Trial by fire: a novel

by Harold Coyle

  In an instant, the van had disappeared down the street they had just come up. Realizing that the van had to be the one they were pursuing, Wittworth turned to his driver and ordered him to move out and follow the van. The driver, however, did not immediately respond. With his hands frozen to the steering wheel in a death grip, his eyes wide open and his mouth gaping, he was hyperventilating, trying hard to catch his breath and calm down. Wittworth's first attempt to get his attention by yelling elicited no response. The man was shaken. Reaching over, Wittworth grabbed the man's arm and yelled again. The driver, his mouth still gaping, slowly turned his head toward Wittworth and stared at his commander with wide, unblinking eyes. Wittworth shook him and repeated his order. There was a moment's hesitation before a weak, high-pitched

  "Okay" issued from the driver's throat.

  By the time Kozak had mounted her Bradley and put on her armored crewman's helmet, Wittworth was. back on the radio, issuing orders as he tried desperately to find his location on the street map and hang on at the same time. Briscoe, unable to do anything but hang on, watched the white pizza truck zigzag in and out of traffic. Briscoe thought about putting on his seat belt, but decided against it. To do so would keep him from sticking his head between Wittworth and the driver. But even with his head next to Wittworth's, the only thing he could get through to Wittworth above the noise was that they were on U.S. 83 headed south out of town.

  The Humvee driver, having regained his nerve, used the superior mobility of his vehicle to close the distance, running up over sidewalks and across lawns, and scattering pedestrians that stood in their way as they continued their pursuit. He was in the process of negotiating a street corner while Wittworth was looking down at his map when the rear doors of the van flew open. The only warning Wittworth and his driver got was Briscoe's yelling, above the roar of the engine, "Jesus Christ! Duck!"

  Looking up from his map, Wittworth was just in time to see the muzzle flash from an assault rifle aimed right at him. The driver saw the same thing and, as before, reacted by jerking the wheel to the side, running the Humvee into an aluminum street lamppost. For an instant, the Humvee pitched up, as if it were about to climb the post, before its weight brought the lamppost crashing down, impaling the Humvee on the stump of the post and pitching Briscoe forward over the windshield and onto the hood.

  The same jarring stop launched Wittworth forward just as he was ducking to avoid the gunfire. The forward movement and stop drove Wittworth's Kevlar helmet into the glass windshield like a battering ram.

  When everything finally settled, the driver jumped out of the Humvee and turned to Wittworth, who was in the process of freeing his helmet from the glass windshield and slowly sitting up. "That's it, Captain.

  That's it. Twice in one day is enough for me. Damned sure not gonna try for strike three."

  Shaken by a near collision, being fired at, and piling up on a streetlamp post, and dazed by the impact of his head into the windshield, Wittworth looked to his right at the ground, noticing the front wheels of the Humvee were off of it. Without admitting it, he too realized that he had had enough for one day. But he wasn't ready to give up. As he sat upright and shook himself out, Wittworth's shock was quickly replaced by embarrassment, then, in quick order, by a fit of rage. Grabbing the radio hand mike, he keyed the radio net and ordered all his platoon leaders to pursue and stop a white pizza van with Mexicans in it at all costs. Those bastards, he thought, were not going to embarrass the United States Army and get away with it.

  At 3rd Platoon's roadblock, Kozak and her people waited. The 3rd Squad, who had been on duty at the roadblock when the call came in, continued to man it. Their Bradley, with the engine running, the gunner and track commander up and alert, the main gun pointed north toward Laredo, sat blocking the right side of the road. Kozak's Bradley sat on the opposite side of the road, also with its engine running and main gun pointed toward Laredo. The other two squads, with SFC Rivera, were mounted and ready to move out, their Bradleys sitting just off the road fifty meters south of Kozak's and the 3rd Squad's Bradley.

  As they waited, watching for any sign of the enemy pizza van, Kozak tried to contact Wittworth, who, for some reason, was not responding.

