Trial By Fire (45 page)

For what seemed to be an eternity, Kozak lay on her back, looking up at the sky as she tried to catch her breath. For the first time since leaving Ithe safety of the buildings, she thought about what she had done and of her current predicament. Every thought that popped into her dazed mind told her that she was not in a good spot. She was in the middle of the street, with the body of one of her soldiers a few feet away from her, under fire, and unable to move the other soldier or herself. In her excitement to rush to Gunti’s aid, she had failed to give Maupin any orders or even ask someone to cover her. She and Gunti, at that moment, were on their own. And as if that weren’t bad enough, she could hear voices speaking in Spanish growing closer. No, she thought, this is not good.

Not by a long shot.

Drawing in a deep breath, Kozak rolled over onto her side. Sliding her left arm and head through the sling of her rifle, she maneuvered it over her head and onto her back. Grabbing a handful of Gunti’s uniform with both hands, she swung her legs around so that she could dig her heels into the pavement as she pulled. When she had one leg on either side of Gunti, and a firm grasp on him, Kozak half sat up and began to tug at him. Her first efforts, while they managed to move him, were disappointing. After dragging him a foot, she had to stop, scooting herself back a foot, before trying again. Kozak’s second try yielded the same result. She managed to move him another foot. As she repositioned herself for her next tug, she looked behind her to see how far they had to go. The ten feet between them and the open door, to Kozak, seemed like ten miles. But she had no choice. Determined to finish what she had started, she turned around and prepared to give the next tug.

A shadow blocking Kozak’s view of the sky and buildings across from her was the first hint that he was there. Like an apparition that had popped out of the ground, the largest Mexican that Kozak had ever seen was standing in front of her, looking down at her and Gunti. From Kozak’s reclining position, the Mexican, holding an assault rifle at the ready, looked like he was over ten feet tall and weighed half a ton.

For the briefest of moments, they looked at each other. Kozak, wide eyed and mouth hanging open, sat with one leg on either side of Gunti’s body, hanging onto him ready for the next pull. She was shocked to see a Mexican soldier so close. The Mexican soldier, rifle clutched across his chest, his legs straddling Gunti’s body, looked down at Kozak, almost as surprised to see an American woman soldier in the middle of a firefight as Kozak was to see him. It was as if both of them, carried forward by the excitement of the battle, had suddenly come across a situation that neither was prepared for. Kozak, with her rifle slung across her back and Gunti’s body half on top of her, could do little to defend either herself or Gunti.

The Mexican, fired up with passion and hate, had been ready to rush forward and slit the throats of the invading gringos. The situation he found himself in, however, left him at a loss. He didn’t quite know how he was expected to deal with the wounded man and woman at his feet.

These, he thought, were not the ten-foot-tall norteamericanos who threatened his home and family. They were, he thought, just people, one an injured man and one a helpless woman trying to rescue him. How could he, he wondered, be expected to kill them in cold blood. Without a second thought, he slung his rifle over his shoulder. Bending down, he took Gunti’s hands, pulled Gunti up over his shoulder and onto his back.

Without looking back at Kozak, the Mexican soldier began running toward the open door Kozak had been headed for.

Kozak, still trying to get over her close encounter with the Mexican soldier, watched in amazement as he lifted Gunti and carried him away.

As soon as she could recover her composure, she was up and headed for the open doorway where the Mexican and Gunti had disappeared. Rather than hassle with her rifle, she unholstered her 9mm pistol, charged the slide to .chamber a round, and went into the building after the Mexican, ready to save Gunti from capture.

Running into the dark room after.having been in the bright sunlight, Kozak found herself momentarily blinded. She was therefore unable to see Gunti’s body, left just inside the doorway, when she came charging in. Tripping over his legs, Kozak went down on her face, bashing her nose and chin on the tile floor. Pushing herself up with her hands, she shook her head, then looked around. Between the stars that floated before her eyes from the collision with the floor, and the adjusting of her eyes to the dark room, she almost missed the Mexican soldier. He paused long enough, however, for her to see him looking down at her. Still at a loss as to what to do, the Mexican, with his rifle in his left hand, raised his right hand, waved at Kozak, whispered “Vaya con Dios,” and then disappeared down a dark hall toward the back of the house.

