by T I WADE
How many men have we lost?” asked Manuel groggily.
“Many thousands Manuel, but we met up with 5,000 guys from the Gonzalez Cartel that Sanchez told us about. Carlos Sanchez has not come on the radio since the attacks so I think he was hit.
Manuel heard Pedro’s voice come over the radio close by and state that, by his map, he was in a place called Mission Bend and the road was getting wider.
“Pedro, go east until you get to the interchange with the Beltway and come north. Manuel is OK and we are waiting for you. I will guide you in,” Alberto replied.
“The wind is bad, Alberto, and I will tell my men to head for the Beltway. Glad we passed out all those maps from San Antonio. I think I have contact with only a quarter of my men.”
“How long have I been out?” asked Manuel.
“Three hours, and the doctor here says nothing is broken, just your pride!” laughed Alberto. As he laughed he heard screams from Pedro over the radio to tell his men to take cover and suddenly Alberto felt the ground vibrate slightly beneath his feet. The wind was too noisy to hear anything but he looked out of the window and began to see the horizon glow to the southwest.
“It looks like the Gringos are back, Manuel,” Alberto stated simply.
* * *
“My crew doesn’t see any movement on Interstate 10 apart from at the rear where the Marines are going through the debris,” stated the commander of Blue Moon over the radio to the jets circling a few thousand feet overhead. His AC-130 had only taken on ten minutes of fast fuel, and he had 30 minutes over the target area before he would have to head back to Dyess. It was the same with the faster jets, and he had his men searching for infra-red movement on the black strips of road.
They had packed a hundred HE rounds for the aircraft’s 105-MM howitzer and he was hoping to return empty.
“Mike Task Force here, we got through about a mile of damage here on I-10. There are hundreds and hundreds of bodies. This place is going to become a cesspool of disease once this hurricane passes. They are all from south of the border and I’ve found odd information on a couple of bodies. One guy is from Venezuela, one guy is Brazilian and three so far look like they have papers from Colombia. Another one is from Mexico City and another from Panama. It certainly looks like South America is trying to do a number on us. Over.”
“Thanks,” replied General Patterson. “I have a C-130 about 30 minutes out, he is monitoring this communication; throw up a flare in 30 seconds; he has three pallets aboard to drop to you. It’s the best we can do to help you ride out this storm. Mike, get as far as you can and then take shelter. We are searching for groups of bad guys and will be out of here in 30 minutes. Good luck and we will be back as soon as the weather lets us. Out.”
“Blue Moon here, I have heavy movement of the next highway further south and all over the rural areas south of I-10.”
“Roger, Blue Moon, check out the densest groups and coordinate with the Foxtrot Fours, and Fours, use your HE first, keep the hot stuff for later.”
Several voices acknowledged the commands, and thirty seconds later a large area of the western outskirts of the Mission Bend area erupted into large explosions as several bombs and one large Napalm bomb went in from the jets.
There were groups of men everywhere on Blue Moon’s scanners, and they did their best to pinpoint the bomb drops. It didn’t really matter where they were dropped; there were blobs of movement everywhere.
Within ten minutes the area west of Mission Bend was a hot place to be.
“There is dense movement around the same highway intersection and the western Beltway heading north,” stated Blue Moon’s infra-red operator a minute later. “It looks like there are thousands of bodies in the actual intersection. We need to head in closer but it looks like this group is heading off the west-east highway and going north… hold on… let me check my map. OK! I got it. The intersection is the Westpark Tollway and the Sam Houston Tollway North.”
“I see the lead group about two miles in front of that group,” added a second radar operator in Blue Moon. “Save some heat and I can get you a second really large group about a mile further north. Actually if you start at the intersection and lay down heat for a mile north, you should fry a lot of army.”
“Roger that,” stated the F-4 commander. “Lead us in and we will follow your line. I suggest a few howitzers HE’s into the area from you guys, and we will cover the area around the blasts. Our heat will fry the guys under the bridges as well
“Sounds like Thanksgiving is coming early this year for a few illegal immigrants,” replied General Patterson giving his orders to all the aircraft.
