The Red Line

A smaller group of ill-destined deviants was at the rear of the ambulance. The wide door swung open. Elizabeth Morse had no way of protecting her charges. And each was too seriously injured to be of any help to her. Nevertheless, she boldly stood blocking the entrance to the rear compartment of ambulance number three.

Two shaved-headed Germans in their early twenties reached in. They snatched the pretty nurse from the rear of the ambulance. She let out a terrifying scream. The pair dragged her away from the vehicle. They threw her onto the bleak asphalt and tore at her clothing. Before they killed her, they’d every intention of raping the appealing, dark-haired American. She fought back with everything she had, struggling to keep the vile creatures from her.

Her screams attracted the chaotic mob’s attention. The malevolent ones, blood dripping from their hands and feet, turned toward the new drama unfolding a few feet away. For the moment, the injured soldiers inside the doorway were forgotten.

Morse’s scrubs were gone. The tattered cloth had been ripped from her frame. Even so, while she lay on the freezing roadway clad in only her undergarments, she continued to vigorously resist her antagonists’ efforts. The beautiful nurse was determined to go down fighting. A swift kick to the head from a sturdy German boot silenced her struggle. She lay alive but unmoving on the harsh ground. The final shreds of clothing were savagely torn from her body.

The first of the grinning attackers pulled his filthy pants down around his knees. He dropped to the ground to mount the fallen figure.

Without warning, a single shot rang out. The skinhead fell on top of the unconscious lieutenant. The back of his head was gone. In a flash, his partner fell dead next to him, the victim of a second ringing shot.

The defiling crowd instinctively parted. It was just long enough for the stone-faced American to force his way through. Ramirez kicked the dead rapist’s body from Elizabeth Morse. With the rifle menacingly raised under his left arm, he stood over the unconscious figure. The brown shirts closed in from three sides. The battle-tested Ramirez took his time. Firing a single shot only when necessary, he held the threatening tangle at bay for a full forty-five seconds. One by one, bodies dropped around him. By the time he was finished, ten corpses would lie at Ramirez’s feet.

The seven MPs were nearly there.

The fallen lieutenant stirred. Ramirez’s undoing. Her movement distracted him for the briefest of moments.

“Stay still, don’t move,” he said.

He glanced at her struggling form. When he did, the clustering attackers saw their chance. From every direction, they pounced upon the wounded soldier. Ramirez tried to respond. He fired two belated rounds. But it was too late. The deadly rifle was ripped from his hands. He vanished beneath the crushing mountain of inhumanity.

On the side of the roadway one hundred yards away, the MPs knelt on the hard ground. As one, they opened fire on the huge melee of marauding figures near the rear of the third ambulance. From this distance, they wouldn’t miss. At the edges of the horde, the Germans dropped in clumps. Flowing blood was everywhere. The death toll quickly mounted. The mob staggered back. They scattered to the four winds from the concentrated gunfire. The MPs continued to shoot into the fleeing crowd. The soldiers stopped to reload. An irrational force of four hundred seized the opportunity. They re-formed and charged across the pavement directly for the MPs.

The Americans opened fire again.

The running Germans fell beneath the persistent gunfire. Even so, their uncontrollable passion for ruinous revenge propelled them forward. Undeterred by the death around them, the neo-Nazis raced screaming across the pavement toward the MPs. Three hundred raging animals closed to within fifty yards of the firing soldiers. One hundred more lay dead, or dying, behind them. The Americans continued to fire. Two people were falling for every yard of ground covered. But still, the mob came on. At the present rate, two hundred Germans would reach the seven Americans in the next ten seconds. The MPs knew they were in serious trouble.

More chattering rifles suddenly joined in on the slaughter. On the MP’s left, the four medical technicians from the cabs of the fourth and fifth ambulances were shooting into the sprinting crowd. The defenders had the frenetic assembly in a crossfire.

