The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath (21 page)

* * *

Manuel Calderón had been shocked at the quick and extremely heavy reception they received once his vehicles began moving again. His anger quickly changed to cold fear as he realized that his blind anger had led his men into a massive trap.

His driver, obeying his fast and implicit orders, drove like a drunk on Saturday night, careening around burning vehicles and over burning men, and finally, with tires screaming, swung off the closet exit way. He immediately looked for an opening to head south or west.

There were dead everywhere as they flew off the highway; they hit and killed several of his own men as the driver braked and swung the wheel to the left to get around the tight corner at the bottom of the exit. Manuel was purely a passenger and he trusted Oscar, his driver, to get him out of tight situations.

He hung on for his life as the driver swerved around fires and over bodies on the ground, found a road to the west, and headed down and out of the ambush for a couple of blocks until several rounds began to hit the jeep from the front, one taking off Manuel’s right ear lobe. The driver slid the jeep left and began heading southwards as the shots behind them faded.

“We are being attacked from the air and from the south, Manuel!”
shouted a voice over the radio he recognized from Pedro’s army
.
Manuel tapped his driver on the shoulder and the driver bought the jeep to a halt
. “Manuel, there are hundreds of American soldiers cutting off all the roads, even the road we came in on. My men are taking heavy fire. Orders, please!”

“Attack the Americans!” he ordered. “Charge into their lines and kill them!” Manuel shouted back. He was in a burnt down area of old buildings and gas stations and he couldn’t see anything.

“We can’t, they are everywhere; on top of buildings, and I see aircraft in the area. We only have four missiles left, Manuel!”

Manuel asked and got the man’s location from him and he ordered his driver to head south again. Within three minutes he had found the man who was on top of an overpass on the highway and hiding behind the southern concrete wall. There were shots coming from everywhere: the buildings hundreds of yards on the southern side of the east/west highway, artillery fire raining down on certain areas of the highway, a tank rumbling up the road in the distance, and mortars blowing holes in the mass of vehicles, many of which were already masses of flames. There were thousands of bodies everywhere, and he realized that it would be suicide to mount an attack from the open highway.

The first aircraft came in, and he ran to find the man with the shoulder rocket-launcher. He was a hundred yards behind and he was ready on one knee and with the launcher loaded. Manuel noticed three more missiles ready in a line next to the man. A large C-130 came into view low and was shooting his men on one of the highways. He tapped his man on the shoulder who took aim on the aircraft as it swung in front of them less than half a mile away. The missile went straight into one of its engines and it flew directly overhead with pieces of hot metal raining down on the men around him. Three smaller propeller fighters came in next, a mile or two east of his position, and threw rockets down at the highway as they flew over The launcher was ready as the fourth aircraft approached a mile east, and the missile went straight into the nose of the aircraft as it flew over, blowing it into a million pieces.

“Return fire to the south, we are now winning the war!” shouted Manuel into the radio mike and his men seeing the death of two of the American aircraft renewed their firing into the buildings to the south of the highway.

The noise was bad on the ears, and Manuel’s driver pointed to southeast of their position. There was another highway, the one they had arrived on, about half a mile to their south, and he saw what the driver had pointed at: two fast jets screaming in from the east and he tapped the man with the launcher and pointed to the incoming jets. The man swung around and fired at the first one, less than a mile away.

As with all the missiles they had used up to now, it wasn’t necessary to aim exactly at the aircraft, the missiles locked onto the heat of the incoming aircraft and that was that. This time, and even though the man with the launcher was extremely accurate, the missile sped past the second jet and the plume of smoke behind it, and headed away from the target as if it hadn’t seen it.

The rebel commander was shocked and his mouth hung open, blood still dripping from his ear. “Here come more, fire again, fire again!” he shouted to the launcher who was being loaded by his assistant helping him. They missed the next F-4, and he released his last missile at the fourth F-4 a mile behind.

