The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath (6 page)

Slowly Alberto agreed. The prisoners had already been collected from the several bases where they had waved their white flags and were encamped at Lackland Air Force Base.

Later that day and just before dusk, they stripped the soldiers of their uniforms and burned the lot. The prisoners, 848 men and the 69 women, who had suffered the brutality of the men, were driven out of the base like cattle, dressed in underwear, hats and boots, and told they would be hunted down, starting in 24 hours. The soldiers knew what that meant and, helping limping and injured soldiers, they hobbled off and scattered like leaves in the wind, much to the men’s laughter and merriment. He gave his men the rest of the day off and the next day to rest

The next morning, May 14th, Manuel left San Antonio and headed towards Houston leaving 10,000 men with enough captured American MRE rations and food at Lackland to keep the base intact. The men had orders to empty the other bases of vital equipment and raze the bases to the ground. They had found a couple of dozen old military troop carriers, a dozen jeeps, and several artillery pieces which they took with them.

Manuel also left his army with far more than they needed to defend themselves. He also had his men destroy the quantities of U.S. Air Force modern fighter jets, bombers, and dozens of useless modern attack helicopters on the airfields. Manuel’s men found a couple of 707 tankers at Randolph and blew them up. Fort Houston experienced the same treatment, except the weapons of destruction were furniture and gallons of aviation gasoline which was no good for Manuel’s transport, but excellent for setting the base on fire.

Massive black clouds of smoke began erupting out of San Antonio, a couple of hours after they left the base. It would give notice to anybody who could see them that the invading army was not afraid of the Americans knowing that they were there.

Radio communications between the Sanchez Cartel in Corpus Christi and Manuel was constantly relayed, and Manuel heard that they also had captured Corpus Christi. Carlos Sanchez had killed every one of the 300 American soldiers found there, loaded important food and gas supplies, and departed with part of the city burning.

The Sanchez Cartel was to travel northeast and meet Manuel on I-10, halfway to Houston.

* * *

By this time General Patterson was landing at Edwards in California. It had taken him only six hours to get airborne out of Harbin, and over the aircraft’s radio he gave instructions to his men remaining in China. He had waited for the five C-130s to return; the 16 others were already loaded with the first rotor-less helicopters. The five C-130s from Misawa took less than two hours to load the last helicopter and 200 of the 600 cases of missiles in the other four aircraft.

He refueled in Misawa, organized and checked on weather from Carlos’s satellite for the long and heavy flight into Elmendorf, and took off in a heavy rain storm from the south, knowing that the 18 C-130s, two Gunships and seven tankers would have tailwinds for at least the first couple of hours to help them get the range into Alaska. It was touch and go with the heavy choppers aboard.

On board, General Patterson acted much like General Allen had done before him. He contemplated every fact, and then phoned people to get their input and give orders.

No, nobody knew what was happening in San Antonio. No, there were absolutely no flyable aircraft in the whole of Texas. Even the Laughlin Air Force Base commander said that he had nothing flyable. Everything was north feeding people. The commander had 3,000 men on the base and had heard over his satellite phone about the attacks 200 miles to his east in San Antonio. No, he would not go and see what was going on. He had 3,000 men versus hundreds of thousands. He was going to stand and defend his base and wanted backup.

It was same at Dyess, Goodfellow and Shepherd Air Force Bases in the rest of Texas. There were less than 12,000 men at these three bases, no flyable aircraft and nobody knew who the attacking army was.

General Patterson’s brain was working as fast as it could while the pilots flew northwards enjoying a 50-knot tailwind for the first three hours. They would make it.

Refueling was completed six hours later, halfway to Elmendorf in Alaska. General Patterson phoned Carlos in California, who was now able to send orders to the satellite via the observatory from “The Cube” near San Francisco.

“How long before you get our observation satellite back over Texas?” he asked Carlos.

“It took two weeks to redirect it from Kansas to directly over Hawaii. I think we will have visuals back over western Texas in about ten days,”
Carlos replied.

