The Red Line

• • •

Within minutes of the Russians escape into the woods, the Americans undertook a powerful response. First, six Apaches appeared like avenging angels over the forest. Without warning, the helicopters dove at the snowy evergreens. Rios watched their guns blazing in the early-evening darkness. The tortured shrieks of the wounded and dying were carried to him on the crisp night air. Deep within the dark forest, Russian blood flowed down the broad trunks of the ancient trees.

The Russians responded with venom of their own. They added their own brand of poison to the witches’ brew. Antiaircraft missiles soared up through the branches. The missiles screamed through the forest’s canopy. An exploding Apache fell from the low heavens in thirty flaming pieces.

The Apaches sought to revenge their squadron’s loss. The killers from above brought perdition’s fires down upon the treetops. Rockets ripped through the thick evergreens. Five 30mm chain guns rained unspeakable savagery upon the ground below. The Russians clawed deeper into their holes, digging for the earth’s frail protection. Like a heavy spring sap, the crushed remains of the parachutists’ tattered bodies oozed onto the forest floor. The forest’s snows turned bright red. Suffering and carnage were everywhere.

The angel of death looked down through the darkness and smiled a broad, satisfied smile.

Twelve Black Hawk helicopters, supported by half as many furiously buzzing drones, swooped in to relieve their brothers. The Black Hawks’ machine guns kept the pressure on. Once again, missiles and rockets rained down. The less-well-armored Black Hawks were an easier prey for the enemy hiding in the trees. In the first ten minutes of this new battle between ground and air, three whirling rotor blades stopped in midflight when struck by a hail of gunfire. When they were hit, the crippled Black Hawks slowly spun out of control. They plunged into the waiting evergreens. Spinning helplessly toward the unforgiving ground, the Black Hawk crews watched their lives coming to an end. The exploding helicopters filled the wicked night with mayhem once more. The Black Hawks pulled back.

The drones continued their relentless pressure.

The 82nd Airborne’s mortar teams raced to set up their firing tubes on the runways. A mortar barrage of fearsome intensity came down around the Russians’ heads. The exploding mortar rounds cut deep swaths through the trees. The majestic timbers were splintered by the fierce assault. The parachutists answered back. Using the long range of their sniper rifles, the Russians responded by picking off the soldiers of the mortar teams one by one. The surviving burgundy berets grabbed their equipment and withdrew. The helicopters returned to take their place.

The Apaches struck once more. Scores of rockets roared from beneath the attackers’ bellies. Shimmering fireworks thundered as the soul-stealing armaments struck the trees. The lethal munitions fought their way through the heavy foliage, reaching for the mortal flesh hiding on the frozen ground below.

With each new clash, the fence line would be illuminated by glittering flashes of fire and light. Like a sudden summer storm, the thundering bursts distorted the winter world, turning it surreal and misshaping its images. The menacing lightning bolts caused the dead Wilson to appear to be trying to speak. Wilson’s spectral grin, flashing over and over again in the darkness, haunted Rios and Goodman.

“Wilson, leave me alone!” Rios screamed.

But Wilson continued to grin and talk with every fearsome burst.

Death reached up to pluck a second spinning blackbird from the star-filled heavens. Another Apache went down.

The Bradleys rolled onto the runways. The fighting vehicles’ crews unleashed a curtain of cannon fire with their Bushmasters. The parachutists cut holes in the fences in a number of locations and futilely attempted to answer back with their shoulder-mounted antitank missiles. The killing went on without letup. The night reached its middle, and a suffocating fog rolled in upon the gruesome darkness. The casualties on both sides grew with every passing minute. During the countless hours, the suffering never ceased.

Finally, the sun rose on a new day. As it continued its midmorning journey, the morose shroud of frigid gray refused to relinquish its stranglehold upon the mangled forest. It was apparent that Ramstein would remain covered in a heavy fog for many hours to come.

Half of the one thousand parachutists who had reached the safety of the woods as darkness fell had failed to see the morning. The night’s sixteen hours of killing were finally at their end. A day filled with anguish was about to begin.

