Trial By Fire (67 page)

Though she had seen the vans that made up the division main command post, she had never been in them. It was, to her, like entering another world. The radios, telephones, computers, and other electrical equipment that did things she had no idea about made her platoon’s radios look puny. As they went through vans, along ramps, past staff officers, and around desks piled high with stacks of paper, Kozak didn’t notice a single officer below the rank of captain. She was, she realized, walking through the rarefied air of a higher headquarters. She hardly noticed the stares of both staff officers and NCOs who wondered, just as she did, what she was doing there.

Finally, they arrived at the commanding general’s van. The aide knocked, then opened the door without waiting for a response. He, however, did not go in. Instead, he motioned for her to enter. As she walked into the van, her helmet on and rifle slung over her right shoulder, she felt like a Christian entering the arena. The stare of the faces that turned toward the door as she entered only served to reinforce that feeling.

Once inside the door, Kozak stopped. Reaching across, she grabbed the sling of her rifle with her left hand and saluted with her right. “Sir, Lieutenant Kozak reporting.”

For a moment, Big Al looked at her. Her uniform was dirty and torn.

Her gear was hanging about her loosely. Her face still showed the results of her broken nose, and of her having been awakened in the middle of the night: patches of black and blue under drawn, baggy eyes.

Turning to Cerro, Big Al dryly commented, “I thought you said they were rested.”

Cerro shrugged. “Sir, that’s what a well-rested infantryman looks like.”

As Dixon, the G2, and the aviation officer laughed, Kozak looked at Cerro, then at the general. When she spoke, she surprised everyone but Cerro. Though her comment made no sense, its meaning and the enthusiasm with which it was delivered were understood by all. “Sir, 2nd Platoon is ready and can do.”

The laughing stopped. Big Al looked at Cerro and nodded his approval.

“If the rest of the platoon is like her, they’ll do.”

Then, after looking at Cerro and then the general, Kozak asked, a little less enthusiastically, “Excuse me, but what is it exactly, sir, we’re supposed to do?”

The Spartans do not ask how many the enemy number, but where they are.

—Agis of Sparta

7
KILOMETERS
NORTHWEST
OF
SAN
LaZARO,
MEXICO

0600 hours, 19 September

Carefully picking his way through the loose rocks of the gully, Childress paused as he left its cover. To his front, the ground finally began to flatten out. Though the sparse chaparral that seemed to spread out before Childress without end appeared desolate and uninviting, it was far more hospitable than the barren hills behind him. He would be glad, he thought, to leave, for this land, like his profession, no longer suited him.

From the east a sudden breeze swirled around him, sending a chill down his spine. Looking to the left, he could see the sun peeking over the tops of the Sierra de la Garia. It was not, however, an inviting sun.

Instead of the usual pale yellow ball of fire that he had come to associate with this part of the world, Childress watched as a strange reddish-orange orb struggled to climb above the distant mountain peaks. The glow that it cast across the plain before him bathed everything, even the colorless rocks at his feet, in an eerie, almost blood-red hue. While Childress viewed this strange sight, an old sailor’s ditty about the sky came to his tired and troubled mind. The lines ran through his head as if someone were behind him, whispering them in his ear: “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.”

Glancing over his right shoulder, Childress looked back at the twin peaks of the hills he had passed through for any activity or signs that he had been followed. There were none. Not that Childress had expected any. He had been careful to avoid the sentinels posted around Delapos’s base camps. Since it had been his task to set up security for the base camps, and he had personally walked the hills, he knew where every outpost and sentinel was posted.

The greatest threat, when he and Delapos had been setting up the camps, had appeared to be from the hills to the north and east that dominated the mines and mining camps that they were using. If a raiding force was able to secure that high ground while blocking the trails leading from the east and west into the camps, escape would be difficult, at best.

Since seizing the high ground and attacking downhill was a technique favored by both the Americans and Mexicans, Delapos had put most of his efforts into guarding against such an attack from those hills. Since the approach from the village of Ejido de Dolores provided an attacker with a quick and direct route into the base camps, it also had received a great deal of attention. By the time they got around to the south and east, there had been few assets left to guard against attack from those quarters. Not that either man considered an attack from those directions very likely.