“Do you need to be there? Can Lee do your satellite commands for you, Carlos? I need you in Texas,” replied the general.

“Give me another day and I’ll be ready to leave.”

“Good, you still have the AC-130 Gunship
Pave Pronto
with you don’t you, Carlos?” the general asked. Carlos acknowledged that he did. “Get her refueled and head for McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas once you are done. I want you to phone Preston’s farm and order the Super Tweets airborne and get them over to Kansas within 24 hours. I’m scrambling the F-4s and F-5s and they will be heading into McConnell today. We are at war, it’s going to take us 24 hours to mobilize our aircraft and base ourselves in that area for our next battle. Get there fast, I have 18 of the attack helicopters aboard and will fly them into Edwards; get the choppers out of our holds and to our technicians to get them operational again, and then fill our 130s up with Marines. It will take 48 hours from now for me to get out of Edwards, and then we should be able to see what we are up against. I’m sending a couple of Cessna 210s south as spotters, and we should have eyes by tomorrow. Call me when you get to McConnell. Fly safe!”

Next the general called other bases and scrambled all the jet aircraft at the bases. It wouldn’t take them long to get to Kansas and he would brief them once somebody knew what the hell was going on. He couldn’t fight a war blindfolded.

Fifteen hours later he landed in Edwards and hundreds of extra technicians at Edwards, flown in by small civilian aircraft from the surrounding bases, began taking the Chinese helicopters out of the thirsty C-130s which were immediately refueled. The first flight of 18 C-130s and three of the six gunships, which had brought in the Marines from China 48 hours earlier, were ready to go with a few of their bellies full of soldiers.

Another 2,200 Marines from the 1st Marine Division were picked up at Camp Pendleton, They had only returned from Europe a week earlier and were still getting used to Pacific Time. The total number of Marines from this division now numbered 4,000 and the C-130s, like a swarm of birds now with five gunships also full of soldiers, headed for McConnell in Kansas. Nobody could tell where the enemy was, and McConnell was far enough away to regroup and prepare for whatever was to come.

* * *

Manuel looked at the sky. He was worried. It was a beautiful day with no wind and not a cloud in the sky. It was very hot and more humid than usual. The weather was too perfect and he thought a storm was brewing as he closed in on the intersection where he was to meet Carlos Sanchez.

Both armies were growing rapidly, sweeping up any Hispanics and Latinos who had a gripe against the United States, or were just bad guys at heart. For many of them this was a dream come true. Manuel’s soldiers were ordered to shoot any gringos or black men who wanted to join his army, and dozens of warm dead bodies littered the Interstate behind them. Many of these unfortunate people arrived on horseback; the horses were taken for the army leaving the dead riders to rot in the sun.

The Sanchez Cartel radioed in and told them that they were two hours from reaching the intersection; their highway was only a two-lane road and they couldn’t travel as fast.

By nightfall Manuel saw the southern army coming over the dunes to meet them.

* * *

By nightfall of the same day, May 14th, the eight F-4s and three F-5s had already been waiting a day for the swarm of C-130s to arrive from the west. There wasn’t much they could do and they weren’t built to be slow spotter planes.

A spotter plane, a Cessna 210, had been sent southwards and flying high at 25,000 feet over San Antonio saw the smoke from the burning barracks. That was all it had time for before returning at dusk to Dyess to report as the small aircraft’s 800 mile range couldn’t get the two pilots back into McConnell.

The Super Tweets, coming in from Preston’s airfield in North Carolina, were eight hours ahead of the C-130s the next day and landed right behind Buck coming in from Andrews in the Colombian DC-3. Carlos arrived an hour behind the Super Tweets, he flying in from California, and excited to see Sally for the first time in weeks. He knew Preston wasn’t far behind and was surprised to see his Colombian gunship standing there with Buck walking up to say hi.

The slower C-130s finally arrived in a line ten miles long and began turning into finals for McConnell’s two major runways from the north east. There was a brisk constant wind coming in from the south.

