“Your governor chose to engage our troops. It was a fatal decision. As with any other criminal or enemy, our troops returned fire. Both the governor and his wife are dead,” the commander stated.
“Oh, my God! You didn’t have to shoot them! Oh, Jesus! Who ordered this killing? We were to negotiate an end to this crisis tomorrow! Who ordered this raid? Who, dammit? Are you sure he’s dead?” Weaver yelled at the commander as veins popped out from his neck.
“The governor brought this on himself. All this was unnecessary if you damned cowboys had turned yourselves in. Personally, I have no remorse for any of you. You killed eighteen Americans in Austin. I have three more dead in that lodge, one of them killed by Cooper. He got what he had coming. The governor’s wife appears to be collateral damage.”
Weaver stared at the federal agent coldly.
“Are you serious? I want to see the bodies right now!” demanded Weaver.
“Pipe down, counselor. You’re just going to have to take my word for it.”
“Where is the lieutenant governor?”
“Your lieutenant governor and his wife have sustained injuries. He has been wounded in the leg. We don’t know the extent of the injuries to his wife; however, they are both being readied for transport.”
“Dear God….”
Weaver sat quietly for a brief moment, then continued, “So tomorrow’s meeting was a ruse. It was obviously set up to get us to let our guard down so you could come out here like thieves in the night and take out Johnson’s political enemies by murdering the governor and his wife!”
“I don’t know a damned thing about any meeting,” retorted the commander. “We were exercising a legal warrant under federal orders. Your men here were armed. Austin wasn’t happening all over again. Not with my men. We did what we had to do. We returned fire when fired upon.”
“Of course, you don’t know about Bartlett coming here. That was obviously never going to happen.”
“Secy. of State Bartlett was coming here? I seriously doubt that,” said the commander realizing that, if it was true, it was possible the bloodshed at the Swingin’ T may have been premature or unwarranted.
“Apparently not. Johnson and Tibbs wanted Gov. Cooper and they got him. They killed him. They killed his wife,” continued the angry and shaken Weaver. “You and your boss in D.C. are sneaky bastards, I’ll give you that.”
The commander strode close enough to Weaver to deliver a stinging slap to his face. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Texas and neither do my men! We had a job to do. The governor would be alive right now if he hadn’t fired on our men!”
Weaver’s face flushed bright red. “Don’t think for one second Texas will forget this! Texans don’t forget attacks on our sovereignty! I promise you they won’t forget the feds murdering our governor and his wife!”
“Put him in the chopper!” yelled the commander to his underlings. “I’m already tired of his whining.”
The stunned Texas officials, their spouses and staff sat quietly on a cedar bench in the terrace at gunpoint for the next few minutes. The silence was broken only by the radio communications from the commander to the USS Harry S. Truman in the Gulf.
“Santa Anna command, this is Santa Anna One. Eight minutes to lift-off,” radioed the pilot.
Weaver looked at the commander. “Santa Anna? Are you friggin’ serious? You boys sure know how to escalate things, don’t you? Wait until Texans hear what this operation was called to invade Texas and kill their well-liked governor!”
The commander looked at Weaver with no expression. He knew little of Texas history and Weaver’s comments didn’t resonate. He was clueless that the Mexican dictator, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, had nullified the Mexican Constitution of 1824. That led to the Texas Revolution, and it was Santa Anna’s troops who killed all one hundred eighty-nine men at the Alamo.
“Reap the coming whirlwind, commander. Reap the whirlwind,” said Weaver.
“Gag him now,” the commander said tersely.
Chapter 13
“True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.”
~ General Robert E. Lee
Commander of the Confederate Army
Son of an American Revolution Hero
West Point Graduate & Widely Regarded Military Tactician
By 4:40 a.m., the two reserve Blackhawks from Ciudad Acuna arrived at the Swingin’ T. The first assault Blackhawk, Santa Anna One, loaded with two wounded agents, a shackled Weaver and the injured lieutenant governor and his wife had taken off thirty minutes before Prickly Pear One and Two arrived at the ranch. Instead of heading back to one of the two border town airports where the operation originated, Santa Anna One took a direct path to the USS Harry S. Truman. Included in the cargo bay were black body bags containing the bodies of the governor and his wife, along with the three dead federal agents.