• • •

The smothering fog had swallowed the world around them. In the middle of a fierce battle involving thousands of men, the two airmen in the isolated bunker were all alone.

Hidden deep within the sand, Rios indiscriminately fired his machine gun into the mist-shrouded forest. The Russians answered back with wild gunfire of their own. Every now and then, mortal screams shattered the sinister morning as combatants on both sides were felled by a perverse death’s random whims.

The only parts of Rios’s body that were visible were his hands and forearms. With his tattered gloves, he gripped the powerful gun. There was no need to expose himself further to the enemy. The fog had grown so thick in the past few hours that he could not make out the ghostly fence fifty feet away. There was no possibility of seeing the parachutists lurking in the trees beyond even if he tried. During the unrelenting hours, Rios had learned a painful lesson from the Russian snipers and their lethal night scopes. While he watched his countrymen die around him, he’d discovered that an exposed American was a dead American.

“Goodman, the Russian rifle fire’s picking up again. I sure could use some help up here.”

Near the rear of the bunker, the luckless Goodman grappled with a badly bleeding left thigh. The wound was the result of a parachutist’s haphazard handiwork. He looked up at Rios and spoke through clenched teeth.

“Let me try to get this bleeding stopped first. The bullet hole in the back of my leg’s so damn big that no matter what I do, I can’t seem to slow it down.”

Next to Goodman, Wilson’s body lay where it had been tossed by a sniper’s bullet seventeen hours earlier. The back of Wilson’s head was gone. The dead airman was faceup in the pink snow. Beneath what remained of his splintered skull, the pool of blood and brain cells was frozen solid. The silly grin on Wilson’s face was also frozen in place. The grin would be there for all eternity.

The grin haunted Rios and Goodman throughout the long night. The annoying smile on the purplish lips mocked them. It was as if the smirking Wilson knew something in death that they could not know. It was almost as if Wilson were urging them to come join him in his ghoulish discovery. The eerie grin had enticed Rios, beseeching him to unmask Wilson’s unearthly secret. More than once during the terror of a horrific night of continual angst, Rios had believed it might be better to get it over with once and for all. A quick death from a sniper’s bullet just might be the ticket.

He’d fought those beckoning impulses often during the darkest moments. It would’ve been so simple. All he had to do was leap to his feet. In a matter of seconds, his misery would end. He’d receive the sleep for which his body screamed. A long, satisfying sleep. A sleep to last forever.

On more than one occasion, he’d come close to giving in to his tortured mind’s persistent prodding. Yet in the end, his innate need to survive hadn’t allowed him to take that final step into oblivion.

“Goodman, I’m almost out of ammunition.”

Goodman dragged himself through the dirty snow toward the front of the bunker.

“Use my M-4 if you have to. I’ve still got two clips left.” The grimacing Goodman dug into his parka pockets and pulled out the ammunition clips. “Here.”

Seventeen hours they’d been pinned down by the Russians. Unlike the maniacal enemy Rios had battled on the previous day, the group he clashed with during the eternal night had been exceptionally patient. Th

ey’d spent the dark hours picking off the sixty airmen protecting the eastern fence. By 10:00 a.m. on a winter morning thick with a suffocating blanket of morbid gray, only eight of the airmen on the fence line had survived unharmed.

The fog had hampered the Americans’ efforts. Three times during the night, small groups of Russians had found openings in the air base’s defenses. They slipped through unnoticed and headed for the aircraft hangars. Deeper inside the base, the M-1s, Bradleys, and Humvees waited. Each time, the armored vehicles’ sophisticated thermal sights located the invaders. On all three occasions, the 24th Infantry soldiers, supported by the burgundy berets, stopped the Russians before any serious harm could be done.

A fourth close call had occurred at a little before five. Nine parachutists crept through the fence and got to within a few hundred yards of the ammunition-storage area. The parachutists were preparing to fire rockets into the huge mountain of ordnance when two airborne soldiers in a Humvee spotted them. An expertly placed burst from the Humvee’s machine gun dropped six of the Russians. A second quick squeeze of the trigger eliminated the rest. Ten more seconds, and the eastern half of Ramstein would have disappeared in a crushing explosion.