Martie ran into Preston’s outstretched arms as he exited
Blue Moon
. He had been away forever and she had much to tell him about her new flying abilities. It was time for the two couples to have a little time together and General Patterson, who rested a little during his long flight, called for a briefing in an hour.

The first spotter plane had gone out again early that morning and was followed by a second one an hour later and a third, an hour after the second one.

“OK guys, get settled, we have another bloody war to fight. When are we going to end these battles?” he asked aloud from the podium as everybody took their seats. “What do we know other than what has been explained already?” he asked. The report from the pilot of the spotter plane told the briefing room that he had seen two major columns of smoke exactly where Fort Houston and Randolph were situated. He had to return due to the lateness of the day and had seen no more.

General Patterson got on a radio on the desk next to the podium and called in the first spotter plane.

The aircraft’s pilot replied that he had again seen the same fires over San Antonio, and he was currently 50 miles west of San Antonio over Interstate 10 at 10,000 feet and heading west towards El Paso. So far he had seen no movement.

The second pilot reported that he was west of Dallas directly over Dyess Air Force Base, southwest of Abilene, and he was to fly southeast to San Antonio to see if any enemy were using the major secondary roads in that direction, and if they were planning on attacking the next Air Force Base, Dyess. The pilot’s instructions were then to fly east over Interstate 10 towards Houston.

The third spotter pilot stated that he was 100 miles north of Dallas and was to head down Instate 35 over Waco and then to circle over Austin to see if he could see any movement anywhere. So far none of the aircraft had seen any movement.

* * *

Manuel Calderón had spoken with Carlos Sanchez the previous night and was happy to learn that a new cartel out of North Texas, the Santana Cartel of 15,000 men, had been found by Carlos just outside Corpus Christi and had happily joined the army. The Santana Cartel knew of and had radio contact with another Mexican Cartel which was heading south from Lubbock, Texas and were currently 50 miles north of Houston traveling south on I-45. They had another 5,000 men.

Carlos Sanchez also had good news which explained why he had taken longer to get to the intersection. He found a large storage warehouse on the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi he had attacked. There had been only 200 men at this base.

His men had destroyed all the aircraft they found there, dozens of useless pieces of metal. In one of the warehouses was a mountain of army rations. This base looked like it had not been visited for a couple of months by any outsiders as the American soldiers were unshaven and dirty. The only thing they had apart from a couple of operational vehicles and a jeep was this mountain of food. He had stacked the two troop transporters full, and he suggested that they send a dozen trucks back immediately to fill them with MRE rations.

The Cartel members couldn’t keep count of all the men and now with so many men, they would be like locusts on the ground; they would need to find food supplies in large quantities. Hopefully Houston had some sort of food supplies and only military installations seemed to have ample food stocks.

Manuel agreed with Carlos Sanchez and looked at his map. There were smaller roads direct from Houston to Corpus Christi and if he had a problem, he could send out trucks at night which could return the next night.

Manuel estimated that now he had well over 190,000 men with still more joining every day. He had ordered his commanders to check on food stocks throughout the night and several hours later he was given vague amounts that he and his men had enough for less than a week.

He ordered hundreds of men out of dozens of troop transporters and told them to walk. They were only 30 miles from the outskirts of the massive city of Houston and once he was in there, he knew that he would have better cover from future air attacks, if any came.

He asked Carlos Sanchez for one of his commanders and told him and the thirty drivers of the now empty trucks to immediately head south on the smaller roads, fill the trucks with food and return to Houston. The trucks headed southwards with a fuel tanker, two of the valuable missile launchers and fifty heavily armed men to help load the food.

An hour later he was still discussing his “Invasion USA” plan with Carlos Sanchez when they heard the drone of a small aircraft high in the sky coming from the west, behind them. The enemy aircraft would have seen the rear armies by now, and it was also the first time that he had seen or heard a small aircraft in the U.S. This one was certainly not a fighter aircraft, and his three armies began to move eastwards again as he knew that they would now be monitored by the U.S. Air Force. He hoped the pilot didn’t see his trucks traveling south, now at least forty miles away heading towards the food.