by Payne, T. L.
NO TURNING BACK
Fall of Houston Series, Book Three
Copyright © 2020 by T. L. Payne
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design
Edited by Melanie Underwood
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Check out other books by T. L. Payne
The Gateway to Chaos Series
Seeking Safety
Seeking Refuge
Seeking Justice
Seeking Hope
The Days of Want Series
Turbulent
Hunted
Turmoil
Uprising
Upheaval
Mayhem
Defiance (Coming Summer 2021)
Although much of this story takes place in and around Houston, Texas, some aspects and locations have been altered to enhance the story. Most of locations within Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana are fictional. Thank you for understanding an author's creative license.
“Texas is a blend of valor and swagger.” — Carl Sandburg
Created with Vellum
For Nathan,
Aim High
&
Dream Big
Contents
Prologue
1. Will
2. Isabella
3. Will
4. Savanah
5. Will
6. Will
7. Savanah
8. Will
9. Will
10. Isabella
11. Savanah
12. Will
13. Will
14. Will
15. Will
16. Will
17. Isabella
18. Will
19. Isabella
20. Will
21. Savanah
22. Will
23. Isabella
24. Will
25. Savanah
26. Isabella
27. Will
28. Savanah
29. Cayden
30. Isabella
31. Will
32. Will
33. Will
Sample Chapters
Also by T. L. Payne
About the Author
Prologue
It was windy. It was noisy. And analyst Rachel Stephens could smell the fuel as the vintage, propeller-driven, two-seater T-6 Texan airplane climbed to twenty thousand feet and headed toward Killeen, Texas. The pilot, seventy-five-year-old Ernest Elliot of Crosby, Texas, had over seven thousand hours of experience flying the thing—or so he kept saying every time she asked if it were safe.
She’d thought she hated flying in a 747, but this was like being strapped to the outside of the space shuttle and launched into space. If the nation’s fate had not been at stake, she would have walked to Fort Hood before getting in the ancient machine.
Stephens wanted to kiss the ground when they landed safely at Fort Hood. Armed escorts met her, and she was whisked away to meet with the base commander, Major General Brian Waltrip. The central Texas army base was a buzz of activity, with Joint Light Tactical Vehicle trucks lined up heading somewhere.
From what Stephens had learned, the Greywolf brigade and 1st Cavalry Division had been undergoing huge modernization efforts in recent years. They looked to be mobilizing, ready to take the fight to the enemy. It was an encouraging sign after what she’d witnessed first-hand down in Houston.
They escorted Stephens through a maze of hallways to a secure room at the end of a long corridor. The sensitive compartmented information facility looked much like the one at Ellington. She waited in the SCIF for at least an hour before the base commander appeared. He asked for his aide to wait outside.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Analyst Stephens. As you can imagine, we’ve been quite busy.” Waltrip took a seat across from her, leaned forward, and interlaced his fingers. “Tell me what you’ve got there.”
Stephens gave him a brief background on the investigation her team had been conducting into Chinese illegally crossing the border with the Mexican drug cartels’ aid. Only a minute into her briefing, Waltrip began tapping his index finger on the table. He was getting impatient, so she skipped the rest and opened the laptop. She typed in her login and password, pulled up the encrypted file, typed the password, and turned the computer around to face him.
He leaned in and studied the screen. His eyes met hers. “What am I looking at?”
“Names, dates, locations.”
“How did you get this?”
“A Chinese double agent. It’s legit. We’ve confirmed it. The commander at Ellington sent troopers to twelve of the locations indicated here, and all had already been targeted. Pipelines, roads, refineries—”
Waltrip held up one hand. He stood and walked to the door, opened it, and spoke to the soldier on the other side. “Your counterparts will be here in five minutes. I need to inform SOUTHCOM we finally have something actionable.”
“You’re in contact with Southern Command?”
He hesitated. “Through the 4th Fleet,” he said as he exited the SCIF and shut the door behind him.
Minutes later, the door opened. Stephens stood.
“I heard you were down in Honduras,” Brad Smith said as he closed the door and approached her.
It shocked Stephens to see Smith in Texas as the last she knew, he’d been in London. He held his arms open as if to give her a hug. She took a step back and held out her hand. She’d called off their relationship, and they hadn’t spoken for over nine months. He was going to act like nothing had happened. She wasn’t.
“I was, for a while. I’ve been in Houston for the last three months following the money.”
“Waltrip’s aide said you’ve got something there,” he said, pointing to the computer.
