by Ian Slater
David cupped the barrel in his hands, letting what warmth he had in them thaw the snow that now might be ice inside. He’d come too far to kill himself. If he was to die, they were going to have to do it for him. Far over on his right, down the road, he heard the trucks starting up, the convoy, he expected, warming up, getting ready to head back to the front as soon as loading was completed. He flipped up the rear tangent sight, set it for fifty meters, aligned it with the front protected-post sight, and moved the bayonet scabbard from where it was digging into his belly.
When the first man filled the sight, David squeezed off a burst. Snow fell from a branch overhead from the air vibration and he shifted the AKM to the right, firing again. The first man was already down, the second thrown back till the safety bindings gave on the skis and he toppled into the snow. The other two were down, returning fire, bullets thwacking into the timber above and around him, but so high and wide, he doubted they had any precise idea of his position. Getting up behind the cover of the branches, sticking a twist of handkerchief into the barrel, he headed through the wood toward the dump — if he was still within the dump’s precincts. He was making much better time now, the snow in the woods nowhere as deep as in the field behind him.
In a few more minutes, having left the sporadic fire well behind him, he saw the trees were thinning. He was out of the wood.
“Halt!”
The Stasi trooper had his rifle up. David dropped to the ground as he fired a wide, sweeping burst. The man’s legs buckled, snow flicking up around him, and David felt his left shoulder stinging like crazy. He heard a loud panting noise coming out from the wood — too close for the other two to have caught up with him.
Then he felt the hot rush of air, a flurry of snow. Instinctively his left hand flew up, but the Doberman had it between his teeth, fangs crushing through the thick coat, crunching to the bone. David reached for the AKM but couldn’t find it. He tried to roll the dog over, but the Doberman had him pinned. His left arm bleeding profusely, David shoved his right into the coat’s right hand pocket, felt the lighter, and grasping it with all his strength, flicked the flint. The blue-orange propane flame shot up, and David pushed it at the dog’s eyes. Astonishingly, the Doberman hung on, jaws still clamping down on David’s arm, trying to shake the life out of him. Then suddenly the dog jumped back, skittering a short distance away, his paws frantically wiping his eyes. David saw the stock of the AKM and pulled it toward him. Its barrel was jammed with icy snow. Getting up, he flipped the butt down, lifted the gun by the barrel, and felled the dog.
The voices in the wood behind him were getting closer now. Stumbling through the snow, David reached the dog’s handler, who was making a noise as if he were snoring, something wrong with his breathing. David, almost passing out from the pain in his arm, removed the two M42 screw-threaded stick grenades from the man’s belt, as well as two banana clips of 7.62 millimeter, stuffing them into his coat’s pocket, then headed toward what looked like a barn fifty yards away, a horse trough nearby congealed with ice.
Then, beyond the barn, he saw what he’d been after from the moment he’d seen the Englishman dead in the snow and had asked the oberst permission to bury him. For once the snow was helping, firm underfoot, packed down, presumably by the boots of prisoners as they’d marched in from the trucks. The huge, snow-laden, camouflaged canvas-and-netting roof formed a strikingly beautiful and symmetrically scalloped pattern like the awning of some vast, expensive garden party marquee. Behind him he could hear the two men crossing the field and was about to turn to see if he could spot them when, seventy yards in front of him, away to the left, he heard a truck slowly coming to a stop, and the sound of more dogs. Without hesitating, he fired the whole magazine at the truck, the barrel so hot, the steam rose all around him. The truck’s engine was now in the high whine of reverse. He knew that now was his only chance. The AKM slung over his right shoulder, he ran the fifty yards toward the black wall of fuel drums. Kneeling, unscrewing the stick handle from two grenades, screwing them together, forming a demolition charge, he pulled both pins and threw them as far as he could into the gap between the canvas roof and the stacked fuel drums.