The choreographed attack went in fast.
The Super Tweets followed the general in. They flew in at 5,000 feet in a tight arrowhead formation the girls had practiced every day during their month of non-stop training. They had great seats and watched the battle light up a couple of miles west of them.
Blue Moon was first in, heading north directly over the center aisle of the highway and lit up the two heavily populated intersections with dozens of white phosphorus flares before turning away to starboard.
As the general had ordered, the F-5s went in next, a thousand feet above and two miles behind Blue Moon, emptied their bellies into the first intersection and turned to starboard, climbed to 5,000 feet and headed home, out of the way of the F-4s behind them.
As the Super Tweets turned north over the highway, several miles south of the erupting battle scene in front of them, the F-4 leader warned that he was two miles out and in a tight arrowhead formation of three aircraft at 1,500 feet, with the second arrowhead of three F-4s twenty seconds behind him, 1,000 feet higher. He warned those behind that “heat” or Napalm was part of his load.
“Super Tweets, our target is the second intersection,” stated General Patterson calmly. “Stay above 2,500 feet, that Napalm will burn your tires off and drop everything we have on the bridge across. Then we are heading home.”
The Super Tweets, at 400 miles an hour came in tight formation and twelve, 500 pound HE bombs went into a dense area between the gas stations and the tarmac stretching over Westheimer Road. As the Tweets veered off to port one at a time, the heavy blasts hit their aircraft from the rear and pushed them forward like leaves in a breeze.
“Wow!” stated the F-4 commander already heading home. “There was fuel in those gas tanks. It’s like daylight down there.”
General Patterson turned and dropped down to a thousand feet and headed south a mile away from the lit up highway. The commander was right; he needed sunglasses to look straight at the second intersection. The Napalm and fuel gel had now gone down and connected with the exploding fuel. It was like looking into the sun, it was so bright.
* * *
Martie was sleeping with Preston holding her hand and sitting by her bed. She stirred and her big blue and bloodshot eyes looked at him. She coughed and Preston wiped her mouth.
“I can still taste that smoke in the cockpit,” she stated weakly to Preston.
“It won’t kill you and I’ll try not to kiss you for awhile,” he retorted smiling. “The doc stitched up your arm and told me to ground you for two weeks until he checks you again and takes out the stitches.”
“Two weeks,” she replied still coughing. “I’m heading home to get my P-51.”
“Oh, no you are not!” replied Preston. “It looks like a hurricane coming in and we will all be grounded by early tomorrow.”
“But it’s only May! What day is it?” she asked. “It’s too early for hurricane season.”
“May 17th, you’ve been asleep for six hours. Well, I suppose General Patterson forgot to tell Mother Nature about our little war here in the south,” he explained sarcastically. “We might have to move the aircraft back to McConnell. Admiral Rogers arrived an hour or two ago and he sent out one of his Hurricane aircraft to find out what’s out there and where it’s going to hit.
“Have the girls gone back to Housto
n?” Martie asked.
“Yep! They are doing a night-bombing run and should be back in thirty minutes. We are to be on standby in case we need to get out of here. The 130s headed off three hours ago to get more troops out of another base in Arkansas and will be dropping them into the area north of Houston at midnight. General Patterson wanted to divert a couple of the 747s to bring in troops, but decided that the winds are getting too strong.”
“Are the girls alright?” she asked.
“They came in to see you before they left and ordered me to look after you until they get back and can give you real motherly care,” stated Preston cleaning her sweating face with a cloth. “They were all excited to go on the second night run, especially Sally and Jennifer. They have trained for this type of air-fighting for years. Admiral Rogers brought in Seal Team Six, and they are leaving to go somewhere once Patterson gets back and figures out what to do with them. They had been stuck in North Africa for three months.”
“I was wondering when they would show up,” added Martie.
* * *
“Pedro, Pedro. What’s going on? I felt the ground vibrate,” stated Manuel into his radio mike. Pedro, Pedro can you hear me?” Manuel tried several times before he heard Pedro’s voice.
