Trial by fire: a novel

by Harold Coyle

  And, remind your men, a green flare means they are to rush the column. I will do that only if conditions are ideal. Do not rush the column on your own, no matter how good conditions appear to be to your front.''

  Garza paused, looking at each of his subordinate commanders as they nodded

  that they understood. Though he was far from being the patronizing type, Garza knew that the men entrusted to his command were simple farmers and shopkeepers. He not only had to keep everything simple, he also had to remember that each of these men had a family that depended upon him. Though the men were patriots, and each and every one was willing to die in the defense of his home and Mexico, as their grandfathers had been, Garza never forgot Colonel Guajardo's admonishment to him and other guerrilla leaders like him: "While we need patriots to fight this war, never forget that only live Mexicans can build our future." So Garza was careful to ensure that, if nothing else, everyone in his command understood the dispersal plan and the signal to initiate it. "Regardless of what happens or what you are doing," he stressed to his subordinates, "when I or my deputy fires a red flare, the company will disperse. Do not wait for me, or anyone else. Take your people back to their rally points, have them clean their weapons before they bury them, and send them home. I will contact you when I can. Is that understood?"

  With a final nod, each of Garza's subordinate leaders moved off into the darkness, back to his unit where he would wait with his men for Garza to initiate the ambush.

  Stuck in the rear seat of Major Nihart's vehicle, amidst a tumble of personal gear and boxes, Captain Harold Cerro was asleep. To him, convoy and sleep were synonyms. Since his earliest days in the Army, he had found that the slow, serpentine pace of a convoy, coupled with the steady hum of an engine running at the same speed hour after hour after hour, was the best sleep aid ever invented. Cerro could last for ten, fifteen minutes tops, in a convoy before going to sleep. While sleep was always a commodity soldiers sought, it was not acceptable for the senior occupant of an Army vehicle to be seen sleeping while the vehicle was moving.

  Though Cerro understood the reasoning behind that rule, he also understood that no one could regulate biology and human nature. Cerro had therefore developed a system for accommodating both. After being reprimanded on several occasions for sleeping, he now took the precaution of training his drivers to be on constant lookout for officers of the rank of major and above when he was asleep. When the driver saw the senior officer, it was the driver's duty, Cerro would explain, to wake him.

  That night, it would take more than a nudge by the driver to wake Cerro. It had been a difficult and trying day for him, far more demanding than he had ever thought possible. Though the threat of danger had been absent, along with the stress of being a leader in battle, the strain on the body and mind he had experienced that day was no less debilitating.

  Division staffs are dominated by lieutenant colonels, who are the principal staff officers, and majors who are punching their tickets while they wait to become lieutenant colonels. Captains serving on division staffs don't make any real decisions and don't really get the chance to do much of anything. Their-days, split into twelve-hour shifts, consist of numerous little tasks, such as answering the phone; filling out, receiving, and submitting reports; asking questions of staff officers on subordinate unit staffs or answering questions asked by staff officers from higher headquarters staff; updating maps or redoing map graphics; searching to find the answer to a question posed by a senior officer; and dozens of other relatively simple and mundane things. Each of these actions, in and of itself, is simple, ludicrously simple. Doing all of them at once, however, in an area the size of a small hotel room crammed with tables, chairs, radios, telephones, map boards, computers, and a dozen other members of the staff is not only hard, it is physically and mentally demanding.

  As in the experiment in which rats are made to live in overcrowded conditions, it is not long before the stress and strain of operating in an overcrowded van causes the members of a staff to turn on each other.

  Though Cerro and the other members of Major Nihart's current operations shop got along with each other under normal circumstances, the demands of the last twenty-four hours would have turned a saint into a chain-saw murderer. Even Colonel Dixon, normally a rock, had broken that day. During a heated conversation with the corps G3, Dixon had reached his breaking point. When he terminated the conversation by throwing the telephone across the current-operations van, barely missing Cerro, everyone in the van froze. Looking about at everyone in the van--all of whom were, in turn, looking at him--Dixon, a little embarrassed, mumbled, "Stupidity knows no bounds," before he turned and left. Though no one had any idea what he meant, as soon as Dixon was gone, everyone went back to work without giving the incident a second thought. Such scenes were becoming more and more common.

  Unable to vent the stress and frustrations of the day through physical means, as he had been able to do when he had commanded an airborne infantry company, Cerro sought escape through sleep. A sleep that nothing could disturb. Or so he thought.

  Cerro hadn't counted on Captain Garza and the members of the Rural Defense Force. No one, in fact, had. And that was about to become apparent.

  When the convoy reached the point where Garza wanted to initiate the ambush, he fired a white flare, the signal for the mortars to commence firing. Five hundred meters to his rear, a man old enough to be Garza's father, a cobbler by trade, watched the white star cluster climb into the sky and burst before he gave the three mortar crews under his command the order to fire. The mortar on the left, manned by a fanner and his two sons, had the honor of being the first to fire.

  Cerro's eyes popped open when the first 6omm mortar round, the one fired by the farmer and his sons, detonated less than one hundred meters in front of them. The odds against a mortar round, especially the first one, impacting on a moving truck were, even when the range was known, astronomical, under the best of circumstances. But it was also true, in the game of probability, that eventually someone had to be that "one" in a situation that measures the million-to-one odds.

