The Red Line

by Walt Gragg

  In the Avengers, the gunners stayed with their targets. They prayed for the firing tone to squeal. The four soldiers with Stingers resting on their shoulders did the same.

  When they neared the ground, the Su-35s dropped their ordnance onto the command center. The instant they did, each intentionally stopped emitting flares. The sweet tones went off in the Stinger gunners’ ears. At nearly the same instant, six missiles leaped into the sky. The fighters completed their bombing runs and raced upward at incredible speed. The moment their systems told them they’d been fired upon, the pilots released another long line of flares. All they needed to do was fool the American missiles a final time, and they’d be home free.

  The lead plane was engaged by a pair of Stingers. The Su-35’s flares quickly deceived the first of the heat-seeking killers. The missile went after one of the falling flares. It followed the false image as it dropped toward the snows. But the second Stinger never took the bait. It headed straight for the fighter with unwavering determination. The chess match of pilot and missile was on once again. And as before, an unrelenting missile matched the fighter’s every move. Another deafening fireball appeared in the skies over the beleaguered base.

  The next plane in the formation never had a chance. Its last-second attempt to confuse the Stingers on its tail was unsuccessful. Both missiles closed with the fighter’s engines. A few thousand feet above the destroyed command buildings, the plane exploded beneath the striking missiles. Smoldering pieces of the defeated aircraft tumbled to earth.

  The last two Stingers met with mixed results. The Stinger chasing the third Su-35 came within a few hundred yards of the plane. The kill was at hand. At the last possible instant, however, the missile decided that one of the fighter’s flares was the real target. The Stinger veered off course and chased the descending decoy.

  The final Stinger wasn’t fooled. Straight as an arrow it ran for the fourth plane. In his cockpit, the pilot watched his radar as he counted down the last seconds of his life. The Stinger caught up with its prey. Another shower of burning fragments sprinkled forth from the heavens.

  The formation’s trailing Su-35s hadn’t been engaged by the small force of air defenders. With smiles on their faces, the pair flew off toward the east and headed for home. They’d lived to fight another day.

  The firing of the Stingers was what the MiG-29s had been waiting to see. The fighters spotted the source of the launches from the north and west. Two MiGs rushed to engage the Avenger on the northern fence. The third Russian aircraft headed west.

  The shoulder-mounted Stinger gunners on the western side of the base had laid their weapons down. They were busily removing the handle and grip stock from their empty tubes. Trimming the treetops, the MiG roared toward the kneeling soldiers. The pilot squeezed the trigger on his fighter’s 30mm cannon. The shells pirouetted across the frigid white ground. The rounds raced straight for the Americans. The defenseless soldiers had just enough time to look up, and no time at all to react to the fierce cannon fire. The shells ripped into them. Both soldiers tumbled into the snows. Their twisted corpses lay on the bloody ground next to their replacement Stingers.

  At the same moment, the northern Avenger was attacked by the other MiG-29s. The fighters were too low and too close for the Americans to launch a Stinger. The Avenger gunner did the only thing he could. He opened fire with his 12.7mm antiaircraft machine gun. Two strafing 30mm cannons versus a single stationary machine gun would never be an equal match. The Russian firepower was far too great for the Avenger crew to match. Nevertheless, the Americans were determined to give it everything they had.

  The brief battle was extremely intense. And quite final. When it was over, the Avenger and its crew had been forever silenced.

  A dozen MiGs leaped from their perch high above the beleaguered base. They dove to join in on the attack on the overmatched Stinger teams. The final Avenger and the two soldiers on the southern fence stood their ground and waited. They wouldn’t go down without a fight. The Avenger acquired a diving MiG-29. The tone screamed, urging the American to fire. A missile arched skyward. The match of man and missile was under way once more.

  The MiG pilot, as skillful as any in the Soviet Air Force, used every trick he knew. He had to fool the heat-seeking missile. Strings of flares poured from his plane. The Stinger came on. The pilot dove toward the ground to hide himself in the ground clutter and confuse the missile. Yet the Stinger was right with him. While he roared away, he skimmed the tops of the German houses just outside the fences. Still the killer kept closing. In the end, it was no use. The Stinger wouldn’t relent. The pilot reluctantly accepted his fate. He realized there would be no reprieve. The MiG exploded a mile north of the base.

  The Avenger picked up a second target. A missile rocketed from its right-hand pod. It curved upward at tremendous speed. Another pilot and missile dueled in the smoldering skies above Stuttgart. And another pilot lost.

  The leading MiGs pounced upon the Avenger. The last thing they wanted was to give the Americans another chance to steal a life. The fighters raced toward the Humvee. Gunfire poured from the MiGs’ cannons. The Avenger fought back with all it had. But it wasn’t nearly enough. The Avenger was ripped apart in a hail of cannon fire.

  On the southern fence, the Stinger gunners both picked up firing tones. They fired at the final pair of aircraft in the lengthy column attacking the Avenger. The missiles raced toward their targets. It wouldn’t be long before flaming pieces of defeated airplanes would litter the ground once more.

