The Guns of Veracruz: Chapter 1 – The Boy from Orizaba
“You’re not just there for yourself, Mateo. You are there for all of us.” A lie. A noble lie, perhaps, the kind men tell to give sacrifice the sheen of honor, but a lie all the same.
The train groaned into Veracruz, its brakes shrieking. Mateo Rojas pressed his forehead to the grimy window, the glass vibrating against his skull. The cool, pine-scented mists of his native Orizaba already felt like a memory from another life, a different boy. Here, the world was a smear of color and heat—crumbling stucco buildings painted in the faded pastels of a forgotten fiesta, the shocking magenta of bougainvillea spilling over wrought-iron balconies, and the hazy, oppressive glare of the sun on the Gulf of Mexico. The air that seeped through the window sash was a physical weight, tasting of brine, hot metal, and the city’s collective, unending sweat.
His fingers, calloused from mending leather harnesses and not yet from the cold steel of a rifle, dug into the canvas strap of his duffel bag. The bag was new, a gift bought with the last of his mother’s egg money, but the weight inside it was old. It was the weight of his father’s last words, delivered on the Orizaba platform with a back as straight as a fence post and eyes that stubbornly focused on the mountains beyond Mateo’s shoulder.
“You’re not just there for yourself, Mateo. You are there for all of us.”
A lie. A noble lie, perhaps, the kind men tell to give sacrifice the sheen of honor, but a lie all the same. His father, a man who spoke to his cornfields with more tenderness than he’d ever shown his son, hadn’t sent him to the Heroica Escuela Naval Militar out of some swelling pride. He’d sent him because the corn was failing for the third year running, because the whispers from the north spoke of revolution and bloodshed, and because Victoriano Huerta’s federales were snatching boys from villages to feed their endless war machine. A son in the Naval Academy was a son with a cot, three meals a day, and a fighting chance to see the other side of whatever cataclysm was coming. It was a trade, plain and simple: one son’s freedom for the family’s survival. The weight of that bargain had settled in his gut like a stone, and he’d been carrying it all the way from the highlands to the coast.
The platform was controlled chaos. Cadets in impossibly white uniforms, their rigid posture an affront to the city’s languid slouch, barked orders at porters hauling the heavy trunks of the wealthy. A knot of upperclassmen, clearly veterans of this brutal transition, lounged against a pillar. Their uniforms were just as immaculate, but they wore them with a casual arrogance, a languid ownership of the space that marked them as predators. One of them, a tall, lean cadet with a cigarette dangling from his lips in casual defiance of the platform rules, elbowed another and jerked his chin toward the disembarking passengers. "Fresh meat," his lips formed the words, the sound lost in the hiss of steam from the engine.
Mateo stepped off the train, his farm boots hitting the platform with a solid, unrefined thud that felt too loud. He ignored the assessing glances, the way their eyes caught on the worn leather of his boots and the simple cut of his trousers. He adjusted the strap of his duffel, squared his shoulders, and made for the nearest officer—a barrel-chested man with a mustache like steel wool and a clipboard that seemed to be the center of his universe.
"Cadet Mateo Rojas, reporting for duty, sir." The words came out clear and steady, practiced in his head for the entire journey.
The officer’s pen scratched across a manifest. He didn’t look up. "Dormitory C. Drop your gear and report to the drill field in ten minutes. You’re late."
The words were a slap. "Sir, the train just arrived."
The officer finally raised his eyes. They were flat, gray, and utterly devoid of interest. He looked at Mateo as if he were a piece of equipment, and a faulty one at that. "The train’s schedule is not my concern, Cadet. My schedule is. And according to my schedule, you have nine minutes left. The clock is ticking."
Mateo felt a hot surge of resentment. On the farm, ten minutes was the time it took to coax a stubborn mule or mend a split rail fence. Here, it was a deadline he was already failing to meet. He bit back the retort that burned on his tongue, gave a curt nod, and turned—only to walk straight into a wall of white uniforms.
It was the sharks from the pillar. They grinned, their teeth very white against their sun-darkened skin. The tallest one, two chevrons on his sleeve marking him as a second-year, crossed his arms. His eyes, a pale, washed-out blue, raked over Mateo with contemptuous slowness. "Lost, farm boy?"
Mateo met his gaze, refusing to be the first to look away. "No, sir."
The word was a mistake. Their grins widened. The one on the left—a squat, brutish cadet with a flattened nose and knuckles like walnuts—shoved him backward. "‘Sir’? We’re not officers, idiot. You address us as Cadete." He snatched Mateo’s duffel, the weight of it surprising him for a moment, and tossed it to his wiry friend on the right. "Let’s see what the sticks sent us. Probably has a piglet in here."
