The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath (8 page)

Seconds earlier he had ordered his driver to drive twenty feet off the road and he let out his man carrying the missile launcher. His jeep had just climbed a low slope by the side of the road and he stood up so that he could see what was happening. He felt his jeep going over as if it was blown by the wind and it landed on top of him, the rear gun holding the vehicle off his body.

His eyes and nose filled with dirt and dust, and he closed his eyes and stayed in a fetal position under his protective roof in shock, not knowing what was going on.

The man with the launcher was able to get his missile off and he watched it go straight into the air intake of the second F-5 a hundred yards in front of him; the aircraft blew up and, as he watched, the debris came straight down towards him and he dissolved into a billion pieces; so did thousands of men around him as millions of pieces of metal traveling at nearly the speed of sound scythed through anything in their way. Trucks and other vehicles blew up as the angry shrapnel passed through killing them all and igniting their fuel tanks. Again a long stretch of road nearly a mile long disintegrated under the heavy force of the exploding aircraft.

The two remaining F-5s finished their runs and peeled away heading for Dyess.

“Foxtrot Five Leader, my number two took a direct missile hit,”
reported an F-5 pilot. “
Two aircraft are OK and there are no missiles airborne on my radar. We are right behind the Foxtrot Fours for Dyess. Fuel levels good.”

“Well done men,” replied the general saddened that he had just lost a few good men and very valuable aircraft. “There should be ground crew ready for you when you arrive. There are C-130 tankers airborne if you need air refueling, but you should make it. Don’t take any chances and, Foxtrot Leaders, I want you refueled, armed and ready ASAP. We might be able to get a night raid in. Did you see much down there?”

“We hit them good, exploding damage for twenty, thirty miles. There isn’t a part of their convoy which isn’t a mile within smoke and or fire. The rear section got hit real bad from the Fours, and we did a smaller number on the vanguard group. They have missile launchers everywhere, so watch out for incoming.”

“OK, Super Tweets, we are next and ten minutes out. The sun will be setting by the time we get there, and I think since we are slower we will split up. Powers, Roebels and Smart, you are with me, we are going in straight from the east for the vanguard group. You other three Tweets form up under Watkins; come in from the south turn eastwards and get the sun behind you. Go into the rear group and complete one pass. Look out for us we are coming in from the east and we will break south before we get into the second groups area. We are slower and the missiles will have more time to lock onto us, so we are going in at nosebleed level above the ground and we will stay there; don’t climb if there are hot missiles. Second group, attack in sections of about a mile; get off several of your rockets like you did in training and then turn away to the south and come around and get back into what’s left of the sun. If you see or hear missiles stay as close to the ground as you can for three to four minutes. I believe the missiles are heat-seeking and there is a lot of heat on the ground. Then, go in for a second and a third attack.

Watkins, aim your second attack on the second group and then hit the rear group again.

My group will concentrate on the vanguard group from the east. Gunships, the sun will have set by the time you get there. I want all of you to come in south of the road and from the west once the Tweets are out of there. Pick the largest black areas on your heat sights. Use your infra-red to fire, stay as far out as you can and stay low, we can’t afford to lose more aircraft. We have “
Puff
” twenty minutes behind us to pick up any downed pilots, so find roads if you need to land. Carlos, AC-47, you are last and tie in with any emergency commands. Everyone, stay low and strafe the ditches and holes where soldiers could be hiding. They should run out of stuff to throw at us sometime so every missile they launch means one less they have.”

As planned it was getting dark when the two groups of Super Tweets went in together twenty minutes later, the first time many of the girls were seeing real action. They had trained for this for six weeks now, including how to dodge ground-to-air missiles, but were still green behind the ears and each one scared, but the time was now and they needed to concentrate.

Manuel crawled out from the remains of his jeep. His ears hurt like hell, and he looked around for the radioman he had with him. He found part of his body and a useless smashed radio.