Running fast through the blinding snow, he estimated he would have five seconds. He was wrong. On a three-second fuse, the grenades blew, and the next instant he was lifted off the ground, the force of the explosion throwing him forward at least twenty feet, behind him a mountain of orange fire and dense, black smoke, the air like a desert wind, fantastic shadows playing across the snow, men running farther down the road from rivers of lighted fuel spewing out into the snow like molten lava. David dragged himself up, stumbled and fell, rose again, not knowing where he was heading so long as it was away from the fire. He heard screams and the futile spinning of truck tires trying to grip on snow that in seconds had become a bubbling sludge. More men somewhere off to his right were running, throwing weapons down, clambering aboard what looked like half-tracks in a desperate exodus as more and more of the drums exploded, adding to the towering flames, leaping hundreds of feet into the air, visible to NATO positions as far south as Bielefeld.
Hauling himself to the wood’s edge, it was not until about a quarter hour later that David realized the back of his head had been singed and the coat covered with the burns of airborne cinders. He knew he could run no more. If they got him — the best he could hope for was that he’d make them pay. He put the AKM across his lap and felt for the other two grenades, making sure no snow had iced up on them. Last thing he needed was the pins to freeze.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The German Army would call it the “Time of Deliverance,” the Americans, the “Bust-Out,” the British, “About Bloody Time.” But whatever name they gave it, the American-driven counterattack was something to behold.
Ironically, the first man to witness its beginning was not a combat soldier at all but a Bundeswehr surgeon. Assigned to the field hospital west of Munster, the surgeon had always admired the Americans for their inventive know-how, especially the revolutionary MUST — Medical Unit, Self-Contained — hospital that had been first designed in the 1980s. Seemingly rising out of nothing, inflated within twenty minutes by sterile compressed air from portable generators, and air-conditioned throughout, the fifty-two-foot-long, twenty-foot-wide, and ten-foot-high ward of six operating tables and inbuilt equipment had greatly reduced the fatality rate. The only fault the German surgeon found with it was that, as in all American installations, the thermostat was set way too high.
Stepping out at around 1600 hours on the day of the convoy’s arrival in Brest for a blast of cold and invigorating air between operations, he heard a thunderous roar overhead in the blizzard that had blanketed the front from lower Saxony as far south as Heidelberg. He hoped it was an American plane, for if not, there was nowhere to go for shelter — the slit trenches dug earlier in the day were now snow-filled, every available man having been sent to the perimeter in the desperate last-ditch attempt to stop the Russian advance. The roar of the aircraft had barely abated when out of the blizzard he saw a dark square the size of a house descending several hundred yards away above the airstrip designated “Minister 1,” but dubbed by the Americans “Monster 1.” As he watched the object, a vinelike mesh dangling from it, and saw the four ghostlike chutes above, he realized the mesh was the cargo net about a resupply palette.
The blizzard, so welcomed by Kirov’s divisions and which Kirov’s staff had predicted would bog down the Americans, was proving no impediment. From the Bielefeld line to the Danube three hundred miles to the south, the American M-1s, German Leopards, and British Challengers were about to be given new life. The airlift from Brest would fly in more supplies than in either the famed Berlin airlift of ‘48 or the resupply of Khe Sanh in the Vietnam War. In the blinding white-out, American ingenuity, German organization, and British doggedness came together like old friends called to the bedside of a critically ill relative. In the snow the Americans’ high-tech instrument flying co
nstantly amazed the Soviet divisions that had broken through, rolling toward what they had thought was certain victory.
With fighter cover provided by RAF Tornados flying out of southern England and American F-111F swing-wing fighter interceptors, dozens of the giant 245-foot-long, 65-foot-high American C-5C Galaxies, flying out of Brest, delivered fuel and ammunition to the hastily prepared prepo sites west of Munster. The giant transport’s normal load of 121 tons was increased to 150 tons, the Galaxies able to cut down on then-own fuel load because of the short sixty-eight-minute, five-hundred-mile flight from Brest to the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket.