Mateo lunged for his bag. It held everything he owned in the world. The brute, whose nameplate read GÓMEZ, blocked him with a meaty forearm to his chest. The impact jarred him, but he held his ground. "Easy, kid. Lesson time." Gómez ticked off the points on his thick fingers. "Rule one: You don't look us in the eye. Rule two: You don't speak unless spoken to. Rule three: You don't—"
The wiry cadet had the bag open. He pulled out Mateo's spare shirt, a neatly folded letter from his mother, and then, a small, carved wooden horse, its lines worn smooth with years of handling. A gift from his youngest sister, Elena. He could still feel the press of it into his palm as he’d said goodbye at the station, her small voice whispering, “So you won’t be lonely, Mateo.”
The wiry cadet held it up, a cruel, delighted smirk on his face. "Look at this! The farm boy brought his toys to war!"
Something inside Mateo snapped. The careful discipline, the weight of his family’s future, the crushing fear—it all vanished, vaporized by a white-hot flash of rage. Before Gómez could finish his third rule, Mateo’s fist, hard and unforgiving as a blacksmith’s hammer, cracked against his jaw.
The impact was solid, deeply satisfying. Gómez staggered back, more shocked than hurt, a trickle of blood welling at the corner of his mouth. The wiry cadet dropped the wooden horse. It hit the platform with a soft, pathetic clatter.
Gómez’s face twisted into a mask of fury. "You little bastard." He swung, a wild, clumsy blow that Mateo ducked easily. But the wiry cadet was faster. His leg swept out, hooking Mateo’s ankle. He hit the platform hard, the taste of blood and gritty coal dust flooding his mouth. The cadets laughed, a harsh, braying sound, but it was cut short by a sharp, commanding whistle.
"Enough."
The voice was lazy, laced with an amusement that was somehow more insulting than the laughter. Mateo pushed himself up on one elbow to see the tall cadet from the pillar—the smoker—stepping between him and the others. He took a long, slow drag from his cigarette, his dark, mocking eyes taking in the scene. "Pathetic. You let a hick drop you, Gómez?"
Gómez wiped blood from his lip, his face sullen. "He started it, Uribé."
"Obviously." Virgilio Uribé—Mateo knew the name; every new recruit had been warned about his cruel intelligence and bored contempt—exhaled a perfect smoke ring. He didn’t offer Mateo a hand. He just nudged the fallen wooden horse with the toe of his gleaming black boot. "You’ve got a right hook. Too bad it’s all you’ve got."
Mateo ignored the insult and scrambled to his feet, snatching the horse from the ground. He clutched it in his fist, the wood pressing into his palm like a prayer. "I’ve got more."
Virgilio’s smirk was a thing of beauty and pure condescension. "Prove it." He turned to the others, his voice dripping with bored authority. "Alright, jackals, playtime’s over. The sergeant will be wondering where his fresh sacrifices are." He flicked his cigarette away in a shower of sparks and clapped Mateo on the shoulder, a gesture that was less friendly and more a claim of ownership. "Drill field. Now. And if you puke, I’m making you clean it up with your tongue."
The drill field was a furnace. The sun hammered down from a bleached-white sky, the heat shimmering off the cracked earth in waves. Mateo fell into formation with twenty other new cadets, all of them wilting in their starched uniforms, their faces a mixture of fear and defiance. At the front, a drill instructor with a face like a bulldog and a voice like gravel paced back and forth.
"Listen up, maggots!" he roared, his voice carrying effortlessly over the field. "You are not soldiers. You are not sailors. You are not even men. You are nothing but piss and vinegar, and I am here to boil the vinegar out! You will do exactly as I say, when I say it! Am I understood?"
"Yes, Sergeant!" the cadets shouted, their voices thin in the vast, hot space.
"I can’t HEAR YOU!"
"YES, SERGEANT!"
The instructor nodded, a flicker of satisfaction in his eyes. "Good. Now drop and give me fifty!"
Mateo hit the dirt with the others, the ground hot enough to burn through the thin fabric of his uniform. His arms protested as he pumped out push-ups, the sergeant’s voice a constant, grating litany in his ears. Beside him, a soft-bodied kid from Puebla collapsed after twenty, his arms giving out. The instructor kicked him in the ribs without breaking stride. "Get up, worm, or I’ll have you scrubbing latrines with your toothbrush until you graduate or die, whichever comes first!"
