Trial By Fire (51 page)

Finished, Delapos again waited for Childress to respond. In Delapos’s eyes, Childress could see both excitement and joy. After having listened in silence, struggling to avoid any emotional response, Childress finally had to say something. Several thoughts ran through his mind. First and foremost was the realization that he was, despite years of self-denial, still an American. The idea of being a man without a country, which had been appealing to him in his youth, was wearing thin as he began to look for a life that held more than just danger, excitement, and adventure. At thirty-five, Childress wanted to make peace, with himself and with a country he had so long ignored.

Hand in hand with this realization was the impression that, just as he was too much an American, Delapos was too much a Mexican. The same forces of heritage, birth, and experience that made Childress undeniably American made it impossible for Delapos to be anything but a Mexican.

In his enthusiasm to follow Alaman, a man Delapos had begun referring to as a great Mexican patriot, Delapos was ignoring the stupidity of using mercenaries in an area contested by two standing armies. Cold hard logic told Childress that, regardless of how vast the area of operation and how dispersed the opposing forces were, of how good and secretive the mercenaries were, and of how inept the Mexican Army was, the mercenaries would eventually run out of luck—or, worse, their usefulness to Alaman would end. How easy, Childress knew, it would be for Alamdn to arrange for information regarding the location of his mercenary base camps to fall into the hands of the American
CIA
or Mexican intelligence. Once this was done, every asset from high-performance bombers to special operations forces would be used to eradicate the mercenary teams, relieving Alaman of the necessity of paying them.

Despite the reservations he harbored, however, Childress found himself seriously considering going along. Such a risky venture, he knew, would require that Alaman pay top dollar to his mercenaries. It would take little effort to convince him, through Delapos, that all payment had to be in advance. Childress, therefore, saw an opportunity for one last hurrah, one more job that would, if he survived it, let him leave his chosen profession and retire to.his beloved Green Mountains. Though the idea of building his future on the bodies of his fellow countrymen was never far from his mind, Childress was able to keep those thoughts in check. He was, he told himself, just like the American politicians in Washington, D.C., who were enhancing their political careers by sending Americans to fight another war that was, by any measure, wrong, immoral, and unwinnable.

35
KILOMETERS
SOUTH
OF
NUEVO
LAREDO
,
MEXICO

1310 hours, 9 September

t

With the passing of the scout helicopters, quiet returned to the arroyo.

That they had once again escaped detection by the Americans both surprised and worried Guajardo. For he knew that, as good as the sensors and optics of the American recon aircraft were, the camouflage and positions of his men were bad. Not that the men, or their leaders, were slack or undisciplined. On the contrary. The morale and spirits of both leaders and led were high, almost euphoric. Though much of the euphoria was nothing more than a thin veil to hide their nervousness, Guajardo could tell there was a true desire to do well in the soldiers he had selected to fight the rearguard actions. No, Guajardo knew, it wasn’t really their fault that things were not perfect. It was just that they were not as well trained as they should have been, and lacked the experience that served to both motivate and focus one’s efforts in combat.

To some extent, he blamed himself, for the mechanized cavalry platoon waiting in ambush was from the military zone he had been responsible for before the June 29 revolution. During his tenure as their senior commander, part of his responsibility had been to train and prepare them for this day. That he felt uneasy now, when his soldiers were about to engage in their first battle, was natural. That he also saw only the negatives, and imagined the worst possible outcome, was also natural. His admonishments to subordinates during peacetime training exercises, telling them that perfection in war was an illusion, did not, at that moment, help relieve the anxiety he felt, for he knew that errors cost men their lives and lost battles.

Yet, despite his reservations, there was nothing, in reality, that he could do. Technically, by all measures, Guajardo had done everything expected of a senior commander. He had formulated his strategy, had it approved by the council, issued the necessary orders to implement it, and done everything that was prudent and within his power to ensure that his subordinates carried it out. Now, all he had to do was have the courage of his convictions and see those plans through. The most difficult part of command, Guajardo was beginning to realize, was letting go, trusting in subordinate commanders and allowing them the freedom to do their jobs.

