THE TEN THOUSAND

by Harold Coyle

  Tonight her fears and doubts came forth like a spring storm. At first there was only a slight darkening on the distant horizon, so subtle that one hardly noticed it. Then came a gentle stirring of the wind, first that way, then this, as if Mother Nature herself was vacillating, unsure if she wanted to unleash her fury. But this lasted only a few minutes. With the measured pace of a great musical composition, the various elements began to make their presence felt. The clouds rolled in, casting their shadows across everything beneath them. The wind gave up its hesitancy and began to move across the face of the earth with purpose and force. Finally in the distance, like great kettledrums announcing a storm of war-horses, thunder warned all who heard that a great storm was coming. Finally, when all the elements were ready, wind, rain, darkness, and thunder, the storm unleashed its full fury and came crashing down.

  In the beginning, during her first few years of public life, Wilson had discounted her feelings, telling close friends that they were nothing more than silly emotions that she needed to master. But as her political career blossomed and she grew in both importance and ability, Wilson also matured and found that she didn't need to deny herself or her emotions. For she found that, like the spring storm, an occasional venting of her fears or anger in private served to release her tensions and cleanse her soul in the same way that a spring storm unleashes the pent-up fury of the heavens and makes way for the cool, fresh calmness that inevitably follows.

  So Wilson chose not to sit in the War Room with key members of her staff like mourners attending a wake. Instead she stayed in her private apartments and allowed her emotions and thoughts free rein for a while. In a few hours she would need to be in complete control of herself, for it would be in the aftermath of the operation to take back the nuclear weapons from the Germans, an operation that was about to commence several thousand miles away, while the wounded were still being tended to and the dead counted, that her struggle would begin.

  In her wanderings, Wilson came to the window and stopped. Looking out, she could see the lights of the city that lit the streets and the many imposing statues and monuments that made the city of Washington an open-air museum. Even at this hour there was a fair amount of traffic, something that never ceased to amaze her. She still didn't understand cities, even after living in Denver for years and now Washington. They were alien places with their own rules, their own codes of ethics, their own ways of life.

  In many ways, Wilson thought, her inability to understand the city was like her ignorance of the innermost psychology that drove the military machine that she now commanded. While the organizational charts and mission statements of each of the services and units were simple to understand and their use easily explained, she lacked a real appreciation of what it meant to be a soldier or an airman or a sailor. Nothing in all her years of college, life as a mother, member of Colorado's leading law firm, and governor of that state gave her any idea of what motivated young men and women to place themselves with such casualness into harm's way in defense of a vague idea, a principle. How shallow such words as duty, honor, country, must seem when facing death. Or were they shallow? Was there real meaning in those words that only a person faced with his or her own mortality could really understand and appreciate?

  Leaning her head against the window, Wilson felt the coldness of the glass against her warm forehead. When she had been a young girl in Colorado and her head seemed so full of troubled thoughts that it appeared that it must burst, she would go over to the window and place her head against the pane of glass. Somehow, in the mysterious ways that elude explanation or logic, the image of the soft, quiet landscape and the feeling of the cold glass against her brow served to calm her.

  There was nothing more to do. She had done what she had felt was right. Now it was up to others to do what was necessary, leaving her to deal with her emotions alone and prepare for the consequences of her decisions.

  With every turn of his staff car's tires, he rolled closer to the front gate of the storage site. Seated in the front passenger seat clutching the assault rifle that lay across his lap, Ilvanich could feel his heart beat louder, more violently. Though he tried not to, his eyes remained fixed on the muzzle of a machine gun that protruded from the aperture of a concrete bunker that sat next to the front gate. Ilvanich knew that behind that gun there was a young German soldier, a paratrooper, with his finger wrapped around the trigger and his gaze fixed along the sights of the machine gun that was locked on his vehicle. In silence, while Sergeant George Couvelha seated to his left drove them forward at a steady, unrelenting pace, Ilvanich waited for the machine gun to fire. At this range there was little doubt that both he and Couvelha would perish in the first volley. Yet there was nothing he could do. It had to be this way. It was expected of him. He had known all of his life that nothing less would be acceptable.