He couldn’t hear the remainder of the jets heading out, and he looked at the trail of chaos left behind. The one jeep and three transporters behind where he had left the road were nothing more than a burning mass of twisted metal. It was hot and the smoke burned his lungs but he ran ungainly down the road until he reached one of his commanders shouting orders for the men to get into town. Manuel had passed twelve burning vehicles before he found his man in an untouched jeep.

Here there were hundreds of men getting out of the ditches in the middle of the Interstate and into twenty undamaged trucks, two of which had fuel tankers behind them. Then his eyes fell on the next swath of burning debris where the F-5 had gone down; even he was shocked at the destruction. It was as if a stretch of the Interstate had been cleared of everything that was on it. There was broken metal and fire everywhere on both sides of the asphalt for as far as he could see. It was pure devastation.

“Manuel, do you want to use my radio?” asked his commander. “Manuel, Manuel, can you hear me?” Manuel raised his arm which hurt to show that he did and staggered towards the jeep.

“Alberto, Alberto, report! Pedro, Pedro, report in! Are you OK?” There was silence as nobody responded. Manuel tried again and again and the fourth time Pedro replied. He was OK but his men had taken a beating. Alberto also came over the air and he said the same thing.

“I don’t know if there are more, but leave your dead and get into town. The buildings will help protect us from the air. He reiterated his orders several times telling the men to fan out and get into town as fast and in any way they could. Do you have any missiles left? Did we shoot down any aircraft?”

“I saw one go down. It came out from the sun, a missile blew it up,”
stated an unknown man.

“I saw a second one right behind it. It also blew up a mile in front of me, and the explosion killed hundreds of my men,”
stated Carlos Sanchez.
“It took out a whole mile of people and trucks.”

The commander next to him stated that he saw one from the east go down right behind his jeep.

“We got three aircraft. How many missiles and launchers do we have?” One man said he had one and suddenly the world around Pedro tossed him around, his body blew backwards toward the way he had come, and this time he hit his head against the side of his commander’s still unscathed jeep and he blacked out.

* * *

Martie Roebels, going in behind the general, fired her first two rockets at the first group of trucks Manuel was looking at behind the jeep and he bore the brunt of the edge of the explosions as the trucks and men he was facing flipped in the air in front of him. He didn’t even know what was happening.

General Patterson was a hundred yards in front of her, and he ordered the girls behind him to peel off; a 500-pound bomb was not something to fly over. He saw where he wanted to deposit his first bomb, at the next group of undamaged vehicles on the north side; and he pulled the stick back to gain altitude so that he would also be out of harm’s way.

The small twin-engine jet screamed upwards and rose 3,000 feet before he forced the stick forward. It felt like he was on the fastest roller coaster in the world as his belts stopped his head from being flattened against the canopy above his head and he shouted “Bomb gone!” as he released the 500 pounds of pure destruction.

He had seen a large group of trucks and men, Carlos Sanchez’s group, and he released the bomb for that precise area. As the bomb dropped he hauled the joystick to the left, pushed both throttles to maximum and dipped south as fast as he could.

Several seconds later the blast caught up to him and rattled the thirty-year old aircraft around him. He was pushed here and there, and then it was over.

* * *

Carlos Sanchez was trying to get his machine gunner to aim at the aircraft, and his man fired off his first rounds as General Patterson pulled the stick back, climbing steeply, and the man’s tracers headed out behind the little jet. The machine gunner didn’t have time to catch up with the aircraft as it quickly rose several hundred yards ahead of him and his commander, and the next thing he saw was a shape drop from underneath the aircraft as it dived away and headed southwards.

He froze as he saw the shape slowly descend towards him and he forgot all about trying to shoot the aircraft as his body was vaporized by the explosion.

Carlos Sanchez had also seen the shape leave the aircraft, and he was about to tell his men to scatter when it hit the ground several feet from where he and hundreds of his men had just congregated for orders.