The aircraft carrier had a full medical staff and facilities onboard and was waiting to treat the wounded. Two of the four fully-armed F-15 fighter jets that were already airborne over the Gulf after the governor was found crossed over Baffin Bay near South Padre Island, headed on a direct path to San Antonio. These two fighters had a defined mission planned in the event Santa Anna suffered casualties. Nobody on the Joint Chiefs expected to suffer casualties in the operation but, like any good military plan, they were prepared in case.
The USS Truman was nearly at full power, steaming from one hundred fifty miles from land toward the Gulf Coast. Every mile the carrier could put behind it would be one less mile the Blackhawk had to travel to deliver the wounded to treatment facilities and lessened the chance that the Blackhawk or F-15s might encounter Texas State Guard aircraft en route.
Now that Santa Anna One was en route, the F-15s were ordered to fulfill their specific missions. The fighters were locked on targets in San Antonio, Brownsville, Corpus Christi and the reserve Naval Air Station at Beeville, Texas.
The Joint Chiefs had determined, in planning Operation Santa Anna that, if the mission resulted in casualties, any Blackhawks with wounded or prime targets would be re-routed to the most direct path to the carrier.
The most advanced aircraft used by the Texas State Guard were F-16s, which were generally outclassed in air-to-air combat scenarios by the more powerful U.S. F-15s. The F-15s had a maximum speed of 1,875 miles per hour, three hundred miles faster per hour than the Texas F-16s. The F-15s had some air-to-air tactical advantages, including two engines versus one and two pilots versus one. U.S. military planners knew that any hastily prepared radar might pick up the Blackhawks and the F-15s, and were fully prepared to engage if necessary.
The stealth skin attached to Santa Anna One, Two and Three was most effective at very low altitudes and slower speeds designed to sneak in under radar. This chopper had a single purpose: to get its cargo to the Truman as fast as possible. The F-15s would provide air cover if needed.
* * *
At the Swingin’ T, federal agents loaded the remaining choppers with confiscated cell phones, laptops, notebooks, briefcases and papers they found from Texas officials. The four choppers took off simultaneously from the courtyard of the Swingin’ T. Staffers and family left behind scrambled to get clear of the swirling rocks and dust caused by the rotors.
The remaining staff, still unaware of the governor’s whereabouts, dashed into the main lodge to see if the governor was still there. They had not heard what the operation commander told Weaver when he was separated from the group being held at gunpoint in the courtyard. The survivors rushed into the master bedroom, and came upon a pool of blood in the entry and a larger pool of blood just off the right corner of the bed on the knotted pine hardwood floor. Blood spatter was also on the French doors out to the courtyard, along with a mirror, and a door frame and wall in the entry way. It was obvious there had been a battle in this room, but whose blood was
this? Were the governor and his wife okay? Lt. Gov. Foster’s chief of staff, Rory Kendall, a young dark-haired thirty-two year-old, took charge.
“Try all the phones. It looks like they cut them all. Does anyone have a cell phone? Did they miss anyone’s cell phone?”
Some ran back to their guest cottages to see if the federal agents had gotten theirs.
“Look! They destroyed the cell repeaters,” yelled one of the staffers from inside the telephone closet. Kendall went and found that all the phone equipment had been ripped off the walls and bashed on the floor.
“Somebody has to get word to Pops! Did anyone call Pops?” Kendall asked, knowing Pops would know what to do next. During the quick strike and chaos caused by the DHS assault troops, nobody left alive at the Swingin’ T had a chance to, or even thought about, sending a message to Pops.
