The Red Line

by Walt Gragg

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, Seth,” Jensen said, looking at Austin and speaking loudly to be heard over the ever-growing noise of the ferocious little battles springing up all along the entire length of the border. “You and Foster stay here with your Bradleys. I’ll leave you eight men. Take Jelewski and the ones who aren’t ready yet. I’ll take the others and the final three Bradleys. We’ll set up an ambush at that wide curve about halfway to the border and wait for the Russians. If we can’t stop them, or the Russians beat us to the curve, it’ll be up to you to slow them down. If we succeed, I’ll need you back here to cover our retreat. Set up about a hundred yards back down the trail toward the highway. There’s a decent spot for an ambush there. Any questions?”

  “No, Bob, I’ve got it.”

  Jensen then quickly explained the details of his plan. When he was finished, he calmly asked both what they thought.

  “What have we got to lose? Let’s get up there,” Cruz said.

  When Jensen turned to Austin, Seth furrowed his brow and nodded in agreement.

  While the five-minute battle raged at the border, what was left of 2nd Platoon was beginning to move into position. Jensen’s force ran through the blizzard to the three Bradleys, and four soldiers entered each. Jensen and Marconi leaped into the platoon sergeant’s Humvee. The cavalry soldiers charged up the trail toward the border. They held their breath and prayed they would beat the Russians to the ambush spot. Each knew if the enemy caught them out in the open on the tiny roadway, there would be no chance of escape. All their lives would be over in an instant.

  As it was, Brown’s Bradley roared around the left-hand curve just as Jensen’s force reached its objective. The initially unidentified armored vehicle’s sudden appearance on the curve above them brought terror stabbing deep within each American heart.

  Brown’s Bradley screamed to a stop at the ambush position, and the commander’s hatch popped open.

  “Where’s the rest of the platoon?” Jensen asked.

  “I don’t know, Sarge. I guess they’re probably dead. All hell broke loose up there. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know how we survived. I’ve got my crew and Ramirez and Steele. That’s it. I didn’t see anyone else. Except for the enemy, that is. I saw plenty of them.”

  “Any idea where the Russians are now?”

  “Right on my tail, last time I looked.”

  “Brownie, we’re going to wait for the Russians here. Austin and Foster are setting up a secondary position about a hundred yards past the platoon building. Get down there and give ’em a hand.”

  “All right, Sarge, I’m on my way.”

  Brown pulled the commander’s hatch shut. The Bradley roared down the trail toward the highway.

  To the north and south of Jensen’s position, the war’s intensity was growing by the second. The Russian invasion was fully under way. In front of Jensen, however, the noise of 2nd Platoon’s battle had stopped completely.

  When the vicious skirmish with the Americans ended, the Russian general needed a few minutes to get his division organized before initiating the next phase of the assault.

  It was just enough time for Jensen to spin his deadly web.

  Renoir’s Bradley took up a firing position inside the trees to the right of the trail. Sergeant Richmond directed his Bradley into the woods on the left. Cruz’s Bradley waited to the rear of Richmond’s. It would move out to fire from the trail the moment the engagement began. The platoon sergeant pulled his Humvee into the heavy woods on the right. Jensen would command the platoon from the Humvee’s position.

  The remaining four soldiers split up. With their M-4s, two disappeared into the shadowy evergreens on the left. The two on the right did the same. The four were to protect the platoon from the threat of Russian infantry rolling up their exposed flanks and encircling the Americans. Should the fight last any time at all, a serious possibility existed that they would all be surrounded and destroyed.

  The Americans had to hit fast and hit hard or else find themselves on the losing end of the life-or-death struggle.

  Whatever happened, Jensen was certain of one thing. This time, the Russian general would have to face him on his terms. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if that was going to be enough.

  He’d soon have his answer.

  The first enemy tank had entered the trail.

  CHAPTER 5

  January 28—11:49 p.m.

  Military Airlift Command

  Rhein-Main Air Base

  When she arrived at the front of the line, Linda Jensen handed the three computer cards to a bored Air Force technical sergeant. Linda pushed open the weighty door. She headed out into the blowing snows of the tarmac. Her daughters, and the families of the men of her husband’s platoon, followed close behind. The 767 was waiting.

  As she walked across the open ground, even in the blizzard she couldn’t help looking up at the plane. The aircraft was completely illuminated. The artificial glow of the tarmac’s spotlights created a beautiful image. The bright lights striking the glistening fuselage were mixing with the falling snow and melding into one.

  On her tail, the 767 had a giant eagle with wings stretching upward and talons reaching down as if to grasp an unseen prey. Under the eagle, the gold letters read EARLY EAGLE AIRLINES.

  The plane had landed twenty minutes earlier. Air Force personnel were busily preparing it to depart within the next ten. A ground crew worked in a tremendous hurry to refuel the giant old lady.

  Another crew was deicing the wings. Still more airmen scurried about in the storm, loading baggage and food onto the airplane.