This was it. He was going to move right in and take over. He’d take the credit, of course.
“At first, I thought it was a decoy, something to throw us off, but it checked out. They’ve already hit several of the targets on this list. Ellington was hit—overrun with insurgents.”
Smith reached up and lightly touched her forehead. “Was that where you got that?”
Stephens ran a finger across her forehead just above the brow. It was sticky. “I had a building blow up around me.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you made it out.”
She sensed she was giving in to his charms but pulled back. She wouldn’t let him get to her—not again. She reminded herself why she’d called it off. “How’s Victoria?” she asked.
His smile faded. “Fine, as far as I know. She’s in London.”
She pitied him, momentarily. She would be a wreck if she had a significant other and a newborn child that far away at a time like this.
“Show me,” Smith said, pointing to the laptop. “Let’s see if we can put a stop to their little plan.”
They spent an hour going over every piece of information contained on the flash drive that Kim Yang had stolen from her Chinese handler. It was like old times. They bounced ideas off one another and even laughed occasionally. Soon they were joined by Chinese interpreters and several other analysts in the tiny SCIF. Stephens grew increasingly claustrophobic. As they discussed what they’d learned, her face flushed and her pulse rate increased. She was feeling lightheaded and wondered when she
last time ate. It had been a crazy day. There hadn’t been time to take care of her body.
“We cut off communications between General Dempsey and Colonel Edwards. Ellington has Edwards in custody. Now Dempsey has no way of coordinating with the Chinese through him,” Stephens said.
“We need to make sure that he cannot contact anyone else from the People’s Liberation Army,” Smith said.
“What if the PLA’s Navy has already landed their expeditionary force somewhere along the gulf coast?” Stephens asked.
"We’ve already intercepted several amphibious assault ships. They’ll utilize hovercraft and helicopters to land troops. They’ll use something similar to our San Antonio Class to do it from much further offshore than traditional landing craft,” a man in a naval uniform said. She’d forgotten his name already and looked for a name tape. “Shaffer.” She raised an eyebrow when she noticed the green beret on the table next to his right hand.
“But we have ships in the gulf to stop them, right?” she asked him.
“Most of our ships were in the South Atlantic and got here as quick as they could. But we don’t know what or where they got through before we formed the blockade,” Shaffer said.
“What about the Chinese troop buildup in the Bahamas? I know officially that was denied, but we have intel that says otherwise. What about those two hundred thousand illegal “workers” they brought into the Caribbean?” Analyst Brown asked. He looked up from the laptop, adjusted his eyeglasses on his face, and shifted toward Smith.
“They’re not going anywhere. We’ve had submarines there since the beginning. If they move a muscle, it’ll all be over for them. The initial assault will most likely be from the PLA’s army amphibious assault brigades. China's Marine Corps may play a role at some point, but the main amphibious force will be their army. They’re equipped with amphibious tanks and troop carriers. That’s where we’ll get them,” Shaffer said.
Stephens’ head was spinning. They sounded confident that the invasion would be put down quickly, but she’d been on the ground in Houston. She’d seen what fighting with limited technology looked like.
“How are we going to be effective without all our modern technology?” she asked.
Shaffer turned to her and smiled. “Most of our technology works fine. We’ve had hiccups with our coms because of cyber-hacks of our satellites, but we’re quickly working around that issue. Don’t worry, sweetheart. We’ve got this. You’ll see.”
Stephens cringed and gritted her teeth. She was accustomed to the misogynistic terms and usually called them out on it, but she let it go this time. She needed to stay in the loop, not be frozen out.
“Just wait until you see all our new toys,” Shaffer said.
“Can they stop tanks and helicopters?” she asked.
“Sure can. We’ve got anti-tank missiles that’ll stop them in their tracks.”
“And you’re able to move sufficient troops that way to prevent them from successfully invading?”
“They’re on their way. Everything’s being planned from a room just on the other side of that wall,” Shaffer pointed.
“What’s the plan for all the citizens down there caught in the middle of a war zone?”
Shaffer gave her a blank stare.
“Houston alone is a city of over two million people. Is there no plan to evacuate them?”
Shaffer shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade.”
“I heard that FEMA was setting up a shelter in Texarkana. A cable went out to Shreveport to send troops there to help receive refugees. I heard nothing about a plan to help them get there or anything. That is supposed to be our rear operating base. Major General Waltrip will be moving his headquarters there in the coming days,” Smith said.
“Retreating?” Stephens didn’t receive an answer.
