Текст книги "The Battle for New York"

Автор книги: T. I. Wade

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It took half an hour, but the military vehicle slowly made it up Parley’s Canyon and all the way to the turnoff to the road that would take them another four miles to the observatory. Here, the road had a steep downhill slope and the entrance to the road had several feet of snow piled up by the wind, creating a barrier for any road vehicle. It was time to test the snowplow.

The men got out of the troop carrier and set about getting the plow off the trailer. Carlos had no idea how to drive it but he was told he didn’t need to. Within minutes, the driver was ready, the snowplow was started up, and a second man got in behind the machine gun. Carlos and Lee were offered the rear seat, and a set of goggles and warm gloves were given to each of them as they took off over the mound of snow at a quick pace. As Carlos gave directions the snow, now about a foot thick underneath them, crackled as they moved forward at 15 miles an hour.

The four miles were covered in less than 20 minutes, and they had to shoot the lock off the main gate and drive over it where it stood– frozen in a couple of feet of snow. Inside the observatory compound, the drifts were more than two feet deep and the snowplow had to move slowly to stop from covering them all with the fine powder.

The parking lock was empty except for Lee’s old car still sitting where he had left it and just barely visible from under a pile of snow. The whole place was closed down for the holidays. They drove up to the observatory building and the door was locked. Lee brought out keys and within seconds the door squeaked open, still frozen from the icy wind. It was cold inside, very cold. There was no electricity and immediately Carlos went around to the rear of the building and tried to start the big generator—the observatory’s main backup system. The modern generator was also dead to the world. He then helped the men lift the lawn tractor generator they had brought. It was light enough for four men to lift and place the green four-wheeler by the outer door. One man started it and let it warm up.

Carlos then picked up the long, thick extension cord he had brought with them, and within ten minutes had it mated into the building’s main circuitry. He first made sure to turn off all the unnecessary switches that he knew they wouldn’t be using and shouted for the men to connect the power and engage the generator on-switch that Preston had built. He flicked the main electrical switch to “On” and several of the lights blinked on. He heard the growl of the generator deepen outside as it accepted the added feed.

Once the generator was warmed up and fully operational, Carlos walked over and checked the telescope, hitting the switch to power it up and move it. The large telescope creaked and then hummed as it activated itself very slowly. It worked! He tried to start his computer, but it was as dead as he knew it would be. He opened the side of the PC and took out several parts—parts he knew were useless. He had modified his own computer over time and it was very different from the average computers sold in stores since it was tweaked to his needs. He had replaced most of the parts, and he knew that without all the modern parts “Made in China” it should work.

It took an hour of messing around, but he switched it on and the “On” light lit up. He went through the rest of the observatory’s computer system so that they could begin transmitting signals to and from space. The old observatory system was much like the ham radios—30 years old—but had new modifications installed over time. He removed most of the modified parts and replaced the older parts found in the storage room. Carlos hoped the computers would start on his first try. They didn’t, however, and he spent another hour working on the electronics. Lee brought him a warm cup of water with a tea bag in it.

“Have you changed the communications oscillator from automatic to manual mode and the output and input DOS regulators to manual override?” Lee asked. Carlos looked at him with an open mouth.

“You know about oscillators and DOS regulators?” he asked, his face incredulous. Carlos was shocked. How did this Chinese janitor know about advanced computer electronics? “How do you know that?”

“I have Ph.D.s like you, friend Carlos. Maybe they are 30 years old, but I read to keep up with the modern advancements in electrical engineering and astronomical engineering, and I have often used the telescope when I was alone in here. I can give you a hand since my old-fashioned knowledge is perfect for what you are trying to modify, and maybe a little more experienced than your younger knowledge. Together we can get this thing working.” Carlos looked at him, still in shock and with his mouth open as he stared at the older man and then moved out of the way for Lee Wang to sit down.

It took Lee only minutes to remove parts and set up the commands of the system. A little work with a soldering iron and he asked Carlos to switch it on.

