by T I WADE
*****
“All Howitzers, submarines, fire at will. Spotters, help the submarines, they are pretty blind. South shore anti-aircraft guns and missiles, get the rest of those fighter aircraft. They are incoming from the south and looking for trouble. The carrier is still a quarter of a mile from the bridge and still incoming. All aircraft get your asses off the ground—we need air cover in ten minutes!”
Suddenly, the colonel couldn’t hear himself speak as every gun around the harbor threw whatever it had at the two destroyers, both at full speed at about 30 knots and blowing holes into anything they thought deadly. The colonel watched as dozens of white tarpaulins had been pulled away from the howitzers, and as in a ballet, they all turned together to face the destroyers that were broadside to many of them and the air below him completely filled with lead.
There were dozens of guns on each ship, and everything they had lit up to fight back. The 155mm rounds began hitting the sides of the ships, and some were so close that they went into the hardened armor and one of the destroyers lit up like both of the frigates had done and literally rose into the air, her bow leaving the water for a split second and then crashing down. It kept going, explosions erupting from every part of her, and she went straight down and keeled over showing her hull.
Colonel Patterson directed the fire onto the second destroyer as the aircraft came over for a second sweep, and several big guns blew up on the south side in the park—two of the aircraft never made it out of their dives and went straight in, killing many soldiers.
He could only see three remaining aircraft, and they were heading south and coming in for a third run when he looked over towards the aircraft carrier. She must have had her engines in reverse, as mountains of water was rising up her rear end, but she was still coming forward at about 15 knots, now only 200 yards from the bridge.
The colonel looked back into the harbor area, telling the engineers with the explosives on the bridge to get ready. The second destroyer was plastering the south shore as he saw three torpedoes head in her direction. They were aimed towards her aft and she nimbly turned to face the area and the torpedoes passed her by.
The next two torpedoes were side by side, and 100 yards behind the first three. She sprayed the water area around the shoreline with fast antisubmarine guns. There was a large balloon of water as one of the submarines must have taken a direct hit before the destroyer herself leaned horribly over as the two torpedoes hit her on her starboard bow area. Both torpedoes had come from the submarine she had just hit and they opened up her bow like a can of sardines. This time, there was no explosion. She just slowed and began sinking from the bow, her tail lifting out of the water. She slid most of the way into the water before she stopped—her bow must have touched bottom.
The aircraft carrier’s bow slipped under the bridge several hundred feet below Colonel Patterson, still moving forward at three to four knots, her engines still in reverse. Slowly she was being brought to a halt.
The last fighter, desperate to remain alive, tried to come in from the east onto her aft deck. The sprays of water literally lifted the aircraft up and threw it 100 feet forward onto the deck, where it exploded into a ball of flame. This set off a massive explosion where the supplies had been placed on the deck and a second, even larger explosion sent shock waves all the way up to where Colonel Patterson calmly watched.
There wasn’t much left to do, apart from looking at the aircraft carrier trying its best to get into reverse, but even though the engines were working at full power, it took a lot of time for a ship of that size to change direction. The smoke from the area was everywhere, and all of the firing from the big guns had stopped.
Colonel Patterson asked about aircraft. Their own F-4s were now overhead, and two of the pilots stated that they were already forcing one of the enemy aircraft down into Newark and there were two more, empty of weapons, that needed guidance and they wanted to collect. Preston came on the air stating that he, Carlos and Martie had one aircraft between them and were working on forcing it down into JFK. The third gunship came on line a few seconds later saying that it was being helped by Blue Moon to show a third pilot the way into Newark. The F-4 pilots stated that theirs was now down—one of the F-4s was flying on top of it so that it couldn’t take off again, so the other two screamed up to search for any remaining aircraft.
This was all happening while Colonel Patterson kept his eyes on the aircraft carrier and his ears glued to the radio announcements. Suddenly the aircraft carrier’s smaller guns started blasting away at the aircraft in the sky, tracers going up from the forward area inside the harbor and its rear guns outside the harbor mouth. It took another three seconds before the massive tower of the aircraft carrier towered directly under the middle of the bridge. Its forward movement stopped, and it slowly, inch by inch, started moving backwards, back out to sea.
*****
With the dead body of his Air Force commander slumped on the floor of the bridge, the chairman took over the battle. He had ordered the frigates to fire into every building around the harbor area and destroy every visible building. Again, it was under his orders that the two destroyers went in under full power a few seconds before both frigates erupted into massive explosions. Then he ordered the aircraft carrier to full steam ahead to catch up with the destroyers. The admiral tried to intervene and suggest that the carrier stay outside until the battle was over, but he was told to shut up. Then, the frigates and a minute later the first destroyer blew up and a couple of his fighters dropped into the harbor a mile or so away. It was then that the chairman realized that he might not be competent to fight a battle such as this one, and ordered the admiral to take over.
