Trial By Fire (32 page)

Without looking up from the beer bottle that he continued to turn slowly, Childress summarized the major points of their discussions. “As I see it, the colonel has some very valid points. Even with the improved weaponry that he will be providing, and the inside information Alaman is able to provide concerning American operations, the National Guard will be able to achieve superiority over our people every now and then. The National Guard can afford to lose both men and materiel. We cannot.” Childress paused, lifted his beer bottle, took a sip, then pointed it at Delapos to drive home his point. “You might be able to explain away the loss of a single team to bad luck. After all, accidents will happen and everyone understands that. But if we start taking casualties, you’re going to have some real problems. We are, after all, businessmen, not patriots. There is no profit in becoming a dead hero.”

Delapos, looking down at the drink he was holding with both hands, shrugged. “I cannot argue with such logic. We must stay one step ahead of the Americans. We must maintain an edge.” Delapos looked up at Childress, then the Nicaraguan. “Like you, my friends, I see that we have no choice.” Lifting his drink, Delapos proposed a toast to seal their agreement. “It is time to end this discussion. There is much to do, and the sooner we start, the better.”

Both the Nicaraguan and Childress brought their own drinks up, tapped Delapos’s drink, and took a long sip. As they sipped, each man watched the other out of the corner of his eye, for each man knew that they were, at best, reluctant partners, temporarily joined by necessity. All three understood that each of the others, and Alami, had his own agenda, one that was self-serving and had limits. In a pinch, each man would betray the next. They were, after all, businessmen.

Austin, Texas

1030 hours, 13 August

The hostility that permeated the conference room poisoned every conversation, every comment. Even when no one was speaking, Dixon felt as if his body were being shredded by a deluge of invisible daggers from the governor and his staff seated across from them. It was for him, and all of the Army briefers from Fort Hood, a most difficult experience.

Combat, Dixon thought, was preferable to the verbal and mental abuse they were being subjected to. In combat, at least you could do something.

Here, in the presence of the governor of Texas, his adjutant general, and all their staffs, the only thing the Fort Hood people could do was preach the party line, take their lumps, and keep smiling.

The briefings being presented addressed how the regular Army planned to deal with the problems on the Mexican border. They were to have taken place at Fort Hood in another five days as part of a conference, a real dog-and-pony show meant to reassure the governors of the Southwestern states that the federal government was not ignoring them and had a plan to deal with the Mexican problem. Unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. Border Patrol and the deployment of the Texas National Guard to seal the border, however, had shot that plan all to hell. Instead of controlling the situation and providing a solution that would allow some flexibility for diplomacy, the federal government now found itself reacting to the initiatives of the governor of Texas. Part of that reaction was sending the corps commander and selected officers from his corps, to brief the governor of Texas on the Army’s contingency plans for dealing with Mexico. Big Al, along with Dixon and the division intelligence officer, were among them.

The move by Governor Wise was a gamble. In a televised speech, Wise had stated, “Action, only action could protect the citizens of Texas and their property. Direct and unhesitating action, therefore, would be the order of the day in Texas. I am therefore ordering the Texas National Guard to do what the federal government seems incapable of doing, consequences be damned.”

While his speech was stirring and his motives understandable, the Texas National Guard, despite its size, simply wasn’t up to the task of sealing the border with Mexico. At best, the Guard would be able to establish outposts at critical crossing points along the border and patrol the rest. Even that would be difficult, for the bulk of the state’s units were not structured for such operations. The largest unit, the 36th Mechanized Infantry Division, was designed to fight a high-tech foe on a modern battlefield using tanks, heavy artillery, and attack helicopters in swift, sweeping maneuvers. Its force structure, equipment, and training were ill-suited for the task of patrolling and securing the border. And even if the 36th Division, along with other Guard units, could do so, the cost of operating the equipment and paying its troops would soon bankrupt the state. Personnel and operating costs alone would cost the state of Texas several million dollars a day. Without federal manpower and funds, Texas alone could not accomplish what the governor publicly had set out to do.

That was where Governor Wise’s gamble came in. Politically, he could ill afford inaction. Although he knew the state could not afford full-scale deployment of the National Guard without federal aid, he also knew that the president, and most of the Congress, could not, politically, afford to do nothing while Americans were being killed and the nation’s southern border violated with impunity. What he needed to do was precipitate action. With Texas committed, he hoped to force the president to make a decision, one way or the other. Sending the National Guard to the border was a challenge that the president could not ignore.

Nor was it a challenge that the Mexican government could afford to ignore. Within an hour of the announcement of the deployment of the National Guard along the Texas border, the Mexican representative to the United Nations, supported by every Central American government and most South American governments, called for an emergency session of the UN. Within two hours a representative of the Mexican government was at the State Department demanding an explanation as to why the United States was militarizing the border between their nations. When the secretary of state commented that the action had been a unilateral one on the part of the governor of Texas, and that the president of the United States had not sanctioned such a move, the Mexican ambassador threw back a comment, word for word, that the secretary of state had used on the Mexican ambassador several times in recent weeks. “If, sir, your government is unable to control what is happening along its own borders, then my government will have no choice but to take action to control matters on our side of the border.” In addition to the diplomatic moves, the
CIA
reported that the Mexican Army was finally beginning to stir itself. .

For his part, the president had wanted to wait, allowing the Mexican government a period to establish itself and stabilize its own border. Like many in Washington, he and his closest advisors were puzzled by the raids. Privately, he favored the theory that forces opposed to the new regime were attempting to precipitate a crisis between the United States and Mexico. While that was a popular concept, called the Pancho Villa theory, the fact that the Mexican government could not control its borders and prevent such raids from taking place could not be ignored. More and more, the president was bombarded by calls to do what the new Mexican government could not do: to take action to secure the border. With the national presidential convention of his party less than a week away and that of the other party opening the next day, decisions had to be made.

