The men were piling up all the workable weapons in the C-130. The two injured Chinese were also loaded, the new medics looking after them as well as the injured Americans. The dead American soldier was lifted into the C-130 with the remaining troops.
Jennifer took off to the west 15 minutes later and Preston waited for her to climb away. He waved goodbye to the nice old farmer, who saluted him as he gunned the engines for departure.
“With Americans like that, this country will certainly survive,” he thought to himself, and as he flew over the bridge spanning the highway, he felt good and had hope for the future for the first time in several days.
He beat Jennifer in by 30 minutes after telling Buck and Mike to turn back. They were half an hour out from the farm when they turned back and reached the airstrip together. Preston had radioed Martie earlier, and she was just taking off from Robins Air Force Base and on her way home—she was an hour out and had enough fuel.
It was 4:00 pm and an hour before dark, when Martie came in and Jennifer went out, saying “Hi” as they passed each other in flight. The wind was coming from the south, and Preston noticed that landing was from the north for the first time this year. He hoped the winds were the winds of change. Somehow, he knew that this day had been a real victory for the United States. Now it was all up to General Allen. Hopefully, he would cut off the head of the “serpent” in the next 24 hours. America had certainly just cut off the tail.
Chapter 13
‘Z’ Day 7 – China Attacked
At the exact moment that Preston was thinking about General Allen, the general had been in Japan for 20 minutes. Carlos, before he packed up to leave, had guided General Patterson and his aircraft into an overcast Japan. Luckily, the overcast conditions were only ranging about 20 miles offshore, but during the night Carlos had changed the three aircraft’s course three times as they flew over the ocean for the second half of their 12-hour flight. Carlos and Lee needed to be set up at McGuire within four hours to help guide General Allen and Lee’s wife into mainland China.
The first half of the trip had been easy. They had followed the Alaskan islands in a southwest direction from Anchorage, with the Bering Sea on the left and the Pacific Ocean on the right. They had passed over Atukan and Unalaska four hours into the flight, the infrared scanners and the antiquated but working 100-mile radar systems onboard the gunships giving them eerie views of the islands 29,000 feet below them. After five hours, they needed to head away from the land as it began to stretch in a west-northwest direction and towards Russia. For the next several hours, they needed Carlos to guide them.
All the way through the flight, General Allen, with his cell phone permanently on charge from the flight deck, made and received calls. For the first few hours, it was Major Patterson giving him sitreps, and by the time they left the last islands on their radar and infrared scanners behind, the fight was over and it sounded like they had their first prize—an intercontinental aircraft to ferry troops back to the States. He had given orders to get it checked out, refueled, and ready to meet him either in Ramstein, Germany, or at their main Air Force base in Turkey. General Allen wanted to move troops away from all front lines immediately and get them into safer areas.
He managed a couple of hours of sleep before they were scheduled to call Carlos again and get their latest position in relation to a line they had drawn on a map. He called Carlos at the appointed time, got all the aircrafts’ transponders switched on for several seconds, and within minutes Carlos was telling them that they were over 100 miles off their line to the south. They changed flight direction, and everyone not doing anything went back to sleep.
It was weird, flying over pure blackness and having only one person in the world to talk to, several thousand miles away, who could give them accurate information on where they were.
Two hours later, they did the same and this time they were only 20 miles off course. The winds from the north must have must have lessened. At this point, seven hours into the flight, they decided to add 1,500 gallons into each gunship from the tanker. It took an nearly an hour to get both aircraft refueled, and half the fuel was used during the refueling period, but it got them 275 miles closer to their targets. Once this fuel was used up, they started small electrical gravity feed pump motors that pumped the stored fuel from the soft bladders in their holds into the fuselage fuel tanks, which in turn pumped any excess up and into the wing tanks. That took another hour, and by the time they were finished, they expected to land in just three more hours.
Two hours later, they phoned Carlos and got a third location report. This time it looked like they were 40 miles north of their line into Misawa Air Force Base and 400 miles away from Japan. The area around the base was also overcast, and it could be snowing. They were 100 miles behind schedule and it was going to be tight on fuel.
Then General Allen got a call. The call was not from the red number, but an American voice with a southern drawl called up and said, “Allen Key.”
“Name and location?” asked the General.
“Grady, Army, State-Alpha Lima (AL),” was the reply.
“Nice to hear from you, Mr. Grady. What can I do for you this cold winter evening?” the general asked.
“Got this phone from a Mr. Strong, sir,” Grady answered. “He told me to contact you when I got it and give you a sitrep.”
“Well, get on with it, Mr. Grady. I assume you know who you are talking to. I don’t, yet.”
“Allen Key, we are heading due east on I-20 in the direction of Bragg. I have 700 men in 22 trucks. We are towing five 155mm howitzers and ten 105mm howitzers, tons of ammo, and I estimate we will find more men and materials at four more Alpha-Lima bases on our way to November-Charlie (NC), where Preston lives. Did you copy?” asked the colonel.
“Roger that, Grady. Best news I’ve heard all day. What is your end station?”
“November-Yankee (NY) in six days, I hope,” Grady replied.
“We are going to need you Army guys. You’ve seen what the Alpha-Foxtrot (Air Force) boys are working with. The November (Navy) boys are even worse off than us, with four or five boats that can’t even catch fish. Anyway, I’m heading to the other side of the world. When you get to Preston’s, I want at least 100 big guns, 10,000 buddies, and I don’t care if they have to walk to November-Yankee, just get them there. I hope to be there a day or two after you and I’ll buy you a beer, Mr. Grady. Good luck. Out.” He signed off as he heard his radio operator trying to contact the Air Force base 350 miles in front of them.
It took several minutes, but every person aboard the three aircraft was very relieved to finally hear a voice respond from somewhere in front of them. After several codes and two-way communication was exchanged, information was received. The weather wasn’t bad. Cloud height was at 3,000 feet above ground with a very light snow. Wind was from the northwest at five to ten and the temperature was 32 degrees. The runway was clear. They had had no traffic for a week but they did have flares to help the general land. The landing lights were operational with several generators and the runway slightly slippery, but it would be checked out and cleared with their one working bulldozer by the time they got there.
General Allen called Carlos, thanked him for saving all of their lives, and for providing radio communications, and told him that he was free to head up to McGuire. There was already a C-130 flying down to get him, and he had four hours to get there and set up his equipment in case the general needed help flying into South Korea.