INVASION USA (Book 1) - The End of Modern Civilization Read online

  Mike and Mary Strong were killed exactly two years later to the day. They were traveling on vacation in Italy over Christmas. Mike Strong was the number two pilot to Captain Macquarie on Pan Am Flight 103 when it blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. Mary was sleeping in First Class and, Preston assumed, never awoke. Preston’s life was never the same. At 14, and on a farm, nobody really knew the Strongs or lived close or missed them after the accident. Living away from everybody on the 40-acre farm, he missed school for a few weeks, then forged a note in his late mother’s handwriting that his father had been killed, and then carried on his life living alone, keeping his head down to avoid any questions and catching the yellow school bus every school day as if nothing had happened.

  The young man soon never had to worry about money again. He received a very large payout from the Libyan government a year and a half later. He had already received a $100,000 insurance check addressed to his mother, which he had deposited into her account. He asked the manager to allow him signing power on the account, took home and “signed” the necessary paperwork to allow him temporary access to the account with his mother’s signature, and lived off the account—taking enough once a month to pay any bills, farm upkeep, and food.

  This existence was not without stress. At one point, a letter from the bank arrived addressed to “Mrs. Mary Strong.” She was needed at the bank to sign the acceptance letter for a large sum of money. Preston went in, stated that his mother was still very ill in bed, and took the paperwork home for “her” to sign. “She” also signed a new note that told the bank to allow Preston access to the account, and that she would be in once she was better.

  “Your mother must be very ill,” the bank manger observed when Preston returned with the signed paperwork. “I guess I should go out and see her myself.”

  “Her doctor suggested that she stay at home and not have visitors for a couple more months,” stated Preston innocently. “She still hasn’t got over my father’s death and I have to look after her all the time. She’s been bedridden for months now.”

  “I see,” continued the manager, looking over the signed documents. “All right, You have the authority to make withdrawals on her behalf and that will suffice until she is well enough to come in and see me. It is a very large amount, and we will look after it for her until she tells me otherwise. Please tell her that this is a temporary arrangement and I need to see her when she feels well enough to come in. I will allow you to withdraw funds once a month and take the money home for your mother to pay her accounts. She has signed for a monthly withdrawal allowance of $500.00 a month and that’s fine for now.”

  Luckily for Preston, the bank manager was promoted to another area a few months later and the branch forgot about the temporary arrangement and Preston diligently went in and took home the monthly funds to live on until his 18th birthday.

  When he turned 18, he took in a new letter, again “signed” by his mother, allowing Preston to take over full control of her accounts. He had grown up that year, looked adult and mature and the bank allowed him to take over full control of the accounts even though no one had seen his mother for several years. He told the bank personnel that she was still at home on the farm, and still doing very poorly. The branch manager was not keen on asking very many questions. Preston opened a savings account and the majority of the large six-digit account was transferred into a new account with a small annual interest accrual.

  He never forgot his father’s words about college, and for the rest of his school days he worked hard to achieve his father’s wishes. On his graduation night, he cried long and bitterly for his father and mother, and knew that his father would have been so proud of him on that very important day in his life.

  A week later and toward the end of October, Martie and Preston were at the same dining table with Oliver, who was looking for any donations. This time, Preston had cooked a casserole and Martie had supplied a bottle of her grandfather’s semi-sweet wine.

  “Guess what?” Preston volunteered with his mouth half full. He didn’t give her time to respond. “I spoke to Carlos in Utah on Saturday about the ammo, and he said that I shouldn’t worry about illegal possession of .50 or even 20mm ammo for the Hispano cannon if I can find it. He emailed me a few hours ago saying that we could buy ammo on the Internet and that it is legal to own all caliber rounds in North Carolina. He suggested that I take the four old Brownings out of the P-38 and replace them with a set of four larger American Browning AN M2 .50-caliber machine guns—the same guns as the six on your P-51D and our two P-51Cs.” Preston stopped for another bite of casserole. “Nobody would really know the difference. It’s a pretty simple operation of changing the four major connection bolts by a few millimeters per gun. He knows a place where there are a set of four in working order, and I could keep the old ones for spares. They are $12,000 each and are in perfect condition, from a disassembled Mustang in Reno, Nevada. AND, we can legally buy as much already belted ammo as we want on several Internet sites.”