* * *

The sun had half sunk behind the horizon as one man in Alberto’s group saw more aircraft coming in, turning in from the south and trying to hide with the dying sun. He shouted the alarm; one man turned fast enough and got a missile off. It passed harmlessly between the first and second aircraft and then all hell broke loose as the incoming rockets blew that immediate area of his convoy to pieces.

Six rockets from the three aircraft hit in a pattern on the north side of the highway, the first one hitting a full fuel tanker. The blast was so big that the jets veered off passing the mushrooming firestorm on each side and were hit hard by the blast.

On the ground nobody cared about the aircraft as several vehicles around the tanker blew up and connected the explosions from the five other rockets.

Alberto’s troops, a hundred yards away and on the north side of the highway, could only watch as the line of explosions traveled down the southern highway at the speed of sound. A truck on the north side and directly opposite the mushroom fireball exploded, spewing men all over the place. Seconds later there was a mass of bodies heading for cover anywhere they could find.

* * *

Martie’s aircraft began to act weird as she veered away from the road; a machine gunner got in several shots into her underbelly and hit her hard.

“I’m hit, I’m hit!”
shouted Martie into her radio as the cockpit filled with smoke. Preston in
Blue Moon,
still twenty miles away, felt his stomach tighten. Up to now it had been exciting, but suddenly the scene turned personal. This was something he hadn’t expected as he heard Sally Powers tell Martie that she had her visual and ordered Martie to turn the aircraft to the right.

“Try your gear, Martie, try your landing gear, get it down, does it work?”
Sally ordered sternly.

“Super Tweets break off, congregate south of the convoy!” ordered General Patterson. Everybody stay off the air until we solve this problem. I’m going in to get rid of my heavies. “
Puff
… Carlos, location please?”

“Twenty miles out from estimated problem point and turning towards it. Sally, I think we have you visual on radar.”

“Martie, I see your wheels going down, do you have green lights?”
continued Sally.
“Martie, Carlos, we are about three miles south of the middle convoy. Martie, I see a tarred road about a mile in front of you. Do you have it visual?”

“I have green lights, I think so, its dark in here and the smoke is bad,”
Martie responded coughing badly and grunting to control the aircraft.

“Martie, zero wind, take her in to the south and I’ll help you in.”

“I’m losing thrust, airspeed just over stall,”
stated Martie.

“Hey girl, remember that Cessna flies like a Cessna. You know what to do. Martie, she has a glide pattern, use it and kiss the asphalt gently for me. Turn south slowly now! You should see the black tarmac below you,”
stated Sally calmly.

Preston held his breath and prayed; this was where every ounce of her thousands of flying hours would be the most important thing in her life. He saw three large fireballs erupt into the air ten miles in front of his aircraft. General Patterson was still nailing the enemy.

“Is it the black stripe below me? No power she’s going down fast,”
responded Martie.

“Let her go Martie, point her nose down a bit more and then flare out when I tell you, your height is about 300 feet. That’s right let her go, keep her speed up, concentrate on the air speed and I’ll get you in.”

“I can see a white line, Sally,”
replied Martie a second later.

“Flare now, Martie, just like we taught you in training school. You have fifty feet to go, forty, thirty…”

“She’s stalling!”
shouted Martie.

“Let her Martie, twenty feet, Martie, ten…”
and Martie’s Super Tweet hit the asphalt hard as it fell the last few feet out of the sky and she began to apply brakes.

“You have flames behind you, Martie! Blow the engine extinguishers! Martie use the brakes and open the canopy. Martie get out! Martie get out now girl!”
shouted Sally.

Martie pulled her release and stood up; now, adrenalin taking over, she jumped onto the left wing as her cockpit was engulfed in flames and she jumped down to the side of the asphalt, rolling as she hit.

“Run, Martie, run!”
shouted Sally in her radio knowing that Martie couldn’t hear her anymore; she was detached from the aircraft.

Sally circled as slow as the aircraft could as Martie, now a dark shape on the ground rose to her feet and began to sprint. Sally knew she was fast and she watched as the distance widened between her friend and the aircraft which was going to explode at any second, and still had armaments aboard.