  She was unsure of her instructions. His last orders, "to pursue and stop"

  the pizza van, were, at best, ambiguous. Kozak didn't know if she was required to challenge the people in the pizza van, offering them an opportunity to submit to a search or surrender before she opened fire. If they showed any signs of resistance or flight, was she authorized to use deadly force? What, she wondered, constituted resistance, and how much deadly force was too much? What did Wittworth have in mind, Kozak wondered, when he ordered them to stop the pizza van? A simple physical roadblock? Warning shots from small arms? Or did he expect her to use 25mm high-explosive rounds and simply blow the van away?

  All these questions, and more, were racing through Kozak's mind when Tyson yelled into the intercom, "Here they come! There's a white van heading for us. And he's in a hurry."

  Hoisting her binoculars up to her face, Kozak searched the road to the north. The white van Tyson had spotted was, indeed, headed south toward them as fast as it could go. On top of the van's roof, a red plastic pizza identified the van as the one they were after. This was it. There wasn't any time for questions, no time for clarification. She was on her own. Self-doubt and the uneasy feeling that comes with it were gone. In its place, a nervous rush of anticipation and a tingle of excitement. This was it.

  Letting the binoculars fall until the strap around her neck stopped them, Kozak stood up on her seat, bending over until she could see Staff Sergeant John Strange, squad leader of the 3rd Squad. Leaning against the side of his Bradley, Strange was talking to one of his soldiers when he heard Kozak yelling for him to come over closer to her Bradley.

  Picking up his rifle, Strange began to trot over toward Kozak.

  Kozak didn't wait for Strange to reach her before she began to issue her orders. "Sergeant Strange. The white van coming down the road, stop it.

  But do not, repeat, do not shoot unless fired on. Is that clear?"

  Stopping short, with his M-16 in his left hand, Strange waved his right hand and nodded. Without further ado, he turned in place and, in a booming voice, called his squad to action. "Okay, 3rd Squad. This is it.

  Show time. I wanna see everybody up and ready. And no shootin' unless I or the LT say so." He looked around as his people put on helmets, crouched behind the concrete road barrier, and prepared themselves. Just to be sure, he repeated the last part of his order. "No shootin' until you hear the order from me or the lieutenant."

  Satisfied that all was ready where she was, Kozak keyed the radio tuned to the platoon frequency. Turning around in the open hatch and looking south toward the other two Bradleys of her platoon, Kozak alerted Rivera that she thought the van they were watching for was coming at them. She instructed Rivera to stand by with the 1st and 2nd squads and be ready to move. Rivera acknowledged her orders with a short, functional

  "Wilco, out," and dropped off the air. With the platoon ready, Kozak next dropped down into the turret and prepared to switch the radio frequency to the company command net when Tyson's voice came over the intercom. "They've seen us and stopped, LT."

  Forgetting about the company net, Kozak put her head up to the eyepiece of the primary sight. Tyson already had the van in the sight, crosshairs laid on the center mass of the vehicle, which was sitting some five hundred meters north of them on the road. "Are you sure they saw us, Sergeant Tyson?"

  Taking his eyes off his sight, Tyson looked at Kozak, seated to his right, for a second. At a range of five hundred meters, he thought, even if he missed the red and white fifty-five-gallon drums, concrete Jersey barriers, barbed wire, and stop signs of the roadblock, even a blind man would see the two twenty-five-ton, nine-foot-nine-inch-high Bradleys, standing right behind the roadblock. Holding his tongue, he gave a simple, short response. "Yeah, LT, they saw
us."

  "They're backing up."

  Swinging back around to his sight, Tyson caught the image of the van just before it completed a wild U-turn in the middle of the road.

  Even before the van finished the turn, Kozak was up out of the hatch and yelling orders to Sergeant Strange. "Sergeant Strange, you stay here with the 3rd Squad. I'm taking the rest of the platoon and going after the van."

  As she dropped down and ordered Rivera to bring the rest of the platoon up, Strange had his people open a gap in the barrier. Hearing Kozak's order to Strange, Freedman, her driver, anticipated her next order. He let the park brake off, put the Bradley's transmission into gear, and prepared to roll. Without waiting for the rest of the platoon, Kozak told Freedman to move out.

