Then the general told them about Ghost Rider, an AC-130A Gunship that was already airborne out of Edwards AFB and on its way to Andrews AFB. The gunship was to be delivered to the newly built wing of Washington’s Air and Space Museum in its original Vietnam colors, and they would see it at Andrews later when they arrived. The general was excited about this one.
They were expecting to pick up Carlos, return to Andrews, and then talk to the president early the next morning. They flew into Hill Air Force Base, its runway briefly lighted, and the general was told that Carlos would not be returning until morning.
The sergeant, who had delivered Carlos and Lee up the mountain, had returned two hours before the general, and the only two troop carriers and trailers that were operational, were already in downtown Salt Lake City working on Carlos’ orders to acquire as many television trucks as possible. Several dozen soldiers were inspecting the museum and forgotten areas of storage hangars for any old televisions or computers.
Two old 1970-era color televisions had already been located and tested. They worked, and three old computers like the ones Carlos wanted were located on a back shelf of the Repairs and Museum Storage Depot near the base’s aircraft museum.
They also had sent word to Andrews and Edwards AFBs with another C-130 that had come in from Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, to look for the same kind of equipment. They had had radio communications for over thirty minutes now. An old base radio from the Vietnam War was now operational and working with Preston’s frequency and solar towers. This gave them a total of four communication stations across the country—Preston’s farm, Andrews AFB, Hill AFB, and Edwards AFB.
National communications was getting better!
Chapter 3
North Carolina – Preparations for an Attack
Preston’s airstrip was busy, and in between flights he checked the asphalt on his runway for damage. He and Joe had built it well, with Preston spending a lot more money than needed to strengthen the ground under the asphalt. There were three layers of granite rock, stones, and chips on top of each other to allow the asphalt to bed down on a strong base. But neither man had ever expected it to handle the larger-than-life C-130s that were now coming and going on a daily basis—every arrival heavier than the one before.
Apart from a slight normal crack here and there, however, it seemed to be standing up well. The C-130s, meant for dirt landings, had several tires in their undercarriage wheel-wells, which distributed the weight a little, and up to now all the aircraft had landed and taken off with very little cargo. That was until Jennifer came in from Salt Lake City.
“Tom” the C-130 returned a couple of hours after Carlos left that morning. It was 10:00 am on the second day when Preston heard Jennifer call in over the radio in the lounge. He had just set up the powerful speakers from the new “kaput” stereo system to work outside on the roof of the house to broadcast to anybody working that somebody was coming in for a landing. There was much that had already been completed outside. The barbed wire had been installed along the front fence area and around the only gate at the entrance to the property.
The barbed wire was weird stuff, and dangerous, as Preston found out when he was helping to stretch it out. Thick protective gloves were needed. The rolls were extremely thick and weighed a couple of hundred pounds. The forklift had been needed to transport them to the gate, which was pretty tough for the little guy on an uneven road surface with its small wheels. It had taken most of the morning to string out the first six rolls. Each roll was placed on the ground and the wire end tied to Preston’s truck. He pulled it away from the roll and the round wire formation just elongated out 100 feet and became a twisted length of dangerous wire, three feet high and three feet in diameter. The next one was pulled out next to the first one, and then the third was placed on top of the first two, creating a triangular effect and becoming a six foot high wall.
The same was done on the other side of the gate, and then the gate was dressed in cut sections of the wire. It still moved, but was virtually impenetrable when shut. Preston left the men and his truck to complete the next 100 feet and returned to inspect the runway.
“Hi Jennifer, Preston here,” he responded to her call. It was pretty quiet in the house with several members gone and the new arrivals still sleeping.
“Hi Preston, I’m about 20 minutes out coming in a little heavier this time. I have some Christmas gifts for you from the Rockies,” she replied.
“Wind from the north, five to ten miles an hour, temperature 38 degrees, runway lights are removed, you have the whole field. Over.”
“Roger,” she replied. “Will be coming in from the south, unpacking, and then refueling at your neighbors to the south. They are now up and running and selling gas.”
“Good to hear that. We are heading out anyway to get some extra, just in case, but I’ll wait for you,” he replied.
She came in, her rear tires hitting hard on the ground several feet before the beginning of the asphalt and using the whole runway this time, her propellers on full feathering, breaking down her speed. This time, he did see plumes of blue smoke spew out from the tires as she came to a heavy stop.
He was surprised to see a small, camouflaged bulldozer and a second forklift back out of the rear of the C-130. That was not all. There were another two dozen troops, tents, two porta-potties, boxes of rations, gas cylinders, and another dozen rolls of barbed wire. Then three large mortars, nearly five feet tall, and dozens of cases of mortar bombs on pallets were lifted out. Lastly, bags of what looked like sandbag cases, on plastic wrapped pallets were forklifted out.
“We are digging in here,” stated Jennifer, standing next to Preston and wiping her face with a cloth. “We are planning to increase your perimeter around the airfield, take down the brush and the trees with our old Vietnam museum-piece mini-dozer here, stolen from Hill’s museum, and set up a perimeter of sandbagged mortar and machine gun placements—especially around the entrance, which should have the barbed wire up and ready to repel any unwanted people.”
“Yes, we installed the first 200 feet of it this morning. Horrible stuff, that barbed wire,” Preston replied. “We are going to need at least 600 yards of the stuff just for the front area and I worked out another 700-800 yards to cover the sides. The rest of the perimeter should be OK with the natural water boundary. We can’t do the whole lot?”
“I agree,” acknowledged Jennifer. “Just enough to stop anybody coming in from the farm’s frontal boundary. Once we clear the brush around the sides, we can protect it with night goggles and infrared warning devices. I know that the wildlife will cause some issues, but that can’t be helped. The troops will have what’s left of the wire out front by tonight and the general wants to place tripwires outside the fence to warn us of any human creepy-crawlies crawling around out there. The general thinks that an attack could happen here as soon as tomorrow night and we need to be ready for them. Tomorrow we have a platoon of Marine snipers coming in and they will be placed up and down the highway to let us know if we are going to get company. They will make sure that nobody leaves the party. I suggest that you have one of your aircraft ready. You might be the air backup, Preston, and actually get to use your machine guns. I know Martie is not dying to use them on humans, and I’m not sure, but that could happen.”