Still, there had to be something he could do, some way that he could influence the battle. This very question had, in the past, often nagged Guajardo. Over the years, he had studied how various commanders, both Mexican and foreign, had sought to exercise command and control, to influence their subordinates by thought, word, and deed. At an early age, Guajardo had rejected the manners and techniques used by his fellow Mexican officers. They were, he felt, too self-serving. While some of the battlefield exploits of his ancestors provided stirring accounts and inspiration, they offered little in the way of practical war-winning advice.

While the story of the young cadet who plunged to his death wrapped in the flag of Mexico at the Battle of Chapultepec on September 13, 1847, made a great and inspiring legend, it scarcely provided a commander with a solution to command and control problems on the modern battlefield.

At first, Guajardo thought American leadership techniques could provide an answer. Quickly, however, he found that American commanders depended far too much on sophisticated equipment, equipment that Guajardo knew the Mexican Army would never have. In addition, and to his surprise, he found that the practices of many American officers, too, were quite self-serving. In their own way, the “professional” military officers in the United States made just as many decisions based on domestic and international political considerations as did officers in Mexico, although no one would ever admit to such a thing. Finally, the American character, both national and individual, greatly influenced their system. American professional journals and doctrine preached a policy of centralized planning and decentralized execution, in which the subordinates supposedly had great latitude in deciding how to perform assigned tasks. In practice, however, sophisticated communications systems provided very senior commanders, commanders who were conscious of the fact that their careers depended upon the success or failure of their subordinates or who were lacking confidence in those subordinates, the ability to actively intervene in operations in which they had no business. Rather than having freedom to fight their own battles as they saw fit, American commanders, Guajardo found, were hamstrung by demands to submit frequent and detailed reports and were often victimized by recommendations and advice from commanders too far removed from the reality of battle.

Rejecting the American way of war, Guajardo briefly considered the Soviet technique. In many ways, it was attractive. Its reliance on standardized battle drills and clear, concise doctrine took much of the guesswork out of the decisions of junior commanders. But this, too, was rejected by Guajardo as being too inflexible. The conformity demanded by Soviet techniques was unsuited to the Mexican temperament. It was too mechanical, too cold, too precise. His men, he knew, were men of flesh and blood, men of passions. Such men, Guajardo knew, could never be made into the machines the Soviet techniques required. While one could not build a system using only the example of the Ninos Perdidos of Chapultepec, the occasional display, of passion, courage, and sacrifice, which Mexicans abounded in, and which the Soviet system discounted, was needed to stir a fighting man’s blood.

It was only after many years that Guajardo had realized that he would never find, in a foreign army, an ideal technique that could be grafted onto his army. Instead, he opted for a mix, a hybrid system combining the strengths of his army with suitable techniques and practices from other armies. Of all the armies he studied, the system he followed most closely was the German. Though it was the system that the Americans pretended to follow, Guajardo knew they had lost focus when they diluted it with particular American practices and idiosyncrasies. Guajardo, on the other hand, chose only two features of the German system that he knew he could implement and influence. The first was a small, well-trained staff that created plans, coordinated them, and then provided necessary synchronization when the plans were implemented. The second feature, which Guajardo himself endorsed, was leadership from the front. It was only from the front, Guajardo knew, that officers could see and understand what was happening. A man sitting in a safe, comfortable bunker, miles from danger, could not possibly feel or understand a battle in progress. Only a leader standing shoulder to shoulder with his men could gauge what was possible and what wasn’t. Besides, Mexican character responded to such leadership. It, in fact, demanded it. So Guajardo found little difficulty in justifying why he, the senior military commander in Mexico, was standing in a hastily dug position on the forward edge of the battlefield. After all, how could he demand that his subordinates lead from the front if he himself didn’t. And it was only by using such excuses that he was able to escape the chaos of the capital and go where he could be with men he understood and do what he was trained to do.

