Final Storm

by Maloney, Mack;

  But now the Soviet commander was about to disobey one of the tenets of warfare; that was, exposing the majority of his forces at one time. In peacetime, it would be routine for them to launch the 16-airplane patrol flight and recover the Polish Flankers all at once.

  But in wartime, it was a gigantic risk.

  By allowing the fighters—both those taking off and those landing—to cluster on the open runways, he would leave himself wide open for disaster should the enemy strike.

  Standing in the huge base’s control tower, he glanced out at the crews struggling to mount a temporary radar antenna for the base’s single mobile SAM launcher. This was another point of contention with him. How could he be expected to defend such a critical base with only a single, back-up SAM?

  He blew his nose and yearned for a glass of vodka. The lack of reserve SAMs was more evidence that Moscow had been ill-advised if not downright insane to start this campaign—this entire war—when it did. Although he was certain that NATO wasn’t quite aware of it yet, the massive chemical strike on Western Europe two days before had been as much a surprise to the Soviet forward commanders as it must have been to the NATO commanders themselves. None of the advance Soviet military units in Europe had had any indication that their government was about to launch World War III. And as such, none of them was prepared for the struggle.

  Why did they do it? the commander had asked himself over and over again. More importantly, how could they possibly win a war that had started such as this one?

  He shook away the disturbing thoughts and looked back at the SAM crew. The anti-aircraft battery would be operational in moments—when it was, he could take the chance and land the incoming Polish fighters, while at the same time launching the long-delayed 16-airplane patrol.

  It would turn out to be the most disastrous decision of his long military career.

  The FB-111s descended on the Soviet airfield just moments after the last of the Polish Flankers had landed.

  With no SAMs operational, the Soviets were trapped, horrendously exposed on the runways. The first wave of Aardvarks thundered over the cluttered base, dumping thousands of incendiary bomblets in wide patterns among the grounded planes. Explosions erupted across the entire width of the main runway as the firebombs did their deadly work, touching off hundreds of separate fires that quickly joined forces, engulfing planes, fuel storage, hangars, and dozens of ground personnel with yellow-orange sheets of flame.

  The mobile SAM launcher that the Soviets had counted on to defend their base was one of the first victims of the raid. Even while its screens were being jammed by the EF-111 Raven, a Rockeye cannister, dropped by one of the lead Aardvarks, impacted squarely on it, killing the radar crew and destroying the battery.

  The FB-111s swept around for another pass at higher altitude, this time loosing their special runway-cratering bombs on the base’s now-flaming airstrips. The weapons tumbled off the wing points of the FB-111s and began a swift free-fall as their pointed steel noses aimed straight down at the burning mess below.

  As they accelerated toward the ground, a spinning airspeed sensor tripped a small charge in the tail of each bomb, which fired a rocket to propel the explosive lances downward at more than 2,000 miles per hour.

  The speeding darts struck the burning runways and burrowed almost ten feet into the hard concrete before then-warheads detonated, sending huge chunks of concrete flying through the air. Flaming planes reared up as the heaving runways snapped and buckled beneath them, leaving giant craters jagged with rusted ends of snapped reinforcing rods to mark the bombs’ devastating handiwork.

  The final blow was delivered with Mk 80 500-pound conventional bombs, laser-sighted in directly on the base’s two control towers, repair hangars, and barracks complex. Multiple explosions shook the ground as the bombs were detonated shortly after impacting their targets.

  Survivors raced to escape the flames and destruction that tore through the shattered air base, once the proud headquarters of an entire Soviet Air Wing.

  Scampering back over the horizon from which they had come, the FB-111s cranked in their wings and floored their powerful engines to race for the border and the comparative safety of their base in Belgium.

  Hunter heard Jones receive the terse preliminary report from Ringside, the mission coordinator.

  It was almost noon now and they were well on their way back to Rota. The three-pronged raid on Neurippin had been a smashing success. Similar, though lower-scale, missions carried out by combined US and other allied air forces, had also gone off well. In a little more than six hours, hundreds of NATO aircraft had been carefully choreographed to inflict a heavy toll on the Warsaw Pact’s forward airfields and strike planes.

  But they would have to wait until they were back at Rota to get the full results—and casualty reports—over secure communications channels.

  Casualties. Hunter thought about DuPont again. What bothered him most was the guy never had a chance to shoot back. The big Soviet air-to-air missile, with enough explosive power to smash a strategic bomber, had obliterated the F-16 in a split-second.

  And worst of all, it wasn’t supposed to happen—they were just decoys …

  Why DuPont? Why today? How many other pilots had cashed in their tickets in this first full engagement of the war? How many more before it was over? Indeed, Hunter knew that DuPont was just a small part of the war’s horrifying toll.

  On the return trip, the pilot they called the Wingman surveyed the devastated West German countryside, ravaged by the ghastly Soviet chemical munitions that rained down on it two days before. Looking down from his aerial vantage point, Hunter could just imagine the attack that had laid waste to this once-fertile land. The poisonous Valkyries, riding down on their winged SCUD missile steeds, had brought death everlasting in a cruel mockery of the promised land.

  Now here there was only death, pitiful and agonizing, for warriors and innocents alike.