From the sheer weight of the killing, the attack ground to a halt. Thirty yards from both groups of Americans, the Germans stopped in the middle of the roadway. The sergeant in charge of the MPs signaled for his men to cease firing. The ambulance drivers responded in kind. They waited while the disheveled audience milled about on the cold pavement. With their rifles at the ready, the Americans prepared to fire again if the Germans should charge once more.

Those in the mob hesitated, unsure of what their next move should be. At its edges, many started slipping away. Still, its central core of crazed killers remained intact.

It was the Russians who’d end the calamitous circus once and for all. From low in the east, the thirteen surviving Havocs returned. At the rear of the convoy, the Stinger teams were waiting. The Americans fired first, hoping to stop the helicopters before they could loosen their lethal munitions. Five missiles ripped through the cold morning. The targeted helicopters raced away. All five, prepared this time to counter the swift Stingers, released strings of flares. Three helicopters would ultimately be successful in fooling the little killers. A trio of Stingers would uselessly attack falling flares. The other missiles continued straight and steady. A pair of deadly Havocs exploded in midair.

The Avenger gunner targeted his next victim. The four Stinger teams scrambled to prepare a new missile. The final eight helicopters roared forward, intent on destroying the air-defense teams.

The Havocs opened fire on the rear of the column. A barrage of rockets and missiles, smaller than the initial attack but still quite deadly, reached down for the ground below. Two hundred yards of highway erupted in a blazing fireball. Hundreds more, American and German alike, joined the dead on the scorched autobahn.

In one quick strike, the Stingers were gone. Every last one had been consumed in the all-encompassing flames.

With the American air defenses eliminated, the eleven surviving attack helicopters would be free to rampage up and down the highway. At the front of the column, the disorganized Germans broke and ran in stark terror.

The defenseless Americans braced for a fiery death to pour down upon their heads. There was little chance any of them would survive. Yet to their surprise, the pitiless helicopters unexpectedly turned and raced east. Hot on their vapor trails were the Sparrow missiles of three Lakenheath F-16s. The dead MP lieutenant’s pleas had finally been answered.

The savage hunters were on the run. With a gleam in their eyes, the American pilots chased the slower-flying enemy. The F-16s fired their missiles and cannons again and again.

One by one, they tracked their overmatched prey. In less than five minutes, all eleven Havocs lay burning on the outskirts of Wurzburg. And the F-16 pilots were on their way back to England.

• • •

At the rear of the third ambulance, the naked lieutenant sat on the frigid ground cradling the lifeless private’s crushed body. While she clutched Ramirez to her, huge tears fell upon his unseeing face. He’d given his life to save hers.

He wouldn’t have had it any other way.

For the moment, the threat from the Russians was over. The threat from the civilians also appeared to have dissipated. The Americans picked themselves up and re-formed the column as best they could. All around, the doctors and nurses found themselves faced with hundreds upon hundreds of injured and dying Germans. After what had transpired, the Americans chose to turn their backs and walk away. They’d leave the Germans to their fates—and the Russians.

With the enemy close behind, there was no time to adequately care for their own dead. The Americans took their fallen brothers and sisters and laid their remains in straight rows in a snow-covered field

at the edge of the roadway. Ramirez was among them.

• • •

The remainder of the trip would be slow going. It would take the convoy nine hours to cover the remaining 125 miles to the final-standing American Army hospital. In the rear of the now-leading ambulance, for the entire journey, Elizabeth Morse’s tears never stopped.

Inside his mask of white cloth, the battle-hardened sergeant in the bottom left stretcher cried along with her.

CHAPTER 51

January 31—10:00 a.m.

Defense Information Systems Agency

Hillingdon

As the battered medical convoy continued its ill-fated journey, five hundred miles north George O’Neill and Randy Carson were ready to unveil their ingenious plan. When they’d finished explaining their idea, Colonel Hoerner, Major Siebman, and Master Sergeant Doyle looked at the pair in complete disbelief.