Trial By Fire (25 page)

When Tinsworthy and the rest of the day shift had been greeted at 7:30

that morning with the news that Stevenson and the new man had still not checked in, no one was surprised. Someone recommended that before anyone got excited, they check with the Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma highway patrols. They were even betting money on why Stevenson wasn’t answering the radio. Half felt he was too embarrassed. The rest claimed that he was too far out of range. Still, when nothing was heard from Stevenson and his partner by nine o’clock in the morning, their supervisor had ordered all patrols to begin to converge on the area where Stevenson and Mikelsen should have been.

Tinsworthy was in the process of checking the high ground overlooking the Rio Grande when his partner spotted a light green and white Border Patrol four-by-four sitting on a knoll in the distance. Since they were the only ones in that area, they knew it had to be Stevenson’s.

Turning off the trail, Tinsworthy headed straight for the stationary vehicle while the new man tried unsuccessfully to raise Stevenson on the radio.

At a distance of one hundred meters, Tinsworthy suddenly slowed down. The new man looked at Tinsworthy, then at Stevenson’s vehicle, then at Tinsworthy again. Tinsworthy, both hands on the wheel, was staring intently at the other vehicle. The new man, not understanding why they had stopped, tried to figure out what Tinsworthy was staring at.

“What’s the matter?”

“Somethin’s not right here.” Stopping his vehicle fifty meters short of the stationary four-by-four, Tinsworthy took his hands off the wheel, unsnapped the strap of his holster with his right hand. He opened the door with his left and began to get out, all the while watching the vehicle on the knoll. “You stay here and cover me.”

The new man, spooked, looked back at the vehicle and the knoll, then to Tinsworthy. “Cover you? Cover you from what?”

Tinsworthy had no time to explain. How could you explain a feeling to a new man? How could you tell him that the cold chill down your back told you something was terribly wrong? Instead, he just repeated his instructions, never once taking his eyes off of the knoll. “You just do as I tell you. Cover me and be ready to call in for help.” Without waiting for a response, Tinsworthy began to inch his way up the knoll.

Despite the heat, Tinsworthy felt as if a cold hand had been placed on his back. With his right hand on the butt of his pistol, he slowly moved forward. Though he continued to face the stationary vehicle on the knoll, his eyes scanned to the left and right, watching for movement. Halfway up the knoll, he noticed that there was someone in the driver’s seat, his head bare and resting on the steering wheel as if he were asleep. Pausing, Tinsworthy took a long look at the vehicle’s driver, then looked about, turning until he could see his own vehicle and partner behind him. The new man, standing behind the passenger door of their vehicle, had the window down and the shotgun resting on the door. Tightening his grasp on his own pistol, Tinsworthy continued to advance.

At a distance of ten meters, he stopped when he saw a jagged line of bullet holes in the door. Drawing his revolver, he closed on the vehicle, holding his pistol with both hands pointed up and over his right shoulder.

He heard the sound of the flies before he saw them buzzing about and landing on the head of the man in the driver’s seat. When he reached the vehicle, he took a quick glance inside, then around the entire area. Seeing nothing that looked suspicious, Tinsworthy moved closer to examine the body draped over the steering wheel. It was Mikelsen. Tinsworthy reached into the cab, feeling Mikelsen’s neck for a pulse with his left hand while still keeping his pistol at the ready. Though the stench of blood exposed to the summer heat for hours and of human waste released when the bowel muscles lost tension told Tinsworthy that Mikelsen was dead, he still felt for a pulse. As he did so, he wondered why there appeared to be no blood, though he could smell it. It wasn’t until he finished trying to find a pulse and walked around to the passenger side that he saw it.

The passenger’s door was open. Seeing that the radio was on, Tins worthy reached in to grab the hand mike. As he did so, he examined Mikelsen’s body from that side. At his feet, down on the floor, Mikelsen’s cowboy boots were awash in his own blood. The seals of the door and the hump where the transmission was had caught Mikelsen’s blood as he had bled to death.

Drawing in a deep breath, Tinsworthy took the hand mike and called the base station, requesting backup and an ambulance. The dispatcher, taken aback by Tinsworthy’s request, paused before putting their supervisor on. In a solemn voice, the supervisor asked what Tinsworthy had.

