The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath

by T I WADE

  * * *

  As Wong was entering the general’s room, the last of thirty C-130s full of Marine parachutists was leaving the ground at Dillingham for the 55 minute flight to Cold Bay. The three F-4s and two F-5s were warming up and the dozen Z-10 attack helicopters were already a third of the way.

  General Patterson was still issuing orders in Easy Girl on his satellite phone as she was next to take off. He wasn’t flying this time as Pave Pronto took off in front of his aircraft.

  * * *

  Washington was a busy place; the two aircraft had just landed at Dulles, and General Austin was making sure everybody understood their orders.

  General Austin was in charge of the military operations at Dulles. All military were low profile with the odd guard standing around to make it appear to the two incoming aircraft that there was military presence, but not more than usual. Westbrook had warned them.

  The two aircraft taxied into a large empty Delta maintenance hangar and the doors closed. Next to the hangar was a small jet terminal where the meeting was to take place. The president’s helicopter could be heard heading in from the White House. Several senators and congressmen had already arrived in a couple of other helicopters from Capitol Hill, and there was no other air traffic.

  Within minutes, the two CEOs, with six heavily armed American men in civilian suits, headed out of the side door and into the small jet terminal. As soon as they did so, two large air-conditioner vents supplied cold sleeping gas into the hangar. It would take at least an hour to fill the large area with enough gas to put everybody to sleep, and the noise was totally normal to those inside the hangar.

  General Austin viewed the goings-on inside to make sure the aircrafts’ passenger doors were open and that the eighteen Chinese-looking guards, four pilots, and two American-looking male cabin attendants were not wearing gas masks.

  The president arrived and with his usual secret service detail headed towards the jetport. He would be in the last group to enter.

  “Good morning all,“ he stated not smiling at anybody, and headed towards the coffee machine and nice array of doughnuts and Danish on a table set up on one of the side walls of the large meeting room. The conference table was long enough to seat the dozen people expected and the president was shown to a chair at the middle of the table.

  “Since we are all here,” stated Peter Westbrook taking the seat opposite the president, we can get most of your goons out of here. We want complete privacy.”

  “Unfortunately, sir, two of our guard detail must stay on each side of the president at all times. That is normal protocol, sir,” stated the president’s head secret service agent in his usual dark suit and a man sat down on each side of the president.

  “We will do the same, and we can then get started,” replied Westbrook. “And you can turn off that camera up there,” he added pointing to the blue dome on the ceiling on the corner of the room.

  “The meeting is being recorded, and I cannot authorize that, Mr. Westbrook, sir,” replied the head guard.

  “Don’t you have any say in the running of this country, Mr. President? Are you really the puppet we have so often heard about?” added Bowers.

  “Taking the office of President of the United States of America, gentlemen, warrants this form of protection. I don’t like it, but Congress and the Senate enacted all these laws decades ago, after the Reagan assassination attempt, and I have little say in the matter. Shall we get on? I see we have the Alaskan member, Washington State member and an Illinois member of House of Representatives and both Senators from Alaska, all of whom voted for you at the last meeting, correct, Mr. Westbrook?”

  “Yes, a little one-sided, but since this is our last meeting, Mr. President, we have all our men right here.”

  Everyone at the table was finally seated twenty minutes later as they all stood up to help themselves to coffee and snacks. It had been a long flight and fresh coffee and cake were certainly a delicacy in this day and age. Everybody, apart from the president, who had already helped himself, and the four bodyguards from both sides, got up to fill plates and coffee cups.

  The president was on the closest side to the closed door. Two mean-looking secret service men sat on either side of him. Opposite them were two tough American guards on each side of Westbrook, then Bowers, and finally the last five seats were filled with the congressmen and senators.

  “Congressman Williams, I have considered you as a friend for over three decades, ever since we were in law school together. Why have you sided with these men?” the president asked the only African-American Congressman in the room.

  “Sorry, Mr. President. A year or two ago these guys offered me the world and the whole of Illinois if I relayed Congressional information to them. A deal, I couldn’t say no to.”

  “So, Charles, you sold out the American government, its people and me to these guys for money?”

  “Everybody in Congress was selling something to someone for money. I just got the best prize, a hundred million dollar prize. It’s just politics, Mr. President, and you should know that.”

  “A friend with the same law degree selling information for cash; sometimes I think this catastrophic attack on our country was the best thing, to get rid of vermin like you, earning millions and selling out the American people,” replied the president.

  Suddenly both secret service agents felt a sting of a needle from the men sitting next to them and slowly slumped forward in their seats. The other two men stood up and headed towards the door, bearing large .44 Magnums in both hands.

  “Your work, I assume Charles?” asked the president realizing that there were not meant to be any weapons in the room. Everybody except the president had been searched before entering the room.

  “We learned a lot from the Colombian attack in their chambers, Mr. President, when we were briefed about it during the last meeting. I sent the information on, and I suppose these guys just copied it. And now may I add, as opposition to your party, Mr. President, how I have found your administration to be stupid, with a total lack of intelligence, and you should be the one tried for treason. You have done an abysmal job since you took office. There, I’ve said it!” stated the congressman proudly. “You just don’t know how many years I’ve wanted to say that straight to your face, you stupid jerk!” Congressman Williams took a large bite of his doughnut and smiled at his ex-friend.

