The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath (9 page)

She then noticed a Super Tweet landing a mile further south of the burning aircraft. It had its full landing lights on and was dropping fast.

“
Puff!”
come in on my landing lights south of the fire,” ordered General Patterson

Then the area lit up as Martie’s aircraft fire-balled and blew a sprinting Martie over hard as the blast hit her yards from the aircraft.

“She’s fifty yards east of the aircraft; I think she had enough time to get clear!”
shouted Sally.

Her aircraft turned and she banked over the stopped aircraft. It was her old one, the twin-seat General Patterson was flying, and she saw a dark shape run towards where Martie had fallen.

There was silence on the airways, and Sally with tears welling in her eyes waited with the rest for word from the ground. She looked over to the north and saw the mess they had made of the convoy. There was a line of fires from horizon to horizon and the ground was flat.

“I got her, I got her” stated General Patterson into his radio back at the aircraft, a few minutes later as “
Puff
” could be seen with full lights going into land half a mile behind the general’s aircraft. “She’s unconscious but breathing.” Carlos I need help, get over here with a medical bag; she needs two of us to get her into your aircraft. AC-130s commence your attacks at will, stay low and blast anything you see. Commander of
Blue Moon
; take over air command until further notice. Out.”

Preston, co-pilot of
Blue Moon
got a slap of encouragement on the back from the engineer behind as his commander began giving orders. They were five miles away to the north at the end of the convoy and still thirty miles from the downed aircraft. Carlos must have pushed his throttles to the limit and he had watched “Puff” on his radar scope go straight over the convoy.

The captain shouted orders into the radio system to turn on all instruments to control their altitude above ground and all aircraft not to go below 300 feet. There were few hills or rises that high in the area. He then ordered all weapons to test as they turned eastwards and headed towards the end of the area where there were fires.

“Gunships, we are going in a mile south of the highway, in a line; stagger your distance between a mile and two miles. Gun controllers, if anybody sees a missile launch I want that area hit with the 105-mm. Shout missile launch, and pilots dip fifty to a hundred feet. Engineers shout out height above ground continuously. Let’s do one full run, and then break to the right on my command.”

They went in low and fast, the Gunships’ machine guns and howitzers began shooting into and between the flames on both highways a mile to their north. With such heavy weaponry, a mile distance was nothing.

“There is more damage on the southern highway; gunners aim more towards the northern asphalt strip,” stated
Blue Moon’s
commander.

At 250 miles an hour, it took twelve minutes to reach the front of the three convoys. By this time all guns were hot and needed a break. Over a ton of explosives had exited the six gunships with not one missile coming up to meet them.

“Shit!” stated
Blue Moon’s
pilot as his aircraft suddenly lurched. “That must have been a gust of wind or something. It nearly took the stick right out of my hands. Radar, what do we have in the way of weather? Extend your view to maximum, also, damage report in case that wasn’t a breath of fresh air.”

“Dangnatious!”
replied his radar operator excitedly.
“It looks like something coming in from the south. There are rain squalls coming in lines, I can see three thick green lines of rain on the screen thirty miles to our south.”

“No damage to report, guns are cooling and we are down to about 40 percent of our ammo,”
stated his weapon systems operator over the aircraft’s radio.

“I heard that,” stated General Patterson coming back on air. “There was no wind a few minutes ago when I landed, and now it’s like gale-force winds coming in from the south.
Puff
is taking off and I’m a few minutes from being airborne. Gunships complete one more attack,
Blue Moon
and
Easy Girl
concentrate on the vanguard area and level any buildings where you believe the vanguard position may be; the other four head westwards and use up everything you’ve got. Then head back to Dyess.

“Mike Task Force to command, we are twenty miles out and north of the western end of the fires. Over,”
stated the lead C-130 bringing in the Marines.