  Scurrying out of the way just in time, the men of 3rd Squad watched as Kozak's Bradley whipped around the barrels and wire, knocking one of the barrels over in the process. Its engine whining to a high pitch, then dropping as the next higher gear caught, the Bradley cleared the barrier and took off down the road. Seconds later, the other two Bradleys, with Rivera perched high in the commander's hatch of the first, came tearing through. They were already close to reaching top speed and less able to negotiate the twists and turns of the roadblock. It came as no surprise to anyone in the 3rd Squad, now standing on either side of the road at a respectful distance, when Rivera's Bradley ran over and crushed flat the fifty-five-gallon drum Kozak's Bradley had knocked over. The 3rd Platoon was in hot pursuit of a dangerous pizza van and nothing was going to stop them.

  As they closed to where the van had disappeared, Kozak watched as three police cars in pursuit of the van went careening around the corner, down the side road where the van had disappeared. Looking down at her map, then at the street sign as they closed on and turned the corner, Kozak noted that they were now on Masterson Road, which ran due west and ended just short of the Rio Grande. Between ducking low branches from trees along the road and working out in her mind exactly what they would do with the van if and when they caught it, Kozak wasn't paying attention when her Bradley came to the end of the road and almost rammed a Laredo police car sitting sideways in the middle of the road.

  The driver's door, facing the oncoming Bradley, was open, with a Laredo policeman standing next to it, radio hand mike in one hand, looking west, across the river, when Kozak's Bradley appeared out of nowhere. Both Kozak and the policeman saw each other at the same instant, their eyes flying open in surprise. Freedman, too, saw the danger. Honking the steering wheel over to the left, he felt the Bradley slide forward on the dirt road a few meters before it began a hard left turn. Missing the front of the police car by inches, the Bradley crashed through the brush on the side of the road and down the embankment toward the river where other policemen and sheriff's deputies were standing.

  Although Freedman had control and was already in the process of stopping the Bradley, the policemen and deputies didn't know that, and didn't give a hoot about their pride. Like chickens scurrying to get out of the way of the fox in the hen house, the policemen and deputies turned and fled when they saw Kozak's Bradley come crashing down the embankment, throwing dirt, dust, and rocks everywhere.

  After Freedman finally did manage to bring the Bradley to a stop, everyone stopped in place and looked at it. Kozak, stunned by the near collision, stood up in her hatch and looked behind her to make sure they hadn't run over anything or anyone of importance, then turned to the nearest policeman. "Where'd the white van go?"

  The policeman, still recovering from his close encounter with Kozak's Bradley, just looked up at her for a second. The fact that the commander of the huge combat vehicle was a woman was as much a shock to him as his close brush with sudden death. What in the hell, he thought, was she doing up there? Kozak looked at him for a moment before repeating her question. "Where'd the white van go?"

  Realizing that she must be for real, the policeman pointed toward the river. "They tried to ford the river. Van got stuck and they took off, on foot into Mexico."

  ' Looking over into the river, Kozak could see the white van, all its doors wide open, awash in the center of the Rio Grande. Taking a deep breath, she realized that the enemy had evaded them. With nothing else to do, she dropped down and switched the radio frequency over to the company command net. The CO had to be told the bad news.

  Pacing back and forth to work off his anger and nervous energy, Wittworth heard Kozak's call just as the aidmen were about to pull Briscoes body off of his Humvee's hood. Ignoring them, Wittworth ran over to the Humvee and reached for the radio hand mike. Keying the mike, he responded to Kozak's call using his standard company call sign, Alpha 6.

  "Alpha thirty-six, this is Alpha six. Send your traffic, over."

  "Alpha six, this is thirty-six. We were in pursuit of the white van.

  They have abandoned the van and fled on foot. We have broken off the pursuit and are ..."

  Kozak's comment that they had given up the pursuit simply because the Mexicans had taken off on foot pissed him off. Even before Kozak finished her report, Wittworth squeezed the talk button with all his might and began to yell into the mike. "Damn you, thirty-six. Get out of your tracks and follow them, over."

