The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath (46 page)

“You don’t want to go down there, Colonel, I’ve been told it stinks down there,” replied the major looking directly at Wong.

“Precisely why he has ordered me to clean it up, Major! I don’t even know where the underground area is. Can your corporal show me?”

“You are a colonel. You are entitled to go down there at any time,” was the reply.

“I don’t like underground places and I don’t like stinking smells, Major, but when the general gives orders, I must obey!”

“Of course, Colonel! Corporal Bo, issue Colonel Wong an ID badge and show him the door to get down there. Good luck, Colonel. Better you than me!” and the major saluted and headed back into his office.

A color photo was taken and glued onto a badge that stated Hangar Three, and the corporal headed out of the door, expecting the colonel to follow.

Colonel Wong quickly looked over the desk in front of him and looked inside the still-open draw where the corporal had taken out the badge; he saw several others in there with photos on and left the room.

“You must return this badge when you leave Hangar Three,” stated the corporal as he caught up. They walked through the heavy guard consisting of a jeep, two heavy machine guns behind sandbags and a dozen soldiers, all saluting upon seeing Wong’s rank.

They didn’t go into the hangar, but to a set of steps that went down outside the side of the hangar. It was at least a thirty foot flight of stairs and heavily concreted around the entire staircase entrance.

“Code is ‘Zedong007’,” Corporal Bo stated to Wong smiling. It never changes. I’m not allowed to go in there, only colonels and above and several of the white coats, we call them, engineers who come down here and check on things at night. Just show your ID to the guards the next time, and they will let you in, daytime only Colonel.” He saluted and climbed the stairs.

On a Chinese box with ten numbers and letters, he spelt out Z-E-D-O-N-G-0-0-7 and the door automatically swung open. He went in, found a light switch, and the smell of a mix of cold nitrogen mixed with cold liquid rocket propellant hit his nostrils.

He walked down a concrete corridor and came face to face with two lighted corridors with a door at each end. The first one he tried was unlocked and he walked in, switched on a second light and came face to face with three rocket motors, exactly the same height as his head and several feet in front of his eyes. The smell was coming from small, external solid/liquid-propellant side-thrust motors steaming small amounts of coldness into the air a dozen or so feet above him.

“
This was certainly a bad stinking animal,”
he thought to himself. He looked up and saw that he couldn’t get any higher. He then realized he had walked down the exhaust escape corridors for the rocket and he went to the second door to find exactly the same set up. On the outer side of the second door, there was a flight of stairs and hitting the switch at the bottom of the stairs climbed the stairs to see what was on ground level in Hangar Three.

The time for civilians is over.

With very little to do, but wait, the civilian pilots sat around waiting for their turn to get to the enemy.

Preston and Carlos were still upset and angry about the loss of Buck and Barbara. Buck had been a longtime friend to both of them and was an outstanding engineer. The sense of loss was beginning to get to them and for the first time since New Year’s Eve Preston sensed that he and Martie were no longer really needed. Martie had suggested the night before that the U.S. Air Force was now better equipped, and their old fashioned aircraft weren’t really needed any more.

This time the enemy had modern weapons, modern Chinese missiles that could take them out of the sky before they even got into range of Cold Bay. Buck was the first real casualty of the war among their group of friends. They knew that they had won the lottery on New Year’s Eve, being in the right place at the right time. If they hadn’t had the fly-in, they would be among the hungry and destitute population out there.

Although they had continued to live the high life—flying and enjoying the luxuries the farm provided to them—they also had helped deliver food and supplies to the needy. They had witnessed nationwide loss and devastation and observed heart wrenching despair and hopelessness on hundreds of faces of depressed people in line for food. They had also seen the resilience of many, who, although they had nothing, would still be the backbone of this country, the country they all called their own.

