It came from the east at 500 feet and very low. Preston asked for a radio and called up to the aircraft as it flew overhead.

“Hi, Preston, Jennifer here. I’ve come to take some boys up north. Buck and Mike are two hours behind me and I have a doctor and three medics on board. I’ve got to head up north to help with a big fight up there.”

“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 Jennifer about his luck with the Army base and the movement of troops beginning in a few hours from Anniston. He asked the farmer if he could give the two confiscated phones to Colonel Grady, who would be coming through in seven to ten hours, if he left written instructions for how the phone should be used. The farmer replied that they would dig the communal hole and then wait for the Army to show up.

A quick note was written, including Preston’s new cell phone number and General Allen’s, which he got from Jennifer. He then wrote down the instructions on how to use the phone, to always state the two words ‘Allen Key’ when starting to speak, and explaining why not to answer if the red number called. Both phones were from the batch the lieutenant had given him and still had full battery life. A charger had been found unharmed in one of the trucks and Preston also left that for the Army commander. It had a vehicle-lighter attachment and the phone could be charged while driving. He told the colonel to call General Allen when he got it and provide him with a sitrep.

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.”