“I could have a dozen Naval officers ready to go in at a moment’s notice,” chimed in Vice Admiral Rogers. “With ten of those massive ships under our control, we could move mountains of men and equipment across the ocean. It could be the means for the survival of mankind in other areas if that amount of food could be transported, say, into England or France, or even Japan in the future.”
“Well said, sir. General Allen knew that you would be on the same wavelength. His idea was to fly two of the 747s back into Shanghai full of troops with protection from the two remaining gunships and the fuel tankers to get the gunships there. Unfortunately, we have no operational helicopters with rapid-flight deployment capability. It would take too long to disassemble and reassemble them on the other side, but several jeeps and some smaller armored vehicles could be transported to Shanghai with the transporter, refueling in Alaska. One point I must mention that really got to General Allen was, how did they fly the transporter here with the other 747s in the first place? It doesn’t have the range from anywhere in China and it must have been refueled and joined the incoming troop carriers from a different location.”
“Could it fly into Panama?” asked Preston. “They control Panama.”
“No way! It’s even further to Panama, Preston. General Allen believes that the chairman, or whatever he is called, has another secret base somewhere, but we might never find out where. But at least we can halt his missiles from anywhere.”
“We have some rat patrol jeeps and two armored cars in North Carolina,” added Preston.
“They would be perfect, plus one or two other vehicles— maybe mortars and rapid-movement vehicles. We can see what Colonel Grady brings up with him. I’m sure he said he had an old multiple missile launcher that would be useless against hardened ship armor but great against a base of troops.”
“So what is your idea, Colonel?” asked the president.
“In a nutshell, Sir, I believe we should attack them in Shanghai at the same time they are attacking us here. Land our aircraft in Shanghai Pudong, unload the mobile equipment, and drive the ten or so miles into the harbor. Then we take over the ships, drive back to the airport, reload our valuable equipment, and fly back. Stupid and simple, just the way I like it. Hopefully our old trucks and jeeps will shock the Chinese troops into immediate surrender.” Everyone laughed.
“What about your plans for New York?” the president asked, now that they were flying over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge at 2,000 feet. Not a ship or boat could be seen anywhere. The sea was completely empty of shipping.
“First, we have somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 of their troops getting off aircraft at our three airports. They may reduce that number now, but we can’t take that chance. By the time they land, we will have 25,000 troops in and around each airport. I’m hoping that they will unload and start marching towards the harbors using the freeways. It should take them between 2-6 hours to get to the harbor area. They will never get there.”
The colonel looked at the group for approval. “The plan is to sneak a couple of men aboard each aircraft as they are refueling, if we can. There are a couple of places underneath the aircraft where they can get in through the main undercarriage doors, or through the cargo hatches, of which there are several. I’m sure the men are coming in armed to the teeth, and they will have supplies underneath in the cargo areas. Our men will gladly give them a hand with the unpacking and hopefully put a little present into whatever they are carrying. We are putting together several very small exploding devices, mainly with a grenade surrounded by a fingernail-size piece of C4 with an electronic detonation device in it. The blast should be strong enough to ignite the grenade, and that with the C4 should kill or maim the men standing around the poor guy carrying it. We have about 300 of the detonation devices from the two transporter loads. We can make miniature bombs to be ignited by a satellite phone call. Hundreds of special computerized numbers can be dialed into the phones and we can make up the phone numbers.”
“I’m thinking of only using three numbers, one for each location, and we have about 90 engineers from the Marines, Navy, Army and Air Force working on them right now. We expect the aircraft to be refueled by our new Chinese-American engineers, and they will have American Marines and pilots dressed the same as we did the last time. All we want is for them to lie low until the aircraft are out to sea. Then we conk them on the head and bring the aircraft into McGuire and Andrews—the whole bloody lot of them. As a backup, we will have our trusty pilots in the air in their World War II machines and they can persuade and Chinese pilots to turn around, or offer to shoot them down until the 747s with much higher air speeds quickly pull away from our aircraft. Then we will have no choice but to shoot them down. We have the frequencies they are using and we will just invite the Chinese pilots to choose life or death.
“We will only have minutes before they speed away from us?” asked Preston.
“Not if you are 20 miles in front of them and at maximum altitude,” replied Colonel Patterson. “Your four aircraft’s dive speeds are as fast as a 747 and you can warn them, even shoot one down. They won’t know what you’re flying until they see you and then they may go to maximum power and laugh at you, but they won’t laugh at the three F-4s they will meet next. The Phantoms will be our last resort to catch our sitting ducks.”
“The next phase of the master plan I discussed with the general was attacking the men who get off the aircraft. As you see below us, the New York harbor area has major highways and they will have to use them to get such a large number of troops over land to the harbor area. We will place ambush zones all the way down the highways and we will attack them from buildings, bridges, overpasses, and wherever we can shoot at them. We will have another 10,000 troops stationed at all the entrance points to the harbor. I’m sure some will get clever and move through side roads, buildings, and alleyways to get to their main rendezvous point, somewhere in the harbor. Phase Three is the sea battle. Vice Admiral Rogers already has his three submarines in the area and we will place them with their propellers facing the shore line and their torpedo tubes open and ready.”
Colonel Patterson went on for another hour pointing out the areas around New York Harbor and the best places to position the available hardware.
“What are we going to do about their aircraft?” Preston asked about their top-of-the-line fighters. “We will have no chance against them.”
“They can shoot you down before you even see them, but General Allen’s idea was to get rid of their runway, the aircraft carrier. Once that happens, they will have no choice but to land somewhere in the United States. It would be nice to get a few of those, and we’ll be ready for them. None of you guys will be in the air when they arrive. We will pound their runway and they will have a maximum of about three hours flying time, maybe four. We are going to hit them so hard that their fancy Chinese computers will not know what to defend themselves against first,” exclaimed Colonel Patterson. “But, it all depends on three scenarios—whether they all come in together unafraid, whether the Naval ships come in first, or whether the food ships are sent in first.”