“Let me look at you. Step out of the car, let’s see if you are big and strong men, or are small and weak.”
The five dismounted from the car, as Hernando and Gomez carefully sized them up. “I am foremen for one of the crews, the one that works the feedlot. We have cattle to brand, castrate, vaccinate and dehorn in a couple of days. I will talk to the general foreman and see what he says. Come back tomorrow at the same time. I will tell you then what he says.”
Sabata and all of his men noted that Hernando stayed close to the pickup and kept his arms crossed across his chest. This tended to pull in his shirt a little, which allowed his revolver he had stuck in the front of his pants to be imprinted by his shirt, his right hand near the butt.
“We will return tomorrow at this time. We hope you have work for us. We are good workers,” stated Consaida as they climbed back into their car. They drove carefully away, so as not to raise a lot of dust.
“What did they look like to you two?” asked Jesus Gonzalez.
“I don’t like them,” said Gomez.
“I liked them,” said Hernando.
“Interesting,” said Gonzalez. “Why didn’t you like them, Gomez?”
“Because every one of them had very short hair, every one of them was very well built, very muscular. They have not suffered lack of eating, but they are not at all fat. They have the physique of people who lift weights and work out regularly. They look like soldiers. Only the leader spoke until the very end. That smacks of military discipline. Each of them inspected us as we inspected them. They are very observant, these men. They did not smell bad enough. They have all bathed and shaved recently. None of them even had a mustache. The piercing eyes of the leader bother me. He was looking right through me. I have seen that look before.”
“All that Gomez says is true. Perhaps that is why I liked them. Our reputation has spread very far. Perhaps they are police or soldiers as Gomez suggests. This I do not know. Certainly, they are not from around here. Their Spanish is different. That might mean that they are from a different region or that they are Federales or perhaps Americans, if Americans would dare to do such a thing. We know the American drug agents do these things, but soldiers? Perhaps they are what they say they are. Who knows?
Jesus Gonzalez thought about it for a minute, and then said, “Do not hire them. We are not planning any big raids for the time being. Our snipers are busy, but we have lost several of them. We could not find the bodies of two, so maybe the Americans have them. The timing is not good. Tell them to leave their names and check back in a couple of months. We might be hiring then.”
“I will tell them when they return tomorrow. I told them come back tomorrow so we could think about it; maybe have someone watch them for a while if they stay around in town.”
“That is a good idea, Gomez. Take one or two of your better street fighters. Go into town tonight. Find out where they are staying. Have your man start a fight with one who is not the leader. See how well they handle themselves, if they come to the aid of their man if he needs it. Do not use any weapons, but bare hands. We don’t want any unnecessary trouble. If you find their car in a place where you can search it without difficulty, do so. Perhaps there will be some clues as to how they act. They will probably eat at a cantina, and so be easy to find since there are only two in town.”
Captain Sabata and his four men strolled into the cantina and selected an empty table adjacent to the far wall. From their table, they could watch the front door, the bar, and the back door that opened at the end of the hall along the bar. They had strolled around the back of the cantina before they entered it in order to orient themselves and identify possible escape routes. They ordered a meal of tamales, chicken quesadas, frijoles, tortillas, and a pitcher of Corona beer. The beer didn’t last long. Captain Sabata drew an American five-dollar bill from his wallet and threw it on the table. Staff Sergeant Consaida picked it up and walked to the bar with the empty pitcher. He handed both to the bartender without saying a word. He placed both hands on the bar top while the bartender refilled the pitcher and gave him a dollar’s change in pesos. As he picked up the pitcher, his arm was rudely shoved from behind. Consaida looked at the man who shoved him in the mirror, then turned to face him, as he sat the pitcher on the bar. Consaida shook the beer off his hand, looked at the bartender and then asked for a bar towel. The bartender, recognizing the offending man, gave Consaida the towel without saying anything, then began to wipe up the spilled beer with another.
“Why don’t you be more careful, Amigo?” said the individual, who slightly weaved as he stood. Consaida looked into his eyes and saw that they were clear. The man was not drunk as he pretended. He also read a degree of malevolence. The Sergeant immediately recognized the challenge.
“Si, I’ll do that,” Consaida said as he turned to the bartender and said, “Please fill it again, Amigo, throwing down the peso he had just picked up as change. When he started to pick up the pitcher, the man hit his arm again. All the time, the four other Rangers were watching. They had observed who sat with whom, who was paying attention to the altercation at the bar, and who was not. So far, no one else had moved in the direction of Consaida and the offender. They continued eating while observing carefully the surroundings.
“Don’t do that, Amigo, it is not good to waste good beer.”
“Then, you can lick it off the bar, can’t you?”
“Amigo, I do not want trouble. Do not carry this any farther. Let me go in peace.”
“You will lick the bar, or I will put your head in, on, or through it, Señor.”
“That is what you will have to do.”
The man made a grab for Consaida’s neck with his left hand, but found his left arm pushed up by Consaida’s right hand as Consaida ducked under it. A fierce left jab to the man’s left bottom rib, followed by a powerful right jab to the man’s left kidney left him sinking to his knees as he uttered an agonizing “ugh” from his cracked rib and terrible kidney pain. The man held onto the bar with both hands as he slid downwards. Consaida grabbed a hand full of the man’s hair and whispered in his ear as he sank to the floor.
“I do not think it is healthy in here, for you, Amigo. I suggest you leave now before bad things happen to you. Do not make me hurt you again. I can, and will, do terrible things to you, so why don’t you just leave. Do you understand me?”