  The instant they fired their Stingers, the soldiers scooped up their replacement missiles and ran for the dense woods. They were only fifty yards from the beckoning safety of the broad trees. But weighed down by the Stingers, it was slow going in the deep snows. Russian fighters roared in to eliminate the final pair of air defenders. The Americans just beat the first of the firing MiGs to the tree line. The soldiers disappeared into the woods. The fighters strafed the forest again and again, determined to finish off the Stinger gunners. Protected by the thick evergreens, the Americans somehow survived the tenacious Russian attack. The burgundy berets knelt in the snows and plotted their revenge.

  For the next half hour, the pair would pop out of the woods unexpectedly. Each time they would be at a different location. Each time they would fire one of their final five Stingers. Four of the five would destroy a MiG. In the end, however, they would prove to be nothing more than a minor annoyance. A handful of missiles weren’t nearly enough to deter the unwavering Russians from their task. They’d come to destroy the enemy headquarters, and they weren’t going to be denied. No matter what the Americans did, the MiGs wouldn’t leave until their mission was completed.

  When the last Stinger had been fired, the Russians had a field day. With nothing left to challenge the attack, their bombing passes were routine and methodical. This was as easy as any practice run. One by one, the buildings of the American base disappeared in a hail of bombs and rockets. Near the western fence, the DISA building was one of the last to fall. By the time the Russians got around to destroying it, not a soul remained in the building. Colonel Cossette and the men and women under his command had all escaped into the woods.

  Others on the base weren’t so fortunate.

  • • •

  While he raced across the midday sky, the Su-35 pilot fired a long stream of rockets from the pods beneath his plane’s wings. With blinding speed, a dozen deadly rockets rushed for their target on the frozen ground below. But the pilot had released his ordnance a fraction of a second late. As they were intended to do, the first few rockets pierced General Oliver’s operations center. The southern end of the lengthy building erupted. All inside were killed.

  Moments later, it collapsed. One tremendous explosion after another shook the basement of the apartment building on the other side of the narrow street. Those hidden within its sheltering walls had only the briefest of moments to sc
ream.

  The remainder of the rockets ripped across the frozen ground that separated the demolished office building and the aging apartment. The constricted cobblestone street between them was torn apart in a thunderous storm of incredible violence. Each striking rocket came closer and closer to the defenseless women and children cowering belowground a short distance away. And the line of lethal rockets kept coming. They reached out to seize the apartment building.

  The Su-35’s final three rockets smashed into Christopher’s room on the building’s second floor. The child’s crib was vaporized.

  The four-story building disintegrated. Tons of shattered mortar and steel, furniture and fixtures, came down upon itself. It pressed in on those waiting below. The immense weight of the falling building caved in the basement ceiling. The ancient pillar Kathy and Christopher were hiding behind buckled. While her world crumbled around her, Kathy bent forward in a desperate attempt to shield her terrified son. The huge pillar shuddered, unable to support the massive burden being placed upon it. It broke in two. The broad beam collapsed. Its ponderous weight crashed down upon Kathy’s tiny form. The colossal blow shoved her to the floor. She fought with all her might to hold on to her child. But her frantic efforts were for naught. Christopher was knocked from her grasp. Kathy was slammed to the cold concrete by the oppressive mountain of defeated steel and cement. She was buried beneath thirty feet of suffocating rubble.

  The last thing she remembered was the sweet taste of blood in her mouth and the anguished screams of her child.

  And then there was nothing.

  CHAPTER 36

  January 29—12:24 p.m.

  1st Platoon, Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division

  At the Crossroads of Highway 19 and Autobahn A7

  Tim Richardson stood in the open commander’s hatch of his M-1A2 tank. A tanker’s helmet covered his auburn hair. On his left in the turret, Clark Vincent rubbed his tired eyes as he stood behind his machine gun. The hurried nighttime journey south from Wurzburg had exhausted them all. Each was watching as a combat engineer used a bulldozer to dig the third of the tank platoon’s fighting positions. The other two M-1s were already in their holes on Richardson’s left and right. Both tanks’ crews were busily making their final defensive preparations.

  The fifteen thousand men of the 3rd Infantry Division were going to be the last organized line of the American defense. Sixty miles behind them lay the sprawling cities of southern and central Germany, and the Rhine River itself. The majority of the divisions’ 332 Abrams tanks, supported by a similar number of Bradleys and untold smaller combat vehicles, were being placed in defensive positions nearly one hundred miles long.

  The real struggle for Germany had begun in the past few hours. Twenty miles east of Autobahn A7, two German armored divisions and the American 1st Armor had made contact with the enemy’s lead units. A tank battle of monumental importance had begun.

  Six German armored divisions were to the north. The combined British and Canadian division was with them. Four of the German divisions were embroiled in a fierce assault to break through the Russians’ tenuous defenses on the East German border. For the moment, the Russian line appeared to be quite thin. The Germans had seen an opportunity to retake East Germany before it was too late and were racing to capitalize upon it.

  One hundred and twenty miles to the southwest, the nine thousand men of the American 11th Armored Cavalry and 6th Cavalry were waiting east of Munich to block the enemy’s advance into the city of nearly two million.

  That was all there was.

