[b]Puebla, Puebla[/b]
[i]August, 1955[/i]

	Captain Lopez felt the all-too-familiar weight of his gear constrict his movement as he awkwardly shuffled forward on the flight line. Loaded down with a large rucksack rigged between his knees, a stiff weapons case on his leg, a bulky parachute on his back and another on his stomach, he walked like a stiff penguin to the open door of the transport aircraft ahead of him. He and 29 other paratroopers each bore a “1” marked in chalk on their parachute bags, which led them to a corresponding aircraft with the same number written on its door. The engines were already roaring, so the jumpmaster physically grabbed everyone’s shoulder and loudly counted off to confirm all personnel were aboard.

	Captain Lopez climbed into the fuselage of the plane, turning his head to observe the tarmac as he did so. The other members of his company were loading into four other identical planes, each shuffling orderly in a similar line. Captain Lopez would be the first to jump and First Sergeant Kan, at the end of the fifth chalk, would be the last: a way to ensure accountability of all their soldiers. The officer took his seat as the number-one man by the door, waiting for the rest of his chalk to take their seats. They crammed in on the benches, facing each other in silence as the jumpmaster finished his count and closed the door behind them.

	The jumpmaster gave a thumbs up to the man closest to the pilots’ cockpit, who loudly thumped on the cabin door to confirm their presence. Inside the cockpit, the pilots chattered with each other on the radio and then to the Puebla airport traffic control tower. It was time to go. The plane lurched forward as its chock blocks were removed and the engines increased power. It taxied from its loading position onto the long runway, neat and orderly like the paratroopers on the ground. Captain Lopez heard the dull buzz of the propellers get louder and felt the plane rattle and shake: a few seconds later, they had lifted off.

	Captain Lopez had thought after the brief that the battalion leadership had given him the prior week. It was going to be Mexico’s biggest and longest ranged airborne operation ever, and perhaps the biggest in history. Puebla was over a thousand kilometers to the drop zones in British Belize: the transport planes would be pushing the endurance of their aircraft with a two-thousand kilometer round trip. The pilots, too, were prepared for a flight of nine hours. Every nonessential component of the aircraft had been removed, from their protective machine guns to armor plating on the wings and fuselage.

	The good news was that Britain lacked any sort of air defense capability in Belize. They barely had a regiment in Belize City, underfunded and undermanned and with a poor reputation as a castaway job for mess-ups and incompetent officers. The British maintained a squadron of Great War-era biplanes at the city’s dirt and soil airstrip, rarely utilized for anything more substantial than officers’ leisurely trips to the beach. The Mexican aircraft would have no problems flying through Mexico, then cutting directly across neutral Guatemala undetected. In the meantime, a division of motorized soldiers had staged in Yucatan State to rush down Belize’s main highway as soon as the paratroopers had secured the eastern flank.

	He fell asleep to the dull thrum of the propellers, nesting himself within his bulky gear until he felt somewhat comfortable. Four hours without even a bathroom break would pass by better with sleep. Some of his soldiers read, others fiddled with their equipment, and more sat silently as they stared out the window. Lopez thought of his wife as he fell asleep: their goodbye at the gate to Puebla base was short and sweet. Even with the uncertainty of the conflict ahead, they were both sure that he would be back soon enough. The whole campaign was designed to be quick and decisive, to strike before serious resistance could be massed. It was more political than military.

	The commander awoke sometime past Villahermosa as his executive officer nudged him. The young lieutenant had been awake the whole time, keeping an eye out for the checkpoints of the flight. Villahermosa was the last major Mexican city with a significant airport for the planes. Any malfunction in flight requiring an emergency landing would require them to turn around and make their way to the town. Otherwise, they had to press forward. The pilots had not reported any issues, so the squadron continued. Thirty minutes later, they had passed the border into Guatemala. Beneath the aircraft, it all looked the same: dense, green jungle.

	Guatemala came and went, another quick leg of the trip. As the morning son shone its way through the windows of the cabin, the jumpmaster suddenly hollered from his seat by the door: “Fifteen minutes! Red light!”

	The cabin became illuminated by the glow of bright red bulbs with the thud of an electrical circuit completing. All of the paratroopers had it drilled into them to prepare for the jump. They checked their equipment and the equipment of the man across from them, just to make sure that nobody had crossed or twisted straps and loose buckles that could be fatal in a jump. The jumpmaster yelled out the time in increments of five: ten minutes to go, then five minutes. At the three minute mark, he called for the jumpers to stand up.

