Time Soldiers

By Max Recod

Enormous natural and manmade energies are instantaneously fused to generate an unnatural incident that propel half of a reconnaissance platoon of the 82nd Airborne Division to the year 1835, just before Santa Ana attacks the Alamo. These time soldiers might, if pushed too far, be forced to pit their twentieth-century technology and tactics against the mass brutality of nineteenth-century warfare. Sergeant Reno Bender must evade or fight Los Tigres, a regiment of mounted lancers, to save his and his men's lives—with only twelve inexperienced men and three M151 jeeps against almost six hundred Tigres of the best-trained and fiercest lancers in the Western Hemisphere led by the narcissistic and very ambitious Colonel Ortega.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684564583

Book preview

Chapter One

Ain’t Doin’ It!

*****

The tires screeched as the small Japanese compact rounded the sharp curve at fifty miles per hour, the caution sign recommended thirty-five. Scattering gravel and dust, the right tires went off the road as the driver tried to regain control of the car.

Donna wrenched the wheel to the left as fear instantly replaced the thrill of driving fast because she realized that she was in trouble.

The two children in the car began to scream at the erratic and violent course of the car and the unfamiliar deafening and terrifying sounds it was making.

The young woman, Donna, who could have been a twin of the young and beautiful actress, Mary Tyler-Moore, twisted and turned the wheel as she frantically tried to regain control.

A ten-year-old girl walking down the road turned around to see the source of that startling sound that jerked her out of her whimsical daydreaming. What she saw horrified her into a vocal statue that screamed for its life. An upside down, rotating car, with an ear-piercing screech of metal-on-road, careened toward her!

The impact of the rotating car slammed the girl across the road and into the ditch. She lay motionless as the car continued a few more feet, then stopped and rocked gently on its roof. The tires rotated slowly; smoke and steam hissed as it billowed from the upside-down car.

The scene was instantly silent, except for the sound of a rolling tin can-sound made by the right front hubcap as it made its wobbly way for another twenty yards. The debris had stopped tinkling, ringing, and clattering. In the car, there was silence.

Rhonda, the young girl in the ditch, lay flat on her back with blood all over her T-shirt and jeans. Blinking her eyes, she snapped to a sitting position with fists balled and her arms at her side. She began to scream in pain and hysteria! Looking down at her jeans and seeing the profusion of blood splashed on her T-shirt caused her to increase the volume of her outburst. The bloodied children in the car added their screams to hers.

*****

Sergeant Manny looked over at Sergeant First Class Bender when he heard Bender sigh again and said, in sympathy, Reno, I wish I knew how to help ya. Man, but there ain’t much I can do.

I know, Manny, Bender replied quietly. My only hope is the Army will make my variable reenlistment bonus a 3.

The 3 factor would multiply Bender’s base pay three times. The total of this would then be multiplied by the number of years he reenlisted. The bonus helped the army retain experienced enlisted soldiers in the new all-volunteer army of 1975.

Otherwise, I’m down the tube! There’s no way I can come up with fifty-two thousand dollars by January 1. Even the 3 VRB won’t give me much more’n 10 percent of it, but it’d be a good down payment, an’ hold the lawyers off for a little while, Bender said dejectedly as he looked down at the M16 in his hands.

Neither said anything for a while as they watched the parachute riggers finish checking the parachutes on SFC Bender’s gun jeeps, which were strapped down on the aluminum heavy-drop pallets. A bed of cardboard, shock-absorbing honeycomb, was positioned between the pallets and the undercarriages of the seven jeeps. Receiving an Okay from the riggers the two NCOs walked over to the air base’s Green Ramp mobile snack bar for a cup of coffee.

The roar of several C-130s revving engines parked and taxiing 150 meters away on the Pope Air Force Base runway made it difficult to hear each other.

This may be my last jump, ya know that, Manny? If I don’t get the 3, I might have to get out of the army next month an’ get a high-payin’ job somewhere. The lawyers are still arguing about my options to pay this off, Reno said, looking to the west.

The sky was the red, pink, and flamingo colors of another beautiful North Carolina sunset. However, this time, the colorful display was lost on the distraught sergeant.

Bender cursed silently as he thought of the accident his wife was involved in and the lawsuit that took all his life’s savings of over eight thousand dollars.