The man nodded yes, as he winced in pain.
Consaida turned loose of his hair, picked up the pitcher of beer and walked casually back to the table as the man pulled himself up to the bar and staggered out the door.
“I think we have just been tested; one of the two men whom we met at the gate is sitting in the far corner, taking this all in,” said Captain Sabata with a smile. “Either we have been made or we just passed the test. Do not think any more about it. We shall see tomorrow.”
Gomez dialed the cell phone number of Miguel. “I think bad things are going to happen down here in the not-too-distant future. I think we are under close surveillance by our friends from the north. There are five men looking for work who are not workers, but well-trained people from across the river. I think it is close to time to come home.”
“I will leave it to your judgment not to stay too long but remain there as long as it is not too threatening. I need to know what is developing. It has taken the gringos long enough to figure things out. There might be a way for us to make some good money over this. If I need to contact you, I will leave word in a sealed envelope at the desk at the hotel there in town.” Gomez heard the click as Miguel switched off the phone. He went back into the bar to further observe those whom he perceived to be American agents of some nature. After they retired to their hotel rooms, he broke into their car and thoroughly searched it. He found nothing unusual or incriminating. He collected the man who picked a fight with Sergeant Consaida and drove back to the farm that night. The man moaned frequently but softly the entire trip. He took the man to the infirmary and left him there. Since it was so late, he reported to Jesus Gonzalez in the morning his observations, more convinced than ever that they were American agents. The nurse reported to Gonzalez that the man had two broken ribs and a bruised kidney. His urine would be tinged with hemoglobin over the next several days. He had to remain at bed rest until his urine cleared and his rib fractures stabilized.
Gonzalez pondered his courses of action. He could hire them and then kill them before they could report anything. He could hire them and keep them under observation to confirm that they were American agents and then act, or he could refuse to hire them. He decided the first course of action might bring even more agents and closer scrutiny, the second might allow them to see too much, and so decided on the third course. “Refuse them employment. Tell them we do not need any more help at this time, but to come back in three months if they are not well situated elsewhere and we will see then.”
Not willing to accept returning to Fort Bliss without information, Captain Sabata and his team drove back across the border and called his commander with a request. He wanted computers, binoculars, small arms, video equipment and more money. His request was denied, and he was ordered to return to Fort Benning via Fort Bliss. He dutifully drove back to El Paso and sold the car to the dealer from whom he purchased it at a $400 loss. They went to the USO, where they all took the shuttle bus back to Ft. Bliss. From Fort Bliss, they flew to Fort Benning in a C-130H just in time to make a practice jump.
Chapter 19
The South Koreans were fighting desperately, but slowly being pushed backwards by the sheer mass of manpower. After two weeks, Seoul was outflanked on the east and south, essentially surrounded. The main roads were more or less controlled by North Koreans, although isolated pockets of South Korean infantry continued to cut the roads and ambush convoys in a very irregular fashion. Moving more slowly, the North Korean infantry was overwhelming the countryside in the eastern portion of the peninsula. In places where the civilian refugees blocked the road by sheer mass, the North Koreans opened fire on them with automatic weapons, or in a few cases, simply drove T-64 and T-72 tanks over them to open the roads. Peasants were always easier to replace and in steady supply than skilled industrial workers of the cities.
At the beginning of the third week, North Korean destroyers began shelling Kunsan. North Korean armored forces were just outside of Taejon. The North had formed a line more or less through Ch’ungch’ong Namdo, running to the northeast towards Samchok. North Korean armor halted along the Choch’won –Ch’ongju road for rest and reupply, while the infantry to the east moved ten to twelve kilometers a day. Infantry units hopscotched around each other as they cleared the countryside of all resistance. Any village which offered resistance was destroyed by killing the inhabitants and burning the village. None were spared, not even children. Ch’ongju fell before the week was out. Many in the western part of the country fled into the low mountains to the east, where they would ultimately come into contact with the advancing infantry.
By the middle of the fourth week, South Korea was squeezed into a line roughly running from Kunsan through Chonju to Taegu to Pohang. Three fourths of South Korea was now held by North Korean forces.
From an island south of Mokp’o, an intermediate range missile with a Global Positioning System Guidance system streaked to P’yongyang. It carried a twenty-kiloton warhead. When it detonated, it was one thousand feet over the political center of the city.
The tremendous machstem, the backpressure composed of eighteen hundred mile an hour winds of the explosion, wreaked havoc and destruction for four thousand meters in every direction. The heat ignited fires such that the entire circumference of the blast was revealed by satellites to be a huge blackened spot upon the earth. The blast was slightly larger than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Jason Thornton’s phone rang. It was General Craig. “I just informed the SECDEF. He asked me to give you a direct call. Sir, the South Koreans launched a nuclear strike on Pyongyang. Our satellites just picked it up. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle. We think it was around a twenty-kiloton weapon detonated as an aerial burst. The electromagnetic pulse was pretty significant, but it seemed to be tailored more towards the heat and blast aspects of the spectrum. Thank God, we didn’t have an AWACs in there. The South Koreans did, but it seems to still be flying and reporting. We can’t say at this stage where the fallout will go for certain, but the winds are generally from the south and the west this time of year. China should get some of it, if not the majority of the fallout. We also picked up some ominous transmissions from the South Korean leadership to an elite artillery unit. We think they might be going tactical nuclear as well.”