	Lopez was on autopilot, like all of his previous jumps. Stand up, hook up, get checked. The jumpmaster did what he was trained to do, checking all the equipment one last time before returning to the cabin door. He opened it and slid it on its rail to let the wind come rushing through the cabin, knocking Lopez back a step as he braced for its force. The jumpmaster looked down at the drop zone, a large clear farm field that had been cut into the jungle by Belizean plantation owners. He gave one look back and flashed a thumbs up to the soldiers. The red light switched to green, and the paratroopers rushed out of the door.

	The commander didn’t think about the fact that he was in the air until the ground came up very fast to meet him. He instinctively braced for the fall, landing onto his legs, hip, and back like he had been trained. It never got easier: it still felt like getting hit with a sack of bricks. As he got up from his landing, he looked up at the sky to see rows of Mexican paratroopers each with parachutes opened heading straight for the ground. Groups of men scrambled to ditch their reserve chutes and open their weapons cases, regrouping in small formations to find their proper squad and platoon leadership.

	Lopez found his executive officer nearby, struggling to cut the parachute cords with his knife. They had gotten tangled around his rucksack and were not coming off without a fight. He managed to cut the chute away just as Lopez arrived, rifle in hand, to take a knee. “Lieutenant Muñoz,” he said. “Let’s get oriented. Are we in the right drop zone?”

	Lavulo rolled over and jumped up from the ground, reaching for the map case that dangled from a strap around his shoulder. Inside was a map of the drop zone and attack plan with directions of confirmation already written on a piece of paper with it. He took his compass from a pouch on his belt and quickly confirmed where they were. They had already figured out two identifiable mountains that they should have been able to see from the drop zone and gotten the back-azimuths. The numbers on the compass matched what they had calculated during their planning: they were in the right spot.

	Lopez’s radioman, a short teenager named Reyes, jogged towards the captain and his lieutenant with the whip of his radio flailing wildly in his step. He took a knee next to the two officers and extended the telephone to his commander. “Sir,” he said breathlessly, “First and second platoons have organized and are ready to go. Third and fourth platoons are still reorganizing.”

	“Thanks, [i]Especialista[/i],” Lopez replied. “Let them know we’re in the right drop zone and we’re to move into town when everyone is set. Send reports of injuries to First Sergeant Kan.”

	Reyes nodded while Lopez observed the field in front of them. They were a kilometer or two outside of a small town in western Belize by the name of Belmopan. It sat at a critically important intersection between the main highway and a western offshoot and housed a platoon of British troops. Other paratrooper companies were dropping into similar towns to take out their local British units: in keeping with classic military theory, Captain Lopez had four-to-one odds against the defending British. A company was the ideal instrument to use against a platoon in defense. Not that the British appeared to know they were coming; the morning was still.

	Eventually, third and fourth platoons reorganized and assessed their statuses. Only a handful of soldiers had been hurt from the jump, mostly broken or sprained legs and ankles. Every jump, especially combat jumps, were predicted to sustain these casualties even before contact with the enemy. They had been collected by the First Sergeant and the company’s detachment of medics, who would treat them at the company command post until they could be evacuated. With their reporting, the company immediately set into motion initiating their attack.

	Captain Lopez made his way forward to the first platoon’s position, who were holding a line facing northeast to the city proper. They had seen nobody yet, but their element of surprise was undoubtedly going to be broken by some farmer seeing the planes and paratroopers on his way out to the field. The riflemen and machine gunners had nestled themselves into positions behind dirt mounds and irrigation ditches, awaiting orders to move forward. His other platoons were maneuvering into assault positions to form an “L” shape and flank the town. Once the first and second platoons initiated contact, the third and fourth platoons would sweep through and destroy the British garrison there.

	Captain Lopez arrived just in time to see a lone light blue police car drive slowly up to the road some hundred-and-fifty meters away. Close enough that the Mexicans could see a pair of policemen emerge from the coupe, bobbin helmets silhouetted against the fields behind them. They appeared to be looking for something but couldn’t yet see anything. Through the scope of his rifle, Lopez could see that one had a pistol on his hip and the other was heading back to the trunk of the car. A sergeant on the Mexican line, receiving a nod from his platoon leader, reached for a megaphone that was strapped to his belt kit.

	“Attention, attention,” he blared through the tinny-sounding voice amplifier. “Step away from the car and lay down your weapons. You will not be harmed.”

