Trial By Fire (13 page)

Since there was no way of knowing what helicopters and helicopter crews would be available on the day of the raid, Guajardo, who was not a pilot, decided to keep them out of the mission planning. To protect the security of the operation, Guajardo made it a habit to use different helicopter crews. An Air Force colonel on the council advised Guajardo to include the pilots in the rehearsals, but was rebuffed for his efforts. “This is,” Guajardo told him, “a ground operation. All the helicopters are needed for is transportation. And for that, all the pilots need to be given is a course, speed, and destination.” Unstated was Guajardo’s dislike of aviators, a breed he considered to be overpaid and underworked. So the pilots, like many other participants, would learn of their role at the last minute.

With the two western and two center towers seized or under attack, the door to direct insertion of the main force into the compound itself was open. The open spaces needed to grow the beautiful gardens of Chinampas, which is the name given ancient Aztec floating gardens, provided ample space for helicopters to land within the walls of the fortress. Two assault groups, one coming in from the north and one from the south, would use these open spaces as landing zones.

The assault group coming down from the north, designated Group M

for its staging area near Monterrey, was commanded by Major Antonio Caso, Guajardo’s deputy commander for this operation. Consisting of two Bell 205 helicopters and twenty-four infantrymen, Group M would land in the northern half of the garden, seize the northern side of the main house, and engage the barracks with automatic rifle, machine gun, and recoilless rifle fire.

Converging on Chinampas from Distrito Federal in the south was Group D. It consisted of twenty-four men transported in two Bell 205A helicopters, nicknamed Hueys by the American military. Guajardo’s corn mand group, in a Bell 206 like those used by the engineers, would follow Group D into Chinampas. Consisting of himself, two radiomen, and two riflemen to be used as runners as needed, Guajardo would move along with Group D once on the ground. Landing in the southern half of the garden, this group would seize the southern half of the main house and, from there, engage any of Alamdn’s men holed up in the stable or garage.

So as to prevent confusion, the east-west walk in the garden served as a boundary to separate the landing zones and areas of responsibility for groups M and D.

A fourth assault group, Group N, consisting of 24 infantrymen commanded by a lieutenant, would approach from the east. Staging out of Nuevo Dolores, hence its designation “N,” this group would not enter Chinampas. Its mission, instead, was to seize the airfield east of Chinampas, clear all buildings there, and capture, or if that was not possible, disable all aircraft on the field. Once this was completed, Group N was to deploy itself on either side of the footbridge, establishing fields of fire so as to prevent anyone from escaping from Chinampas. Though there was concern over the use of so junior an officer to command one of the assault groups, Guajardo dismissed it. The lieutenant, a graduate of the Mexican Military Academy at Chapultepec, was highly recommended by Colonel Molina.

If all went well, and all groups secured their objectives, any occupants of Chinampas or its garrison surviving the initial assault would be disorganized, perhaps leaderless, and trapped in the buildings along the eastern wall within ten minutes, maybe less. After a brief pause to regroup and assess the situation, Guajardo intended to begin a slow, methodical clearing operation to eliminate any remaining resistance.

Covered by suppressive fire provided by Group M from the main house and Group Z’s teams in towers 2 and 5, Guajardo would lead Group D, reinforced by engineers from teams 1 and 6, against the garage.

By blowing a hole in the east side of tower 5 from the inside, Guajardo’s force would gain access to the narrow gap that separated tower 5

and the garage. The engineers, covered by fire from every weapon that could be brought to bear, would cross that gap, blow a hole into the garage, and clear the way for Guajardo and Group D. Once inside the garage, Group D, assisted by the engineers when necessary, would be free to clear the garage, tower 4, and the stable room by room. With the stable cleared, if the garrison was still resisting from the barracks, Group D and the accompanying engineers would cross over from the stable into the barracks and tower 3 using the same techniques that had been used to gain access to the garage from tower 5.

Few, however, including Guajardo, thought that it would go that far.

