The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath (39 page)

“
Roger that. Confirm Chinese soldiers, and can you count how many missiles ready? Over.”

“There are two missiles on two different gun-looking launchers. Four in total,” Mike replied.

“
Roger, that. Wait one,”
and the radio went silent as the operator in the aircraft must have been checking with his control center.
“Charlie 130 to ground, they could be Chinese LY-60s, we are in trouble and pulling back. Out!”

“
All Charlie 130s get down low immediately, possible Chinese Mach 3 missiles on the airport. Charlie 130 Leader to Foxtrot Five Leader, did you hear the conversation with base? Over.”

“
Loud and clear,”
came a new voice over Mike’s radio.
“Foxtrot Five Leader to ground spotter, we are ten minutes out and incoming from the south. Which way are the rockets pointing over?”

They are working on them now,” replied Mike. “At the moment they are all pointing skywards, but I can see that they are mobile as one has just done a three-sixty. Over.”

“
Foxtrot Leader Roger, nine minutes out. Charlie 130 Leader, can you begin long noisy finals onto main runway 32 from the south. Go in very low and keep just above the buildings. I want you to be a decoy over. Get their attention in five minutes, we are going hot. Out.”

Even Mike Mallory knew that going hot meant lighting their afterburners, and he watched the men below him. “Everybody get down; they also have binoculars and could look this way at any second.” There was a rustle of body movement as bodies dropped just as one set of Chinese binoculars held by the high-ranking Chinese officer with lots of red braid turned towards the control tower.

He swept the tower for a whole minute, Mike watched the man trying to look through the darkened glass, and then somebody shouted something and pointed towards the south and all the binoculars turned in that direction. So did Mike and he saw a lone C-130 turning in to set up for finals a couple of miles south of the airport. A second C-130 was visible a couple of miles behind the first one and he assumed that the men on the ground had heard the noise of the aircraft’s engines as they were too low for the men on the ground to see the very low-flying aircraft.

“
Charlie 130 Leader to Foxtrot Five Leader, we are at 400 feet, three miles from the airport and turning in on finals.”

“
Roger that. We are coming around and need 90 seconds. Stay low and we will go over the top of you. Out!”

“
Foxtrot Leader to Ground Spotter, we need wind direction, speed, direction of aiming missiles and which way the target is focusing their attention. Over.”

“Wind coming in directly from the west, windsock looks like about 3 to 5 miles an hour, missiles facing incoming Charlie 130s from the southeast and all targets facing south. Over.”

“
Roger that, Ground. You say four vehicles together on mid-runway crossover, confirm final target please. Charlies, stay under 500 feet. Thirty seconds to target, will have visual in 15 seconds. Over.”

Mike confirmed the target, which looked like they were ready to fire at the incoming C-130s. As he put his binoculars down, he saw two dots silently sweep over the runway from the north at about 500 feet and suddenly two lines of red fire erupted from several hundred feet to the north of the enemy trucks and sped towards the unsuspecting men who were beginning to look up. Then there was an almighty explosion as the flames engulfed the four trucks and all hell broke loose as the windows in the control tower shook and vibrated as explosion after explosion slammed against the reinforced glass.

Once Mike realized that the glass wasn’t going to break he looked over the window sill and was shocked at what was going on down there.

* * *

“
Foxtrot Four to Charlie 130, the airfield looks safe. We will stay up here at 10,000 until you can confirm that. Over.”

The C-130 went in followed by Preston and then Sally. The airport looked deserted and three blackened circles showed where three small aircraft had once stood.

The Marines were out and within ten minutes declared Dillingham Airport safe. The F-4s headed back to Elmendorf and it began to get dark and rain looked pretty close. Preston’s satellite phone rang.

“
Preston, Patterson here. I’ve just had a message from Mike Mallory in Medford Oregon. Something about an attack by Chinese soldiers in Oregon of all places. He seems badly beaten up and his team has had several causalities. I have a 747 passenger jet incoming with Marines here at Elmendorf in 75 minutes. Leave the soldiers to guard Dillingham. You guys get your Cessnas back here, and I’ll wait for you.”

