by T I WADE
General Patterson acknowledged and wanted a report on equipment movements from Harbin. He got on the phone to Mo Wang, still in China.
“It is going well here, General, we are working around the clock,” stated Mo once the general had asked him for his progress. “I have completed a timeline for the equipment at the factory where I’m currently standing, and will have the first of approximately 500 aircraft-loads ready in 14 days. The three Airbuses and all twenty 747s are flying out the food stocks and electronics from the airfield. The 747 Transporter is taking out munitions and loads of helicopter parts from the factory and all the weapons and ammunition you asked for from Colonel Zhing’s location.”
“Then it will take two months to move the entire factory? Is that correct Mo?” asked the general.
“That is correct,” Mo answered. “The airfield still has several outgoing flights with all the aircraft to go, counting two days per flight, before the storage depot is empty. Could I ask that you return my good friend Colonel Rhu who is still in Hawaii? He can help me with the inventory,” asked Mo. General Patterson said that he would send orders to Misawa.
“Do you need any more help: men or heavy duty machinery?” asked the general. Mo stated that he didn’t. “Those other four partially completed helicopters I saw in the factory. What has happened to those?”
“We decided that you might need them due to the new problems you are facing,” replied Mo. “So I ordered the factory to complete the helicopters. Two will be ready for testing tomorrow and the other two in a week.” General Patterson thanked Mo and told him to get the four completed Zhi-10s to Edwards Air Force Base as soon as their tests were done.
“Preston, Buck, Carlos come with me. Carlos I want you back at “The Cube” helping to get that satellite repositioned over us. How many more days do we need?”
“A week,” replied Carlos. We can see the western area of Texas and maybe the Dyess-area in six days and the Houston area several hours after that. I believe May 25th is our day. There is no way I can direct the satellite any faster.”
“Well, there is no flying here for a few days, so let’s go and check on what is happening in California.”
The other aircraft were already leaving; the winds were becoming stronger and the rain more constant instead of squalls. It looked like the whole of southern Texas was in for a lot of rain.
General Patterson gave new orders for an air force crew to fly out the twin-seat Super Tweet he was supposed to pilot. He, Preston, Buck, Carlos and Martie, who wasn’t going to be left behind, loaded their gear aboard Blue Moon to take off in dark and windy weather towards Travis Air Force Base.
* * *
“What do you think?” Lieutenant Colonel Clarke asked his five majors reporting in and whose men were going through the blackened and rain-drenched Mission Bend intersection. At midday on May 18th, it looked like dusk and the rain was coming down hard. Counting the dead was dirty, wet, work, especially checking for any identification.
“My men just can’t keep up with the numbers,” declared a couple of the men together. “There are just too many. It would be easier without this weather.”
“I think a cleanup team of thousands should head in to both these locations as soon as this all blows over, and then we can get an accurate count,” suggested the major.
At the Interstate-10 battleground, the carnage was very bad with thousands of dead bodies and body parts everywhere. Several badly wounded men were dealt with in accordance with their orders to take no prisoners. They counted seven thousand bodies and a thousand vehicles before they just gave up on I-10 and headed into Houston. They had been ordered to head to the area of the second attack on the highway south and the two intersections.
It was nearly impossible to count the dead and remains of bodies and vehicles; the wind and rain made visibility bad, and it was impossible for the men to take accurate numbers. The wind was cold, colder than when they began the previous day, and Colonel Clarke was happy to hear Admiral Rogers’s voice come faintly over his radio.
The colonel reported his numbers and stated that if it got any worse, he and his men would need to find shelter. Admiral Rogers told him of several large warehouses around and north of the second intersection where the last attack had taken place, but to be careful in case the enemy was still in the area. Admiral Rogers also told Colonel Clarke through a coded message that a second group of 3,000 Marines under Lieutenant Colonel Catlin were about seven miles north of the city airport, and Seal Team Six had also gone in and were heading for the airport in civilian dress. From now on the Marines had to be more careful about shooting on sight.
Lieutenant Colonel Clarke transmitted the urgent need for cleanup teams, and the admiral acknowledged. He had a good man to sort out this big problem, Mike Mallory.
* * *
The three Seal Team lieutenants were making good time to the intercontinental airport. They had consumed a quick meal inside several dry boxcars, and after a six hour nap, were still dry underneath their rain gear, and had a mile to go. None of them had seen any life. Even the dogs had disappeared to survive the heavy rain pelting everything. It was beginning to rain very hard and visibility was down to less than a hundred feet.
Their orders were to find the enemy. Once that was done, the non-Spanish-speaking men would set up a base of operations, and the two squads of six men would head into the melee of enemy and search out the commanders, whoever they were. Based on identification found on many of the dead bodies, they already knew the rebels were from Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and every country in Central America.
Lieutenant Colonel Clarke had earlier reported from the first scene of attack that several of the Hispanics carried U.S. papers such as Green Cards and even U.S. Passports. There had not been a black or white body in the whole search to date, and the Seal Team had been told that any whites or blacks they came across would probably be harmless civilians and should be given help.