His wife, Donna, had wrecked their new car on a hazardous curve on a country road near Fort Bragg, three months earlier, in June 1975. The parents of the now fully recovered Rhonda had sued the Benders for damages.

The Benders’ insurance had expired three days before the accident due to the payment being lost in the mail. He wasn’t mad at his wife, even for one second, but he cursed the misfortune of the accident. It totaled their new car and wiped out their savings. Savings he and she had accumulated during his three combat tours in Vietnam.

Bender had gone to South Vietnam in early 1966 with the Fifth Special Forces Group. He arrived with the rank of specialist fourth class after graduating from the Special Forces Qualification Course. The young soldier went as a light-weapons specialist, then moved up to heavy weapons sergeant and finally intelligence sergeant on his Twelve-man A team.

He had fought in some of the bloodiest battles and firefights the Special Forces had ever been engaged in. As a staff sergeant, he led a Spike Team of three Americans and seven Vietnamese on deep reconnaissance, snatch, ambush, and like missions. There were other missions, as well, but these he was forbidden to talk about, so he didn’t.

Mostly these were relatively small engagements compared to the conventional infantry battalion operations. The firefights were short and more often than not very bloody in comparison, but there were a lot of them!

Reno’s training, combat skills, and bravery often was the common factor in pulling his small unit out of tight situations and usually without the benefit of artillery support or air cover.

On his third tour SFC Bender was assigned to a staff position for three months. During that three months, he screamed and threatened desertion to fight for the Viet Cong and finally the life and limb of everyone in his Special Forces A Camp if he didn’t get sent back to the bush. He would rather face booby traps, punji pits and ambushing VC than the ambushing reports and brain-numbing paperwork. He collected three purple hearts and a multitude of other medals, including two Silver Stars for the three years he was there. During that three years, he also collected eight thousand dollars, which was now gone.

Four months! Bender thought glumly. Four months to come up with fifty-two thousand dollars! How can I do that? No way! That’s how! he said hotly, as he put a death grip on his Styrofoam coffee cup.

I ain’t doin’ it! I just ain’t doin’ it! Bender said quietly.

You ain’t doin’ what? asked Rick Manny.

Huh? Oh… I said, ‘I ain’t doin’ it,’ Bender replied absent mindedly.

"Ain’t doin’ what?" Rick asked again, getting confused at his platoon sergeant’s words.

Ain’t doin’ it. You know, ‘It ain’t doin’ it!’ Bender emphasized, the phrase again.

"It ain’t doin’ what?" Manny asked again.

Oh yeah, you’re from La Grange, Indiana, Bender said, as if excusing Manny’s lack of knowledge of archaic Southern slang.

"I have a friend in Alabama who says that. When things ain’t goin’ too well, or things couldn’t be any worse. ‘It’ meanin’ being ‘true,’ or ‘goin’ great,’ or ‘good.’"

"He would say, ‘It ain’t doin’ it!’ Or ‘I ain’t doin’ it!’ Well, Rick, I wish t’ hell I was doin’ it!" Bender said sadly.

Did you say we’re gonna in-flight rig? Manny asked, wanting to change the subject.

"Man! What a pain inna ass! If somethin’ ‘ain’t doin’ it,’ it’s in-flight riggin’! I hate strugglin’ t’ put on my chute while the pilot is flyin’ up and over hills. Those C-130 pilots, deep down, must be frustrated fighter pilots, the way they fly those things.

I know someone is gonna be wearin’ my supper again! Manny laughed, thinking of the last in-flight parachute rigging, when he vomited his supper all over his jumpmaster as the lieutenant was checking under Manny’s reserve parachute.

Right down the back of his neck! Manny laughed at what he considered a fine joke on an officer.

"I’m jumpmaster on this one, buddy! And I write your Evaluation Report! If you get the urge for a repeat performance, you remember that!" Bender laughed, feeling better, knowing Manny’s attempts to cheer him up always worked.

*****

The UH/1-N helicopter jerked and swayed almost erratically as it flew in a northwest direction. Its course was being contested by strong and sometimes very violent crosswinds as it made its way in, out and over rugged canyons.

Everyone onboard was agitated and very nervous. The pilot and crew were afraid for the safety of the aircraft and everyone onboard. The three passengers were concerned about the thirteen men they were searching for.