“It’s like daylight here behind me,” he shouted very loudly into his mike. They hit us again with bombs I think. I was a couple of hundred yards in front of where the closest bombs hit. It looks like they hit a gas station; the first blast knocked me over and then the whole world lit up! It looks like more bombs increased the explosion into a massive fireball. I could feel the heat from here. My men counted over a dozen aircraft fly overhead. Manuel, there were a lot of fast jets everywhere. It’s now starting to rain really heavy, and I’ll tell you more when we get there. We lost a lot of men, brother.”
Twenty-four hours later, at midnight on May 18th, Pedro finally reached Manuel and Alberto; they were waiting for him at Bush Intercontinental Airport, where Manuel had decided to get all the men together to ride out the storm. The remnants of Pedro’s army were still slowly shuffling forward in heavy wind and rain squalls on the highway in a line five miles behind him.
Pedro didn’t know it, but the burned and blackened bodies of over 11,000 men lay just over a mile and a half of highway to his south. Also, over two hundred vehicles and seven fuel tankers had gone up, increasing the flames and killing hundreds around them. The escape areas underneath the highway had become hot, blast ovens, incinerating the hundreds who scrambled under them for safety. Several hundred more were injured, blind or disorientated and would never see their colleagues again.
The three brothers set up camp in the vast area of the airport. It was the only location in Houston that could accommodate so many men.
As the storm grew worse and began rattling the buildings and hangars in which they were sheltering, Manuel and Alberto’s commanders reported in with their numbers.
The totals rose as over 500 men stood in lines to report, several men taking down numbers of men, arms and vehicles. Pedro’s commanders and what was left of Carlos Sanchez’s men were ordered to do the same as they arrived.
“Our army doesn’t look so good,” stated Alberto to Manuel two hours after midnight as he waited, dozing every now and again, but awakened every few minutes to wind gusts hitting the terminal building. There were several fires in the broken down terminal where men were cooking and several areas had rain coming in where windows had been broken before they got there. They also had to eject several old and decomposing bodies before the long buildings became semi-habitable. Pedro’s men were still coming in, many helping wounded soldiers.
“What do you and I have in numbers?” asked Manuel, looking around for the half-empty bottle of American Bourbon he found at one of the bases they had ransacked.
In Laredo, we each had 25,000 men,” replied Alberto looking at a vast list of numbers on a scrap of cardboard in front of him. We were joined by 5,000 fresh men, the Gonzalez Cartel, here in Houston. I believe you and I had 20,000 other men join us between Laredo, San Antonio and here. That is 75,000 men we used to have Manuel, now we have only about 55,000 men. We had more than 2,000 vehicles of all types between us, now we have less than 1,250, mostly smaller vehicles. In those lost vehicles they destroyed over 400 troop transporters and thirty-four fuel tankers. We still have our five howitzers from San Antonio, tons of ammo and three ground-to-air missiles and one launcher left. We lost most of our rations and we have food for our men for two more days.”
By morning the storm was intensifying when Pedro’s men gave their numbers. They hadn’t slept a wink. “Manuel, out of the 60,000 men I started with in Laredo, I had 4,000 men join me and left 10,000 good men in San Antonio. After San Antonio more joined. Then Carlos Sanchez met us at the intersection with his Cartel of 15,000. That should have increased my numbers to 93,000 men.
Manuel, Alberto, I don’t know how many men and vehicles I have. Many hundreds were blown up and destroyed; even my own jeep took bullets, but still runs. Maybe more men are coming. I think I lost over 25,000 men just today. Manuel, my men have one aircraft missile, one launcher and three howitzers and 21 undamaged heavy machine guns from Fort Houston in San Antonio. I have one day’s food in two trucks; they hit over 30 of my trucks carrying food when one of their aircraft exploded and obliterated the road.”
Well any number over 100,000 well-armed men is still an army,” stated Manuel. “Let’s wait for our 50 trucks to arrive from the naval base in Corpus Christi. This little storm will blow over, and then we go and blow those Americans to pieces. What do you think about that?”