  The president said nothing, but waited for the drug in the food to take effect.

  “Crap! We’ve been poisoned!” stated Westbrook feeling a little groggy, and he stood up, held the table with one hand, pulled something very small out of his suit pocket and drove a needle into the president’s closest shoulder as he toppled forward.

  Suddenly there was pandemonium outside as automatic weapons made hearing impossible. The president felt something enter his blood stream, and he felt a wave of laziness envelop him as he tried to get up and stop Bowers speaking to someone on his satellite phone.

  Suddenly the world went blurry, he felt like he wanted to puke, and his head hit the desk hard.

  Several secret service men flew through the breaking door seconds later; the first men inside got two before they themselves were hit and, General Austin, with several medics behind them headed straight for the president, got him on a stretcher and ran out with the inert body.

  Bowers toppled over from the drugs in the Danish he had just eaten, and the phone flew from his hand.

  Seconds before General Austin entered the conference room, he had ordered the attack on the hangar, exactly seven minutes before the charges were due to explode in Cold Bay, a third of a world away.

  The men, wearing gas masks, entered through all the hangar doors, the people inside drowsy from the gas, and the soldiers with Glocks began shooting anything moving inside the hangar. One pilot jumped into one of the Gulfstreams and managed to push both red buttons inside the aircraft, before several shots ended his life. It was all over in minutes, but unfortunately the red buttons did
their job and a signal to several parts of the machinery inside Hangar Three started machines working.

  * * *

  Lieutenants Paul and Murphy were halfway through taking out the inner defense posts when the darkness disappeared and the whole roof of the third hangar began to open and began to light up the area with an eerie false light. Immediately they went to ground and took off their goggles.

  They couldn’t carry on, there was at least 200 feet between the defense posts and there was no way they could get across the open areas without causing suspicion. Joe Paul checked the map Chong had given him and saw that he was six machine-gun posts short on the eastern side. He assumed that Lieutenant Murphy was in the same predicament on the western area of the large airfield. It looked like the missiles were about to depart and seconds later both missiles slowly lifted out of the hangar areas and within seconds were high and disappearing. Paul looked at his watch, the explosions were still ten minutes away and it seemed that the charge Wong had placed on the roof mechanism wasn’t programmed to explode early either. “Damn!” he thought to himself.

  At the same time, General Lee, now awake, was being held hostage in the cockpit of the aircraft as the doors were opened and Chong started the first engine as the Hangar Three’s roof doors opened. It took three minutes to start all four turbo-prop engines, and Major Wong already had the first two engines screaming to taxi the large aircraft out of the hangar by the time Chong had the fourth engine blowing smoke out of its exhausts.

  Major Wong had the aircraft halfway across the tarmac and heading towards the control tower as the two missiles lifted off. He let the ramp begin to open. They still hadn’t seen any men, and they had only seconds to get across to the tower and the prisoner’s building before the place would be swarming with enemy troops.

  “Seals, our job is done, there’s not much more we can do. This place is going to go up like a July 4th fireworks display and anybody caught in here will be toast. We have six minutes to get as far away as possible. Head back to the holes in the fence and tell the men outside. Leave now!” ordered Charlie Meyers to the men in the hangar, its doors automatically closing, the aircraft a black silhouette fifty yards away.

  A couple of officers hearing the noise of the missiles leaving ran down the stairs and made a pile at the bottom as Charlie’s silenced Glock gave them a third eye. He replaced his magazine and was the last out of the hangar as all the lights around the airfield began to blink on.

  Joe Paul and Lieutenant Murphy hoped this wouldn’t happen and headed as far out of the light towards either end of the runway as possible. Lucky for them it took several blinks for the large lights to finally omit a powerful light, and they used this to get as far away as possible. They reached the furthest machine gun post towards the eastern end of the runway, blew away the several Chinese soldiers trying to figure out what was happening. They hadn’t expected enemy soldiers to be in the airport and looked at the approaching men puzzled.

  “Take over the machine gun post, then shoot at anything that fires towards the aircraft, I’m sure they have tracer loaded, so just put rounds into the general area. Where is that aircraft?” Joe Paul stated jumping into a foxhole and turning around to look down the runway as the runway lights slowly came on, and headed towards them at a fast pace. “Heads down men!” he shouted as the area around him lit up.

  Lieutenant Murphy, with less ground to run to the fence had men cutting holes, and they were already getting through and heading towards the old dirt runway as the lights came on. He didn’t want to be close to the buildings when they went up.

  Charlie Myers and two men manning a machine gun post were the only Seals left in the area as he watched the blacked out aircraft head in the vicinity of the prison building. As the lights came on he now could see that his three Seals were running next to it, and the two men he had sent forward to get the prisoners ready had the men, women, and children outside the building, all lying down on the ground. He watched as the aircraft stopped, and the whole group jumped up and headed the twenty yards towards the rear of the aircraft.

