Chapter 6: Freedom is Not Free

(June 29 — Day 38)

Once the bio-chemical agent had run its course, Chinese, Venezuelan and Mexican forces came across the southern border of the US two hundred and thirty thousand strong, consolidating a hold on the southwestern US. The four groups were now concentrated in the southern parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. They found out early in the war that various small Militia groups had gone into underground bunker areas and caves and survived IT. Thus when they moved in Company strength, the Militia hidden in the hills along their route conducted guerrilla warfare, ambushing and cutting down the invaders. They learned to stay clear of the Indian Reservations too.

General Gutierrez's 1^st and 2^nd Mexican Army's objective was to move east toward Galveston or New Orleans from Laredo and Del Rio, and consolidate a hold on San Antonio with the Mexican-American force of Raul Gomez. There he planned to acquire supplies and equipment from the several military bases, along with aircraft to be used both offensively, and as transports to move his armies. He could then focus on his real goal of Houston.

From Houston he would send the 2^nd Army east to open the port of New Orleans, so that the Chinese and Venezuelan invasion force in troop transport submarines, and freighters, could land along with the surface transports that waited 200 miles off the coast of Chile, in the South Pacific, carrying the second wave of troops and supplies. Ten nuclear missiles in the Canal Zone had vaporized Colonel Tong 1^st Red Army's 1st Supply Group during the initial retaliatory response.

Panama would henceforth be the name of a strait fifteen miles wide connecting the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea. General Alfonso Ramos' Mexican force, the 3^rd Army, began its march to Albuquerque on the 26^th, after licking its wounds at Las Cruces following a fierce battle near Fort Bliss, west of El Paso Texas with the remaining Army forces based there, scattering survivors into the desert. Now bolstered by nine thousand new troops and fifteen tanks and six helicopters his objective was to take Albuquerque and turn east to Amarillo to capture the plant there reputed to produce nuclear weapons.

Everywhere General Gutierrez's 1^st and 2^nd Army, and General Ramos' 3^rd Army went they flew the flag of Aztlan prominently over the reclaimed lands lost in the Mexican War. Along the way, they found printed flyers in English only, that read,

"American Survivors:
Regroup in Abilene, Texas.
Further instructions there,
God Bless the USA!"

This presented a new strategy as they would simply avoid Abilene and later lay siege to it once the several hundred thousand Chinese, and Venezuelan troops came ashore in New Orleans. The Mexican Army still lost between twenty and thirty troops each day to snipers roadside bombs, (a tactic borrowed from the terrorists in Iraq) and the oppressing heat of summer. After they had taken Albuquerque, where Gen Ramos set up his new headquarters, and proclaimed it the capitol for the nation of Aztlan, they would advance in late evening and at night in the summer.

Scavenging through the city, they found enough air-conditioned vehicles to move the men east to Texas. This plan was also conveyed to Gen Gutierrez, now at Laredo, who was not finding nearly as many operable vehicles. He now regretted the tactics used on El Paso and Fort Bliss; the few survivors had rigged explosives to deny the use of any weapons or equipment to the enemy. His overwhelming display of might in rolling over the fifty two women and nine men defending Fort Bliss allowed them time to set off the explosives, not only denying him the equipment, but causing his army over 2200 casualties.

If he had allowed Capt Ramon Alejandro to use his rifle company as snipers and use the night vision goggles to take them out in unison, he might have succeeded, but once they knew they were under attack, the plan of last resort went into effect. Gutierrez wanted the enemy to surrender when faced with a vastly overwhelming force. That way they could be tortured into telling how each weapons system worked. Now, what food and equipment he could confiscate was left in the city.

As the natives from New Mexico and El Paso fell back into Texas, they burned everything that could be used by the invaders, especially airplanes. One group, from the Mescalero Apache Reservation with over three hundred and sixty survivors, had made arrangements for forty Humvees, and two UH-1 Huey helicopters, along with a host of other small weapons from Capt Johnny Gallegos at Kirtland Air Force Base as they were ferrying the last six F-16C's to Dyess AFB in Texas.

