by Harold Coyle
When he dropped his hand to his side, Jan raised her two hands to his head, running them along his temples and stopping when they came to rest on his cheeks. With a gentle squeeze, Jan held his face in her hands, tilting it up toward hers. "We have nearly an hour until the president comes on TV and enlightens us with his latest pearls of wisdom. All will be forgiven, provided you buy me something cold and wet. I'm dying of thirst."
Dixon smiled. "Your wish, my dear, is my command. I happen to know this great little convenience mart a few blocks from here that sells the greatest thirty-two-ounce drinks this side of the Rio Bravo."
As they walked to the convenience mart, Dixon, for the most part, was silent as Jan talked about the shooting she had done during the past few days as well as what she was planning to do next. Much of her activity had included a healthy dose of the history of Texas, which she was using as background for her stories, and which she now related to Dixon. In one piece, shot outside Meir, Texas, Jan recounted how a small group of Texans, bent on invading Mexico in 1842, had been captured by the Mexican Army. She used this as a lead-in to a story that recounted the problems the Republic of Texas and the Republic of the Rio Grande had had with Mexico after the War for Texas Independence. These incidents, Jan explained, coupled with vigorous lobbying from Texans and expansionists in the United States, had led to what she now referred to as the first Mexican War. That war, Jan told Dixon, had resulted in strained relations between Mexico and United States that had never healed and often resulted in misunderstandings and, at times, incidents like the one that had just occurred in Laredo. In another piece Jan had done, she told of some of these minor border incidents between the American Army and Mexican forces at the beginning of the first Mexican War. Not far from Me Allen, Texas, Jan and her crew visited the site where a patrol of sixty-three U.S. dragoons, led by Captain Seth Thornton, was intercepted and ambushed by Mexican General Anastasio Torrej6n on April 23, 1845. When they shot that piece, Jan had intended to use it for another story. Instead, she explained how she'd use it as a lead-in during her report on the incursion into Mexico by U.S. forces that morning.
After buying their drinks, and as they returned to city hall, Jan told Dixon all was not going well, though. She and her crew had planned to cross over into Mexico to visit several historic sites over the next few days as well as to interview local Mexican officials. That, she pointed out, was highly unlikely after the incident of that morning.
While she spoke, Dixon marveled at Jan's ability to travel about with her little crew and do what she did. Conventional wisdom viewed Dixon's duties, those of an American soldier, as dangerous and difficult.
Dixon, however, didn't feel that way. While being a soldier entailed danger and the requirement to place life and limb in harm's way, on command, what Jan did was often times as dangerous, and infinitely more difficult.. Dixon, especially as a general staff officer, operated within a very large and complex organization known as the United States Army.
The Army delineated his exact duties.and responsibilities, provided training until he mastered those duties, and for the most part then told him what to do, when to do it, and where to do it. To perform his assigned duties, Dixon had a large number of soldiers to assist him. Like Dixon, these soldiers had well-defined duties and the training required to perform those duties, as well as the necessary equipment. In addition, the Army provided for the physical well-being of Dixon and his soldiers by creating and following them with a support system that provided them with their meals, clothing and personal equipment, supplies used to perform their duties, health and comfort items, and medical support. There were even special units, called Greggs, short for "grave registrations," that would tag, bag, and bury Dixon or any of his men should they die in the line of duty. In the United States Army, and all of its sister services, it was an article of faith that the soldiers who had volunteered to go forth and do battle for their country would receive all the support and help that the nation and its government could provide those soldiers.
In Jan's field, by contrast, she was on her own. Everything, from learning the techniques of her craft, to learning how to hustle a news story, was up to her. The only thing she and her crew got from WNN, whom she was now working for, was the equipment needed to shoot and transmit their stories. Everything else, from clothing to lodging, was up to them to obtain. While they did receive a nice per diem rate that was meant to cover all their personal needs, it was far different from having someone hand them to you, like the Army did for Dixon.
