Invasion USA 3 - The Battle for Survival (36 page)

The container ship to Panama was on its way and carried dozens of army engineers to work the canal locks, 15,000 soldiers, several trucks and troop vehicles, three heavy-lift helicopters and three Hueys recently fitted with Miniguns on each side in case the ship needed air support.

One of the World War II Destroyers which had helped in the New York attack was her sea protection and a small-sized tanker ship sailed with them in case fuel was needed. She had a fair distance to go.

The still empty-looking container ship also carried a dozen “Mutts” on her bow, jeeps with rocket launchers which could be fired from the decks or could be driven up to fire from her bows, or any area where there was a pathway to drive on the open ship. These jeeps had been so effective during the fight in New York that every movable four-wheeled land vehicle was being refitted into a “Gunship”-type vehicle.

The deck of the container ship which hadn’t felt the weight of its load, was still quite high out of the water. Tons of dirt and rubble had been placed into special tanks to bring her height above the waterline down as much as possible. Machinery and enough arms to start a war had been placed on her and it would take her four days of sailing to reach the Panama Canal.

The weather was warming slightly. Winter everywhere was beginning to bow down to spring and the sea was calm and balmy all the way to Florida. The convoy was heading for the straits between Cuba and Haiti and the sailors on the bridge were surprised they did not see one other vessel for the first two days, until two ill-defined forms appeared on their modern and still-working radar screens; several looked like fishing vessels off the coasts of Cuba and Haiti, respectively.

It was the same when they passed within twenty miles of Jamaica. Here there was a strong breeze from the west and slightly worse sea conditions. The swell was up several feet, of no concern for the three large ships, but all equipment was tied down and fishing boats were all they saw in Jamaican waters. From there it was clear sailing to Panama, thirty-six hours ahead of them.

Suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, the commander of the Destroyer was awakened by alarm bells. He dressed and rushed on deck, his ship going to battle stations. Three fast-moving vessels had been spotted fifty miles in front and heading directly towards them.

“Unidentified vessels, this is a Destroyer of the United States of America. Please identify yourself,” he stated over the airwaves, the radio operator switching to all the radio channels used by different countries in the area. On the fifth frequency change, they got a response.

“American Destroyer, this is the Commander of ARC Almirante Padilla Colombian Navy Light Frigate P51” was the immediate response. “We have our Navy Admiral on board. We are three Frigates heading for your Norfolk Naval yards at the invitation of the President of the United States of America and your Admiral Rogers. It’s good to see somebody else is out here. We request that you come along side and we can have breakfast.”

“Roger that. We have been expecting you. We’ll have you visual in thirty minutes,” the Destroyer commander replied.

An hour later he was having a delicious breakfast in the Colombian warship, a ship far more modern than his Destroyer which had been built in 1945. The Colombian Frigates were forty years newer than his rust bucket, and the breakfast was still fresh out of Colombia.

Once pleasantries were finished, both flotillas of ships parted in opposite directions. For the container ship which hadn’t stopped, the Panama Canal was still 24 hours sailing away.

Preston was up at dawn the next morning and after a week away on the West Coast, was ready to see what work had been done outside. The kids were still asleep and, being kids, they would sleep until someone woke them up. He was eager to see what his airfield looked like. On approach the previous night he could see several shapes of new buildings silhouetted behind the runway landing lights

The morning temperature on March 15th was a decent 41 degrees. He could feel spring in the air as he walked outside. The two dogs, already doing their morning rounds, ran up to greet him.

He didn’t recognize the area behind the old red barn; it had been transformed. Three hangars already stood twenty or so feet behind the barn and two larger hangars were half finished. Three mountains of cement-making sand and stone, and a commercial cement mixer were on one side with a cement truck ready to be filled.

The odd tree he remembered standing where the new runway was to be had disappeared and the ground flat with several yellow construction vehicles, like the cement truck, waiting for someone to start them up.