  “It will be fun to shoot your slower 51Cs down,” Martie replied in a very strong German animated accent, and Preston nearly coughed out his food, his face going rather pale. “I’m only joking!” Martie laughed. “Can’t you ever take a joke? Besides, you are far too handsome to shoot down—I would have to go look for a new man!”

  “Remember the end of The Red Baron in World War I,” laughed Preston, regaining his composure. “You Germans are far too full of yourselves sometimes. By the way, your Mustang is only seven miles an hour faster than mine. I have already paid for the guns and they are being delivered by a special delivery service. Carlos said that he is going to fly in on Friday afternoon in his Mustang and help me set up and drill the new bolt holes. He is as excited as I am about a weekend playing with real live machine guns. I know it’s a little early, but I went ahead and purchased 12,000 belted rounds for you and 8,000 belted rounds for me. It will cost me a year’s work with the sprayer. But remember, with your guns spurting out 400 rounds per minute each, your supply will last you five minutes and you will owe me $36,000 for that five minutes of pleasure—if I’m not dead by then and there is a tree left standing in North Carolina! Carlos has already purchased as much ammo as he could find.”

  Preston had not touched much of the money left over from his parents’ estate. After he turned 21, he closed all the old bank accounts and invested most of the money into electronic stocks. He had invested heavily into Qualcomm in the late 1990s and had turned a $3 million investment into four times as much. He had then sold and transferred the profits into Microsoft and a startup company called Google, and replaced the original $3 million he had borrowed from the payout from his parents into CDs. Preston did not want to spend his parents’ money. To him it didn’t feel right—it still didn’t feel like his money.

  He didn’t need it anyway. For the first couple of years, with the two new and ever-rising stocks, he had paid over $10 million to the taxman in income tax and had lost any interest in learning, or needing, to invest further. He always withdrew the annual net profit from all of his investments, deposited the amounts into long-term CDs and letting the initial investment grow again for the next year. Stock exchange “farming,” he called it.

  Martie’s grandfather was now in his nineties, and her father was still living with him--both playing wine farmers in California and spending much of their time flying. Grandpa Von Roebels was far too old to control an aircraft, but that did not mean that he couldn’t be a happy passenger. He had also parachuted as a hobby until he was 85.

  Preston and Martie were stacking the dishwasher when the old ham radio in the lounge gave its familiar beeping sound. Preston loved communications enough to have two sets of the best antique 1960s radio equipment any ham radio enthusiast could wish for. One set was in the house and the other in the hangar. Both were left on continuously and the most powerful sets ever made. His massive radio antenna was spread high above the hangar.

  “I think that must be young
Ben,” grinned Preston. “He said something last week about his latest report card coming home this week.”

  “Perfect!” replied Martie. “I can say hi to Maggie. She might be pregnant again.”

  “Ben Smart, Los Angeles to Preston Strong, Raleigh, North Carolina, come in Preston,” stated a young voice over the speakers. “Come in Preston Strong, Raleigh, North Carolina.”

  “I’m here, Ben Smart. How are you, my friend?” answered Preston, getting to the microphone.

  “10/4, everything is good over here on the west coast, Preston,” replied Ben, a young 11-year old ham radio enthusiast and son of Martie’s old MIT roommate, Maggie.

  “Ben, this is Martie, is your mother home?” asked Martie into the microphone on the table in front of the large radio.

  “Hi Aunty Martie. How are you doing? Mum is at choir practice with my sister, and she told me to relay to you that she ‘isn’t,’ whatever that means,” he replied.

  “Thanks Ben. Tell her I said to look after herself and that I’m still coming to visit in January. I have to visit Grandpa and Dad at the farm, and I will be spending a few days with you guys in L.A. on the way.”