A young captain of cavalry, who commanded the mechanized cavalry units in this area, lightly tapped Guajardo on the shoulder to get his attention, then pointed to the north, toward the road. Taking his time, and making a great show of a calmness that he really didn’t feel, Guajardo hoisted his binoculars to his eyes and began to search in the direction indicated by the captain.

At first, Guajardo didn’t see what the captain was pointing at. Then, as if it simply had popped out of nowhere, he saw a dark green vehicle moving down the road. With his binoculars, he studied the vehicle. It was a Bradley, probably the scout version. If that was so, there had to be another, somewhere near. Following the road back to the north, Guajardo searched for another vehicle. He saw none. Perhaps it was halted, covering the lead vehicle from a concealed position. Without stopping his search, Guajardo asked the cavalry captain if he saw any other vehicles.

The captain responded with a curt no, he did not.

Guajardo grunted. Perhaps, he told the captain, the scout vehicle was being overwatched by attack helicopters. Still searching, the captain responded that he had thought of that, but saw no dust or shaking vegetation that normally betrayed the presence of a hovering helicopter. Again, Guajardo responded with a grunt. “Perhaps,” he said, “we have a careless scout.”

The captain of cavalry lowered his binoculars, scanning the horizon with his naked eyes before responding. “Perhaps, Colonel, that is true.

The only way to be sure of that, sir, is to fire.”

Guajardo, his binoculars still riveted to the enemy scout vehicle, didn’t react at first. Then, understanding that the captain was seeking permission, he turned his head, calling over his shoulder while still holding his binoculars up. “Then, Captain, perhaps you should do so.”

Unfamiliar with the proper etiquette for starting a war, the captain snapped to attention, saluted, and responded to Guajardo’s comment with a resounding “Si, Colonel.”

As the captain of cavalry issued the order to open fire, Guajardo chuckled.

In time, he knew, after they had been brutalized by combat, such giddiness would be gone. Only then, when the enthusiasm of the first battle had been washed away by blood, would he know if his soldiers could do what was expected of them.

Though he knew where the Panard recon vehicles were hidden, Gua jardo could not see them as they pulled out of hidden positions and into their firing positions. Even after they fired, throwing up plumes of white smoke and dust from the muzzle blast, Guajardo still could not see the two vehicles.

Neither, he noted, could the American. Both Panards had fired within a second of each other. And both missed. The round of one Panard impacted on the road just in- front of the American Bradley while the round of the second hit the shoulder of the road to the left of the Bradley.

Even before the dirt thrown up by the near misses began to fall back to earth, the Bradley jerked to the left. For a second, Guajardo caught a glimpse of the Bradley’s commander as he dropped out of sight and pulled his hatch shut. It was obvious that the driver, seeing the explosion to his immediate front and not the one to the left, had reacted instinctively and without guidance from his vehicle commander, for his maneuver was taking the Bradley right into the guns of the Mexican Panards. Of course, Guajardo thought, maybe the Bradley driver did know what he was doing. After all, standard drill in an ambush was to turn into the ambush.

That possibility, however, was quickly dismissed when the Bradley began belching smoke from its on-board smoke generator. Rather than hide the Bradley, which the white billowing smoke would have done if the Panards were behind it, the smoke now silhouetted the Bradley, making it an ideal target. Not that the smoke was necessary. The first round that had impacted to the front of the Bradley had landed short because the commander of the Panard that had fired it had made an error in estimating the range. By turning toward the Panard’s position, the Bradley had closed the range, eliminating the ranging error. The commander of the Panard, unable to see the strike of his first round because of the muzzle blast and the dust kicked up by it in front of his vehicle, fired a second round without making any corrections. Thus, the actions of the Bradley’s driver, and the failure of the Panard’s commander to make any corrections, established a perfect ballistic solution for the Panard’s second round.