Trial By Fire (35 page)

Not that Childress really had to do this. To ensure that the border was properly covered, and that military operations did not interfere with civilian operations, all American patrol plans, roadblocks, and OP locations had to be determined well in advance, coordinated with state and local authorities, and approved. If an OP was to be located on private property, the owner of the land had to be notified. In this way, a great deal of detailed information was available and passing through many hands on a daily basis. It was therefore not difficult for Alaman to energize his own intelligence network. The fact was, some of the state and local officials who were handling the military information were already on Alaman’s payroll, holdovers from when Alaman’s efforts had been simply to facilitate the movement of drugs and illegal aliens.

Movement of new personnel, funds, and even military hardware, was no problem. In fact, using Alamn’s connections, it was surprisingly easy. Secondhand weapons no longer needed by the Nicaraguan and Cuban governments were purchased by Alamdn’s agents and shipped to Colombia. There they were combined with regular drug traffic organized and run by Alaman’s associates in that country and sent on flights being made into the United States. Once in the United States, the new personnel, funds, weapons, and equipment were moved by road using a trucking company owned by another of Alaman’s associates. In this way, Delapos was able to provide antitank guided missiles and portable surface-to-air guided missiles to his teams within a matter of weeks.

Though outdated, the new heavy and precision-guided weapons gave Delapos’s teams an edge that the National Guard was unaware of. When they did find out about it, and American intelligence began to look into the matter, they would find little useful or conclusive information, be cause the Nicaraguans were providing the same weapons to the regular Mexican Army. Even this effort was planned in such a way as to reinforce the confusion within the American intelligence community about whether the Mexican government, through intent or ineptitude, was implicated.

By using the same Nicaraguan colonel who was handling the movement of weapons to the Mexican Army, Alaman could avoid duplicate systems. Both he and the Mexican Army were drawing from the same stock of weapons. The Nicaraguan colonel, for his part, ensured that weapons and ammunition provided to either the Mexican Army or Alaman did not have consecutive serial numbers, but were mixed. For example, a shipment of surface-to-air missiles was arranged so that the Mexican Army received weapons with serial numbers one through three, while Alaman received the missile with serial number four, the Mexican Army numbers five and six, Alaman seven and eight, and so forth. In this way, if the Americans were able to obtain the original manufacturer’s serial numbers, and track them through Nicaragua, there was the possibility that some would be found to be in the hands of the Mexican Army while others, with consecutive serial numbers, were found conveniently discarded at ambush sites in the United States.

There was little, therefore, from Delapos’s standpoint, to fear from the National Guard. With the Guard in place and settled into a discernible routine, and his own teams rearmed and set north of the border, Delapos was more than ready to open the next phase of Alaman’s reign of terror.

From the seat of the division commander’s command and control helicopter, Scott Dixon watched the two Humvees below for a moment before returning his attention to the border to the south. This was his third trip to the border in ten days and, with pressure increasing for the federal government to take an active role in securing the border, he knew it wouldn’t be his last.

The recons, by Dixon and other key members of the division, were meant to prepare them for what some called the inevitable deployment of the division south. Rather than increase his knowledge of the area and better prepare him, however, each successive recon only served to heighten Dixon’s sense of foreboding and apprehension. Even Jan, during their brief reunions, noted that Dixon was treating the entire subject of the use of American military forces on the border with great trepidation.

In one halting discussion over dinner, he kept pointing out that unless someone came up with what he called a “war-winning strategy,”

they were not only wasting time and manpower, but were leaving them selves open to a situation that had no definable goal and little direction other than the perceived need to “teach the Mexicans a lesson.” In his heart, Dixon knew that if the Army deployed to the border, someone, for some reason, would find an excuse for using it in Mexico. And once that happened, there would be no peace for years, on either side of the border.

With a heavy Hispanic population throughout the southwestern United States and a strong anti-American sentiment in Mexico and Central America, the resulting mess would make the Israeli-Palestinian problem in the Middle East look like child’s play.