Capt Gallegos was a member of the tribe and assured the others that the Apache wanted only to defend their native land and claim it back. They swore an alliance against the Mexican invaders, and utilized the men from the tribe to help move the equipment they would use in harassment attacks. Two of the older men had flown Huey helicopters in Vietnam, and would be the pilots of the UH-1's. Gallegos' F-16 was to be used as a reconnaissance plane for the Apaches, until he had a rough landing with it along Highway 70 on the reservation, hitting a pothole in the road.

For three days the Jicarilla, and White Mountain Apaches also were given what materiel they could fight with to fight from the north from Kirtland before it too was booby-trapped and evacuated. Gen Ramos was in for a miserable time during his stay in Albuquerque. He arrived in the city on the 27^th but attributed the sniping raids on local gangs. At the air base, his scavengers found nothing of use save two buses, and an RV converted into a command center, but with the communications equipment removed.

It was painted in desert camouflage, and Gen Ramos decided that was what he needed rather than the SUV he traveled in from El Paso. He had his men spend two days equipping the RV so it could be his mobile headquarters. Amidst the raids, Ramos sent two companies and a helicopter after the raiders on the morning of the 28^th. When they did not return by evening, he sent four companies and two helicopters to find them.

Nine men returned late that night, saying that Indians ambushed them. Ramos scoffed, and commented how they probably got lost in the mountains. Indians didn't have the weaponry to take down helicopters and defeat almost 600 regular army troops. The general concluded they must be regular US Army troops and surrounded the city to keep them out.

His assault on Amarillo was about to begin. He had cars, trucks, vans, buses and SUV's for transporting his men, and he didn't wish to risk losing any more until he had captured the nuclear weapons plant. Then he would come back and exact his revenge on the raiders. His men worked feverishly at the airport to get as many airliners operational as they could. Civilian airliners were to figure prominently in the conquest of Aztlan.

(Day 39, June 30, Laredo, Texas)

Gutierrez was unable to get his hands on even six operable airliners in Laredo he could use to ferry his men to Houston. New Orleans was a second objective, at least to Gutierrez, as he wished to avenge the defeat of his great-great-great grandfather, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at the hands of the city's namesake, Sam Houston in 1836. Col Gomez assured him that his men held dozens of flyable Airliners at the San Antonio International Airport, but lacked the pilots to fly to Laredo to come for his troops. On the morning of June 30, the 1^st and 2^nd Mexican Army began their move to occupy the Alamo City and Corpus Christi.

While controlling Houston and Galveston would give the Chinese their port, he agreed to give them New Orleans. Once Texas was conquered, per the pre-war treaty, he would become El Presidente Esteban Lopez Gutierrez, of the new Republic of Aztlan. New Orleans would be a simple conquest after the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina, and the Chinese had enough good sense not to try to rebuild the city, that would again be destroyed by a future hurricane, only the port. That gave them access to the Mississippi River and the heart of America.

(Day 39, June 30, Mexicali, Mexico — across the border form California.)

Colonel Tong promoted himself to General Tong, and with 120,000 troops, 400 tanks, 24 helicopter gunships, and twelve fighter bombers, he began his advance once more on California. The heat in the desert was killing his men. Coming ashore at Mazatlan, and to a lesser extent Puerto Penasco, he finally had all of his troops off the ships and out of harm's way before the Reagan or Abe Lincoln returned with more air strikes.

It would take too much time to clear and repair the ports of Long Beach and San Diego, and after the last of the Pacific Fleet was dealt with, there would be time for that. He had received intelligence from Anchorage that the Reagan Battle Group had been in Cook Inlet just days before, and that they were amassing air and sea assets in Alaska beyond what the prewar levels were. Alaska was to be dealt with after the Siberian oil fields were in Chinese hands.

