With this mix of new equipment, men, and mission, with almost no time to organize and train properly, Sullivan didn't have to fabricate a reason for not making their start time. In the words of his first sergeant, the scout platoon was an accident waiting to happen.
While Sullivan knew he could get away with such excuses, he didn't want to if he didn't need to. To do so at this early stage would be unwise.
The good ole boy system had no place in the 1st of the 141st. Instead, both the company commander and the battalion commander judged their people on their performance, not who they were or who they knew. Those who performed were rewarded, those who didn't got extra training or the boot. The day would come, Sullivan knew, when he would need a favor, such as a couple of days off to go home and see his family. When that time came, the last thing he wanted to have was some officer pull out his notebook, flip to a page, and inform Sullivan that on 29 August he and his patrol had been thirty minutes late getting into place. And Captain Terry Wilkes, his company commander, was just the kind of guy to do that. So Sullivan told his normal driver to hop in the passenger seat, took the wheel, and made a beeline for the site where they would set up their first observation post that night. Along the way, he decided to reduce the number of stops to check crossing points from six to three and make a visual inspection of the other three as they went by. It was a gamble that Sullivan thought was worth taking.
The truth was, it didn't make any difference. Even had Sullivan stopped at each of the six crossing points in his sector, neither he nor his section would have found any traces of Lefleur and his team. They, like all the other teams, were already north of the border, preparing to operate from new locations in the United States, not Mexico.
In a stroke of real genius, Delapos had ordered his teams to go north and-find base camps on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande before the Texas National Guard was able to close on the border and replace the U.S.
Border Patrol. The advantages of doing so were numerous. By operating in the United States, Delapos's men could avoid the need to sneak through the increasing Mexican patrols, crossing a border that was coming under intense scrutiny by human and electronic surveillance on both sides, and then, when finished, come back after everyone was alerted. Their earlier operations, against the border patrol, had more than established the idea in everyone's mind that the raids were coming across the border. There was, therefore, no need to reinforce this. What was necessary was to maintain a high success rate without compromise or loss. Actions by both the Mexican government and the state of Texas were making this harder.
Capitalizing on the fact that the Americans were becoming both frustrated and mesmerized by the ability of the raiders to move across the border without detection, both Delapos and Childress suspected that each success would cause the Americans to panic, redoubling their intelligence efforts at or south of the border, not north of it. If this in fact happened, Delapos figured that their operations would become easier as more troops and efforts were piled up on the border and drawn away from the interior.
Besides being able to avoid crossing the border, Delapos would be able to supply, pay, reinforce, and communicate with his people with greater ease. In the days after June 29, it had not been a problem to move men, weapons, and money about in Mexico while the Purification was decimating Mexico's police and intelligence agencies and causing panic among those that remained. Deployment of the Rural Defense Corps, movement of regular Army units to the border, and acceptance of the Council of 13 by the people, however, had made operations south of the border hazardous.
Coupled with an increase in the odds of being discovered while operating on the border itself, was the fact that the Council of 13 was beginning to gain a firm grasp of Mexico's institutions and systems. Banks, now under control, were limiting the amount of funds that could be transferred in and out of the country. The purge of customs officials, as well as of the police at seaports and airports, was over. Those who remained took the lessons of the Purification to heart and were, at least for the time being, incorruptible. To ensure that they remained so, the customs officials and police were being rotated to other assignments randomly and at irregular intervals, making it difficult to bribe them and allow arms and military supplies to be smuggled in. Against such moves, there was little Alaman or Delapos could do. Even communications and movement were becoming more difficult. The comings and goings of strangers were being tracked and reported. The telephone system was susceptible to being tapped. And roving roadblocks, set up without notice and at random intervals, were making movements of equipment difficult to plan.
The situation in the United States, however, was different. If anything, the shifting of operations north simplified matters. Despite the fact that the raids had created a panic in Texas and the National Guard had been called out, no one, not even the governor of Texas, was prepared to suspend civil liberties by declaring martial law or restricting movement of civilians. It was therefore possible for Delapos's men, especially those who were North American or European, to travel near the border in pickup trucks and scout out their next ambush sites and watch the National Guard as it deployed and maneuvered. Some, like Childress, actually went up to the National Guard observation posts. Striking up a conversation with the guardsmen, Childress would share beer he just happened to have in a cooler in the back of his pickup, telling them how glad he was to see them on the job, and swap war stories. And while the guardsmen drank his beer, Childress carefully noted how they were equipped, asking seemingly innocent questions about their unit and mission, and listened to their reporting procedures. That they were being set up was the last thing on their minds. After all, he spoke the language, looked like them, and had been in the Army himself. The enemy, according to the commanders, were sneaky little Mexicans. As far as the soldiers were concerned, Childress was just another good ole boy who really knew how to support the troops.
Not that Childress really had to do this. To ensure that the border was properly covered, and that military operations did not interfere with civilian operations, all American patrol plans, roadblocks, and OP locations had to be determined well in advance, coordinated with state and local authorities, and approved. If an OP was to be located on private property, the owner of the land had to be notified. In this way, a great deal of detailed information was available and passing through many hands on a daily basis. It was therefore not difficult for Alaman to energize his own intelligence network. The fact was, some of the state and local officials who were handling the military information were already on Alaman's payroll, holdovers from when Alaman's efforts had been simply to facilitate the movement of drugs and illegal aliens.
Movement of new personnel, funds, and even military hardware, was no problem. In fact, using Alaman's connections, it was surprisingly easy. Secondhand weapons no longer needed by the Nicaraguan and Cuban governments were purchased by Alamdn's agents and shipped to Colombia. There they were combined with regular drug traffic organized and run by Alaman's associates in that country and sent on flights being made into the United States. Once in the United States, the new personnel, funds, weapons, and equipment were moved by road using a trucking company owned by another of Alaman's associates. In this way, Delapos was able to provide antitank guided missiles and portable surface-to-air guided missiles to his teams within a matter of weeks.