The Red Line

The division commander took stock of the enemy. It only took a moment to determine that the pitiful force challenging the might of his rolling armada was insignificant. A handful of armored vehicles supported by a small group of infantry. Nothing more than a minor irritant. Right now, however, he was in no mood for irritations, minor or otherwise. The column was well behind schedule. If they fell any further behind, a bullet to the head would be his reward.

Four of the five Bradleys fired a second volley of screaming TOWs. Three tanks and a BMP met the same calamitous fate as had befallen their countrymen a few seconds earlier. Four brightly burning pillars joined in lighting up the dreadful night.

In the fifth Bradley, Austin also fired. Unfortunately, rather than racing across the battlefield to destroy its victim, the TOW dropped harmlessly from its tube. The missile skidded along the ground for a few feet and stopped.

“Shit! A damn misfire!”

It only happened about 5 percent of the time with the highly reliable TOWs. Still, it wasn’t a good omen for the embattled defenders.

In near unison, the Bradley crews retracted their firing tubes. Each began reloading. For the next two minutes, the Bushmasters would have to go it alone.

The division commander saw his opening.

“All units pinch in toward the orchard and finish them off. Do it now and move on.”

Five rows of Russian armor headed straight toward the apple orchard.

The moment the first explosion occurred, four Bradleys from Captain Murphy’s force sprang from their hiding place at the edge of the village. They roared up the highway two by two. It would only take a half minute for them to arrive at the front of the orchard. That, however, was going to be too much time for them to be of any help to 2nd Platoon. In thirty gruesome seconds, Jensen’s men were decimated.

One hundred yards to the platoon sergeant’s right, Sergeant Richmond reached back for a replacement missile. A T-72’s 125mm cannon shell ripped through the snow wall in front of his position. The shell drove headlong into the stationary Bradley. It bored through the fighting vehicle’s seven inches of frontal armor and detonated inside the command compartment. Richmond’s Bradley exploded. Another fireball crushed the fleeting darkness.

On the far left, a foot soldier supporting Renoir’s position took a bullet in the face from an AK-47.

Renoir was positioning a TOW in its firing tube when half a dozen rounds from a BMP’s 30mm cannon ripped through the thinner armor on his Bradley’s turret. Both Americans were killed instantly. For good measure, a nearby T-72 finished off the crippled Bradley with a single shell from its main gun. The horrific fires were growing with every passing heartbeat.

Austin’s Bushmaster gunner returned the favor, repeatedly striking the commander’s compartment of a charging BMP. Hatches on the top of the BMP sprung open. Two frantic figures clambered from the smoking vehicle. A lethal burst from Jelewski’s M-4 struck both. The Russians crumpled half-in, half-out the open hatches. Neither moved again.

Beneath Jensen’s deadly fire, four white-clothed Russians went down in quick succession. Somewhere on the right, a cavalry soldier screamed. The turret of a T-72 turned. Its main gun lowered. Austin had a TOW in its firing hole. From point-blank range, the T-72 fired. Austin’s shattered Bradley leaped into the air. Flaming chunks of jagged metal and minute fragments of fragile flesh flew in every direction.

A white-hot piece of aluminum the size of a giant fist landed upon the prone Jelewski. The searing metal burned through the soldier’s clothing. His parka burst into flames. The soft flesh between his shoulder blades started to sizzle. The platoon radio operator shrieked in agony. He dropped his rifle and rolled onto his back. Jelewski frantically clawed at the burning aluminum. The metal fell into the snows.

One by one, the ground soldiers of 2nd Platoon were isolated, engaged, and eliminated. By the time Murphy’s four Bradleys completed their suicidal rush through the orchard, only six of the fourteen American infantrymen were still firing.

The quartet of Bradleys raced past the barren trees. They roared into the center of the fray. On the right, the lead Bradley never got off a single round. A BMP beat him to the draw. A Spandrel missile smashed into the fighting vehicle, setting it ablaze. Its crushed steel treads moved no more. The remaining Americans fired TOWs into the oncoming tanks. As the TOWs struck, three more huge flaming candles melted the night’s new drifts.