  Holding on to the handrail, Linda walked up the icy ramp. Upon reaching the top step, she entered the aging aircraft. Greeted by a pair of smiling flight attendants, she made her way down the narrow aisle and found seats 14A, B, and C. She and the girls stowed their carry-ons and sat down. For once, Amanda and Susan were too tired to fight over the window. When she settled in next to the aisle, Linda felt herself sink. Wave after wave of exhaustion washed over her.

  Forty-four-year-old Linda Jensen had been an attractive young woman. Twenty years earlier, she’d met Robert at a dance at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina, recreation center. It hadn’t been love at first sight. In fact, she really hadn’t cared for him much. Still, he’d been a determined suitor. And his persistence had finally won her heart.

  Her parents opposed her marrying a soldier. At twenty-four, however, she wasn’t going to let that stand in her way. Now, after two decades of marriage, any real passion between the couple was a distant memory. Yet even without the passion, she loved her husband. And she was certain Robert loved her. The relationship was a comfortable one, which for Linda revolved around the raising of the girls.

  As she sank farther into the uncomfortable airliner seat, Linda realized she hadn’t slept in nearly two days.

  The sudden evacuation had surprised them all. Given three hours’ notice in the middle of a forbidding winter night, she’d thrown a few things together for herself and the girls. Along with hundreds of others, they’d left Regensburg at 6:00 a.m. in one of the many convoys that would depart throughout the day. Although she’d no responsibility for the families of the men of her husband’s platoon, they’d naturally fallen in behind her for the two-hundred-mile trip to Rhein-Main. Many of the soldiers’ wives were scarcely older than her daughters.

  It was a journey that normally would have taken four hours.

  In the midst of the blizzard, however, the autobahns were packed with deep snows. Beneath the fresh powder lay two inches of solid ice. As they normally did when the snows came, the Germans made no attempt to clear the roadways. Instead, they left the frozen asphalt to its fate and gathered around their hearths to wait out the storm.

  With Military Police escorts, the convoy had driven north toward Nuremberg. What was normally a pleasant sixty-mile
jaunt took the Americans well over three times what it should have to accomplish. Every hill on the autobahn, of which there were far too many, became a nightmare for them all. At first, the girls enjoyed piling out to free a wayward car from a snowbank. The game, however, had soon become tiresome, even for the energetic teenagers.

  It didn’t take long for the local populace to further complicate the Americans’ fight for Rhein-Main and the flight that would take them home. Upon hearing rumors of the American evacuation, a few Germans had panicked. On this initial leg, the interference hadn’t been too severe. Yet as the endless hours passed, the number of Germans joining in the movement west would steadily increase, causing further misery for them all.

  In Nuremberg, the column waited for two hours while other Americans arrived from the north, south, and east. At midday, the expanded convoy headed west into the teeth of the blizzard.

  On the road, the struggling Americans encountered the same problems as before. The severe weather and frightened Germans were taking their toll.

  The column trekked on to Wurzburg, an hour’s drive west of Nuremberg. And again, it was a journey that took much, much longer to complete. At 3:30, hungry and tired, they arrived. The onrushing darkness of a long winter’s night was quickly approaching.

  In Wurzburg, there was another extended stop while more dependents gathered. The convoy, now nearing seven miles in length, headed into the black night toward Frankfurt. On this stretch of autobahn alone, thirty-seven cars had to be abandoned. The overwhelmed MPs could no longer take the time to deal with those that became jammed in the unyielding snows or suffered mechanical problems.

  Seventeen hours after leaving Regensburg, Linda Jensen drove through the front gate at Rhein-Main. She was exhausted, she was filthy, and she was ready for the nightmare to end.

  With no relief driver, Linda had driven the long, dark hours through the blizzard. She had struggled with the weather, the MPs, agitated Germans, and her increasingly restless daughters. Waved through the air base’s main gate by an air policeman’s strong right arm, Linda entered Rhein-Main in utter relief. Another air policeman directed her to a sprawling parking lot, where hundreds of automobiles sat on the frigid pavement.

  Linda located a distant spot and parked the family’s modest car. She and the girls dragged their bags across the wide parking lot toward the beckoning warmth of the passenger terminal. They were soon within the small terminal with its broad expanses of plate-glass windows. There, a stunned Linda found thousands of earlier-arrived men, women, and children crammed into every inch of space within the two-story building.

  It took ninety minutes in a line that refused to budge for Linda to check in. There was an hour wait for the restrooms. The Jensen women found themselves a tiny spot on the cold floor. There they sat throughout the endless night and all the next day amid screaming babies, tired children, and people who’d long ago run out of patience.

  With over two hundred thousand American dependents to evacuate, the logistics of the monumental operation were already showing the first telltale signs of failure.

  Linda watched one commercial airliner after another arrive and unload its cargo of soldiers. Eight hours earlier, the soldiers had kissed their loved ones good-bye and departed from their stateside bases. With every seat crammed with women and children, the planes would quickly turn around and head back across the Atlantic. During the painful twenty-four hours Linda huddled on the terminal floor, she watched as a continuous stream of dependents arrived to take the place of those who’d found their way onto one of the departing aircraft.

  Finally, their turn had come. Their names had been called. The wives and children of the men of 2nd Platoon had gratefully stepped out into the blizzard and hobbled on board the old 767.