The admiral immediately ordered the carrier’s engines into full reverse and the chairman shouted into his radio for all the troops on the container ships to get off and kill everybody they saw.
They did that, and hundreds of Red Guards came down the sides of the ships on ropes only to be mowed down by the waiting American troops. Their falling bodies turned the water red around the first four ships.
*****
The two American destroyers had approached as the second Chinese destroyer, whose captain hadn’t even seen the two old World War destroyers firing shells into her as fast as their nine 105mm guns on each ship could. It wasn’t only the two torpedoes that blew his modern destroyer apart, but well over 70 rounds from the rapidly firing guns on the old destroyers that went into her before she sank.
The last container ship was not yet docked, and she had her engines in full reverse when the nearest destroyer fired a round into her bridge, killing everybody there. The engineers below deck closed down her engines as they felt the vibrations of the explosions vibrate badly through the whole vessel.
The vessel was still moving and now out of control. Ropes were shot over her bow and stern by the destroyers and the few soldiers on board who tried to shoot back were mowed down by several heavy machine guns on both American ships. Once the crew realized that they had no chance, they waved white flags and secured the ropes as the destroyers, acting as tugs, slowly stilled the massive ship 20 times bigger than they were.
*****
The chairman was in shock. Minutes earlier he had ordered his Politburo up on deck to be with him as they went under the bridge. He was excited about renaming the bridge, but then as the men arrived, everything seemed to go wrong.
The 14 men looked on in shock as one ship exploded after the other, and they all held on as the vibrations of the engines in reverse tried to still the large ship. Slowly, they inched under the bridge, and the chairman put his hands up for silence. He shouted out as loud as he could that this bridge would now be “renamed the…” Suddenly hundreds of massive explosions filled the air from the bridge directly above them, shutting him up once and for all.
Hundreds of blinding explosions hurt their eyes and deafened their ears as the bridge span above them was ripped away from its two towers. Very slowly the whole structure above
the aircraft carrier began to descend, gathering speed as it fell right on top of them.
The Chairman of Zedong Electronics—the most powerful man in the world, the man who had already killed one third of the world’s population—still had his arms outstretched and his mouth open mouthing words as the tons of steel and cement came down, crushing the whole tower of the aircraft carrier and imploding the steel structure into the flight deck as if it was paper. It turned everything underneath it into hamburger meat, and the whole bridge hit and then sliced and diced the dying ship into two. Within seconds, there was nothing left on the surface apart from rolling water and explosions, as hundreds of pockets of air boiled back up to the surface.
The whole bridge, the Politburo, the Chairman of the New World, and the entire aircraft carrier was gone—gone forever.
To Be Continued in…
INVASION USA III – THE BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL
Books by the Author:
The Book of Tolan Series:
Banking, Beer & Robert the Bruce – Hardcover and eNovel.
Easy Come Easy Go – Hardcover and eNovel.
It Could Happen – eNovel.
INVASION USA Series:
INVASION USA I: The End of Modern Civilization – eNovel.
INVASION USA II: The Battle for New York – eNovel.
INVASION USA III: The Battle for Survival – Launch date – June 1st, 2012.
INVASION USA IV: The Battle for Houston – The Aftermath – Launch date –June 1st, 2013.
The Tolan Chronicles Series:
Volume I 1779-1879: Launch date – July 1st, 2012
Volume II 1879-1979: Launch date – July 1st, 2012
Volume III 1979-2079: Launch date – July 1st, 2012
Volume IV 2079-2379: Launch date – July 1st, 2012
Volume V 2379-2779: Launch date – July 1st, 2012
About the Author
T I WADE was born in Bromley, Kent, England in 1954.
His father was promoted with his job to Africa and the young family moved to Africa in 1956.
T I Wade grew up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Once he completed his mandatory military commitments, he left Africa for Europe at the age of 21.
He lived in the UK, Germany and Portugal for 15 years before returning to Africa in 1989. Here the author got married and due to the upheavals of the political turmoil in South Africa, the Wade family moved to the United States in 1994. Park City, Utah was where his writing career began in 1998.
To date T I Wade has written five novels, the sixth is under edit and the seventh half complete.
T I Wade, his wife Cathy and two teenage children live 20 miles south of Raleigh, North Carolina.