“Sir, we have a report that Mexican Falcons have been scrambled and are en route. They intend to provide air support!” radioed a junior officer to Sterling.
“Shep, things are heating up here. We have incoming Mexican Falcons. Take that facility now!” ordered Sterling.
The Alamo Guard troops entered the facility from every possible entry point other than where the border agents were assembling outside on the bridge. Apparently Carranza was confused on what to tell his agents to do, and Davis decided the Border Patrol had still not heard back from Washington.
The Alamo Guard took the facility quickly without a shot fired. The Border Patrol agents began filing toward Nuevo Laredo on the bridge walkway. Carranza was visibly agitated that he had to abandon the facility, hadn’t heard from McDermott and had zero back-up support from the U.S. military. Looking toward the Mexican checkpoint, he was surprised to see the Mexicans advancing.
The Mexican force took up the entire width of the bridge with three armored personnel carriers, followed by a couple of hundred Mexican infantry.
Brig. Gen. Sterling was trying desperately to reach the Mexican commander, but fully expected the Mexicans to stop at the half-way line painted across the center of the bridge. If the Mexicans advanced all the way across the bridge before the Apaches arrived on the scene, Shep’s Alamo Guard could be overwhelmed.
“Shep, the Mexicans are advancing across the bridge. Get your folks into defensive positions now!” Sterling yelled into the radio.
“We see ’em, General! They’ve got some firepower! Surely they will stop at the midway point.”
“Shep, prepare for any scenario. This administration has gotten very cozy with the Mexican government, so anything is possible!” reasoned the general.
“And the Apaches?” asked Davis.
“En route. Will be over your facility in three minutes, I’m told.”
“Roger that! Sir, what are my orders if the Mexicans cross the half-way mark? We have two .50-caliber guns that may be able to take out those armored personnel carriers. I don’t think air support will be here before they cross, if their intent is to cross!”
“If they cross that mark, fire warning shots. If they continue, blow them the hell off the bridge. The Apaches will finish whatever you start. We’ve called in additional support from Lackland.”
The Mexican force pulled up to the painted black line and stopped. The Border Patrol agents were swallowed in the mass of troops to the point that Davis couldn’t separate them from the Mexicans.
Suddenly, the landline phone in the checkpoint facility rang.
“Sir, I have the Mexican commander on the phone,” said one of the Guard.
Davis dashed back to the counter from the double-door area of the stark cinder block government facility and grabbed the phone.
“This is Col. Davis, Alamo Guard Regiment of the Texas Guard.”
“Col. Davis, this is Generales Juan Ramon Soto,” said the Mexican commander in broken English. “I am advising you to remove your troops from the customs facility on your side of the bridge. Your federal government has asked us to aid your Border Patrol to restore this facility to national control.”
“Oh, is that so? Let me get this straight,” Davis said as he intentionally stalled for the arrival of the Apaches. “The United States government has asked the Mexican military to intervene on Texas soil once again?”
“Col. Davis, on behalf of your government and your president, I am ordering you to abandon the customs facility. This border has been ordered to re-open at once.”
Davis paused as he shook his head. “General Soto, Texans don’t abandon their posts. This is a Texas facility, and you will not cross that center stripe and enter Texas. If you do, you will be fired upon,” answered Davis without hesitation.
Word of the stand-off had spread through both towns, and citizens from both countries lined the Rio Grande, or sat with lawn chairs on rooftops and watched from their windows.
The Mexican commander gave the order and the armored personnel carriers rolled at slow speed across the midway point of the bridge into Texas.
“Fire! Fire now!” ordered Davis. The .50-caliber Barrett machine guns began strafing the three armored personnel carriers before they had gotten six feet over the line. The Mexicans returned fire from .30-caliber guns mounted in turrets on top of the carriers as glass, metal and mortar seemed to explode off the customs facility. Small arms fire from soldiers on either side echoed from both sides of the bridge as the late afternoon began to turn to dusk, and smoke began to rise from the bridge.