The Huey was racing as fast as conditions would allow for its search for Sergeant Bender and his section of the battalion reconnaissance platoon.

The darkening sky was frequently split by ragged bolts of lightning and frightening thunderclaps. These unbelievably high intense electrical blasts jarred the senses of everyone onboard but the pilot. The treacherous winds screaming over the southwestern desert, at times, scooted the helicopter sideways in its seemingly intelligent attempt to tear apart the aircraft or slam it into the sides of mountains. The pilot was sweating as he tried to keep the Huey off the canyon walls and in the air.

They’ve either disconnected their antennas or turned off their radios, Colonel. Must be afraid of the lightning knockin’ ’em out, was Major Retkins’s speculative comment over the Huey’s intercom.

The battalion sergeant major just sat looking out the window with his forehead against the wind and rain cooled plexiglass window. Even with his face close to the door window the bull-like man didn’t see anything. He was trying not to be any more airsick by concentrating on the bouncing and swaying horizon.

Finally, feeling guilty about catering to his illness, he began to search the terrain below with greater concentration but still emitting suffering groans. He thought to himself, Duty first, die later!

"And it doesn’t help us one stinkin’ bit to get in contact with them! Does it, major? Lieutenant Colonel Spanner, the battalion commander, retorted angrily, We’ve got three and a half minutes before we reach the turnaround point!"

Retkins mentally winced at the rebuke, but his visible reaction was to grit his teeth and look at the aluminum deck of the rocking chopper.

How in the hell could you make a mistake like that, Retkins? Colonel Spanner asked the admonished battalion operations officer for the tenth time.

"I mean, hell, a coordinate and azimuth that is one hundred eighty degrees from the direction they’re supposed to go! And don’t feed me that crap about the 71 Lima typing the wrong info! You, sir, are supposed to proofread every scrap of paper that your section publishes!

"If those men get killed, it’ll be my ass! Not yours! Mine, that’s going to swing, Major!" the battalion commander said hotly, as he searched the terrain ahead of the noisy Huey with his binoculars.

Sir? Colonel Spanner? Two and half minutes, the warrant officer pilot reported over the intercom, I want to continue, sir, but I’ve never flown near a detonating nuclear weapon before. There was more than just a trace of uneasiness in his voice.

I’ve only read what an electromag pulse does to electronic equipment. These avionics are going to catch hell when that surge passes through us.

The fuming-light colonel just grunted in anger at the pilot’s reminder that time was running out.

I’ll go on if you say so, colonel, but… The pilot paused. But I’d like to let everyone else out, except you and me. If that’s all right with you, sir, the pilot finished, silently praying the colonel would say what he heard next.

"No, Edwards. Fly as planned. No sense in putting anyone else in danger. My luck, I’d have to pay for this noisy windmill along with the three jeeps that’s going to be vaporized in twenty minutes.

"Dammit! Ret, you son—ahh, crap!" Spanner said disgustedly.

Colonel, they won’t be vaporized, Major Retkins said lamely. They’re still a long way from ground zero. Accordin’ to the Flash Report’s coordinates, even if they traveled another half hour, they’ll still be at a relatively safe distance.

"Now, just what in the hell’s a relatively safe distance, ya dipshit, to two-hundred-kiloton bomb!" the colonel asked mockingly.

The major looked down and shrugged and asked himself dejectedly, Why in hell did they have to start testing those bastards again for anyway? And above ground for crap sakes!

Try the radio again, Spanner said to the pilot over the intercom. Try the Control Net. Hell! Try ’em all!

It’s time, sir, came the pilot’s relieved voice, as he banked the helicopter to the left in a steep turn, pointing the nose of the helicopter to the southeast. I’ll keep callin’ on all the recon platoon’s CEOI freqs, sir, but I think the major’s right. They’ve shut down their radios.

As it happens in the southwestern part of the United States in the mountainous desert regions in the autumn, sudden thunderstorms appeared. For the past three days, the region had been subjected to these frequent and violent thunderstorms.

Though it was only 1620 hours, it was getting dark as the clouds blanketed the vicinity’s sky and the winds violently buffeted the small helicopter. However, to the north and west, the sun’s rays could be seen beaming brightly through the fast moving and broken clouds. However, lightning flashed with frequent regularity, lighting up the rugged and desolate, darkened desert below the bouncing helicopter.

