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

by T I WADE

  “It’s getting overcast, but I don’t believe it is going to snow tonight, sir. The clouds are high clouds, the ones that show change, but not immediate change. I think it will snow tomorrow sometime, but not tonight.”

  “Good. Go down the mountain and tell General Allen to look for any old military computers at the base. I mean old junk like this Amiga here,” Carlos showed the sergeant the computer Lee was pulling apart. “Tell him ‘Zedong Electronics’ are to blame for all our woes, got that?” The man nodded. “Amiga computers pre-1985 and tell him to get over to the local television station. I want him to get one of those mobile television trucks—you know, the ones that have the satellite-feed dishes on top?” The sergeant nodded again. “Somehow get it loaded onto a trailer or whatever. If there are six of the satellite-feed trucks, take all six. Get every one he can, because I think Lee and I can reroute the electronics to give us a satellite feed from one truck to another somewhere else in the country. The TV trucks should fit into a C-130 and be moved around the country.”

  “Yes, sir,” smiled the sergeant, now understanding what Carlos was trying to do.

  “We will need to have constant generator power up here, so bring up more fuel in the morning in case we need to stay longer. Lee and I are going to try and work out a permanent connection here and then bounce the feed back to Hill Air Force Base, and then hopefully to any other place in the country that we want. If we can do that, we can use one of the television trucks as a mobile head quarters. But, we need these old Amiga computers and the dishes on the television vehicles to work together. Tell the general that I need to move the satellite into position where it is directly over us here and that will hopefully give us simple but viewable pictures of both our coastlines, understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” and he was gone.

  “I have the Amiga operational,” Lee spoke up. “It had an ancient burned-out fuse, and I just re-routed the feed past the old fuse. Not a Zedong Electronics fuse—it says ‘Made in America.’”

  For the next couple of hours, Carlos and Lee worked, downgrading the whole system. It got dark outside and much colder, and they put on extra jackets to keep warm.

  By 10:00 pm that night, Carlos pushed the ‘A’ command for Navistar P and a dark picture of the Earth—a very poor-quality picture—flickered on and was displayed on the old Amiga screen. Carlos could just see the dark outline of what looked like the North Pole, the northern area of Canada and the top of the United States with the sun’s rays off to one side and a quarter of the dark planet in the bottom right corner of the computer screen. Carlos typed in new coordinates so that the satellite would reposition itself directly over Salt Lake City.

  Navistar P was already moving in a fixed orbit at 241 miles above Earth, but was rotating a mile a year slower than it was meant to so it wouldn’t keep a constant position. The readout from the computer stated that it would need several hours to perfect its rotation speed, complete the repositioning process, and asked for permission to move. Carlos gave it the necessary permission and the latitude and longitude coordinates on the screen slowly started to change.

  “That’s all we can do for now,” Carlos said to Lee. Lee nodded. “Now tell me your story, Lee. I want to know everything.”

  Lee did. It took two hours, several of cups of tea, and several packages of junk food from the food dispenser the soldiers had broken into. Lee told Carlos about his studies, his degrees, the old man who met him in the corridor one day, their family’s new home on the island that looked like America. Then he told him about his work in America—how he stole plans for new PC computers from Microsoft, sent over many new software programs, motherboards from several companies Microsoft was working with. Microsoft had themselves stolen parts from IBM, Acer, and all the other major computer manufacturers to make their new programs compatible.

  Lee then worked for several smaller companies that were in the forefront of new communication technology. Nokia was a big one. He even worked for Intel, cleaning floors for a year until he got a new job with Apple. With Apple, he became a sales agent for Zedong Electronics.

  Until 1998, he had cleaned floors and downloaded plans from computers belonging to directors, designers, and scientists. After 1998, he wore a suit, used his knowledge, and sold several firms on producing everything they needed to be made in China—the whole product from computer chips to cell phones. He was the one who got the contract for everything Apple was about to design to be made by Zedong Electronics in China “I never thought that it was for anything bad,” added Lee, over his second cup of tea.

  They glanced at the screen. The Earth was still there, still very dark, and the center of the planet had moved an inch closer to the middle of the screen. If it had been daylight, they would have been able to make out Salt Lake City’s position faintly in the bottom right corner.

  “I never thought for a second that something bad was going to come from all our work and selling for Zedong Electronics. The Russians were stealing technology from you. America was blind to it all. America was trying to steal technology from the Japanese and when we came out with the first parts, I’m sure the Japanese then tried to steal it from us. Even a few American spies went over to China. I met a couple of them, and unbeknownst to them, they tried to steal their own technology back!”

  “It was nothing new, just a copy of what was stolen, and a cheaper price that nobody could refuse. For years I tried to understand the logic of selling parts at cost or even below cost, but once they started making whole units, the profits must have risen quickly. Zedong Electronics must have lost billions of dollars in the first couple of decades and then got it all back and a lot more by the third decade. It was genius, I thought. The only bank that could have loaned them enough for those two decades would have been the Chinese government—or another country’s government, like Russia or America—nobody else was big enough.”

