by T I WADE
There were two.
“Comrade Chairman, what about the 90,000 estimated American troops left on their mainland, and armed American civilians turning themselves into armies? Surely a large number of American civilians will survive with many guns?”
“With no electricity, no radio communications, no satellites, and no way to control millions of hungry, angry people, I will be surprised if there is anybody left when we arrive. Any males that are left, except male farmers, are to be executed by our termination squads. The termination squads are to look for any pockets of resistance and destroy them. We, with our allies; Iran, North Korea, fighters in the middle east and Afghanistan, and fighters in Africa who are to be our future work force, have pushed their attacks in the last year to levels where the American President and his miserable government have deployed 91% of all American troops and 80% of the American National Guard to foreign lands where they can never get back to America. They will be easily attacked without all their fancy military equipment, and each American soldier will be killed. The old U.S. Armed Forces will never be a problem to anyone again. These poor, miserable soldiers with have nothing to defend themselves with, apart from their little guns and a few rounds of ammunition. In America, there will be no vehicles for moving their few troops around, except maybe a few old vehicles. They will have absolutely no fighters or bombers. They will lose 99% of their Navy—a few old ones might remain, but will not be a problem with our five stronger, modern naval warships.”
The Chairman paused for effect, his room full of colleagues sitting in rapt attention. “I’m also 100% positive that every movable machine in America has one or more of our electronic parts installed. The Americans always upgrade everything all the time, why not the old equipment? And even with troops or teams of civilians becoming a force against us, our termination squads are better armed and have modern and working radio communications. We have stashed away mountains of ammunition over the last five years and will be able to destroy anybody in our way. The squads’ orders are to kill any adult males they find and leave the women and children for us to use as a work force to re-build our new country. America currently has 310 million people. Comrades, given the time we will allow our enemy to kill themselves, I believe that there will be less than 50 million starving, weak capitalist women and children who will join us, the leaders of the new Communist Republic of American People.”
“Comrade Chairman, could you please explain why your plans are to attack the east coast first. Surely it is a long way to go, where Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle are half the distance?” asked one man.
“An excellent question and one I pondered on for years. The answer, Comrade Bo, is that I believe the remains of the American military, if they happen to understand our plans, will be based in the West Coast cities for any potential attacks. I think that if they get that far and realize that another country was behind the electrical attack, they will think that either the Russian government or our own Chinese government was behind the attack, not Zedong Electronics. I’m sure many clever people will survive and analyze possible answers. I want them to, because America is vast like China. If I can get the remaining troops to one side of the country like the west coast, then the other side—New York and Washington D.C., the White House where I will reside, the Pentagon, and all the country’s wealth—will all be immediately vulnerable to our occupation. There should be less than 10 million very hungry and cold people in that area.”
“The military might take days to hear of our final invasion planned for exactly three weeks after we activate Z-Day, but will be powerless to walk across the continent before we have amassed our 25,000 well-armed troops in New York and then our 20,000 troops in Washington. My belief is that their military, from all around the country, will start walking east. Our termination squads are expected to leak the information to them, and they will walk away from the west coast, leaving it undefended, and we will attack Los Angeles after they have left. We will also have full control of the Panama Canal within a week. A special secret force of 1,500 specially trained Red Guards are to take control of the Canal and they are already in position. They have been transported by submarine over the last several weeks. Once we have control of the Panama Canal, we will be leaving here and our East Coast Attack Force, including all of you, will depart for our new country. That is all I have to say at this moment, time is running short. Comrade Wang, your final report please.” This time the Chairman did not leave the podium.
Lee Wang’s old boss stood up where he sat. “Comrade Chairman,” he began. “We have completed our mission in the United States. All our operatives are now terminated. Unfortunately one of our termination squads had a gun fight with the local police force in Salt Lake City. Thankfully they were killed only after they had terminated the last operative and his family. Our four-man squad was terminated by U.S. police and our media team sent out more news about Chinese hit squads being paid by the Russian or Italian mafias We had the same problem in Las Vegas the same day. One of our California operatives had realized what was happening and tried to evade us by running with his family to Nevada. The first squad on the scene terminated him and his family in one of the hotels, but was seen by a civilian. The squad immediately left Las Vegas and headed out into the desert where a gun battle ensued. We lost eight men in the two attacks, and the American FBI and local police force lost 27. It shows the strength of our termination squads.”
“We sent out the news relating to possible Italian mafia gang fights in Las Vegas, and the news went national. I think the FBI is currently looking for a group of Italians all over the United States. Their media is so easy to manipulate—seems they will do anything for a story. The two unfortunate occurrences happened too close to Christmas and our Z-Day to give us any problems, except that we are eight good men fewer in the United States.” He sat down.
