“Affirmative, Comrade Wong. I’m in the aircraft two in front of you,” Captain Chong replied, making it sound like it was two Chinese pilots talking over the radio.

“Comrade Chong, cut out right and head over to the eastern side of the airport. Hopefully the guy in front of me will follow you. We can all get out of here quicker if we use the western runway as well. The Supreme Commander is in a hurry.”

“Roger, Comrade Wong. The feeder road is coming up, and I’m turning to the right.” As planned the two aircraft in front of Captain Wong both turned onto the feeder road 200 yards apart in front of him.

They were all taxiing at a rapid rate, but big jets like these had to wait at least two minutes before take-off between each aircraft to subdue the air turbulence from the one taking off in front. The last of the twelve aircraft moved rapidly towards the western side at a fast pace, turned left to taxi to the end of runway as they saw and heard the first 747’s engines pushing the aircraft down the eastern runway.

It took Captain Chong another four minutes to get to the runway end, turn, and begin his take-off. By that time, there were a lot of orders in Chinese being shouted over the radio.

“They have somehow found a hole in our plan major. Their troops are mobilizing,” shouted one of the pilots over the radio in English as the fourth aircraft on the eastern side began its long take-off. They were still taxiing in the opposite direction for take-off when Captain Wong turned the heavy transporter onto a second, smaller stretch of asphalt taxiway 50 feet before the main runway and told all the pilots in English to get out of there as fast as possible—the troops were coming.

Major Patterson immediately called Ghost Rider, who was still a few minutes out, and told him to come in hot and come in quickly—they needed covering fire. The second 747, the one in front of the transporter began its slow trundle down the runway a hundred yards behind and fifty feet to the left of Captain Wong’s waiting aircraft. Captain Chong’s aircraft was already climbing into the air a mile in front, but Captain Wong had to wait. He had to wait at least a minute or two, and it was the longest and slowest-moving time of his life. It was so long, that he only waited 50 seconds before he saw trucks moving out from the terminal and slowly pushed the four 747 throttles forward to maximum.

They couldn’t see what was happening on the eastern side any more, as the weather was coming in, but his job with the fully-loaded 747 transporter was to get it off the ground. Explosions started happening to his right as his jumbo jet, now on full power, began to gather speed and he could just see another 747— “the seventh,” he thought to himself—on the other side begin its slow climb into the sky and into the lowering cloud base at the end of the eastern runway, over a mile away.

Suddenly, there was a massive explosion by the terminal several hundred yards to his right as a massive fireball flew into the air. The explosion was so big that his jumbo vibrated as the shock of it hit the aircraft. He watched as Ghost Rider flew directly over him at a couple hundred feet, lines of tracers from the gunship firing into anything mobile around the terminal now to his east.

A truck exploded a couple hundred yards in front and to the right of the strip of tarmac on which he was taking off, halfway between the feeder runway he was on and the western side of the terminal. Then, the tower itself disappeared as a second massive explosion hit directly underneath it literally enveloped the tower and disintegrated it.

There was only one thing that was that powerful an explosion. An aftershock hit his aircraft hard again, and by his time he was accelerating through 95 knots and it vibrated the whole aircraft. The gunship was blowing up fully fueled 747s.

Another 747 climbed away on the other side of the airport as he came abreast of the burning truck and saw two jeeps trying to cut him off a couple of hundred yards ahead of him and speeding abreast of his piece of asphalt which was about to run out.

One suddenly exploded and the second one blew up less than a second later.

The transporter was now approaching take-off speed and needed another several seconds to get airborne. The engines were screaming, not used to taking off at absolute maximum power when he felt another massive explosion way behind him and some sort of rocket, or missile passed pretty close by, several feet above his aircraft. “Thank God it wasn’t a guided ground-to-air missile,” he thought as he gently pulled back on the controls, felt the front wheel lift, watched the computers aboard begin to work the heavy aircraft off the ground and saw less than a couple of hundred yards of tarmac in front of him.

He was still a knot or several under take-off speed as he pulled back harder on the stick, and he shouted to his co-pilots to switch controls to manual override and hauled back on the controls hard as he pulled the aircraft off the ground with only yards of taxiway left. The heavy and groaning transporter now climbed at an attitude that would have made any passengers sick if it was a passenger flight.

“We have nine in the air so far,” reported Major Patterson to Captain Wong as he wrestled with the aircraft for height. “We are number ten and I’ve lost visual. The 11th one was still halfway down the eastern side and the last one is a couple of hundred yards behind it— far too close for survival. He’s going to get into dangerous turbulence. Meanwhile, Ghost Rider is breaking up the airport buildings, and it looks like two or three 747s are burning fireballs down there.”

Captain Wong brought the aircraft engines down to normal take-off power, he pushed the controls forward to lower the nose and cleaned up the aircraft’s wings, bringing in the flaps. The aircraft slowed her high climb rate, and he watched the ten aircraft on the radar screen as the 11th one left the eastern runway behind him, immediately turned right and climbed hard to get out of the area. The airport was long out of visual range, and the 747s which had taken off before him began to form a line in front of his, climbing up to cruise altitude and slowly turning into the direction for the U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey. Captain Wong didn’t have orders, and he circled above Shanghai gaining height. He was expecting the general to send them somewhere else once he was done down below.

It took a couple of minutes before the general came back on the radio.

“How did you get that last aircraft got off the ground, pilot? I just don’t know, the turbulence must have been darn crazy!” everyone heard General Allen communicate with the last aircraft.

“I didn’t think we were going to get off the ground, so I let her run another 200 yards to the end of the runway and took her off underneath the dirty air of the aircraft in front and since she banked away to starboard, I stayed straight. She’s okay, sir—a little beaten up, and the galleys must be a mess, but we are joining the end of the line for our destination,” replied an Air Force pilot.

“Well done, pilot,” said General Allen. “I’ll buy you a drink when we get home. Guys, head to our designated destination. I’m heading on and will be several hours behind you. I’ll call you with more details on the phone. Our cover is blown and they are listening to us on this radio frequency. Radio silence from now on. Out.”

“Good job, Wong. Remind me to give you and Chong a promotion to Major. Tell Patterson if I get lost before this is all over. Wong, you alone will set a course for McGuire. You are on your own, I’m afraid,” the general continued, now using his secure satellite phone.

“Go the Bering Sea route. Refuel at Elmendorf and that will give you at least an hour of reserve fuel into McGuire. Well done, now hand me over to Patterson please.” The pilot handed the phone over. “Colonel Patterson. Your promotion is also secure. Just remind me when we get back to McGuire. I’ll relay your three promotions over to Andrews right now and call you back in a few minutes.”