by T I WADE
He gave up trying to dodge them as their numbers mounted and were too much for the truck to negotiate, and he turned back and headed for the highway exit they had passed a mile earlier. At least they could by-pass the carnage.
“The aircraft had certainly done a number on this lot!” he shouted to Lieutenant Paul sitting on the other seat and Corporal Rodriquez who was now front gunner; he had seen, stopped the truck, and picked up the beautiful undamaged tri-pod machine gun and several hundred rounds from a broken jeep as they had approached the carnage.
“I’m sure the guys will see us on the side road just as easily,” added Lieutenant Paul and, several minutes after turning onto the side road, they saw men in front waving them down.
“You guys look like a bunch of drowned rats,” stated Charlie winding his window down and smiling at the Marines.
“You guys are sure roughing it in a limo, I see,” replied a very wet lieutenant. “Mommy not allowing her babies to get wet, poor little dears,” he joked smiling at the face in the truck with raindrops streaming down his face.
“Good news for you; clean dry accommodation a few miles north at Bush Intercontinental; but bad news is that a whole rebel army already has the lease; you are more than welcome to go and throw them out anytime you want. I see you let their trucks go through; we passed them a few miles before the airport. Where’s your boss man?” Charlie asked.
“About 300 yards behind; he told us you were coming and has some blow-up toys for you youngsters.”
He signaled goodbye and the truck inched slowly through hundreds of men on guard who were protecting hundreds more on the highway below them to their left.
“We found two ground-to-air missiles and one launcher so far,” stated a wet Colonel Clarke as they pulled up underneath the overhang of a gas station half a mile further on. He and a hundred men were trying to heat up some food; the Seal Team left the truck in the rain and went to join them. “I have already had their guidance systems disarmed, so if they are fired towards our aircraft, they will go straight past, unless they hit them head on.”
“At least we have something to bribe them to be our friends,” replied Lieutenant Paul being offered a tin plate with a hot biscuit drenched with “SOS” sauce.
“What are your plans and how can we help? I’ve heard that the rest of our men with the 2nd Marine Division from Lejeune are coming in later with my commander and more are to be trucked in within twenty-four hours.”
“How many men expected in total?” asked Paul taking a good bite out of the biscuit after drowning it in the hot sauce.
“It looks like we will have 12,000 more Marines north of here in twenty-four hours, and we even heard of Chinese attack choppers and gunships as backup. The Air Force lost three jet aircraft to those damn missiles yesterday, and we are hoping that the bastards don’t have many left.”
“We counted two when we talked to the Calderón brothers, and we didn’t see any more during our walk-about of their base,” added Lieutenant Meyers.
“Cookie, get these guys some more food, I’m sure they haven’t eaten for a while!” Colonel Clarke shouted over to the group of men boiling a large container on a massive gas ring. “We got in a pallet of cooking supplies with the last drop a couple of hours ago and have five stations cooking the men up some food. I believe there is no rush to get anywhere just yet and any place dry is good right now. There is a large broken, but still dry, Walmart on the other side of the highway, and the other four cooking stations are feeding our men in there right now. The bodies down there take your appetite away, especially the napalmed dead. That old Vietnam stuff burns like a crematorium.”
“We are going to bed in with the guys and might need backup once we are ready to go. I know the admiral will place a Jolly Green Giant or an extraction chopper pretty close, and we will have to work by ear. Just tell the boss to try and warn us when he sends in the jets or choppers. I don’t want to be taken by our own bullets. It might ruin my appetite,” Lieutenant Paul replied. “Thanks for the missiles. We will give it to the enemy and maybe suggest coming out and looking for more once the weather dries out a little.”
“At least twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight, we haven’t even seen the worst of this storm yet,” added the colonel.
“We can meet again in the town of Spring, whenever. Just call. Colonel, if you locate any more missiles, sort out their innards and we’ll come and find you.”
The Marines were thanked for the hot food, and Lieutenant Paul and his team got back into the truck and headed back to the airport picking up another two good-looking machine guns and dozens of cases of ammo from the same Marine lieutenant they had met on the way in.
“No harm in having a little backup for the boys,” laughed Charlie Meyers as he drove towards the airport.
* * *
It was close to midnight the next evening, May 21st, when Admiral Rogers received word from the first Orion, which had gone out for the third time. The weather had been bad now for 72 hours and the hurricane’s eye had only moved thirty miles north-eastwards, less than half a mile an hour. It was virtually dead still. “The cold front is destroying the hurricane bit by bit," he told General Patterson.
General Mark Watson, the current commandant of the Marine Corps, had just flown in from Europe with the latest 747 delivery, straight into McConnell Air Force Base with General Mike Austin, commandant of the Army, who was on the same aircraft. The president also flew in at the same time to meet with the two new generals who, in December, had been directed to get the troops home from Europe, and had stayed there as long as necessary.
Now that there were very few soldiers left, only 70,000, they were able to return a month early, at the request of General Patterson, who needed their expertise in this next battle.