Unable to escape, the garrison’s occupants would be faced with the choice of surrendering or dying. As these men were either mercenaries or criminals motivated by money alone, once the hopelessness of their situation became obvious to them, Guajardo expected their will to stand and fight to collapse and resistance to cease. Guajardo hoped to forestall such an event for as long as possible. From the very beginning, his goal was nothing less than total eradication of Chinampas and all who lived and worked within its walls. Once he started, Guajardo had no intention of stopping.

Such thoughts, however, were clouded by apprehension as Guajardo watched the men of Group D complete their final preparation. Like an anxious groom, he felt second thoughts begin to creep into his tired mind.

The nervous flipping through maps, orders, and diagrams scattered before him was pointless. He knew every word, every detail on every map.

There was nothing more to do, nothing left to say. After two days of ceaseless activity that had begun the day before the coup and had taken him from one end of Mexico to another, not to mention months of planning, plotting, and preparation, Guajardo found himself with nothing to do but wait for lift-off. What he should have done was sleep. Yet he could not, despite the fact that he had less than four hours’ sleep in the last forty-eight, all of it while being flown from one place to another, and never for more than an hour at a time.

Instead, Guajardo pushed himself away from the table, stood, and stretched, then began to pace. First he circled the small table where he had been seated. Tiring of that, he walked over to the door of the hangar and looked outside, checking his watch before he did so and after. After standing there for a few minutes, he walked back to the table and began to circle it again, absentmindedly.

In his head, thoughts rattled about, thoughts, apprehensions, and fears.

It was only natural, as Clausewitz once wrote, for a commander to become uneasy with his plan when the moment of execution drew near.

After all, the attack on Chinampas was no longer a theoretical drill. Men, weapons, and aircraft were, at that moment, in the final process of staging for the attack. The 124 soldiers and pilots participating in the operation were real human beings with all their frailties, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses.

Each man, officer,
NCO
, and enlisted, understood what was expected of him. The question that kept cropping up was, Could they do it?

For all the planning, for all the security, there was much that was against them. As part of the security plan, the four groups had never worked together. In fact, until a few hours ago, the commanders of each of the groups not only had not known what their true objective was, they had not even known that the other groups participating in the attack existed. Throughout the entire preparatory phase, each group had drilled and rehearsed on its own, all, like the engineers, believing they were training for an entirely different mission. The first time the entire force, with the pilots added in, would be brought together was within the walls of Chinampas itself.

Few commanders ever created such a potentially deadly self-imposed handicap. Even Colonel Molina had not taken Guajardo’s plan seriously when he first presented it to the Council of 13. His efforts to convince Molina and the others that his plan was the only solution often reminded Guajardo of his grandfather’s story of a man trying to sell a blind, three legged mule that had gone lame. Yet through sheer stubbornness and persistence, the other members of the council had finally allowed Guajardo to have his way.

,

Looking down at his watch for the second time in less than three minutes, Guajardo saw it wasn’t even four o’clock. There was still better than half an hour to go before lift-off. The group he was traveling with, Group D, having the farthest to travel, would be the first airborne. They needed to be skids up at 0424 hours in order to cover the 483 kilometers and arrive at Chinampas at 0700 hours, H-Hour. Group Z, perhaps the most important of the four, with 362 kilometers to travel, was scheduled to leave at 0515, followed quickly by Group M, leaving Monterrey at 0536. Group N, nearest to Chinampas and with only 121 kilometers to cover, would not leave Nuevo Dolores until 0621, thirty-nine minutes before the engineers went in.

Even this thought gave Guajardo little comfort. Though he was the commander of the raid, he had no way of knowing if the other groups were ready or, when the time came, if they made it off on time. Another feature of the security plan imposed total radio listening silence on all groups until Group Z actually opened fire on the guard towers. The commanders of the other groups could not even contact Guajardo by phone if they needed to, for none of them, except Major Caso, knew where everyone was staging and launching from.