  Twelve hours into the war, there were thirty Russian divisions in East Germany. Another twenty were crossing into the northern portion of the country. In the south, things were even worse. Fifty Russian divisions were inside Germany and rolling west. Thirty more were making their way across the border.

  Eleven NATO armored divisions and the two American cavalry regiments were rushing into battle against 150 Russian divisions. The final elements of the 82nd Airborne were three hours away from arriving in Germany. The 24th Infantry’s last units were just now boarding planes in Georgia. Both divisions had planned on joining the 3rd Infantry to strengthen the Americans’ defenses. But because of the Russians’ airborne assault, those orders had been changed.

  For the Germans, British, and Americans, the situation in the initial hours of the conflict appeared quite grim. In this war, there were going to be ten attacking divisions for every one defending. The odds were staggering. Yet they weren’t hopeless. On the technology-dominated battlefield, the advantage would go to the defenders. With the West’s superior weapons, the attacker was going to suffer severe losses of men and equipment while attempting to root the Allies from their fortified positions.

  • • •

  The combat engineer indicated that the hole was ready. Richardson spoke into his headset.

  “All right, Jamie, drop her in nice and slow.”

  Specialist Tony Warrick stood on the ground, guiding the M-1. Private First Class Jamie Pierson drove the seventy-two-ton tank forward. He eased it into the sloped hole the bulldozer had created. Using a smaller bulldozer, another combat engineer pushed three large logs in front of Richardson’s Abrams. To complete the job, the bulldozer piled dirt and snow on top of the logs. When their efforts were completed, only the tank’s turret was visible.

  Their task at an end, the engineers hurried off to prepare the platoon’s secondary position. Five miles west on Highway 19, three new holes would soon be dug.

  Lieutenant Mallory and Staff Sergeant Greene walked up to Richardson’s tank.

  “Richardson,” Mallory said, “let’s take a look around while we’ve still got a little time.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  Richardson climbed out of his tank. To evaluate their fighting position, the tank commanders headed into the snow-filled valley. They stopped a few hundred yards down the modest slope. They turned and looked back at the hillside.

  “What do you think, sir?” Greene asked.

  “I like what I see.”

  “Me, too,” Greene said. “From here, you can’t even tell we’re there. We’re definitely going to get a clean shot at Comrade before he knows what hit him.”

  The trio of tanks lay hidden on the crest of a small hill. They were on the edge of a patch of dense woods, a mile west of where the only major east–west highway in the area intersected Autobahn A7. To advance, the enemy would have to come down one of the two roadways. When they did, they’d head straight into the crosshairs of the waiting M-1s. What made the location even better was that while the woods protecting the Abrams were thick, the trees behind the platoon were fairly thin.

  “What I like best,” Richardson said, “is that when the time comes to run, it’ll be easy to retract from our holes and escape through the woods in either of two directions.”

  “There you go again, Tim,” Greene said, “always running from something. First it’s irate Frauleins you’ve promised to marry in Wurzburg. Now it’s Comrade in . . . um . . . aw . . . Where the hell are we anyway?”

  Mallory looked around. “Somewhere in Germany, I think.”

  “Thanks, sir, that’s a lot of help.”

  “Well, wherever we are, we’ve been out in the open long enough,” the lieutenant said. “Let’s get back up the hill before some Russian helicopter jockey decides to use us to test out his machine guns.”

  Richardson scanned the cloudless sky. “I’m with you, Lieutenant.”

  They climbed through the waist-deep drifts to the top of the hill and clambered back into their Abrams tanks. While the afternoon wore on, there was little more for the tankers to do. Richardson spent the time watching the snarl of automobiles on the intersecting highways below. Frantic German refugees covered every inch of both roadways for as far as the eye could see. Over the noise o
f the tangled traffic, the twelve soldiers could hear the rumbling thunder of the intense battles raging in the east. The frightful sounds went on without end.

  • • •

  Early in the afternoon, a steady succession of Predator drones began appearing overhead. Each carried two Hellfire missiles. Each was heading east in search of prey.

  A few minutes later, a flight of six Apache helicopters appeared out of nowhere. The tank killers screamed overhead. They passed a few feet above the treetops. In their haste to become a part of the historic contest, the helicopters roared through the scenic valley at speeds approaching 180 miles per hour. In less than a minute, they disappeared into the eastern trees. Richardson watched them go. A smile came to his face. The helicopters’ obvious hurry to join in the fighting amused him. The young tanker was in no rush whatsoever to become a part of the death and destruction being wrought a scant handful of hills away.

  There was no need to hasten things. He knew the platoon’s time would come soon enough.

  • • •

  The Apaches hovered one hundred yards apart. Hidden in a blanket of fir and beech, they prepared to unleash their missiles. Twelve unsuspecting tanks scurried through a trackless field toward the attack helicopters. With their rotors spinning, the deadly spiders waited in the treetops. They needed to ensure that all the flies were ensnared in their web before they struck. The T-80s continued ever farther into the Americans’ trap.

  “All right, Warrior Flight, let’s get ’em,” the flight leader said into his headset. “I’ll take the middle one and the one right behind him. The rest of you take the two nearest your position.”