Up to now, General Patterson and the U.S. Air Force had been in charge of the defense of the United States, but he felt that since he needed to use Marines and Army soldiers in this upcoming battle, he should at least bring in their commanders to help with the battle plans
“General Patterson has worked 24/7 to keep our country safe since February 1st,” stated the president. “He was actually in combat himself in China only a week or two ago. Admiral Rogers, in charge of our naval forces, has worked just as hard and, I know you men have done the same for your country overseas. General Watson and General Austin, we are now the five men who control the entire United States of America. We need to work together to solve this next problem of border incursion before we start rebuilding this land of ours from scratch. Do all of you understand?” The four men nodded, and the president thought for a few moments before carrying on.
“I want you four to be the Joint Chiefs of Staff until further notice. I know that this is a promotion for all of you; the previous members have all been found and their bodies identified. General Patterson, who has been at the forefront of our country’s defense, will be the new Chief and you three generals part of the Staff. We need to work together to end this battle against our country once and for all and, if we destroy this massive army from the south, I believe word will get out that we are still a strong nation and not to be played with. Once this battle is over General Watson and General Austin, you will both become the men in charge to help form and set up our new police force across the country. The idea I have, and both General Patterson and Admiral Rogers agree, is that all of our country’s Military Policemen from all branches of service will become our new nation’s police force. How many men can each of your departments offer for this new military police force?”
“My men are ready; only yesterday I confirmed that the Navy can supply 12,000 MPs to the new police force,” stated Admiral Rogers.
“My second-in-command also checked yesterday, Mr. President,” added General Patterson. “We have 9,000 active MPs who can join the new force. I also checked the latest numbers with Captain Mike Mallory who, for you guys who have just arrived back, is in charge of food, population numbers, and nearly everything
civilian. He has 6,500 still-active policemen from across the country who are already working the beat. Not many, but they are already doing a stellar job in certain areas. I believe that ex-LAPD Detective Will Smart will certainly be a good man to help with the formation and then running of the new force. Don’t forget him, Mr. President.”
“Since I have only been back a couple of hours, Mr. President,” stated General Austin, “I need to exact my numbers; but in Europe I had a force of 17,000 MPs dealing with getting the men ready to travel. I believe that I could increase my total to 20,000 given a few weeks.”
“The Marines still have 7,000 MPs over in Europe and I have another 2,000 here stateside. That is what the Marines can offer, Mr. President: 9,000 men and women in total.”
“Well, it’s a start. Something you don’t know, gentlemen, our latest numbers from Mallory’s computer system that is counting our population. As of last night, we have 54,575,512 U.S. civilians registered alive. Our total military forces number 1,185,909 personnel and we have, as of yesterday, combed 79 percent of the country looking for civilians who are still alive. We still have low-population areas like Wyoming, the Dakotas, Idaho and a few other northern areas to check, as well as several large city centers, but that is it gentleman. Mallory tells me that we could add another five to eight percent to our numbers by year-end. Our U.S. population has dropped from 323 million to a possible 60 million. So, with the numbers from you men, we could have a new police force of 55,000 men to look after 60 million civilians.”
“Is that all the people we have left in this country?” asked General Watson, shock written all over his face.
“Unfortunately, we have lost five-sixths of this country, General. A lot has happened here since you’ve been overseas. Our teams of hundreds of thousands of helpers have been cremating over 500,000 bodies a day, and we are still not halfway finished. Disease is now rampant in dozens of areas of this country and, General Patterson here, is shipping captured supplies back from China; we believe, and the Surgeon General of the Air force stated to me a few days ago, that there are enough electronic supplies in these loads to get hundreds of hospitals operational within months. Disease and then food are our two most important factors to deal with after this darn battle, which is taking up too much time and effort by all of you valuable people. I’m ready just to pull out our troops and nuke Houston and be done with it, but the winds will blow radiation all over the East Coast and kill the few people we have left!”
This time all four military men looked at the president in awe.
“We still have nukes?” asked General Austin.
“Yes, and so did the Chinese, General Austin. General Patterson managed to capture a multi-warhead Russian M-36 nuke, I think it’s called, aimed for Washington and a dozen other cities. It was ready for launch in Harbin, China. Gentlemen, many thanks to all of you, and also many thanks to your Marines, General Watson; we were maybe twenty minutes away from some Chinese officer sending this Russian missile over here. We were this close to total East Coast annihilation; you two just don’t understand.”
There was silence for a couple of moments as the two new men realized that it had been touch and go over here. While in Europe, they had been complaining to the president over their satellite phones about the 747s not arriving to get the military troops back home.
“I’m ready to work and to help,” stated General Watson. “What do you want of me and my men?”
“Me too; I reviewed and admired General Patterson’s battle plan for New York City; in Europe, we heard all about it several days after the end of the invasion,” added General Austin. The U.S. Army is ready to defend our country, Mr. President.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” replied General Patterson. Now what is the best way to destroy this army of 150,000 well-armed rebels?
For an hour the four men planned. The weather at McConnell wasn’t bad enough for the president to head back to Andrews in Blue Moon. With no expertise as a soldier, he wanted to return to Washington where he could be most effective aiding the civilian rebuild.