  Still, sheer terror that tried to wrestle away Ilvanich's sanity couldn't be denied. It was like the feeling of helplessness he got when he sat in the front seat of a roller coaster. Slowly, with mechanical precision, the roller coaster was cranked up the first incline. Ilvanich hated roller coasters, hated them with a passion. To please a girl he was with or a little nephew he was entertaining, however, he would always go, as was expected of him. There would be when the lead car reached the top nothing but sheer terror, panic that Ilvanich was expected to master because he was, in the eyes of those with him, the strong one. Today, as on those occasions, there was no other place he could be. He was where he was expected to be and nothing and no one could change that. It was his fate, and he accepted it in silence.

  At the command post that served as the headquarters for the 2nd Battalion, 26th Parachute Brigade, Lieutenant Colonel Jakob Radek greeted the news that there was a convoy of trucks carrying troops approaching the front gate with a great sigh of relief. His pleas to Colonel Haas, his brigade commander, had been heard. It had been a stupid decision to strip away one of his companies and send it to Berlin for riot control just when the Americans were growing closer and the danger of a strike against the storage sites was at its greatest. Radek knew it. And Haas knew it.

  In stormy conversations, both when he had received the order early the night before and again not more than three hours ago, Radek had told Haas exactly what he thought of the decision, not to mention the fools in Berlin who had placed such a demand on him. Though he knew he had been wrong to do so, it was, he felt, necessary to make his protest in the strongest possible terms. That Haas, or one of the idiots in Berlin, had finally come to his senses and realized what he had done didn't surprise Radek. Without further thought, he ordered the sergeant of the guard at the gate to have the company commander of the returning company report immediately to his office. Radek was anxious to get his third company back into the defensive positions inside the inner secure area where the nuclear weapons were stored. Hanging up the phone, he finally felt that he could breathe easy. Given the choice of having a strong force in the inner secure area at the expense of weakening his outer perimeter, Radek had opted for the strong outer perimeter. Since it was his mission, after all, to keep the Americans away from the nuclear weapons, it made perfect sense to Radek that the further away from the inner secure area he could keep the Americans the better. Besides, he reasoned, if the outer perimeter broke at some point, he could always withdraw units on the outer perimeter that were not under pressure into the inner secure area. That this gamble in deployment of his forces would never be put to the test was for Radek a great relief.

  At the gate the sergeant of the guard looked at the receiver of the telephone, then at the corporal who stood across from him. Radek's last instructions, in light of the standing orders that no one under any circumstances was to be allowed in, did not make any sense at all. Of course, pulling one of the companies away from the battalion and sending it to Berlin for riot duty didn't make sense either. Carefully replacing the receiver, the sergeant looked at the convoy, now less than fifty meters away, and then back to the corporal. He shoo
k his head before he gave an upward motion of his arm, the signal to his men to remove the barriers at the gate and let the convoy through.

  At this range, Ilvanich knew that the machine gunner couldn't miss. There would be no chance to duck, no opportunity to strike back. He would fall with the first burst. It came as a shock when Couvelha shouted, "They're opening the gate for us, Major. The fools are going to let us in!"

  Tearing his eyes away from the sinister black muzzle of the machine gun, Ilvanich looked over to the gate and saw a German corporal waving them through a now opened gate. For the briefest of moments Ilvanich was flabbergasted. What, he wondered, was going on? But quickly he recovered from his surprise and ordered Couvelha to continue forward. "They must be expecting someone and they think we are them. Go, go. Keep going but do not speed up."