Suddenly, the three armored personnel carriers were hit with multiple rockets, seemingly out of nowhere. The two Texas Apaches had arrived and were on both sides of the bridge about one hundred yards away from the personnel carriers. Two of the vehicles stopped dead in their tracks as the rockets penetrated the carriers and exploded into fireballs.
The third was still rolling, but on fire. It veered hard to the right and hit the ten-foot tall iron link fence, eventually toppling a section of it. The carrier’s wheels kept turning as the personnel carrier climbed the crumpled fence and, in a dramatic scene captured on local news cameras, crawled over the fence and then plunged one hundred fifty feet into the shallow Rio Grande River, exploding in a small, tight mushroom-shaped fireball that shot up to the bottom of the bridge.
The world was now seeing the live news coverage being broadcast from Laredo by local network affiliates. The Texas crisis was exploding again on television screens and streaming on the Internet for all to see, including the White House.
“Col. Davis, Mexican air support is inbound. We have to pull the Apaches!” yelled Sterling into his microphone. “Tell your men to take cover! I don’t know if they will attempt to hit your facility!”
The Mexican Falcons’ air-to-air missiles had a much longer target range than the Apaches, who were outfitted with air-to-surface rockets. Davis and his Texas Guard were sitting ducks for the Falcons if the Mexicans decided to hit the facility with their firepower.
Small arms and machine gun fire was still being traded heavily across the bridge. The Border Patrol agents who had crossed over into Mexico were now accompanying the Mexican troops shooting at the Alamo Guards.
The Falcons came in low, and began strafing the bridge and the customs facility on the Texas side of the bridge. Davis’ troops hit the deck inside the facility, looking for any cover they could find.
Texas’ first casualties of the conflict began mounting with the attack from the low-flying Falcons that strafed, circled and came back continuously. The Alamo Guards were hunkered down as Mexican troops began advancing slowly across the bridge and the small arms fire defense from the Texans became less and less with each strafing from the Falcons.
“General, we are taking casualties from the Falcons! The Mexicans are advancing on the bridge. We need air support, sir!” screamed Davis.
Sterling had already ordered F-16s at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio scrambled when he received word that Mexican Falcons were in the air. Two F-16s were scorching the Texas sky headed to Laredo, with afterburners aglow, even in the bright daylight. Leading the charge to protect the pinned-down Alamo Guard was Cmdr. “Tex” Parsons, who was famous for the destruction of the Mexican Falcons after the raid on the Swingin’ T.
The Alamo Guard was under heavy fire, being attacked from the bridge and from the air.
“Col. Davis, hang tough, son. We have air support on the way!” yelled Sterling.
“We’re giving them hell, sir! But we are almost out of rounds here!” pleaded Davis. “I’ve got six dead and eight that need medi-vac now!”
Dead Mexican troops littered the bridge, but more were slowly advancing and another armored personnel carrier was making its way through the Mexican checkpoint followed by four Russian-made light duty tanks.
“Davis, there are tanks approaching the bridge. If we don’t get air cover soon I’m going to have you step back and retreat into
downtown until we can recover the bridge!”
“No, sir! We can hold ’em!” responded Davis.
There was no way Davis’ small regiment could hang onto the facility with the barrage coming from the air, infantry and now tanks.
“Eight minutes!” yelled a junior officer to Sterling.
“Shep, the F-16s are eight minutes out. Can you hold?”
“Yes, sir! We ain’t budging!”
Sterling grabbed another headset as the chopper hovered five miles from the bridge.
“Laredo, this is Cmdr. Parsons. We are minus six minutes from the checkpoint. I need orders.”
“Son, this is Brig. Gen. Sterling. The Alamo Guards are pinned down. Best we can tell, two Mexican Falcons are buzzing the checkpoint, causing our guys hell!”
Pops Younger had been monitoring the radio traffic from his jump seat on the Blackhawk with five other Texas Rangers he’d picked up at the state trooper regional headquarters. Under orders from Brig. Gen. Sterling, Younger’s Blackhawk remained in a hovering pattern eight miles north of the bridge.
