The Red Line

On the far left, the soldiers in the platoon’s northern guard tower met with the same fate as had befallen those in the middle tower. A single shell from a Russian main battle tank quickly ended their lives.

Sergeant Kelly’s crew fired both its online TOWs. The first destroyed a BMP and the ten souls within the false protection of its metal walls. The second missed its target, a T-80 flying full speed across the snows.

Kelly’s gunner began the tedious process of refilling the empty missile tubes. It would take at least two minutes, an eternity on a battlefield of such intensity, to reload the TOWs. Kelly pounded away at the enemy with his Bushmaster cannon while he waited for his gunner to finish the task. The Bradley’s gunner had the first missile in place and was reaching for a second when a Russian tank fired from point-blank range. Another death-filled cannon shell ripped through the night to seek and destroy. In a fiery display of the tank’s impressive power, Kelly’s Bradley was added to the crimson field’s mounting infernos. The false light was growing ever stronger.

Three tanks moved toward the final American tower.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Ramirez screamed, the terror visible in his dark eyes.

Steele threw open the trapdoor. Both began furiously descending the icy ladder. Steele’s feet had just met the snow, with Ramirez ten feet above him, when the lead tank fired. The shattered tower disappeared. A plummeting piece of jagged cement struck Ramirez on the top of his head, opening a large gash. The stunned private lost his grip on the rungs. He fell the final ten feet to the snow, landing on his tower mate.

The pair lay motionless on the cold ground, with the bloody Ramirez on top of Steele. Both were conscious, but neither could catch the fleeting breath the collision had stolen from them. The moment their senses cleared and the air returned to their lungs, they scrambled to their feet. Each started running as fast as his wobbly legs would carry him through the deep snows. While he ran, the panic-stricken Ramirez didn’t notice the blood pouring down the side of his face and clotting in his thin mustache.

A pair of M-4s lay forgotten in the snows beneath the destroyed tower.

• • •

While the battle raged around them, Brown switched back to his Bushmaster cannon. Once more, an outgunned BMP fell. With exacting accuracy, his gunner fired a second TOW. The missile ruptured a T-80, setting it ablaze. Another fireball rose to meet the snow-filled heavens.

Brown’s missile tubes were now empty. But the combat-experienced squad leader wasn’t going to make the fatal mistake Kelly had made seconds earlier.

“Whiting, get us out of here now!”

Without hesitation, the Bradley’s driver responded to Brown’s command. Its broad treads churning through the deep snows, the Bradley raced away from the battlefield.

To survive, they’d need some luck. The woods were a long ways off. A half mile of open ground had to be crossed before Brown’s crew would reach the safety of the trail. And scores of Russian armored vehicles were right on their tail.

As it was, poor marksmanship from a T-80 gunner gave the Bradley crew a chance for survival. The Russian tank’s gunner had the Bradley squarely in his sights. In the excitement of his first combat, however, the gunner rushed his shot by the thinnest of margins. The roaring shell passed inches in front of the American armored vehicle and exploded in the woods.

Even so, the cavalry soldiers weren’t safe yet.

Brown’s Bradley closed to within fifty yards of the opening to the trail. A BMP’s gunner took aim and fired. Three 30mm shells pierced the Bradley’s thinner rear armor, entering the back compartment where two Americans would have been sitting had the vehicle been carrying its normal load of five. A few feet forward, however, the three crewmen in the separate command compartment were unharmed. The fighting vehicle scurried into the woods and raced for home.

One hundred yards into the trees, the twenty-five-ton Bradley nearly ran down Steele and Ramirez. Reduced to an exhausted trot, the pair was jogging down the middle of the narrow path. With the Bradley rushing headlong down the trail, Brown’s driver didn’t spot them until the last possible instant. The fighting vehicle slid to a stop inches from the panicked figures. Brown flung open the commander’s hatch.