  Just as Ilvanich's vehicle pulled even with the front gate, Colonel Johann Haas's staff car came out of the wood line and into the open stretch of road that led to the storage site. He saw the convoy of trucks entering the storage site and wondered what was going on. Already angered by the tone of his last conversation with Radek, Haas began to slip into an absolute rage.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Haas was a reasonable man. But these, as people kept reminding him, were not ordinary circumstances. Besides, he was not used to having his subordinates argue with him over such important issues. While Haas was always willing to listen to the thoughts and ideas of his subordinates, when he gave a final order he expected discussion to stop and for the order to be carried out. Radek's continued badgering and the tone of his conversations had infuriated Haas, who was already angered over his dealings with his own superiors. After Radek's second phone call of the morning, Haas wanted to run from his office, jump into his vehicle, and drive immediately to the weapons storage site and relieve Radek on the spot. But there were other, more pressing matters that needed to be tended to. The battalion he had sent to Berlin for riot duty had turned out to be woefully inadequate for the task. Though he didn't like the idea, he had ordered each of his other two battalions guarding the two nuclear weapons sites near Potsdam to send one of their companies to Berlin to augment the battalion already there.

  This problem was only one that the parachute colonel had to deal with. Besides his own units, he discovered two battalions from the 3rd Panzer Division in Berlin. They had come into the city in the middle of the night after the President of the Parliament had made a personal appeal to the commander of the 3rd Panzer. By dawn Haas had learned that the President of the Parliament, fearing that Ruff had brought Haas's battalion into Berlin to intimidate them, felt the need to counter Haas's battalion with units loyal to the Parliament. So, although he had wanted to deal with Radek, Haas had felt that it was more important to meet with the commander of the 3rd Panzer's units in Berlin and ensure that they established a clear understanding of where each stood on the matter of loyalty to the government. The last thing Haas wanted to do was to have various units of the Bundeswehr start tearing away at each other because of misunderstandings.

  Yet now, seeing the lead vehicle of the convoy start to roll through the front gate of the storage site, Haas regretted his earlier decision. Something was happening here, and he didn't like the looks of it. Haas began shouting to his driver and making gestures. "Go around. Go around this convoy and head for the front gate, now!"

  Caught off guard by his commander's sudden shouts, the driver did exactly as he was told. Jerking the wheel to the left, he stepped on the accelerator and began to race down the road in the left lane so that he could pass the trucks as the lead vehicles of the convoy began to roll into the storage site.

  At the gate the guard corporal turned his attention away from the trucks passing him as he heard the gunning of an engine. Looking down the flat, straight road, he saw a staff car headed right toward him and gaining speed. Throwing up his right arm and waving violently, he yelled halt three times in quick succession. The driver of the staff car only drove faster. Realizing that he was in danger, the corporal began to run for the cover of the bunker, yelling to the paratroopers inside to open fire as he ran by.

  The sudden order to halt, followed by the rattle of the machine gun behind them, caused Ilvanich to snap, "NOW! STEP ON IT."

  Like Haas's driver, Couvelha complied without hesitation. The inner secure area was straight ahead, less than three hundred meters away. With luck they could cover that distance in a matter of seconds and have a real chance to grab the weapons. Couvelha ignored Ilvanich as Ilvanich kicked his door open, leveled his automatic rifle, and began to spray the bewildered Germans along the side of the road as they emerged from buildings.

  Radek had just opened the door of the commandant's building when the shooting started. Stepping out onto the front step, he gasped in horror as he watched a staff car careen madly past him. It was going as fast as it could while the passenger on the side opposite from where Radek stood fired wildly out of his open door. Radek was still standing there, bewildered and disbelieving, when the first truck of the convoy went by. In the rear of the truck, the canvas sides were rolled up, revealing the German soldiers inside crouching behind the thin sides of the truck's cargo bed as it came roaring past. Like the soldier in the staff car, they too were firing their rifles as they went. Though their aim was wild, the volume of fire they put out more than made up for it. Hit in the shoulder, and then the chest, Radek was thrown backwards through the open door of his office. There, bleeding and unable to get up or even call for help, he lay listening to the sound of trucks rushing by, punctuated by screams of pain, panic, shooting, and every now and then a random explosion.

  Outside the site, Colonel Haas pulled himself out of his overturned staff car. His driver, crumpled up like a ball of rags behind the steering wheel, was dead. And from what he could tell, he had two broken legs. Once he was out on the paved road leading into the site, Haas looked toward the gate, still gaping open. Like Radek, he listened helplessly to the sounds of battle as they moved away from him and closer to the inner secure area.