“General, I’ve got the two Mexican bandits on radar. Permission to take them out?” radioed Cmdr. Parsons.
“We’ve got a lot of civilians in the area watching the show, Commander. No air-to-air missiles unless you have a short-range shot that won’t take them out over downtown or the bridge.”
“We’ve got state troopers trying to clear the civilian areas, sir, but it’s nowhere close to being clear,” radioed Pops.
“Roger that. Laredo, we are closing in now,” responded Parsons from his F-16.
The Mexican military radioed the Falcons circling to take one more run at the checkpoint facility and that the F-16s were closing fast.
“Take it out with missiles,” was the command in Spanish from Matamoros military operations, referring to the Falcons’ unused air-to-air missiles.
“Sir, the Mexicans just ordered the facility to be hit with rockets!” screamed a junior officer monitoring the Mexican radio traffic.
Cmdr. Parsons and the two F-16s were still two minutes out.
“Shep, get the hell out of there now!”
“Sir…” A sudden noise and then radio silence.
“Davis, are you there? Davis? Davis? Laredo checkpoint, do you copy?”
“Look, sir!” radioed the chopper pilot.
Sterling looked to the south and saw two separate columns of dark smoke climbing in the Texas sky.
“Damn it! Davis, are you there?”
“Sir, the Mexicans hit the checkpoint with either missiles or rockets from the Falcons!” radioed a ground coordinator. “The checkpoint is leveled, sir!”
“Davis? Davis?” repeated Sterling.
“Sir, the Mexican bogeys have bugged out. They are back across the river heading south!” said a junior radio officer.
Irritated that the F-16s hadn’t arrived in time, Sterling barked, “Cmdr. Parsons, this is Brig. Gen. Sterling. Those Mexican bogeys took out the checkpoint and we likely have a high casualty count. Your orders are to take out that bridge. Do you understand?”
“Roger that, General, destroy the bridge.”
“Get the governor on the radio now. I want permission for those birds to take out their entire damned customs office on the Mexican side of the bridge!” Sterling was fuming.
Two more Mexican personnel carriers were close to the rubble of the customs checkpoint on the Texas side of the bridge when “Tex” Parsons and the two F-16s banked hard south and low over downtown Laredo. The Russian-made tanks were now at the half-way point on the bridge, advancing slowly, followed by a couple of hundred infantry, including the U.S. Border Patrol unit.
“Fire! Fire! Fire! Missiles away!” came the excited voice of Cmdr. Parsons as he let go of the missiles.
The missiles from Parsons’ F-16 struck the concrete bridge and sent fireballs into the sky, followed by the barrage from the second F-16. Large pieces of the bridge, steel fencing, tanks and bodies began falling into the Rio Grande River below in a surreal scene similar to a video game.
Parsons then banked and came back to the bridge with both F-16s strafing what was left on the Mexican side of the bridge.
“Permission to take out their facility, General?” yelled Parsons.
The action was happening so fast that the governor had no time to ponder the situation thrust on him, surprised that the event had escalated so quickly.
“Governor, they just killed a couple of dozen good men. They attacked our facility on our side of the river. Give me the order, Governor! Give me the order!” insisted Sterling.
Receiving the nod from the governor, Sterling replied to Parsons, “Take the damn Mexican customs office out. No mercy! Obliterate them!”
“Roger, General.”
The next few minutes played out on worldwide television screens as the F-16s pummeled the bridge and the Mexican customs office. Dark smoke emanated from the bridge, the two destroyed customs offices, and the burning carcasses of the tanks and personnel carriers that weren’t under water in the shallow Rio Grande. Bodies of dead Mexican troops were all over what was left on the bridge and on both banks of the river one hundred fifty feet below.
The Apaches and the F-16s continued to provide air support for recovery efforts in the destroyed Texas customs facility as fellow Texas Guardsmen looked for any Alamo Guard survivors.
The governor ordered two more regiments to the Texas-Mexico border just in case there were designs of the same kind on other Texas entry points by the federal government.