Manuel’s face went white, and he knew that he was now in trouble as the last missile acted the same as the one before and missed the incoming aircraft by less than fifty feet and headed out of the combat area in a straight line. It was the first time in his life he suddenly didn’t know what to do. He just sat in his seat and watched as two more aircraft, the same Mexican aircraft he had seen in his battles further south came in and blew the troops around him into oblivion.

“We are being massacred! We are being murdered! We can’t hold out against the firing from the buildings! We are being hit by artillery, mortars, aircraft, napalm, bullets! We are dying, Manuel! Orders, Manuel, Orders!”
shouted several commanders over his radio and, he was at a loss what to do.

“Head back to the airport! Leave the wounded, leave the highways, go back to the airport and regroup immediately!” he shouted over the radio. “Get us back to the airport, now!” shouted Manuel to his driver, who crashed the jeep into gear and sped off the nearest exit ramp.

The carnage was bad on the way. There were napalm fires still burning, and men screaming and burning everywhere. He ignored them and sat in the jeep surveying the remnants of his armies. There were fires and dead everywhere; thousands and thousands of bodies and vehicles in flames, but there was a movement back to the airport. His driver must have driven over a hundred bodies before he got on the side road to the highway going north to the airport. Again the highway was not drivable, the fires and exploding trucks were extreme and there were still projectiles coming in from the south.

A mile north of the highway the fires and bodies gave way to clear roads, and here there were vehicles and men heading north and following orders. Manuel saw somebody he knew from Alberto’s men.

“Where is your commander? Where is Alberto?” he shouted to them as he passed, and all he got were shrugs that they didn’t know. He entered the southern area of the airport and saw several of Pedro’s men. Again, they shrugged their soldiers. The airport wasn’t that badly damaged, the northern buildings anyway, and he shouted orders to get to the buildings and terminals to search for his brothers. He didn’t care much for the war any more.

His driver rushed him to the rear of the terminal where he had sat out the hurricane and rushed inside the empty expanse of area which had several new fires and gaping holes everywhere in the roof and walls.

“We will hold this airport and fight until these dogs of Americans are dead, every last one of them!” he shouted to the group of men gathering around him as the terminal filled up. “Get vehicles ready to defend and attack underneath, they will be safe from attack down here in the baggage areas. I want tons of ammo in all vehicles and we will attack the armies when they arrive. This is our Alamo and we will defend it! We have destroyed most of their aircraft; it will be hard for their soldiers to cross the runways and open area of the airport. I want every man loaded and ready to fire back once all our men have arrived. I’m sure the Americans are following our last men in. Give them cover when they run through the entrances! I want machine guns on the roof of every building; their airplanes will be back! Get all the buildings heavily fortified, we still have a chance to win this war!” shouted Manuel trying to convince himself as much as the dirty and bloody group of men around him. “I want numbers of men, and I want somebody to go and find Alberto and Pedro, my brothers!” he ordered.

“I think I saw your brother, Alberto, when I left the airport,” stated a man who was absolutely filthy and had dried blood all over him. He was with three other dirty and bloody men Manuel did not recognize.

Sergeant Mendez, this time, was standing in front of three of the other Seals, Sergeant Chavez and Corporals Rodriquez and Santana. They had made themselves as dirty as possible, and had dirtied and bloodied their ponchos and clothing from a generous selection of hundreds of dead bodies.

They had been waiting in case “Extraction Three” returned to this building and they were in luck. Charlie Meyers and Paul didn’t want to be recognized again so soon after the disappearance of the two brothers.

“He was sitting next to a man I didn’t recognize. It could have been your brother,” Sergeant Mendez suggested.

“Where, where did you see my brother?” Manuel asked.

“Over there and in front of the terminal, there are dozens of dead bodies from the air attack,” Sergeant Mendez replied pointing to the front terminal exit door from which they came in, and where the Mexican troop transporter was waiting with its engine running underneath.

The balance of Seal Team Six had set up an ambush point around the hole in the northern perimeter they had used to enter the airport.

“Oscar, Miguel, Carlo, come with me, bring your men and Manuel headed for the door. The area between his old command table, which was still standing, and the exit door a hundred feet away had filled up with men, and they were all looking at Manuel who was moving through them.