Even more significant was the fact that, legally and practically, the rights and protection afforded to Jan and her crew were no different than those of any ordinary citizen. When Jan and her crew were out chasing a story, whether it was in Austin, Texas, or in the mountains of Mexico, they were on their own. They had to protect themselves, and if one of them became injured, they had to fend for themselves. By comparison, even though Dixon was the soldier, he was relatively safe, protected by distance from the forward edge of the battle area, and by units such as the MP platoon assigned to guard the division command post and commanding general. Drawn to where the action was by the need to get her story, Jan had no one and nothing to protect her. Dixon thought on that for a moment, reflecting how strange it was that he, pledged to defend and uphold the Constitution, could, in reality, do nothing to protect his lover from the danger she so readily put herself in. Not that there was anything he would do to change such things. Both he and Jan were adults, two people who had their own aspirations and callings, and at the same time, they loved each other so much that neither wished to change the other.
When they got back to the steps of city hall, Jan and Dixon sat as far away from the main entrance as they could. For a moment, there was a pause as each tried to find something to talk about. Dixon, with full knowledge of the current situation on both sides of the Rio Grande, as well as what the president was going to announce in less than thirty minutes, had to be careful what he said, or even implied. Jan, a reporter by profession and nature, had to suppress her natural desire to probe for the information she knew Dixon had. It was not the nature of the trite conversation that mattered, however; it was the proximity of the person that each loved, the sound of their voices, and the tone of the conversation they fell onto. The time they spent that evening on the steps of the Laredo city hall was, for both, a period of rest and renewal as they drew upon each other's strength in preparation for the ordeal each knew was coming.
Dixon heard the tromp of combat boots approaching on the steps behind him before Jan did. The steps were hurried, which meant the owner of the boots wasn't coming over for a social call. For a moment, he tried to ignore the approaching boots, hoping they were headed somewhere else--but he wasn't that lucky. When the sound of the boots was only a few feet away, the voice of the general's aide called him. "Colonel Dixon, the CG
needs to see you ASAP."
Twisting his head around, Dixon watched as the division commander's aide came down and around until he was facing Dixon and Jan. "Sorry to disturb you, sir, Ms. Fields. But we just got this in." With that, he thrust out a sheet of yellow paper, folded in half, that Dixon recognized as a spot report form.
Dixon unfolded the spot report and read it. Jan, anxious to see what was on it, nevertheless restrained herself, concentrating on taking a long, slow sip from the soda she held. Folding the paper in half again and handing it back to the aide, Dixon told him he would be along in a minute. The aide saluted, then went scurrying back up the steps. When he was gone, Dixon reached out with his left hand and put it on Jan's legs.
"Well, my dear, duty calls."
Leaning over so that her right arm was against his left, Jan looked at Dixon, who was staring off into the distance. "Hot date with Big Al?"
Patting her leg, he turned and looked Jan in the eye. "Well, I guess you'll find out soon enough. Seems our friends south of the border aren't going to buy the president's plan."
Jan was intrigued. "What plan?
"
Looking away from her, back to the distant object that he had been staring at, Dixon slowly, carefully, explained to Jan. "The president of the United States is going to annodnce to the American public in twenty minutes his proposal to solve our little border problem, a solution that the American ambassador presented to the Council of 13 in Mexico City a little over four hours ago." Dixon paused, took a drink, and then continued.
"In a nutshell, the president is going to announce that the armed forces of the United States are going to establish a security zone south of the Rio Grande, to be patrolled by us, with or without the cooperation of the Mexican government."
Jan sat there for several seconds, absorbing what she had just been told. "How do you know that the Council of 13 is going to reject it? Have they made an announcement?"
Dixon, his face showing no signs of concern, played with his drinking straw as he answered. "No, not that I know of. But there are subtle ways soldiers have of broadcasting their intentions. Take that spot report, for example. It was from the division cav squadron watching International Bridge Number One five blocks fro.m here. Right now, as we speak, the Mexicans are preparing their side of the bridge for demolitions." He turned and looked at Jan. "Call me paranoid, but it seems to me that our friends south of the border are trying to tell us something, and it ain't
'Welcome.' "
Mercy Hospital, Laredo, Texas 2025 hours, 7 September With nothing to do while he waited for the doctor to finish working on Lieutenant Kozak, Harold Cerro reread her report concerning her pla toon's foray into Mexico that morning. It didn't get any better with the third reading. Grammatically and structurally, it was quite good, unusual for a junior Army officer. Its tone and content, however, were self demeaning and apologetic in the extreme. Were the investigation into the cause of the border incident to be based solely upon Kozak's statement, an uninformed person would walk away with the impression that Kozak had planned and been responsible for everything that had occurred from the loss of the Alamo in 1836 to the overthrowing of the old Mexican government in June. It was no wonder that Colonel Dixon had sent him to talk to her, both to assess her mental state and to get her to reconsider her first report and rewrite it.
