leave?'
For Kozak, the assignment was welcome. Getting used to Staff Sergeant Maupin as the platoon sergeant and Sergeant Kaszynski as the 1st Squad leader was no big problem. In fact, the only problem she saw that needed to be tended to was with herself. In a span of less than a week, her entire world had been turned upside down.
Up until the seventh of September, the day they had gone into Mexico after the bank robbers, Kozak had thought nothing could be worse than her first six months at West Point. The physical and mental stress and strain of that six months, however, now seemed trivial when compared to the demands of command in combat. After the firefight in Nuevo Laredo, Kozak had almost lost it when Rivera pulled the zipper up on Private Gunti's body bag. She still found it impossible to pull up the zipper on her own sleeping bag without panicking. And then there was the sight of Sergeant Rivera himself after the fight with the tanks, laid out on a stretcher, his face as white as a sheet from shock and the loss of blood.
The seemingly cold, matter-of-fact comment by his gunner, who had been sitting next to Rivera when their Bradley was hit, still echoed in her mind. When Kozak and the dismounts rejoined the Bradleys after their fight at the arroyo, and she asked how Rivera was, the gunner had looked up at her. 'Oh, he'll be okay, I guess. Sarge is lucky. He only lost an arm.'
It was in the calm after the battle that Kozak had been able to consider what had happened and, even worse, what could have happened. Like a person who walks away from an auto accident, it was only after the danger had passed that Kozak began to shake as the images of what might have been became clear to her. The thought that an entire enemy tank battalion might come crashing down on her and the handful of dismounts she had deployed never occurred to her before she initiated the antitank ambush. Her failure to contact Wittworth herself and push for the support they needed would have been fatal had the battalion commander not been in a position where he could see what was going on and quickly put two and two together. It was, Kozak realized, the same situation she had faced at Fort Hood, only bigger this time. It was as if she hadn't learned a thing from Captain Cerro that day. And if that were true, would she, could she, ever?
So when the order came down to 2nd Platoon, Company A, to report to the division's headquarters commandant, Kozak was hard-pressed to hide her relief. Back at the division CP, tucked safely in the division rear areas, she would have time to sort herself out. She needed time to absorb the horrors of combat. Like her nose, the wounds of her spirit and mind needed time to heal.
Like clouds on the distant horizon that foreshadow a coming storm, forces were in motion that would deny Kozak what she needed most, time.
The operational pause that was meant to provide the people in Washington with time to reassess their policy toward Mexico was a godsend to Senior Alaman. It provided him and his mercenaries with conditions that couldn't be more perfect for what they intended to do. With U.S. forces deep in Mexico, spread very thin and operating in the midst of a hostile population that provided cover for an active guerrilla force, it would be easy for Delapos's teams to move about and attack isolated American outposts and columns. That the Mexicans would be blamed for both the attacks and the atrocities Delapos's people would commit was without doubt. And for the American soldiers who would witness the results of the atrocities and have to live in fear of them, the desire to exact revenge from the nearest Mexican would, Alaman knew, soon become overpowering.
With atrocity repaying atrocity, it would not be long before the bloody cries for revenge drowned out the calls for diplomacy and reason.
It was now simply a matter of timing. As with the raids along the Texas border, Alaman warned Delapos to take his time and set the stage properly before acting. 'It would be a shame,' Alaman repeated at every chance, 'to come this far and lose everything because we were in too much of a hurry. Time now is a friend that we can use freely. So long as we are willing to be a little patient, the opportunities that will bring us success will come our way.'
All of this, to Jean Lefleur, that evening, was purely academic. He seldom bothered himself with the details of his bosses' ambitions or goals. His needs were few. In fact, his only needs were money and job satisfaction. So long as someone was willing to provide both, he was happy. As he sat in the passenger side of his newly acquired four- by-four, feet up on the dash and headed toward Sabinas Hidalgo, there was a smile on his face as he hummed old marching songs from the French Foreign Legion.