That thought triggered another, causing Guajardo to automatically begin to recite, in his mind, a litany of options and responses he had generated, in case one or more of the groups failed to arrive or reach their initial objective. This process, however, was cut short by the sound of helicopter blades beating their way through the still predawn darkness.

Also hearing the approaching helicopters, the platoon leader turned to his senior
NCO
and told him to have the men prepare for embarkation.

With a series of short, crisp orders, the sergeant set the men in motion.

For Guajardo, and the men who would make his quest a reality, the waiting was over.

Fort Hood, Texas

0615 hours, 30 June

It was easy to tell it was Friday morning. The entire 16th Armored Division, by battalions and separate companies, was out doing their morning run in formation. For a two-mile stretch, from Cedar Creek Road in the west to Hood Avenue in the east, massed ranks of soldiers ran along Maintenance Row. In the lead, their unit commanders and regimental colors and guidons set the pace. On the flanks, sergeants counted cadence and made corrections as tired soldiers wavered and slowed, causing disruption and disorder of the ranks and files. In the rear of each formation, other sergeants ran, encouraging those who were lagging or had fallen out. The words used to encourage or threaten the offending soldiers varied, depending upon the soldier or the personality of the sergeant.

Those shouts and threats mixed and mingled with the cadence and the commands of officers and NCOs as well as with the panting, moaning, and griping of soldiers reaching their limits, real or imagined. The whole disjointed chorus echoed and reverberated off the buildings along the entire two-mile stretch of road, then drifted across the rolling ground into the distance to remind all those who heard that this was a military base.

From a side street, Captain Harold Cerro paused before entering the endless stream of running soldiers. The spectacle of soldiers training, whether it was on the range or simply doing PT, never failed to excite him. Cerro loved being a soldier and loved being with them doing, as his wife often referred to it, soldier things. That he happened to be where he was, watching the massed formations go by, was no accident. Cerro had learned early in his career that you could tell a lot about a unit by watching it during PT. Two units, passing to his front as he watched, provided him with a good idea of what the 16th Armored Division would be like.

The first unit to run past Cerro was an artillery unit. It was in the process of passing a slower-moving unit. There was no mistaking their vocation. The artillerymen, wearing Army-issue running shorts and red shirts decorated with yellow crossed cannons that symbolized their branch, looked like a unit. And they moved like a unit. To a man, they were in step, creating a strange muffled slapping noise as hundreds of pairs of sneakers hit the pavement in unison. In the front, their battalion commander, closely followed by the battalion colors, moved out with a purpose. Behind him came the companies, in solid formations of four men abreast and led by their young company commanders and company guidons. Each company was in step, every soldier gliding forward almost effortlessly as they repeated .the chants sung by their NCOs.

In stark contrast, the unit the artillerymen were passing showed little sign of either cohesion or pride. There was no guidon or flag to betray their branch of service or unit. No two soldiers were dressed alike. The shirts and running shorts they wore were a riot of colors and styles, ranging from the Army-issue brown T-shirt to shocking-orange designer sleeveless running shirts. From what Cerro could see, not only was no one in step, there appeared to be no effort on the part of the NCOs to get them in step. Nor was there anyone in the rear of the formation, a term Cerro loosely applied to the gaggle, to police up a line of stragglers that trailed behind. By ones and twos, the soldiers of the second unit were dropping out, unnoticed by their commander, who kept on running, oblivious to the disintegration of his unit. Rather than a unit, the second group was simply a collection of people moving in the same general direction.

Shaking his head in disgust, Cerro was about to move out when he saw an infantry battalion moving down the road. From the pace and the determined look of its commander’s face, Cerro had no doubt they had but one goal in mind, to pass the artillery battalion that had just gone by.

The soldiers of the infantry battalion, like the artillery unit, were outfitted in matching T-shirts and running shorts, their T-shirts embossed with their unit crest and motto. A history buff, Cerro recognized the regimental crest as that of the 13th Infantry, although he couldn’t place the battalion based on the motto, “Forty Rounds, Sir.”