be made safer and easier for the pilots. Carlos then told him that a radio beacon was already operating at McGuire as of 20 minutes ago, gave him the frequency, and told him that there were still another three they were working on. The general reckoned that there must be dozens of them in Europe, and told Lee to get several of the necessary parts loaded with the Air Force engineers going to Hawaii and Japan. Lee told him that he could have another two ready within the hour, and the general ordered him to get them placed into the HC-130 he was about to have the meeting about.

“Good day, gentlemen,”
the general started, as Carlos put the phone on speaker 10 minutes later, once everybody had arrived from different places on the large base.
“First of all Marine Lieutenant Smith, well done down in North Carolina! You guys did a fantastic job and I have an even more exciting mission for you. Major Patterson, well done again. Captains Wong and Chong, you are to be commended. Actually all of you will be recommended for a promotion once we have won this thing. A luncheon with the president is certainly in the cards in the not too distant future. Lieutenant Smith, can you get 24 parachutes from your base in North Carolina, and are you all parachute-trained for low-level insurgence?”