“Mike Task Force, the road is pretty straight east to west, but you should be feeling a headwind. I recommend a thousand foot altitude drop half a mile to the south of the highway and a mile west of the first fires. That should drift the men towards the road. Over,” replied the general pulling his aircraft off the gusty road. “We have a bad storm coming in, and I will get you resupplied by morning with extended rations. Mike Task Force, I first want to know who these guys are, and where they’ve come from. Don’t take prisoners; I’m sure they didn’t take any of ours. Report in when you have your cloth stacked and packed, and we’ll send in someone to collect them. Command pilots find a north/south intersection before you let the dogs out, so that somebody can come in and retrieve. The wind is too strong for side-wind landings, out.”

Puff
rose steeply out of harm’s way south of the convoy; Buck was flying as Carlos and two of his crewmen tended to Martie. She was still unconscious; the blast had hurt her and must have thrown her to the ground hard. He checked for broken bones and didn’t find any. She had several cuts on her face from flying debris and a large gash on her left upper arm which was bleeding badly.

He cut off her flight suit at the shoulder, bandaged, and tightly bound the wound. It certainly needed stitches. Her face was a mass of tiny scratches, so he cleaned her beautiful face with cold antiseptic gauze which brought her around slowly.

“Gee, Carlos, did you sock me or something? Boy! Does my head hurt,” she stated her blue eyes looking directly into his, blinking. “Did I make it, or are you an angel looking after me?” she continued. She was slowly coming around.

“Move your arms and legs, Martie, show me that you can move them,” ordered Carlos and he was relieved to see her four limbs move slowly. “Martie, move your neck, can you lift your head up?” Martie complied and she grimaced with pain as she moved her head.

“Am I in one piece, lover boy?” she asked.

“It seems so Blondie, your spine isn’t injured and your head and mouth work, so your neck and one brain cell are fine!” he replied smiling at her. “You are going to need stitches in your left arm and I’m sure your head hurts badly, so the medic is giving you something to take away any pain and make you sleep.”

“Is Preston OK?” she asked.

“Yes, I think he is still blasting at the enemy, the parachutists are going in and we are heading back to base. Now sleep and my guys will cover you with blankets and keep you warm. I still don’t trust Buck flying my new baby.”

“Our injured is doing fine and nothing broken,” reported Carlos as he took over flying
Puff
. Preston was relieved as a now quiet
Blue Moon
headed out of the area.

They hadn’t got one round off at the enemy but Carlos felt good going in to save a good friend. “
Pity about the other five pilots who didn’t make it,”
he thought to himself.

One after the other the aircraft were helped northwards by the growing winds from the south. Dyess was reached within 30 minutes of leaving the scene.

General Patterson was worried about this storm. He knew there was something bigger than just 30 to 40 mile an hour winds now behind him. While he was on the ground the air was so still that it was eerie, and suddenly the first gust had hit him in the back as he bent over Martie, nearly pushing him over onto her. All the slower aircraft still had good reserves of fuel; and he landed his Super Tweet first to see how the other jets were doing, getting ready for a possible second mission.

“It is weird not to know what was out there,” he stated to the F-4 and F-5 commanders as they came up and saluted him.

“I spent five years in south Florida and Louisiana training on jets,” stated the mature and experienced F-4 Flight Commander. “I smell a hurricane, and I would put some money on it that she is a doozy! Several times we had to scramble out of these wind squalls that hit from nowhere. We could always see the squall lines on the weather systems we don’t have any more, and the national weather reports we also don’t have any more. We were always out of the area once the wind increased up to thirty knots. General Patterson, if that squall nearly knocked you over, that is the tell-tale sign to get the aircraft away from the coast.”

“So, Colonel,” replied the general. “I’m not from a hurricane area; Washington State is where I learned to fly. Can your team do another mission into the area before whatever’s coming gets here?”

“Sure, we will be ready to go in an hour and I recommend bombs, we can nail them hard with nine bombs per aircraft. General, I would recommend eight 750 pounders or whatever they have here at Dyess, and a napalm or fuel gel under the belly this time. I would aim to hit and destroy the outer buildings around where these guys went in. If I had just been hit with what we gave them, I would be heading into the built-up areas for safety like a bunch of hound dogs. My gut feeling is that we have about six hours before things get bad towards the coast. Here, we are far enough away from the coast to ride out the storm, but we’d better tie all the aircraft down, or get ready to base further north. It’s going to take a couple of days before anybody can do anything after tonight.”