Kozak was still on the floor, looking down the dark hall where the Mexican had disappeared, when someone else came charging through the front door. Like Kozak, the new arrival failed to see Gunti’s body just inside the doorway. And, like Kozak, the new arrival tripped and went sprawling, head-first, into the house. Fortunately for the new arrival, Kozak’s body cushioned his fall, which shoved her face back down onto the tile floor. Cursing, Kozak tried to push herself up, but found that it was impossible while the new arrival was still on her.

“Jesus, Lieutenant! I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.” Turning her head, she saw that the new arrival was Sergeant Maupin.

“Apology accepted. Now get the hell off of me!” In a flash, Maupin was on his feet and helping Kozak, all the while

looking about the room. “Where’s the Mexican? Did you get the Mexican that carried Gunti in here?”

With her right hand, which still held her pistol, she pointed to the hall while she carefully felt her nose with her left hand. “He went that way.”

Maupin, running over to where she had pointed, looked down the hall.

When he didn’t see anyone, he looked at Kozak, then at Gunti. “You mean he just brought him in here, then left? Did you get a shot at him?”

It was broken. Kozak realized her nose was broken. Letting it go, she tilted her head back and crossed her eyes in an effort to see how badly her nose was broken. She couldn’t. But she could feel the pain, pain that spread across her face like a blanket. And, even worse, she could feel the blood running down her nostrils and around her upper lip. With her nose broken and clogged with blood, she sounded like a person who had a severely stuffed-up nose. “No, I didn’t shoot him. What the hell is going on outside?”

“Nothing, right now. I left ist Squad in place to cover us.”

Moving to the side of the doorway, Kozak carefully peeked around the corner and looked down the street in the direction that the Mexicans would be coming in. “Any sign of the bad guys?”

Maupin, coming up to the other side of the doorway, also peeked out, then faced Kozak.’ ‘No. Only one we saw was the one who grabbed Gunti.

But there’s got to be more out there. No doubt, they’re closing in.”

Kozak was still looking down the street while she held her nose with her left hand. “Yeah, no doubt. We need to get outta here.” Seeing nothing moving, she turned to Maupin. “Can you move Gunti back to where your squad is or do you need help?”

Looking at Gunti’s body, Maupin thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I can do it. No problem.” Looking back at Gunti where they had left him sprawled in the middle of the floor, Maupin asked Kozak how bad Gunti was hit.

Like a shot in the head, it struck Kozak that in all her excitement she hadn’t even looked to see where Gunti had been shot and how bad it was.

She didn’t even know if he was alive. Glancing back over her shoulder, she stared at Gunti’s body. For the first time she noticed the pool of blood on the floor under Gunti. Oh my God, she thought, he’s probably bleeding to death and I never looked or did anything for him. “I don’t know.

See what you can do for him before you move out. But hurry.”

Without a word, Maupin moved over to where Gunti was, leaving Kozak to silently curse herself as she watched for any sign of the Mexicans.

After

several seconds, Maupin grunted. “Geez, LT, this guy’s a mess.

I can’t do shit for him here. We gotta get him back to the aidman, fast.”

Kozak, still at the door, looked back over at Maupin, down at the floor at Gunti, then back to Maupin. While she put her pistol back into its holster and took the rifle off her back, she considered her next move. ‘ ‘All right, Sergeant Maupin. When you’re ready, take Gunti out of here. I’ll cover you from here and follow once you’re clear. If we don’t draw fire by the time you reach where the rest of your squad is, keep going. I’ll gather them and bring ‘em along. Got any questions?”

“No, no questions, LT. Just give me a minute.” Maupin slung his rifle over his back and bent down. Grabbing Gunti’s hand, he pulled Gunti up and over one shoulder into a fireman’s carry. After bouncing up and down a couple of times in an effort to shift Gunti’s body into a comfortable and balanced position, Maupin informed Kozak that he was ready.

Hoisting her rifle into the ready-to-fire position and bracing it against the doorway to steady it, she told Maupin to go. As the sergeant ducked and ran under the muzzle of her rifle, Kozak wondered if she should fire some random shots, in the hope of making the Mexicans seek cover, or if she should just hold her fire and,return aimed fire after the Mexicans opened fire and revealed their positions. Maupin, with Gunti on his back, however, was gone before she had made a decision.