Sergeant Foster fought to keep his head. His second TOW was entering its firing tube. Next to him in the compartment, Marconi continued to fire the Bushmaster. The last thing Foster would ever hear was Marconi’s dejected, “Aw, shit.”

The young soldier had recognized that a Russian tank’s long barrel was pointed straight at them from two hundred yards away. A huge explosive round escaped from the tank’s main gun. Foster and Marconi never heard the night-shattering “whoosh” the round made. The shell hurtled across the flaming field in less than an instant. It smashed full force into the fighting vehicle. Four of 2nd Platoon’s Bradleys were enveloped in roaring flames. A single one remained.

Brown fired a TOW from his reloaded tubes. The missile slammed into a T-72.

One of the Bradleys on the highway fell prey to a charging BMP. The American vehicle’s fiery wreckage slammed into an apple tree twenty yards to Jensen’s left. The ancient tree was soon ablaze.

The other two fired a second missile with devastating effect. Beneath the striking TOWs, more earthshaking explosions rocked the bitter night. The Russians pounced on the surviving pair of Bradleys. Two T-72s fired, and the third of Murphy’s fighting vehicles was gone. The last, its missile tubes empty, turned to make a desperate run for the safety of the village. The Bradley hadn’t gone far before the power of the enemy fell upon it. Another scorched and twisted mass of unrecognizable metal was created by the impact of striking shells.

On the far right, Brown fired his second replacement TOW. Like a comet searching the heavens, burning pieces of a defeated BMP soared into the bright night. It was Brown’s sixth kill of the war. It would be his last.

All attention turned to the sole surviving American vehicle. A T-72 quickly isolated and, in a vivid display of its immense power, destroyed the final Bradley of 2nd Platoon.

Jensen and Jelewski continued to return the Russian fire.

From the safety of his command tank, the Russian general surveyed the killing ground. A smile came over him once again. The brief skirmish had gone exactly as he’d hoped. Despite being surprised by the enemy, his men had responded quickly. Just what he’d needed to save himself from the firing squad. He’d suffered some losses. Yet his losses were trivial in the grand scheme. The encounter had been little more than a min

or bump in the road for his rolling armada. In scarcely three minutes’ time, his lead units had finished off the small force of enemy armor. The threat from the foolish Americans was over. The fierce little battle was at its end. There were only two inconsequential infantrymen with whom to deal, and the column would be advancing again. At least that’s what the division commander believed.

The Russians had taken the bait. As Jensen and Captain Murphy had anticipated, the firing from the orchard and the rush of the four Bradleys into the middle of the nasty conflict had focused the enemy on the area surrounding the highway. With their tanks concentrated in the center of the battlefield, the Russians’ flanks were extremely vulnerable.

He’d sacrificed his platoon, but the plan had worked exactly as Jensen had hoped.

The time had come to spring the Americans’ trap. At just the right moment, identical groups of six M-1s and six Bradleys appeared north and south of the orchard. Thirty-two foot soldiers struggled through the waist-deep snows to support the armored vehicles.

Firing as they went, the Americans smashed into the enemy’s soft flanks. They ripped into the exposed sides of their gigantic foe. Fireworks blazed in all directions. Four . . . five . . . six Russian tanks fell in the first seconds. The Americans surged forward, determined to take the fight to their opponent. Confusion gripped the field. M-1s and Bradleys waded deep into the T-72s and BMPs. Cannon shells and TOW missiles roared through the grievous morning. Explosion after explosion rocked the fallow fields.

The M-1s were over twenty tons heavier and technologically superior. Their frontal armor was nearly impenetrable. The American crews were the best in the world. They struck a severe blow on the lead division’s armor. The slaughter went on without letup. If they had had twice their number, the Americans could have stopped the enemy in his tracks. But without pause, Russian tanks and BMPs kept appearing from the woods and moving toward the orchard.