The door opened, and Waltrip appeared. Everyone stood. The officers in the room saluted. “Clear the room. I need to speak with the analysts,” he said.
When the officers had exited, Waltrip took a seat at the head of the conference table. “Now tell me how General Walter Dempsey got involved with this plot.”
One
Will
Day Seven
Will Fontenot watched from the window overlooking the parking lot as two figures moved between the buildings across the way. They remained hidden among the shadows so he was unable to recognize them. He doubted that it would be Gus or any of Kevin’s bandmates. His brutal murder still had residents there unnerved, even though the killer had been brought to justice.
Isabella and Cayden were sleeping. The sun would be coming up soon and the three of them would be leaving to begin their journey to his sister’s homestead in Louisiana. He should have been relieved—it was all he’d wanted since the lights went out—but he wasn’t. Now, fear of the unknown had set in. He had no idea what to expect out there on the road. People were his greatest fear. He’d seen what they were capable of now that law enforcement wasn’t there to protect the citizens.
A scream sounded from across the way. It was a female voice. Will had thought the only females still in the apartment complex were located in Isabella’s building. Will raised his rifle and moved to get a better look, but all he saw was darkness. He waited and listened. A moment later, the shadowy figures of two men ran from a ground-floor apartment and headed toward the street. Will debated with himself. Should he go see if the woman was all right? He glanced toward the bedrooms. He couldn’t leave Isabella and Cayden sleeping and defenseless. Going out there alone wasn’t smart either.
The incident only went to show him how difficult it was going to be out there. They would have to have one person awake and guarding their location at all times. He and Isabella would need to sleep in shifts, which would mean none of them would be getting enough rest. There were moments when he considered whether staying put was a better plan. At least they had a defendable position. That’s fear talking, he reminded himself.
It wasn’t sustainable. Eventually, they’d need to leave to find food. They’d already been competing with all the other hungry and desperate people for the scant resources still available in the city. For that reason alone, going was their only option.
“I thought I heard someone scream,” Isabella said. She pulled a thin purple robe over her slim frame and joined Will by the window.
“From there.” Will pointed. “I saw two people running from that downstairs apartment.”
“That’s supposed to be vacant. You checked it when—” She stopped herself.
He and Gus had checked that apartment and all the others in that building when they’d searched for Kevin’s killer. But that didn’t mean that someone hadn’t taken up residence there since then. There would be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of displaced residents seeking shelter around Houston. The security gate that once separated and somewhat protected the apartment complex from outsiders no longer worked. Anyone could just walk up and move on in.
“It was empty. That whole building was unoccupied. People could have moved in while we were gone, though.”
She stretched her arms above her head and yawned. Will could barely make out her face in the moonlight coming through the open window. “What time is it?” she asked.
“No idea. Has to be close to sunrise. See the hint of light on the horizon?”
She leaned in close to the window. He could smell the fragrance of her shampoo and recalled their kiss the day before. He’d just pulled her from the rubble of the flight museum. They’d been in a fierce battle with Chinese insurgents, and Isabella had just learned that Agent Betley had been killed in the fight. She’d been distraught. He was trying his best to comfort her. She may not even remember the kiss. She may not remember, but he couldn’t forget it. He had qualms of conscience about it now. It was too soon—for both of them. He was still grieving the death of his wife—and Isabella had just lost her boyfriend. The timing was awful. It would never work between them. Guilt resurfaced. He was sick of the feeling.
“I think I’m going to get dressed and then make some coffee.” She touched his shoulder. His heart rate sped up. “We’re still heading out at first light?” she asked.
“Yeah. If you think you’re up to it. I don’t think we should wait. I’m hoping we can come across some form of transportation. I think bicycles are still our best bet until we can find something better. Even though you can’t pedal, I could push you, and we could put our supplies on another for Cayden to push.”
“I don’t want you to have to push me on a bike. I’ll be okay. I can walk. We could put supplies on both bikes and carry twice the stuff,” Isabella suggested.
After seeing the gash in her leg the day before, he knew she was lying, but they could start out, and she’d soon realize she was slowing them down by not getting on the bike. He’d make sure to load them in a way that she could still ride when she chose to.
By the time Isabella and Cayden were up and ready, Will had all their supplies loaded into backpacks or trash bags and sitting by the door. Lieutenant Sharp had instructed the soldiers to return the gear they’d taken from him, but all he’d received was his empty rifle. He’d carry it, in hopes that he might come across ammunition for it somewhere. Going out there without a weapon was crazy, but he didn’t have any other option.