It was during one of these flashes that major Retkins spotted the reflection off one of the lowered windshields on one of the three M-151 reconnaissance gun jeeps.

"There they are, Colonel! Retkins shouted, into the intercom, pointing excitedly. A great sense of relief flooded him, Northwest! Three hundred meters to the left of that white cliff face and up just a hair! About five hundred meters out!"

The jeeps had closed the usual one-hundred-meter interval between jeeps to twenty meters, apparently due to the blowing rain, darkness, and the winding rocky and mountainous trail they were following. They were creeping along very slowly with the men huddled and shivering beneath their ponchos, in the open jeeps, for whatever warmth they could find.

Spanner, pressing the push-to-talk button, on his headset and holding the binos to his eyes, roared into the mouthpiece at the pilot, Turn this thing around! Get over to those people! And keep calling!

Colonel, if we don’t keep going at this speed we’re gonna get caught, the pilot objected shakily, this chopper just might fall outa the sky, when the surge hits.

Then land this thing as close as possible. Overfly them first. Then land in the lee of that hill, if you can, the battalion commander ordered.

They’re shootin’ at us, Colonel, Retkins said, in disbelief.

So friggin’ what! They’re supposed to. Just blanks anyway! Your idiotic operations order said no friendly aircraft in their area. They think we’re the enemy. Part of the exercise, the battalion commander said sarcastically.

Hover above them, Spanner called to the pilot.

*****

The rocky terrain showed thousands of points of light as the lightning reflected off stones, puddles, cacti, and the vegetation from the drenching downpour. The road was just a trace and hard to see in the very reduced visibility. The scenery reminded Reno of the old black and white movies he had seen of the stormy opening scenes of Frankenstein’s castle.

Sergeant First Class Reno Bender had stopped the recon jeeps on a side of a high hill upon seeing the chopper circle, then spun around to put the right door over the drenched jeeps and half drown troopers and hovered just twenty feet above them. SFC Bender could not make out who was in the Huey doing all the arm waving.

Who’s that, Reno? Sergeant Manny yelled in Sergeant Bender’s ear. Both he and Bender were looking up and shielding their eyes from the blade-driven rain mercilessly beating down on them when Manny yelled.

Both men had dismounted from their vehicles and were now standing beside the last heavily loaded trailer, as everyone else protected themselves from the hard, prop-driven rain.

Most were thinking evil thoughts about the SOB that would hover over cold, wet troops. The blade wash compounded the misery they were already suffering by making them feel as though their wet clothes were made of ice, making the younger and thinner paratroopers shiver uncontrollably.

Can’t make ’em out, Manny! Bender shouted back, his poncho whipping around and flapping loudly in the helicopter created windstorm.

The chopper came lower and Bender yelled, That’s Spanner, Manny! He’s waving for us to turn around. I don’t like this! There’s been a screwup somewhere! Now the colonel wants us to turn around, he yelled to the drenched and shivering Manny.

Bender patted his chest and then raised his right arm over his head, rotating it in a counterclockwise motion and pointed to the southeast.

The colonel acknowledged with an exaggerated nod of his head then gave the arm signal to double-time or hurry. Bender in turn acknowledged. Bender then signaled he must move forward a little way to find a turnaround point. The colonel gave a thumbs-up and a double-time arm signal again.

A few seconds later, a helmet flew out of the Huey’s closing door. It crashed to the ground near the last jeep with a muted wet metallic thump!

The M60 gunner jumped down, retrieved it, and threw it into the back of the jeep.

The rain passed while the UH/1-N spun to its left and gained altitude with a powerful roar. The air now felt warm to the men. More than one arm flew up to flip off the chopper and its inconsiderate occupants.

*****

Major Retkins’ battalion op shop had published an Operations Plan and Operations Order giving the Battalion Reconnaissance Platoon two primary and three alternate objectives. The platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Barst, commanded the conduct of the first primary objective. This mission was being carried out to the letter.

However, the second objective, led by Sergeant First Class Charles Reno Bender, was not so fortunate.

The Third Battalion, 584th Infantry Regiment, commanded by recently promoted Lieutenant Colonel Jeffery C. Spanner, was brought to this southwestern state to be tested according to the latest ARTEP, the Army’s acronym for army training evaluation program. Navajo Desert II was the operation’s code name.