  Letting up on the talk lever on her CVC helmet, Kozak was surprised to hear Wittworth's voice come booming over the radio. Since she was transmitting and his radio couldn't override her transmission, all she caught of Wittworth's transmission was the last part, the part that instructed her to follow the Mexicans. Obviously, she thought, he didn't understand that the Mexicans had fled over the river into Mexico.

  Keying the radio again, she tried to inform Wittworth of the real situation.

  "Alpha six, this is Alpha thirty-six. I don't think you understand the situation, over." Kozak's response caused Wittworth to lose whatever self-control he had left. Mashing the hand mike as if he were trying to crush it, he yelled back at Kozak, "This is Alpha six. You get your ass off your tracks and get those bastards or don't come back. Out." With that, Wittworth threw the hand mike into the Humvee, turned and went storming off, looking for some way to vent his anger.

  Kozak was still trying to raise Wittworth on the radio when Rivera's Bradley pulled up next to hers. Taking off her CVC, she yelled to Rivera,

  "Have you been listening to the company command net?"

  Rivera nodded his head. "Yeah, I heard. What do we do, Lieutenant?"

  "I don't think he understands that the Mexicans are across the river."

  Rivera looked down, thought about that, then looked back at Kozak.

  "He must. All these police have been following them. He's got a sheriff's deputy with him. He's got to know. Why else would he order us to pursue? Besides, don't the rules of engagement say something about hot pursuit in life-and-death situations?"

  He was right, Kozak thought. The rules of engagement did say some thing about hot pursuit. While she didn't remember exactly what they said, surely Wittworth did. Otherwise, he wouldn't have ordered them to pursue. As she pondered this, neither she nor Rivera thought to ask the deputies, now wandering about in an effort to recover from their close call, if any of them had contact with the deputy who was Wittworth's liaison. Instead, Kozak accepted Rivera's logic. Looking over at the river and the far bank, she decided to do as she had been told.

  "Sergeant Rivera, have the dismount teams from 1st and 2nd squads dismount and form up at the riverbank. We're going after them on foot."

  Dropping down, Kozak recovered her web gear, rifle, and Kevlar helmet.

  As she did so, she told Tyson to stay with the track and on the radio, even though he already knew this without her telling him. Tyson, a senior sergeant E-5, was familiar with his duties. At times, he resented having Kozak. remind him of them, like now. It was, to him, almost as if she didn't trust him and she felt it was necessary to constantly remind him.

  Though he knew most new lieutenants were like that, it didn't make him feel any better about it.

  Once outside the tr
ack, she trotted down to the riverbank, where Rivera was already forming the two squads. Quickly scanning the length of the river, with the stalled van in the center, Kozak decided it wouldn't be a very formidable barrier. A dry summer had dropped the water level, leaving several exposed sand bars that would make their crossing easier. For a second, she thought about leaving Rivera with the tracks. She should. It was the normal practice in mech infantry platoons to leave the platoon sergeant with the carrier teams while the platoon leader led the dismounts. In this situation, however, Kozak felt it would be better to have him with her. The tracks weren't in danger, and the men, she knew, would feel better going into battle if Rivera was with them.

  Suddenly, Kozak's heart skipped a beat. It had just occurred to her that they were, in fact, about to go into battle. They were crossing an international boundary, locked and loaded, in pursuit of an armed foe. This was no exercise. No drill. When they pulled the trigger, real bullets, not laser beams, would be launched. When she reached the river, she looked at the two squads of soldiers, the 1st Squad on her right, the 2nd on her left. All eyes were on her. She returned the stares. Since most of her men were taller than she was, she had to look up. That, however, didn't seem to matter, for they were all waiting for her orders. Even Rivera, understanding the gravity of the situation, said nothing. He could have, but to do so would have undermined Kozak. This, she suddenly understood, was it. This, as the books say, was the moment of truth.

  Without further thought, Kozak ordered the ist Squad to deploy in line and follow her. Turning to Rivera, she ordered him to follow with the 2nd Squad, providing overwatch to the ist. When Staff Sergeant Roger Maupin had his ist Squad deployed, Kozak plunged into the knee-high water of the river and began to head into Mexico.

  16.

  War means fighting, and fighting means killing. --Nathan Bedford Forest Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

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  0925 hours, 7 September