The Red Line

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.