Trial By Fire (27 page)

It was, as Alama”n pointed out, as if a boat were sinking and no one could decide what to do to stop it. As the parties argued, Alamdn planned to use his tiny army to set the boat on fire.

With the warm waves of the ocean washing over their feet as they slowly walked along the shoreline, Alama”n explained to his lover, called Anna, how he would make the military buffoons in Mexico City pay for what they had done to him. “At this minute, my love, I have forty men spread out along the border of Mexico and the United States, men with no other purpose in life than to kill Americans and spread terror along the border.

Most of these mercenaries, some of whom are former leftist guerrillas, are all experts in antiterrorist operations or have been terrorists themselves.

None of them, to a man, has a single moral fiber in his body. They are mine, and will soon create the havoc that will sweep me back to my beloved Mexico.”

For her part, Anna merely listened as he spoke of his plans and the actions of his tiny mercenary army. She was content to allow Alaman to pamper her in ways she had never been pampered before while she indulged both his sexual appetite and his need to brag, both of which seemed insatiable. With only a slight nod of her head, Anna listened as they walked and Alamn droned on. “Assigned a sector along either the Texas or New Mexico border, each team, with six to eight men, is allowed to develop its own techniques, schedule, and operations. The only restrictions I have placed on them is their choice of weaponry, the vehicles they use, and almost total segregation between the teams. Weapons, of all caliber and type, are limited to what is currently issued to the Mexican Army. Likewise, the vehicles used by the teams must be either the same type as used by the Mexican Army or equipped with tires used on Mexican Army vehicles. Communication, either by radio or telephone, is forbidden. Even in extreme emergencies, the teams are not permitted to contact Delapos, whom I hold responsible for supervising the actual operations. Instead, Delapos comes to me for my orders and, in turn, travels from one team to the next, reviewing their past actions and approving the team leaders’ plans and issuing new instructions, when necessary. In this way, only I and Delapos know where everyone is and what is actually happening along the border.”

Pausing, Alamdn looked out at the rising sun. “This, my love, is beautiful. But not as beautiful as in Mexico. You will see.”

Taking her cue, Anna bent down, kissing him softly on his lips, then along the side of his neck. Running her hands along his naked side, Anna lowered herself to her knees, lightly kissing his chest. When her hands reached his waist, Anna inserted her ringers between the waistband of Alaman’s swim trunks and.his body. Catching the waistband with her thumbs, she lowered the trunks to Alam£n’s knees. All the while, Alaman continued to stare out over the ocean as he took Anna’s head and gently guided her to him. “You will see, my love. I promise you.”

Maverick County, Texas

0745 hours, 8 August

Peeking out through the narrow gap between the edge of the camouflage net and the ground, Childress made a quick scan of the horizon. Seeing no motion, he turned his attention to the road that ran at an angle to their position, some one hundred meters away! Starting at the small culvert that concealed a forty-pound cratering charge, Childress ran his eyes along the length of dirt road until it disappeared over the horizon, some five kilometers in the distance. Nothing would be able to come and go along the road without his men being able to see it.

It had taken Childress over two days to find this spot, a spot which, for his purposes, was ideal. The gully where he and two other men, manning a .30-caliber M-1919 machine gun, lay hidden, provided both cover and concealment from the road. It also offered them an excellent covered route of retreat back to their vehicles, hidden farther down the gully. A branch of the same gully, off to their right, provided the same features to

the other three men of Childress’s team. In this way, if something went wrong with the ambush, both sections of his team would be able to make it back to their vehicles secure m the knowledge that their opponent would be unable to see them, let alone put effective fire on them as they did so. This last item was all-important to the six men protected from the searing morning sun by the tan and brown nets. They were, after all, doing this for the money. Neither glory, nor honor, nor decorations motivated them. A medal presented to a next of kin posthumously had no meaning. The only bottom line that mattered was a healthy bank account and an equally healthy body with which to enjoy it. Escape routes, both primary and alternate, were therefore a critical element of every plan for Childress and the other team leaders of Senior Alam£n’s private army.

