The parachutists did the only thing they could. They fought and died on the bloody ground of Ramstein. At the very least, they were determined to drag a few more Americans into the netherworld with them. They’d been close to victory. In the end, however, the parachutists’ defeat was complete. In a one-sided battle, all seventy-five went down beneath the power of the swarming Americans.
The depot had survived. Its immense supply of bombs and missiles would continue to be carried to the flight line. The bellies and wings of the American fighter aircraft would be filled with death and destruction over and again in the days to come.
Throughout the base, the handfuls of surviving parachutists were soon identified, isolated, and destroyed. With a vengeance, the Americans swooped down upon the remaining pockets of resistance. They swiftly eliminated the last of their airborne adversaries.
The process of cleaning up the battlefield began. Wounded parachutists were shown no mercy. The revenge-minded Americans killed them on the spot. Far too many of their friends lay dead in the fields and woods surrounding Ramstein for them to show any compassion to their ruthless opponent.
It was all over. The Americans had won. Ramstein was back in their control. The parachutists had been swept clean from the evergreen forest and the runways of the immense base. The time had come to sweep the German skies clean.
Squadrons of virulent fighters rose from Ramstein’s runways. They burst through the fog and headed into the late-morning sky. Flight after flight roared east to vanquish the enemy.
It was now almost a certainty. With Ramstein back in the war, the skies on the second day would belong to the Americans.
• • •
In another hour, the air police would discover the lone surviving airman in the collapsed bunker near the middle of the eastern fence. Rios was plucked from the sand. The critically wounded airman was rushed to the base hospital.
Inside the chaotic hospital, Arturo Rios lay unmoving while medics applied sutures and dressings to his mauled shoulder. The young airman knew he’d survived to fight another day. That thought, however, gave him little comfort. He’d witnessed far too much death and come much too near his own to ever again be the same. He’d straddled the line that separates the living from the dead, and he was no longer sure on which side of the line he truly belonged.
Stoically, he stared at the ceiling while they attended to his wound.
The light in his dark eyes no longer burned.
In many ways, he envied Wilson and Goodman.
CHAPTER 45
January 30—1:15 p.m.
NCO Housing Area, United States European Command Headquarters
Patch Barracks, Stuttgart
Sergeant Major Harold Williams lifted a crushed and twisted bed frame. He passed it up to those at ground level. Twenty feet away, the teenage boy dug in another section of the shattered building. The two were well into the bombed-out basement. All morning long, they’d been painfully raising cement and furniture over their heads and handing it to those above.
For the past twenty-four hours, the exhausted fifteen-year-old had worked on without thinking. With every inch of his tortured body pleading with him to stop, he continued his demented digging. For each member of the determined group, it had become an all-encompassing fixation. Using only their bare hands, they were going to defeat the tons of mortar and concrete to reach into hell and rescue those trapped below.
If they could find anyone alive.
The boy peered into the twisted rubble. A curious expression spread across his face. For a better view, he knelt and pressed his nose against a small opening next to a crumbling cement slab. He looked up at the sergeant major with a start.
“Hey, Sergeant Major! I think I see something down there!”
“What is it, Ryan?” Williams answered.
The boy stuck his face into the opening once again. He turned back to the sergeant major. “It’s a baby! And he’s alive!”
Williams rushed through the jumbled refuse toward the boy’s position. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah. I can see him moving.”
The rescue party scrambled into the hole. The weariness of twenty-four hours of mind-numbing toil was swept away in an instant. Harold Williams was the first to arrive. He knelt and looked into the opening next to the top of one of the laundry
room’s dryers. Three feet below, he could see the small child.
“Christopher! Christopher!”
The baby moved in response to Williams’s words.
“It’s okay, little one; lie still. We’ll have you out of there in no time.”
While he stared into the hole, the sergeant major saw something else. He looked up at the group of rescuers.
“There’s an outstretched hand a few inches from the baby.”
“Is it moving?” one of the women asked.
“No,” Williams said. “Mrs. Reed, why don’t you and Laurie go see if you can find those medics who were around here a few hours ago. I think Christopher’s going to need them real soon.”
The woman and her daughter hurriedly climbed to ground level. Each set out in a different direction in search of the medics.
While they walked through what remained of the housing area, the news spread like a raging forest fire. A tiny survivor had been found at the bottom of the pit where Building 2417 had stood.
The sergeant major and the teenage boy started working at eliminating the three feet of debris separating them from their prize. After a full day of backbreaking effort, the valiant rescuers’ reward was within their grasp.
• • •
Williams lifted the dazed handful of a child from the depths of the depravity. He handed him to the taller of the waiting medics. A crowd of forty had gathered at the edge of the pit. As the little one was carried out, the cheer from the exhausted onlookers was meager but genuine.
The medic placed Christopher in a thick woolen blanket. He handed the blanket to Mrs. Reed. She held the confused child as lovingly as if he were her own. The medic started examining the filthy toddler.