The Red Line

Schoenfeld was a smoking ruin.

The other pair of sergeants tried notifying the German and English air bases in the northern half of the country. Without Schoenfeld, it was a call that would be impossible to complete.

The MiGs came on.

“Major, this isn’t working. Spangdahlem’s operations center’s been notified,” Brennan said, “but no matter what I try, I can’t seem to get through to either Mildenhall or Lakenheath.”

“I’ve gotten ahold of no one, sir,” Rodgers added. “Not a single German fighter base has been alerted.”

Major Colemen looked at the final member of his team. Mitchell shook his head, indicating he’d also met with complete failure.

“What’re we going to do, sir?” Rodgers asked. “Obviously, we need to try something else if we’re going to have any chance at all of completing our mission.”

Coleman stared at Rodgers and Mitchell, his mind racing. “Get onto German civilian landlines and keep trying. I’m not sure if that will work any better than what we’ve already attempted, but don’t give up no matter how long it takes. We’ve got to get in touch with the Germans and British.”

Without further word, both began furiously dialing, attempting to get an outside line. They would quickly discover, however, just how overwhelmed the civilian communication system was. Millions upon millions of harried souls had overpowered its capabilities many times over. And an annoying busy signal was all that greeted the frantic airmen’s every effort.

Outside, they could hear thunderous scores of American F-16s, F-22s, and F-35s coming to life and heading for the runways. The response, while incomplete, was getting under way.

In the middle of the absolute chaos within Germany, Coleman knew reaching England by landline was beyond impossible. But there was one thing his team could still try.

“Sergeant Brennan,” he said, “do you have any friends at Lakenheath or Mildenhall?”

“Lots of them, sir.”

“Any chance you’ve got their cell-phone numbers?”

“Got a handful of close friends at Mildenhall and a few at Lakenheath programmed into my phone.”

“I’ve got the same. You take Mildenhall. I’ll go after Lakenheath. If you get through to anyone, explain the situation and have them contact their base operation’s center immediately.”

“Will do, sir.”

Both the sergeant and the major were soon on their cell phones, desperately attempting to break through the snarl of maddening busy signals that also greeted them.

It would take a frantic hour’s effort for Major Coleman to contact an old friend at Lakenheath. By then, Lakenheath’s fighters would be too late to influence the outcome of the air battle that raged throughout the skies over Germany.

They would never reach Mildenhall.

• • •

Twenty-four F-16s met the Russians at the German border. Like Jensen and his platoon’s hopeless stand on the snowy ground below, the pilots knew they were here for one purpose—to buy precious minutes of time. In the sparkling darkness preceding the dawn, twenty-four attacked one thousand. The battle was joined.

The Americans were clearly better. Better aircraft. Better pilots. Although not so much better that they could withstand the ridiculous odds they faced.

The F-16 pilots expected the skies behind them to hurriedly fill with American, British, and German fighters. It didn’t happen. The Americans began responding out of Ramstein, and minutes later out of Spangdahlem. But without effective command and control, the British and Germans didn’t arrive in time to be a significant factor in the initial air battle of the new war. At Mildenhall, the Americans never left the ground. With the sluggish Allied reaction, the Russians were in a position to gain temporary control of the skies over Germany. For the moment, that was the only thing they wanted. One hour’s control of certain parts of the skies over their ancient enemy was all General Yovanovich had asked of them.

The majority of the Russians blew through the screening force of F-16s like they weren’t even there. One thousand MiGs were inside Germany. In bits and pieces, two hundred scattered American fighters would eventually race east to challenge them. In what would be recorded as the classic duel in the short history of man’s flight, the world’s greatest aircraft met in the enveloping darkness that masked the coming morning. High over central Europe, the talented American pilots battled the MiG-29s and Su-35s to the death.