  Specialist Kevin Pape ignored the wind whipping in his face, made harsher by the speed of the truck he was riding in. Instead, he prepared to fire the machine gun that he had cared for and manned for many days but had never had the opportunity to fire in anger. Leaning into the weapon, Pape tucked his chin up against the shoulder stock, took careful aim at a group of three Germans running for cover behind a bunker near the gate of the inner secure area, and opened fire. Seeing his first burst of seven to ten rounds fly over his targets, he stretched himself up slightly and fired again. This time he was on target, sending the middle soldier tumbling down and causing the man behind him to make a quick leap lest he trip over his fallen comrade. With a slight correction, Pape caught the German in midair.

  Absorbed by his engagement, Pape did not notice that a machine gun in the bunker where his targets had been running was now firing on Ilvanich's staff car. It wasn't until that car, its driver hit, made a sudden turn to the right and went crashing into the barbed-wire fence that Pape realized what was happening. The driver of his truck, Private Ken Hillman, cut the wheel to the left to avoid crashing into the rear of Ilvanich's staff car. In doing so, he lost control of the truck and, like Ilvanich's staff car, the truck went crashing into the barbed-wire fence. Unlike Ilvanich's car, the heavier truck continued through the fence and into the anti-vehicle ditch beyond. The front wheels bit into the soft mud of the ditch and buried the front fenders.

  Even before the truck stopped, Sergeant Rasper slapped Pape on the side of his leg. "OUT! OUT! EVERYONE OUT!"

  Reaching forward, Pape pulled the pin that held his machine gun in the truck's ring mount, dropped inside, and yelled to the driver as he started to duck out the door on the left. "Don't forget the ammo. Grab the ammo boxes."

  As Pape began to go out the door, Hillman yelled, "Got it," and leaped from his.

  Rasper, in the middle, was right behind Pape as a stream of bullets smashed the track's windshield.
"Go, damn it. Get your ass out of here." Excited, Rasper gave Pape a shove.

  Caught off balance, Pape and his machine gun went flying down, face-first, into the mud of the anti-vehicle ditch.

  Pulling himself out of his vehicle, Ilvanich paused only long enough to satisfy himself that Sergeant Couvelha was beyond help. Then, with his automatic rifle in his right hand, he jumped up onto the hood of his staff car, placed his left hand on top of the pole that the barbed wire was strung on, and boosted himself up and over the wire fence. Like any well-trained paratrooper, he brought his feet and knees together while he was still in the air and prepared to roll as soon as he felt the shock of hitting the ground. The mud in the ditch, however, was softer than he had anticipated. He sank several inches into it and never rolled until he remembered to do so.

  His timing was impeccable. Ilvanich's gymnastics caught the attention of the Germans manning the machine gun in the bunker at the entrance of the inner secure area. Finished with the truck for a moment, the machine gunner brought the muzzle of his weapon around to the left and fired a burst at Ilvanich. He had, however, disappeared into the anti-vehicle ditch. Cursing, the gunner slapped the side of his weapon. "Why in the hell did they dig a ditch like that right in front of the bunker's field of fire? The Russians must have had a death wish."

  The sergeant behind him smacked him on the side of his helmet. "Shut up and go back to the truck. The enemy are deploying."

  But by the time the machine gunner had managed to bring the gun back to the right, the last of the rangers that had been in the rear of Rasper's truck were in the ditch and rushing forward to the wall of the anti-vehicle ditch nearest to the inner secure area.

  Throwing himself against that wall, Ilvanich paused for the first time since the shooting had started to assess the situation. Twenty meters to his left he watched for a second while Rasper deployed his men against the wall and, like him, stopped to catch his breath and sort things out. Behind him he could hear firing from the direction of the buildings they had gone through. Lieutenant Fitzhugh, no doubt, was deploying the rest of the ranger company and engaging the bulk of the German garrison. Though Ilvanich didn't know what had happened that had allowed them to get so far, he knew that if they didn't do something in the next minute or so, the Germans to their rear would be able to assemble their overwhelming numbers. They would then be free to wipe out Ilvanich and the rangers, now trapped between the inner secure area and the main compound.