The battalion was to be tested over a large part of this vast desert. After each line company and other supporting units reached their final objective, they were to conduct a live-fire exercise.

Heavy emphasis was placed on using the actual combat basic ammunition load of live ammunition. Since in a combat situation they would be required to carry it, Spanner wanted the battalion to experience the actual weights and special considerations needed in handling the real stuff.

The use of the live ammunition also used up the battalion’s fiscal year’s allocation of ammunition. The heavy expenditure of ammunition was normal for the months of August and September. October was the month the new ammunition was allocated throughout the army and the usual practice of use it or lose it was adhered to.

The real stuff included, 81-mm mortar rounds, 90-mm recoilless medium, antipersonnel and armor weapon (MAW) rounds, M72 light antiarmor weapons (LAW), claymore mines, fragmentation grenades, 40-mm grenades, smoke, white phosphorus, and small arms ammunition for the M60 machine guns, M16s, and .45-cal. 1911-A1 automatic pistols.

Also included were a multitude of pyrotechnics needed for signaling. Artillery and grenade simulators were issued to provide battlefield incoming and other explosions for additional realism.

They also carried blank ammunition to be used for the engagement of other Army personnel posing as an aggressor, enemy force. However, the battalion trains would carry the real stuff until after the engagement of these aggressors and issue it prior to the live-fire exercise.

The men and vehicles of the reconnaissance platoon were weighted down and more than a few complained of the excessive weight. To accommodate the blank ammunition and the excess live ammunition the recon platoon was forced to add two trailers to the Alpha and Bravo Team jeeps. This brought a howl from Lieutenant Barst and the highly experienced Sergeant First Class Bender.

These two leaders wanted to leave the trailers with the battalion headquarters and return for supplies of live ammunition as the missions dictated. The two were hotly overruled and the heavy-laden trailers were to be towed throughout the operations.

The recon platoon would have to carry all their live and blank ammunition because they were not going to be with the rest of the battalion at the conclusion of the FTX, it was explained. Being away they were expected to transport the ammunition to a separate and distant firing range where they would be met by a firing-range officer to conduct their live-fire exercise and account for ammunition and brass.

Carrying their own ammunition wasn’t the point; they were also given all the battalion’s extra ammunition to burn up, out from under the eyes of any unsympathetic official observers.

It is common practice to fire up any excess ammunition on the range this close to the end of the fiscal year. But it gave the men extra weight and used up precious space in their already crowded gun jeeps.

They had almost sextuple their actual "combat basic load" of live ammunition. And, in the case of the linked M60, 7.62-mm, machine-gun ammunition, they had more than eight times their basic load.

*****

In the battalion operation’s office, the mimeograph’s stencil sheet had deteriorated due to excessive rough handling prior to mounting it on the machine. As a result, the last copy of page two of the operations order was badly smudged. This page contained the coordinates and azimuths of Team Bravo’s secondary missions. Page two of the last set of orders had to be retyped just for this one page.

The 71 Lima was not happy about the task during this disconcerted time. The battalion staff evaluators were all over the place, breathing down everyone’s neck.

They acted like starving rats in search of food, as they tried to ferret out any mistakes made by the battalion staff sections.

The 71 Lima, the Army’s designation for a clerk typist, was a map reader with no more skill than to recognize a map two out of thirteen times. To him, shooting an azimuth required a large-caliber rifle, preferably, with high explosive projectiles.

The typist wasn’t much on taking physical chances. However, he would take a few secretarial chances and shortcuts. Which he did, because it was the end of a very long, hard day and he was too tired to get up and get a clear copy to transfer the information needed to finish page two. When he tried to read the severely smudged page two, he copied both the coordinates and the azimuths incorrectly, with the thought, Who’ll notice? This copy will probably go to the personnel section anyway. They won’t even look at it, or know what it is.

FTX Navajo Desert II, copy number 25 of 25 copies sent the three recon gun jeeps 180 degrees in the wrong direction. No one checked the orders, nor did anyone ask to be briefed back on any of the reconnaissance platoon’s missions. The battalion commander merely asked Lieutenant Barst and SFC Bender if they had any questions. They had none.

Since each had a different set of targets and missions, those missions were discussed between them but not their map locations. Why should they? They each had an identical set of orders off the same mimeograph machine, right?