Martie had spoken words of humility, how she was tired of this short and false life and being given everything they needed. They rode the roller coaster of good fortune for long enough, and it was time to get off and lead as normal a life as the U.S. offered for the future. She wanted to go and help her father, look after their new family, take back the farm, and go back to what “normal” had to offer.

Preston agreed to most of the ideas Martie proposed. He always underestimated the female sex on logical thinking.

To men, the thrill of action and adventure took priority over much of life. As long as a man had action, a cold beer, and a beautiful woman by his side, life was good.

Preston and most of his friends, other than Will and Maggie Smart, were in the top one percent in wealth in the country, before all this happened. Now all the wealth and security was gone, and money meant nothing. There was no communication with others around the country, or the rest of the world, and they hadn’t seen the real death and destruction this world-changing event had affected.

They hadn’t seen small innocent children dying of starvation, or mothers and daughters dying of exposure to the elements, or the millions of stories of horrible suffering in the northern and southern cities, around the country and the rest of planet earth. They had seen only the excitement of the action and adventure most people only dream about, and slowly a sense of guilt crept into his thoughts. He began to see the big picture for the first time since New Year’s Eve.

It was time they returned to reality; let the soldiers do their job and the civilians go home to start a new life in this new country. The battles would end; they had already won the major ones, and now it was the time for family unity: help thy neighbor and go forward.

“OK,” he said after spending most of the night lying awake and thinking. “Martie, let’s go home,” Preston stated to his wife. “We have new kids to look after, crops to grow, and a new life to start. You are right, let’s go home.”

Preston told Carlos over breakfast an hour later. “Carlos, you do what you want, but Martie and I are going to ask permission from the general to go home, back to North Carolina.”

“Funny, replied Carlos. “Sally and I spoke along the same lines late yesterday. I’m sure it is a female ploy, but Sally has lost interest in military flying, and we all have a life to rebuild. I have work to do in the U.S. with the satellites, and with my father as president in Colombia, Sally doesn’t want to be on the wrong end of a Chinese missile and I agree. We each flew a 747 for an hour and reached heaven. I don’t want to fly one again. Will and Maggie are already back in California doing their thing, and I think the girls are right. Let the soldiers finish this fight. I’m getting interested in seeing if we could fly over to Europe. Preston, do you want to hear about my latest idea?” Preston nodded. “Once the work is done getting the satellites aligned, I was thinking of asking the president if we could start a sort of International information gathering mission, to see what is happening in Europe and other parts of the world, and see if we, the United States, can aid other nations in engineering and electronics rebuilding. That sounds like a lot more interesting than getting a missile up my undercarriage. What do you think?”

Preston thought this over for a minute. Normally he was the idea man, but this one sounded like a lot of flying and since no information at all had reached American shores from Europe, apart from bits here and there from returning soldiers, maybe this idea could be a future path. He had heard that Europe was far worse off in electronics than the U.S., but more people had survived. The police forces had managed to control the violence more effectively than in the U.S. where there were guns and shooting everywhere; further, with Michael Roebels, his new father-in-law, heading the U.S. reconstruction program, maybe there was merit to Carlos’ idea. Plus it was time, the first time, for Preston and Martie Strong to actually travel, and see the rest of the world. They had lived this false life for eight months now, and it was time for a new life.

With the general’s permission, they flew out several hours later with Sally catching a ride in a C-130 heading to Edwards to pick up her Pilatus, left there weeks ago. First, she wanted fly down to Flagstaff and visit her parents. Carlos wanted to head to Bogotá, but would wait for Sally in California at
The Cube
.

Major Wong and the Seals

The large roof hangar lights came on, first with a low dim light which made the interior of the hangar eerie.

It took a minute for the lights to brighten up and slowly the small lines of incoming light from outside disappeared as the hangar inside turned into daylight.

Wong stayed in one place and quickly looked around. The two heads of the 55-foot long Shaheen II rockets stood thirty feet or so out of their respective concrete tubes in the ground. He moved to a thick concrete wall built near the corner of the aircraft hangar, nearly wide enough and high enough to get a 747 inside. There was a protective curved, concrete wall in the corner of the hangar, and behind that sat several more jeeps, artillery pieces and a fourth small amphibious-looking Chinese tank, about twenty tons in weight .