  “Why did you end up here?” asked Carlos. “There’s nothing to steal from here, not from this observatory anyway.”

  “I think that after Microsoft, Acer, Intel, Nokia and Apple, and all the information I had gathered, I was relocated to a place that would hide me from the people in Silicon Valley. I think they were scared that employees from those different companies would remember me and put two and two together. I was getting old, my daughter was about to go to university, and my assistance was not necessary any more. I was a liability to them,” Lee replied bluntly.

  “You were paid for all this information?” Carlos asked.

  “Yes, 1,000 dollars for each contract, and I got paid 63 times in 25 years. Then they told me to come here, they paid for my little house in Salt Lake, purchased our small dry cleaners shop in Holladay for my wife, and told me to sweep floors up here and disappear until they contacted me again.”

  “How did they contact you?” was Carlos’ next question.

  “Either through a satellite phone we were issued in late 1999, or here by satellite communication.”

  “Can you find the satellites they used to contact you from here?” Carlos asked.

  “Yes. There were three Chinese satellites that belonged solely to a subsidiary company of Zedong Electronics in Shanghai. All the other Chinese equipment is, or was, controlled by the Chinese government. They must have forgotten that I had enough knowledge to trace their contacts back to the source. I was only contacted here once, then I assume I was forgotten until last week when it was time to terminate me and my family. They often checked to make sure I was cleaning floors here and that I was living in my house, and that my wife and I were happy. The last time I was contacted was a year ago.”

  “Where did they contact you from, Shanghai?” Carlos wanted to know.

  “No, from their headquarters. It is a large building in Nanjing. I saw the building go up in 1979-80. It took two years to build, was about 30-something stories and the biggest in the area at that time.”

  “Who tried to terminate you?” was Carlos’ next question. Lee told him about
the four men in the SUV who looked like special soldiers. His friend from Las Vegas had warned him, explaining that he himself was running away from a Chinese hit squad of four men. He had seen this squad of four set fire to his house and a couple of other Chinese families’ houses. Lee explained that a number of families had been killed all over America at the same time, and that it was the work of more than one team of men.

  Lee then described the size of the island village north of Shanghai and explained that there could be hundreds of termination, or killer, squads in America, and all the other countries for that matter. Zedong Electronics could have a whole army of them.

  *****

  General Allen was busy. By lunchtime, he had met with Vice Admiral Martin Rogers in Norfolk. The Navy, he had learned, was in far more disarray than the Air Force. The Navy had zero communications, and the two men went over possible attack scenarios. The general told the admiral that the Air Force was already under wartime conditions with no transponders or lights during flight. General Allen suggested that all naval shipping use the same secrecy because they were definitely being spied on from space.

  The meeting was brief, only an hour, but the general left Norfolk for Salt Lake City knowing that the Navy had two old World War II destroyers in operational status and three old diesel-powered submarines used for training that still had usable torpedoes. Martin Rogers had explained that this was what was left of the whole Atlantic Fleet, and that there were about the same number of operational vessels stationed in San Diego—the remains of the Pacific Fleet. He also disclosed that they still had tons of armaments for these rusty buckets on both sides of the country. They had at least a small chance of sinking a couple of ships, if and when necessary.

  Captain Sally Powers was flying the general to Salt Lake City. They arrived an hour after Carlos had left, had a late lunch with the base commander, and took Lady Dandy’s crew with him in the C-130 over to Edwards Air Force base. They all arrived in California around 4:00 in the afternoon. Maggie and the kids were happy to see Will and decided to stay with him until they were needed elsewhere. Will Smart was still not happy about flying across country.

  The general met with the Edwards base commander while the troops lifted the fourth generator from Preston out of the belly of the aircraft, after which he took off for the return flight with Buck and Barbara still aboard, back to Hill AFB in Salt Lake City.

  It would be dark by the time they landed and Sally would get a rest while another pilot flew them back to Andrews. On the way, General Allen told Buck about the developing Air Force they now had. Edwards AFB would have their own C-130 ready in a day or two. There was the F-4 Falcon at Edwards, two pilots would fly her over to Hill AFB tomorrow, once she was ready for flight. Two more Hueys in the museum could be operational within a week, and now that they would have electricity in a few hours, they could work 24/7 on the aircraft. He told Buck about the two flyable F-4s already at Hill and his loan of an HC-130—a Hercules fuel tanker used in Vietnam that he called Mother Goose—to Preston in North Carolina. She would be ready at Hill AFB in the morning and could get into Preston’s airstrip half loaded with fuel. It could refuel his airfield tanks daily and since it had pre-1980 pumps, it could suck fuel out of anything—even a commercial airport system or a tractor-trailer.

  Then the general told them about Ghost Rider, an AC-130A Gunship that was already airborne out of Edwards AFB and on its way to Andrews AFB. The gunship was to be delivered to the newly built wing of Washington’s Air and Space Museum in its original Vietnam colors, and they would see it at Andrews later when they arrived. The general was excited about this one.

  They were expecting to pick up Carlos, return to Andrews, and then talk to the president early the next morning. They flew into Hill Air Force Base, its runway briefly lighted, and the general was told that Carlos would not be returning until morning.

