Free The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath by T. I. Wade Page A

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,