Even if they’d accomplished nothing more, the presence of the parachutists and their lethal antiaircraft missiles at the end of the runways had caused Ramstein’s planes to remain on the ground. The fighter aircraft had sat throughout the night in their deeply bunkered worlds. The pilots’ inability to take to the skies had been acutely felt by the frontline soldiers in desperate need of air support.

With Ramstein out of the fray, the task of wrestling the Russians for control of the heavens had fallen upon Lakenheath and Mildenhall. Using their superior weapons, the American pilots from across the English Channel had succeeded in claiming tenuous ownership of the moonlit skies.

Reinforced by a number of stateside squadrons and supported by the Royal Air Force, the American fighters had done a magnificent job of crossing the narrow seas and holding on to the night. During the long hours of air combat, the star-strewn skies had been dominated by the outnumbered defenders. The talented American pilots had forced back threat after threat from the dogged MiGs.

Still, the besieged ground forces would have no chance of surviving the coming day without the continuing dominance of their air forces. If they were going to avoid a quick defeat, the Allies had to rule the skies.

As the sun edged higher on the second full day of the war, the Americans knew they’d have to improve their fragile hold upon the heavens. To do so, the Russians had to be cleaned out of the woods around Ramstein. With the parachutists eliminated, Ramstein’s powerful air assets would be able to race into battle once more. With Ramstein back in the war, the Americans would be in an excellent position to maintain some control of the skies throughout the second day.

Without Ramstein, all was lost.

With Ramstein out of the war, another massive Russian air assault similar to the one on the previous morning would undoubtedly succeed in gaining permanent control of the air war.

For the moment, the Americans were in no position to stop such a determined attack. Ramstein’s fighters had to rejoin the struggle. And they had to do it soon. While the sun continued its frosty rise, eradicating the staunch parachutists hidden deep within the twilight of the sinister woods had become an imperative.

It would be no easy task. With seventeen hours to prepare for the American attack, the Russians were well dug in. Their positions were strongly fortified. And despite the untold agony they’d experienced, the surviving parachutists were as resolute as they’d been yesterday afternoon. The Russians weren’t yet ready to concede defeat. In fact, they believed quite the opposite. Despite the sobering reality of their situation, the parachutists remained convinced that a miraculous victory would somehow be theirs. Ramstein would fall. They were certain of it. They’d gone through a hellish night of endless cruelty at the hands of the fierce American assaults. Yet despite everything the Americans tried, the parachutists were still there, ready and waiting. And as lethal as ever.

As the long hours passed, the 82nd Airborne had waited for the sunrise. Entering the forest in total darkness to battle such an elite enemy was beyond consideration. The Americans were certainly their equals. But during the horrid night, they’d have to battle from afar and wait for the new day before daring to approach the killing ground.

• • •

The situation in the skies over Germany was growing desperate. The Americans had to get Ramstein’s fighters back into the war. They couldn’t wait any longer. The time had come to enter the ominous woods. The burgundy berets would use the thick fog to conceal their presence. In small groups, the airborne soldiers started silently slipping into the trees on both sides of the base. In fifteen minutes, nearly a thousand Americans had infiltrated the tattered forest. Five hundred talented assassins waited in the mist to greet them.

One company of American paratroopers and the surviving M-1s and Bradleys were left in reserve inside Ramstein.

Both sides had spent thousands of hours preparing for the hand-to-hand combat that was moments away from erupting in the frightening forest. This time the dying was going to be up close and personal.

In twos and threes, American apparitions warily crept into the malignant evergreens. Step by stolen step, they drew ever deeper into the shadowy woods. The enemy bided his time. Behind fallen logs, in fog-infested glades, in the trunk of the next tree, the Russians watched and waited. The Americans continued on.

