The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath (17 page)

Martie laughed at this idea, told her father what Preston had asked General Patterson for—the three 747s—and suggested to her father that he build the recharging stations next to motels and then upgrade all the overnight accommodations in California and go into the motel business. “We’ll leave the car charger on for you!” got a good laugh from her father.

* * *

Manuel had had enough of sitting around for three solid days, and every hour meant that the Americans could attack them at any moment. Manuel Calderón didn’t like having his men at the airport and finally, the next morning, May 22nd, three days before the satellite would be over the area, one of his men stated that he felt there was less power in the wind, and the rain seemed not to be penetrating the terminal building as it had done the day before.

“Get me my commanders!” he ordered men close to him. “I want vehicles ready in 30 minutes, packed and moving out. It’s time to leave this lousy dammed airport and this crappy Houston weather!”

* * *

The first U.S. Army units had arrived several hours earlier and were setting up their howitzers a couple miles south of the airport.

The second group from El Paso was still a couple of hours away. Travel had been slow going, sometimes the wind so strong that drivers of the Mutts thought that their jeeps could be swept up and turned over. They had been drenched by the pelting rain for the last twenty-four hours, and all the vehicles had stopped a couple of times over underpasses to refuel and heat a quick meal.

The 12,000 Marines were ready and positioned across a ten-mile strip, on and between two major highways running north. With winds still topping 80 miles an hour, visibility was down to less than a hundred yards, and the men had dug in around the five exits leading north from the airport area. They were not that heavily armed, but had a dozen large mortars on each of the roads north as well as several machine-gun nests built behind wet and dripping sandbags, which the men had filled over the three days they had nothing to do apart from trying to keep dry. Many of the defensive positions were in second-story windows of broken houses, with open firing positions to the roads. Several positions were even a couple hundred yards away from the roads and under gas station roofs or any other overhangs, where it was drier than being directly under the pelting rain.

An AC-130 gunship,
Easy Girl,
was at 5,000 feet, fifty miles north of their position and had been circling for the last twelve hours, with a second gunship,
Pave Pronto,
flying south to take over guard duty. The men would be happy to be relieved as it had been a lousy flight; bumpy and stomach wrenching for twelve solid hours.

* * *

Charlie Meyers sat with his men in a corner of the expansive terminal and out of the way for the last three days. He was asleep when Lieutenant Paul nudged him awake and whispered that orders were being shouted out a couple of hundred feet from them at the command table.

Awake in an instant, he immediately got up and headed over to the command table where men were slowly gathering. He was smaller than Paul and would be less conspicuous.

“Luiz, get all the large troop vehicles loaded first,” shouted Manuel, giving orders at a rapid rate. “Have the fifty trucks returned with our third load of food from Corpus Christi?”

“No, Señor, they are expected in about three hours,” shouted Luiz.

“Luiz, I want the most recent American ration packs loaded on the drier trucks. The men can sit on top of the food and help keep it dry. We are not coming back here. I want somebody to go and tell Pedro to stay here and wait for the food trucks and then head north behind us!”

“I can do that, Señor!” shouted Charlie instinctively now only several yards from Manuel and the growing group.

“Charlie Manéz… Montano… Mendoza, or whatever your name is, go and tell my brother Pedro to get ready to move out, but tell him he is to wait for the trucks from Corpus Christi!”

“Si, Señor!” Charlie shouted back and promptly headed for the rear door where he and the Seals had initially come into the building. The other eleven men were already heading for the same exit.

“Charlie, tell Pedro that his brother wants him and only him. Walk back towards this building and we will hide in the area and grab him,” whispered Lieutenant Paul meeting Charlie at the exit. He had heard the orders given.

“My sentiments exactly, amigo Paul, I’ll go alone so that Pedro doesn’t feel threatened!” Charlie replied not halting his stride, and he walked out of the building alone, the others not wanting to make their exits noticeable.

“Señor Pedro, Señor Pedro, your brother is very ill and wants you immediately,” stated Charlie ten minutes later, walking up to the man who was the same height and who looked him straight in the eyes. “He wants to move out and told me to tell you to order your commanders to get ready. You must wait for the food trucks arriving in three hours before you leave the airport. Pedro, he is not well puking everywhere, and I think you had better get the orders directly from him, yourself!”