Lieutenant Paul’s men were the first to reach the outer-perimeter fence to Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport. They reached the northwestern tip of the airfield and couldn’t see past the first runway. Within a minute they had three holes cut into the fence, and the men slipped into the grassy verge around the runway tarmac heading out in a easterly direction as far as visibility would allow.
All three platoons had checked maps once they landed and mentally visualized the airport area. They had very little trouble staying hidden. The Seals didn’t expect anybody to be on guard, and their next job was to radio the Marines behind them to move south into what they hoped were drier and better accommodations at the airport terminals than the ransacked railway box cars.
The other two Seal platoons arrived at the opened fence holes, marked with a small white ribbon a minute later and found Lieutenant Paul and his men.
“We are lucky the weather is so bad,” shouted Lieutenant Paul to the whole group once all 93 men had congregated in the airport grounds. They were totally hidden from any prying eyes and were confident in standing around in the open. “We would have needed to wait until dark before we could get across the open runways. There is the taxiway, which has a flyover, or a bridge that goes over a road a hundred yards to our south. Why don’t the rest of you take cover while we go forward and check out the first terminals? If it’s all clear we’ll come back for you guys to join us. Stay put until you hear from one of us, understand? We won’t take a radio in case there are enemy there and somebody wants to search us.”
The rest of the men nodded and quickly headed under the bridge to get out of the pelting rain. Now it was just the twelve men, and they moved forward, looking like they were patrolling the area.
Half a mile later they reached the second east/west set of two runways and walked straight into six poncho-covered men trying to stay dry in a covered jeep at the beginning of the front apron to the closest terminal. The Seals had been briefed on the battles during the last 24 hours and were ready for any questions fired at
them.
The visibility was now down to twenty feet, the wind was wailing and even the Seal squads couldn’t have seen the jeep before they almost walked into it.
“Where have you come from?” was the first question in Spanish from the passenger side, the man aiming his AK 47 at the Seals without even getting out of his dry seat.
“The first battle on the highway; we were at the back, and we lost several men. We were waiting in a ditch for someone to give us orders,” Lieutenant Meyers, the lead Seal, replied in fluent Spanish.
“Whose cartel are you from?” the man asked.
“We are Panamanians living in America. We joined your army in San Antonio, twenty of us, and there are only have twelve of us left; I am the commander, Charlie Mendoza. We were supposed to be given a commander but nobody told us who our new commander is yet,” Charlie Meyers/Mendoza replied calmly just standing there trying to look lost. “Are the others around here?”
“We are all here at this airport. You must have been with the rear army; they are staying in the last terminals to the south. If you follow this runway southeast,” the man pointed to a taxiway heading directly south, “It’s about half a mile. Ask for Pedro’s army. Somebody will show you where to go. Do you have any missiles, launchers or any RPGs?”
“No, we were never given any, why?” asked Paul.
“The army commanders need all of them, and if you see anyone else with missiles or launchers, tell them to head to the lead army. They are sleeping in the second terminal to the east of there,” he stated, pointing in the direction the men had been previously heading.
Charlie Meyers thanked the man and headed to where they had been told to go to find the rear army. The weather had cleared slightly, and they now could see to the bridge where the rest of the men were hidden and, the others would have seen the confrontation with the men in the jeep. They could report back when the weather came in again.
There were jeeps every fifty yards or so and, casually walking past the second jeep, the Seals waved at the shapes inside. The third jeep was the same, except the rain was slight and a man shouted to them asking where they were heading. Lieutenant Paul shouted back, “Pedro’s men,” and an arm pointed to several cargo hangars including UPS, FedEx, and a couple of private looking terminals parallel with the runways.
“Who are you?” stated a guard at the hangar’s small entrance door. All the large buildings were closed except this one door.
“Charlie Mendoza family out of Panama, we got lost on the highway when the gringos attacked,” stated Lieutenant Paul using their Spanish secret name to communicate with each other.
“Go find a place to sleep,” he replied picking his teeth with a toothpick and pretty much uninterested in the men in front of him.
“Where’s Pedro?” Paul asked.
“Why do you want to know?” the dirty guard replied relishing his toothpick more than talking to the man in front of him.
“We were told by the guards on the corner that Pedro was interested in any launchers or missiles his men have. We don’t have one, but we saw a dead man with a missile launcher at the last intersection where the gringos had bombed.”
“Pedro is in the front terminal talking to his brothers. I will tell him when he returns,” and the man waved them away to get out of his face.
“It looks like we need to move up in the world from the rear army to the front army. What do you guys think?” asked Lieutenant Paul once they had moved away to a darker area where thousands of men were sleeping. They nodded their agreement.
“I don’t think I would like to have these guys as my fighting comrades,” added Lieutenant Charlie Meyers. “I think advancement in comrade-quality is the best way forward, or I could fold up and die in this stench.”
The men always found Charlie Meyers to be the joker of the group, and even when they were in tense situations he was always had something stupid to say.