Governor Wise’s move, therefore, could not have come at a worse time, or in a worse form. In one fell swoop, the governor of Texas, and the reaction by Mexico, had all but eliminated diplomacy as an option. It was, as one presidential advisor mused, a shotgun wedding, with Governor Wise’s finger on the trigger.

The commander of the Tenth Corps nodded to Big Al Malin. He, in turn, leaned over and whispered to Dixon the old gladiator’s refrain, “We who are about to die salute you.”

Dixon turned and looked Big Al in the eye. “Right behind you, boss.”

While Big Al and Dixon stood and moved to the front of the room, the corps commander explained that the 16th Armored Division, with three active brigades and no units out of place due to training exercises, and because of its proximity to the border, was the best-prepared division to move to the border and would probably be the first to do so. The governor of Texas cut the corps commander off, dryly reminding him that the 36th, the division that had spearheaded the first bloody attempt to cross the Rapido River in Italy during World War II, was already headed there and that the 16th would be the second.

What the corps commander did not tell Governor Wise was that the 16th was the only division that had taken this particular contingency seriously and therefore was the only division with complete and updated plans for such an operation. Besides, Big Al and Scott Dixon made an unbeatable pair when it came to conducting a briefing. If they couldn’t satisfy the Texans, no one could.

While Dixon managed a blizzard of slides, charts, and maps with overlays, Big Al did his thing. He started by stating that the United States Army, once deployed, had to consider the entire border with Mexico, not just the portion adjoining Texas. That, he explained, represented a grand total of 1,933 miles, or 3,111 kilometers, which included mountains, desert, and urban terrain. With that as a given, Dixon showed a slide that listed the amount of front a typical platoon, company, and battalion could defend, or cover, according to current doctrine, and handed out paper copies of the same slide to the governor and his adjutant general.

Taking great care, Big Al explained the problems that the Army would face if it were sent to the border. “As you can see, Governor, a mechanized infantry battalion, ordered to defend a piece of terrain, can effectively hold ten kilometers of front. To spread that battalion out further would mean leaving holes, or gaps, in the line. Even with this density, however, you are looking at one combat soldier every thirty-three meters.

Were we faced by a mechanized foe, armed with tanks, armored personnel carriers, and such, that density, with the weapons available to the soldiers of a mechanized infantry battalion, would be able to stop the foe.

Unfortunately, we are facing a light infantry threat, a guerrilla force not unlike the Viet Cong. Even with extensive barriers such as barbed wire, land mines, antivehicle ditches, active and passive sensors, and aggressive patrolling, the best infantry unit cannot prevent a determined foe from infiltrating through our defenses. We ourselves train to do just that, and the enemy, whoever he is, has demonstrated that he is both a skilled and clever opponent. Complicating this is the fact that in a typical mechanized infantry division, such as your 36th, only six battalions are infantry.

The other four are tank battalions. In my division, I have the opposite mix, six battalions of tanks and four of infantry. While tank battalions are the cornerstone of offensive operations, they do poorly, almost without exception, in a static defense. The opponent we face would have little difficulty finding weak points and infiltrating at will.”

Shifting in his seat, Governor Wise grumbled. “Opponent, my ass, they’re goddamned murderers. And it’s my people they’re murdering.”

Big Al paused, allowing the governor to vent his spleen before carrying on. When Governor Wise had settled back into his seat and appeared ready to listen again, Big Al continued. “The orders we received from the Tenth Corps state that my division is to be prepared to seal the border between the United States and Mexico from Laredo to Rio Grande City.

We assumed that ‘sealing’ means preventing the movement of any hostile force north of the border.”

Governor Wise again cut in. “Brilliant damned assumption, General.

Did you come up with this on your own, or did you need some help from Washington?”

Ignoring the governor’s attempt to provoke him, Big Al carried on as if-the governor hadn’t said a word. “Given that interpretation, we could not accomplish our mission given the forces at my disposal and the length of the border assigned.”

The last comment, delivered in such a cool and unemotional manner, almost went over Governor Wise’s head. It took him a moment to understand what Big Al had just said. When he did, Governor Wise shook his head and blurted out, “You mean to say that you cannot do what your own commander told you to do? And that the United States Army cannot defend its own borders?”

In the same controlled and unemotional manner, Big Al responded without hesitation. “Yes, sir, that is correct. Let me explain. In order to seal the border, we would be obliged to deploy in the manner shown on this slide, using the deployments and densities we have just gone over.

Now, not every battalion can be on the front. We also assume that this will be a long-term mission, requiring the Army to be deployed for months, perhaps years. You cannot keep a unit on the front line forever.

Therefore, some system of rotating units from the front to the rear would be necessary. One way of doing this would be to have each brigade, with an average of three battalions, hold one battalion in reserve. This reserve battalion, freed from frontline duty and the associated stress of that duty, would be able to rest, train, receive replacements for soldiers whose enlistments have expired, send some of its personnel on leave, and be ready to respond to any penetration of the frontline battalions. This reserve battalion would give us tactical depth, a deeper sector that any enemy force would be required to traverse if it penetrated the front line, and a force available to deal with such penetrations. Assuming each brigade was organized with three battalions, the division, in turn, would retain one battalion, the tenth battalion, as a division reserve for much the same purpose. Using that system, a division would have six battalions forward deployed, allowing each division to cover sixty kilometers of front.”

Understanding where Big Al was going, Governor Wise cut in again.

In a briefing presented by his own military people a week earlier, he had been told much the same thing. “Okay, so what you’re trying to say is that the United States Army cannot accomplish its most fundamental mission, securing its own borders.”