Carlos and Lee found what they were looking for in the pile of equipment—satellite telephones.
“These are American satellite phones,” Carlos identified one as he picked it up. “I have the civilian version of these, the Iridium 9505a. These phones are the 9505c military version. Do you recognize this phone, Sergeant?” Carlos asked, and it didn’t take long for the man to recognize it.
“I was issued one of these two months ago on a training mission when we were down in Georgia,” he replied. “Before we left Seymour Johnson three days ago, we tried to activate all the units we have in our supply closet, but every one of them was dead. How come this one works?”
“It doesn’t,” Carlos replied. “A bullet has broken off its antennae, but we can fix that.” Carlos bent down and found one that seemed intact, and Lee found a second one. Carlos switched his to its ‘on’ position, and it lit up and went into start-up mode. So did Lee’s.
“Switch yours off, Lee, in case they see someone operating it and try to communicate with us. I’ll do the same. We need to prepare for any response to them. Preston, they must be working on a very simple communications satellite system. There were over 70 communication satellites around the world before December 31st, but I did a check when I was in the observatory and found only three operational satellites on perfect stationary points for very slow and limited two-way communications. If I’m right, and Lee checked me on my results, then Zedong Electronics has terminated the rest of the satellites up there, including ours—even those belonging to the Chinese government and all their military communications satellites. I‘ll bet that Zedong Electronics are the only people communicating around the world right now and maybe the Chinese military are as useless as our own.”
“Can we start filling the bags, Preston?” the first sergeant asked.
“Of course! Sorry, guys,” replied Preston. “Let’s collect everything in these equipment piles and get it into the hangar for inspection. Carlos, find a dry bucket and take the phones and parts separately. Maybe you can cannibalize them into more working units.”
“Good idea. Sergeant, let’s check the last two trucks at the end of the road before we head back,” suggested Carlos, placing the small pile of phones into a bucket as they moved on. Lee stayed with the bodies, looking them over and searching for anything he might have missed. He asked a soldier to place all their personal papers, mostly bloody, into another bucket.
The sun was over the trees by the time they got to the road, and a light mist, or smoke by the way it smelled, was clearing. Here, there were no bodies, since they had been carried to the ambush zone. There were just two soldiers guarding the vehicles. The first sergeant walked up to the machine gun-peppered vehicles as the rat-patrol jeep made its way out of the forest on the other side and bounced through the shallow ditch. Joe was driving next to a soldier that was still behind the front gun with three more soldiers standing on the back as the jeep came up to them and stopped.
Preston also noticed a line of half a dozen soldiers walking away from them in both directions, slowly checking both sides of the road, and they were already a couple of hundred yards away.
“Did you leave the sandbags in position?” asked Sergeant Perry.
“Yes,” replied the soldier in the front seat of the jeep.
“Good, we might need them again for the next attack,” Perry said, looking into the first vehicle. It had more than two hundred holes on its right-hand side, and there was drying blood all over the leather seats of the old Ford. It had been cleaned of bodies, as well as anything small. The rear, enclosed bed of the truck was still full of equipment, and the first sergeant pulled away a canvas cover to reveal food, water, and what Carlos was looking for—two satellite phones, brand new and still in their cases, a backup satellite receiver dish, and a two-way communications box on the front arm of the dish.
The small dish was connected to a tripod and was lying on top of three large marine deep-cycle batteries, a small military field generator, a laptop computer, and a couple of red gas cans. There were also several cases of ammunition, all being protected by quarter-inch thick heavy steel; a coffin-like box—three feet wide, two feet high and six feet long. The frame had been placed in the middle of the bed and they had stored the food and water around it as added protection.
All the food and water containers were completely ruined and their contents had drained out or lay in piles from the damage, but the communications gear had been protected. Not one round got through the steel. The second truck was also an old long-bed Ford with a roof extension and had the same set up, again with the same communications equipment protected.
“I wonder why these two trucks have more gear than the others,” Preston wondered.
“I assume that these guys were two groups from separate areas and had backup communications between themselves as well as with headquarters,” suggested Sergeant Perry. “It would be nice to get more of this stuff. Can we ask the rest to come and visit? I’m sure they have more guys out there—maybe thousands of them!”
They returned to the hospital tent to find the doctor working hard on a wounded American soldier. “I need to get him back to Seymour Johnson quickly,” he said to the first sergeant. “He is losing blood. I need to amputate his arm. Unfortunately the other two men were DOAs.”
“Sergeant Perry, get some men to carry the bodies and the wounded aboard the FedEx Cargomaster,” suggested Preston. “There will be room for you, Doc, and a nurse and we can be at Seymour in 15 minutes. I’ll go and get her started and I’ll swing her by the front of the tent.”
It was ten that morning when Preston returned from Seymour Johnson with a fresh medical crew. As he came in he saw that the bulldozer had forced a route through the blackened enemy vehicles. Preston went over to check out the road damage, and he agreed to Sergeant Perry’s suggestion that the bulldozer should dig a large hole about two hundred yards into the forest on the other side of the road and place the bags of the 40 Chinese bodies in it. The last one had died on the operating table at Seymour Johnson due to loss of blood. The bulldozer moved out into the forest just in time for a late breakfast prepared by the ladies. Nobody was really hungry.
After breakfast, Preston called a meeting. Martie had already told him that the general had been briefed on the attack and wanted to congratulate the team when he returned. Will Smart had stayed in the hangar with two soldiers to protect the civilians as a last resort and was still not feeling well from the “drug overdose” he kept complaining about, so he went back to bed.
Carlos stated that he and Lee would be busy for the rest of day, and asked Martie and Maggie to help them disassemble the radios once the meeting was over. Asked to give a report of the events, a tired First Sergeant Perry told everybody about the success of thwarting their first enemy attack. He got a standing ovation from the group, was thanked profusely by everyone and told, once the meeting was finished, to get himself and his troops some rest.
“Well done, guys. We have succeeded in winning our first attack against the enemy,” said Preston. “I watched everything from the fire tower and thanks to First Sergeant Perry and his men, the other guys never had a chance. It was better organized than a ballet. You were fantastic and I’m happy to be working with you guys. Ok, Carlos, we need to meet and figure out what is the best way to reply once they communicate with us. My thoughts are that I would like Lee to respond, saying that the attack went well. He should say that we were a base of ex-military pilots and put up a good fight. Lee tells them that their commander, or the guy they usually communicated with, was killed. Lee, you could put a cloth over your mouth and pretend that you are that young man. What was his name?”