“Not good, boss. Mikelsen’s dead. Looks like they were hit with automatic fire while they were sitting on a knoll watching the river. I haven’t found Stevenson yet. The passenger door was open and there’s no bloodstains on his side of their vehicle. I’m going to go find him.”

“Negative, not until you get some backup. Stay with your partner. We have the chopper en route now.”

“Can’t do that, boss. Jay might need my help.”

“Ken, I repeat, stay where you are. Do you hear me?”

Tinsworthy didn’t answer. Dropping the hand mike on the seat, he turned and began to search for his friend. When he found him after what seemed like an eternity, he wished he had listened to his supervisor.

In a gully, down by the riverbank, Ken Tinsworthy found Jay Stevenson’s body. The first thing he heard was the snarling of two wild dogs fighting. Drawn to the commotion, he saw the two dogs alternating between chewing on Jay’s body and snarling at each other. Without thinking, Stevenson lowered his gun and fired twice, dropping one of the dogs, scaring off the second, and causing his partner, who had lost sight of him, to panic and report on the radio that they were under fire.

Moving down into the gully, Tinsworthy looked down at his friend’s corpse. He didn’t need to read the name plate to recognize that the body at his feet belonged to his best friend. The sight of Jay Stevenson, his feet and hands bound and his head blown off at point-blank range, was too much for Tinsworthy. Dropping to his knees, Ken Tinsworthy looked up at the clear blue sky and began to cry for his friend. As he cried, he first asked God why he had let such a terrible thing happen. Then he began swearing to revenge his friend’s death, crying out loud through his tears,

“God help the fucking spick that killed Jay. God help him.”

The instruments of battle are valuable only if one knows how to use them.

—Ardant du Picq

Fort Hood, Texas

,

0545 hours, 8 August

Watching Second Lieutenant Kozak as she conducted her final precombat inspection of the 2nd Squad, Sergeant First Class Rivera wondered what it was with infantry second lieutenants. Perhaps, he thought, Fort Benning makes them that way. It had to be. After being a platoon sergeant with the same platoon for twenty-six months, he was in the process of breaking in his third brand-new, fresh-from-Fort Benning platoon leader.

And each and every one came into the platoon full of piss and vinegar, ready to set the world on fire, and hell-bent for leather to lead a bayonet charge.

Even his new lieutenant, a woman for Christ’s sakes, was just as gung ho, and as intolerant of anyone who wasn’t, as his first two lieutenants had been. It wasn’t until they became captains, or so it seemed, that they discovered that just maybe sergeants weren’t so dumb after all. Rivera wondered if his counterparts in the field artillery and tank corps had the same problems. Probably did, he thought. A lieutenant, after all, was a lieutenant, was a lieutenant, was a lieutenant. Maybe the first sergeant was right. He always told his platoon sergeants to save their breath when dealing with new officers. Instead, he told them, they should just take their new lieutenants out into the boonies and beat them senseless with a two-by-four for a half hour before starting their training. That was the only way, the first sergeant contended, that you could, A, get rid of some of the foolish stuff they filled their heads with at Benning, and, B, be reasonably sure you had their attention.

That day’s operation was a prime example. The platoon’s mission was to establish an outpost forward of the company’s battle position. The task, as it was explained by the company commander, was rather simple.

One squad was to move forward where it could observe the main avenue of approach into the company’s engagement zone. All Wittworth wanted was a few minutes warning so that he could coordinate the direct fires of the company with the indirect fires of the artillery.

Lieutenant Kozak, however, felt that it would be better if an antiarmor ambush was established in addition to the outpost. Rivera pointed out that the purpose of the outpost was to provide security and early warning to the company, nothing more. The lieutenant, however, believed that they could do that just as easily by establishing an ambush. An ambush, she pointed out, would begin the process of attrition and perhaps confuse the enemy as to where the company’s main positions actually were. Rivera made an effort to point out that they stood just as good a chance of becoming confused as the enemy. It didn’t take long, however, before he realized that he was fighting a losing battle. Watching her eyes and listening to her tone of voice as she explained her reasoning in great detail, Rivera decided that perhaps it was best to let the lieutenant have her way. Sometimes, he knew, it was better to leave lieutenants to discover the grim facts of life themselves. Perhaps she just might pull it off, though he doubted it. She was, after all, here to learn, and Rivera knew that sometimes the best lessons in life came from the biggest screwups.