We must not let them retreat back into the city of Houston. If that happens we would end up with months of building-to-building combat,” stated General Watson.
“I agree, murmured each of the four men, all looking at a large map of Houston and its surrounding areas.
“I will have 12,000 Marines ready in the town of Spring to the north, and we have another 4,000 Marines here at McConnell ready to parachute in at the first opportunity. That will give us a good force of 16,000 Marines under my best leadership to halt their forward advance. It looks like their leaders might be anticipating capturing the state of Texas, and I believe will try to head north very soon. General Austin, I agree that if they run into my guys, plus choppers and attack gunships, they will retreat and go hide in the inner city, and we will have to go in and get them.”
“What about an old-fashioned siege, like Genghis Kahn did in Beijing, and starve them out by surrounding the city? For your information, next month the president will write into law that all cities north of Washington, in a line across the country, and a similar line from Dallas Texas, except coastal cities, are to be off limits to civilians and patrolled by our soldiers as war zones, especially in the south. You men must understand that we cannot support the whole country; with only fifty-plus million people, the entire country is too large to police until our population grows and with it a need to naturally increase our living space. Cities like Houston, San Antonio, Philadelphia, and Chicago, are now useless and disease-ridden, and are going to crumble and die before we breed enough people to fill them up again. And by that time, we feel that they will need to be destroyed and rebuilt from scratch. That is why we looked at nuking Houston before this hurricane reminded us that it is in the wrong place due to fallout.”
“A siege will take too much time, Patterson. I think that we should attack them from north and south,” suggested General Austin. “Let’s fortify an area around the highways they will need to use, wait for them to retreat into our strong defensive positions, and simply ambush them. They are rebels and will retreat when heavily attacked. It’s like playing pinball; if we can get them to bounce backwards and forwards into different masses of soldiers, we can whittle their numbers away. General Patterson already has a large number of my men from Texas on the move, and they have a few tanks and howitzers to reinforce a southern position here on the North Sam Houston Parkway, between Interstate 45 and Highway 59,” the general suggested, pointing to the map laid out in front of them. “That will stop any retreat into the inner city. I don’t think a siege will work due to the time scale. It will take weeks or months, with us sitting around and waiting for them to get hungry enough to come out and attack.”
The other two agreed and General Austin’s and Patterson’s suggestion was forgotten.
“It’s a pretty open area on this piece of North Sam Houston Parkway I would like to defend,” stated the army commander. “The open ground will give armor and artillery good aiming possibilities. Any area south of the Beltway begins to have buildings, and I believe not advisable to defend. I hope to have 6,000 to 8,000 men there in twenty-four hours and, we must cover and ambush on these five major north/south roads. I know of another 10,000 men and weapons I can get into this area from neighboring states within seventy-two hours. Patterson, there is a group from Alabama who fought with you in New York. They have a pretty powerful array of several tanks and the remaining howitzers you used around New York harbor in January; I believe there are 10,000 troops who are ready to move.”
“Excellent, get them moving,” replied General Patterson. “Those guys were fantastic in the defense of New York, and I’ll be glad to have them around. “
If I cover the ten to twelve mile area of the same two major roads north of Spring and have heavy ambush positions on the highways themselves,” added General Watkins, “General Austin and I should be able to surround the entire airport areas within forty-eight hours. I rec
kon that this storm has another twenty-four hours of momentum before the cold front picks it apart, and then those rebels will move north. I can have my current men positioned on the main routes north and, as General Austin stated, hit them and push them back to the airport to rethink their plan of attack. I bet they will then head south and bang straight into Austin’s Army boys. By that time the Air Force will have better weather to pound the stinky meat off their asses.”
“Plus, if Seal Team Six can extract their leaders, the Calderón brothers,” added Admiral Rogers, “then their men should be leaderless for a time and factions of them will jump around inside their corral like wild horses and, as General Austin stated, we can whittle down their numbers even more.”
“And one more thing, they will not get any reinforcements corralled up like this, so their numbers should quickly reduce once the aircraft go in. Boy! Do I have a surprise for you guys!” laughed General Patterson and explained to the new men about the seventeen Chinese helicopter gunships about ready to fly into McConnell.
Chapter 8
The Battle of Houston – May-June
Hurricane No-Name was the first hurricane of the 2013 season. The formation of the initial tropical storm was a hundred miles west of Belize, and the lousy weather had missed Cuba, traveling northwards and passing westward and on the same path Mo Wang had taken northwards a month earlier in his ship.
The tropical storm had hit warmer than usual water east of Cancun and had turned in a Category One. It continued its forward movement at 12 miles an hour in a northwest direction until the winds increased to become a Category Two Hurricane, three hundred miles south of Corpus Christi.
The strong cold front coming the south began to effect the hurricane’s direction, and the storm began to move from northwest to north and then northeast as it did its best to push the cold front northwards out of its way. The winds had just increased to a Category Three, winds above 111 miles an hour, when the two Orion Hurricane Hunters passed through on their first run several hours later.
