That, however, was not necessary. When the final vote was taken just before midnight on the 12th, seven members of the council voted to declare full mobilization and meet the challenge from the north as best they could. So, when President Molina announced from Mexico City that morning that it was with a heavy heart that he was ordering the full mobilization of the Army and militia in preparation to go north to the border, he meant it.
The rearming of the Rural Defense Corps, planned before the current crisis, fell into place with the defensive plan that Guajardo was now developing as a result of the council's call for full mobilization. Even before the current crisis, Guajardo had felt that there was a need for the rearming, and so he had issued the appropriate orders. At that time, he himself could not have explained to his own satisfaction why he felt that doing so was necessary. Events had proved him right, though not for reasons he could have foreseen at the time.
The Rural Defense Corps, on horseback and foot, and supplemented by mechanized cavalry units of the Mexican Army, would patrol the border, providing both a visible presence and information. The last point, the gathering of information, was both critical and, for the Council of 13, a sore point. The Purification had, when it came to purging Mexico's intelligence apparatus and both the national and state police forces, gone too far too fast. While few members of the intelligence community and the police had been arrested, the number of those under suspension had been quite large, accounting for over one-third of all members of those agencies. In addition, many of those who were not affected by these actions deserted, either fleeing north to the United States or back to their home villages. This accounted for another third of the force. Within the ranks of those that remained, morale was almost nonexistent and reliability even lower. After all, as Colonel Zavala pointed out, to the intelligence community and police forces of Mexico, the interests of Mexico and of the PRI had been one and the same. "How can we trust men,"
Zavala had stated before June 29, "who owe everything they have to men whom we are about to kill?"
Perhaps he had been right, Guajardo mused as he watched apeloton of Rural Defense Corps reassemble after receiving their new weapons. The men, smiles on their faces, were busy chatting amongst themselves while they worked the actions on the rifles and machine gun and inspected the sights by aiming at distant objects around the courtyard. These men, who had also been part of the PRI's power structure, would now have to do the bulk of what trained and organized professionals had once done. And their task would be complicated by the need to look both ways, for it was Guajardo's intent to use this force to not only keep track of activities north of the border, but also on their own side. Perhaps, he thought, they, people from the local communities along the border, could discover who it was that was working so hard to start a war between Mexico and the United States. Any information, any clue, any tiny break could make a difference, a difference that could end the current crisis and buy the council the time to work the miracle so desperately needed to save Mexico.
But as far as Guajardo was concerned, time and hope were running out.
Each day brought the possibility of open conflict between the two nations closer. And as that gap closed, the possibility diminished that the United States would believe any evidence offered by the Council of 13 that it was not responsible for the border raids.
12
The country must have a large and efficient army, one capable of meeting the enemy abroad, or they must expect to meet him at home.
Moving far too fast to observe anything along the route, the lead Humvee of Sergeant Jimmy Sullivan's scout section raced along the deserted highway to their assigned observation post. Two hundred meters behind, the second Humvee of the section, an armored Humvee armed with an M-60 machine gun, was pushing it to keep up with Sullivan. Were it not for an occasional reminder from Private Tod Alison, who normally drove Sullivan, Sullivan would have gone faster and lost the heavier and slower vehicle. Losing the second vehicle, however, was the least of his concerns.
With both hands gripping the steering wheel, Sullivan ignored the speedometer and leaned on the accelerator in an effort to make up the time they had lost getting ready back at the battalion's base camp. In the backseat, Andy Morrezzo, a scout observer, held onto his map with one hand and the radio mike with his other, keeping track of their progress and calling off checkpoints as they went whizzing by. While he was doing so, Morrezzo hoped that no one back at the battalion was noticing that they were hitting the checkpoints rather fast.
There were any number of excuses Sullivan could use, if necessary, to explain why they had started late. After all, this was only their third day on the border, using equipment that was relatively new to them, and working as a section for the first time. Even under the best of circum stances, it took the men of the ist Battalion, 141st Infantry, most of the first week of annual summer camp to get into the groove of tactical operations. After all, you simply cannot jerk eight hundred men from their homes scattered all over central Texas one day and expect them to be up to speed, working as a battalion, the next.
To say that the conditions they were working under were far from the best would be an understatement. To start with, instead of going to Fort Hood, where their equipment was located, the battalion had assembled at Camp Mabry in Austin, Texas. There, they were reorganized and issued a mix of Humvees and ancient M-151 jeeps instead of their armored vehicles. The wheeled vehicles, which were cheaper to operate and more suitable for patrolling the vast stretch of border which they were responsible for, were nonetheless new to the men and required some retraining as well as rethinking on how to employ them. In the case of Sullivan's section, this meant reorganization as well as training. At Camp Mabry, Sullivan found that his scout section, authorized at five men and one M-3
Bradley fighting vehicle but consisting of four men and one M-113 armored personnel carrier since it was short personnel and modern equipment, now consisted of six men and two Humvees. One of the Humvees he was issued was a stripped model with nothing but a radio. It could carry four men and their equipment. The second Humvee, borrowed from an MP unit, was an armored version with a roof mount for the M-60 machine gun. The FM radios in both vehicles, VRC-64S, were built in the 1960s and had a planning range of twenty-five kilometers, or sixteen miles, which would be woefully inadequate for what they would have to do. Sullivan still wasn't sure how best to use this combination of equipment when they were moved to their sector on the border.
Sullivan's personnel status was just as bad. Of the three men assigned to his scout section before the call-up, one announced on the day everyone reported to the armory that he was nondeployable due to his job with the state police. This cut Sullivan's section down to three, including himself. To make good this deficiency, three new men were assigned to his section after they had arrived at Camp Mabry. One man, the best of the lot, had just left active duty. Although he had been an artilleryman while in the Army, he at least was trained. Of the other two, one had not yet had a chance to attend basic training while the other, Jack Lyttle, Sullivan suspected, was a dud transferred from one of the infantry companies.
Jack was a nice enough guy, anxious to please, but seemingly incapable of doing anything without close supervision. Sullivan thought that Jack's nickname, Gomer Pyle, gave him too much credit, since, as Sullivan put it, at least Gomer knew how to wear his uniform properly.