Almost none of the Galaxies landed in the pocket; most of their intermodal CONCAR — containerized cargo — having being taken straight from ship to plane, was dropped low by chute-braked palette. The cargo of ammunition and fuel drums from the hundreds of forty-eight-foot-long containers was heading toward the front within twenty minutes of a palette skidding to a stop, the snow helping to brake the palette’s slide in a shorter distance than usual.
The massive resupply drop had no noticeable effect for the first six to seven hours, the NATO-sown mine fields Freeman had relied upon to slow the Soviet armor breached by Russian divisions pouring through gaps where the mines had been rendered useless in the heavy fall of snow. Because of this, a British infantry battalion and an American Ranger regiment were overrun southwest of Bochum, over three thousand taken prisoner. Many of them were shot out of hand for no other reason than that the Soviet supply line — already stretched for the final attack on the besieged Allies — had no containment areas or food allocated for prisoners. After U.S. M-16 and M-60, and U.K. SLR 7.62-millimeter ammunition had been stripped from the British and American bodies, they were left to be covered by the snow, Kirov and his staff regarding the fuel necessary for a bulldozer to dig mass graves too vital for their armored and mechanized divisions. The early discovery of this by an American airborne battalion led to some of the most vicious fighting anywhere on the perimeter.
Six hours after the airlift had begun, around 2200 hours, the snow-filled sky over the pocket became brilliantly incandescent, with blossoming patches of ruby-red and ice-cream-white flares shot through with green and orange parabolas of tracer as refueled Apache and Cobra gunships, flying in excess of 150 miles per hour, swarmed across the outer reaches of the chaotically shifting and segmented front, firing thousands of Hellfire — fire and forget — antitank missiles. Though equipped with infrared sensors far superior to those of the Soviets, the initial Hellfire attacks were not as effective as hoped because of the lack of laser-beam-equipped forward air controllers to guide each missile to its target. NATO choppers, with pods of eight TOW-tube-launched, wire-guided missiles, were more effective against the enemy tanks, the TOWs not requiring anyone on the ground to assist. Soviet Hind and Havoc helicopters, having had it their own way for the last forty-eight hours because of NATO’s rapidly dwindling fuel supplies, were now faced with a far different situation, scatter fragments from the exploding warhead of the Sidewinder missiles proving deadly to the Soviet gunships.
Much of the credit for the destruction of the Soviet choppers was due to the contour-imaging guidance radar aboard the American Apaches, which permitted their pilots NOE, or “nap of earth” flying, the choppers able to skim less than fifty feet above ground, tree, or water contour even in the worst snow conditions. NOE flying was especially easy over the flatter southern sector of the DB pocket.
* * *
By the time Major Norton had returned from Brest to Freeman’s hospital HQ outside Munster, he found the general, though still rigid in his brace, very much alert, looking up at the maps of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Rhineland Palatinate that were taped to the field hospital’s ceiling. The general’s exhausted yet attentive staff clustered about the bed, the mood of new hope evident from the sheer vitality that radiated out from Freeman, who was holding forth a telescopic pointer, stabbing at the ceiling. “Ah, there you are, Norton. What d’you think of my chapel?”
Before Norton could say anything, Freeman raced on. “If Michelangelo could do it on his back, so can I, eh?”
“I guess so, General. I heard on my way up here that we’ve stopped our withdrawal.”
“Stopped!” It sounded like an obscenity. “By God, Major, we’re moving. We are going on the attack! Their advanced dump — the bastards had it hidden away up here in the goddamned woods — has blown up in their faces.” The general moved the pointer north of Bielefeld. “Outside Stadthagen.” Freeman’s face was so flushed with optimism that at first Norton thought the general had had some kind of adverse reaction to the pain shot. “Now,” Freeman continued, lowering the pointer and looking around at his staff, “the shoe’s on the other foot. Kirov—” the general paused, savoring the moment “—is running out of gas, gentlemen. Here, Norton,” said Freeman, passing him a bulging manila folder. “Feast your eyes on these.”