Mateo gritted his teeth and kept going, his own farm-bred toughness rising to the surface. His arms shook, his lungs burned, but he didn’t stop. Not when Gómez, two places down, "accidentally" spat a glob of phlegm that landed on the back of his neck. Not when another upperclassman, supposedly correcting his form, kneed him hard in the gut. He pushed through the pain, focusing on the rhythm, the burn, the silent count in his head. Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.
He held the last push-up until the instructor’s shadow fell over him. "On your feet, Rojas!"
Mateo sprang up, his face slick with sweat, his heart hammering. The instructor threw him a rifle—an old Mauser, its wood worn smooth by a thousand other hands. "Field-strip it. You have one minute."
Here, at last, was something familiar. Mateo’s hands moved on autopilot, his mind blessedly blank. He’d practiced this hundreds of times on his father’s hunting rifle, his fingers knowing the clicks and slides by heart. Magazine plate, follower, spring. Bolt stop. Bolt assembly. The pieces laid out on the hot ground in perfect order. The instructor watched, arms crossed, a stopwatch in his hand. He grunted when Mateo finished with ten seconds to spare. "Not bad. For a hick."
Virgilio Uribé materialized beside the instructor, lighting another cigarette with infuriating slowness. "Told you he had something."
"One skill doesn’t make a sailor," the instructor snarled. He jerked his head toward a monstrous collection of ropes, walls, and mud pits at the edge of the field. "Uribé, take him to the obstacle course. If he breaks, toss him in the bay. We don’t have room for weak links."
Virgilio clapped Mateo on the shoulder again, his grin sharp. "Come on, hermano. Let’s see if you can run as well as you punch."
The course was a meticulously designed slice of hell. Mateo hauled himself up the rope climb, his palms raw, his muscles screaming. He slogged through a mud pit that smelled of sulfur and despair, the thick muck trying to suck the boots right off his feet. He scrambled over a wall slick with algae, his fingers finding purchase in the crumbling mortar just as his feet slipped. Gómez and his friends jeered from the sidelines, their laughter a constant, grating chorus.
"Tired already, farm boy? Want your mama?"
Mateo ignored them, focusing on his own ragged breath. He dropped down the other side of the wall, landing with a bone-jarring thud. Virgilio was waiting, leaning against a post, looking utterly bored. "Not bad. You’ve got guts." He offered Mateo a swig from his canteen. The water was warm, metallic, but it was the best thing Mateo had ever tasted.
He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Why are you helping me?"
Virgilio shrugged, taking the canteen back. "Because Gómez is an idiot, and I hate being bored. Besides," he grinned, "you remind me of my little brother. Except he’s smarter." He didn't say it with pride. He said it like a man who had lost a brother to the very thing he now taught others to survive. He nodded toward the final obstacle—a gauntlet of upperclassmen armed with thick, padded sticks. "Last test. They’re going to beat you. Don’t let them break you."
Mateo didn’t answer. He just ran.
The first blow caught him across the ribs, knocking the wind from his lungs. The second cracked across his thigh, sending a jolt of fire up his leg. He gritted his teeth and kept moving. A stick caught him across the back, another on his shoulder. He stumbled but didn’t fall. He could hear their shouts, their laughter, but it all seemed to come from a great distance. He focused on the finish line, a simple white post a hundred yards away. His lungs burned. His legs felt like jelly. But he didn’t stop.
By the time he staggered past the post, his uniform was torn, his face was bleeding, and every muscle in his body was screaming in protest. Virgilio was waiting, smoking. "Still standing. Good." He tossed Mateo a rag. "Clean yourself up. We’ve got a tradition for new cadets. Drinks at The Mermaid. You’re buying."
Mateo wiped blood from his lip, the rag coming away red. "I don’t have any money."
Virgilio laughed, a genuine, surprising sound. "Then you’d better learn to steal."
The Mermaid hit you first with the smell—stale rum, sweat, and the cloying sweetness of cheap perfume trying and failing to cover the scent of the docks. The upperclassmen were already crowded around a scarred wooden table, passing a bottle of dark, unlabeled liquor. Gómez glared as Mateo and Virgilio walked in, a fresh bruise purpling vividly on his jaw, but he didn’t say anything.
Virgilio slid the bottle toward Mateo. "Drink. You’ve earned it."
Mateo took a long swig. The liquor burned all the way down. He coughed, his eyes watering, and the cadets laughed, the tension finally breaking.
Gómez leaned in, his voice a low growl. "You’re lucky Uribé likes you, farm boy. Without him, you’d be swimming with the fishes."
Mateo met his gaze, the rum warming his gut, chasing away the last of the fear. "I’d like to see you try."
Silence fell over the table. The air went still. Then Virgilio burst out laughing, clapping Mateo on the back hard enough to make him choke. "I like this one!" He raised the bottle high. "To Rojas! The hick who doesn’t know when to quit!"