It was a far different form of air combat than any of the pilot’s grandfathers had experienced in these same skies during the Second World War. Eighty-three years earlier, a pilot’s anguished defeat had been up close and filled with gut-wrenching emotion. But as the years passed and technology leaped forward, death in air combat had become almost sterile and impersonal. Rather than pitched battles with machine guns blazing and the pilots so near they could see the terrified look on their vanquished opponent’s bloody face, the Americans and Russians dueled from vast distances.

The American Sidewinder and Sparrow missiles and the Russian Archer and Aphid missiles ripped through the remorseless skies from up to forty miles apart. And when armed with AIM-120 AMRAAMs, the American planes’ range grew by nearly three times that.

Sitting in front of their screens, Fowler and Morgan watched the burgeoning air battle. With each passing minute, the clashes multiplied. The Patriot team’s reaction to what they were witnessing was part fascination and part horror as the triangles from the west and the triangles from the east tore into each other. Death was coming to scour the heavens and weed out the unworthy.

A hundred miles from the closest clash of pilots and planes, they could see the tiny images of the air-to-air missiles streaking through the sky. Upon impact, the losing triangle would distort and break up. Any trace of the defeated aircraft would then disappear from the screen. The battle raged for half an hour, with neither side gaining a clear advantage. More of the triangles from the east than triangles from the west were falling. Still, the American victories weren’t so overwhelming as to overcome the enemy’s five-to-one edge. The mesmerized pair sat staring at their screens as the Russian steamroller slowly pushed their opponent back. The American pilots faltered.

The Russians came on. Holes appeared in a number of places in the American fighter defenses. By their sheer numbers, the MiGs broke through. Russian aircraft poured into the heart of Germany.

Behind the American air forces, the air-defense units braced for the attack. Close to the front, the Stinger shoulder-mounted missile and other shorter-range systems were assigned the task of supporting the ground units. Those weapons didn’t have the capabilities to stop the high-flying Russian fighters headed for the rear of the American defenses.

Patriot and Hawk waited. The role of these long-distance killers was to protect the air bases, command and control centers, and support systems. Shoulder- and Humvee-mounted Stingers were also assigned to work in unison with their more powerful brothers. With their five-mile limit, the Stinger would try to protect the vulnerable close-in area created by a diving aircraft that the Hawk and Patriot couldn’t activate in time to defeat.

Only Patriot and Hawk stood between the onrushing enemy and the total destruction of America’s strategic assets. As the Americans had done to the Iraqis during Desert Storm, and later in the second Iraq war, the first objective of the Russian air armada was to destroy the thing that could destroy it.

Patriot and Hawk had to die.

• • •

In the early 1990s, a joint American and German proposal called for the permanent assignment of seven American and four German Patriot battalions within the Republic of Germany. If the original plan had been carried out, the Russian attack on that January morning would have been met by forty-four Patriot batteries. Each battery would have been capable of firing thirty-two missiles without reloading. The seven hundred surviving MiGs would’ve been g

reeted by twice their number in Patriot missiles.

At one billion dollars per battalion, however, such peacetime expenditures for Patriot hadn’t been politically supportable. Instead, there were two German and two American Patriot battalions assigned the task of protecting the critical assets of the West from the threat approaching in the dawning skies. One of the plan’s original Patriot battalions had been diverted from Germany for duty in Saudi Arabia. Another had been given to the Israelis as part of the Desert Storm agreement. The final three battalions had arrived in Germany only to be deactivated and sold to the Japanese.

With the arrival last night of Fowler’s battalion, the West presently had twenty firing batteries with a little more than six hundred missiles inside Germany. Unfortunately, four of those batteries containing over one hundred missiles would be of no use in the coming battle.

Delta Battery of the Texas battalion was trapped on Rhein-Main Air Base by the ever-growing flood of panicked German refugees. They’d just received word to set up on Rhein-Main itself. It would be another hour before they’d be ready to fire their first missile. And three of the sophisticated Patriot batteries—two American and one German—were presently down with maintenance problems and would never join in the fray.