The hangars were right behind the old barn and there was just enough room to make a path to walk in between the old and new. He stepped inside the three doorless hangars; they were smaller than his, and had enough room for three small aircraft; cement floors had already been poured.

The two larger hangars, twice the area and another ten feet higher, could fit two C-130s each. The cement was poured and the walls were still going up; sections of steel-corrugated frames stood thirty feet high.

With the dogs playing around him he looked back at his farm and hangar and saw what he hadn’t seen last night. One building looked complete and there were three partially-erected buildings on the north side of the farmhouse, still in the framing stage. One was going to be big, so big that his farmhouse would be dwarfed by its size. They were set too far back to see last night in the lights and he hadn’t looked that way this morning.

As he looked, men began to exit the completed building; it was about the same size as his farmhouse, but with two stories. He walked over to say hello.

“Good Morning, Tech Sergeant. Have a good sleep?” Preston asked the first soldier, who had been here from the start.

“Morning, Preston. Like your new additions? Want me to show you around?”

“Sure,” Preston replied, being handed a cup of coffee by another soldier. “Where’s Sergeant Perry sleeping?”

“In his usual room in your hangar, Preston,” the Technical Sergeant replied sipping his steaming cup. “We have 150 men working ten-hour shifts. I’m glad you didn’t want to park in the hangar last night. You would have run over lines of men. Every available place is being used and will be for another ten days to two weeks.”

“I hope Carlos wasn’t shocked by finding several men sleeping in his bed,” Preston laughed.

As they looked towards the hangar Sergeant Perry exited, also with a cup of coffee and a continuous line of men after him. He saw the two men, waved and walked over.

“Morning, Preston, sorry about messing up your peaceful environment here,” said Sergeant Perry, shaking both men’s hands, “but we will be busy here for another couple of weeks completing the buildings and runway, and then all the engineers and construction workers will be gone. We are starting to lay the first level of tarmac this morning and have three trucks coming in by 08:00 hours to offload the tarmac-laying equipment. The single building over there,” he pointed to a smaller house right next to his farmhouse, “Joe, his boys and twenty of our men are completing that one for the President. The next one is a barrack/guardhouse so we don’t need to use your hangar as a guardhouse anymore. It will sleep up to forty soldiers in ten large rooms upstairs, with a communal living space downstairs.”

Security for the President as well, I assume,” suggested Preston.

“Correct,” replied the technical sergeant, the man in charge of the development. “As you can see, it has been placed a hundred feet away from the President’s house and the new barracks will have a wall to give you and the President security from the road entrance, as well as privacy. The wall will be a steel frame with a dirt hill on your side to look normal and hide the first story, much like an armory wall. You can plant grass and a tree or two on the sloping dirt to help separate the two areas if you wish. Next to the barracks is an Officers’ Mess and quarters where pilots or other visiting officers can overnight, eat and drink. This building will accommodate twenty in separate rooms, all ground level. The final building is for aircrew and civilians. It will be three stories high, organized for communal living needs like kitchen, lounge and eating areas on the ground floor. The top two floors will have ten rooms per floor, much like you created in your hangar. It will have communal ladies and gents bathrooms on each floor and, full, the building can sleep eighty people, four to a room if need be. Each room will have a double bed and a pull-down couch. We found a couple of dozen Lay-Z-Boy-type sofas in storage at Fort Bragg. We have added twelve septic tanks in a line fifty feet behind the buildings and they are already in and covered.”

“You guys have sure done a lot since I left,” stated Preston.

“You have a cup of coffee, let’s walk across to the aircraft hangars,” suggested Sergeant Perry. “The technical sergeant has to get his guys sorted out.” The two men walked over to the center of the airfield as three large tractor-trailers entered the farm. They had an escort of two Mutts, one front and one back. Preston thought that they’d better keep the jeeps away from Joe; he might try to commandeer them.

First Sergeant Perry showed him the flattened runway section. Preston knew, from laying his first runway himself, that three layers of sand and stone had already been put in, and the flattened surface was ready for the first of two blacktop coats.