The cadets clinked their glasses and bottles, the sound rough and loud. "To Rojas!"
Mateo drank, the alcohol a fire in his belly. For the first time since he’d stepped off that train, he didn’t feel like an outsider. He felt like a survivor.
Virgilio lit another cigarette, his eyes thoughtful as he watched the smoke curl toward the soot-stained ceiling. "Tomorrow, it starts for real. Drills, inspections, more beatings. You’ll hate every minute of it."
Mateo took another swig, the rum giving him a courage that wasn't entirely his own. "I can take it."
Virgilio grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dim light. "We’ll see." His gaze shifted toward the door, his smile fading. "Heads up. The bosses are here. And they look pissed."
Mateo followed his gaze. A group of academy officers stood in the doorway, their faces grim, their movements sharp. They were huddled together, their voices too low to hear over the din of the bar. One of them—a captain with a face like a hawk—was holding a telegram. He read it, his face paling, then crumpled it in his fist and stormed out, his colleagues hurrying after him.
The boisterous noise of the bar suddenly seemed to dim.
Virgilio’s cigarette dropped from his lips, unnoticed. "Something’s coming," he said, his voice flat.
Mateo set down the bottle, the warmth in his gut turning to ice. "What?"
Virgilio’s dark eyes met his across the table, and for the first time, Mateo saw something in them that wasn’t mockery or boredom. It was a cold, hard certainty that resonated with the stone in his own stomach. He exhaled the last of his smoke.
"War."
Outside, a distant rumble echoed over the city. It wasn’t the sound of thunder.
The USS Prairie tasted of rust. It was a flavor Daniel Carter had come to know intimately over the past four months—a metallic tang that clung to the back of his throat, infused the recycled air in the berthing compartments, and seasoned the bitter, chicory-laced coffee they drank from chipped ceramic mugs. The ship was an auxiliary cruiser, a glorified transport, and its purpose was not to fight but to wait. And waiting, Daniel had discovered, was the primary occupation of the United-States-Marine-fucking-Corps.
He leaned against the railing, the steel warm beneath his forearms, and stared out at the greasy, slate-gray water of the Gulf. There was no land in sight, only the endless, indifferent horizon. This was his third week on patrol off the coast of Mexico, and the heroic adventure promised by the recruitment poster back in Dayton, Ohio, had so far consisted of chipping paint, swabbing decks, and playing endless, soul-crushing hands of poker with men who smelled of sweat and boredom.
"You look like someone pissed in your cornflakes, Carter."
Private First Class Ellis slumped against the railing beside him, a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips. Ellis was a wiry Texan who had been in the Corps for two years and already possessed the hollow-eyed, cynical gaze of a man twice his age. He saw the world not as a place of ideals, but as a series of dirty jobs to be survived.
"Don't eat cornflakes, Ellis," Daniel said, not taking his eyes off the water.
"Figure of speech, college boy," Ellis drawled, exhaling a plume of smoke. "Point is, you got that look on your face again. The one where you look like you're trying to figure out the meaning of the universe and coming up empty."
"Just thinking."
"That's your problem. Thinking gets you in trouble in this man's Corps. What you need to do is stop thinking and start drinking." He produced a small, dented flask from inside his tunic. "Hair of the dog?"
Daniel shook his head. The one time he'd tried Ellis’s contraband hooch, he’d spent the next morning's inspection trying not to vomit on Gunny Sergeant Hale’s freshly polished boots. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make twice.
Gunny Hale. The name alone was enough to make Daniel’s spine straighten. The Gunny was a relic from the Spanish-American War, a man carved from sun-dried leather and pure, unadulterated rage. He believed discipline was a religion, and pain was its most effective sacrament. Hale was everything Daniel had imagined a Marine would be, and he was terrified of him.
"Suit yourself," Ellis said, taking a quick swallow from the flask. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand. "Got a letter for you. Came with the supply drop this morning." He pulled a creased envelope from his pocket and handed it to Daniel.
The handwriting was his sister Sarah’s, a neat, looping script that felt like a relic from another world. He turned it over in his hands, the paper soft and familiar. He could picture her writing it at the small kitchen table, the light from the oil lamp glinting off her brown hair, the smell of woodsmoke and baking bread in the air.
He found a quiet corner behind a stack of life rafts, the sea breeze tugging at the thin paper, and opened it.