* * *
At 4:49 a.m. in San Antonio, Lackland Air Force Base’s radar alarms went off as their systems picked up the two incoming F-15s just as they crossed the Gulf Coast. Radar stations across Texas at military and civilian airports were manned by skeleton crews as air traffic over Texas had been reduced to a trickle since the crisis began. Federal air traffic control workers were ordered to stay home by the FAA and access to the national air traffic support system was made unavailable by executive order. This left the civilian airports without air traffic control, but some larger airports still had radar and the Texas State Guard air wing staff was able to get Lackland’s control up and running.
The nature and intent of the two radar blips of very fast moving jets left the Texas Guard confused and questioning the veracity of the original interpretation of the jets’ radar signatures. Precious minutes were lost while State Guard command tried to decide if this was any kind of imminent threat. Traveling at thirty-one miles per minute, the F-15s needed less than ten minutes to reach San Antonio two hundred ninety-two miles from the USS Truman.
A U.S. F-15 Eagle closed on the Brownsville airport, banked sharply to the southeast, then let loose two air-to-surface Maverick missiles that struck and destroyed the air traffic control tower. Fortunately, the tower was not staffed in the early morning hours; if it had been, there would have been more casualties.
In Corpus Christi two minutes later, the control tower and radar facilities on the airport property were destroyed in the same manner by an F-15. This was not the case in Corpus Christi, which was still allowing some limited private aircraft to take off and land. Two civilian volunteer controllers in the tower were killed instantly.
At the Naval Air Reserve Station in Beeville, Texas, just south of Corpus Christi, the dormant base was just brought back to life as a result of the crisis in Austin. The outdated control tower and two State Guard helicopters sitting on the tarmac were completely destroyed by Maverick missiles from the third F-15.
Thirty-five miles from San Antonio, radar indicated that three F-15s had peeled off in different directions, but four new images appeared. That could only mean one thing. One of the radar blips was on a route tracking directly to Lackland Air Force in San Antonio.
Suddenly, one radar blip turned to five.
The F-15 had launched AMRAAM long-range missiles, satellite- guided and “beyond visual” of the pilots, and they were deadly accurate. Two Texas Guard F-16s blasted down the Lackland runway, their thrusters glowing bright orange in the near-dawn sky. Two more were being readied when the first two missiles hit the control tower, exploding the top off the tower as it fell.
The tower had just become fully manned when the first alarms went off. Nine souls died in the explosion and the collapse of the tower. Two more missiles hit the tarmac where two F-16s were being scrambled, and the jets erupted into giant fireballs that could be seen more than ten miles around the San Antonio area by anyone who might have been awake that early in the morning.
Within seconds of the first launch, the F-15 turned back north and launched two Mavericks that struck the San Antonio commercial airport control tower.
There was no time to alert the airport by the Lackland control tower before it was destroyed, and the four volunteers in the San Antonio airport tower never knew what hit them as missiles slammed into the concrete tower, throwing large chunks of concrete hundreds of feet into the air with many of them crashing into empty adjacent terminals.
If the U.S. military thought it had just rendered south Texas’ airspace completely blind to Texas state military forces, they may have been over-confident. They knew towers in Laredo and Del Rio were not likely manned at night because of the lack of air traffic. Even so, those radar towers only had a one hundred fifty-mile radar footprint.
Santa Anna One was informed it had a clear path to the Truman.
The Joint Chiefs had planned Operation Santa Anna to be a covert snare-and-snatch mission to bring Texas state officials to federal justice. When the Santa Anna Blackhawks radioed that they were taking incoming fire at the Swingin’ T and had federal casualties, command figured the Texas Guard would scramble fighters and engage the Blackhawks. It was assumed by operational command that their cover was now blown. The admiral in charge on the Truman made the judgment call to protect the Blackhawks by striking radar installations and F-16s where they sat.
Lackland radar in San Antonio was blinded, but command had quickly established rudimentary communications with civilian radar towers at Laredo and Del Rio airports. General chaos ensued at Lackland with fire crews attempting to douse the fires and recover survivors.