	The policemen jumped in fright, ducking to the ground. One of them reached for his hip as a squad’s worth of Mexican soldiers emerged from the crop field in front of him, rifles drawn and pointed at the pair. They yelled in Spanish for him to surrender and drop the weapon, their voices all shouting over each other. The Belizean policeman changed his mind, yelping and raising his hands high in the air. “Okay! Okay! What the fuck?” he exclaimed as a Mexican corporal rushed forward to take his weapon. His partner similarly placed his hands high above his head, stepping away from the car.

	“What the hell? Who are you?” he repeated, eyes wide in fright. The Mexican platoon bounded forward out of their positions to the road and he got a good look at their gear. Everyone’s helmet bore a white stenciled “MX” and the squad leaders wore large brassards with an embroidered Mexican flag on their right shoulders. “Mexico?” he stuttered, turning back to his partner. Before he had time to ask any further questions, a soldier had forced the policeman to the ground and was tying up his hands with a piece of rope. He slipped a blindfold out of his pocket and over the man’s face before forcing him up and rushing him to the prisoner collection point behind the platoon lines.

	Lopez lowered his scope and turned to congratulate the sergeant with the megaphone. They were instructed to offer the British an opportunity to surrender first before shooting and try at all costs not to kill the Belizean local police. Knowing the town of Belmopan had only a few policemen, he only had a handful of prisoners that he needed to detain. The platoon reformed into a line past the now-abandoned police car and continued their bound further towards the town.

	Belmopan was a squat farming town of only a few buildings, none of them more than two floors tall. Mostly made of wood with tin roofs, the town had everything a rural farmer could ever need: a general store that doubled as a clinic, a bank, a one-room schoolhouse, and a pub. Everything else was an automobile trip away to Belize City sixty kilometers to the east. The British blockhouse was the only thing made from concrete, a barracks building for forty soldiers located at the exact intersection the Mexicans were to take. It was three hundred meters north of their current position, well within visual range. Captain Lopez rushed forward with the platoon to where they took up more fighting positions in the fields outside the town.

	In the distance, a man dressed in khaki held a Lee Enfield rifle hesitantly, pushing the brim of his tommy helmet out of his face with a palm. The Mexicans advanced through the crops, staying off the road where they had just taken the policemen prisoner. The British soldier could see the plants rustle as the Mexicans silently bounded to the edge of the fields just another hundred meters shy of him. He had no doubt heard the confusion down the road but didn’t know what to make of it.

	He squinted, thinking he saw figures in the fields ahead of him. The Mexican sergeant with the megaphone turned it on again and, this time in English, offered a warning: “Attention, attention. This is the Mexican Army. You are severely outnumbered. Drop your weapon and surrender.”

	The Brit, who appeared to be in his late forties, dropped his jaw and fell to a knee in the middle of the road. “To arms! To arms!” he shouted back to the blockhouse behind him. Before he could get the rifle shouldered, someone on the Mexican line fired a single round. The other paratroopers in the line immediately erupted into a volley of rifle fire that cut down the British soldier in the road before he could even shoot back.

	Over Reyes’s radio, Captain Lopez heard the platoon leader report that they were firing upon a British position in town. The second platoon acknowledged as their machine guns swept the blockhouse perimeter from a position three hundred meters to Lopez’s west. The roar of automatic gunfire broke through the calm of the morning and the commander watched as bullets impacted across the concrete barrack’s façade. Someone inside pulled an alarm, and an air raid siren broke out in a screeching wail across the town. The Mexicans held their fire to await further commands before a team of four British soldiers came rushing out the front of their barracks armed with rifles.

	The Mexicans fired again at the troops, forcing the British to scramble for cover behind crates and barricades in their supply yard. Some of them shot back, the high velocity rounds whizzing overhead of the Mexicans who were still camouflaged behind the lush crops of the town’s farms. Lopez turned around to see Lieutenant Muñoz and Specialist Reyes ducking into a small muddy ditch. Muñoz was white as a ghost, more so than his usual pale complexion, clutching his rifle with one hand and the map case with another while Reyes was rapidly chattering away on the radio’s hand mic. Someone on the firing line shouted “watch right!”

	A pair of British soldiers had raced around the corner of a squat single family shack, both in berets. Only one of them appeared to have a rifle; the other held a revolver with a lanyard tied to his pistol belt. They both ducked down, surprised to have run into the enemy, and attempted to fire back. The rifleman squeezed off a trio of shots, clumsily charging the bolt on his rifle between each one, before a burst of machine gun fire raked across him. The soldier died instantly, his corpse jolting with the impact of the .30 caliber rounds into his chest as blood sprayed from his back.

