Odds, Amanda thought. After all, any Vegas gambler knew that if you threw the dice enough, you would eventually come up with a winning number. After Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, and Iraq, some president had to get lucky. Suddenly, she realized that she was beginning to sound as cynical as Ed. With a shake of her head, she stood up and moved over to the tray to pour herself another cup of coffee.
"You, Mr. President, may be committed. But I am not obliged to follow. This is a dumb move, a move that neither you nor I, in the end, will pay for. I just pray that next week, when the body bags start coming back, you can find a way to explain to Johnny Jones's mother that her son died for political necessity." After listening for another minute, Lewis heaved a sigh. "Yes, Mr. President. It will be a long day. But not near as long for us as it will be for our people moving into Mexico."
Without any further response, Lewis hung the phone up. Turning away from the tray, Amanda saw him sitting there, still holding the receiver with his right hand while bending over, staring at the floor in silence.
He had lost, again. Heaving a great sigh, Amanda felt the urge to go over and take him in her arms. But she knew that this wasn't the time for that. Instead, she lifted the pot of coffee and quietly went over to his desk.
As he heard more coffee being poured into his mug, which still sat teetering on the papers he had put it on, Lewis sat up and turned to his wife. For the first time, he took note of her smiling face framed by her long, ruffled hair. When she was finished and began to return to her seat, leaving the pot on the tray as she did so, he reached over for his mug, taking a sip before saying anything. When he did speak, it was in a low, almost plaintive tone. "This, my dear, isn't a good night to be an American."
Resuming her seat and picking up her own cup, Amanda gave him a sympathetic smile. "I heard, dear. How about telling me all about it."
For the briefest of moments, the sky above Laredo lit up. Though she couldn't hear the muffled explosion over the whine of her Bradley, Kozak knew someone had blown something up somewhere. She had no way of realizing that she had just witnessed the explosion that claimed the first American dead of the day. The war of attrition, a war the Mexicans felt that they couldn't possibly lose, had begun.
Turning her attention back in the direction in which they were moving, Kozak squinted slightly, searching through the dust thrown up by the lead vehicles for the chem lights marking the Bradley to her immediate front.
It took her a few seconds to identify the faint glow of the three red chem lights hanging vertically from the back of the turret of the 1st Squad's Bradley, the lead track in her platoon. Each company in 2nd of the 13th Infantry used different colors to identify their vehicles. Her company, A Company, used red stripes painted on the base of the 25mm cannon for visual recognition during the day and red chem lights or red-filtered flashlights at night. B Company used white, C Company blue, D Company yellow, and all headquarters vehicles green. Within the company, platoons were identified by the number of stripes or lights used. First Platoon had one stripe or light, 2nd Platoon two, 3rd Platoon, her platoon, three, and the company commander's Bradley used four. By using such a system, commanders, at a glance, could tell who they were looking at in the heat of battle when a friendly vehicle appeared on their left or right.
Satisfied that her driver was keeping the proper interval, Kozak twisted about, looking behind for the 2nd Squad's Bradley, which was supposed to be following hers. The 3rd Squad, with Sergeant Rivera, was taking up the rear of the platoon and the company. As she looked, it occurred to Kozak that she had fallen into the habit of assigning missions and establishing the order of march for her platoon in such a manner that it was always 1st Squad in the lead, 2nd Squad next, and 3rd Squad in the rear.
Although Staff Sergeant Maupin was the most experienced and competent of her squad leaders, it wasn't fair that he should always lead. Kozak had been taught that such a practice had a tendency to make the other squad leaders lazy, dependent on the map-reading skills of Maupin and secure in the knowledge that Maupin's Bradley, and not theirs, would catch the first land mine or antitank round in a firefight. The same considerations put continuous pressure and stress on the men of the 1st Squad. That such feelings were real struck home when Kozak noticed that two riflemen from Maupin's squad had scribbled "First to Fall" on the camouflage bands of their helmets. The use of such graffiti, thinly disguised as humor, was a subtle method used by soldiers to communicate dissatisfaction with leadership or unit policies or practices. That Maupin, who had to have seen the slogan, allowed the two riflemen to continue to display it, told Kozak that he agreed with its sentiment.
Not that she could blame her own people for feeling that way. With Captain Wittworth's habit of placing her platoon at the rear of the company column during every road march, or in reserve during most operations, she was beginning to sympathize with the feeling of the men in 1st Squad. At first Kozak had accepted Wittworth's practice of putting her platoon in the rear without much thought. When she began to notice that he continued to do so, she had passed it off as common sense. Wittworth, she told herself, was simply giving her a chance to learn her trade without the added pressure of being in the lead. That rationale, however, began to wear thin when Wittworth rotated ist and 2nd Platoons, while keeping Kozak's in the rear or sending her on every mission that required a platoon to be detached from the company. Though she tried hard not to become paranoid, Kozak began to wonder if Wittworth was trying to discourage her or keep her at arm's length. Regardless of the reason, it was becoming apparent to her, and to her platoon, that Wittworth was, in his own way, telling the 3rd Platoon that it wasn't good enough yet to be part of the company.
Besides the psychological cold shoulder, there were practical concerns.
Being the trail platoon meant that the 3rd Platoon had the honor of eating the entire company's dust on long road marches. When traveling on dirt trails, especially on the tank trails at Fort Hood, where the dust had been ground into fine powder by the passage of thousands of tracked vehicles since 1940, the dust clouds could reach great heights and linger forever.
It was not unusual to end a road march covered with a thick layer of dust that clogged every pore, violated every crack, crevice, and opening on your body, and turned dark green camouflage uniforms almost white. For Kozak, whose nose was still stuffed with cotton wadding and who was still breathing through her mouth, this was particularly annoying. In fact, she had even considered scribbling a motto of her own on her helmet, such as "The Dust Devils" or "The Last of the Least." But Nancy Kozak was an officer, a new and junior officer, who was being watched and evaluated by everyone who outranked her, which, to a second lieutenant, seemed like everyone in the Army. So she bit her tongue and did as she was told. Her day, she knew, would come. Until then, all she could do was follow and, for the time being, eat more dust, a commodity that 2nd Platoon was currently supplying lots of as they headed south into Mexico.
Each page of the thick document sitting on the breakfast table served only to discourage Childress, though he didn't show it. There was a reason, he knew, for his being shown this particular report. When he asked Delapos, who sat across from him, sipping coffee and eyeing the waitresses, how he had managed to obtain it, Delapos smiled. "The Council of 13, my friend, no longer thinks as one." If, in fact, the document he was reading was authentic, then Delapos's words were true, and Alaman, the manager, had succeeded in penetrating the belts of security that had surrounded the council.