Within five minutes, Preston told Sally to follow him, gave orders to the soldiers on base and was pulling back slightly on the Cessna’s throttle and retracting his undercarriage. It would take them at least ninety minutes to fly the 300 plus miles back to Elmendorf at a fast cruise.

Two hours later, and with soldiers converging on Medford, and Oregon in general, the 747, which did not need refueling took off with an F-4 Phantom flying out to catch up to the larger aircraft.

Only one of the four F-4s that General Patterson had relocated to Elmendorf had all three of its extra under-wing fuel tanks fitted and
Mother Goose
was already heading 300 miles south of Elmendorf and would fly south so that the fighter jet could top her off with enough fuel to fly the 1,600 miles into Medford, only 250 miles further than its already extended range.

A high-cruise flight of three hours got the 747 down on a blackened, but cleaned up Medford runway. General Patterson had stayed on his phone for the whole flight, putting the country on high alert.

With no national communications, a pattern of calling one phone user and telling them to put out the alert on all radios in his area and also call several nearby bases with satellite telephone communication was the only alert system in place.

It took over seventy calls and three hours to get the whole of the United States on “High Alert”, where a year earlier it was virtually instantaneous. The general had ordered several C-130s to reinforce all the western air bases, in case there was more than one band of thugs, or enemy soldiers.

By the time the two aircrafts’ engines whined down, General Patterson was talking to the Air Force medical crew which had come in three hours earlier and transferred a dozen injured personnel to Travis Air Force Base, the nearest air base with full operating facilities.

Preston, Carlos, Martie and Sally found Mike Mallory in the airport’s small first aid center. He looked pretty bad. As he acknowledged their presence, the nurse tending him told Mike’s friends, that he had a bad concussion, had been given a pint of blood, some air force clothing to replace his bloodied clothes, and needed sleep. They noticed that his girlfriend seemed sedated, had a drip running into her arm and was asleep in the bed next to his.

They were asked to leave, and Mike weakly told them to give him an hour or two of sleep.

The four returned to find General Patterson looking through the terminal area which, even cleaned up, looked like a massacre had taken place. There were blood stains everywhere—floor, glass walls, chairs and signs. A Marine captain was updating the general with the information he received when he arrived twenty minutes after the two F5s had blasted the runway with napalm.

“The Charlie 130 flight leader ordered us, the third C-130 in line, down onto a clean stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, about five miles from the northern airport boundary,” the captain stated. “It took us several minutes to get down and out. As a dozen of us climbed into the two jeeps, we saw smoke coming from the direction of the airfield. We headed towards Rogue Valley International at top speed and crashed through the locked north gates to see half of the runway still lit up with napalm. We immediately headed towards the main terminal as the lead 130 came in on the northern section of the main runway. There was just enough room for her to land without getting her wings burned and we headed over to her to set up a secure perimeter. The runway smelled like cooked meat. It was bad. The Marines got out and Major Blakely ordered me to take my men to the terminal in the jeeps. They were no enemy in the terminal the civilian on the radio had reported. We got over there and it was horrible; twelve people, including seven air force dead, bullets in the head execution style. Then there were two civilian males and three civilian females, also murdered execution style. The rest were huddled in the control tower. This airline captain, Mallory, totally bloody from head to foot from a large gash or two on his head, was still on the airport radio keeping lookout. We had three medics with us, and they started helping the wounded, another dozen with head wounds from rifle butts and boots, and two of them had less severe wounds.”

“Let’s go and see the enemy position,” General Patterson ordered captain.

“Yes, Sir. We haven’t touched the enemy camp as you ordered, Sir. Major Blakely only cleared the runway for you guys to land.”

They all walked out of the terminal into air which smelled as if a hundred barbeques were cooking meat for a large gathering. Martie and Sally didn’t want to go and said that they were going to see if anybody needed help.

It was a grizzly scene. Four metal outlines of trucks could just be made out, as the ammo which must have exploded blew them to bits.

“General Patterson, Sir, over here please!” shouted a Marine major.