  Dead livestock dotted the snow-covered hills, dark spots that stained the quiet white blanket. Likewise, the autobahns were crammed with cars, some twisted into huge, still smoking pile-ups caused as their drivers, fleeing the poisonous gas, died in agony at the wheel. Here and there bodies were strewn outside the smashed cars, victims flung out by the force of the collisions or propelled by their last dying gasps, trying to escape the very air that carried death.

  Safe but not secure in the artificial bubble world of his F-16 cockpit, Hunter saw masses of bodies littered around the city of Frankfurt. The streets were clogged with carnage, spilling out beyond the city limits in straggling dry rivers of corpses that marked the futile attempts of the denizens to escape the gas attack.

  Only death as far as the eye could see. No motion, no life, just death. Once again the Black Spectre had visited Europe. Centuries before it had come in the guise of the plague and had wiped out more than a quarter of the population. Now it needed no natural mask—man had invented terrifying new means to improve on nature’s destructive powers.

  “Vengeance is mine,” thought Hunter as he flew over the grisly tableau of pestilence below. He looked over at Jones, who was scanning the countryside too, undoubtedly thinking much the same thoughts. There would be vengeance enough to go around …

  Chapter 18

  BACK AT ROTA, HUNTER landed directly behind Jones, bringing the F-16 in for a flawless three-point landing.

  He taxied off the main runway onto a cross-strip, waiting as a long stream of C-17s and C-5As trundled across his path, lining up for their takeoffs back to the States on a parallel strip.

  He felt their jet wash rock his plane from side to side as their big engines pushed them along at faster and faster speeds, finally heaving the groaning behemoths into the air near the end of the runway. Hunter watched, thinking how improbable it must seem to those less familiar with aerodynamics to see more than a hundred tons of metal machine become airborne.

  The transports went past, and he slowly maneuvered the fighter toward the speci
ally constructed hardstands that now housed the aircraft of the 16th TFW.

  Inside the gray caverns were fueling stations, munitions loaders, and repair facilities for the F-16s. The thick concrete walls were designed to withstand almost anything the Soviets could throw at them, short of a nuke. And if it got to that point, Hunter reminded himself, it wouldn’t much matter where the hell the planes were if they were still on the ground.

  Oddly the hardstands and hangars still carried the markings and insignia of the US Navy, and their overlarge dimensions bore testimony to the fact that they were actually designed for the big P-3C Orions of the Navy’s anti-sub patrol. When the war broke out, a flight of Orions had been shuffled around to provide a home for the 16th TFW’s smaller F-16s.

  Originally the F-16s would have been based up north at the NATO base in Torrejon, near Madrid. That sprawling airfield and support facility had been constructed at great expense by the Air Force, and it was virtually dedicated to the F-16 fighters which had been its primary residents. The 16th would have shared the base with the 72 Falcons that formerly comprised the 401st TAC Air Wing, joining in their defense of NATO’s vulnerable southern flank with close air support and interception missions.

  But several years before, politics had reared its ugly head to deny NATO the use of the base. The Spanish government at the time thought the bases were too “provocative.” So the F-16s were stuck on the “ass-end of Europe” instead of being hundreds of miles closer to the battle.

  Hunter forced himself not to dwell on the stupid political decision that had forced the F-16s to fly out of Rota. He wasn’t a politician—he was a soldier. As such, he was supposedly trained to fly and fight anywhere.

  After turning the F-16 over to the ground crew, Hunter quickly headed for the briefing room to get the lowdown from Jones on their recent mission.

  He found the small room nearly overflowing with pilots. The general was already there, analyzing the communiques and trying to evaluate the results of the surprise anti-airfield strike they’d just conducted. Still in his flight suit and puffing on a fresh cigar, the senior officer was sifting through a mountain of paper, poring over the coded messages coming through from airbases around Europe, and from the mission coordinator in Belgium. Finally, he made some notes, tapped a few numbers into a small handheld calculator, and turned to the pilots who were buzzing around in small groups or talking to the debriefing officers at tables around the room’s periphery.

  All eyes turned toward the small podium as Jones approached it, paper in hand.

  “Gentlemen,” he begun formally, “it gives me great pleasure to report the preliminary results of Operation Punchout, our strike against the Soviets’ forward air bases. We won’t be able to verify all the data for some time, but the indications are that we did considerable damage to most of their forward airfields.”

  Spontaneous cheering erupted from the tired pilots, elated to know their mission had been a success.

  “Intelligence estimates that most will be inoperable for at least two weeks,” Jones continued. “Some even longer …”

  There was another round of cheers.

  “We also have a preliminary report that states we took out more than three hundred enemy aircraft during the operation, most of them on the ground.”

  More cheering.

  Then Jones’s voice took on a sobering tone.

  “NATO losses,” he said gravely, “were thirty-seven aircraft. Ten Weasels went down either over the SAM belt or the Soviet airfields. The biggest single loss involved a squadron of twelve Luftwaffe Tornados coming in for Roundhouse. They were jumped by MiGs that managed to get off the ground early. All were lost. A dozen decoy planes in all were shot down, including DuPont here of the Sixteenth.”