Manuel, Manuel,” stated a man as he passed. “I’ve seen these men before. They were with the Panamanian men who walked off with Alberto. I was right there…” he stated as his head blew apart; Corporal Santana fired three rounds from his AK 47, point blank, three feet away.

All hell broke loose as three of the Seals fired into the crowd around them, piling dozens of rounds point blank that went through more than one person, the crowd was so thick.

Cover me!” shouted Sergeant Mendez, a big guy at six foot three and weighing in at 250 pounds. He grabbed the collar of Manuel’s leather jacket and pulled him off balance towards him and swung his AK 47 to connect hard with the shorter man’s head. At the same time, he swiveled around, humped the falling man’s body into a fireman’s lift and began to run for the door, firing his weapon at anybody in front of him.

The Seal team was so fast that many couldn’t get out of the way of the shower of bullets spraying in all directions, or Manuel’s now inert body swung over the dirty man’s shoulder. Sergeant Mendez was within twenty feet of the exit ramp door when it opened and four more AK 47s began blasting at the crowd.

Few got rounds off and one hit Manuel himself in the arm hanging loosely down the side of the running Mendez and made a gash in the Seal’s side. He didn’t lose pace, and he and the three men close behind him made it through the door, the Seals’ fire enabling their escape.

“Into the truck, fast!” shouted Charlie Meyers as he turned back through the still open door and fired off the last of his rounds from his thirty-round banana magazine. He flipped the magazine out and over, shoving a fresh magazine into the weapon as did Lieutenant Paul, and they fired another sixty rounds into the mass of people falling in front of them.

Both men emptied their second magazines as they heard the horn of the truck below them blast. The Seals in the building, now out of ammo, caught up with the guys giving them covering fire from the door. They threw away the empty magazines, were thrown fresh magazines, shoved them into their hot weapons, headed down the exit ramp, and jumped ten feet onto the apron below.

A Seal began firing from the roof of the truck’s cab with a heavy machine gun as Charlie, the last man, jumped up and clambered inside the rear and over the closed gate. There were vehicles being started up everywhere under the building as the driver floored the truck, and it lurched forward with Lieutenant Meyers nearly being knocked out as his head hit the rear gate.

“Head for the perimeter, we have vehicles coming at us from everywhere!” shouted Lieutenant Paul as the men in the truck began firing in all directions.

They left the terminal area and the driver slammed the screaming truck into second as bullets began hitting the protective steel sides from everywhere. He got it into third and headed over the apron as vehicles of all sorts headed out onto the apron behind them, weapons firing.

An M35 isn’t the fastest vehicle in the world, and they reached the first taxiway when the faster jeeps began to gain on them. There was so much lead being shot at them that it was nearly impossible to fire back.

Three P-51 Mustangs screamed over firing at the lead enemy vehicles which literally exploded and somersaulted over, spewing men in all directions.

This gave the cumbersome M35’s driver a chance to double-clutch and loudly grind the gear lever into fourth, as the speedometer climbed through forty miles an hour. They passed by where the remains of
Blue Moon
were still burning, and Charlie looked over the rear gate to count more than forty vehicles still gaining on them a hundred yards behind. They still had several hundred yards to go as the men firing through the cab’s turret shouted “Choppers incoming” from the front of the truck.

“Hold your fire!” shouted Lieutenant Paul as the vehicles behind began slowing down; he looked outside and around the tarp over the rear bed to see a beautiful sight: a dozen of what looked like modern attack helicopters coming in low over the perimeter fence, and the lead chopper flew straight over the truck.

He looked back and saw the vehicles all turning and trying to head back as a dozen rockets went into the mass of vehicles; within seconds he lost sight of the enemy and the whole terminal area of Bush Intercontinental Airport as massive explosions and smoke obliterated his entire view.

Charlie Meyers, leaned back against the rear gate of the bouncing truck, his head hurt like hell, but he had a broad smile on his face.