“Diego! Costa! Miguel! Antonio! Jorge! Get your men up and ready. We are moving out in three hours. Philippe! Come with me, we are wanted by Manuel!” and without even noticing or thanking the messenger, he picked up an AK 47 and headed for the door Charlie had just walked through into the rear terminal. A massive bear of a man nearly seven feet tall, followed Pedro with a machine gun and several belts of ammo slung over his shoulder.

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,”
Charlie thought to himself smiling at the size of the man. He also noticed that the weapon was loaded, cocked and ready for use.
“Pedro is still limping and is walking slowly, his injuries must be hurting,”
Charlie noticed, as he followed the two men who had completely ignored him. “
Being ignored is a beautiful thing!”

The weather was still pretty bad; the wind was howling and the rain drenching. Charlie put his head down, rapped his waterproof poncho around himself and followed the two men out the door.

It was an 800-yard walk back to the rear of the northern terminals where he knew there would be guards and men running around getting personnel and machinery ready to move. He walked a few steps behind the big man and watched for movement coming out of the visibility curtain a hundred feet in front.

Charlie noticed three figures merge out of the drenching rain as they walked forward. They were standing still in their path, and one seemed to be gesturing to the other two, turning and pointing in different directions.

Pedro and Philippe headed off at a tangent to bypass the men. The one who was gesturing saw the three men approaching and shouted at them in an insulting way to walk over to him. Who were they?

“And who are you to order me around, amigo?” asked Pedro nastily walking up to the bad-mannered man who, Charlie noticed, was Lieutenant Paul.

“Your worst nightmare, Pedro Calderón,” laughed Lieutenant Paul as he swung the Glock Seal-Issue 21 and silencer he was hiding under his poncho and connected Pedro’s head with its butt, hard. The surprised man dropped and didn’t see two long, sharp and deadly knife blades enter the slow moving Philippe, one in the neck and one underneath his ribcage, as the two men next to Paul did their job.

Paul shouted and three more men ran out of the visibility curtain and grabbed hold of the bodies before they hit the ground. Charlie had Philippe’s trigger finger in his strong hand, and it had snapped at the same time the knives had gone in.

The bigger man was heavy and it took all three of the men to drag his body, still upright, off into the shadows of a building. The unconscious Pedro was easier, and three more men ran out to take him away. Paul and Charlie were left standing next to a pool of blood which the rain was diluting by the second. They decided that peeing into the puddle would help color the blood as two men they didn’t recognize ran up from the direction of Pedro’s terminal.

“You have to piss everywhere, you dogs?” admonished the front men running up from the northern terminal. “Where is Pedro? We have heard from the trucks, they are still five hours away, the weather is bad, worse than yesterday on the highway, and the drivers thought they saw an American jeep on the road going the other way. We need to give him the new information immed—” as three rounds from Charlie’s silenced Glock hit the man, still mouthing his next word, right between the eyes and at point blank range. The sound of the shots were as dull as a twig snapping and Paul whistled for backup as Charlie terminated the second man; three light taps with his trigger finger and four more men ran up and dragged the bodies away before more blood had to be diluted with pee.

“Charlie, you go back inside and tell Manuel that Pedro is in the toilet. He is sick or something and he should come. Maybe we could be lucky again.”

“I did that old trick to get Pedro. Twice in one day is a little too much to ask,” smiled Charlie Meyers. “But what the hell; it could be my lucky day!”

“I’ll get four men to take Señor Pedro to our team outside the wire, and the rest can hide these bodies somewhere safe. The men can tell Clarke that they could see some action pretty soon and I’ll wait behind the terminal for your exit.

“Señor Manuel, Señor Manuel! Señor Pedro is puking outside the last terminal,” stated Charlie “His man, Philippe, says that he has a high temperature and needs a doctor!” Charlie was working on his best Oscar-winning performance to date when he reached the table. While he was shouting at Manuel, he even pushed several men who were around the map out of the way to get his message of urgency across. One happened to be Alberto, who slapped the bad-mannered “Panamanian” across the head hard for his bad attitude as he stood next to him.