Chapter 6
The Hurricane with No Name
With a heavy tailwind, the first Orion Hurricane Hunter returned at 05:15 on May 18th, and the crew didn’t need to wake up the admiral or the general. The wind and rain squalls were keeping them from a restful sleep. The rest of the pilots were still fast asleep; they were due at the 06:00 briefing. The wind squalls were now coming in from the north and, a lot of the pilots watching the weather had never seen drastic changes like this. The temperature outside had dropped twenty degrees in the last ten hours.
The flight crew reported back at 02:30 that they had found the storm. It was 120 miles off the Texas coast, a big one by the look of it, and they would report again once they had flown through the eye and out the other side. Their equipment was thirty years old and not as exact as the more modern equipment normally used, and there was no satellite help to guide them through, but they found the eye wall and thirty minutes later passed through the main body of the storm.
The second Orion was an hour behind them and followed a different route 50 miles closer to the coast to attempt to record the wind measurements of the frontal area of the storm. They were scheduled to land at 05:30, and during the flight home both aircraft could compare readings and have a report for the 06:00 briefing.
“It’s a big hurricane alright,” stated the commander of the first aircraft once all the dreary eyed pilots and crew met in the briefing room. “I also believe that a cold front went over us from the northwest yesterday and, if that happened, then we have a perfect storm down there about 120 miles off the Texas coast.”
The C-130 pilots had dropped the 93 members of the Seals with the second group of 3,000 Marines and full kit at 01:30 several miles north of the outskirts of Houston; it was just south of a small town called Spring, which General Patterson thought an appropriately named place to drop the men. At the drop point, there were less severe gusts when the men jumped at 1,000 feet, 10 aircraft at a time, into a clear area between two railway depots. The railway trucks could shield the men during the hurricane if need be, as well as give them a defensible position if enemy troops were in the vicinity. Also, it was a couple of miles to Houston’s main airport which could be a second shelter position from which to scour the city for enemy.
The Seals were dressed in civilian clothes and carried mercenary-type weapons like shotguns and AK 47s. Their
aim was to find the enemy and infiltrate as members of the rebel army.
“I don’t believe you are going to get any more flights into Houston for the next 48 to 72 hours,” continued the Hurricane Hunter’s commander at the briefing. “Our read-outs show a full-fledged hurricane 300 miles wide and we have rated it as a Category Three. The hurricane eye looks like it is heading into the area east of Houston, somewhere between Galveston and Beaumont and will land in about ten to twelve hours. We can only gauge its forward movement on our second pass, but a hurricane of this size would normally average 12 to 17 miles an hour. At 03:05 this morning the eye was 91 miles off the coast, directly north of High Island. We are heading out again once our aircraft are refueled. I don’t believe Dyess is in any danger, but I would move your aircraft back to McConnell just in case, General.”
“You stated a cold front?” asked Admiral Rogers. “If it is a cold front that passed over this area yesterday —and I agree with you, I know a cold front when I smell one—then it must be either halting the forward movement of the hurricane, or the hurricane could possibly push it back over us, or both; just stop dead and pour rain down until the hurricane is consumed by the front. That could cause really destructive weather in Houston and the surrounding coastal areas.”
“Correct,” replied the commander. “That’s why we need to get back to measure how far the eye has moved and in which direction.”
“Pilots, head all aircraft back to McConnell. I want everybody out of here by midday. I will leave last in the Super Tweet at 11:59,” ordered General Patterson and the pilots got up to prepare.
“I’m going to do some hurricane and weather surveillance of the area in the Coast Guard C-130,” added Admiral Rogers. “She has old weather equipment on board, and I can monitor the area around Houston and relay any messages from my Seal Team. General Patterson, please fly some 130s into Camp Lejeune to pick up a third parachute drop of men and load a couple of the Gunships with extra ammo and supplies for the men already on the ground. We now have 6,000 Marines in and around Houston; and even with my 93 guys, that isn’t very many against a couple of hundred thousand rebels.”