Dearest Danny,
I hope this letter finds you well and that you are eating properly. Ma says the Navy feeds its boys well, but I still worry. The nights are getting cold here. Pa had to put down Old Bessie last week. Her leg was bad, and he said it was the kindest thing, but he hasn’t said much since. The Copley farm went under. Mr. Copley is working at the factory in town now. He looks so tired.
Daniel paused, folding the letter. He didn't need to read the rest. It was always the same. A litany of small-town woes, a catalogue of quiet desperation that felt a million miles away and yet was the very reason he was here. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, he wasn’t on a warship in the Gulf of Mexico. He was back in Ohio.
The memory was sharp, vivid. The smell of wet earth and manure from the perpetually muddy yard. The relentless, grinding labor that started before sunrise and ended long after sunset, a cycle of planting and harvesting that yielded less each year, leaving his father’s shoulders more stooped, his face more deeply lined, his silences more profound. Their farm wasn’t a home; it was a slow-motion drowning.
The town offered the only other paths: the dark, dusty maw of the coal mine that had claimed his uncle’s lungs, or the deafening clatter of the National Cash Register factory, where men his father’s age went in with straight backs and came out gray and hunched, their spirits as worn as their leather aprons. It was a choice between dying slow in the dirt or dying slow in the dust.
Then he saw the poster.
It had been tacked to the post office wall, a vibrant splash of color in a world of brown and gray. A United States Marine, his dress blues immaculate, his jaw set, stood on a pristine beach, palm trees swaying behind him. His eyes were clear, his rifle held at a perfect parade rest. Behind him, the flag billowed against a brilliant blue sky. The words were simple, powerful, a siren’s song to a boy starving for purpose: HONOR. COURAGE. COMMITMENT. BECOME ONE OF THE FEW.
Daniel had stood there for a full ten minutes, captivated. The poster wasn’t selling a job; it was selling an identity. It promised a world beyond the muddy fields and the factory smoke. It promised that a boy from Ohio could be a hero, that he could stand for something, that his life could have a meaning that wasn't measured in bushels of blighted corn.
He’d enlisted the next day.
His father had taken the news with the same stony silence he reserved for a hailstorm or a broken axle. He simply nodded, his eyes fixed on the horizon, and went back to mending a fence. But Sarah had cried. She’d clutched his arm in the kitchen, her voice a fierce whisper. “They're sending boys to Mexico, Danny. To fight for oil companies. Don't go. It's not our fight.”
He’d gently pried her fingers from his sleeve, his own voice full of a conviction he’d borrowed from the poster on the wall. “It is, Sarah. It’s a fight for order, for democracy. It’s the only fight I’ve got.”
A whistle shrieked, tearing him from the memory. "ON YOUR FEET, LADIES! GUNNY HALE WANTS TO HAVE A WORD!"
Daniel shoved the letter into his breast pocket and scrambled into formation. The forty men of his platoon stood at rigid attention as Gunny Hale paced before them, his boots echoing on the steel deck. He stopped in front of a new replacement, a skinny kid from Boston who still couldn't get his salute right.
"What's the Corps' primary weapon, maggot?" Hale barked, his face inches from the terrified private's.
"The M1903 Springfield rifle, Gunnery Sergeant!"
"WRONG!" Hale's roar made the air vibrate. "The Marine Corps' primary weapon is the individual Marine and his fighting spirit! You are the weapon! This," he snatched the rifle from the kid's hands, "is just a tool! A tool you will learn to love more than your mother, a tool you will sleep with, eat with, and die with! Do you understand me?"
"YES, GUNNERY SERGEANT!"
Hale tossed the rifle back. He continued his pacing, his eyes sweeping over them, missing nothing. "You are here because your country has an interest in this godforsaken shithole. Rich men in Washington want the oil that's under that dirt. We are here to make sure they get it. We are not diplomats. We are not missionaries. We are not here to win any hearts or minds." His gaze flickered with contempt. "We are the big stick the President likes to talk about. When some two-bit general in a tin-pot dictatorship gets out of line, they send us to knock him back in."
His gaze landed on Daniel. "Carter. Step forward."
Daniel's heart hammered. He took one precise step forward. "Sir!"
Hale circled him like a shark. "You look like a thinker, Carter. Read books, do you?"
"Sometimes, Sergeant."
"Well, stop it. Thinking is a luxury we can't afford. You know what I think about when I'm in a firefight?" Hale leaned in, his breath hot and sour. "Nothing. I think about my front sight post and my trigger squeeze. That's it. You let your mind wander to your girl back home or the Sunday pot roast, you're dead. You let yourself wonder if the man you're about to kill deserves it, you're dead." He jabbed a finger into Daniel's chest. "He is the enemy. That's all you need to know. He wants to kill you and everyone you love. Your job is to kill him first. It is the purest, simplest thing in the world."