“Your new runway direction is 220 degrees from the south and Runway 40 from the north,” stated Sergeant Perry. We also found that you were slightly out on your own runway by one degree and your original runway is 09 degrees from the north and Runway 189 from the south,” smiled the sergeant.

“It was only meant to be a simple farm runway,” returned Preston. “One degree to me doesn’t matter.”

“Totally understandable,” replied Sergeant Perry, “but if you are going to have F-4s landing in bad weather, they need absolute accuracy if they are flying blind. At 3,700 feet long, everything the Air Force has flying can get into your new runway, apart from the Jumbo Jets. For the Air Force jets we are going to setup an ILS (Instrument Landing System) for approach in bad weather as well as a DME (Distance Measuring System) and an ALS (Approach Lighting System). Then, we are locating two outer markers six miles out on the southern edge of Jordan Lake and two more, one four miles north and the second one six miles north on two defunct cell phone towers. Middle markers aren’t needed and we are placing four inner markers a thousand yards from all four of the runway thresholds. That will be completed with a full array of runway lights in the next ten days.”

The tarmac-laying equipment began unloading and three dump trucks arrived on the farm with the first asphalt.

“The runway’s official statistics are 3,704 feet by 30 feet. We are putting down two layers of asphalt and adding a second top to yours. We will then add cement aprons in front of all the new hangars, white-painted lines and markers, and lastly yellow taxiing paint and markers, then we are out of here.”

“It sounds like something I could only dream about,” replied Preston. “My poor old trusty cropduster will be too scared to come into such a fancy airport as this,” he laughed. They then headed for the hangars.

“You have three smaller hangars which will be complete today. Each has water connected to your well and each has a septic tank for toilets. A new fuel depot and underground tanks are installed and complete over there.” Sergeant Perry pointed to the area south of the last hangar in line.

Several yards beyond the hangar and in the area where the cement apron was to be laid, Preston could see several pipes and tank entrance covers sticking out of the perfectly flat dirt surface. “We are covering this fuel depot and two thirds of the thirty-foot long tanks with cement as well, so that the heavier tanker trucks, or a C-130 tanker can get in close on either side,” continued Sergeant Perry. “Four of the seven 12,000-gallon tanks will be filled with jet fuel and the other three with aviation gas. The tanks are pointing towards us, parallel with the runway and will be fed from two newly modeled computerized control boxes flown in from Mr. Roebels in California, and which will be situated on the outer hangar wall. These tanks, Preston, are long thin tanks, dug ten feet deep and they fit perfectly in a line between the hangar and the runway. They will have ground markers showing where they are in case somebody else wants to dig in the area. The two larger hangars over there will fit two C-130s each, or eight of the small Super Tweets each, or similar aircraft like your Mustangs. Again, there is a septic tank for each hangar already in the ground and we laid the internal cement hangar floor yesterday. There will be a flight office, lounge and three to four bedrooms per large hangar for flight crew. Also, one of the hangars will have a forty-foot high control tower on one side for ground control,” he said, pointing to an extra square steel frame being built on one wall of a large hangar. ”It will have the best radar system and other equipment we can get operational and there will be sleeping and living accommodations for six traffic personnel in the lower levels if and when needed. When the President is here, everything will be fully operational, but when there is little or no traffic, the personnel will be transferred back to Seymour Johnson.”

Preston was impressed. All this would be completed by the end of March. He looked around and even Joe, David and his five sons had arrived and were working on the President’s new house. A pile of long straight logs were being unloaded with a small crane at the rear of one of the military trucks.

Carlos made an appearance, stretching outside the side door to the hangar. The large front hangar door was still closed behind the two aircraft they had landed the previous night. A couple of Air Force personnel were working on both aircraft, servicing what was needed.

Preston returned to the house to get some breakfast going. Martie was not around and somebody had to do it.

Over breakfast a sleepy Little Beth came out of her room and ran into Preston’s arms. Dressed in Martie’s cutdown bathrobe, she looked sleepy with her long hair all over the place.