After accomplishing their primary mission Team Bravo, SFC Bender’s section, headed for the first of his secondary targets, which was in the direction of a nuclear testing ground, 130 miles away.

Major Retkins sat at the typist’s desk when things had quieted down a couple of days after the infantry line companies crossed the line of departure. This lull always occurred after the grunts began to beat the bush and an ARTEP was in full swing. Casually looking at the floor, his eyes caught a carbon copy of page two.

As a good S-3 officer should, he was intolerant of ill-disposed classified waste. It wasn’t to be anywhere, except in the plastic bags designated specifically for it; and, like all good operations officers, he was an expert on all the missions and had a very good working knowledge of the whereabouts of all the participating units and their general map coordinates.

These particular coordinates looked strange to Major Retkins. Taking the sheet to the S2/S3 situation map, he gasped in horror.

Battalion Headquarters had just received a FLASH REPORT from Brigade HQ, not three hours previous, about an impending nuclear test. Since the ARTEPed battalion was over 130 miles away and none of the maneuver areas were even close, no one was overly alarmed.

The message was a safety precaution to warn troops not to gaze in that direction at 1630 hours, September 13, 1975, unless wearing the authorized, tinted safety goggles.

Shaken, the major realized immediately how the error had been made. He had proofread the S-3 operation section’s copy of the operations order and assumed all copies were identical.

The recon team was nearing the testing ground, if they were not already in it.

*****

The pilot raised the chopper, after Spanner delivered his helmet turn around message and began the trip back to safety.

Just a second. Let’s see if they are really going to turn around, Spanner said skeptically. I know Bender is a good NCO, but I want to make sure.

Heavy clouds moved back in and slammed rain and a lightning bolt into the hovering helicopter. Edwards sat the lightly damaged chopper in the lee of the rocky hill to ascertain the damage as fast as possible. He worked fast, wanting no part of the nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Spanner and Major Retkins ran to the crest of the hill. They stood within the ruined walls of an ancient stone cabin to see what Bender and his men were doing.

The rain was now pouring down in sheets. However, it was raining only in one place and that was the area of the narrow trail one hundred meters away. The rain fell in torrents on the side of the rocky hill, but Spanner and Retkins were out of the rain.

Lieutenant Colonel Spanner noticed a large tan closed-body truck approaching from the southeast. The heavy truck moved slowly in low gear and then halted. The truck body gleamed in the rain.

The thick bearded driver, with sun glasses and a cowboy hat pulled low, sat for a minute or two, then began slowly moving the truck in the direction the jeeps had taken.

The jeeps returned and rolled cautiously around a bend and entered the downpour. The M-151 jeeps were beside the stopped rental truck when the last jeep entered the steady curtain of rain.

Suddenly, a tremendous bright flash lit up the northwestern sky, even through the clouds, as the two-hundred-kiloton nuclear weapon detonated.

At precisely the same instant four impossibly, jagged lightning bolts, hitting all around the vehicles, added to the brilliance of the nuclear explosion, fifteen miles away. The thunderclaps shattered the steady sound of the falling rain and caused the air to sizzle with its ionization of the air and inconceivable crack!

No one noticed the electromagnetic pulse, except the pilot and copilot. Their radios went dead, as an incredible and invisible pulse of several million watts from the nuclear explosion ionized the air about them and burned out the ship’s computers and other electronic equipment.

Spanner and Retkins shook their heads to clear the very brief disorientation, then looked back at the falling rain. The rain had moved off the road. There were still isolated showers all over the desert visible from their elevated position. Sunlight streamed through the breaking clouds as well. Looking in both directions down the road, the two officers saw…empty road!

Where the hell are the jeeps? And that civilian vehicle? Retkins asked, confused. They were right there! Not more than one hundred meters away!

"Crap! The lightning knocked ’em over the embankment! Ret, there’s injured troops down there! Get Edwards to call for a dust off. I want those med-evac choppers here in thirty minutes! Move, dammit!

And bring the first aid kits from the chopper! the colonel ordered with precision.

A few minutes later Retkins rejoined Spanner, clutching two first aid kits.

The radios are out an… What’s going on here? This don’t make sense, sir. Where are they? Retkins asked the bewildered lieutenant colonel.

The colonel was looking down at the muddy trail, then over the embankment. The jeep tracks ended at his feet!