Counting slowly to ten, Kozak held her position, slowly scanning the street to her front for any sign of a reaction to Maupin’s appearance.

When she saw and heard nothing after reaching ten, she went out the door and headed down the street where 1st Squad waited.

Alerted by Maupin as he went by, the rest of 1st Squad was ready to move when Kozak came running by. “First Squad, out and back to the river, now!”

As the members of 1st Squad came out of the buildings they had been in, Kozak, standing in the middle of the street, turned and looked back, holding her rifle at the ready and searching for pursuers. Their roles, she thought, were reversed. Her platoon had come into Mexico pursuing the Mexicans, and now they were being chased out of Mexico. Looking over her. shoulder, she yelled to her people to get a move on. Only after the beating of boots on the pavement began to fade did she turn around and follow them at a run, breathing through her mouth and trying hard to keep the blood and snot running down from her broken nose from going into her mouth.

With far more fanfare than it had begun with, the latest incursion by the United States Army came to an end as Second Lieutenant Nancy Kozak, her nose bent to one side and bleeding, came sliding down the embankment, into the Rio Grande, across the river, and into the ubiquitous eye m of Ted’s camera.

On television sets across the nation, people barely heard Jan Fields’s running commentary. Instead, the image of the lone infantry lieutenant, with blood dripping down her chin, wading back across the river after a brief pursuit of Mexican raiders, stirred viewers’ emotions as no words could. Blood had been drawn. American blood. They had watched the body of one of her soldiers carried across the river. They had seen the medics working frantically to save the soldier. Then, when hope was gone, the television viewers had watched as the medics, in disgust, turned away when they realized they had failed. And finally, the young female officer who had led her men in an effort to punish the enemy came back, wounded but undefeated. Such images stirred the passions of a nation and washed away any vestiges of logic or reason that might have remained.

While the National Guard incident could have been a mistake, few could find any defense or justification for this latest spilling of American blood.

In the minds of millions of Americans, the war with Mexico was a reality.

The first casualty when war comes is truth.

—Senator Hiram Johnson

City Hall, Laredo, Texas

1905 hours, 7 September

Working her way through or around barriers was as much a part of Jan Fields’s job as shooting a story. A fighter by nature, who enjoyed the fight just as much as the fruits, Jan never took no as an absolute answer.

Rather, it was a signal that the approach she was using wasn’t working, and that a different appeal to “be reasonable” or for cooperation was required. Military police were no different. If anything, they were easier to deal with. Well trained to perform specific combat-related tasks, the young soldiers who made up the military police corps often lacked the depth of experience veteran civilian police had when it came to dealing with civilian media. So Jan was able to use her entire repertoire of tricks and pleas to get what she wanted. The only time she ran into serious problems was when the senior MP on site was female.

This evening, this was not the case. The young staff sergeant whose squad was augmenting the sheriff’s deputies and the Laredo City police at city hall was an easy mark. The conversation started with Jan insisting that she had an appointment with Lieutenant Colonel Dixon, the G3 of the 16th Armored Division. When the MP sergeant responded that he didn’t know who Dixon was and doubted he was there, Jan happily pointed to Dixon’s Humvee parked ten feet away from them. Embarrassed at being caught off guard and beginning to wonder if the female reporter badgering him did, in fact, have an appointment, the sergeant sent one of his people into the courthouse to check. Jan, with the confident smile of a cat who was about to pounce on the cornered mouse, waited with the MP sergeant.

Her smile disappeared, however, when the MP sent to summon Dixon returned. Reporting to his sergeant, he stated that Colonel Dixon not only had negative knowledge of an appointment with a female reporter, but couldn’t even seem to place the name Jan Fields. Jan blew a gasket. Scott was playing with her and she was in no mood to be messed with. With her eyes reduced to angry, narrow slits, and her forehead furrowed with rage, Jan turned to the MP who was patiently waiting and pointed her index finger at him. “Look, soldier, you march right back where you came from and tell that pompous ass that if he doesn’t haul his butt out here in two minutes, it will be a cold day in hell before he beds this broad again.