They saw a man exit the large cargo terminal building using a small door on the opposite side of where they had come in and they followed him outside. They exited into a parking area at the front of the building which had hundreds upon hundreds of ragged vehicles of all types in the parking lots and on the roadway where the fencing had been torn down for more room. They squeezed between the vehicles, which felt more like a Wal-Mart parking lot at its busiest time, and headed back to buildings to their north.
“Where are you going?” asked a guard in one vehicle sheltering from the growing rain shower.
“Pedro and his brothers want to see us about a missile launcher,” replied Lieutenant Mendoza slouching up to the vehicle. “What are his brother’s names? I have never met them.”
“I don’t know, but I think one’s called Alberto. He is in charge of the second army, and the other brother is in charge of the lead army.”
Charlie Mendoza thanked the man and they moved on. They got to within a hundred yards of the main terminal buildings and control tower in the middle of two massive terminals before they were questioned again. This time the guard was alert and braved the rain to find out who the men were.
“We have some news for Pedro and Alberto about a couple of missiles and a missile launcher. We were told that they were asking if anybody had them,” replied Lieutenant Paul.
“I don’t see them. You are not carrying them?” the guard asked. This time several of the men recognized an accent they hadn’t heard for two years, a Colombian accent.
“We don’t have them but we saw them back at the first attack on a broken vehicle, and we wondered if Pedro and Alberto wanted us to go all the way back to get them.”
“It’s not Pedro or Alberto who wants to know, it’s Manuel, and he gave orders to find every missile. Go in and ask Alberto to ask his brother.”
“Alberto who?” questioned Charlie Mendoza, never thinking twice about asking a stupid question.
“Alberto Calderón, you stupid mule, he is second-in-command to Manuel Calderón, your leader. Are you so stupid, you don’t even know who is running this army? Go into that door there and be careful amigo, they shoot stupid people like you in there.” The man shook his head and, not wanting to cause trouble just yet, the two lieutenants apologized for being so stupid, backed away, and headed for the door.
Inside the smell was the same; dirty bodies littered the floors everywhere. It was dark and the terminal was at least half a mile long. This was the main terminal for the airport; there were dozens of broken and burned aircraft with hundreds of vehicles everywhere underneath the bent and mostly broken walkways to the dozens of aircraft.
Then they reached the main inner-terminal, where inside, a sea of bodies were sprawled everywhere.
“Looking for Alberto Calderón,” stated Lieutenant Paul several times, and when asked why, he always had to reply that they had information on missiles. They moved through the thousands of sleeping people, and finally they got within a hundred feet of a lit up area where there was a meeting going on.
* * *
Manuel, Alberto and Pedro were being bandaged up by the best medic they had, a doctor that had been with them and who had kept them whole for two decades.
“Ow! That stuff hurts!” exclaimed Pedro and was laughed at by his older brothers as the doctor tended his wounds. This bad cut was on the top of his head and needed a couple of stitches, and all the old doctor had to cleanse and sterilize the wound was Tequila. “I should drink it, not waste it on my head!”
The two older brothers had already had their wounds cleaned, and the doctor was down to a half a bottle of Tequila. Pedro noticed that and helped empty the bottle by taking two large swigs before it was pulled out of his hands by Alberto who took a swig and passed it on to Manuel.
“It’s not worth wasting the stuff on Pedro. Let him scream with pain, it will give us a show while we wait for this storm to pass,” laughed Alberto.
“I want a meeting of my section commanders, Luiz, in ten minutes,” Manuel shouted to one of his top men across the extra dis
tance. “After that I want to see Alberto’s commanders and then Pedro’s. I want all the other cartel commanders we have picked up in Pedro’s meeting. You know what I have to say and while I speak with the men, I want you to go outside to check on things behind this terminal. Keep an eye on any movement. Also, change the outside guards every two hours, I don’t want any guards sleeping, or I will personally cut off their ears and give them to their wives gift wrapped if they are caught.” Luiz acknowledged his orders and headed for the closest rear exit to the walkway connecting the aircraft behind the terminal. He wasn’t too happy to be on guard in the rain, but he was used to it, being a Colombian.
The first meeting started half an hour later, and several men were seated in front of the table where two powerful kerosene lamps gave Manuel and the men light to see each other.
“Everybody here?” asked Manuel and there was silence.
A couple of minutes after he started, the edge of his vision caught movement towards the rear of the terminal; a lightning bolt helped him see men moving, and he saw several shadows approaching the lit up area.
Suddenly there was a brilliant shaft of blue lightning outside the front windows which lit up the whole inner area of the terminal for a split second, followed by a crash of thunder enough to vibrate eardrums.
The twelve Seals froze; they were the only ones standing in that area and people suddenly noticed them.
“Who are you? Come over here now!” shouted one of the men standing around the table and who had noticed the twelve men standing there. The Seals walked over to the area. There was a map of Texas displayed on a square table and several men had been studying it when the lightning struck. “Why are you coming over here? Can’t you see we are in a meeting?” He was tall, thick-shouldered, and injured with dried blood in several areas of his face; one eye looked half-closed and he was pretty mean-looking.