Both expected that any attacker, if one came, would be drawn to the natural benefits of the northern and western approaches.

It was for those reasons that Childress chose to leave by the southern route now that he had decided it was time to terminate his association with Delapos, Alaman, and their schemes. He had, Childress decided, overstayed his welcome in Mexico. Though he was a mercenary, and felt no need or desire to apologize to any man for that, he was not a terrorist.

He would leave such things to men like Lefleur, who saw no difference between the profession of arms and murder.

To his front, the red stain of the morning sun was beginning to fade.

The sun, a little higher in the sky, was beginning to wash out. Adjusting the straps of his rucksack, Childress prepared to continue his journey to San Lazaro, then south to Saltillo. Eventually, all of this—Delapos, Lefleur, the desolate landscape, and the war—would be behind him. With luck, he would be back in his beloved Vermont in time to see the foliage change and watch the first snow fall.

Headquarters, 16th Armored Division, Sabinas Hidalgo, Mexico

0715 hours, 19 September

Even though Kozak hadn’t told the members of her platoon the nature of the mission, they could tell. Instinctively, in a way that only a long serving soldier knew, every man could sense that something was going down. As she followed Captain Cerro down the ranks of her platoon during his first precombat inspection, Kozak could see the emotion each man felt in his face. Most showed a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

The faces of other soldiers, despite their best efforts to hide them, betrayed small, unmistakable signs of fear. A few were even impatient.

Though they didn’t know where they were going, when they were going, what they would do when they got there, or why, all they wanted to do was to get on with the mission, whatever it was.

Passing from one soldier to the next with little to do but look each man in the eye as Cerro inspected him, Kozak wished that somehow some of the confidence she saw in some of their faces could, like magic, flow from them to her. But she knew that such things did not happen. The confidence she needed that morning had to come from within. No one, not the general with all of his rank and authority, not Colonel Dixon with his plans and reputation as a fighter, not even Cerro with the air of professionalism and confidence that he wore like a cloak, could give Kozak what she needed most. Only trial by fire would tell if she was what she had so long pretended to be, a soldier.

As much as she would have liked to believe in herself, the two fights which she had already participated in hadn’t given her the assurance that she was what she wanted to be. Though the two fights, the one in Nuevo Laredo and the one north of Monterrey, had been very different, they had been similar in one important point. In each case, Kozak had simply reacted. Neither situation, even the battle against the tanks, had given her an opportunity to think more than one or two minutes in advance. Everything had been quick, unexpected, and unpredictable. They had been more like car wrecks than battles. Though she had done well, or so she was told, Kozak still lacked the confidence that came from knowing, in her heart as well as her mind, that she had what it took to be a leader.

So she both looked forward to and feared the upcoming raid. No wargame or drill, no reading or lecture, no badge or ribbon, no peacetime test or physical exam, could tell her, or any infantryman preparing to go into battle, if she was a true combat leader. Not until it came time to go over the top, to face, as they used to say, the push and pull of the bayonet, would she know for sure if she was a combat leader.

Nearing the end of the last rank, Kozak wondered how many good men had been lost in battle because, at the last minute, their leader suddenly discovered that he didn’t have the right stuff. How many graves were filled with the corpses of trusting soldiers who were betrayed by a system that allowed untried and unfit leaders to take them to war. Pausing, she looked back along the rank she had just passed, praying to herself that her vanity and ego, her single-minded drive to be the first woman infantry officer, wouldn’t cost these men their lives.

From the shade of one of the CP’s vans, Dixon watched Cerro and Kozak complete their inspection. They would, he thought, make a good pair.

Cerro had more than enough confidence for both of them, and Kozak had a quiet, businesslike manner that made shoestring operations like this one possible.

From the east, the beating of helicopter blades through the quiet morning air announced the approach of the Blackhawks. Squinting, Dixon searched the sky until he saw the five helicopters. Though the operation needed only four, three in a pinch, Dixon had decided to add a fifth as an added margin of safety. They had only one chance to get this thing right and he didn’t want what happened to the Teheran raid to happen tonight. He had, after 1

all, a personal stake in the success, or failure, of this operation.

