Jonathan was a patriot and believed in the oath he had taken as a member of the US military “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” That oath had no expiration date, and Jonathan signed up to be a part of the East Texas militia and offered his services to convert many of the militia vehicles to use electric power instead of gasoline. He had seen the handwriting on the wall and had placed solar panels on his own home, which ended up supplying not only his own family but also militia vehicles with energy. This was being done in conjunction with other experts who had been able to convert additional vehicles to rely on natural gas, which was readily available in East Texas by the use of solar energy to pump the gas out of the ground. As a result, the militia was able to have a virtually unlimited supply of fuel for its ground vehicles.
Jonathan’s contributions to this breakthrough had been critical to the militia, but Johnathan felt he had more to offer. He wanted to serve as a combat officer, and because of his record, he was granted the command of a militia company. Now he found himself in a position where he had only two of his platoons in a situation where they would have to fight on two fronts. He knew they were in for a hell of a fight.
The attack on the Iranian reserve position started at the exact moment that the Apaches initiated the assault of the federal positions along the Kaufman County line. This additional air assault came from the four Blackhawk helicopters. They did not have the firepower of the Apaches, but three of them had two heavy machine guns while the fourth one had two powerful Gatling guns. The Blackhawks did not have the capability of taking out the enemy tanks, but their assault did destroy many other Iranian vehicles and killed or wounded scores of troops.
As his position was under attack by the helicopters, the Iranian commander received a distress call from the federal commander on the border of Kaufman County. He knew that his primary responsibility was to reinforce and protect the federal unit. He ordered his tank commanders and crews to man their tanks and prepare to move out and ordered his infantry commanders to mount the remaining transport vehicles and follow the tanks. As the men who were to man the tanks ran toward their armor, they were cut down by the two special operations teams that had taken up sniper positions. They were spread out in the nearby tree line with some of them behind trees and others up in the trees. They all had weapons with infrared sniper scopes made by the Buchanan family.
Their first job was to keep anyone from reaching the tanks, and they were successful in killing most of the men headed for the armored vehicles. Only two feds made it, and only because they had been sleeping in a small tent just about twenty yards from their tank. The other two members of the crew had not survived. However, since all members of tank crews were cross-trained, two men could operate the tank. That meant that only one of the Iranian tanks could move out with the rest of the reserve force.
Once they had done what they could to disrupt the movement of the armor, the snipers turned their fire on anyone who seemed to be in positions of command either as officers or noncommissioned officers. They shot and either killed or wounded a number of them before the heavy return fire forced the teams to withdraw. They moved east to join up with Captain Jonathan Martin and his infantry. At this point, the Iranian commander ordered his men forward. He did not know what he was facing but felt that he needed to join his remaining troops up with the federal force on the Kaufman County border. He never made it because while he had not seen any further sign of the Blackhawks that had initially hit his camp, he was not prepared for the Apaches that had been hovering nearby, waiting on orders.
The Apache Squadron commander was told that only one tank was moving forward with the Iranian force, and it needed to be destroyed along with the vehicles carrying the Iranian infantry. However, only three Apache helicopters would be used because of the limited fuel and ammunition available. The choppers made one pass and fired several rockets in addition to using their chain guns. They took out the Iranian tank in the lead and three Strykers that were following in the column. They also killed and wounded many more Iranian soldiers who were riding in the trucks that survived the initial assault.
The remnants of the Iranian force continued down Highway 80 with only twelve vehicles and less than 150 men. They made it about two hundred yards before they ran into the first of the IEDs placed along the highway by the militia team of combat engineers. One of these destroyed the armored Humvee that the Iranian commander was riding in, and he died instantly. Since most of the other officers in the force had already been killed, the Iranian troops decided to turn around and go back up the highway to someplace safe. However, for most of them, there was no safety.
The militia special operations teams had been moving through the woods on the side of the road to hook up with Captain Martin and his men while at the same time shadowing the enemy column. When Roger Hall, who was commanding the teams, saw the Iranians turning back, he unleashed the full firepower of his teams on the retreating enemy. This was a no quarter fight. The American forces were facing several brutal enemies including the Iranian forces, the federal troops who were treasonous Americans betraying their own country, and the gang members who were rapists and murderers. Nome of them deserved mercy; and the militia was not going to take food, water, and medical supplies away from the American people to take care of prisoners, so no surrenders were accepted. The enemy troops were simply killed.
The same was true for the enemy that Captain Martin and his two infantry platoons were facing. A runner sent by Roger Hall had informed Martin that the Iranian threat no longer existed, so he was able to turn his attention entirely to the retreating federal force that had been driven away from the Kaufman County border. Martin had three squads deployed to defend the highway, and the rest of the men were stretched out in a defensive line in the woods on both sides of the road. Martin knew that some of the enemy would be trying to escape through the woods, and once the group on the road ran into his roadblock, many of them would also take to the woods.
