“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.