The Battle for New York

“There is enough room to land here. A kind farmer has cleared 700 yards on both sides of the highway for us, and I suggest you come in on the other side of the P-38. Over.”

She did, and let the engines shut down before getting out and coming over. She was introduced to the excited old farmer and then the tired Marines, who were excited that they were going with her to New York. Tired or not, they certainly didn’t want to miss any action. They would need every soldier up there.

There was a problem with the dead enemy bodies here though. The farmer spoke up and told them that he and the townsfolk had enough old equipment to dig a mass grave and that a communal grave just off the road was as good a place as any.

Preston told Je

A quick note was written, including Preston’s new cell phone number and General Allen’s, which he got from Je

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.

Je

“With Americans like that, this country will certainly survive,” he thought to himself, and as he flew over the bridge spa

He beat Je

It was 4:00 pm and an hour before dark, when Martie came in and Je

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 sca

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 sca

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.”