  As the G2 current-intelligence van, hit dead on, flopped over into the ditch on the side of the road, small-arms fire began to rake the column.

  In the darkness, to his right, Cerro could see the flashes of rifles and machine guns. As he struggled to find his own rifle, hidden amongst the tumble of gear and equipment, Cerro heard a thump-thump-thump on the side of the vehicle, followed by a scream from Major Nihart. "Jesus. I'm hit. I'm fucking hit!"

  Thrusting his head between Nihart and the driver, Cerro could see Nihart bent over, grasping his right thigh with both hands. Though he couldn't see the blood, the grimace on Nihart's face told him he had been hit bad. Cerro turned to the driver. "Left. Go left and get off this road.

  Now."

  For a moment the driver looked at Cerro, then at Nihart. Thrusting his head forward so that it blocked the driver's view of Nihart, Cerro repeated his order. "Get this piece of shit off the road to the left now, before we all die."

  When, out of the corner of his eye, the driver saw another truck further down the road blow up, he snapped out of his shock. He cut the wheel to the left with all his might, stepping on the accelerator as he did so. The vehicle almost jumped. The ditch to the left, though it wasn't very wide or very deep, was wide enough and deep enough to bring the vehicle's sudden burst of energy to a bone-crushing halt. Cerro was thrown head-first into the dashboard. Nihart, still clutching his leg, let out a piercing scream.

  Panicked, the driver pushed the accelerator to the floor to no avail.

  "We're stuck! We're stuck!"

  Pulling himself back, Cerro shook his head. Now, he thought to himself, he finally understood why everyone insisted that soldiers wear their helmets when in a vehicle. Though he knew his neck would be stiff, his Kevlar helmet had saved him from a cracked skull. After shaking his head again, Cerro turned to the driver. In a rather calm tone of voice, he told the driver to let
up on the accelerator and engage the four-wheel drive before trying again. Though the rear window of their vehicle was shattered by another volley of rifle fire, the driver complied. This time, they cleared the ditch, crawling up into the open field on the left side of the road and away from the ambush.

  Sergeant Major Aiken, Dixon's senior NCO and operations sergeant, was in the cab of the truck immediately behind Major Nihart's vehicle.

  He was in the process of swinging the ring-mounted .50-caliber machine gun that was attached to the cab of his truck toward the ambushers when he saw Major Nihart's vehicle clear the ditch and move into the field to the left. Deciding that it might be smarter to follow the major, Aiken leaned over and yelled to the truck driver to follow Nihart into the open field. Though he knew that there might be mines or more enemy troops lying in wait on the left side of the road, Aiken also knew that the odds would be better moving around in an open field instead of sitting on the road.

  Though he hadn't intended it to, Cerro's action created a chain reaction.

  Behind Nihart's vehicle and Aiken's truck, every truck that could make the left-hand turn began to follow them. Though the drive across the open field was almost unbearable for Major Nihart, as each bump sent a spasm of pain through his body, it quickly became clear to Cerro that they were moving out of the kill zone of the ambush and mortar fire. It was only after he looked back to confirm this that he noticed that he was being followed. After traveling several hundred meters away from the road, a trip that seemed to take forever, Cerro told the driver to stop.

  Climbing out over him, Cerro ordered the driver to tend to the major, then set out to set up a defensive perimeter.

  Once on the ground, he headed for the first truck he came to. Aiken, seeing Cerro, who he thought was Major Nihart, on the ground, ordered his driver to stop. Dismounting even before the truck stopped rolling, he began to head for Cerro. "If you start forming the perimeter, Major, I'll direct the other vehicles over to you."

  Cerro ignored the fact that Aiken thought he was the major. "Sounds good to me, Sergeant Major."

  Confused, Aiken walked up to Cerro, confirmed who he was, then apologized. "Sorry, thought you were Major Nihart, sir."

  "The major's been hit. He's out of it for now."

  "Anything we can do?"

  Cerro looked around as he answered. "No, the major will be all right, I think. His driver's with him now, taking care of him. Besides, you and I got a lot to do out here. If you will go on over there, Sergeant Major, and direct the incoming trucks to me, I'll start circling the wagons."

  Aiken was about to respond when a red star cluster popped over the portion of the column that was still on the road. "What do you suppose that means, Captain?"

  Cerro looked at the star cluster, noting that the ambushers were increasing their rate of fire. "I don't know, Sergeant Major. But I have a sneaking suspicion we're gonna find out. Until then, let's get a move on and form this here perimeter."

  Aiken, looking at the road one last time before setting out, sighed,

  "Big Al's going to be pissed."

  "Pardon my apparent disrespect, Sergeant Major, but screw Big Al.

  Right now, I'm more concerned about the yahoo that's directing the ambush and what he's thinking."

  Almost a kilometer away, on the other side of the road, Captain Garza, the yahoo that Cerro was referring to, decided to break off the attack.

  The sudden separation of the rear of the column had come as a surprise to him. From where he sat, it looked as if the Americans had been less surprised than he had hoped, and were responding better than he'd expected.