The choppers were no sooner on the ground than Cerro gave the order to commence loading. Besides Kozak’s platoon, two medics and an extra radioman for Cerro would go. The radioman, at Cerro’s request, was Dixon’s own driver, Fast Eddie. Though Eddie, like Kozak’s platoon,

¦

didn’t know where he was going, he was glad to get out of the division ¦

main for a while, even if it meant carrying a radio.

Besides the rations and water they would need for the next twenty-four hours, and their basic load of ammunition, Cerro was taking nine AT-4

antitank rocket launchers to be divided between the three squads, and two M-60 machine guns with 600 rounds per gun. Though the banditos, as everyone now referred to the mercenaries, didn’t have anything bigger than a pickup truck, rocket launchers and M-6os would be useful in taking out machine-gun positions or banditos holed up in a building that 40mm grenades and the 5.56mm squad automatic weapons could not reach. Cerro had even tried to get a 60mm mortar, but couldn’t find one in time. The consummate American warrior, Cerro was in love with firepower; the more, the better.

Once the helicopters were loaded, they would take Cerro’s force to an isolated spot where he could brief the ground force, conduct some rehearsals, link up with Colonel Guajardo and his helicopter, and rest his troops. By noon, he would have everything except the Apache attack helicopters in hand, briefed on the mission, and at least one short rehearsal completed. If necessary, he would then have the balance of the afternoon to refine his plan, conduct another rehearsal, or rest his troops.

Either way, Cerro showed no worry about being able to make their ; scheduled 2100 hours liftoff time.

“I thought I would find you here, Scotty.”

Turning, Dixon didn’t even salute Big Al as he came up to stand next to him and watch the ground force prepare for departure. Instead, he stood there for a moment without looking at the general, then spoke.

“Have you reconsidered my request, sir?”

Without turning toward Dixon, and not wanting to rehash the converation, Big Al simply told him no in a manner that could leave no doubt in Dixon’s mind that all discussion was at an end. After a couple of minutes’ silence, however, during which Big Al began to feel like a heel, he turned to Dixon. “Look, Scotty, you’re too goddamned old to be crawling around in the dark, on your belly, like a twenty-two-year-old ranger candidate. And it won’t do you any good to remind me that the Mexican colonel is at least five years older than you. I’m not responsible for him.” Big Al paused, softening his tone before he continued. “Besides, the last thing we need is a person emotionally involved, like you, dicking around out there tonight. Given your current state of mind, not to mention lack of sleep, you’d be of no use to the mission or Jan, not to mention yourself. As much as I would love to let you go, Scotty, I am ordering you to stay.”

Dixon had expected Big Al’s answer. He knew Big Al was right. He knew that it would be pointless for him to go out there. That wasn’t his kind of war. That wasn’t what he was trained for. He would be, as Big Al pointed out, a threat, not an asset. Dixon had done everything he could to plan and prepare the mission. All of that was, he knew, logical and correct. Still, the thought of staying behind, doing nothing while others prepared to go out and save the only person in the world that really mattered to him, cut him to the bone. The idea that he had done his best, and that that might not be good enough to save Janr broke down whatever restraint and reserve of calm Dixon had left. As he watched Cerro walk from helicopter to helicopter, making sure everyone was in place and all was ready for liftoff, tears began to streak down Dixon’s cheeks. Big Al pretended not to notice. Instead, he just stood next to his G3, watching the helicopters as, one by one, they lifted off and disappeared to the south.

4 kilometers east of ejido de dolores, mexico 1200 hours, 19 September

Delapos turned away from the window and again began pacing the small room that served as his office. He did so for several minutes before he stopped by the window, looked out in the direction of Ejido de Dolores for a minute, and went back to his pacing. The thought that he could lose both Childress and Lefleur did not seem possible. It did not seem fair, either, especially since Lefleur had dumped the American congressman and his companions and left, leaving him the responsibility of deciding what to do with them. It would have been better, Delapos kept thinking, if the fool had simply killed the Americans and been done with them. As it was, if neither Lefleur nor Childress showed up, and he received no suggestions from Alaman, he would have to decide how and when to dispose of the matter himself.