Daniel stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a rust stain on the bulkhead behind Hale’s head. "Yes, Sergeant."
"You don't believe me, do you?" Hale’s voice was softer now, almost conversational, which was far more terrifying.
"I will follow my orders, Sergeant."
Hale grunted. "You'd better." He stepped back. "Now, I'm tired of looking at your ugly mugs. Some of you have gotten sloppy. You think this is a pleasure cruise." He grinned, and it was a terrifying sight. "Time for a little... motivation." He pointed at Daniel and Ellis. "You two. Down. We’re gonna practice knife-hands until your fingers bleed."
An hour later, Daniel stood with Ellis by the aft railing, his hands raw and aching, watching the sun dip toward the horizon, painting the clouds in shades of blood and bruised purple. The monotony was broken, replaced by the throbbing pain in his hands and the chilling echo of Hale's philosophy.
"He's a real piece of work, ain't he?" Ellis said, rubbing his own red-striped hand.
"He's a Gunnery Sergeant," Daniel said automatically.
Ellis snorted. "That don't make him God. Just means he's better at killing people than we are." He pulled out his flask. This time, Daniel didn’t refuse. The whiskey burned, but it was a clean fire, different from the shame and confusion that had been smoldering in his gut.
"He's wrong, you know," Daniel said quietly, staring at the darkening water. "It's not simple. Killing someone."
Ellis took the flask back, his eyes shadowed. "It is if you do it enough. Or if they do it to enough of your friends." He took a long swallow. "Look, Carter. You're a good kid. You got ideals. That's fine. Just... try not to let 'em get you killed, alright? There are no heroes here. Just survivors."
Before Daniel could respond, a runner came pounding up the companionway ladder, his face flushed. "PFC Ellis! Private Carter! Gunny wants you in the briefing room, on the double!"
Ellis sighed, tucking his flask away. "Showtime."
The briefing room was a small, airless space packed with the platoon’s non-commissioned officers. Gunny Hale stood in front of a map of the Tampico coastline, a pointer in his hand. His face was grim, stripped of its usual parade-ground bluster.
"Listen up," he said, his voice low and urgent. "At 1400 hours today, a whaleboat from the USS Dolphin carrying a paymaster's assistant and eight sailors was arrested by federal soldiers under the command of General Zaragoza." A low murmur went through the room. Hale silenced it with a glare.
"The men were paraded through the streets and briefly detained. They have since been released. An official apology was offered by the Mexican commander on site." He paused, letting the words sink in. "Admiral Mayo did not find the apology sufficient. He has demanded that the Mexican military render a twenty-one-gun salute to the American flag."
Ellis whistled softly. "They'll never do that. That's an admission of guilt. A surrender."
"That's the point," Hale said, his eyes glittering. "President Huerta has refused. President Wilson is considering it an act of war." His pointer tapped the map, right on the port city of Tampico. "The fleet is on high alert. We've just received our orders."
He looked around the room, his gaze settling on each man, a predator savoring the moment before the kill.
"We land at dawn. Secure the oil fields. Neutralize all hostiles. You will show no mercy. You will take no prisoners." He looked directly at Daniel, a cold, challenging smile on his lips. "It's time to find out what you're made of, Carter. Time to be a hero."
Daniel’s hand went instinctively to the letter in his pocket. Sarah’s innocent words, the smell of his mother’s kitchen, the memory of a colorful poster on a dusty wall—it all felt a lifetime away. The adventure had arrived. And its face was a grimace.
Dawn in Veracruz was a slow burn, the sun a pale wound in the humid sky. Mateo Rojas was already awake, already standing at rigid attention in the predawn chill of the courtyard, the coarse wool of his new uniform scratching at his neck. His hands, still soft from a life spent guiding a plow and not gripping the cold steel of a rifle, were clenched into fists at his sides. The memory of yesterday’s humiliation—the jeers, the blows, the suffocating rage—was a bitter taste in his mouth, mixing with the metallic tang of blood from a lip he’d bitten through during the night.
The Academy was waking around him, a beast stirring in its stone lair. The rhythmic tramp of boots on the cobblestones, the sharp, barked commands of senior cadets, the distant clang of the mess hall bell—it was the sound of a world grinding into motion, a world that had no place for farm boys with wooden horses in their pockets.
The day’s brutality began, as it always would, on the drill field. Sergeant Robles, the bulldog-faced instructor from yesterday, seemed to take a special, perverse pleasure in singling Mateo out. While the other new cadets struggled through rifle drills, their movements clumsy and uncertain, Mateo found himself a half-pace ahead, the motions of the Mauser almost second nature. It was this small, instinctive competence that seemed to enrage the sergeant.