Turning his thoughts away from the politics of the problem, which were not his concern anyway, and back to the immediate military situation, Dixon looked out the open door. The terrain below, the area where the 16th would be operating, was a real horror story. Looking down at his map, Dixon tried to figure out where they were. In the process of trying to solve the problems of the world, he had lost track of his location. When he couldn’t relate the terrain he was looking at to the symbols on the map, he flipped the map over and refolded it to uncover the next sheet, taking great care to hang on to it as he did so lest the wind rip it from his hands and out of the helicopter. To lose one’s map was the nightmare of every officer, the supreme moment of embarrassment. As a young company commander, leading his tank company on his first major tactical exercise in Germany, Dixon had lost his map doing just what he was doing now.

The image of his wayward map, lazily floating away down the long column of tanks after being ripped from his hands, was burned into his mind as one of the three most embarrassing moments in his life. Though he didn’t take the precaution of tying his map to him with a string, like they taught at the infantry school, he was always extremely careful and very mindful of what he was doing whenever he handled his map while on or in a moving vehicle.

It therefore came as a surprise when, after refolding his map, he looked up and saw a UH-1 helicopter flying parallel to them south of the border.

Running his hand along the intercom cable until he found the intercom button, Dixon pressed the button and blurted, “Who’s that?”

The pilot, a young warrant officer, responded without thinking. “It’s a helicopter, sir.”

Taken aback by the comment, Dixon tried to decide if the aviator was trying to be a smartass or didn’t understand what Dixon wanted. Either way, he decided that he should have gotten a better answer. He therefore decided to give the young warrant a verbal shot in the head. “No shit, Sherlock. You figure that out on your own or did the co-pilot help?”

There was a pause while the pilot figured out that Dixon was not pleased with his first response. In a more respectful and less flippant tone, he corrected himself. “Sorry, sir. It looks like a Mexican Air Force Bell 212. It came up from the south, from our seven o’clock position a few seconds ago and began to parallel us. He’s still on his side of the border, traveling at approximately one hundred knots.”

Dixon only grunted in response as he looked across the open space between the two aircraft in an effort to find any distinguishing marks or equipment that would help him identify it later. The Mexican Air Force helicopter, like his, had its doors wide open. He could clearly see its pilot and co-pilot, the crew chief, and the door gunners. On the right side of the cargo bay, a lone passenger sat. He, like Dixon, held a map on his lap and was watching Dixon watch him. No doubt, Dixon thought, the lone passenger was an officer, like him, making his recon in order to prepare himself for the deployment of his forces to the border. The irony of the situation did not escape him. Keying the intercom again, Dixon instructed the pilot to slowly increase their air speed. Dixon wanted to see how badly the Mexican, whoever he was, wanted to play chicken.

Colonel Guajardo had no doubt that the American UH-60 helicopter his helicopter was paralleling was a command and control aircraft. The symbol of the 16th Armored Division, painted in bold colors, was all over it.

That, and the lone passenger seated before a huge radio set in the cargo bay, left little doubt that the anonymous American was doing the same thing that he was. And the presence of door gunners, on the American aircraft as well as his own, told Guajardo how seriously both sides took the current situation.

As he watched the American door gunner that faced him, Guajardo noted that he held the spade grips of his M-60 machine gun with his right hand angled down and away from Guajardo. Guajardo knew, however, what the American gunner was thinking. Even with the American’s sun visor down, Guajardo could almost feel the eyes drilling a hole through him as the gunner mentally noted range and computed the angle of deflection he would need to apply in order to hit Guajardo’s helicopter.

Such thoughts, Guajardo knew, were expected. In fact, only a poor soldier would have been thinking of other things. And the odds were nonexistent that a poor soldier would be part of the crew on a command and control helicopter.

The thought of flying in such close proximity to a group of men who were prepared to kill him without hesitation, on order, was sobering.