General Patterson agreed with the man and asked the Dyess commander what he had stored. Within twenty minutes the men were bringing out their supplies of older bombs.

“We have looked in every corner and this is what we have. First, we have forty-two old M117, 750 pounders. They are perfect for the F-4s, eight to an aircraft if need be. We have twenty-eight of the Mark 82, 500 pounders for the F-5s. Everything else is pretty useless but I did find a dozen old MK 77 fuel gel 750 pounders and ten even older napalm 1,000 pounders. They are so old I think they will burn forever. If I may, General, since I spent seven years in Nam, I would suggest four Mark 82s under the wings of the 5s and a 1,000-pound napalm under the belly. For the F-4s, I recommend six of the M17s and two MK 77 fuel gels under the wings and again a 1,000-pound napalm under the belly.”

The F-4 colonel who had also flown in Vietnam nodded his agreement. General Patterson was still a few years younger than the two more experienced pilots and had only risen to the rank of general from major a few months earlier when the president had crazily promoted him twice in two months.

“Who could I ask for a better plan?” he replied to the two men smiling. Get your aircraft ready. Because the Super Tweets can also only carry 2,500 pounders in their current configurations and, it will take too long to remove their fuel pods, get all six armed and ready to go. We might as well throw what we can at the enemy before we are grounded by this weather. I have
Blue Moon
being refueled, and she will head out ASAP to give us an infra-red view of what is moving where down on the ground. We can’t do much without her eyes.

He headed towards the terminal when, to his surprise, he saw three C-130s and two other aircraft coming in from the northwest. He hadn’t ordered this flight and knew nothing about it. He stopped and waited. As the C-130s and the other two he wasn’t familiar with taxied onto the half empty apron, he saw the white and red markings of a Coast Guard aircraft and four U.S. Navy aircraft.

Seal Team Six

They were parked in a line by ground personnel under the apron lights run by six generators when, to his surprise, Admiral Rogers walked out of the first aircraft with a mass of men.

“Good to see you, Admiral. I’m glad you have some aircraft at your disposal,” stated General Patterson seeing a good friend again.

“Yes, General, we navy boys are slow but sure. We also have two more 70s frigates nearly operational, and we have given up on the USS
Yorktown
in Charleston, but will have the
Midway
operational in a year. Also one of my ships reported bad sea conditions off Florida two days ago; and I’ve brought my two Lockheed Orion Hurricane Hunters, operational from yesterday. I know they look pretty old, but after refueling they are heading off to see what this storm is. I put my money on an early season hurricane, but they will tell us in a couple of hours. I have also brought you a gift from the navy, the best gift I can. I hear you are having problems in Houston. I will loan you our best Seal team, Seal Team Six. They have just returned from an outreach location in Africa. We had to wait for them to surface, and it took two months for them to get into Germany so that we could fly them back here. They arrived two days ago on the lone 747 you have operating out of Ramstein.”

“Are you the guys who took out Bin Laden and got those hostages out of Somalia?” General Patterson asked with respect.

“My guys did Bin Laden, and those guys in the second aircraft did the hostages, Sir,” stated a lieutenant who looked like he would kill if you looked at him too hard. “We were all deep in Somalia again in December after an American ship’s crew of sixteen were captured and held hostage back in November. We were told to get ready to be extracted, and then nothing. We couldn’t get communications when we called for the choppers on January 1st, so we just killed all the bad guys and walked north to the Med. We caught a lift on a fishing boat to Greece a month later, and we made friends with Greek soldiers who helped us travel to Germany. A long story, but we flew back with the hostages two days ago and are ready, Sir. What do you want us to do, General?”

General Patterson counted the men; there were ninety-three in all. “Is this all Seat Team Six?” he asked. “That’s right sir, three platoons run by us three lieutenants, and the only people we take orders from are Admiral Rogers here and then the Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense and the president.