They were infrared aerial reconnaissance photos. At first Norton thought they had been badly overexposed — everything seemed white — almost no contrast at all to the wooded area around the edge of the photographs. Then he realized what he was seeing. “My God, General, that’s some bonfire. It must be—” Norton glanced down at the scale line.
“Over two thousand yards,” Freeman cut in. “They must have had enough gas — our gas — there to fuel Lord knows how many divisions.” Freeman paused and looked about at his staff. “God is on our side, gentlemen. We shouldn’t get too damn cocky about this. Least not until we’re in Moscow.”
“Well, General,” said Norton good-naturedly but clearly skeptical, “I think it’ll be some time before we get to Moscow. There’s the matter of eastern Germany, Poland—”
“Norton,” Freeman responded, “you’re a good G-2. You’ve got an eye for detail that surpasses anyone I know. That’s why I seconded you to my staff, but you’re too conservative in matters military. Because we’ve been losing up to this point, you want to hold back. Consolidate. I understand your caution, but it would be fatal. It’s un-American. Their tanks are chugging to a stop, and within twenty-four hours we’ll have every one of our tanks gassed up and ready to go. Instead of sitting on our butts in defilade — our only option till now — we can move out in force. Kick their ass all the way back to the Volga. At this moment, gentlemen, we have a confluence of forces that will not visit us again — our navy’s secured Atlantic resupply of troops and materiel, the enemy’s supply line is now overextended, out of gas, and we have air superiority. With our Thunderbolts killing their tanks by the bushel, it’ll be a rout! We’ll grow stronger as they grow weaker—” Here Freeman paused, fixing each man in turn with what his commanders called the “Patton look.” “If we strike now—while they’re confused — out of steam.”
* * *
Freeman’s assumption that Kirov’s army was confused was incorrect. As relayed to the world by the TV reporter who had earlier defied Freeman’s ban on media at the front, the truth was that the Russian armies were stunned — not only by the refueling and resupply of troops and tanks all along NATO’s front but above all by the A-10 Thunderbolts. The snow-filled TV pictures were often blurred but nevertheless plainly showed the subsonic Thunderbolts coming in low, often at acute angles of attack, their maneuverability holding even the supersonic pilots in thrall. At times almost in a stall, nose down, the high-mounted rear jets making them look like enormous insects, the Thunderbolts sent down an orange rain of depleted uranium tracer. This fusillade from the thirty-millimeter cannon lasted for only a second or two but, streaming down at a rate over four thousand rounds a minute while the pilot sat protected in the titanium-sheathed seat, passed through the Soviets’ main battle tanks and anything else in the way like a hot poker through butter. Exploding the tanks’ fuel, if it had any left, or igniting the fifty-odd rounds of tank ammunition, it blew the tank apart.
Most of the more than one thousand T-90s and 80s were destroyed in the ensuing forty-eight hou
rs by the Thunderbolts — long before NATO’s tanks were refueled and ready to move. Ironically, had the NATO tanks been moving, the Thunderbolts would not have been anywhere near as successful. For, as in the dust-shrouded battle of Fulda Gap at the beginning of the war, identification between friend and foe in the blizzard would have been extremely difficult, with many Allied tanks destroyed as a result.
The American public and all those watching the TV reports — now Freeman was offering transport to media reps wherever they wanted to go — did not realize that the reason for Freeman’s order to keep his tanks in defilade was that his decision had been dictated by the critical shortage of gas. Nor was NATO’s Supreme Command anxious to let them know how close the entire NATO front had come to irreversible disaster in the DB pocket. What viewers saw before their eyes on every news report in a jubilant America was yet another example of the tactical genius of “End Run Doug,” as the more sensational papers were calling him. And even The New York Times’s in-depth reporting could not detract from his glory. It was clear to everybody from Florida to Alaska that Freeman had gone on the offensive when lesser men would have counseled caution. The reputation of the once unknown one-star general who had been close to retirement when he’d led the raid on Pyongyang was now secure, it seemed, in the Pantheon of American heros.