  Ben Smart was only 11, but loved being a ham radio operator. His mother had completed her final paper for her Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UCLA the previous year, and Martie’s visit was for a big celebration.

  Martie had lived with two roommates for a single semester at MIT—Maggie Bridges, now married to Will Smart, a police detective with the LAPD; and Sally Powers, who was based in Yuma with the Air Force and about to complete her flight training on F-16s. Sally, jealous that Martie had her own Mustang, couldn’t afford such a luxury antique aircraft, but had put in an offer for a much cheaper aircraft she could afford—an old 1981 Swiss Air force Pilatus PC-7 training turboprop aircraft that had just arrived in the U.S. from Switzerland. A private American buyer had purchased the aircraft, but then had purchased a newer 1985 version for sale in Bolivia and just wanted as much of his initial purchase price back as possible. It was a great deal and nearly affordable for Sally. The PC-7 was a single engine trainer that was set up to carry wing bombs, but did not have any guns. She had trained for several hours in one while in Europe as a U.S. Air Force exchange pilot with the Swiss air force and had fallen in love with its flying abilities.

  There were going to be a couple of big celebrations on the West coast shortly, with Maggie finally getting her Ph.D. and Sally hopefully getting her flying wish, and Martie was looking forward to spending a lot of time in her Mustang. With Preston alongside, flying across the vastness of the United States was going to be fun.

  Preston spent most nights on his radio communicating to his friends across the United States. He often dialed into Raleigh-Durham (RDU) International Airport’s ground frequency and listened to aircraft traffic, or listened to other radio communications from around the world. There was no privacy with any ham radio communications.

  Ben and Preston continued chatting for awhile and Ben told Preston that he had gotten all A’s for the semester, even in music, which even he still couldn’t believe. It wasn’t long, however, before another friend hailed Preston on the same frequency. It was his New York buddy and fellow radio enthusiast, Buck McKinnon. He and Buck had found each other over the radio one night several years back and they had become good friends. Buck was also a pilot and owned a Huey helicopter and a share of an old 1950s-era Super DC-3—a twin engine transport aircraft he was looking forward to flying down to North Carolina to spend his first New Year’s Eve at Preston’s New Year’s Eve Fly-In.

  Preston had organized his first New Year’s Eve Fly-In three years earlier and always had one or two of his friends fly in to share the festivities from December 28th to January 2nd. Carlos had flown in all three years, and Michael had flown in Grandpa Von Roebels last year in their Beechcraft Baron. This year would be the first time for both Sally, if she got her new aircraft, and Buck. It was looking to be a really busy hangar party with the best collection of old aircraft in the entire United States of America.

  A year or so earlier, Buck had introduced Preston to another of his radio buddies who wanted to sell a recently semi-refurbished P-38 Lightning, and it quickly became Preston’s newest purchase. It had taken six months to ship the entire not-yet-flyable aircraft (the wings broken down into two long crates) from Reno, Nevada to North Carolina, and another year and a half to get it back together again. The complete refurbishment was completed with Preston’s buddy Carlos helping on weekends.

  Martie sat next to Preston, read a magazine, and listened in on the conversations.

  “How’s the P-38 coming?” asked Buck.

  “I have her all together,” replied Preston. “I completed rebuilding and cleaning her Browning last week and my friend in Salt Lake City found us four .50-caliber Browning guns from a downed Mustang in Reno. I want to replace her old guns with P-51s. That will give us all the same ammo for the new Air Wing we are building over here. A friend of mine also has a Mustang, and with Martie’s Mustang we can now all purchase the same ammo in bulk.”

  “It sounds like you’re starting an Air Force up there. You better be careful! The real Air Force might get worried about your firepower,” laughed Buck. “On a more serious note, Martie, Preston, have you had any glitches with electronics down there? Manhattan had a complete power failure last night for over ten seconds. Funny thing was that it took three relays from other areas to get power back up. That means that there was more than one area grid with problems at the same time. Then today, all the traffic lights on the Avenue of Americas went dead for over an hour. There was total gridlock. On the news, they said that several small computers had malfunctioned and that’s all they would say.”

