demanded by Soviet techniques was unsuited to the Mexican temperament. It was too mechanical, too cold, too precise. His men, he knew, were men of flesh and blood, men of passions. Such men, Guajardo knew, could never be made into the machines the Soviet techniques required. While one could not build a system using only the example of the Ninos Perdidos of Chapultepec, the occasional display, of passion, courage, and sacrifice, which Mexicans abounded in, and which the Soviet system discounted, was needed to stir a fighting man's blood.
It was only after many years that Guajardo had realized that he would never find, in a foreign army, an ideal technique that could be grafted onto his army. Instead, he opted for a mix, a hybrid system combining the strengths of his army with suitable techniques and practices from other armies. Of all the armies he studied, the system he followed most closely was the German. Though it was the system that the Americans pretended to follow, Guajardo knew they had lost focus when they diluted it with particular American practices and idiosyncrasies. Guajardo, on the other hand, chose only two features of the German system that he knew he could implement and influence. The first was a small, well-trained staff that created plans, coordinated them, and then provided necessary synchronization when the plans were implemented. The second feature, which Guajardo himself endorsed, was leadership from the front. It was only from the front, Guajardo knew, that officers could see and understand what was happening. A man sitting in a safe, comfortable bunker, miles from danger, could not possibly feel or understand a battle in progress. Only a leader standing shoulder to shoulder with his men could gauge what was possible and what wasn't. Besides, Mexican character responded to such leadership. It, in fact, demanded it. So Guajardo found little difficulty in justifying why he, the senior military commander in Mexico, was standing in a hastily dug position on the forward edge of the battlefield. After all, how could he demand that his subordinates lead from the front if he himself didn't. And it was only by using such excuses that he was able to escape the chaos of the capital and go where he could be with men he understood and do what he was trained to do.
A young captain of cavalry, who commanded the mechanized cavalry units in this area, lightly tapped Guajardo on the shoulder to get his attention, then pointed to the north, toward the road. Taking his time, and making a great show of a calmness that he really didn't feel, Guajardo hoisted his binoculars to his eyes and began to search in the direction indicated by the captain.
At first, Guajardo didn't see what the captain was pointing at. Then, as if it simply had popped out of nowhere, he saw a dark green vehicle moving down the road. With his binoculars, he studied the vehicle. It was a Bradley, probably the scout version. If that was so, there had to be another, somewhere near. Following the road back to the north, Guajardo searched for another vehicle. He saw none. Perhaps it was halted, covering the lead vehicle from a concealed position. Without stopping his search, Guajardo asked the cavalry captain if he saw any other vehicles.
The captain responded with a curt no, he did not.
Guajardo grunted. Perhaps, he told the captain, the scout vehicle was being overwatched by attack helicopters. Still searching, the captain responded that he had thought of that, but saw no dust or shaking vegetation that normally betrayed the presence of a hovering helicopter. Again, Guajardo responded with a grunt. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'we have a careless scout.'
The captain of cavalry lowered his binoculars, scanning the horizon with his naked eyes before responding. 'Perhaps, Colonel, that is true.
The only way to be sure of that, sir, is to fire.'
Guajardo, his binoculars still riveted to the enemy scout vehicle, didn't react at first. Then, understanding that the captain was seeking permission, he turned his head, calling over his shoulder while still holding his binoculars up. 'Then, Captain, perhaps you should do so.'
Unfamiliar with the proper etiquette for starting a war, the captain snapped to attention, saluted, and responded to Guajardo's comment with a resounding 'Si, Colonel.'
As the captain of cavalry issued the order to open fire, Guajardo chuckled.
In time, he knew, after they had been brutalized by combat, such giddiness would be gone. Only then, when the enthusiasm of the first battle had been washed away by blood, would he know if his soldiers could do what was expected of them.
Though he knew where the Panard recon vehicles were hidden, Gua jardo could not see them as they pulled out of hidden positions and into their firing positions. Even after they fired, throwing up plumes of white smoke and dust from the muzzle blast, Guajardo still could not see the two vehicles.