  There was no telling what they were about to do and how they were going to respond. Rather than press his luck, Garza decided to break off the attack.

  Firing the red star cluster, he paused for a moment and watched the response of his men. As instructed, some of the men increased the rate of fire while others, under the direction of their leaders, began to move back to their rally points. The mortars also increased their fire, switching to firing all high-explosive rounds instead of a mix of illumination rounds and high explosives. The mortars would be the last to stop, as they covered the withdrawal of the rest of the force. Garza's planned route of escape took him right past their position. He personally would give them permission to leave.

  Satisfied that all was in order, he turned to the militiaman who was serving as his radio operator. "We have done well tonight. Tomorrow, there will be many gringo families mourning."

  In the fading light of the last illumination rounds, Garza could see the militiaman's face. The young farmer, a boy of sixteen, was smiling.

  "And we, el capitdn, will have much to celebrate."

  21.

  The morality of killing is not something with which the professional soldier is usually thought to trouble himself.

  --John Keegan, The Face of Battle

  Washington, D.C.

  1045 hours, 15 September

  The shock wave generated by the battle of Monterrey, what some were calling America's second Tet, was just as great in Washington as it had been to the troops who had fought it. Instead of the simple, controlled occupation of a security zone, an image that the president and his advisors had worked hard to cultivate, the American public found itself involved in a full-scale war. Though the battle was technically a victory, since the Mexicans had been forced to break contact and withdraw and all U.S.

  forces had more or less reached the southern limit of advance that defined the security zone, few people in America saw it in those terms. In that single attack, and the operations immediately after it, the United States Army had suffered more casualties than it had during the entire Persian Gulf War.

  The impact of the battle had been magnified by the news stories, uncensored by the military. In contrast to its policy in the Gulf War, where it held a tight rein on what correspondents could see and what they could release for public broadcast, the military had felt that, due to the nature of the operations in Mexico, no censorship would be necessary.

  Both the administration and the Pentagon, however, had soon regretted that decision. To counter statements made during briefings by Pentagon spokesmen, who continued to assure the public that the fight around Monterrey had been a tactical victory, newscasters freely used film footage fresh from the battlefield, showing the devastation. One network newsroom ran a two-minute segment during which the soundtrack of a Pentagon briefing was dubbed over footage showing burning American vehicles, rows of filled body bags being tossed into trucks, overcrowded aid stations, and soldiers, dazed from combat, stumbling back to the rear.

  Such techniques, coupled with interviews with soldiers fresh from battle and still reeling from the impact of losing a friend, made the statements by military officials in Washington seem trite and out of touch with the reality of the situation in Mexico.

  For those in Congress who had been opposed to the establishment of a security zone in Mexico, warning that such a move was not only dangerous but unnecessary, the news from Mexico was vindication. Congressmen like Ed Lewis, who had been vocal in their opposition, redoubled their efforts, taking every opportunity to drive home the point that the longer U.S. forces stayed in Mexico, the more both nations would suffer. The entire affair, Lewis pointed out, had been ill-conceived and based on too many false assumptions. On the day after the battle of Monterrey, after emerging from a special briefing at the White House for selected senators and congressmen, Lewis summed up the administration's problem. When reporters asked him what he and the other members of Congress had been told, Lewis smiled. "The president," he told the reporters, "has assured us that we have that tar baby just where we want it and, any day now, we're going to teach it a thing or two."

  Into this growing controversy came Jan Fields, bearing her message for the president from the Council of 13. When she was told that it was not possible for her to deliver the message in person, as Colonel Guajardo had requested, by a condescending third-ech
elon White House staffer, who informed her that the president could not possibly see her, Jan decided not to get mad. Instead, she delivered the text of the message in a special fifteen-minute segment aired by the World News Network. With a summary of the events that had led up to the current crisis, along with her own observations based on interviews with participants on both sides as a lead-in, Jan delivered Colonel Molina's message. The result exceeded anything Jan could have imagined. The effect was akin to the dumping of gasoline onto a smoldering fire. Within hours, Congress, with Ed Lewis in the vanguard, opened a formal investigation into the administration's handling of Mexico since the beginning of the June 29

  revolution.

  That he had been called to the White House along with two dozen other congressmen and senators for a special briefing the day before had come as no surprise to Ed Lewis. That he had been invited back, alone, did.

  Perhaps, he thought, the president, stung by his tar baby comment, was going to give him a piece of his mind. That caused Lewis to chuckle.

  God, he thought, the last thing this president needed to do was to give anyone a piece of his mind. He already had too little to work with as it was.

  Lewis was still in the midst of his private joke when the president's national security advisor came out of the Oval Office and started to walk over to him. A college professor before joining the White House staff, William Hastert gave new meaning to the word wimp. With men like this to advise the president, Lewis mused, how can he possibly go right? When Hastert reached Lewis and greeted him, there wasn't a hint of warmth in his handshake or smile. Instead, Hastert only mumbled that both he and the president were glad that Lewis had been able to make time in his busy schedule and come over on such short notice. That Hastert placed himself before the president did not escape Lewis's attention.