In fact, the attack on the main federal camp had been very successful because many of the enemy had been killed, and the rest kept from reaching the vehicles in the motor pool. However, there had been several dozen trucks in the encampment itself, and some that survived militia attack were now being used to transport the federal soldiers and some of the gang members who were well aware that they were running for their lives. The retreat quickly turned disastrous because the militia engineers had also set up IEDs to the east of Martin’s position.
These powerful explosive devices destroyed the first eight of the enemy vehicles approaching on the road and killed most of the occupants. This led to the rest of the vehicles being abandoned, and the enemy troops were determined to fight their way on foot through the militia lines. This put Martin and his men in a difficult position because he had less than ninety men facing almost three hundred of the enemy. Martin was the commander of an elite group of militia infantry, and he did what an officer in that position is required to do: lead his men. The militia was taking heavy fire all along the line, and so Martin moved among them, directing fire and encouraging his men to hold the line. His defense was bolstered when Roger Hall moved his commandos into the fight, but his force was still heavily outnumbered.
Captain Jonathan Martin did what he was trained to do and what he had taken an oath to do: lead his men to fight for their country and their Constitution. He continued to move along their defensive line, directing fire and encouraging his men to give an all-out effort. He saw some of them fall as the enemy onslaught continued, and then suddenly, this courageous commander fell to the ground. He had taken a bullet to the head that had killed him instantly.
A few minutes later, the captain’s command was relieved when militia tanks supported by hundreds of militia infantry roared up Highway 80 and slammed into the rear of the retreating federal forces and their gang mercenaries. The militia cut them down. Captain Ma
rtin was not alive to see this or to see the lone Humvee that led the militia column. It was flying an American flag, the same flag that had been considered nothing more than a rag when first discovered by Jamie Donnelly. It was the 9/11 flag, and as General Ben Donnelly had promised, it had led the American attack.
Chapter XXVIII
Ray Thibodeaux had been offered the rank of lieutenant colonel in the militia and a job on the general’s staff, but he had another assignment he requested first. He told General Donnelly that since the 9/11 flag was to lead the troops into battle, it would need to be heavily guarded by an elite team that would keep it from falling into enemy hands at all cost. Ray had volunteered to lead that team and asked that he be able to choose the team members. His commanding officer readily agreed, and then Ray requested that the general’s son, Jamie, be a part of the team. He told Ben, “While I know Jamie has not yet completed his special operations training, I believe that since he is the man who found and saved this flag, he should be part of the team. He can resume his training after the battle.” Once again, the general agreed.
Ray didn’t have to go far to recruit the rest of his team; all the men who had escaped from New Orleans with him readily volunteered with the exception of Tim Johnson who was still recovering from the wounds he had received at the battle for the Sabine River Bridge. They flew the flag on a Humvee with six men inside to protect it and were followed by the Stryker with the rest of the team. It was positioned right behind the American lines on the Kaufman County border until it was time for the infantry and armor to move forward to the attack. Then the vehicles drove into a position where they were following the armor but in full view of and leading the militia infantry.
The Humvee carrying the flag had received some sporadic fire, but the enemy had been too preoccupied with trying to get away from the devastating American attack to worry about an American flag on a Humvee. They might have felt differently if they had known that the very sight of this flag had caused the hearts of the patriot soldiers to swell with pride and fight with all their strength to achieve victory.
It had been a great and decisive victory for the East Texas militia. Of the original combined forces of federal and Iranian troops and their gang mercenaries, less than two hundred had escaped. The rest were dead with the exception of a few officers who were captured so they could be interrogated. There were also three gang members released but only after they witnessed their fellow murderers and rapists lined up and shot. The three were allowed to live so they could take a clear message back to their fellow gang members in Dallas. Joining up with the federal forces was not a good idea.
General Donnelly was congratulated by his staff for his audacious and highly successful plan. Not only had it destroyed many enemy soldiers, but the militia now had three more heavy tanks and several dozen Strykers and Humvees; numerous automatic weapons; thousands of rounds of ammunition, grenades, and RPGs; and truckloads of fuel, food, and medical supplies.
General Donnelly accepted the congratulations, but it was a bittersweet victory for him. Sixty-two members of the militia had died in the battle, and 118 more had been wounded. Among the dead was Captain Jonathan Martin who had been personally appointed to command what became to be one of the best infantry companies in the militia and who left behind a wife and two young children. It had always been the practice in the past that when members of the militia were killed, General Donnelly would personally visit their families and attend the funerals of his fallen soldiers. He would also visit the wounded being cared for in the medical facilities. However, his troops had never suffered casualties of this magnitude, and since he now had to turn his attention in the federal threat in the east, he would not be able to do what he considered to be his duty to the fallen.
