“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.

Twenty minutes later, the three 130s lowered themselves to 3,000 feet and began to pass under the cloud layer. Visibility was about ten miles and they hoped to see the flares or at least be heard from the ground. Ten miles out, they saw flares through the infrared scanning systems and they quickly brought the three aircraft to the correct course and began their landing checks. The two gunships would go in first, and then the tanker, who could still get to Korea without refueling.

The bright and welcomed landing lights formed into two lines in front of them, and with less than 30 minutes of flying time left in their tanks, they went in and touched ground for the first time in 12.5 hours.

Four hours later, fully fueled and totally out of the salmon they had brought with them, they took off and headed on their 3-hour trip to Osan, South Korea 840 miles away. It had taken an extra two hours for the tanker to suck the fuel out of the dead tanker trucks, transfer the fuel to the gunships, and then take on her full load. While they were being refueled, the men stationed there had emptied the Misawa Air Force Base’s armored bunker of all the 105mm HE rounds, which amounted to 120 projectiles per gunship. General Allen knew that there would be more in South Korea, but he wanted to go in with twice the ammunition he would normally have on board.

Fresh pilots had taken over the flying duties. The relieved pilots got a couple of hours of sleep, and the general started thinking about these old birds. They had been flying for nearly 40 years, had gone through several wars, and still they just flew and flew and flew. A third gunship was expected to be located at Osan, and the Japanese bases, now behind them, had absolutely nothing flying. At least they had used their clean and readied runway for a few landings and take offs.

Three hours later, the radio operator got into contact with Osan. They were flying low, at less than 1,000 feet to stay out of any North Korean coastal radar systems and again, they were guided in with flares, before their infrared scanners found the operating runway lights.

There were heavy, pulsating bursts of light through the thin snow on the horizon to the north, and it looked like there was military conflict around Seoul, 40 miles north of the Air Force base they were flying into. The pilots could very faintly see large lights, which meant that large buildings must be on fire.

They landed in an inch of snow and the weather was beginning to close in around this part of Asia. They couldn’t waste any time getting over to China.

Osan was a large base that included the 51st Fighter Wing and the 7th Air Force. The base had two generals and five colonels who were waiting for him with fuel tanker and generators as they drew up to the hangar. Refueling would only take 30 minutes, due to the short haul from Misawa, and the general asked about ‘Easy Girl’. To his relief, she was ready and operational, had a full crew and just needed to be topped off and armed. She was in a hangar and the brass gave orders to have her brought out and for her crew to get ready. General Allen asked for two back-up pilots and they were found. The only working jeep and one old troop transporter were started up, and his armaments crew drove out to the underground bunker to load all the ammunition they needed.

“Gentlemen,” Pete Allen spoke to a two-star general, a one-star general, three colonels and seven majors as they all stood about the aircraft. “I need a sitrep about the fighting to the north, and in return I can fill you in on our worldwide problems. I will need some coffee and whatever you have to eat, as will my men. We have been flying now for 24 hours. I want to get out of here within two hours—my AC-130 weapons chief will fill your guys in on what we need.”

They went into a large and relatively warm conference room. Several men had obviously been sleeping in here, and the room was immediately cleared for the meeting.

“Okay, so tell me what happened here at Osan,” the general asked Base Commander General Hal Whitelaw.

“I assume you know everything went dark here at 1400 hours on January 1st,“ replied General Whitelaw.

“Actually, midnight East Coast time was what the perpetrators were aiming for,” General Allen replied. “It was dark, freezing and we believe that at least 10 million North Americans are already dead or dying.” The men around the table looked at him, many with their mouths open and white faces.

“We had the usual 20 defense fighters and five armed bombers up, as well as eight C-17s on their way to Misawa,” continued General Whitelaw. “We had three Stratotankers about 300 miles out in different directions, and we lost the lot. Not one aircraft made it back to base. Even the two Apache helicopters patrolling 30 miles north of here just disappeared as the radar went down and all of our millions of electrical components just stopped working. We are sitting here with 400 pieces of junk that used to be called aircraft, and one Vietnam-era AC-130 gunship, two old operational F-4 Falcons, and three Vietnam-era Bell helicopters. How did this happen, Pete, and when is somebody going to turn the power on again?”

“Never guys—or not for a long time. All the Chinese-made electronic gadgets and parts worldwide—billions of them, trillions of them, I don’t know how many—were all built to fail and there are no spares or replacements until we set up new manufacturing facilities. These parts were made by the same company—Zedong Electronics.”

For half an hour the general told them everything he knew. He was tired, unshaven, and had bags under his eyes, but after tonight he would have a little more time to sleep.