Without warning, a burst of gunfire rattled through the branches, echoing from limb to limb as it shattered the morning’s fleeting calm. Two shots rang out in return. A scream filled the forest on the far left. Another mortal cry could be heard in the distance. A soldier’s death rattle was devoured by the gray world. Two spectral figures sprang into lethal combat. Their long knives glistened. Further battle to the left. A struggle on the right. The forest was suddenly full of life. And death.

The Russians had the element of surprise. The Americans had the superior numbers. In the beginning, surprise was winning. Two Americans fell for every Russian loss. The pitched battle wore on, reaching the twenty-minute point. And as the Russian positions were identified and engaged, superior numbers steadily turned the tide toward the burgundy berets. Blood flowed like a raging river. The fight, man on man, went on without pause.

After forty minutes of nonstop killing, it was painfully obvious to the Russians that their position was hopeless. Three-fourths of the parachutists who had slipped into the forest as yesterday’s sun fell were dead. The survivors were outnumbered three to one. The final 250 knew if they stayed where they were, they’d soon be joining their mortally wounded comrades. And Ramstein would still be standing.

A new plan was hastily drawn. It was conceived at the height of the fierce struggle in the fog-filled forest. It would be little more than suicide, but it was the only option left. Leaving a small force behind in the woods to hold off the Americans, the parachutists would make an all-out assault at the fence lines. If they could catch the Americans unprepared, they might be able to break through the wire and breach the enemy’s defenses. All it would take was one swift missile into the air base’s mountain of high explosives to avenge their comrades’ deaths and their own impending ones.

If they could get near enough to the ammunition-storage area, their efforts and the efforts of their fallen friends would not have been wasted. Five minutes inside the fence was all they’d need to be in a position for a shot at the storage depot.

Surprise would be everything.

In the forest’s gray world, the Russians disengaged. The parachutists slipped away. Handfuls remained behind to occupy the Americans. Using the frozen fog to shield them, the Russians stealthily moved toward the southern and eastern fences. The burgundy berets noticed a marked decrease in the struggle. But for the moment, they didn’t unders

tand the reason for the abrupt change in the battle’s intensity. After an hour of unrelenting killing, the 82nd Airborne’s soldiers presumed the vast majority of the Russians had been eliminated. The Americans believed the battle was nearly over. They cautiously continued to search the shadows deep within the solemn forest for further signs of the enemy.

The Russians’ main force was quite near the fence. The snipers inside the tree line intensified their fire, pinning down the handful of surviving Americans on the other side of the wire. The desperate mission was poised to commence.

• • •

“Man, I can’t get this bleeding stopped,” Goodman said. Pain was etched on his features.

Preoccupied with his own injuries, Goodman hadn’t been listening to the gruesome fight to the death that floated on the thick haze out of the tortured trees. But Rios had heard the dying quite clearly.

The sounds of battle, the quick bursts of gunfire, and the cries of anguish had been carried to him on the heavy layers of gray. For the past ten minutes, the sounds had been growing increasingly quiet. Like the American airborne soldiers, the embattled airman suspected the second struggle for Ramstein would soon be at its end.

It would be. But not for the reasons the exhausted airman suspected.

“Hang in there,” Rios said. “The battle’s almost over in the woods. The snipers are making one last attempt to find us before the 82nd Airborne finds them. After that, we’ll be home free. There’s hardly any fighting going on. I’ll bet the medics will be able to get out here to get you in the next fifteen minutes.”

Goodman stared at the glistening blood covering every inch of his pant leg. “I don’t know if I’ll last that long.”

“Sure you will. Just tighten that tourniquet real good and hold on. I’m certain help will be here soon.”

Yet as Rios cautiously peeked over the wall of sand at the devouring world around him, he wasn’t certain of anything. He couldn’t see more than a few feet. And he wasn’t at all sure what was happening. The airman slid back into the bunker. He sat staring at nothing in particular, wondering what to do next. He thought about firing a few rounds into the woods from Goodman’s M-4. He decided, however, to wait a little longer before reminding the snipers he was still here, ready to take their lives should they make a mistake.