“Unfortunate, Comrade Wang, but we must expect problems. I agree with you about these problems being so close to Z-Day, and we are now only 20 minutes away from Z-Day, and then we will enjoy lunch and celebrate.”
Two other reports were given to the room, neither of much relevance to the current situation, and the time slowly ticked by—the minute hand of the large clock above the maps getting closer and closer to the top of the hour.
“You have all noticed the five red, armored-glass protected buttons on the board table in front of me,” announced the Chairman. The 15 other men in the room nodded.
“The first four are not locked and will be operated in this room. The fifth one is locked. The first one on the window side of the room will send the electronic destruction signal through our three two-way satellites operating above the Earth, linked up to each other, and set our first action in motion to shut down the first three billion of our older electronic parts that include Strontium in every corner of the world. It will take about a minute for all of these parts to react. The Strontium is slower than our more modern electrical impulse chips that we started producing in the mid-90s.”
“Then I will press the second button, which will send a termination impulse to the part’s backup systems just in case the Strontium hasn’t reacted to the first signal. That will only take seconds.”
“The third button will terminate all our new, modern parts and manufactured units built after 1994. Their reaction time is instantaneous for all our specially-made electronics, and they will close down opposition government and military installations and weapons, including all American and Russian nuclear missiles—every single one.”
“The fourth button is for our allies. We also have specially designed parts on a separate frequency in their governments, military installations, communications, and weaponry in case they decide to attack us. If we are attacked here, it will only be two types of people who have the ability to do that after the first three buttons are activated—our allies, including North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Syria, or our own government here in China. The fifth red button will close down all of China. Exempt
ions to these five buttons are our own electrical power systems, factories, all the aircraft and shipping we own, our buildings, and our satellite communications. Nobody can close down Zedong Electronics… nobody!”
“If I’m killed because our current friends in the government decide to rise against us, the fifth button gives us complete world domination if we need to activate it, and it sits under a locked, protective glass shield. Only I and three of you in this room secretly have the code for it. This system is fully Wi-Fi and a special squad of twelve Red Guard marines, hand-picked by me, will guard it day and night after this meeting. It will always travel with me and will be moved to America when we move. According to the atomic digital clock underneath each map, it is precisely 310 seconds to ‘go.’ Any questions?”
There were none, and the men in the room sat grim-faced as they watched the numbers tick down from 300.
At precisely 1:00 pm local time, and midnight on the U.S. east coast, Chairman Wang Chunqiao opened the glass protection cup over the first button and pushed it. All eyes were glued to the two world maps on the wall behind him, and he slowly turned around to watch the wall above him. Several parts of the world went dark during the first minute after the two digital clocks had reached zero.
He then opened the second glass protective cup over the second button and pushed it. This time, changes on the top map became more apparent. The whole area of lights over the eastern coast of the United States disappeared. Hawaii, now dark, had disappeared and so did all the lights in Mexico and most of Canada. Parts of Spain and Portugal went black and then it happened—hundreds of split-second flickering lights as all assumed that back-up systems were going on and off instantaneously, and then the whole of the eastern seaboard of the United States and Western Europe went totally black. South America had gone black during the first minute. To the fascinated eyes watching the destruction of the world’s entire electrical grid except in China, North Korea, and several other small areas where only a percentage of the lights disappeared—even the darkened coastlines of the continents disappeared as the lines of lights blinked out. The islands of the world disappeared before the Chairman pressed the third button.
“The lower map shows every aircraft in flight around the world. Their commercial locator beacons or transponder impulses are being kept active by our satellites even though air traffic control worldwide is already dead. Even though most of these aircraft are now dead and falling to Earth, most of these transponders are backed up by battery power and will continue to send out impulses until destroyed.”
The number at the bottom of the map showed a total of 4,597 impulses worldwide. The number quickly dropped down to 4,571, then 4,538 and then 4,511 and then stayed there for several seconds.
“The first decrease, I assume, represents aircraft either landing or taking off and very close to the ground,” explained the Chairman, still looking at the map behind him. Then the number began to drop quickly over the next 30 seconds to 2,049. “Aircraft at lower flight altitudes,” he explained to the men around the table. He glanced at the clocks and noticed that 160 seconds had elapsed since he had pushed the first button. By this time, the smaller number 979 showed up on the bottom screen. “You will notice on our top world map that much of northern China is now blacked out, especially around Beijing. The more southern areas like Shanghai and the area around us will not change, apart from several military barracks that will black out, and every vehicle in them. I decided to cut our own country’s strength with the government and military being destroyed by half. Also, apart from our allies and China, the whole world is now becoming completely dysfunctional.”
“There are a group of specialists on the floor below us watching the maps and are ready to send our termination squads into areas that display a visible light in America 24 hours from now.”
