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.
10
How can any man say what he should do himself if he is ignorant what his adversary is about?
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.
Like their lovemaking, Jan and Scott's approach to life was, some would say, rather unconventional and very unpredictable. A widower, Dixon had no interest in a new wife. He had had one of those already and really didn't see the need for another. He had loved his first wife, and was sure that she had loved him. But he knew that it would be impossible to find another woman who could fill her place. Wives, he once told a sergeant, after all, were not like replacement parts. You couldn't, he said, simply wear one out, and then expect to be able to requisition a new one that would be able to fit in where the old one had been. So he had never tried. He didn't need to, for Jan was there when he needed a friend and lover who could accept him for what he was.
Slowly, Dixon began to find what he was searching for. As he found each item, he took it out with his right