(Asia)

Every time the forces that had chased the surviving Russians from the Kamchatka Peninsula tried to move, the pesky aircraft from a base near Anadyr would pummel them, and drive them back. Many of the submarine landing force that was to be used on capturing the Alaska Pipeline was still tied down in Siberia. Worse yet for General Chung, were the Russian hunter subs patrolling the area, that had sunk twenty-nine of the troop carrier subs, preventing reinforcements.

Fourteen million men and their equipment lay trapped in underground tunnels under what once was Mainland China. Bunker busting nukes had destroyed most of the reinforced egress routes, and the less reinforced ones were welded or warped shut beneath the still molten surface. Temperatures exceeding 150 degrees were common in many parts of the Chinese underground system, and in others, the men baked at over 400 degrees like a Thanksgiving turkey!

Two tunnel Boring machines had already been swallowed up by molten lava, and only three more remained, working diligently and desperately towards the north into Siberia. Desperately, because most of the reserve food supply had been destroyed or otherwise compromised, and the one closest to Russia would have to punch through the surface soon, so that the troops would be able to exit the underground bunker system before starvation took them.

Neither Gen Tong nor Chung realistically expected reinforcements beyond what was already ashore. The Task Force off Chile was to go through what was now the Panama Strait and go ashore in New Orleans, after the Venezuelan forces under Gen Carlos Menendez linked up with Gen Gutierrez. His twenty-seven transports and freighters lurked behind the island of Barbados, once more under Cuban control.

Aboard the flagship Beijing, the remainder of the Chinese Navy protected Admiral Lin Huang, but there was no sense leaving his ships to be caught in the Caribbean. Huang discussed with his Generals simply taking his men ashore at Puerto Ventanas, Chile. That would be a move unexpected by the Chinese Fleet, and it would give them a whole continent to share with Venezuela and Cuba.

Meanwhile Gen Tong mobilized his forces, moving at night towards Los Angeles, and San Francisco with plans to push west and open up a West Coast Port. There were factories, and fertile farming valleys in California, and if they could be taken over, along with at least one military base, or at least a major airport then they would devise a means of delivering the hundreds anti-ship missiles carried in the trucks in the two caravans heading into California from Yuma, and Mexicali.

(Day 38 — June 29, Big Bear City, California, 6:30 a.m.)

Chris Davis had just buried his father-in-law two days earlier, and as the food supply ran out, he finally convinced his wife Rachel to take their three-year old son Cory, and Rachel's friend Sandy and leave California. The surviving populace consisted of looting Mexican gangs, a large black gang consolidated in the Los Angeles area, and radical Muslim gangs backed by Chinese gangs. They were all allied against the remaining "White Power Structure" and had killed almost everyone not in their circle of allied groups, including the surviving elders of their own race. Now they fanned out into Orange and San Bernardino Counties as the poorer gang members had moved into several of the finer homes in the area.

The Davis family had been hiding out in the San Bernardino Mountains at Rachel's dad's vacation cabin. Chris made one last run to the house for that "What am I forgetting?" inspection, and made sure everyone was buckled into the Chevy Tahoe SUV. Sandy sat in the back seat with young Cory and Chris' pump shotgun loaded with buckshot.

Chris had been a computer tech before the war, and at his in-laws' cabin he had stored one of his older units in an underground shelter. His father in Texas had given him his copy of the 2002 Flight Simulator and Chris had used it to take a crash course over the last three weeks to where he felt that he was ready to fly his father-in-law's Mooney Bravo, parked at the local airport, so he could try and find his family in East Texas. Unlike another pilot by necessity in the early part of the story, Chris at least had some hands-on experience with the fast Mooney, a low wing, high performance, single engine plane that seats four people.

Doing the pre-flight while his wife impatiently urged him to hurry up was causing Chris even more stress. Much of the stress was caused by the presence of her friend Sandy, whom she knew had a crush on Chris. Yet, Sandy had been a good family friend, and they couldn't leave her behind. Finally at 6:50 Chris finished the checklist, and taxied onto Runway 8 to take off.