To achieve the effect Alamaii desired, every raid had to be as bloody and terrible as it was precise and swift. Lefleur, who had the honor of striking first, had set the tone. To create the desired effect, nothing had been left to chance. Binding one of the border patrol officers and shooting him execution-style had been intended both to infuriate and to horrify those who found him, and the media that reported the incident. The wheel tracks, going into and out of the point where Lefleur had forded the Rio Grande, had been found and plaster casts dutifully made. Also found and identified by the highly trained
FBI
forensic experts had been a pile of

.30-caliber ammunition, an unusual caliber used by few modern machine guns. So as not to make the setup too obvious, Lefleur left no other traces. As it was, the 5.56mm slugs found in the skull of the executed border patrolman and the .30-caliber slugs found in his partner were enough to get the
FBI
onto the trail Alaman was baiting.

Childress, for his part, preferred to do things in a big way. Having worked with explosives, he liked the effect a little well-placed C-4 could achieve in short order. Besides, he felt Lefleur’s approach was far too subtle. While anyone could obtain 5.56mm and .30-caliber ammunition, few people could legally buy a standard military cratering charge. The significance of this would alert even the dullest investigator.

In case, however, this failed to put those coming behind them on the right trail, Childress had added a twist that was unpopular. The idea of making a hit in broad daylight had at first been greeted with horror by his men. The idea of tromping about in the open desert in broad daylight seemed, on the surface, suicidal. Childress had explained, however, that Americans found it difficult to maintain a high state of vigilance around the clock. There was, he noted, a tendency to be on guard at night, and then, when the sun came up, to relax. “The enemy,” he had pointed out,

“always attacks at dawn in the movies.” Besides, he had continued, smugglers, pushing both drugs and illegal aliens across the border, normally operated at night, avoided contact, and fought only when cornered.

They didn’t lie in ambush and blow up roads in the middle of the day.

Only well-trained soldiers did that.

A slap on the shoulder and a finger pointed to the west alerted Childress to the approach of the border patrol. As predicted, there were two jeeps headed their way. Both had their canvas tops off, but their windshields up. Childress thought this was a mistake. Had he been in charge of that patrol, he would have ordered the windshields down to provide a better view and to prevent flying glass in the event of a hit.

The two vehicles, traveling fifty meters apart, each contained two border patrolmen. Even from this distance, Childress could see that the passenger of each vehicle held a shotgun across his lap. Another bad call, he thought. Shotguns were great for coyotes and close-in work. Against automatic weapons at long range, they were useless. Childress faced the man to his side. “These people aren’t taking this seriously yet.”

Tightening his grip on the machine gun’s handle as he tracked the second vehicle, the man shrugged. “That, my friend, is fine by me.”

Further conversation was cut off by the detonation of the cratering charge.

As the front tire of the lead jeep reached the culvert, one of Childress’s men in the other gully twisted the red handle of the blasting machine. The result achieved bordered on perfection. The lead jeep was lifted off the road and flipped end over end amid a growing pillar of black smoke and brown dirt. The driver of the secojid jeep panicked, hitting his brakes and cutting the steering wheel. The sudden locking of the brakes and the turn, coupled with the jeep’s own forward momentum, caused the second jeep to turn over as the machine gunner next to Childress opened up with a long burst that racked the jeep as it rolled over and over down the road toward the growing pillar of dirt and smoke. The machine gunner continued to fire until the jeep made one final flip and disappeared into the gaping crater where the road had once been.

Even before the first jeep finished its wild tumbling and crashed with a great thud, Childress knew they had succeeded. There was, he knew, no way that anyone in the second jeep could have made a radio call. There just hadn’t been that kind of time. Five seconds, maybe ten, was all it had taken. Two days of planning and recon, six hours of waiting, and ten seconds of killing. That, he thought, was the way it should be.’

Standing up, he grabbed the camouflage net and began to pull it down, yelling for the others with him to get the gun and move out. They had done what they had set out to do. “Now it was up to others to harvest the crop that they had so carefully sown.

How can any man say what he should do himself if he is ignorant what his adversary is about?

