left in Harbin with electricity and the only operational factory left in China I believe.” Once General Patterson was told what the man had said, he climbed out of the jeep, the man bowing to him as well. “Honorable General, I also speak perfect English, I received my doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering at MIT in Boston twenty years ago.”
That shocked General Patterson who quickly regained his composure. “So you know U.S. military uniforms, then?” he asked.
“Yes, I spent a month stationed at your McGuire Air Force base on the East Coast studying the principals of military helicopter flight and engineering.”
“Well, I’m very impressed with your Zhi-10; I haven’t had the pleasure to fly one yet, but they seem a pretty neat machine,” replied the general.
“They should be, General,” the man replied. “They are a well upgraded copy of your first American Apache designs with more modern Russian production ideas.”
The general realized that he had just hit the lottery; a fully working engineering factory that he would have the pleasure to take piece-by-piece back to California.
“Would you like the opportunity to return to my country?” the general asked simply.
“That would be an honor,” the man replied. “I never liked my superiors in Nanjing and regretted being forced to hand over the 50-year old company my father started, for nothing. As long as I can take my family and my workers and their families, if they want to join me, I would enjoy working with others in your country.”
“How many people do you have working for you?” General Patterson asked.
“In total, 4,500 men and women, from design engineers to assembly technicians; we even forge many of our own metals and alloys here at our factory.”
“How many people in total would you need to transport?”
“General, I will need to check with my personnel, but if everybody wanted to go with their families, I would say around 25,000 people,” answered the man.
“If you can show me why I would want to move that many people I will get on the phone right here and begin the airlift of your entire factory, its machines and its people over to Silicon Valley in California.”
Within 30 minutes of arriving, General Patterson was on the satellite phone to the U.S. president asking him permission to hold all troop flights for a week and get every flying machine in here to begin transporting equipment into California. The president wasn’t happy until he was told of the R-36M Russian missile pointing at his very office and he then relented. Although over ninety percent of the troops had already returned, he had so far not kept his word to the American people about troop numbers and withdrawals during the current year; one more reschedule wouldn’t really make any difference.
General Patterson had seen what he had wanted to see. This company made things, electronics, from scratch. There were over a dozen modern, big and heavy machines making things so small he needed a microscope to see the parts. There were two completed Z-10 helicopters close to completion and another two in the building stage. There were also two of the mobile ground-missile launchers on the building blocks, and they also made the entire missile itself, including its electronic control parts and guidance systems in-house.
For Michael Roebels, and the other engineers and technicians in California, it would save them years in designing and in making these parts; they could be redesigned to do a hundred different tasks, not run a helicopter or a missile launcher, but maybe liven up the electrical grid or an operating theater in a hospital, and many other important systems the USA needed right now.
General Patterson, Preston, and even Mo Wang were stunned by the treasure trove they had just stumbled upon.
Within an hour the general had phoned Andrews and told all the base commanders, until further notice, to halt the 747s still bringing troops home, leave only