As with the others, the tank was light enough to be carried in the Chinese transporter.

Behind the wall and through an armored glass door he saw a modern missile control center with the latest computers, screens, switches and flight control knobs. It appeared to be state of the art, and was inactive; he tried the door; it was unlocked. Inside he quickly studied the instruments, mostly radar and GPS guidance electronics. He noticed one screen that looked different. It looked like a manual, or radio-operated guidance system and he slowly put two and two together. Both of the Gulfstream Vs had similar equipment in place of parts that had been removed to make room, and this control center could be operated from the cockpit of the jet.

“
Of course! They have satellite phone communications, they could also use the satellite phone digital keypads,”
Wong thought to himself. A person in the Gulfstream could control the direction of this missile by using the keypad of a satellite phone. It wasn’t his area of expertise, but he would bet that both aircraft would have, maybe two of these systems; one for each missile. These missiles might not need GPS. They could be manually controlled and aimed from anywhere in the world, by typing in coordinates or compass directions for radio frequency guidance.

He needed to get back to report, so he quickly counted sixty vehicles stationed inside the hangar, around the two phallic symbols of destruction, and headed down the stairs.

“I think it is a small animal getting in there, like a large rat, or something which has really smelly urine, maybe a muskrat or even a skunk. I’m going to get it cleaned up tonight, tomorrow, or the next day,” Colonel Wong stated to Corporal Bo handing in his ID. “Can you call a jeep for me? I need some fresh air to clear the stink from my nostrils?”

“Yes, Sir,” replied Bo picking up the phone. “The smell must be real bad for the general to complain. He hardly ever goes in there anymore.” A jeep was called and the same lieutenant who had driven him across the airfield a couple of hours earlier drove up to the door.

“I want to clear my head. The smell is so bad in Hangar Three that I want some real fresh air. Lieutenant, drive me down to the old dirt runway south of the missile jeep out there. I need to walk and smell sea air, not the filth of that place.”

“Remind me not to get promoted to colonel, so I never need to go in there,” laughed the man as he drove off to the closest gate, the same gate Wong had walked in through.

“Going out again, Colonel?” inquired the same two guards at the gate. “It is not often that we let anybody in and out. Do you have any orders from the camp commander?”

“No, not today, Sergeant. The aircraft could be flying out later today or early tomorrow, my head hurts from the stink in Hangar Three, and I thought to check on the outside jeeps and men after getting some fresh sea air,” he replied trying to look as sick as possible. “If you don’t let me out I could be sick all over your shiny boots, so open the damn gate!”

The poor sergeant wasn’t going to go further on this topic and made a signal for the second soldier to open one gate. Who was he to cause more trouble than necessary?

“You sure you don’t want me to stay and drive you back?” asked the lieutenant once they had driven through the old runway and further along to the beach.

“No, a good walk will clear my head and I can surprise the men in the jeeps by walking up from the south. It is a good opportunity to see how vigilant they are. Lieutenant, go back and if anybody asks where I am, tell them I went for a walk and will be back in an hour or two. General Lee might want a report on Hangar Three.”

Major Wong let the sea air fill his lungs as the jeep drove off. He was surprised how many Seals had disappeared into the small, old buildings at the dirt runway, and returned to the buildings once the jeep had disappeared to see if anybody was still there.

* * *

Three hours after the Mustangs left, General Patterson held a meeting. He was sad to see his friends head out, but in a way he was thankful. Now he could be a soldier and run a soldier’s war. He still needed Carlos’ brain though, and with his phone, and in front of the meeting, he called Carlos, now cruising over Vancouver. He described to Carlos the information that had come through an hour earlier on Charlie Meyers’ phone from Major Wong.