As he climbed to 15,500 feet he headed at 010 degrees to avoid over flying the Twenty-nine Palms Range airspace, until he could safely pass north of it before resuming his easterly course heading of 073 degrees. Cory loved to fly in his grandpa's airplane and thought it was a great adventure. Rachel was upset on several counts besides the loss of her family and leaving California, where she grew up.

First, there was her girlfriend Sandy, whom she was now becoming jealous of. Chris had no desires for Sandy, but was aware that the 24-year-old thought he was cute. The night before embarking on the journey, Sandy suggested they could go to Utah, and be Mormons so Chris could have two wives. She was teasing, but Rachel and Chris didn't find it funny. Rachel had no sense of humor about things like that, and Chris knew the argument that awaited him because of Sandy's teasing.

They spoke very little during the flight other than for Rachel to insist that Chris land so she could go to the bathroom. They had discussed that for days before the flight and would use plastic urinal pitchers, or a plastic tub with a lid, and coffee cans for that purpose. Sandy didn't make an issue of it, and little Cory thought it was all the rage going tinkle in the bottle.

Rachel on the other hand was angered and humiliated that Chris made her use the pitcher, and scared everyone to death when she tried to open the door while in flight over Arizona to throw it out. Sandy and Chris screamed out "NO!" Rachel stopped, but not before cracking the door and depressurizing the cabin. Maps and papers swirled about the cabin and were sucked out the door.

Chris immediately put the plane in a dive, screaming down below 10,000 feet before leveling off again at 9500 feet. Rachel then went into sobbing fits as she realized she could have killed them. After everyone's ears equalized with the inner and outer air pressure, and the oxygen level safe, he climbed back to 11,500 and continued east. Chris still had the Rockies in New Mexico to get over.

Rachel squeaked, "I am sorry. I forgot about it doing that. Daddy didn't fly that high."

Chris noticed there was no cross-feed on the fuel tank switch, so he switched from the left to the right fuel tank, re-trimmed the plane and reset the autopilot. He did carry 30 gallons of extra fuel in lieu of baggage. Thus everyone only had three changes of clothes with them in the cabin and some granola bars.

West of Gallup, New Mexico, Chris landed the plane on an open stretch of Interstate 40. There he put the fuel into the tanks, and did a walk-around inspection. The potty pitchers were poured out, and everyone took turns relieving themselves in the shade of the airplane. That business done, Chris started the plane again, and took off once again. Chris tried to avoid large cities, staying well away from Phoenix and Flagstaff, now he would go wide of Albuquerque on the north. Beyond that city, he decided to follow the Interstate to Texas, as the aeronautical chart was one of the casualties of Rachel's tantrum.

West of Tucumcari, Sandy spotted a long line of cars, trucks and buses, bumper-to-bumper, on the Interstate moving towards Texas. This stuck out, because between there and California, there were only scattered cars on the side of the highway. This group looked to stretch all the way back to Santa Rosa. Suddenly the radio squawked at him for the first time all day... in Spanish!

Chris didn't understand it beyond the "Alto! Alto!" but Sandy said they demanded he turn and land or he would be shot down. Chris immediately increased his power and climbed to the northeast. On the ground in Tucumcari, a Mi-24 Soviet made helicopter was taking on fuel before scouting ahead. The Capitan with the convoy called the helicopter on the radio, whose pilots were in the terminal looking around at that time. By the time they got the message, Chris was already at 17,000 feet headed for Dalhart, Texas following US Highway 54.

Chris turned off the radio, and after he crossed into the Texas Panhandle dropped to 5500 feet to land. He had to get fuel now and was running on his 45-minute reserve. Ahead he spotted the Dalhart Airport. As he lined up on his landing approach, he spotted a military C-17 parked there and saw soldiers milling about. As he landed and taxied to the terminal, a pickup with a woman in battle fatigues drove past him and pulled in front of him. After all day in the air, the group was ready to find a hotel.