  “No, nothing major,” replied Preston. “Although, I was listening to the traffic pattern earlier this morning and there seemed to be a problem with Raleigh/Durham air traffic control. They asked all aircraft to fly in a pattern for well over ten minutes because they had a problem with something they wouldn’t elaborate on. All they would say is that there was a control problem with aircraft traffic on the ground. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, over the last few weeks, there has been a large increase in electrical component malfunctions across the country,” replied Buck. “Three nuclear power stations—one in Nevada, one here in New York State, and one in Pennsylvania—had minor electrical malfunctions and all had to go into safe mode for a short period of time. All three happened at different times last week. After the problems in Japan in 2011, we had better be on our toes with these nuclear power plants. I don’t trust them.”

  “I heard about the New York one on the news,” injected Preston.

  “That’s not all. CNN reported that a cruise ship went totally dead in the water,” continued Buck. “An engine-management malfunction, they said. Then, the World Space Station went two degrees off course for over an hour and a new directional transformer had to be installed by the crew. An Abrams tank in New Mexico went crazy and overturned itself before its electrical control system went dead, and an F-16 lost its fuel control system and went down in San Diego. It wasn’t Sally, thank God. All this in less than two weeks, I think something very weird is going on.”

  “I can ask my friend Carlos at the Utah Observatory if we’ve had any sun flares or radiation pulses lately,” replied Preston. “It could be due to increased radiation activity from the sun.”

  “You mean the Carlos Rodriquez out of D.C. currently at the observatory above Salt Lake City?” asked Buck.

  “You know Carlos?”

  “We worked together briefly in the global communications department in the Pentagon,” replied Buck. “We wrote a military computer scenario on Possible Communication Satellite Aging and worked on the probability of potential electrical component malfunctions. We flew together a few times, too. He has a small share in my Baby Huey and the DC-3. Yeah, let’s see if he’s at work and can get on the line tonight. I’m really curious about all this act
ivity.”

  “I haven’t heard anything on the news, except for that New York power grid glitch and the military aircraft crash in San Diego,” Martie whispered to Preston as they waited for Buck to contact Carlos via radio. “The media seems to be downplaying these glitches, as if they are minor and just everyday events. It’s as if they haven’t learned anything from those 2011 meltdowns and what it did to the Japanese people.”

  “I don’t think the powers-that-be really want the public to know much about any problems these days,” added Preston. “I think they don’t want to spook the American people while over 80% of the

  U.S. armed forces are out of the country fighting wars here and there.”

  “We still have the National Guard,” returned Martie.

  “I’ve heard that a large number of the National Guard have also been deployed to Iraq…”

  “You called, Buck McKinnon?” came a familiar voice over the radio.

  “Hi, Carlos,” Preston and Martie heard Buck reply. “I knew you would be working at this hour; it’s dark outside. Listen, Carlos. I have a mutual friend of ours listening in—Preston Strong from North Carolina.”

  “You guys know each other?” Carlos’ radio voice sounded surprised.

  “Know each other!” interrupted Preston. “It was Buck’s friend who sold me the P-38 we’ve been working on for the last year or two. Thanks to Buck I have a war bird that will beat you around the sky in speed.”

  “In your dreams,” laughed Carlos. “If Preston is there, then my future wife Martie Roebels is hanging around that miserable excuse for a North Carolina wanne-be fighter pilot.”

  “In YOUR dreams Carlos!” interjected Martie with a smile on her face. Carlos had fallen for Martie the first time they had met, but had little chance of winning the prize. Martie was Preston’s girl and she was the first to say it to anybody, but naturally, she enjoyed the interest good-looking Carlos paid to her. Preston just smiled. It was Carlos’ way of trying to rile his best friend. He also knew that best friends could become the most dangerous in a girl situation, however, and didn’t let him get out of hand.