	His colleague panicked, jumping up from the ground and dropping his revolver as he sprinted towards the concrete barracks across the road. It was his last mistake, as he was shot down in the road by a volley of fire in the violent chaos. He buckled dramatically under the bullets, falling to the ground with his hand dramatically outstretched in front of him. Three British soldiers lay dead in the road with another seven sprawled out across the barrack’s parade lawn, killed as they rushed out of the door with no chance to fight back. Sporadic fire answered the Mexicans’ attack from the windows of the barracks as the defenders organized into a somewhat coherent defense. The building was already peppered with bullet holes as it sustained a violent attack from both ends.

	At Lopez’s position behind the first platoon, he saw the fruits of his training manifest. Sergeants and officers were now racing behind their firing lines shouting at their soldiers to conserve ammunition. In the excitement of first contact, the paratroopers had seemingly forgotten about control and measured firepower. Hundreds of shells littered the muddy ground between the crops as the rate of fire slowed to a manageable rate. The squawking of Reyes’s radio could now be heard as officers and radiomen chattered in the background. The platoons were getting another series of status reports from their sergeants: ammunition, casualties, and equipment status was all sent up to First Sergeant Kan with the company command post.

	An awkward silence befell the battlefield, punctuated only by the distant blaring of the air raid siren. The paratroopers reloaded in between British potshots as the sergeants ran amongst themselves and figured out a plan of action. The solution in first platoon was a volley of rifle grenades, which was approved by their platoon leader. “Grenadiers!” bellowed the officer from his position, “shoot two grenades to their bunker!”

	Two grenadiers hurried forward from other positions, equipment jostling as they darted and dodged through the crop field. Affixed to the front of their semi-automatic Mondragón rifles were silver-colored grenades with fins. Secured straight to the bayonet lug and fired with the simple insertion of a blank cartridge to their open breech, the rifle grenades could easily fly the hundred meters from the Mexicans’ line to the British position. Lopez much preferred to attack with them, as opposed to sending teams of men dangerously close to bunkers and trenches with hand grenades. The two grenadiers dove into positions in a ditch next to the platoon leader who aggressively pointing out their target.

	One after another with heavy thumps, the grenadiers shot off their projectiles and dove back into cover. Sunlight glinted off the rounds as they sailed through the air before slamming into the building. With quick thuds, two explosions rocked the barracks and kicked up clouds of dust and concrete fragments. Lopez looked through his scope to see cracks in the concrete wall, shattered windows, and large chunks missing from the British barricade. It seemed to silence the enemy, however, as a minute passed with no shots fired from either side. In the background, the platoon leaders debated over the radio on if they could see anyone moving.

	Another minute passed as Lopez wondered what was happening. The air raid siren that had been blaring the entire time suddenly cut out, sending the small town of Belmopan back into its early morning silence. In the distant jungle, exotic birds chattered again. The smell of gunfire and carbon mixed with the humidity and dew. Through his scope, Lopez saw a rock sail out of the front entrance to the barracks with a white rag cut up and tied to it like a flowing tail. His eyes widened and he turned back to Reyes: “Cease fire!” he hissed to the Specialist.

	Reyes echoed it through the radio, which was then repeated by the officer of first platoon to his sergeants. All of the paratroopers laid with their guns pointed towards the British barracks as a man in khaki emerged cautiously, legs shaking, from the entrance with his hands high in the air and a white undershirt. Lopez moved up, slowly and carefully to ensure that he wouldn’t spook either his men or the British into any reaction, and tapped the first platoon’s megaphone carrier on the shoulder. He gestured to the man that he needed the device and the sergeant duly gave it to his commander.

	Lopez stood up, still camouflaged behind a mass of vegetation in front of him, and turned on the speaker: “Can you speak Spanish?” he asked calmly, knowing that the answer was probably yes. British forces in Belize usually had to be able to speak to the local population.

	“Sí,” came the reply, a shout in a heavy foreign accent. It sounded like the Brit had learned his Spanish from Spain instead of Mexico. He continued to walk onto the parade field, leading a line of British soldiers without weapons and their hands on their wide-brimmed helmets to a loose formation behind him. Over the radio, the fourth platoon’s leader reported that they had moved a machine gunner to have an eye on them in case they tried anything. Lopez doubted that they would. He brought the megaphone to his lips and, after looking to Lieutenant Muñoz behind him, stepped out of the field and into full view of the British just a hundred meters away.

	“This is Captain Dominic Lopez of the Mexican Army,” announced the commander. “We accept your surrender.”