With the western border secured, General Donnelly returned to his headquarters in Canton to find out what his recon units had learned about the enemy advance coming up through Louisiana. He learned that the federal forces had successfully completed the pontoon bridges over the bayous and the entire federal force was together again. However, the force commander Colonel Jacob Collins had been blamed for the debacle, had been relieved of his command, and had been executed. Failure was not an option tolerated by the federal government.
The new federal commander of the column went by the name of Raphael Ortega but was, in fact, actually Omar Shala, a plant by the Muslim Brotherhood who had worked undercover inside the federal government for years. In order to undermine and ultimately destroy the Constitutional Republic that was the United States, the progressives were willing to make allies of anyone that could assist in that endeavor, including the Muslim Brotherhood that had its own agenda to force Sharia law on the entire world.
Shala had originally been given a high-level position in the Department of Homeland Security where he was supposed to be specializing in tracking foreign terrorists trying to infiltrate the United States. Instead, he was given the task of having all US military veterans as declared potential domestic terrorists and placed on the terror watch list and, in many cases, on the no-fly list and then having their firearms seized. Since the concept of “due process” required by the Constitution had been essentially done away with, Shala was highly successful, and millions of America’s heroes were stripped of their constitutional rights.
Shala was rewarded for his success by being appointed a colonel in the federal army, but his cover was maintained because even some progressives were getting uneasy over the increasing use of troops from Muslim countries to subdue American citizens. These progressives wanted to be in control, not relinquish it to those who would declare Sharia law so they could be in control.
So Omar Shala continued to be Colonel Raphael Ortega, who was placed in command of the Syrian soldiers in the Louisiana column, because he had supposedly been trained to speak Arabic—which was, in fact, his native language—and could better communicate with the troops. Shala was a small man, only five feet eight inches tall, and with a swarthy complexion that could belong to a man of Middle Eastern descent or someone from Mexico or Central America. He was good at everything he did, but he was also a committed jihadist and was sadistic and brutal. He was about to prove that.
The successful militia attack on the federal force on the western border of the East Texas militia was devastating to the plan to invade the militia-held territory form the east. The Louisiana federal column was still strong despite the loss of a large number of tanks and other vehicles as well as several hundred troops. However, there was a major problem: they did not know what they might be facing if they invaded East Texas. The feds now knew that the East Texas militia had armor and helicopter support, but they had no real idea of the true militia strength.
Thus, the federal command decided to withdraw its force back to New Orleans until it could be reinforced. Shala was not content with just withdrawing his force. He did not believe that the attacks on the federal force were just the result of actions by the East Texas militia. He knew that they must have had help from people in and around the Donaldson area, but he didn’t have the time or resources to find out who was involved, and it didn’t matter to him anyway. Guilty or innocent, they were all infidels, and that is what he said to two platoons of his Syrian troops when he sent them into the town in the middle of the night.
They kicked in doors; shot men, women, and children in their own homes; and then set the houses on fire. The raid was not as successful as Shala had hoped, however. He had wanted to commit his tanks and more men, but fuel and ammunition were precious and must be preserved for the upcoming fight against the Texas militia. So his raiding force was relatively small, and it was not unexpected. Local police, sheriff’s deputies, and militia had been on patrol and responded as soon as the first shots were reported. The Syrian troops had been ordered to conduct a brutal strike and then quickly withdraw to avoid a firefight with the locals. They did withdraw but not before losing over a dozen men to the outraged community
.
Twenty-three residents of the Louisiana city had been killed and many others wounded, and the message that Colonel Shala had sent had been received, but the reaction was not what he wanted. He had unleashed terrorism on the city, but while it caused grief and shock, it also infuriated the population; and overnight, the relatively small militia had hundreds of new recruits. Daniel and Frank Hebert had adopted the training techniques of the East Texas militia and soon became so strong that no one from the federal government dared to enter the parish.
Chapter XXIX
The word of the victory over federal forces by the East Texas militia had spread quickly throughout the country; and it was encouraging other resistance forces to become better trained, stronger, and more aggressive. The feds were receiving more pressure than ever before in states all around the former United States of America, and it was determined that the only way to reverse the trend was to totally destroy the East Texas militia as soon as possible.
In Canton, Texas, General Ben Donnelly had been relieved to find out that the federal column that was threatening the eastern border of Texas had withdrawn to New Orleans to await reinforcements. This gave the general more time to build his strength and try to come up with a plan to meet what he knew would probably be the greatest threat yet.
The victory over the federal forces in Kaufman County had not only supplied the militia with much-needed equipment and supplies and had also brought in many new recruits. Temporary housing had been constructed for the new men and women, and because there were so many active farms and ranches in the area that were not being taxed by the federal government, there was an adequate supply of food for everyone. What was not readily available were the weapons and ammunition needed to equip these troops.
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