This time, the observatory’s main computer system lit up and the system worked, although it was extremely slow and the only working screen showed DOS characters. The modern screen was back in DOS mode and Carlos looked at Lee again and connected the two computers together. The telescope and its now simplified computerized system suddenly managed to transmit to Carlos’ computer. They were in business.

“We need to talk, friend,” Carlos said seriously as he looked for his notepad. It took him several pages, but he found the location of Navistar P and typed it into the computer. The whole system took a while to calculate the input with the computer thinking like an old man playing chess but slowly the transmitter attached to the telescope moved, as it was ordered to by the computer, and then stopped.

Carlos typed in the satellite’s call sign code he had written down on his pad and pushed the “Send” button. Nothing happened for several long seconds. The screen’s DOS cursor just blinked back at him, but suddenly Navistar P asked him if he wanted it to turn on.

“Nothing four Ph.D.s, an old man, and a young man couldn’t handle,” smiled Lee Wang. “If I remember my studies over the last three years here, this one might work like the Chinese communication satellites up there.”

“How many do they have?” Carlos asked.

“Several, and I have tracked them and also communicated with them,” replied Lee. Carlos suddenly felt like he was a student and Lee Wang was his teacher!

“Do you have your information here?” Carlos asked. “Of course,” was Lee’s answer. “It is in my head.”

“Let’s see what Navistar P can do first, and then we can check out the opposition,” Carlos said, typing in the command to turn the lost satellite back on. “I’ve just realized that whatever we do, we won’t be able to see the photos the satellite sends us anywhere.”

“Start-up will commence. Time estimated, three minutes,” wrote the cursor on Carlos’ screen.

“If it has digital pictures it can send us, how are we going to see them?” Carlos asked. “I don’t think this DOS screen is going to give us any color photos.”

“I think you are right, but I know what will,” Lee Wang answered, and he was gone.

“Main directory online,” wrote the cursor, and suddenly Carlos knew what this lost satellite was designed to do. There were several sections on the directory:

A. Continuous Feed Photo Display

B. Communication Feed-in

C. Communication Feed Memory Read-out

D. Communication Bounce Angle

E. Automated Setup for Bounce Feed

F. Termination Sequence

G. Deactivation

It was something that shocked him to his core. In the 1970s, the Air Force had actually designed a satellite that could send down continuous photos of Earth, as well as be used as a communications bounce-off system. A signal could be sent to its memory and the computer in the satellite would find the longitude and latitude coordinates of where the sender wanted the message to be relayed, and it would then relay the message. Carlos suddenly figured out how he could set up nationwide communications. It was a shock that they had built this system so early and had never used it. The Air Force had just let it get lost and forgot about it when it went offline.

Lee Wang came back with an old screen and the small computer it sat on. He began to put it together. “This is something that has been forgotten on the other side of the observatory and I think it is an original data-processing PC and terminal from the telescope from the early 1980s. This old piece of machinery was stored behind several more modern ones and I was surprised to find it. It is an Amiga PC computer sold by Commodore in 1985, the newer version of the old Commodore 64 and has better graphics. I studied this when I came over to America. This is the first computer I ever owned, and I pulled it apart and put it together several times. Unfortunately, it is not upgradeable.”

“That’s Steve Crockett’s old computer,” acknowledged Carlos, “and I think one of the original terminals he must have used when they built this observatory. They must have transferred over to more modern computers and a new mainframe in the 1990s.”

“It was, I think, in 1985 when Zedong Electronics started making parts for PC computers,” continued Lee Wang. “This model came out just before Zedong Electronic began to build the parts.”

“Zedong Electronics?” asked Carlos. “Zedong Electronics makes parts for everything in the world and has ever since I was a kid!” And then realization hit him like a brick and he hit his forehand with his open hand. “Zedong Electronics! It is all of their parts that have malfunctioned. Of course! All their parts have malfunctioned, or have all been directed to close themselves down, possibly through satellite communications!”

“Terminated,” corrected Lee Wang.