"You think you're better than them, Rojas?" Robles roared, his spittle flecking Mateo's cheek. "You think because you know one end of a rifle from the other you're a sailor? You're nothing! You are mud from the sticks, and I will grind you down until you are nothing but dust!"
He had Mateo run the obstacle course again. And again. By the third time through, Mateo's lungs felt like they were filled with fire, his muscles screaming, his vision blurring at the edges. But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. To stop was to break, and to break was to be sent home in shame, the weight of his family’s failure strapped to his back.
On his fourth pass, as he scrambled over the algae-slicked wall, a boot came out of nowhere, catching him square in the chest. He lost his grip, his fingers scraping against the stone, and tumbled back into the mud pit below. He landed with a sickening splash, the foul-smelling water filling his mouth and nose.
Gómez stood on the wall above him, his face a mask of triumphant malice. "Looks like the farm boy needs to learn how to swim."
Mateo pushed himself up, spitting mud and fury. He was about to lunge, to throw himself at the wall and drag Gómez down with him, when a voice, lazy and sharp as a razor, cut through the air.
"That's enough, Gómez."
Virgilio Uribé stood at the edge of the pit, his uniform immaculate despite the surrounding filth. He wasn’t looking at Mateo. His dark, mocking eyes were fixed on Gómez. "You want to play games? Play them on your own time. Robles wants to see him, not a drowned rat."
Gómez scowled, but he backed away from the wall. The hierarchy of the Academy was as rigid and unforgiving as the stone it was built from, and Uribé, for all his languid disdain, stood several rungs higher than Gómez.
Virgilio didn’t offer Mateo a hand. He just watched with detached amusement as Mateo dragged himself from the mud. "You need to learn to pick your fights, hermano. And your enemies." He tossed a surprisingly clean rag at Mateo's feet. "Clean yourself up. You look like shit."
As Mateo wiped the worst of the mud from his face, Virgilio lit a cigarette, his movements economical and precise. "You have a problem, Rojas. You have skill, which makes the instructors hate you. You have a temper, which makes the upperclassmen want to test you. And you have no allies. That is the most dangerous thing of all in a place like this."
Mateo stopped wiping, the rag clutched in his fist. "Are you my ally, Uribé?"
Virgilio laughed, a short, sharp bark of a sound. "God, no. I'm your mentor. It's much worse." He took a long drag from his cigarette. "An ally stands with you when you fight. A mentor teaches you how to win without throwing a punch." He exhaled a perfect ring of smoke. "Lesson one: This place isn't about being the strongest. It's about being the smartest. Gómez is strong. That's why he'll still be taking orders from men like me when he's old and gray. You... you might be smart. We'll see."
He led Mateo away from the drill field, toward the cavernous, echoing halls of the main building. "Every institution has its currents, Rojas. Political currents. Social currents. You learn to read them, or you drown." They passed a group of officers, their uniforms heavy with gold braid, their voices a low, conspiratorial murmur. Uribé didn't seem to notice them, but Mateo saw the way his eyes flickered, taking in every detail.
"What you see here," Uribé continued, his voice barely a whisper, "is a miniature of all of Mexico. We have the old guard, the ones who still dream of Porfirio Díaz and think Huerta is a necessary evil. They're the ones with the money and the influence." He gestured subtly with his cigarette toward the cluster of officers. "Then you have the pragmatists. The survivors. They serve whoever signs their paychecks. Huerta today, Carranza tomorrow. They have no loyalty, only ambition." His eyes were cold. "And then there are the idealists. The fools. The ones who actually believe the words they carve over the archways. 'Duty, Honor, Country'."
"The fools," he added, his voice dropping, "the ones who believe in the words carved over the archways. They think they're changing the world. They're just feeding the machine. I know. I watched one do it."
"Which one are you?" Mateo asked, his own voice low.
Virgilio’s smile was a thing of pure cynicism. "I, my dear Rojas, am a student of history. And history teaches us that idealists end up dead, the ambitious end up in charge, and the old guard ends up replaced by a new guard who will eventually become old themselves. The trick is to know which current to ride, and when to jump to another."
Their destination was the Academy’s vast, dusty library. Uribé led him past towering shelves of military treatises and navigation charts to a small, secluded alcove. He pulled two heavy volumes from a shelf: The Art of War by Sun Tzu, and a leather-bound history of the French intervention in Mexico.
"Your training on the field is designed to break your body and your will," Uribé said, dropping the books on the table with a thud. "This... this is how you train your mind. Robles will teach you how to follow orders. I will teach you how to see the man giving them. Understand his weaknesses, his fears, his ambitions. That is how you survive."