How easy, Guajardo thought, it would be for the American door gunner to pull his weapon over into firing position and engage his aircraft. A simple pulling in of the right arm until the spade grips were in front of the door gunner’s chest, a lifting of his left hand to the spade grips, a pause to sight the gun, and a downward motion with his two thumbs were all that was necessary for the gunner to engage Guajardo’s helicopter and start a war. So simple, so easy. Yet the American would not do it, at least not yet. There were still a few hands left to be played out by the politicians and the diplomats. Until these hands were played, it was the task of Guajardo, and no doubt of the unknown American officer in the other helicopter, to keep stupid mistakes from starting something that would cost both sides more than either could possibly imagine.

An increase in the vibration of his own helicopter rattled Guajardo back to the present. He looked to the American helicopter and noted that it seemed to move forward slightly. Then there was an increase in the vibration of his own helicopter as the pilot pushed the old Bell 212 to keep up. Looking toward his own»pilot, he noted that First Lieutenant Blasio’s head was turned toward the American helicopter, watching its every move and matching it. Guajardo, realizing that the American was intentionally increasing his speed, knew that Blasio could not possibly match the speed and performance of the American. The American was only playing with him, egging Blasio on until he couldn’t keep up. The American would then kick in whatever power he had left and leave Blasio behind. In order to spare Blasio such an undeserved humiliation, Guajardo ordered him to stand by to execute the sharpest left turn he could, telling Blasio that he wanted to show the American the backside of a Mexican Air Force helicopter.

This order was greeted by Blasio with great pleasure, for he also realized that he must soon fall behind the American. This way, at least he could show the American some of his skills as an aviator. When he was ready, he informed Guajardo, warning everyone to hang on. “Very well then, Lieutenant. On the count of three. One . . . two . . . three …”

As he finished three, Blasio jerked up on his lateral, twisted his collective to get whatever power he had left, and threw the stick to the left as hard as he could. The American helicopter, and Guajardo’s view of the ground, disappeared in a flash as the helicopter practically stood on its side in a violent power turn. Guajardo could feel himself being forced back into the seat, as if by a giant hand, throughout the turn, by the increase in speed and climb. By the time the helicopter was back in level flight, the American helicopter was nowhere in sight.

Satisfied that Blasio’s pride had been saved, Guajardo instructed him to come around and back onto their heading for Nuevo Laredo. Guajardo was anxious to arrive at the garrison headquarters there and talk to the officers of the cavalry units before they moved out for their nightly patrols. As with the other units along the border, Guajardo wanted to impress upon his officers and men the gravity of the situation. Common sense, tempered by healthy discretion, were the order of the day. Although every man was expected to do his duty, investigating anything and everything of note during their patrols, they were to do their utmost to avoid provoking the Americans. In order to rally world support and opinion in the event of a confrontation, Mexico had to be the offended party.

Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

1925 hours, 29 August

Standing alone, Lieutenant Augustin Marti watched the colonel’s helicopter lift itself through the cloud of dust created by its own rotors and jet engines. Even after the helicopter was aloft and on its way to its next stop, Marti continued to stand there, almost as if he expected Colonel Guajardo to turn around and come back. But Marti knew that would not happen. There was much that the colonel needed to do and so little time.

Such an important man could not afford to explain everything in detail to every lieutenant in the Mexican Army. It was not up to the colonel to explain everything, for if that were the case, there would be no need for lieutenants. No, Marti thought, it was his task to understand what the colonel had said and act accordingly.

Still, as Marti turned and headed back to his platoon, he wished that he were clever enough to grasp exactly what it was that the colonel expected of him and his men. That the situation along the border was serious was well understood. One only had to listen to the news, both from Mexican sources and Spanish-speaking radio and TV stations in America, to know that there was a great deal of mistrust and tension between the two nations. Even the dullest peasant in his platoon felt a sense of foreboding as they approached their duties. All of this was known. All of this was understood.