If Rivera’s goal was to let her learn the hard way, Kozak did everything she could to help him. The plan she had come up with the previous night placed one squad, armed with a single Dragon antitank guided missile, half a dozen antitank mines, and four light antitank rocket launchers, on the forward slope of a hill. The squad’s M-2 Bradley was concealed in a hide position on the reverse side of the hill. Not only did it not have any field of fire, it was over a kilometer away from where the dismounted members of the squad would be waiting in ambush. As tactfully as possible, Rivera pointed out that the dismounts would never be able to make it back up the hill to their Bradley. The enemy force, he pointed out, would overrun the dismounts, pound them with artillery, or simply deploy and gun them down when the dismounts tried to move.

Again, Kozak explained that dismounted infantry, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the ambush, would never be seen by the enemy.

With a bland expression, achieved through years of practice, Rivera gave a dry “Yes, ma’am” and went about organizing the platoon’s battle position while the lieutenant prepared her operations order. As he did so, he wondered where he could find a two-by-four at that hour of the night.

What never occurred to Rivera as he ambled away was that, for the first time, he hadn’t thought of Kozak as a woman first. Instead, he had subconsciously lumped her into the same category as every other infantry second lieutenant he had ever known, and had treated her accordingly.

Though not a red-banner day for women’s rights, it was, nevertheless, a necessary step if the platoon was to become an effective unit, and not just a showpiece.

From the front seat of Scott Dixon’s Humvee, Captain Cerro watched Second Lieutenant Kozak prepare her antiarmor ambush. While the squad setting up the antiarmor ambush might have been able to get away with occupying its positions after dawn, the movement of their platoon leader from one place to another in an effort to check weapons and fields of fire compromised the entire ambush site. Even without binoculars, at two hundred meters Cerro could see people moving and bushes shaking. He had no doubt that the enemy scout track two hundred meters further up the road, hidden in a shallow arroyo and covered with camouflage nets, saw everything.

As Cerro waited for the inevitable, Specialist Eddie Jefferson, nicknamed Fast Eddie, sat next to Cerro, intently studying Cerro’s map and the notes written on the margin of the map case that detailed Kozak’s plan. Bored, Cerro turned to Fast Eddie. “What’s so interesting?”

Eddie furrowed his brow in confusion, answering Cerro without looking away from the map. “This here plan, sir. It don’t make any sense at all.” Draping the map across the Humvee’s steering wheel, Eddie pointed to the blue symbol on the map that indicated where Kozak had placed the antiarmor ambush. “Look. That dumb bitch puts her squad here, on the wrong side of the hill,” running his finger from the squad symbol to a blue symbol for a Bradley, “and the Bradley all the way over here, on the oth,er side of the hill. No way they’ll make it back.”

Wincing, Cerro reminded Fast Eddie that he was talking about a lieutenant and “bitch” was not quite appropriate terminology. Eddie looked over to Cerro. “Oh, sorry, Cap’n.” Then, turning his attention back to the map, he continued. “And on top of that, that dumb lieutenant puts the Bradley in a hole where it can’t use its sights or shoot.”

Shaking his head, Cerro gave up. Eddie Jefferson appeared to be a good troop, intelligent and motivated. There was no need to hassle him.

After all, Kozak was being a bit dumb and it showed. Christ, Cerro thought, maybe he should have sent Eddie out there to set up the outpost.

He couldn’t have done any worse than Kozak was doing.

As they continued to watch, it occurred to Cerro that if Eddie, sitting here with a map, could figure out the lousy spot the squad was in, the men in the squad had to know it. If no one else, at least the platoon sergeant and squad leader must have realized that the plan wouldn’t work the way Kozak had briefed it. If that were true, Cerro wondered if the NCOs in the platoon had pointed it out to their lieutenant and been overridden by an eager beaver LT with a better idea, or if they had kept their own counsel and were letting Kozak make a fool out of herself. Either way, he was not happy with what he saw, although he could understand it if Kozak had overridden the NCOs. As a young, hard-charging airborne infantry lieutenant, Cerro had once thought that he could conquer the world single handed. It took a few years and a war to convince him that he was outnumbered and needed, on occasion, a little help. His battalion commander had referred to that process as becoming a mature leader. His first sergeant had called it pounding some sense into Cerro’s thick head.