“Major Blakely, I presume,” stated the general, saluting back to all the men who had stood at attention and saluted.

“Correct, Sir. We have the live remains of one of the enemy, an American citizen, a right wing mercenary from northern Idaho who belonged to a group of about a hundred others from the same area, and who had been recruited, trained, and paid well by some person he never saw.”

They looked down at the blackened remains of half a man, who was alive purely by the medication being pumped into him. He was very badly burned, most of his clothing that remained was also blackened cloth melted onto parts of his body. He had one leg missing and a tourniquet had been applied just above the remains of his left knee. Most of his left arm was also missing and a second tourniquet, just below his shoulder kept him from bleeding to death.

An air force doctor stood up and looked at General Patterson. “We are trying to keep him alive, but his vital signs are fading. For a terrorist he is going to die pretty happy, with the amount of morphine we have pumped into him, maximum allowed dosage. He is on the morphine drip and blood drip to keep him alive, but only for another few minutes, I believe, sir. He is not delirious and able to talk.”

“What is your name, young man?” General Patterson knelt down, nearly retching from the smell of burnt flesh and looked the dying man in the eyes.

“Charles, Charlie Law. Born in Spokane Washington, live in Sandpoint, Idaho, and proud member of the “Freedom Forces against Total Government Control,” headquartered in Coeur D’Alene. I’m proud to die fighting U.S. government soldiers!” he stated proudly.

“Oh, cut the bull crap!” replied General Patterson. “Without that morphine drip going in you, you would be hurting real bad, so tell me who killed all those people back there in the terminal or I’ll pull your drip and you will die screaming.”

“Our lieutenant, Joe Gibbs. He killed all those people back there, every one of them.”

“Why?” asked the general. “All they were doing was feeding innocent civilians.

“We were told that they were under the control of the U.S. government in Washington and needed to be taken out.” The man replied smiling, his pupils as small as pinheads from the drugs surging through his body.

“Who told you that?” the general continued quietly and showing no emotion.

“Lieutenant Gibbs told us that he had been given his orders from the guys in Alaska to take out the people at the terminal. They even sent in a cargo plane with some of the Chinese soldiers and modern weapons to help us out.”

“In which airport did they fly in this aircraft?”

“Here, right onto this runway a week ago. We were…”and the man stopped, his yes went dull for a second and he coughed up a pool of blood. “We drove in here from Sandpoint a week earlier and were told to kill anybody we found here. There were three soldiers, National Guard guys, on duty here, and we killed and burned them. The next day a couple of civilians arrived, and we rocketed their truck. It blew up outside the main gate, and we didn’t see anybody else until the aircraft and all these people began to arrive a couple of days ago…” Again he stopped and coughed up blood.”

“I should decrease his morphine intake,” the doctor interrupted.

“Captain, go and find somebody else to attend to. Increase his dosage so that he can still talk and buzz off!” stated General Patterson angrily. “You stated Alaska, do you know where?”

“No, we were all blindfolded in and out. It was on an island, or close to the sea, it smelled of fish,” the man responded.

“Did all the 100 men from your club or group go with you?”

“Only fifty at a time for training; there wasn’t much room with all the gooks over there, Chinese soldiers. Can you increase the stuff again doctor? The pain is starting to come back.”

“Only once you have answered my questions,” General Patterson replied.

“Well, hurry up, ask!” replied the man, Preston could see was slowly fading away.

“When did you go to Alaska, the first time?” was the next question.

“Only went once, 50 of us from August last year to November. The second group arrived on the same aircraft which took us out. We spent ten weeks doing basic military training. There was a second group, guys from Montana who were there too. We were crammed into two houses with bunk beds. The Chinese soldiers had the other houses, dozens of them and hundreds more in the large hangars around the airfield.”

“How many Chinese did you see there?”

“I counted about a thousand at one time, but they came and went on Chinese aircraft once a week. At one time it was totally empty and another, there were thousands and thousands, maybe three or four thousand. Once, they arrived on massive jets, dozens of them, just like the one you flew in on. I thought you were coming to save me.” Again he coughed and was silent for several seconds trying to regain some strength to talk.