“Jesus Christ! What the hell do you two idiots think you’re doing running down the middle of the trail like that? You damn near got yourselves run over.” Neither Ramirez nor Steele, their heads bowed, answered. “Shit! I’ve no more time to waste on the likes of you. Hurry up! Get in before you get us all killed. The Russians are right behind us.”

The rear hatch lowered, and the frightened privates scrambled inside.

• • •

For a few minutes, the lieutenant lay on the frozen battlefield. The snow beneath him slowly turned a bright shade of red. When his eyes painfully opened, he found himself staring into the muzzle of a Kalashnikov AK-47. Second Lieutenant Greg Powers had become the first prisoner of Europe’s third great war. In another thirty minutes, he would also become one of its initial fatalities. For without the quick medical attention he desperately needed, he’d soon bleed to death from his wounds.

CHAPTER 4

January 28—11:49 p.m.

2nd Platoon, Delta Troop, 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry

The German-Czech Border

The first fight of the new war had taken little more than a handful of minutes. At its end, fourteen of 2nd Platoon’s soldiers lay dead or dying in the deepening drifts of the border. It had been a foolish struggle, one that shouldn’t have been fought. Outmanned and outgunned, Jensen understood their only chance was to battle the vastly superior enemy on 2nd Platoon’s terms and on 2nd Platoon’s terrain.

And Jensen’s plan to do just that was already under way.

Despite its outcome, Powers’s ill-advised attack had accomplished one positive thing for the platoon. It had given Jensen five full minutes to organize the remainder of the unit’s men.

The battle-tested platoon sergeant didn’t waste a single second of it.

After making a final desperate attempt to get the platoon to fall back, Jensen turned to Jelewski.

“Contact squadron and let them know what’s going on up here,” Jensen said in a voice that reflected strength and a growing confidence.

“Roger.” Jelewski picked up the radio handset for the squadron net. “Sierra-Six, Sierra-Six, this is Delta-Two.”

“Roger, Delta-Two, this is Sierra-Six, go ahead.”

Specialist Four Aaron Jelewski was about to make history. In the next moment, he would say the words a stunned world would repeat over and again in the days to come.

“Sierra-Six,

the Russians have crossed the border with Germany and are attacking in force. I say again, the Russians have crossed the border with Germany and are attacking in force.”

“Roger, Delta-Two, we copy. Russians are crossing the border and attacking in force.”

• • •

While the soldiers hurried about the living area, preparing themselves to battle for their lives, Jensen took Cruz and Austin aside and started laying out his plan.

Their job, Jensen knew, was not to defeat the powerful Russian armor. That would be an impossible task for the lightly armed cavalry. Their job was to slow the enemy down long enough to counter the Russians’ surprise attack. At the border, the cavalry regiment’s purpose was a simple one—buy as much time as they possibly could. Jensen understood there was only one way for the soldiers of the 4th Cavalry Regiment to accomplish such a mission.

They’d pay for each precious minute with their lives.

He was certain his platoon’s location had been the first one breached because of its close proximity to the sole north–south highway within fifteen miles of the border. He knew his tiny force had no chance of defeating the six hundred armored vehicles they faced. Still, he hoped his plan might slow them down. In the dark, the Russians had only one way to get through the impassable woods. If they were going to seize the north–south road, the enemy armor would have to come down the platoon’s narrow, twisting trail.

And they’d have to come down it one tank at a time.

Jensen had selected the perfect ambush spot during his very first month at the border nearly two years earlier. Halfway up the trail, it made an elongated right-hand turn in the deep woods. The trail widened a few feet as it made the sweeping turn. He would hide three Bradleys at the curve and wait. The protection of the woods would be adequate. And the fighting vehicles would have a clear shot at the first four or five tanks as they made their way around a narrower turn from the left. From curve to curve, it couldn’t be more than 250 yards. The Bradleys’ missiles and Bushmasters wouldn’t miss at that range. If he could stop the leading tanks, he could possibly block the Russian column’s advance, buying valuable time for them all.