"No, no questions, LT. Just give me a minute." Maupin slung his rifle over his back and bent down. Grabbing Gunti's hand, he pulled Gunti up and over one shoulder into a fireman's carry. After bouncing up and down a couple of times in an effort to shift Gunti's body into a comfortable and balanced position, Maupin informed Kozak that he was ready.
Hoisting her rifle into the ready-to-fire position and bracing it against the doorway to steady it, she told Maupin to go. As the sergeant ducked and ran under the muzzle of her rifle, Kozak wondered if she should fire some random shots, in the hope of making the Mexicans seek cover, or if she should just hold her fire and,return aimed fire after the Mexicans opened fire and revealed their positions. Maupin, with Gunti on his back, however, was gone before she had made a decision.
Counting slowly to ten, Kozak held her position, slowly scanning the street to her front for any sign of a reaction to Maupin's appearance.
When she saw and heard nothing after reaching ten, she went out the door and headed down the street where 1st Squad waited.
Alerted by Maupin as he went by, the rest of 1st Squad was ready to move when Kozak came running by. "First Squad, out and back to the river, now!"
As the members of 1st Squad came out of the buildings they had been in, Kozak, standing in the middle of the street, turned and looked back, holding her rifle at the ready and searching for pursuers. Their roles, she thought, were reversed. Her platoon had come into Mexico pursuing the Mexicans, and now they were being chased out of Mexico. Looking over her. shoulder, she yelled to her people to get a move on. Only after the beating of boots on the pavement began to fade did she turn around and follow them at a run, breathing through her mouth and trying hard to keep the blood and snot running down from her broken nose from going into her mouth.
With far more fanfare than it had begun with, the latest incursion by the United States Army came to an end as Second Lieutenant Nancy Kozak, her nose bent to one side and bleeding, came sliding down the embankment, into the Rio Grande, across the river, and into the ubiquitous eye m of Ted's camera.
On television sets across the nation, people barely heard Jan Fields's running commentary. Instead, the image of the lone infantry lieutenant, with blood dripping down her chin, wading back across the river after a brief pursuit of Mexican raiders, stirred viewers' emotions as no words could. Blood had been drawn. American blood. They had watched the body of one of her soldiers carried across the river. They had seen the medics working frantically to save the soldier. Then, when hope was gone, the television viewers had watched as the medics, in disgust, turned away when they realized they had failed. And finally, the young female officer who had led her men in an effort to punish the enemy came back, wounded but undefeated. Such images stirred the passions of a nation and washed away any vestiges of logic or reason that might have remained.
While the National Guard incident could have been a mistake, few could find any defense or justification for this latest spilling of American blood.
In the minds of millions of Americans, the war with Mexico was a reality.
17
The first casualty when war comes is truth.
Working her way through or around barriers was as much a part of Jan Fields's job as shooting a story. A fighter by nature, who enjoyed the fight just as much as the fruits, Jan never took no as an absolute answer.
Rather, it was a signal that the approach she was using wasn't working, and that a different appeal to "be reasonable" or for cooperation was required. Military police were no different. If anything, they were easier to deal with. Well trained to perform specific combat-related tasks, the young soldiers who made up the military police corps often lacked the depth of experience veteran civilian police had when it came to dealing with civilian media. So Jan was able to use her entire repertoire of tricks and pleas to get what she wanted. The only time she ran into serious problems was when the senior MP on site was female.
This evening, this was not the case. The young staff sergeant whose squad was augmenting the sheriff's deputies and the Laredo City police at city hall was an easy mark. The conversation started with Jan insisting that she had an appointment with Lieutenant Colonel Dixon, the G3 of the 16th Armored Division. When the MP sergeant responded that he didn't know who Dixon was and doubted he was there, Jan happily pointed to Dixon's Humvee parked ten feet away from them. Embarrassed at being caught off guard and beginning to wonder if the female reporter badgering him did, in fact, have an appointment, the sergeant sent one of his people into the courthouse to check. Jan, with the confident smile of a cat who was about to pounce on the cornered mouse, waited with the MP sergeant.
Her smile disappeared, however, when the MP sent to summon Dixon returned. Reporting to his sergeant, he stated that Colonel Dixon not only had negative knowledge of an appointment with a female reporter, but couldn't even seem to place the name Jan Fields. Jan blew a gasket. Scott was playing with her and she was in no mood to be messed with. With her eyes reduced to angry, narrow slits, and her forehead furrowed with rage, Jan turned to the MP who was patiently waiting and pointed her index finger at him. "Look, soldier, you march right back where you came from and tell that pompous ass that if he doesn't haul his butt out here in two minutes, it will be a cold day in hell before he beds this broad again.
Got that?"
The MP, taken aback by Jan's response, looked at her with wide eyes for a few seconds, then turned to his sergeant for guidance. The sergeant, not sure what to make of the angry woman with the violent temper, was unsure what to do. If he sent his MP back to the G3 with the message Jan had just relayed, and the G3 really didn't know who this reporter was, he might find himself relieved or something even worse. On the other hand, if he didn't send the MP back with the new message, he would have to deal with the crazy woman standing less than two feet in front of him.
Between the look on her face and her proximity to him, Jan appeared to be the greater of the two threats at that particular moment. Deciding that the old saying that discretion was the better part of valor applied, the sergeant turned to his MP and told him to inform the G3 that the young female correspondent was quite insistent and was threatening him with grave domestic consequences if he did not respond to her request. The MP, trying hard to suppress a grin, shook his head, turned, and disappeared into the courthouse.
By the time Dixon came out onto the steps where Jan had been waiting, she had, for the most part, calmed down. Dixon's appearance, in desert camouflage uniform, along with his web gear arranged for field duty, holster and pistol, protective mask, and helmet, took her aback for a moment. They were serious, she thought. The appearance of Dixon in downtown Laredo, ready for battle, finally convinced her that the government of the United States was really serious about fighting. Without having to be told, and not needing to do any complicated analysis in which she weighed all available evidence, Jan knew that there would be war. In her heart, she knew it.
Still, she had a little fire left from the joke Dixon had played at her expense. When he reached her, Dixon fanned that fire into a raging flame by greeting her with hands held out and a broad smile as if he had done nothing. "Jan, what a lovely surprise."