Though Cerro didn't relish his role as a "special projects" officer--which, translated to English, came out as "shitty little jobs" officer--it was better than sitting in the current operations van at the main command post, answering telephones and watching majors thrash about and ping off the walls. It seemed even the most mundane things sent everyone at the CP into orbit on days like this one, especially when no one knew for sure what was going to happen. Staff officers from subordinate brigades, especially the operations officers, were on the phone every hour, asking for current updates on pending orders or changes to the rules of engagement.
Staff officers from the corps command post called more frequently, asking for additional information on the border-crossing incident. It seemed, at times, that the people at corps wanted to know everything about the platoon, down to the names of each individual who had crossed, their ranks, race, the amount of time they had spent in the unit, etc., etc., etc. About the only thing that the corps staff hadn't asked for by the time Cerro left was what color eyes Kozak's people had, though there were bets that someone would get to that question sooner or later. Such questions, in and of themselves, were bad enough. What made it worse was that the staff at corps never appeared to share any information with each other. In one incident, two corps staff officers, who Cerro knew sat next to each other, called within a single ten-minute period to ask the same question. Therefore, when Colonel Dixon had come up to him and handed him the file containing the reports of the incident, notes of the commanding general's initial impression, and instructions to find Kozak, talk to her, and see if she wanted to change her statement, Cerro jumped at the chance.
"Captain Cerro, you can come with me now. The doctor is just about finished with your friend."
Looking up from the report on his lap, Cerro saw the emergency room nurse he had talked to earlier. Far from being an angel of mercy, the nurse that stood before Cerro looked more like a sitcom character. The short, round Hispanic woman, in her late thirties, had a figure that had all the definition of a bowling ball. She wore her hair pulled back from her round face in a bun. The whites she wore, which no doubt had been fresh and clean hours ago, were soaked with sweat and stained with drops and smears of blood. Were it not for those bloodstains, as well as the haggard look and eyes that showed signs of emotional exhaustion, the nurse would have been an object of humor. But she wasn't. While the chaos and pace of her activities differed from Cerro's as night does from day, her look told Cerro that she, like him, had been dealing with the real world too long that day.
In silence, she led him to an examining room, where she entered after looking in at the small square window in the door. Opening the door for Cerro, she let him enter and left without a word, headed for her next task.
Lieutenant Kozak, lying on the examination table, had her legs dangling off the edge, her hands behind her head, elbows out, and eyes closed.
Before he said anything, Cerro studied her. Her boots, as well as the pants of her uniform, were covered with dried mud, which, Cerro thought, was from the crossing of the Rio Grande. From the waist up, she wore only a brown, regulation T-shirt stained with wavy white lines of salt from her perspiration, which made the shirt appear to be tie-dyed.
With her hands held behind her, her breasts, straining against the brown T-shirt, stood like two firm mounds, perfect and round. Since her eyes were closed and the nurse had left, Cerro stood for a moment and gauged, from a distance, their approximate size. He had always pegged her as having a B cup. Now, without the bulky class-A greens or the baggy camouflaged battle dress uniform to obscure them, he could clearly see that young Lieutenant Kozak was a healthy C cup.
Cerro was assessing Kozak's dominant features when the door behind him burst open and a doctor came into the examination room, talking without looking up from a chart he carried. "Well, you're in great shape there, Lieutenant. No concussion, no signs of fractures, nothing broken, except your nose."