“Mierda! Pedro is always slowing me down. Alberto, I’m heading out right now. Go and see what is wrong with Pedro then get your men on the move. Wrap him up in blankets and tell Diego and Costa to take over his command, and tell them to wait for the trucks. Also tell them that we will all meet in Huntsville, about fifty miles north of here. We will spend the night there.”

Alberto slapped three men on the heads, like he had done to Charlie, turned and they followed him to the rear entrance. “He had better be very sick, Charlie Panamanian, or you are going to feel sicker than he is!” he stated to Charlie angrily, as Charlie got into step next to him and was immediately pushed out of the way by Alberto’s three men behind him as they reached the exit door, pushed it open for Alberto to walk through, and Charlie slipped out behind them.

He still had seven .45 caliber rounds in his Glock; leaning forward and pulling the poncho over his body, he grabbed the Glock in his belt and pulled it out in his left hand to wet the silencer in the rain, while grabbing his Bowie-style knife hilt, his favorite weapon of choice, in his right hand. He couldn’t take all four men silently, but he knew there would be help out there. He also reminded himself that Alberto needed to be taken alive, and he would grab for Alberto first.

The weather had cleared slightly and the visibility was a little better. There was still a curtain of cloud and rain around the group as they passed outside the area of moving vehicles and men running everywhere; they reached halfway when Charlie saw several men coming towards them from the terminal in front of where Pedro was supposed to be. He could not recognize the men, but Alberto did and began giving orders.

“Oscar! Get the food packed underneath the men on the trucks. Try and keep it as dry as possible. Jesús! I want the machine gunners in front in all the jeeps and as many standing through the openings in the roofs as possible. I want mortar teams ready to jump out as soon as we hear gunfire. I’ll be back shortly. Get the men ready and loaded; we are leaving in fifty-five minutes. I need to go and see Pedro; now, move!”

The group continued towards the last terminal as the weather let up even more and they could just about see the terminal they were heading towards, three hundred feet away. Charlie noticed three men peeing in a line on the outer wall of the terminal, close to where the northern exit door was. One glanced over his shoulder and saw the group heading for the door, finished his mission, zipped up his pants, moved his poncho into a normal position and the three men headed over to the arriving group looking like actors in a spaghetti western.

Charlie, still at the back raised his left arm into the air and pointed his Glock at Alberto so the other three knew who to keep alive. There was nobody else about, and this area of the airport was quiet.

The distance closed and one of the men shouted at the approaching group of men.

“Where’s Pedro?” shouted Alberto, still needing to shout as loud as he could above the wind. One of the men pointed to the rear of the terminal/warehouse building where there were boxes and broken cases everywhere.

The group was now only twenty yards from the building as the rain began to drop in earnest again and a wind gust pulled heavily at Charlie’s poncho. “Why is he outside?” questioned Alberto angrily as he felt the large man next to him miss a step and lean against him; Charlie’s blade had entered the back of his neck with extreme force and severed everything in there. Charlie pulled the knife through and back as Alberto turned, his mouth opening to shout something. His hand, with the knife in it, was still moving with momentum as Charlie expertly flipped his hand over and smashed the heavy, blunt end of the knife across the side of Alberto’s head, several times harder than Alberto had done to him minutes earlier.

Blood spurted everywhere from the first man, and the other two were already falling, their heads blown apart at the same time from several silenced rounds fired by the three men walking towards them. The shots were so close to Charlie that he felt the air vibrate and thump as the slugs hit bone on the men’s foreheads and went straight through, missing him by less than two feet.

“Shit!” shouted Charlie as he held the unconscious Alberto from hitting the ground. “Get them hidden fast. Anybody could arrive at any minute. Get them over your shoulders and run. I’ll carry this guy!” shouted Charlie as the three men picked up the bleeding bodies and ran for a smaller building which looked like a building that housed aircraft fuel tanker-trucks. Three more men ran out to help as they reached the door.