by T I WADE
The stairs were already on their way to the second group as the pilots—30 of them—ran out from the terminal, still dressing and trying to put their clothing together. Captain Wong issued orders as they arrived, getting a crew aboard each of the next three aircraft as the doors opened. He shouted at the pilots that the first three aircraft had pilots from the Supreme Commander’s own private group and they were to get into the fourth aircraft as spare teams.
The stairs were placed next to the next three aircraft, the forward doors opened, and three Chinese pilots entered each of the front doors with two of the Supreme Commander’s pilots and a Marine. The stairs were being pulled away as the first engines started up and the panting ground crew moved the stairs towards the next three in the row. Everybody was working as fast as they could, with Major Patterson, still in the middle of the apron, moving his arms around in gestures nobody could understand, but it sure looked good to Captain Wong, and hopefully the tower!
By the time the third set of large Boeing 747-400ER aircraft had their forward doors opened, the Chinese crews and American pilots with a Marine per aircraft were climbing the stairs.
Now there were six left—five normal 747s and the 747 transporter at the end of the line facing the other aircraft, the hangar doors were already open and a tractor was about to move the giant aircraft outside. The ground crew, now breathing hard, pushed the stairs to the next three aircraft. At this moment Major Patterson realized that he had run out of men to fly the machines.
The ‘Supreme Commander’ followed the ground crew that marched over to the transporter, looked up to the tower and waved at them, and entered the last aircraft which was outside and ready for boarding.
By this time, Chinese soldiers were appearing from areas behind the terminal and were forming up into squads. Captain Wong decided that it would take at least ten minutes to get the pre-flight checks done and the last aircraft’s engines started. The first three 747s were already on the move, the noise deafening and he shouted as hard as he could into the ‘Supreme Commander’s ear as they stood on top of the mobile stairs. He suggested the major waste some time by walking over to inspect the men before they had a war on their hands.
The two men returned down the stairs after watching a Marine knock four Chinese crew members out cold and allow the last American pilot to get into the co-pilot seat to begin start-up checks.
They moved directly towards the several hundred troops, now dangerous and ready for action at a moment’s notice. The Supreme Commander, his face still covered stopped several yards in front of the men and bowed to them.
“Our Supreme Commander is traveling to Beijing to pick up more great soldiers,” Captain Wong shouted at the top of his voice. “He will return in a few hours to give you a personnel speech on the success we are expecting in America. He has a surprise for all of you! For every man who does his job well in New York, he will receive a thousand acres of land and a large American house. He will explain the plan once we return from Beijing. He is proud of all of you and looks forward to giving you your own part of America when we have won the final battle.”
With that he bowed to the troops, then to his Supreme Commander, and then whispered to him to get back on the aircraft as the guard stood to attention and presented arms. They seemed excited at the news, many smiling and looking joyous.
As they got to the steps, the first three 747s were taxiing down to the southern end of the runway half a mile away, with the second group of three just leaving the apron in a line.
Wong and Patterson walked up the stairs. The ‘Supreme Commander’ reached the top step and as he had seen several presidents do, he waved to the whole airport in front of him. As the first engine of the transporter began its whine, the door was closed, and the ground crew quickly moved the stairs out of the way. They had now set the plan in motion and all they could do was hope that everybody believed them for a few minutes longer.
“You should get a bloody Oscar for your chit-chat out there, Wong,” praised Major Patterson, dialing the phone to call the general and give him an update. “What did you shout out to those guys?”
“I just gave away a thousand acres of farmland and a big house to each man when they get there,” Wong replied as he got into the left-hand cockpit seat and the co-pilot moved the four throttles forward slightly, the engines began to scream and the heavy transporter began to move.
Their aircraft was the last in the queue, as they trundled over the apron to follow the other 11 massive aircraft many yards apart.
“Comrade Chong, are you flying?” asked Wong in Chinese over the radio and taking control of the heavy transporter as it had been handled by the co-pilot in the right seat up to then.
“Affirmative, Comrade Wong. I’m in the aircraft two in front of you,” Captain Chong replied, making it sound like it was two Chinese pilots talking over the radio.
“Comrade Chong, cut out right and head over to the eastern side of the airport. Hopefully the guy in front of me will follow you. We can all get out of here quicker if we use the western runway as well. The Supreme Commander is in a hurry.”
“Roger, Comrade Wong. The feeder road is coming up, and I’m turning to the right.” As planned the two aircraft in front of Captain Wong both turned onto the feeder road 200 yards apart in front of him.
They were all taxiing at a rapid rate, but big jets like these had to wait at least two minutes before take-off between each aircraft to subdue the air turbulence from the one taking off in front. The last of the twelve aircraft moved rapidly towards the western side at a fast pace, turned left to taxi to the end of runway as they saw and heard the first 747’s engines pushing the aircraft down the eastern runway.
It took Captain Chong another four minutes to get to the runway end, turn, and begin his take-off. By that time, there were a lot of orders in Chinese being shouted over the radio.
“They have somehow found a hole in our plan major. Their troops are mobilizing,” shouted one of the pilots over the radio in English as the fourth aircraft on the eastern side began its long take-off. They were still taxiing in the opposite direction for take-off when Captain Wong turned the heavy transporter onto a second, smaller stretch of asphalt taxiway 50 feet before the main runway and told all the pilots in English to get out of there as fast as possible—the troops were coming.
Major Patterson immediately called Ghost Rider, who was still a few minutes out, and told him to come in hot and come in quickly—they needed covering fire. The second 747, the one in front of the transporter began its slow trundle down the runway a hundred yards behind and fifty feet to the left of Captain Wong’s waiting aircraft. Captain Chong’s aircraft was already climbing into the air a mile in front, but Captain Wong had to wait. He had to wait at least a minute or two, and it was the longest and slowest-moving time of his life. It was so long, that he only waited 50 seconds before he saw trucks moving out from the terminal and slowly pushed the four 747 throttles forward to maximum.
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 termin
al. 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.”
Chapter 15
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 o
ne 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.