The doctor's sudden appearance caused Kozak to take her hands out from behind her head and, grasping the sides of the examination table, push herself up into a sitting position. As she did, she noticed Cerro standing next to the door, blushing slightly, as if he had just been caught doing something wrong. It never occurred to her that he had been standing there eyeing her while she rested.
Looking first at the doctor, Cerro didn't notice that Kozak had sat up.
When he had recovered from the sudden appearance of the doctor, as well as his personal embarrassment, he looked back at the lieutenant. It was only then that he realized he had been so busy staring at her breasts that he had not seen her face. What he saw bore no resemblance to the clean, soft face that he had come to associate with the young lieutenant. Her gentle features were obscured by a swollen nose covered with a piece of wide medical tape. Only the tip, swollen, scraped, and red from soreness, showed below the tape. Protruding from her nostrils were the ends of white cotton packing. As bad as her nose looked, however, the blue-black circles that began at her nose and surrounded her eyes made Kozak look like a boxer who had been knocked out. Without thinking, Cerro shook his head and mumbled, "Jesus, you look like hell."
Unable to turn away from the doctor, who had tilted her head back and was looking at her nose, Kozak was about to give Cerro a cynical
"Thanks" for the less-than-cheerful comment, but thought better of it.
She had no idea why he was here. Even though she was convinced that, at that moment, she didn't have a friend in the world, she didn't want to take any chances and alienate a possible friend. So she held her tongue, letting the doctor complete his examination and allowing Cerro's comment to pass unanswered. She would let Cerro initiate the conversation and set the tone when he was ready.
Assuming that Cerro was there to
pick Kozak up, the doctor, finished with his examination, turned away from her and said to Cerro as he prepared to leave, "Well, Captain, she's all yours. You should keep the packing in the nose for twenty-four hours." Pausing at the door, the doctor looked back at Kozak. "Next time something like this happens, don't wait ten hours before coming in. It would have been a lot less painful had we been able to work on your nose immediately after your accident." Without another word, the doctor left. Kozak stared at Cerro, waiting for him to say something.
Feeling awkward, and not knowing how to start, Cerro stalled, moving over to a chair. Taking his Kevlar helmet from under his right arm, he dropped it on the floor from waist level, making a loud clunk that reverberated in the small examining room. Sitting down on the edge of the seat, facing Kozak, Cerro tucked his feet up under the chair but allowed his knees to spread apart. He held the folder containing the reports on the foray into Mexico against his stomach with both hands, and looked at Kozak for a moment, considering how he was going to do this.
From the examining table, Kozak watched Cerro as a bird watches a cat circling the tree it's in. He kept staring at her face, which no doubt looked like hell. At least, she thought it did. If it looked half as bad as it felt, it was terrible. During the initial exam, one of the nurses had looked at Kozak's face with a pained expression. With a sigh, the nurse had grasped her hand, telling her not to worry, that the black and blue would go away as soon as the swelling went down. Instead of serving to calm Kozak, it had only worried her, creating an uncontrollable urge to find a mirror and see what it was that caused everyone to stare. With Cerro sitting there, holding folders that no doubt contained statements and reports concerning the crossing of the Rio Grande, it would be a few more minutes before she got to look at her own face. ,
Seeing that Lieutenant Kozak wasn't going to make his task any easier by initiating the conversation, Cerro decided that he might as well just launch into it. After all, diplomacy, subtlety, and regard for someone's feelings never seemed to blend well with the spirit of the bayonet. Praised by raters throughout his career for his direct, frank, and uncompromising approach to all matters, Cerro now found himself wishing he had a few more skills in dealing with people. Sidetracked for a moment by that thought, he wondered if he was concerned about his approach because Kozak was a woman. No, he was sure that wasn't it. On the day he had observed Kozak's squad get overrun, he hadn't even considered the gender issue when he "counseled" her. No, that wasn't the reason he was uncomfortable. Was it because she was hurt? That could be. After all, he felt the same way whenever he had seen any of his own men wounded or injured. But that wasn't it completely, for in the past Cerro had always been able to say something to the wounded. Even when faced with a man from his own unit who had lost a limb, Cerro had been able to work through his natural revulsion of injured people and say something appropriate.