“And all the back-up spare parts, everything, even whole units, everything we use today are made by the same company!” realized Carlos, sitting back in his chair and looking upwards with his eyes closed. “They have crippled the world, the whole world, and every electronic gadget in the world apart from their own, I’m sure.” He sat quiet, his eyes closed and his brain working faster than any computer could ever do.

It took him a minute and then he opened his eyes and stared at the blinking cursor on the screen in front of him. “Lee Wang, you and I need to have that long talk. Tell me now, are you a spy or work for Zedong Electronics?”

“Yes, at least until they tried to kill me and my family last week,” Lee replied. “It was then that I became a real American citizen and wanted to resign from the company. They were terminating all of their employees, I believe, so that we couldn’t tell anybody about the plan. I wasn’t a spy like James Bond. My job was to find new products they could copy and then manufacture replacement parts, or obtain a contract to build those parts cheaper than any other company. That was my job. It was more the commercial stealing of blueprints or finding out future ideas. The first device I worked on in China was a new prototype of a Toyota engine-management system in 1982. I had to catalog all the small and important parts so that they could copy and reproduce them for the Japanese manufacturer. They gave me the same model back again a few months later and asked me to dissect it again and see if anything was different. I did, and the electronic parts manufactured by Zedong Electronics were well-made—perfect, but had a small microscopic antenna that you could only see with a microscope. One of these was included on every new part.”

“Big enough to receive an electronic impulse?” asked Carlos.

“I would never have seen them if I hadn’t used a microscope, and we were not supposed to use microscopes to dissect the new parts, just eyesight. I got curious and wanted to look through the powerful microscope on my desk and saw the antenna sticking out, but was nearly caught. The miniature part dropped on the floor and broke. I gathered it up, put it in a piece of paper, and looked at it again through my own microscope when I got home.”

One of the soldiers came over. They had been patiently waiting by the front door, eating cookies out of the observatory’s food dispenser, and had made some tea after Lee had shown them where it was.

“It’s time to go,” the soldier said.

“We can’t go now,” replied Carlos. “We are about to get important feedback. Lee and I need to stay here overnight. We brought enough gas for the generator for at least 12 hours and it is starting to warm up in here. The temperature in here must be at least 40 degrees. I recommend you return to the base and either tell General Allen to come up here or come back and pick us up at dawn tomorrow morning. What does the weather look like?”

“It’s getting overcast, but I don’t believe it is going to snow tonight, sir. The clouds are high clouds, the ones that show change, but not immediate change. I think it will snow tomorrow sometime, but not tonight.”

“Good. Go down the mountain and tell General Allen to look for any old military computers at the base. I mean old junk like this Amiga here,” Carlos showed the sergeant the computer Lee was pulling apart. “Tell him ‘Zedong Electronics’ are to blame for all our woes, got that?” The man nodded. “Amiga computers pre-1985 and tell him to get over to the local television station. I want him to get one of those mobile television trucks—you know, the ones that have the satellite-feed dishes on top?” The sergeant nodded again. “Somehow get it loaded onto a trailer or whatever. If there are six of the satellite-feed trucks, take all six. Get every one he can, because I think Lee and I can reroute the electronics to give us a satellite feed from one truck to another somewhere else in the country. The TV trucks should fit into a C-130 and be moved around the country.”

“Yes, sir,” smiled the sergeant, now understanding what Carlos was trying to do.

“We will need to have constant generator power up here, so bring up more fuel in the morning in case we need to stay longer. Lee and I are going to try and work out a permanent connection here and then bounce the feed back to Hill Air Force Base, and then hopefully to any other place in the country that we want. If we can do that, we can use one of the television trucks as a mobile head quarters. But, we need these old Amiga computers and the dishes on the television vehicles to work together. Tell the general that I need to move the satellite into position where it is directly over us here and that will hopefully give us simple but viewable pictures of both our coastlines, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” and he was gone.

“I have the Amiga operational,” Lee spoke up. “It had an ancient burned-out fuse, and I just re-routed the feed past the old fuse. Not a Zedong Electronics fuse—it says ‘Made in America.’”