  An awkward hush fell over the roomful of pilots, remembering their comrade who would never return. Jones quietly explained that a NATO search and rescue team had been sent to the crash site minutes after it happened, but there was nothing that anyone could have done.

  The mood only got worse as Jones revealed another map of the battle zone, this one indicating the latest intelligence on the ground fighting.

  Despite the vast success of Operation Punchout, it was clear to everyone in the room that the situation on the ground was getting worse for NATO. Judging from the spreading red arrows on Jones’s briefing map, it was apparent that Soviet armor, obviously equipped with CBW decontamination gear, had began pouring into desolate, lifeless West Germany like an iron tidal wave. All indications were that the main force of the Red Army was driving fast and furiously toward cities like Frankfurt, Mannheim, Karlsruhe and Bonn.

  And the only thing in between were the scattered NATO rear guard ground forces.

  Even before the Red Army had made its move into West Germany, SACEUR (Supreme Allied Commander, Europe) ordered most of the NATO heavy armored units to fall back as planned in a measured withdrawal to more defensible positions, behind the Rhine. Within 12 hours of the Soviet attack, most of these NATO units were in motion, moving deliberately westward through the chemical-contaminated wasteland that Germany had become.

  But not everyone was taking part in this dreary, strategic retreat.

  Someone had to stay behind and slow the Red surge. In one area—it being designated by several blue dots on Jones’s map—this unenviable task fell to several US and German artillery units both equipped with big 155mm self-propelled howitzers, some US Army Armored Cavalry forces, and a brigade of German national guard forces, the Landwehr. With little more than sheer guts, this delaying force would stay behind and set up ambushes for the Soviets advancing on roadways in central West Germany.

  The cluster of blue dots was labeled NATO Blue Force Charlie. Jones pointed to their position on the map and said grimly: “Of all the rear guard groups, these guys are going to get hit the worst—almost point-blank. But they’re buying precious time for the armored units, who are going to need every second of it to establish positions west of the Rhine.”

  Poor bastards, Hunter thought. He knew the projected casualty rate for the lightly armored anti-tank units was more than ninety percent, and that was under a normal battle scenario.

  And there would be nothing normal about this …

  But he also realized that their nearly hopeless stand might make the critical difference between the clash of armored titans that would surely follow. Without their rear guard effort, the Soviets might catch up and overwhelm the retreating NATO armor before it had a chance to establish a defensible position behind the Rhine, and that would seriously affect NATO’s “strategic withdrawal” plan.

  So the artillerymen and the Armored Cav and the German national guardsmen would all have to be thrown to the sacrifice. It was a grim fact of war, but that didn’t make giving the orders any easier.

  “Now, depending on the results of their initial encounter, we’re going to give these guys in Blue Force Charlie as much help as possible,” Jones said. “Well be taking off soon to provide close air support for the main armor counterstrike.

  “Of course, other air units will be doing the same all up and down the line, and, judging from our success against the enemy forward air bases, enemy air activity should be scattered at best.”

  Jones took a puff of his cigar, then continued: “Now if we’re successful, we can stall the main Soviet thrust and the Army boys will have some breathing room to set up some better defensive positions behind the Rhine.”

  “And if we fail?” JT asked. “What happens if the whole front collapses?”

  Jones didn’t so much as wince. “Then,” he said soberly, “the Soviets will reach Paris in less than two weeks.”

  In the cold sunlight of the central German plain, the first steps of the deadly dance had already begun.

  Oberleutnant Gunter Wessel of the Bundewehr’s Second Artillery Battery shivered inside his parka as he stood beside his massive 155mm self-propelled gun and watched the empty stretch of road before him through his powerful Hasselblad bin
oculars.

  He knew that very soon a torrent of Soviet armor would be moving down this particular section of rural roadway. And with the pullout several hours before of the last of the other NATO armor units, he and his men and their six big guns were alone against the Red Army.

  Wessel checked his watch, then barked out a command to his gunnery sergeant. The sergeant yanked the lanyard of the M-198 155mm howitzer and a deafening report echoed through the woods where Wessel’s mobile guns had dug in. The howitzer leaped back a few feet from the recoil of the shot and spat a long cylindrical projectile out into the frigid afternoon sky.

  At precisely 200 feet over the spot they had aimed, the howitzer shell opened, allowing nine small parachutes to escape and float to earth. The chutes gently deposited their loads onto the hard-packed frozen road surface some three kilometers in front of Wessel’s emplacement.

  The German officer did some quick calculations, then called out another order to fire. Another explosion shook the ground beneath his feet. This time the small parachutes came to rest just beyond the first set, slightly off to the side of the road.

  Four more shells, 36 more parachutes. Five minutes later, Wessel was confident that the road was adequately sewn with the deadly, air-delivered mines.

  He nodded curtly at the gunnery sergeant and gave a new order to train the howitzer’s long barrel down at the highway a few hundred meters beyond the spot where the mines were laid. Satisfied with their preparedness, he climbed up on his 155mm self-propelled gun, directing the driver to move the clanking artillery piece to a position further forward and to the left. Now all they had to do was wait for the enemy armored column.