  He looked at his watch; they had forty-five seconds to go, as he noticed several Chinese soldiers leave a building further down the row to see what all the commotion was about. His gunner saw them as well and his heavy machine gun began its deathly rattle, spewing bullets towards the gathering men, half dressed and still figuring out what to do.

  He heard the four large engines scream, the rear ramp began to close and the aircraft lurched forward towards the runway, several yards ahead of it.

  “Spray the area where you see enemy Mendez! Use up what you have. We have thirty seconds to get out of here!”

  Seconds later, the machine gun hot, its first metal case empty, the three men ran for any available shadows and towards the guardhouse near where they had entered. It was going to be close, but at least they might survive, as the two Shaheen II missiles were already miles away, and it all depended on Wong’s placement of the charges, whether they could take out vast parts of the American countryside.

  Major Wong was concentrating hard in the left seat, while Chong was trying hard to keep with the takeoff checks. There were over 100 checks to do before takeoff, and they had cleared most of them when Wong was patted on the shoulder; he engaged the ramp closing switch and pushed all four engine controls forward.

  “We have flaps and fuel flow?” he asked Chong as a burst of bullets hit the windows where Chong was sitting and his friend slumped forward. The side doors to the aircraft were still open and a Seal had General Lee’s standing body filling the door. It didn’t seem to worry the Chinese guards, or they didn’t understand that the man looking at them was in fact their superior, they fired anyway and several rounds hit the general. The Seal let the body fall, lay down on the floor of the aircraft and began shooting back. The other two Seals blew a couple of windows out and also began firing into the area around the aircraft. They noticed tracer fire going in both directions as the speed of the screaming aircraft increased and the area began to darken as they left the main airport lights.

  Suddenly the starboard outer engine exploded, and fire began to stream out of the rear of the wing. Automatic fire extinguishers erupted to quell the fire and Major Wong fed more power to the remaining three engines. He could hear screams behind him as a second engine began to flame to his left, this time his inner-port engine and he pushed the two remaining controls forward realizing that they were already as far as they would go.

  He didn’t have time to check his watch as he pulled back on the stick, the aircraft was heavily loaded with well over a hundred people on board and his speed was still 10 knots below takeoff speed. He had a hundred yards of runway to go as he felt bullets hitting the aircraft somewhere.

  Then he was airborne, but barely, the outer fence was coming up fast to meet him as he pulled his bloodied hands back hard. He felt the undercarriage hit the fence and then he was away in the darkness.

  Alarms were going off everywhere in the cockpit as he grappled with the stricken airplane. There was no way he was going to get far and he immediately turned to port. The whole area behind him lit up as hundreds of explosions erupted at once, literally blowing up tons of weapons and ammo, thousands of gallons of fuel and he felt a massive shock wave hit the aircraft seconds later. He was still turning but a split second before the expected explosions he was looking towards the direction the two Shaheen missiles were expected to go and thought he saw a minute explosion in the blackness, but his eyes had to leave the area and concentrate on getting all these screaming people down.

  Thinking of what Mike Mallory had done in New York, he decided that the dirt runway was his only bet. The aircraft was at 500 feet, fire was spreading and there wasn’t enough power to climb any higher.

  Meanwhile Charlie Meyers had just exited the fence and was sprinting away when the world went bright a couple of hundred yards behind him. He turned and hit the ground hard as pieces of metal came at them, one large piece of han
gar metal sliced right through Sergeant Mendez next to him as he fell to the ground. Charlie’s ear drums blew out, and he covered his head with his hands and screamed as deadly pieces of metal flew less than a foot above his body.

  The massive explosions subsided at this distance as fast as they had erupted and Charlie felt hands grab him and pull him away. He thought he heard aircraft engines and then a fire in the sky as he blacked out.

  Major Wong, still semi-calm, was extremely grateful that this aircraft had been built so well. There were flames on both wings, He could see them by the light coming into the cockpit from above and behind and was being told by several screaming passengers as he nursed the aircraft towards the south. He was losing altitude; the engines were about to overheat and he looked for the old runway. The light from the continuous blasts now behind him displayed the darker dirt line of the runway and he judged that he needed at least 400 yards to turn 180 degrees and put her down facing the fires. He had about 300 feet of altitude left and it was going to be close.

  Lieutenant Paul was running towards the end of the runway, as soon as the massive explosions died down several hundred yards behind him, where the aircraft’s wheels had ripped open part of the outer fence. They just made the fence when the first parachutes opened up a few hundred yards in front of him and several new-sounding explosions began to pound the buildings behind him and his men. He thought them to be the 72-MM projectiles coming in from the three frigates ten miles away. He was supposed to be the eyes for the frigates and he found a slight rise, dropped behind it and with his satellite phone dialed up Admiral Rodriquez in charge of the ships’ guns. They were firing a hundred yards short and south of the main buildings, in the town itself and within several seconds, he had them taking out the buildings where thousands of enemy were running around in all directions.