For the next couple of hours, Carlos and Lee worked, downgrading the whole system. It got dark outside and much colder, and they put on extra jackets to keep warm.

By 10:00 pm that night, Carlos pushed the ‘A’ command for Navistar P and a dark picture of the Earth—a very poor-quality picture—flickered on and was displayed on the old Amiga screen. Carlos could just see the dark outline of what looked like the North Pole, the northern area of Canada and the top of the United States with the sun’s rays off to one side and a quarter of the dark planet in the bottom right corner of the computer screen. Carlos typed in new coordinates so that the satellite would reposition itself directly over Salt Lake City.

Navistar P was already moving in a fixed orbit at 241 miles above Earth, but was rotating a mile a year slower than it was meant to so it wouldn’t keep a constant position. The readout from the computer stated that it would need several hours to perfect its rotation speed, complete the repositioning process, and asked for permission to move. Carlos gave it the necessary permission and the latitude and longitude coordinates on the screen slowly started to change.

“That’s all we can do for now,” Carlos said to Lee. Lee nodded. “Now tell me your story, Lee. I want to know everything.”

Lee did. It took two hours, several of cups of tea, and several packages of junk food from the food dispenser the soldiers had broken into. Lee told Carlos about his studies, his degrees, the old man who met him in the corridor one day, their family’s new home on the island that looked like America. Then he told him about his work in America—how he stole plans for new PC computers from Microsoft, sent over many new software programs, motherboards from several companies Microsoft was working with. Microsoft had themselves stolen parts from IBM, Acer, and all the other major computer manufacturers to make their new programs compatible.

Lee then worked for several smaller companies that were in the forefront of new communication technology. Nokia was a big one. He even worked for Intel, cleaning floors for a year until he got a new job with Apple. With Apple, he became a sales agent for Zedong Electronics.

Until 1998, he had cleaned floors and downloaded plans from computers belonging to directors, designers, and scientists. After 1998, he wore a suit, used his knowledge, and sold several firms on producing everything they needed to be made in China—the whole product from computer chips to cell phones. He was the one who got the contract for everything Apple was about to design to be made by Zedong Electronics in China “I never thought that it was for anything bad,” added Lee, over his second cup of tea.

They glanced at the screen. The Earth was still there, still very dark, and the center of the planet had moved an inch closer to the middle of the screen. If it had been daylight, they would have been able to make out Salt Lake City’s position faintly in the bottom right corner.

“I never thought for a second that something bad was going to come from all our work and selling for Zedong Electronics. The Russians were stealing technology from you. America was blind to it all. America was trying to steal technology from the Japanese and when we came out with the first parts, I’m sure the Japanese then tried to steal it from us. Even a few American spies went over to China. I met a couple of them, and unbeknownst to them, they tried to steal their own technology back!”

“It was nothing new, just a copy of what was stolen, and a cheaper price that nobody could refuse. For years I tried to understand the logic of selling parts at cost or even below cost, but once they started making whole units, the profits must have risen quickly. Zedong Electronics must have lost billions of dollars in the first couple of decades and then got it all back and a lot more by the third decade. It was genius, I thought. The only bank that could have loaned them enough for those two decades would have been the Chinese government—or another country’s government, like Russia or America—nobody else was big enough.”

“Why did you end up here?” asked Carlos. “There’s nothing to steal from here, not from this observatory anyway.”

“I think that after Microsoft, Acer, Intel, Nokia and Apple, and all the information I had gathered, I was relocated to a place that would hide me from the people in Silicon Valley. I think they were scared that employees from those different companies would remember me and put two and two together. I was getting old, my daughter was about to go to university, and my assistance was not necessary any more. I was a liability to them,” Lee replied bluntly.

“You were paid for all this information?” Carlos asked.

“Yes, 1,000 dollars for each contract, and I got paid 63 times in 25 years. Then they told me to come here, they paid for my little house in Salt Lake, purchased our small dry cleaners shop in Holladay for my wife, and told me to sweep floors up here and disappear until they contacted me again.”