Neither, he noted, could the American. Both Panards had fired within a second of each other. And both missed. The round of one Panard impacted on the road just in- front of the American Bradley while the round of the second hit the shoulder of the road to the left of the Bradley.
Even before the dirt thrown up by the near misses began to fall back to earth, the Bradley jerked to the left. For a second, Guajardo caught a glimpse of the Bradley's commander as he dropped out of sight and pulled his hatch shut. It was obvious that the driver, seeing the explosion to his immediate front and not the one to the left, had reacted instinctively and without guidance from his vehicle commander, for his maneuver was taking the Bradley right into the guns of the Mexican Panards. Of course, Guajardo thought, maybe the Bradley driver did know what he was doing. After all, standard drill in an ambush was to turn into the ambush.
That possibility, however, was quickly dismissed when the Bradley began belching smoke from its on-board smoke generator. Rather than hide the Bradley, which the white billowing smoke would have done if the Panards were behind it, the smoke now silhouetted the Bradley, making it an ideal target. Not that the smoke was necessary. The first round that had impacted to the front of the Bradley had landed short because the commander of the Panard that had fired it had made an error in estimating the range. By turning toward the Panard's position, the Bradley had closed the range, eliminating the ranging error. The commander of the Panard, unable to see the strike of his first round because of the muzzle blast and the dust kicked up by it in front of his vehicle, fired a second round without making any corrections. Thus, the actions of the Bradley's driver, and the failure of the Panard's commander to make any corrections, established a perfect ballistic solution for the Panard's second round.
Striking just below the driver's hatch on the Bradley, the Panard's 90mm high-explosive antitank, or HEAT, round detonated. A HEAT round has a shaped-charge warhead which, when detonated, forms a superheated, pencil-thin jet stream of molten metal molecules. These molecules, which come from the metal cone in the warhead that forms the jet stream, can exert over 125,000 foot-pounds of pressure against a single point. In the case of the Bradley, this force easily defeated the vehicle's aluminum armor. In a span of time that lasted less than a second, the superheated molecules in the jet stream from the Panard's round literally pushed the molecules of the Bradley's armor out of the way. Once inside the Bradley, the superheated molecules of the HEAT round, now joined by molecules from the Bradley's own armor, cut through anything that stood in their way, including the chest of the driver. As it ripped through the crew compartment of the Bradley, the jet stream cut through anything it made contact with, igniting fires as it went. When the stream hit one of the TOW antitank guided missiles stored in the Bradley, itself a HEAT round, and penetrated the thin aluminum skin of its warhead, a chain reaction was initiated.
From where Guajardo stood, the impact of the 90mm round on the front slope of the Bradley, followed by secondary explosions, was spectacular.
One second the Bradley was there, blindly charging for all it was worth toward the Panards. In an instant, a sudden flash and a great puff of thick black smoke obscured the Bradley. Then, before the puff of smoke disappeared, the Bradley shuddered and threw off a coat of dust, like a dirty metal toy that had been hit by a hammer. Almost instantaneously after that, the hatches on the turret and in the rear of the Bradley blew open, venting great sheets of flame that leaped up for a split second, then disappeared. Still, the Bradley rolled forward, trailing thick, dirty white and black smoke from numerous openings. A second series of internal explosions, caused by the detonation of more warheads stored on board, caused the Bradley to shudder again. This time, as the sheets of flame, which were caused by the burning of the TOW missiles' rocket fuel, appeared, the Bradley slowed, veered to the left, then rolled to a stop.
The lone scout was dead.
The scene elated the captain of cavalry. 'We have done it, Colonel Guajardo. We have killed the Bradley. And with only three rounds!'
Watching the burning Bradley, Guajardo's response was cold. 'Four rounds, Captain. Your Panards fired four rounds. The second round of the other Panard flew over the Bradley. The commander of that vehicle either overcompensated, adding too much of a correction, or did not take into account the fact that the American, headed toward him, was reducing the gun-to-target range.' Turning away from the burning Bradley, Guajardo looked into
