The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath by T. I. Wade

Base, Dyess. The pilot’s instructions were then to fly east over Interstate 10 towards Houston.
    The third spotter pilot stated that he was 100 miles north of Dallas and was to head down Instate 35 over Waco and then to circle over Austin to see if he could see any movement anywhere. So far none of the aircraft had seen any movement.
    * * *
     
    Manuel Calderón had spoken with Carlos Sanchez the previous night and was happy to learn that a new cartel out of North Texas, the Santana Cartel of 15,000 men, had been found by Carlos just outside Corpus Christi and had happily joined the army. The Santana Cartel knew of and had radio contact with another Mexican Cartel which was heading south from Lubbock, Texas and were currently 50 miles north of Houston traveling south on I-45. They had another 5,000 men.
    Carlos Sanchez also had good news which explained why he had taken longer to get to the intersection. He found a large storage warehouse on the Naval Air Station in Corpus Christi he had attacked. There had been only 200 men at this base.
    His men had destroyed all the aircraft they found there, dozens of useless pieces of metal. In one of the warehouses was a mountain of army rations. This base looked like it had not been visited for a couple of months by any outsiders as the American soldiers were unshaven and dirty. The only thing they had apart from a couple of operational vehicles and a jeep was this mountain of food. He had stacked the two troop transporters full, and he suggested that they send a dozen trucks back immediately to fill them with MRE rations.
    The Cartel members couldn’t keep count of all the men and now with so many men, they would be like locusts on the ground; they would need to find food supplies in large quantities. Hopefully Houston had some sort of food supplies and only military installations seemed to have ample food stocks.
    Manuel agreed with Carlos Sanchez and looked at his map. There were smaller roads direct from Houston to Corpus Christi and if he had a problem, he could send out trucks at night which could return the next night.
    Manuel estimated that now he had well over 190,000 men with still more joining every day. He had ordered his commanders to check on food stocks throughout the night and several hours later he was given vague amounts that he and his men had enough for less than a week.
    He ordered hundreds of men out of dozens of troop transporters and told them to walk. They were only 30 miles from the outskirts of the massive city of Houston and once he was in there, he knew that he would have better cover from future air attacks, if any came.
    He asked Carlos Sanchez for one of his commanders and told him and the thirty drivers of the now empty trucks to immediately head south on the smaller roads, fill the trucks with food and return to Houston. The trucks headed southwards with a fuel tanker, two of the valuable missile launchers and fifty heavily armed men to help load the food.
    An hour later he was still discussing his “Invasion USA” plan with Carlos Sanchez when they heard the drone of a small aircraft high in the sky coming from the west, behind them. The enemy aircraft would have seen the rear armies by now, and it was also the first time that he had seen or heard a small aircraft in the U.S. This one was certainly not a fighter aircraft, and his three armies began to move eastwards again as he knew that they would now be monitored by the U.S. Air Force. He hoped the pilot didn’t see his trucks traveling south, now at least forty miles away heading towards the food.

Chapter 4
     
    We have found the bad guys, Sir!
     
    “General Patterson, Sir! We have communication from the second spotter plane,” stated a radio operator entering the briefing room an hour later, and all eyes turned to the woman. “The pilot has spotted a large number of people heading eastwards along Interstate 10 towards Houston. They are around 40 miles from the outskirts of the