The Battle for Houston...The Aftermath Read Online Free PDF

zones.”
    Preston, upon hearing the news for the first time, was shocked. His farm and airfield were within the Richmond range.
    “Again, we have won the right to survive and again we will do so,” continued the general. “The last military base of Zedong Electronics is ours, but many of us will stay to clean up the spoils of war for our country which desperately needs them. Once we are done, all enemy soldiers below the rank of captain will be released and allowed to go home. By the time the thousands of Chinese soldiers we sent on leave return, I don’t want one item of value to be at either of these bases. We will not destroy any living quarters, and we will leave a small amount of food for the returning soldiers, but that is all. Another 600 of you Marines will head back to the United States tomorrow with the remaining C-130s. We will keep a Marine commander and 300 men here in case we come up against hostiles. All our Air Force personnel will stay, except the C-130 crews flying our Marines home with three of our Gunships. The rest of us will pack up and load everything we can and get it home to start our country’s machines again. We will fly all of the captured officers to Japan. When we leave here they will be returned and freed. Thank you gentlemen for a job well done!” and the general applauded his troops.
    “That means all our guys back at my airfield would be toast by now,” stated Preston having a drink in the Officer’s Mess of the enemy base with General Patterson, Mo Wang, and Major Wong. Everyone nodded agreeing with him.
    “I knew the Chairman was up to something bad,” added Mo. “He was so secret about this base and especially about that second one. Even I was never allowed to visit that top-secret base. All I was allowed to do here was to track stores in and out, train men, and visit the arms company in Harbin from time to time.”
    “Is that the company that produced the helicopters?” asked General Patterson.
    “They completed the final assembly of several of Zedong’s military weapons,” he replied.
    “A large company?” Major Wong asked.
    “Yes, it has a hangar at the city airfield where you first landed your aircraft in Harbin,” Mo Wang replied, “and a large factory about a mile north of the airport. It is a big company and the factory grounds are about half the size of this airfield.”
    “I think a visit is in order,” suggested the general. “I will schedule it for late tomorrow afternoon. In the morning I want to check all the underground corridors for any areas we have missed, and then get those twelve remaining helicopters over here and have the men dismantle their rotors for shipping. I also want to find every missile around here, air-to-ground and ground-to-air.
    They had a sort of celebration that night. There wasn’t much good alcohol around Mo showed them how to drink the local Harbin rice wine, heated. To Preston even a simple cold Yuengling tasted better than this stuff.
    After an early 04:00 breakfast the next morning, the twelve troop carriers and the general in his Chinese jeep headed over to the other base. Six American and six guarded Chinese pilots were to fly the Z-10 helicopters back to the airfield. Preston and Mo Wang went along to look at this secret missile. Mo did not believe that his ex-Chairman had such destructive weapons.
    The dead had been removed and buried in a freshly-dug, nine-foot deep trench a hundred yards long. The Marines had completed the grizzly task within 24 hours, and nothing more than a long, wide pile of dirt showed where the remains of the defending base soldiers rested.
    A temporary base camp had been set up on the green parade square, and the general was saluted from all angles as he drove in. He checked the walls and found squads of men on guard around the base.
    The first visit was to the Marine officer who he had ordered to protect the missile silos at all costs. Preston and Mo went with him. In the rooms around the