* * *
The president left the Oval Office during the stand-off to scurry down to the situation room, surrounded by his closest staff members and the Joint Chiefs.
“Mr. President, it appears that the Texans have killed the U.S. Border Patrol agents who were manning the Laredo checkpoint,” said one general. “They hit the bridge with F-16s and Apaches from the air wing of the Texas Guard.
“Mexico is also saying our guys took out the Mexican customs facility on their side of the bridge. The bridge looks destroyed. There are literally dozens of Mexican casualties from the Mexicans attempting to aid the border agents.”
“Well, general, this is true, but the Mexican air force also took out the Laredo-side customs facility and there are no doubt significant casualties of the Texas Guard,” countered Avery Smith.
“Who controls the bridge and the checkpoints?” asked the president as he squinted to see the carnage being shown on the multiple LED screens in the room.
“Well, I guess nobody, sir,” said the general. “Look! The bridge has been rendered inaccessible.” The officer pointed to the screens showing gaping holes in the middle of the bridge and the wreckage of Mexican armored vehicles and tanks partially submerged in the Rio Grande River below. Looking back at Smith and McDermott, the president asked, “How are the networks spinning this so far?”
“They are playing up the fact that the Texans killed the U.S. Border Patrol agents,” answered a concerned Smith. “Only Fox is reporting the casualties in the Texas facility knocked out by the Mexicans.”
“That will piss off America!” commented Tibbs, almost gleefully referring to the slanted mainstream media reporting.
“Yes, it will, but those agents weren’t killed until the Laredo facility was hit. It’s important we control the message here and the priority of events is that they struck the agents first,” said Smith seriously.
“Mr. President, we are getting word that there is still some sporadic fighting on and near the bridge!” interrupted the general, pointing to the screen with one hand and holding a phone to his ear with the other hand. Everyone stopped talking and looked at the CNN screen.
CNN cameras were capturing the action on the bridge from a nearby outdoor market near the bridge that was normally frequented by Mexican nationals as they crossed over into Texas to shop.
The cameras captured a Blackhawk helicopter with Texas Guard insignia and Lone Star Flag as machine guns f
ired into the Mexican side of the bridge and the river. The Blackhawk circled the bridge, then banked as if to land.
“What the hell is he doing?” yelled Tibbs.
“The Texans are trying to get their wounded and dead out of the facility, but the Mexicans keep shooting at them from the bridge and off the river bank!” answered the general.
“Is someone in contact with the Mexican army? What the hell are they doing? Do they realize how this is playing out on TV?” asked an irritated Johnson as he stared at the Joint Chiefs.
* * *
At the bridge, Brig. Gen. Sterling radioed the Blackhawk. “We have reports of a Stinger shoulder-launched missile by the Mexicans near the river. Get the hell out of there, Pops!”
“Let us off on the bridge!” yelled Pops to the pilot.
“We have a Stinger missile somewhere. Got to bug out, sir!”
“Pilot, get me and my Rangers off this bird now or I swear we will jump off it!”
“But, sir…”
“Son, there are men dying down there! Get us down now, then git the hell outta here!”
“Pilot, this is Brig. Gen. Sterling. Change course immediately.”
“Sir, the Ranger commander is demanding to be let off on the bridge!”
Sterling keyed the mic, but didn’t say anything before releasing it. Then, talking under his breath to himself, he said, “Damn, Pops, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”
The Blackhawk lowered to the bridge among the rubble and set down unevenly as Pops and his five Rangers jumped off and scrambled to find cover among the toppled cinder blocks of the customs facility.
* * *
“It appears they let some troops off the chopper,” said the general in the situation room. “They are probably providing cover so their people can get their wounded or dead out of that rubble.”
As they watched, the Blackhawk rose upward quickly and banked hard to the north. The chopper swirled the smoke that was enveloping the entire bridge from the battle.
The CNN cameras made out an image in the smoke as the chopper got further away from the bridge. The outline of a familiar figure began to emerge from the smoke. He was easily recognizable to anyone who had been following the months’-old Texas crisis.
A State of Treason Page 25