He opened the book on the French intervention. "Look here. The battle of Puebla. A glorious victory for Mexico, no? A day of national pride." He tapped a passage on the page. "And a year later, the French were in Mexico City. Why? Because winning one battle doesn't win the war. Because the politicians were divided, the generals were jealous, and the country was too busy congratulating itself to see the real threat coming. This Academy... this country... is the same. We are so focused on the enemy we can see—Gómez, the sergeant, the vague threat of American gunboats—that we fail to see the rot from within."
Mateo looked from the book to Uribé’s face. He was beginning to understand. This wasn't just a lesson in tactics; it was a lesson in survival. Uribé wasn't just teaching him about war; he was teaching him about power.
"So, what's the first move?" Mateo asked, his fingers tracing the printed words.
"The first move," Virgilio said, stubbing out his cigarette on the sole of his boot, "is to make yourself useful. But not too useful. Be competent, not a threat. Let Gómez and his ilk make the noise. You... you watch. You listen. You learn." He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "There’s a letter for you. Arrived with the morning post. But the duty officer has... misplaced it."
Mateo felt a jolt. A letter from home. "Where is it?"
Uribé's smile returned. "In Gómez's locker. He 'found' it." It was a classic upperclassman power play—controlling a plebe’s only link to the outside world. To steal back his own letter would be a direct challenge. To complain to an officer would be a sign of weakness, earning him only more contempt.
"What do I do?"
"You do nothing," Virgilio said, his eyes glittering. "You wait. You show him it doesn't bother you. That is a kind of power he doesn't understand. And then... you find a way to make him give it back."
The rest of the day was a blur of calculated endurance. During mess, Mateo ignored Gómez's loud, pointed jokes about lovesick farm boys waiting for letters from their sweethearts. During evening studies, he pretended not to notice when the wiry cadet "accidentally" spilled a pot of ink across his navigation charts. He took the punishments—extra drill, latrine duty—with a stoic, impassive expression that seemed to infuriate his tormentors more than any outburst would have.
He was learning. He was internalizing Uribé's first, most crucial lesson: in a world designed to break you, the greatest act of rebellion is to refuse to show you're broken.
Late that night, long after the last lights-out call had echoed through the stone halls, Mateo lay on his cot, staring into the darkness. The small wooden horse his sister had given him was clutched in his hand, a solid, tangible link to the world he had left behind. He could feel the eyes of the other cadets on him in the dark, could sense their silent judgment. Was he a coward? A pragmatist? Or just a boy trying to survive?
He didn't have an answer. He only knew that the line between duty and self-preservation was becoming harder and harder to see.
A floorboard creaked nearby. Mateo tensed, his hand instinctively going for the bayonet he kept under his pillow.
A figure detached itself from the shadows. Virgilio Uribé. He crouched by Mateo’s cot, his face a pale oval in the gloom.
"Now," he whispered.
"Now what?" Mateo whispered back.
"Lesson two," Virgilio said, a feral grin in his voice. "Leverage." He held up a small, leather-bound journal. "This belongs to Gómez. Apparently, he fancies himself a poet. A very bad poet. Full of sentimental drivel about some girl in Tampico whose father happens to be a very influential customs official."
Mateo's mind raced. He understood immediately.
"It seems to me," Virgilio continued, his voice a silken thread in the dark, "that if this journal were to find its way to Captain Mendoza, whose own niece Gómez has been attempting to court... well, a career could be ruined. Or, a misplaced letter could be returned. Quietly."
Mateo looked from the journal to Uribé’s face. He saw the cold, brilliant calculation in his eyes. This was the game. This was the real battle, the one fought not with rifles on a field but with secrets in the dark.
He felt a thrill of something that was equal parts fear and exhilaration. He was being offered a new kind of weapon.
"So, Rojas," Virgilio whispered, pressing the journal into his hand. Its leather was cool against his palm. "Are you a soldier? Or are you a survivor?"
Mateo looked down at the book. It was a choice. A turning point. He could remain the dutiful son, the loyal cadet who endured, who followed the rules and hoped for the best. Or he could become something else. Something harder. Something more like Uribé.
He clutched the journal, his knuckles white.
In the distance, the foghorn of a ship in the harbor moaned, a lonely, mournful sound. Mateo thought of his father’s stoic silence, of his mother’s tears, of his sister's small wooden horse. The price of loyalty was a debt he was already paying. But who, he wondered, was he truly loyal to?
He looked at Uribé, and in the darkness, he gave a slow, deliberate nod.