  The nightmare was nearing its end. In another few minutes, they’d leap into the darkness and head for home.

  • • •

  Sitting in the captain’s chair, Evan Cooper waited while the final passengers boarded. The past two days had been a nightmare for Cooper as well. A nightmare for which he’d been praying.

  Cooper, a former Air Force fighter pilot and combat veteran, had followed his time in the military with ten years of flying for America West Airlines. Next had come a stint with United. Frustrated by all the hassles that went along with doing the only thing he truly loved, he rolled the dice.

  Selling everything he owned, and a couple of things he didn’t, he’d gone out a few years earlier and purchased the well-worn 767. He was mortgaged to the hilt, but he understood that every dream had its price. With this one plane, he started Early Eagle Airlines.

  Cooper eked out a meager living and found ways to make the payments on the plane during the first couple of years by flying military and tourist charters. But as America continued to withdraw most of its forces from overseas and a lingering recession hit the tourist industry, his dream began to sour.

  Thirteen months ago, he’d been forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy to keep his creditors from shutting down his single-plane airline. He’d given up the luxury of his sparse one-bedroom apartment and moved into a tiny space above a noisy, foul-smelling hangar. He survived on the occasional bologna sandwich. Each month, Cooper somehow scraped together the money to continue making the payments on the plane. And so far he’d found just enough ready cash to keep his ex-wife from having him thrown into jail for failing to pay his child support. How much longer he could continue to do so was anybody’s guess.

  Two days ago, the phone had rung unexpectedly, with salvation on the other end of the line.

  “Could you rearrange your commitments and take on ferrying troops to Europe?” the voice at Military Airlift Command said. “We’ll give you as many flights as you can handle and guarantee you at least a week.”

  At the moment, Cooper’s flights for the next seven days consisted of picking up a planeload of little old ladies in Pittsburgh on Thursday and flying them to Elko, Nevada, to play bingo.

  “Yeah. I think I can handle that,” Cooper said, suppressing the excitement he felt.

  It would be stretching his plane to its limits, but a week of MAC flights would give him enough money to satisfy his creditors and his ex-wife for at least the next three months.

  Cooper located a backup crew. He found some out-of-work flight attendants and notified his copilot there would be a paycheck after all. Forty-eight hours ago, he’d started flying troops to Germany. In two days, the 767 had completed three trips to Europe.

  Their next stop would be Charleston to discharge their passengers. The backup crew would then make the short jaunt to Savannah. There, they’d collect a load of soldiers from the 24th Infantry Division and return to Rhein-Main. At Rhein-Main, another group of dependents would be eagerly awaiting their turn to board the plane.

  Cooper was determined to continue the process for as long as MAC wanted.

  • • •

  As the tired plane taxied onto the runway, Linda Jensen looked at her watch in the dim light of the passenger compartment. It was nearly midnight. The girls were already asleep. Linda glanced around the cabin at the wives and children of the men of her husband’s platoon. In eight hours, they would touch down in Charleston.

  None of them had any way of knowing that at this very moment, their husbands were fighting for their lives in the blustery snows of the bloodstained border.

  • • •

  The plane with the Eagle on its tail roared down the runway. The 767 fought its way into the stormy January night and headed for home.

  CHAPTER 6

  January 28—11:49 p.m.

  2nd Platoon, Delta Troop, 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry

  The German-Czech Border

  Feeling its way as it went, the Russian armored column moved single file down the narrow, twisting trail. The division commander would have preferred to proceed cautiously. The proper procedure would have be
en to first send his foot soldiers to clear the woods of the elusive enemy before moving forward. His orders, however, were to seize the north–south highway without delay. By morning, he had to control the critical highway the entire fifteen kilometers north to where the British and American lines met. If he waited while his infantry secured the woods, most of his division would still be on the border when morning came. He was risking his armor by not supporting it with infantry, but orders were to be obeyed.

  The leading components of the armored advance were nearly halfway to the north–south highway. In less than a kilometer, the forward elements would reach the roadway and turn north. So far, they’d encountered no further opposition after defeating the token American resistance at the border. Maybe Dmetri had been correct in his assessment of their opponent. Possibly after such a humiliating defeat, the enemy had abandoned its positions and was in full retreat.

  At the front of the long column, the lead tank’s massive hull scraped against the low-hanging branches. The tank warily eased around a sharp bend to the left. Two other T-80s and a BMP2 were close behind. All four disappeared from view around the curve.

  Jensen waited until just the right moment. With his heart pounding in his ears and bile rising to his lips, he screamed into his headset, “Open fire!”

  Renoir’s and Richmond’s gunners instantly launched TOWs. Using their periscopes’ optical sights, they made minor adjustments during their missiles’ brief flight. In the twinkling of an eye, the American missiles turned the first T-80 into a flaming mass of twisted metal. Ravenous fires reached back to eagerly lick at the steel treads of those behind it in the endless column. The lead elements frantically searched for the source of the attack. With a forty-seven-ton fireball preventing their movement forward and the massive column blocking their retreat, they were trapped. If they failed to locate the source of the ambush and quickly destroy it, they knew their lives would soon be over.