by Walt Gragg
The sounds of the battle so near Camp Kinney created an even greater sense of urgency in the dispensary’s activities.
“We’ve got to get the wounded out of here,” the doctor said.
“We’ve still got one medevac chopper and four ambulances,” the senior medic said.
“Then let’s get moving right now. If we wait any longer, it’s going to be too late.”
The PA continued to work on Jensen.
“What about this one?” he said. “You think he’ll survive the helicopter ride to Wurzburg?”
“What’s his status?” the doctor asked.
“I’ve got the bleeding stopped. And I’ve bandaged his foot and leg. But his head wound’s very serious.”
“If we don’t have room on the medevac for everyone who needs to be on it, leave him here.”
In three wars, the senior medic had never left a wounded countryman behind. And he wasn’t about to start now.
“We’ll have room for him,” the medic said.
You’re damn right you will, Ramirez told himself. Even if I’ve got to crawl outside to get the machine gun off the Humvee and kill me a doctor, Sergeant Jensen’s going on that helicopter.
• • •
The medics carried the most serious cases out to the waiting medevac. Robert Jensen, still unconscious, with IVs attached to both arms, was loaded onto the twenty-year-old Black Hawk.
The wounded in less need of immediate attention were placed in the ambulances. The instant the last patients were loaded, the ambulance drivers tore out the front gate.
With Steele’s help, Ramirez slowly walked to the helicopter. The two stood looking at each other for what seemed a long time. Neither knew what to say. Finally, the medic signaled that Ramirez needed to board. With his good arm, he patted Steele on the shoulder. Ramirez reached out, and the medic pulled him onto the helicopter. He gave Steele a thumbs-up. The medevac lifted off the ground. It spun around and headed west toward the Army hospital at Wurzburg. Steele gave a halfhearted wave as it soared overhead in the darkness.
The squadron commander watched the medevac take to the skies. The time had come to organize the last of his forces. The two hundred men were given everything left in the squadron’s arsenal—M-4s, grenades, machine guns, and twenty-four shoulder-mounted light antitank weapons. Nothing that would stop so powerful an enemy. But that had never been their job. They’d always been here to trade their lives for precious minutes of time.
While this final element prepared to leave camp, a messenger arrived. The Apaches and Bradleys sent south had failed to stem the tide. All had been destroyed. Nuremberg, and its five hundred thousand citizens, had fallen to the Russians. In all, over five million Germans were already behind enemy lines.
• • •
The last two hundred men rolled out of Camp Kinney. They headed east, hoping to slow the enemy just a little more. The squadron commander rode in a Humvee that had served its country well. Next to him, his driver sat in a seat with a large bloodstain on its upper right corner. Standing behind the squadron commander, Steele waited with his machine gun at the ready. In a few minutes, the two—the African-American private with the haunting baby face and the ancient look in his eyes, and the disheartened squadron commander—would die together on a blustery winter night.
The soldiers of the border would never see the light of the glorious morning that dawned two hours later. By 6:00 a.m., of the fifteen hundred men of 1st Squadron, fifty-nine were still living. Only two dozen of those weren’t wounded.
The proud cavalry squadron was no more.
With their lives, they’d bought the West six hours to prepare to meet the challenge.
In the spring, the apples would bloom again on the scarred trees of the ancient orchard. But the soldiers of 2nd Platoon wouldn’t be there to see them.
• • •
The Black Hawk would cover the 120 miles in under an hour. At a little before eight, with his life hanging by a thread, Sergeant First Class Robert Jensen was rushed into surgery. At that exact moment, 4,500 miles away, the 767 with the frightening eagle on its tail landed in Charleston, South Carolina. Half-asleep, the exhausted Jensen women walked down the ramp and into the Charleston Air Base Military Airlift Command Terminal.
When she entered the warm terminal, Linda handed a third set of computer cards to an Air Force sergeant. Not a single passenger was yet aware that eight hours earlier, their husbands and fathers had begun fighting and dying in the bloody snows of Germany.
CHAPTER 25
January 29—6:00 a.m.
United States Army Air Field
Stuttgart
A green bus with U.S. ARMY on its sides stopped near the C-17 transport. The large aircraft’s four engines were already running. The passengers began exiting the bus and walking up the C-17’s rear ramp. George O’Neill was the last to leave the tired bus. He reluctantly trailed the other five members of his agency as they trudged toward the waiting plane.
O’Neill tossed his suitcase into the jumbled pile in the back of the aircraft. He dropped into the seat between Denny Doyle and Major Siebman. The forty members of the European Command backup team quickly settled in. The cargo aircraft was soon roaring down the runway. It disappeared into the darkness.
O’Neill slumped farther into his seat. The flying time to England would be under two hours. In 120 minutes, he would be five hundred miles from Kathy and Christopher.
• • •
Circling high over the Rhine, the Airborne Warning and Control System’s AirLand Battle controllers noted the takeoff of the plane from Stuttgart. Inside America’s prize command and control system, the AWACS computers instantly processed the data on the departing aircraft.