At that moment, it seemed like he had it all. Alaman's call for the mercenaries to continue their agitation in Mexico, at triple the pay they had been receiving, paid in advance, was an offer only a fool would turn down. That in itself would have been more than enough to satisfy Lefleur.
What really capped the offer was a change in his status within Delapos's small army. The American, Childress, who had served as Delapos's unofficial deputy and advisor, had fallen out of favor. Lefleur couldn't tell for sure what had caused the problem between Childress and Delapos.
Part of it, he knew, was the fact that Childress was lukewarm to the idea of committing what Childress called murder. Though the atrocities they intended to carry out exceeded what they had done in the past, however, that in itself was not enough to explain Childress's mood.
No, Lefleur thought. That was not at the heart of the problem. The real problem, Lefleur suspected, was the obvious one, one that neither man was willing to admit. Childress, despite all his training and years as a mercenary, was and would always be an American, just as Delapos could never be anything but a Mexican. The impressions and beliefs left by the cultures that had spawned them and raised them left a mark upon the two men that no amount of money could ever wash away. Childress did little to hide the agitation he felt when Delapos bragged about the manner in which the Mexican Army had beaten the arrogant gringos. Nor could Delapos ignore Childress's use of the words dago, greaser, and such when referring to Mexicans. As the war between their homelands expanded, so too, Lefleur knew, did the gap between the two men. And it was into that gap that Lefleur intended to insert himself.
No longer able to trust Childress, Delapos began to turn to Lefleur for the advice that Childress used to provide. For Delapos, so anxious to please Alaman, had great difficulty making major decisions on his own, a fact that both Childress and Lefleur had used to their own advantage so many times before. Needing someone he could trust to help him talk his way through to a decision, and unable fully to trust Childress any longer, Delapos accepted Lefleur's counsel more and more. Even the grueling task of reconnaissance, long hours of driving about coupled with the need to dodge or bluff through both Mexican and American outposts and lines, provided another chance for Lefleur to increase his value to Delapos, not to mention his salary. While Childress was left to organize and defend the base camp, Lefleur went out on reconnaissance, familiarizing himself with the ground and seeking routes that could be used for infiltration and vulnerable spots that were susceptible to attack. With intimate knowledge of the terrain and unit dispositions, Lefleur, not Childress, would be able to influence Delapos and future operations.
Armed with a false passport and other ID that identified him as Paul Perrault, a real correspondent for the French National News Network, Lefleur had no trouble moving about the American sector. Since the other men who traveled with Lefleur carried IDs that supported Lefleur's, and enough camera and sound equipment to support their claims, few Americans at roadblocks and checkpoints bothered to search them or their vehicle. Even if the Americans had found the MP-5 submachine gun under Lefleur's seat, or the weapons each of his men kept concealed within arm's reach, Lefleur felt that he could easily talk his way out of any difficulty. There were, after all, banditos about, and he as well as his crew had the right to defend themselves.
So when Lefleur and his men came up to a checkpoint manned by half a dozen MPs at the entrance to the gap between mountains that led to Sabinas Hidalgo, where the CP for the American 16th Armored Division was, Lefleur didn't give it a second thought. Still, he instinctively evaluated the situation and assessed his chances should it become necessary to fight his way out.
After they stopped a respectful distance from the wire entanglement the MPs used to block the road, a lone MP, armed with an M-16 rifle, approached them on Lefleur's side. From the rank on his helmet and collar, Lefleur guessed that he was their leader. Behind him, at the wire entanglement, stood two more MPs. One was armed with an M-16 slung over her shoulder, while the other had an M-203, which is an M-16 with a 40mm grenade launcher attached to the front hand guard. The two vehicles belonging to the MP squad were sitting on either side of the wire entanglement. Lefleur identified them as armored Humvees. Though the vehicles could easily protect the American MPs from the automatic weapons he and his team had hidden but ready, none of the MPs were, at that moment, availing themselves of that protection. Even the MPs manning the weapons mounted on top of the Humvees, an M-
