Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

All is perfectly clear to me, he thought. Clearer than it has ever been.

From where he sat, the dictator could see Volcan Fuego’s rugged upper slopes surmounting the roofs to the southwest, looking for all the world like the throne of a mythical, ruby-eyed Cyclops. To the southeast, Volcan Agua was visible in silhouette, as was Volcan Acatenango west of the city. No man had ever lost his way in Antigua; one could always find his bearings by searching the distance for the three volcanoes. Perhaps, Guzman mused, this was the true secret of its endless allure for travelers.

He breathed in the air of his garden, savoring the fresh tang of eucalyptus, and then lowered his eyes to study the two men sitting beside him. At the far end of the stone bench his Minister of Defense, Captain Juan Guillardo, acknowledged his gaze with a slight nod, eager to resume plotting tomorrow’s military action, his shrewd, narrow features making him resemble a coyote… or so it seemed to the General, anyway. Between the two men, Colonel Eduardo Alcazar, Guzman’s first cousin and Minister of State, had been nursing his thoughts in tight-lipped silence.

“You seem not to appreciate this fine evening, Eduardo,” Guzman said. “Or perhaps the dinner my staff prepared wasn’t to your liking. Your wife’s cooking is unmatched, I know, but we bachelors must make do.”

“I have other concerns on my mind,” Alcazar said. “Dismiss them if you want, but it would please me if they weren’t mocked.”

“You worry too much,” Guillardo said. “As long as they have our reassurances that the oil will flow freely — and cheaply — in their direction, the United Kingdom will never become involved. The most we can expect from them are diplomatic squawks in the Security Council.”

“History warns us otherwise,” Alcazar said.

“If you intend to bring up the Falklands and Kuwait again, please spare me,” Guzman said. “The dispute over that godforsaken pile of rocks occurred a quarter century and several British prime ministers ago. The present head of Parliament is no Thatcher. And remember, the oil strike has yet to produce the kinds of wealth that made supporting the Kuwaiti government so attractive to the rest of the world. Belize is a virgin land, with nobody to protect it.”

“What do you suppose he is doing in Washington if not discussing contingencies? Playing card games with the Yanqui President?”

“We’ve been over this a dozen times. His visit was announced weeks ago. The timing is coincidental.”

“Even if that’s true, there are political realities to be considered. The English monarch continues to be recognized as the Belizean head of state, and the two nations have existing treaties… ”

“And we have prior territorial claims.”

“Which were relinquished in 1992!”

“By a government whose legitimacy I’ve never officially recognized.”

Alcazar produced a humorless laugh. “How far back in time do you reach for justification, then? Will you tell our U.N. ambassador to cite the conquistadores for dividing the Mayan empire? It seems you’ve suddenly found that you have latino roots…”

“Don’t push me too far, cousin!” Guzman shot him an angry look. “You know the potential oil revenues we stand to gain from the annexation as well as I do. Even with Mexico taking their fifty percent, our share would amount to billions, perhaps trillions of dollars. Enough to transform our economy.”

As well as keep your hold on power from slipping away, Alcazar thought, his mind attaching the unspoken codicil before he could stop it. There was, however, no denying the truth of his cousin’s words. Even by conservative projections, the oil money pouring in from the new offshore field would fill Mexico’s almost bankrupt treasury and make Belize the Brunei of the Western Hemisphere — and having lost out on this manna from heaven was as galling to Alcazar as it was to his companions. Still, he was a pragmatist by nature, and his doubts over tomorrow’s planned invasion stemmed from political considerations rather than moral scruples.

Things would have been so different, so simple, had it not been for a bitter fluke of geography. But circumstances were as nature had created them millions of years before. The previous winter, a joint PEMEX/Texaco exploration team had discovered a vast stratographic trap just along the continental shelf of Belize and Mexico… and just beyond Guatemala’s territorial waters in the Gulfo de Honduras. Their survey showed it to be an offshore pool of a potential rivaling that of the North Sea find of the 1960s. The two nations had immediately entered into an agreement that split development expenses and future revenues right down the middle. Fate had handed tiny Belize, which had already grown prosperous from a booming tourist and agricultural trade, riches on top of riches.

Even as the pacts were being signed, Alcazar had known it only would be a matter of time before Guzman began claiming a portion of the wealth for his own financially bankrupt regime. But he’d underestimated the extent of his cousin’s jealousy and resentment, the covetousness of his grasp. Or perhaps Guzman’s waning support among the populace, as well as the growing strength of the revived leftist rebels in the countryside, had pushed him towards a move of desperation. Something that would rally public sentiment and increase his chances of political survival. In the end, Alcazar supposed Guzman’s reasons didn’t really matter. The fatal decision had already been made. The armed forces would roll into Belize the following morning, and nothing he could say would convince his cousin and the rest of the ruling junta to abandon the undertaking. His immediate task as Minister of State, then, was to anticipate, and if possible, moderate the inevitable world reaction.

If possible.

He could readily imagine the universal outrage his nation’s action would provoke, and knew England would not stand alone in expressing its condemnation. The security of Belize’s borders had been guaranteed by numerous international treaties and precedents; in fact, the allusion he’d made when speaking of history’s warning was not so much to the Falklands conflict — as Guzman had hastily jumped to assume — but to America’s decisive intervention when Iraq moved on Kuwait in 1990. What would happen if the current U.S. administration responded to Guatemala’s attack in a similar manner? Alcazar suddenly felt Guzman’s hand slap him on the back and, startled from his thoughts, turned to look into his grinning face.

“Relax, Eduardo, you’re full of knots,” Guzman said. “Like Cabrera in the last century, we soon will be having Fiestas de Minerva in the streets of the capital.”

Alcazar kept looking at him. What Guzman failed to mention, and perhaps realize, was that neither Manuel Estrada Cabrera’s pretensions of being a bringer of illumination and culture, nor his costly festivals to the goddess of wisdom, invention, and technical achievement, had prevented him from ultimately driving his nation to ruin.

“Very well,” he said without enthusiasm. “We’d best get on with our discussion. It’s late, and there are still numerous points that must be clarified.” Guzman regarded him a moment, sighed, and then shifted his attention to Captain Guillardo.

“Run through the details of the troop buildup again,” he said. “Leave nothing out; I want you to give me the position of every man and piece of equipment being used in the campaign.” Guillardo nodded and dutifully gave them to him.

White House, Washington, D.C., September, 2009

The photographic intelligence (PHOTOINT) had first told the tale, though not because the U.S. intelligence services were watching closely. On the contrary, the early evidence of unusual Guatemalan troop activity along the Flores-Melchor de Mencos road was recorded by a commercial one-meter Space Imaging satellite that had been leased to the nations of Belize and Mexico for the charting of their offshore oil fields. This was in early September. The subsequent processing and analysis of these aerial views by photo interpreters had been so alarming they had hurried to quietly report their findings to government officials. Then, after a quick examination of the images, those officials had in turn raced to put them in the hands of local CIA station chiefs.

Within days, two boxcar-sized Advanced KH-11 “Crystal” photoreconnaissance satellites circling 160 miles/257 kilometers above the earth were jogged into orbital paths above northeastern Guatemala. Here they began transmitting a stream of digital images to ground stations, whose operators had been placed on heightened, round-the-clock alert. An advanced KH-12 Lacrosse synthetic-aperture radar-imaging (SAR) satellite was also routed over the area. This was due to the start of the annual rainy season, and the KH-11’s telescopic eyes would be easily blurred by the dense cloud cover that usually prevailed during this period.

The data flowing in from these overhead surveillance systems confirmed and added to the information