The AWACS was carrying its maximum crew of twenty-nine, both officers and enlisted. Twenty-three of them, including the aircraft’s tactical director, were women. For the past six hours, the AWACS controllers had been waiting for the MiGs to appear in the east.
Yet for six tedious hours, the skies had remained quiet. They knew a Russian air attack was inevitable. At this point, the battle controllers didn’t understand why it hadn’t occurred hours earlier. Why the Russians were waiting made no sense at all. The longer they waited, the more time the Americans had to prepare for the coming battle. Inside the AWACS, the controllers were edgy and tense. They sensed that even though there had been no sign of the enemy, the attack would undoubtedly be launched before the sun rose.
The Boeing E-3 Sentry sat well back of the battlefield. Its radar searched the eastern sky. It would report the moment the first enemy aircraft was spotted. Using its pinpoint guidance, the Allied fighters and air-defense systems would then attack and destroy. Because of the AWACS, the Americans firmly believed they could overcome the Warsaw Pact air forces’ numerical superiority.
Despite the three-to-one odds against them, with the AWACS, the West could dominate the skies. Without it, America’s plan for a precisely integrated AirLand Battle would be unworkable.
• • •
Seventy miles north of London, three airmen departed an aging English taxi at the front gate to Mildenhall Air Base. The airmen briefly held up their identification cards for an air policeman to see. They were just three of many entering the American base in the darkness and fog of an English winter.
The main gate’s air policemen had watched a steady stream of airmen arrive at the base in the hours since midnight, as units located their members and ordered their recall.
By 6:00 a.m., the air policeman who passed the trio through had grown tired and a little lazy. If it had been daylight, or he’d been at all suspicious, he would’ve noticed that the pictures on the identification cards and the faces into which he made a cursory shine of his flashlight weren’t the same. The air policeman would’ve also noticed that the three were wearing fatigue uniforms whose necks were splatte
red with fresh blood.
A mile back down the narrow country lane leading to the air base, the bodies of the airmen whose faces matched the identification cards lay in a rock-strewn field a few hundred yards from the asphalt. They were clad in only their underwear. Their throats had been slit from ear to ear.
It had been an expert job.
Once inside the base, the “airmen” walked down the main road for a quarter mile. They turned right onto a quiet side street and headed toward the communication tower. The high tower was easy to find, even in the misty darkness.
One hundred yards from the base communication facility, the commandos melted into the shadows of an abandoned wooden barracks. They scouted the area to make sure no one was about. Satisfied that their presence had gone unnoticed, two of the saboteurs crawled beneath the rotting building. Three machine pistols, an equal number of satchel charges, and a radio were waiting. They gathered the weapons and charges, and when the third signaled that the coast was clear, the pair reemerged. Hidden by the fog and predawn drizzle, the Spetsnaz team started the final preparations for their task.
The killers attached silencers to the ends of their weapons. Another quick glance around, and they headed toward the base’s central communication building.
They’d trained hundreds of hours for this assignment. At last, their time had come.
• • •
Another isolated German mountaintop, hidden in a thick evergreen forest, was the sole remaining target on General Yovanovich’s list.
The sapper team that crept through the darkness was greatly reinforced. Twenty-four skilled assassins were headed for the Air Force communication facility at Schoenfeld. They understood that unlike the earlier attacks at Langerkopf, Donnersberg, and Feldberg, this time the Americans would be alert and ready. And like their comrades preparing to attack at Mildenhall, they also understood they could not fail. Whatever it took, the objective had to be eliminated. At all costs, Schoenfeld had to be destroyed.
When they neared the top, the leader silently signaled. The commandos split into equal groups of six. The plan called for them to assault the facility from all four sides at once.
Russia’s chance for victory was hanging in the balance.
• • •
While they soared through the star-cluttered heavens, O’Neill spoke not at all. The shock of leaving behind the two people he loved more than life itself was overwhelming. Kathy and Christopher were sitting at what would be one of the enemy’s first targets. And he could do nothing to save them. He’d placed his family’s lives into the hands of others. He’d boarded that bus. George O’Neill had done what he had to do.
An hour after leaving her, the last lingering kiss from the only woman he’d ever loved hung on his lips like a heavy mist. He could still see the kiss, but he just couldn’t touch it anymore.
He’d arrived at their apartment at a little after four. The instant George opened the door and saw her standing there cradling Christopher, he knew Kathy was aware of what was occurring.
“Is it true what Mrs. Williams told me?” she said. “Have the Russians really attacked?”
The look on his haggard face gave her all the answers she needed. The rumors racing through the housing area at the speed of light were, in fact, true. Kathy held her sleeping child ever tighter.
“I’ve got to be back at the office in an hour, Kath. They’re sending me to England to set up a backup operations center.”
In the painful silence of the next moments, she began to fathom, as her husband already did, that she and Christopher were soon going to find themselves alone in the middle of a war without George to protect them.
They moved to the bedroom. George started packing. Kathy took Christopher to his room and laid him in his crib next to a frost-covered window. While George continued preparing to leave, Kathy started silently caressing his dark hair. He wrapped his arms around her. Tears rolled down both their faces. Kathy took him by the hand and led him over to the bed.
He would make love to his wife tonight after all.