  The sergeant, who had delivered Carlos and Lee up the mountain, had returned two hours before the general, and the only two troop carriers and trailers that were operational, were already in downtown Salt Lake City working on Carlos’ orders to acquire as many television trucks as possible. Several dozen soldiers were inspecting the museum and forgotten areas of storage hangars for any old televisions or computers.

  Two old 1970-era color televisions had already been located and tested. They worked, and three old computers like the ones Carlos wanted were located on a back shelf of the Repairs and Museum Storage Depot near the base’s aircraft museum.

  They also had sent word to Andrews and Edwards AFBs with another C-130 that had come in from Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, to look for the same kind of equipment. They had had radio communications for over thirty minutes now. An old base radio from the Vietnam War was now operational and working with Preston’s frequency and solar towers. This gave them a total of four communication stations across the country—Preston’s farm, Andrews AFB, Hill AFB, and Edwards AFB.

  National communications was getting better!

  Chapter 3

  North Carolina – Preparations for an Attack

  Preston’s airstrip was busy, and in between flights he checked the asphalt on his runway for damage. He and Joe had built it well, with Preston spending a lot more money than needed to strengthen the ground under the asphalt. There were three layers of granite rock, stones, and chips on top of each other to allow the asphalt to bed down on a strong base. But neither man had ever expected it to handle the larger-than-life C-130s that were now coming and going on a daily basis—every arrival heavier than the one before.

  Apart from a slight normal crack here and there, however, it seemed to be standing up well. The C-130s, meant for dirt landings, had several tires in their undercarriage wheel-wells, which distributed the weight a little, and up to now all the aircraft had landed and taken off with very little cargo. That was until Jennifer came in from Salt Lake City.

  “Tom” the C-130 returned a couple of hours after Carlos left that morning. It was 10:00 am on the second day when Preston heard Jennifer call in over the radio in the lounge. He had just set up the powerful speakers from the new “kaput” stereo system to work outside on the roof of the house to broadcast to anybody working that somebody was coming in for a landing. There was much that had already been completed outside. The barbed wire had been installed along the front fence area and around the only gate at the entrance to the property.

  The barbed wire was weird stuff, and dangerous, as Preston found out when he was helping to stretch it out. Thick protective gloves were needed. The rolls were extremely thick and weighed a couple of hundred pounds. The forklift had been needed to transport them to the gate, which was pretty tough for the little guy on an uneven road surface with its small wheels. It had taken most of the morning to string out the first six rolls. Each roll was placed on the ground and the wire end tied to Preston’s truck. He pulled it away from the roll and the round wire formation just elongated out 100 feet and became a twisted length of dangerous wire, three feet high and three feet in diameter. The next one was pulled out next to the first one, and then the third was placed on top of the first two, creating a triangular effect and becoming a six foot high wall.

  The same was done on the other side of the gate, and then the gate was dressed in cut sections of the wire. It still moved, but was virtually impenetrable when shut. Preston left the men and his truck to complete the next 100 feet and returned to inspect the runway.

  “Hi Jennifer, Preston here,” he responded to her call. It was pretty quiet in the house with several members gone and the new arrivals still sleeping.

  “Hi Preston, I’m about 20 minutes out coming in a little heavier this time. I have some Christmas gifts for you from the Rockies,” she replied.

  “Wind from the north, five to ten miles an hour, temperature 38 degrees, runway lights are removed, you have the whole field. Over.”

  “Roger,” she replied. “Will be coming in from the south, unpacking, and then refueling at your neigh
bors to the south. They are now up and running and selling gas.”

  “Good to hear that. We are heading out anyway to get some extra, just in case, but I’ll wait for you,” he replied.

  She came in, her rear tires hitting hard on the ground several feet before the beginning of the asphalt and using the whole runway this time, her propellers on full feathering, breaking down her speed. This time, he did see plumes of blue smoke spew out from the tires as she came to a heavy stop.

  He was surprised to see a small, camouflaged bulldozer and a second forklift back out of the rear of the C-130. That was not all. There were another two dozen troops, tents, two porta-potties, boxes of rations, gas cylinders, and another dozen rolls of barbed wire. Then three large mortars, nearly five feet tall, and dozens of cases of mortar bombs on pallets were lifted out. Lastly, bags of what looked like sandbag cases, on plastic wrapped pallets were forklifted out.

  “We are digging in here,” stated Jennifer, standing next to Preston and wiping her face with a cloth. “We are planning to increase your perimeter around the airfield, take down the brush and the trees with our old Vietnam museum-piece mini-dozer here, stolen from Hill’s museum, and set up a perimeter of sandbagged mortar and machine gun placements—especially around the entrance, which should have the barbed wire up and ready to repel any unwanted people.”

  “Yes, we installed the first 200 feet of it this morning. Horrible stuff, that barbed wire,” Preston replied. “We are going to need at least 600 yards of the stuff just for the front area and I worked out another 700-800 yards to cover the sides. The rest of the perimeter should be OK with the natural water boundary. We can’t do the whole lot?”