If the feds had taken out Laredo and Del Rio, and crippled key cell towers, they could have rendered themselves invisible. The limited radar facilities were of little concern at night as they were unmanned. The Johnson administration had been convinced by military planners that strikes on radar facilities in Laredo and Del Rio were probably unnecessary. The Joint Chiefs had presented the operation to President Johnson as having an eighty-five percent chance of success without casualties.
State Guard command at Lackland was furiously trying to reach the governor while barking out orders to fire control crews as fires on one of the damaged aircraft were perilously close to jet fuel storage tanks. Unable to reach the governor or lieutenant governor, they tried and were able to reach Texas Ranger Cmdr. Pops Younger. Communications could not be established with Texas Militia headquarters in Austin or various other air wing sites that kept aircraft on standby.
“We’ve been attacked, we have multiple casualties, and we’ve got a damned mess here, sir! We can’t reach the governor! I can’t reach Maj. Gen. Conroy! The fighters that hit us appear to be headed out to the Gulf. Two of our F-16s didn’t make it off the tarmac. Our tower is down!”
“Damn Yankee sons of bitches!” responded Pops. “We can’t reach the governor either. One of my Rangers got a cell phone message from the governor’s staff, but it was unintelligible. That was about 3:30 a.m. We haven’t been able to reach the local command at his hideout location in the hill country. I’m worried they hit there, too. There must be a mole somewhere that disclosed the governor’s location. I’ve just dispatched the Apaches in Austin and the Texas Militia to aid immediately.”
“Sir, where is the governor?”
“I can’t say over the phone.”
“Yes, sir. I can’t reach my chain of command. Are you able to give me orders, sir?”
“Blow ’em out of the sky if you can find ’em!”
“Sir, I’ve got Del Rio reporting four aircraft moving relatively slowly—must be choppers, moving south toward Eagle Pass at very low altitude. Are those ours?”
“No. Damn!”
“I also have the F-16s reporting a chopper moving southeast towards Brownsville shadowed by two U.S. F-15s.”
“What the hell is going on?” said a frustrated Pops.
“I need orders, sir.”
“Send one F-16 to intercept the choppers headed to Eagle Pass. Send the other one to find out where that chopper is headed to near Brownsville.”
“Sir, I just got handed a no
te saying shrimpers radioed in that they have spotted an aircraft carrier fifteen miles offshore about sixty miles due south of Corpus Christi.”
“I’m afraid that one may have the governor! The chopper is headed to that carrier. I don’t know what the hell the other four are doing. See if the pilots can make radio contact. I’ll stay on the line. Tell them to ask what their purpose is and who is onboard. Do not authorize anyone to fire on any of those choppers. One of them is likely to have the governor or other state officials onboard.”
“Geez, sir, do you think they captured him?”
“We don’t know for sure, but they’re sure making a mad dash to get outta Texas!”
For the next ten minutes, the pilots of the two F-16s were in radio contact with the chain of command at Lackland. They had not made radio contact with the choppers but were gaining on them quickly.
“Son, I’ve got an unknown call coming in. I have to take any calls on this line. Stay on the line.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
It was now after six a.m. and daylight was breaking through. The ranch hands, maids and cooks that normally stayed at the Swingin’ T had been moved to local hotels with their families because the heads of state government took all the available guest cottages and bunkhouses on the ranch. A small group of Hispanic ladies came to the ranch every morning at 6:00 a.m. to deliver breakfast to lodge guests.
The occupants of two vans carrying containers of scrambled eggs, refried beans and tortillas saw smoke coming from the ranch entrance and from the ranch when they were more than sixteen miles away over the rolling Texas hills as daylight broke.
When they pulled up to the ranch entrance, they saw that the limestone entrance was in rubble and the guard shack was splintered like shredded toothpicks, still smoldering. They immediately called the sheriff’s office in Llano and turned around to head back to town.
“This is Younger,” Pops answered his cell phone.
A State of Treason Page 12