• • •
They stood on the second-floor landing. His suitcase was at his side. Their parting had been bearable for George only because of the urgency of ensuring that Kathy understood what she needed to do.
“They’re going to evacuate you as soon as they can. With any luck, Kath, by this time tomorrow you’ll be sitting in your mother’s kitchen while she spoils rotten the grandchild she’s never seen. Get a bag packed right away. Don’t bother with anything but the essentials. While you’re waiting, stick close to the other women in the building. If the Russians attack, don’t hesitate. Grab Christopher and get down to the basement as fast as you can. Do you understand? Don’t wait for anything; get downstairs.”
Huge tears streamed down her cheeks. “I understand.”
George looked into her beautiful eyes a final time. He hoped she truly understood. Her life, and the life of their child, depended upon it.
He took the sleepy toddler and gave him a final hug. He turned to Kathy. Their final kiss went on for a very long time. Without further words, he grabbed his bag and disappeared down the steps. She stood staring at the door long after he was gone.
• • •
High in the Eiffel Mountains, fifty miles northwest of Frankfurt, the forty airmen of Schoenfeld waited. The sabotage at Langerkopf, Donnersberg, and Feldberg had occurred six hours earlier. The assault on the Zugspitz was three hours old. Not a single attack on American communications had been reported since. Still, the airmen protecting Schoenfeld felt no sense of security. The airmen of Langerkopf and the Zugspitz had felt safe. And they were all dead.
Ten of the detachment’s airmen, M-4s at the ready, prowled the perimeter fence. Five were inside the chain link. Five others were hidden in the frozen tree line beyond the wire. Every airman knew the value of the prize they guarded.
It was two hours before the German sunrise.
Crawling on their bellies, the assassins inched through the snows to the edge of the compound. Each of the four teams included a commando with a sniper’s rifle. The snipers attached silencers to the ends of their single-shot weapons. From the protection of the woods, the killers lay watching the communication site. In no time, they identified the Americans lurking in the shadows inside the fence.
One of the airmen in the trees outside the compound foolishly lit a cigarette. A second coughed. His location was pinpointed. A third stamped his feet in the bitter cold.
But two of the Americans hidden in the woods went undetected.
Six commandos crept forward to eliminate the three airmen they’d spotted outside the fence. Each commando’s right hand grasped a razor-sharp knife. They were on the airmen before the Americans realized what had happened. It was over in seconds. With blood dripping from their throats, the airmen fell dead. The Spetsnaz leader signaled. The snipers silently fired. Four airmen inside the compound went down. Two of the Americans cried out as they dropped to the frozen ground. The fifth guard, the one nearest the gate, turned toward the final sounds of his fallen friends. Two black figures raced from a nearby thicket. Each plunged his knife deep into the airman’s back. He died before he could sound the alert.
Twenty-four lethal black forms moved forward as one. The six on the west side rushed through the gate. The other teams quickly cut holes in the chain link.
The pair of Americans in the woods waited until the moment was just right. As the commandos breached the fence, the airmen opened fire. Caught in the open, a pair of wounded Russians fell. A third soon joined them.
The firing alerted the thirty airmen inside the communication building. Even so, the commando leader saw no reason to panic. There were only two doors out of the facility. And five automatic pistols were trained on each. To bring the situation under control, all he needed to do was eliminate the unseen enemy in the woods.
The doors of the windowless building burst open. Four Americans rushed headlong from each. They were cut down before their feet hit the ground.
Another commando was felled by the firing from outside the wire. His comrades blindly fired into the trees, trying to pin the Americans down. The leader identified the muzzle flashes in the woods. He signaled one of his teams. They retraced their steps through the gate. The leader knew it wouldn’t take long to encircle and kill the two airmen. Another commando collapsed, little left of his face from the blast of an airman’s M-4.
Inside the communication building, the Americans were trapped. A desperate call went out.
“This is Schoenfeld. We’re under enemy attack. Repeat, we’re under enemy attack. Ramstein, you’ve got to get us some help up here quick.”
Sixty miles away, the Ramstein communication facility responded. “Hang tight, Schoenfeld, we’re on it.”
Six commandos circled the fence line. The two Americans outside the wire were surrounded and trapped. Even so, before they died the determined airmen eliminated three more saboteurs.
To save Schoenfeld would require the close support of helicopters. Four Army Black Hawks lifted off from Kaiserslautern, ten miles closer than Ramstein to the battle scene. Each helicopter carried multiple machine guns, rocket pods, and six infantry soldiers. The Black Hawks had more than enough firepower to deal with the force attacking Schoenfeld. If they could just get there in time.
The Black Hawks raced through the black void with their throttles full out. At this distance, it would take nearly twenty minutes for the helicopters to reach the mountaintop. Until then, the airmen trapped inside the building could do nothing but pray.
The commando leader was aware of the possibility of an American counterattack. Once his sapper team was discovered, he knew exactly how much time he would have. And that time was beginning to run out. The commandos rushed about, preparing their explosives to destroy the hilltop. The team leader personally attached the charges to the one thing that absolutely had to be eliminated—the AWACS ground station.