“How did they contact you?” was Carlos’ next question.

“Either through a satellite phone we were issued in late 1999, or here by satellite communication.”

“Can you find the satellites they used to contact you from here?” Carlos asked.

“Yes. There were three Chinese satellites that belonged solely to a subsidiary company of Zedong Electronics in Shanghai. All the other Chinese equipment is, or was, controlled by the Chinese government. They must have forgotten that I had enough knowledge to trace their contacts back to the source. I was only contacted here once, then I assume I was forgotten until last week when it was time to terminate me and my family. They often checked to make sure I was cleaning floors here and that I was living in my house, and that my wife and I were happy. The last time I was contacted was a year ago.”

“Where did they contact you from, Shanghai?” Carlos wanted to know.

“No, from their headquarters. It is a large building in Nanjing. I saw the building go up in 1979-80. It took two years to build, was about 30-something stories and the biggest in the area at that time.”

“Who tried to terminate you?” was Carlos’ next question. Lee told him about the four men in the SUV who looked like special soldiers. His friend from Las Vegas had warned him, explaining that he himself was running away from a Chinese hit squad of four men. He had seen this squad of four set fire to his house and a couple of other Chinese families’ houses. Lee explained that a number of families had been killed all over America at the same time, and that it was the work of more than one team of men.

Lee then described the size of the island village north of Shanghai and explained that there could be hundreds of termination, or killer, squads in America, and all the other countries for that matter. Zedong Electronics could have a whole army of them.

*****

General Allen was busy. By lunchtime, he had met with Vice Admiral Martin Rogers in Norfolk. The Navy, he had learned, was in far more disarray than the Air Force. The Navy had zero communications, and the two men went over possible attack scenarios. The general told the admiral that the Air Force was already under wartime conditions with no transponders or lights during flight. General Allen suggested that all naval shipping use the same secrecy because they were definitely being spied on from space.

The meeting was brief, only an hour, but the general left Norfolk for Salt Lake City knowing that the Navy had two old World War II destroyers in operational status and three old diesel-powered submarines used for training that still had usable torpedoes. Martin Rogers had explained that this was what was left of the whole Atlantic Fleet, and that there were about the same number of operational vessels stationed in San Diego—the remains of the Pacific Fleet. He also disclosed that they still had tons of armaments for these rusty buckets on both sides of the country. They had at least a small chance of sinking a couple of ships, if and when necessary.

Captain Sally Powers was flying the general to Salt Lake City. They arrived an hour after Carlos had left, had a late lunch with the base commander, and took Lady Dandy’s crew with him in the C-130 over to Edwards Air Force base. They all arrived in California around 4:00 in the afternoon. Maggie and the kids were happy to see Will and decided to stay with him until they were needed elsewhere. Will Smart was still not happy about flying across country.

The general met with the Edwards base commander while the troops lifted the fourth generator from Preston out of the belly of the aircraft, after which he took off for the return flight with Buck and Barbara still aboard, back to Hill AFB in Salt Lake City.

It would be dark by the time they landed and Sally would get a rest while another pilot flew them back to Andrews. On the way, General Allen told Buck about the developing Air Force they now had. Edwards AFB would have their own C-130 ready in a day or two. There was the F-4 Falcon at Edwards, two pilots would fly her over to Hill AFB tomorrow, once she was ready for flight. Two more Hueys in the museum could be operational within a week, and now that they would have electricity in a few hours, they could work 24/7 on the aircraft. He told Buck about the two flyable F-4s already at Hill and his loan of an HC-130—a Hercules fuel tanker used in Vietnam that he called Mother Goose—to Preston in North Carolina. She would be ready at Hill AFB in the morning and could get into Preston’s airstrip half loaded with fuel. It could refuel his airfield tanks daily and since it had pre-1980 pumps, it could suck fuel out of anything—even a commercial airport system or a tractor-trailer.

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.