“I doubt there will be many, but we are ready. In the sunlit areas, the same has happened, but we cannot see it as well. We can tell our success by the number of aircraft remaining, and as you can see, flying numbers have been reduced to 63 aircraft worldwide. These we will assume are old, mostly propeller-driven aircraft older than 1982, and most of them have very little chance of landing safely in America and Europe as the ground is totally black beneath them and they have nowhere to go after their fuel expires except down. Remember, gentlemen, the aircraft sitting on the ground, except for ours and our allies, are also now pieces of junk and will rot and rust at their current locations. That includes every military aircraft, every electronic piece of weaponry, and every naval ship in the world. We have now completed our mission for Z-Day.”
He paused, sighed, and was silent for a few moments. “Gentlemen, 30 years of work have paid off admirably, and we are only at the beginning. Let’s eat lunch and celebrate with the best French champagne. I got a container load in for our consumption only a few days ago.”
Chapter 16
Midnight Eastern Time-The End of Modern Civilization
The party was in full swing, the music was loud with much laughter, and a television was on in the corner—the sound muted for the ball drop on “New Year’s Rocking’ Eve” with Ryan Wavebreak.
“Hey everybody!” shouted Martie. “Five minutes to go and we can watch the ball drop in Times Square! Maggie, Will is working and your west coast festivities are still three hours away, so relax!”
Everyone laughed. “Sally, Maggie, help me open bottles of bubbly, would you? Let’s get them uncorked and make sure that everybody’s glasses are topped off before the ball drops.”
The television screen displayed images of bands and celebrities getting pumped up for the ringing in of the New Year, with location shots from a very white downtown New York City full of fresh snow, people, and freezing temperatures. The usual television commentators could not get enough air time and worked hard to get everybody excited as the crowd seemed to be around them in Times Square.
Champagne corks began to pop as bottles were opened and glasses filled to capacity in the hangar lounge. The twins were happily dancing together—the Rolling Stones blaring from the sound system since nobody really wanted to listen to the audio from the TV. As Preston said to Martie every year, people who watched the dropping of the ball with the sound on were either drunk or sitting up in bed with curlers in their hair with nothing better to do.
At one minute to midnight, Martie started quieting everybody down and making sure that everyone had a glass of bubbly. Her grandfather was sitting in a chair, and he raised his glass to her as she looked in his direction. He had a large smile on his face and she assumed that he had finished at least a whole bottle or more by himself. She remembered the kids and grabbed two champagne glasses, filling them with a can of Coke she pulled out of the fridge and got Maggie to get them into the kids’ hands. She clinked on a spare champagne glass and the room went quiet.
“Okay, friends, Romans and countrymen,” she shouted in rather a tipsy voice, raising her glass. “I would like to thank you for all coming to our most successful fly-in to date. So much so that Preston is designing a new runway for larger aircraft for next year’s shindig already. I think he took Sally’s joke seriously and is thinking of the footage needed for Air Force One.”
The rowdy crowd burst into laughter and several partiers clapped Preston on the back. “I would like you all to count down the old year with me and let’s enter the New Year together, with hope and expectation that this world is going to become a better place!” Again the crowd burst into applause agreeing with Martie.
“Somebody turn the volume up on the tube!” Marti called as she held her champagne glass up high. “Here we go!” She and the rest of the crowd started counting down the numbers as they watched the ball descend on the screen in Times Square.
“Nine… eight... Seven… six... five... four... three... two... one……... Happy New Year!”
Everyone started jumping up and down and shouted and started hugging and kissing each other. Nobody noticed the television screen go blank sever
al seconds later, then fizzle with white and black colors for a few seconds and then go completely dead. Even the red light showing the television was on “Off” mode, came on for a second and then also died.
The jubilant and noisy crowd did notice a couple of minutes later when the loud music blaring out of the new music center died, and the room slowly went quiet. As they all quieted down and peered around to see who had stopped the noise, they noticed that the television was also blank and assumed somebody had turned it off.
“I think you guys jumping around has messed up the new music system,” laughed Preston. “Don’t worry. I have a backup. My trusty old system I’ve had in here for years. Martie, give me a cassette, any cassette.” He reached over behind the kitchen counter and brought out his old one he had put away when Martie had showed him the new one a couple of weeks earlier.
“Did you say ‘cassette’!” joked Buck. “That thing must be from the Stone Age.” Again, there was laughter.
“Yeah, Buck, it’s old and I think Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble gave it to me as a gift, but I bet it still works. Maybe the sound isn’t as good as my Christmas present from Martie, but I reckon that with all the Ph.D.s in Electrical Engineering in this room, somebody can look at the newer one and fix it while we enjoy this one.” Music immediately blared out of the old one—this time it was Chuck Berry and a lot of twisting started immediately on the dance floor.
The noise hid the explosion of an airliner crashing into Jordan Lake three miles away.