In private, Guajardo confessed to one more reason for committing the Nicaraguans. He knew that he could not win the battle of Monterrey. He knew that the fight would be quick and bloody. A defeat involving only Mexican forces would be an embarrassment and would leave the ability of the Mexican Army open to question. By involving the vaunted Nicaraguan Army, and allowing them to share the defeat, Guajardo could humble some of the Sandinista officers who were trying to tell him how to do things, and show them, and the other allies, that American technology and combat power were not to be taken lightly.
With his plans set and dispositions completed, Guajardo's role in the upcoming battle would be simple. He had only two decisions to make, and two orders to issue. The first involved where and when to commit the Nicaraguan tanks into battle. Once he knew where the main American effort was, he would make that decision and issue the appropriate code word to launch that counterattack. The second decision would be when to break off the battle. That decision would be made when, in Guajardo's opinion, his forces had done all they could do and further sacrifice would be pointless. When that point was reached, he would have the code word transmitted that would allow his subordinate commanders to break contact with the Americans. Withdrawing to new positions south and west of Monterrey, they would regroup and wait as the initiative moved back into the hands of the politicians and diplomats.
With nothing to do before the lead units of the division crossed their lines of departure, and too keyed up to sleep, Big Al and Dixon sat in the G3
Plans van in the division main CP and rehashed how they saw the battle developing the next morning. Of the three options available to the division, Dixon still favored punching through the Mamulique Pass with the main effort. It had, he pointed out, the advantage of being the least likely choice while being the most direct into Monterrey. Eventually, since the hills on both sides of the pass needed to be cleared anyway, an assault on the pass would be necessary. The division, Dixon claimed, had more than enough direct and indirect firepower to suppress the defenders in the pass while dismounted infantry were airlifted to the flanks and rear of the defenders to isolate them. Once in control of the high ground, the dismounted infantry would be free to rout out those defenders still wanting to resist.
It was not that Dixon lacked imagination or was, by nature, bloody minded. It was important, he pointed out to Big Al, and anyone who would listen, to demonstrate early in this war the effectiveness of American firepower, the damage it could inflict, and the American resolve to use it. In a set-piece battle, such as Dixon was advocating, all the weight of the division could be brought to bear on a single point. The slaughter of the defenders, which would be great, could not be ignored. Besides, by taking the best-defended and most difficult position, the division would be making it clear to the leadership of the Mexican Army, in a less than subtle manner, that no position, regardless of how well defended, could be held. The technique of attacking into the teeth of apparent strength was often used by the Opposing Force Brigade at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin in order to shake the confidence of units training there.
Dixon, having been on the receiving end of one of those attacks, understood the psychological value of such an action.
Big Al, however, was a maneuver man, a soldier who preferred to use the tracks of his tanks rather than their guns to achieve victory. The end run south of the Sierra Picachos, where the ground was more open and therefore more conducive to maneuver by mechanized forces, appealed to him. The Mexican defenders, notoriously weak in mechanized forces and totally lacking modern antiarmor weapons, would be quickly overwhelmed by a mounted attack. Besides, Big Al's preference just happened to coincide with the general order from the Department of the Army that major confrontations that would result in high casualties and protracted combat be avoided, when possible. That order, coupled with a restriction on both Air Force and Army aviation that limited it to no more than fifty kilometers from the forward edge of friendly forces, bothered Dixon. It was as if,Dixon quipped, they were being ordered to kill the Mexicans only a little. Though Big Al agreed that it was ludicrous to establish such limitations now that they were engaged in a shooting war, he, as the commander, had no choice but to comply.
With the time for debating and decision-making over, and the success or failure of the next day's operations in the hands of the captains and lieutenants, Big Al and Dixon compared Zachary Taylor's campaign of 1846 with their own. Their one lament was the amount of control people outside the theater of operations exerted on their current operations. Had Taylor been burdened with the communications that the current president had at his disposal, Dixon pointed out, the 16th Armored Division would be preparing to seize Kansas City, not Monterrey.
The promise of action in ten minutes, after a sudden and unexpected road march, no longer thrilled Second Lieutenant Nancy Kozak. In part, this was due to the road march that had taken the 2nd of the 13th Infantry from the division reserve at Vallecillo to their current location behind the 3rd Brigade. Moving all night, the 2nd of the 13th had arrived in its new assembly areas just as the sun crested the horizon to the east. Rather than being thrown into the growing battle around Nuevo Repueblo, as the battalion commander had expected, the 2nd of the 13th had been placed in reserve again. The situation that had existed when the 2nd of the 13th began its move had completely changed. Instead of achieving a breakthrough, as the 3rd Brigade commander had expected to do when 2nd of the 13th was released to his command, he had encountered unexpected resistance on the part of the Mexicans which had changed the entire picture by the time 2nd of the 13th arrived in the 3rd Brigade's area.
At an update held by Captain Wittworth after he returned from the battalion CP, Nancy Kozak found out that, rather than giving ground without a fight, the Mexicans facing the 3rd Brigade's sweep south of the Sierra Picachos mountains had merely moved to other positions under cover of darkness. The lead elements of the 3rd Brigade's attack, finding that those Mexican positions that had been occupied earlier were vacant, had assumed the Mexicans had withdrawn. Ordered to switch from conducting a deliberate attack to a headlong pursuit in an effort to catch the fleeing enemy, the two lead battalions of the 3rd Brigade had been in the process of changing formations, on the move, when they made contact with the actual Mexican fighting positions. The resulting combination of surprise, stiff enemy resistance, and the change of formations during a night battle resulted in confusion that stalled, then halted, the 3rd Brigade's advance. Rather than continue thrashing about in the dark, and risk fratricide, the commander of the 3rd Brigade had ordered all units to break contact and assume hasty defensive positions. The attack, Wittworth told his platoon leaders, would begin again, after dawn, using only those elements that were currently in contact. Until such times as the situation was fully developed, the 2nd of the 13th would remain, as it had been since the beginning of the invasion of Mexico, in reserve.