—Henri de Jomini

Georgetown, Texas

0505 hours, 11 August

Carefully rolling over onto his left side, Scott Dixon eased himself into position. Though it was still dark, he didn’t need any artificial illumination for this particular maneuver. His movements were well rehearsed and the terrain before him was familiar. With great care, he brought his right hand up, easing it onto Jan Fields’s bare thigh. Slowly, gently, he began to run his hand up her thigh, around to the front of her stomach, and then up until he was able to cup her right breast in his hand. The quiet darkness of their room, the warmth of her naked body against his, and the smoothness of her skin under his hand were, to Dixon, the most erotic sensations he could imagine. Tenderly kneading the breast in his hand, Dixon could feel himself becoming aroused, causing him to gradually apply more pressure and slowly intensify his manipulation of Jan’s breast.

The effect on Jan was predictable. At first, she let out a low, barely audible sigh as she thrust her bottom out toward Dixon. This action accelerated Dixon’s mounting desire and his manipulation of Jan’s breast.

Sensing that she was ready to execute phase two, he lifted his head from his pillow, twisting his head and upper body around until he could reach the side of Jan’s exposed neck with his lips. Ever so lightly, he began planting a string of kisses starting on her neck and leading up to her ear.

By the time he finished, she was beginning to wake.

Rolling over to face Dixon, Jan opened her eyes and looked into Dixon’s. As she stretched, she broke Dixon’s grasp on her breast and caused him to move his head away a few inches. There was a mischievous smile on her face. “And what do you want, Colonel?” Jan’s voice was low and provocative.

With Jan on her back, Dixon brought himself around so that he had himself propped up with one hand on either side of her, stuck between her arm and chest. Leaning forward until his nose touched hers, he grinned.

“Well, my dear, I’m going to do what every soldier dreams of, I’m going to fuck with the media.”

“You know you could get in serious trouble for screwing with the press. Let me remind you, Colonel, that I’m protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and you’re pledged to uphold that.”

Bringing his right leg around so that he now straddled Jan, and shifting his weight to his knees, Dixon moved his hands to either side of Jan’s rib cage. “Oh, yeah! Is that what you think? Well, I’ll show you what I’m committed to uphold right now.” With that, he began to tickle her under the arms and along the base of her breasts, sending her into a spasm of laughter and beginning what, for them, was serious play.

Wearing only gray Army running shorts and a gray
VMI
T-shirt, Dixon wandered into the kitchen. Even the cool tile floor on his bare feet failed to rouse him out of his early morning stupor. Jan often commented that it was amazing how, in a matter of minutes, Dixon could go from being Tarzan, King of the Apes to a cast member from Night of the Living Dead. Food, mixed with numerous cups of coffee, seemed to be the only thing that could get Dixon going and keep him going.

To this end, Dixon negotiated the perils of the cold tile floor in his pursuit of nourishment and stimulants. With the grace and determination of a wire-guided antitank guided missile, Dixon moved toward the refrigerator.

Opening the door, he stood there for a minute while his eyes and brain attempted to make contact with each other. Not that there was much thinking that Dixon needed to do. Inevitably, he would remove the same items from the refrigerator that he removed every morning. The only problem he faced was locating those items. As in all homes populated by children, items stored in Dixon’s refrigerator had a tendency to migrate from one spot to another in an unpredictable and random manner.

Simply because Dixon had put something on a shelf that he had designated as its proper place was no guarantee that he would find it there the next day. Whenever Dixon complained about this phenomenon, Jan would chide him, claiming that he needed to be a little more flexible, exclaiming, “You need a little challenge every now and then, Scotty.”

A new challenge was the last thing Dixon needed when it came to Jan. Both of them had, from the beginning, realized that if their love affair was going to work, it would require both of them to work at it.

While Jan had been more than willing to leave behind her globetrotting as a hot-shot correspondent for
WNN
for Dixon, it was too much to expect her to leave her career completely. Not even in his wildest fantasies could Dixon imagine Jan playing the role of the good little Army wife. The image of Jan Fields spending her days making cookies for community bake sales and patiently waiting at home for him with a warm meal and a sympathetic ear whenever the Army decided it was finished with Dixon for the day, simply did not register. Of course, no one else shared that image either, especially since Jan Fields and Scott Dixon were not married.