He again looked over the embankment. He could see the steep incline of the hill to where it leveled out three hundred meters away. He could also see over to the next ridge. The whole valley was visible. But the heavy-laden gun jeeps were not in sight!

Where’s Sergeant Bender and his section? Spanner whispered to himself in bewilderment, as he spun around looking in all directions with the notion they would turn up behind him. His speech was halted, "Three jeeps…just…can’t…vanish!"

Turning their heads toward the movement seen at their left periphery, the two confused men spotted, a cavalcade of long, shiny civilian vehicles from the southeast. Their elegance and bright colors seemed completely out of place in the almost colorless and bleak desert terrain.

Chapter Two

Dosher of Nawth C’Lina

*****

Paco del Santos awoke, as usual, before the sun came up. Sluggishly, the bewhiskered old man munched a couple cold, damp tortillas and drank the cool, but slightly muddy water from the worn, cloth-covered gourd. He sat on his thick hand-woven wool blanket with his serape pulled tight around his thin, old body. He looked around at the silent and wet desert through sleep-swollen eyes. The low, bright desert sun caused his already swollen eyes to look like thin slits. His old bones ached from the chill brought on by last night’s rainstorm. A quick shiver was the only movement he made, for he surveyed the beautiful morning with only his slow-moving eyes; he loved this time of day.

During the night, a long series of lightning bolts had struck just on the other side of the hill. The tremendous and terrifying crack of thunderclaps shattered the night and terrified him. He had trembled and prayed, thinking he was sure to see his beloved Mother of Jesus.

It was through those prayers that he attributed his being able to munch the almost tasteless tortillas instead of on the tender clouds that abounded in heaven.

He had crossed over the mountain the afternoon of the day before and camped below the crest of this hill.

The hill, Paco knew, was one of the sacred grounds of the Comanche, and they wanted no one on or near it. Thinking of the close call of the night before and this unholy Indian hill, he shuddered and crossed himself again. The thought of the ruthless, torturing, Mexican-hating Comanche catching him on this sacred hill urged him into movement.

This fifty-five-year-old scrawny, gap-toothed Mexican had enjoyed this bimonthly trip for the last six years into this untamed land of northern Mexico. It gave him a feeling of freedom and youth. It also gave him peace and quiet from Ramona, his never-satisfied, nagging, and vastly tortilla-and-frijoles-swollen wife. When Ramona walked away from him, she reminded him of the donkey-pulled, canvas-hooped two-wheeled Mexican carts.

Now, he feared that these trips were not going to last forever. The hostilities between the Mexican government and the gringos in Texas were reaching the boiling point. He wished things could go back to the way they had been before. He sighed and knew they couldn’t and these journeys must surely end.

Paco packed Pendejo, his strong, little, but sturdy burro with the seventy-five kilos of Yankee-made merchandise, out of Saint Louis. He had picked up the goods in a little town on the Santa Fe Trail, three days earlier. He knew he would make a fine profit with a nice gift for his covered wagon uh, uh…wife.

The load would supply his modest little store on El Camino de los Aztecos, three days south from where he now stood. That is, unless the Mexican soldiers seized his wares again, like they did two years ago.

Thinking of that incident, he said hatefully as he looked south, "Barbaro de mierda, Santa Anna!"

Feeling a little better for cursing the opportunistic general, he started on his long, hot journey to the Highway of the Aztecs and his quiet and sedate life. Quiet, that is, when he was out of earshot of his rotund wife, Ramona.

The hill he began climbing was part of a ridge that ran north and south. The ridge was more or less navigable for carts and such. On his left, the land mass rose at first gently where the rock-strewn trail meandered, then climbed sharply upward to the cragged and spiny ridgetop.

The desert, with its jagged, barren, and bleached mountains to the north and east, spread to the south and west, showing a vista of various shades of green, blue, and purple covering the low hills and extending as far as the eye could see. The pollutant-free desert air was crystal clear from this altitude to about one hundred miles.

The lower hills provided the only pleasing colors in the otherwise drab desert. Upon these low deserts, dune hills grew the fragrant, gray-green sage, the brittle but tough mesquite and cactus, including the tall surrendering saguaro cactus, as well as many other hardy varieties of vegetation. The hills were so covered with this vegetation they barely allowed