Sixty-five of the seventy-three men and women of Delta Battery, 1st “Cobra Strike” Air Defense Artillery Battalion, hurried to back up the 82nd Airborne.
Having finished taking on a load of women and children, two commercial airliners taxied onto the runway. Without waiting for clearance, they roared down the asphalt and soared into the skies. Both pilots reported there were enemy soldiers everywhere they looked on the ground below. On the tarmac, a third airliner was being refueled. Its passenger manifest of over two hundred were running from the overflowing terminal. They rushed to board the waiting plane.
In the terminal building, thousands more were in near panic as the sounds of battle raged around them. Six air policemen burst through the doorway. They tossed M-4s to the four airmen working inside the terminal.
“Down! Everybody down!” an air policeman yelled. The air police raced back outside to take up defensive positions.
On the wide tarmac, a parachutist brought his missile up to his shoulder. He fired at a refueling C-17 cargo plane. The C-17 burst into flames. The fuel truck sitting next to the plane was soon consumed by the growing inferno. The thunder of the exploding truck could be heard for miles around. Flames spread across the far end of the tarmac. Black, noxious smoke covered a broad area. A second Russian took aim and fired at the huge C-5 next in line. The giant plane erupted. The roaring tarmac fires were soon out of control.
In the base housing area, a vile street fight sprang up. With women and children cowering in their homes, parachutists and airmen battled from house to house. But the Americans were no match for the enemy’s superior numbers and fighting ability. They fell back, taking as many of the dependents with them as they could.
Things had grown critical on the flight line. Now in command of the entire area, the Russians methodically destroyed the eight airplanes they found sitting on the ground. The last to fall was the commercial airliner. With a shoulder-mounted missile, a parachutist blew the refueling aircraft apart. On board, every one of the women and children were killed.
Near the rear gate, the lightly armed soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division fought with incredible bravery. They clawed at the Russians with everything they had, clinging to their defensive positions under ever-increasing pressure from their merciless opponent. They knew they had no chance against the power of the overwhelming enemy.
The BMDs broke through the beaten burgundy berets. They rushed down the tree-shrouded road. The three Stinger teams of the Patriot battery stood in the middle of the roadway. As one, the Stinger gunners fired at the oncoming BMDs. The air-defense missiles were as devastating against the armored vehicles as they would have been against a MiG. A wall of flames rose at the front of the Russian column.
The blow from the Stingers didn’t even slow the parachutists down. They slammed their combat vehicles into the burning barrier and shoved their dying comrades into the woods. The Stinger teams hurriedly prepared to fire a second missile.
• • •
Three miles north of Rhein-Main, the commander of the German provisional guard battalion protecting Frankfurt International Airport watched the thickening clouds of smoke rising in the morning sky. He heard one tumultuous explosion after another from the American air base. The German leader listened to the sounds of the nearby battle. He braced his National Guard unit for an assault against Frankfurt Airport. After forty-five minutes, with no attack on his position and no enemy in sight, the German commander gambled. He ordered half his force, two companies of his armored unit, to move south to reinforce the Americans at Rhein-Main.
It was a decision that could potentially change the course of the battle. The Americans were falling back in every corner of the base. They faced certain defeat. But sixteen immensely powerful Leopard 2 tanks, supported by a company of mechanized infantry, were on their way. In fifteen minutes, they’d arrive at Rhein-Main’s main gate.
• • •
Thirty parachutists moved toward the passenger terminal. The six air policemen defending the terminal building opened fire. The first volley from the airmen dropped a third of the enemy. Even so, the Russians came on.
The parachutists fired their automatic weapons at the air police guarding the terminal. Struck repeatedly by rifle fire, every plate-glass window on the south side of the building erupted at nearly the same instant. Shards of jagged glass leaped from the exploding windows. They tore into the frightened masses huddled together on the terminal floor. The screams of a thousand terrified voices filled the crowded building.
Eight adults and four children lay dying from the razor-sharp storm that poured down upon their heads. The blood of fifty others fell upon the cold tile.
One by one, the Russians eliminated the air policemen protecting the building. As the last American outside fell, two parachutists raced toward the terminal. Each carried a fragmentation grenade in a sweating palm. They burst through the terminal door.
It happened in slow motion. Yet it happened in the blink of an eye. The first pulled the pin on his grenade. He lobbed it into the middle of the room. The second hesitated. He realized in an instant what the pair had stumbled upon. He refused to follow his countryman’s lead and attack the defenseless throng. The grenade remained in his hand. The parachutists turned and ran back toward the door. Shooting over the heads of the women and children, the airmen inside the terminal opened fire on the fleeing figures. Bullets ripped into the pair. The Russians slammed into the shattering glass door and were impaled upon its broken pieces.
The live grenade lay on the floor a dozen feet from where, ten hours earlier, Linda Jensen and her daughters had sat waiting for their names to reach the top of the manifest.
The closest airman was thirty feet from the grenade. He threw his rifle down. The airman hurdled the frightened masses blocking his path. He lunged toward the grenade. He had to get to it before it was too late.
He nearly made it.
As he reached out his hand to grasp the waiting time bomb, its five-second fuse expired. The resulting explosion sliced the airman into a thousand pieces. Deadly steel fragments ripped through the building. For thirty yards in every direction, the angel of death came to call.
• • •
Near the back gate, the final surviving Stinger team fired a third missile. Another BMD erupted beneath a missile’s lethal nose. And for the third time, the Russians came on. The soldiers of the Patriot battery tried to rally once more. It was, however, no use. There was nothing they could do to stop the irrepressible Russian tidal wave that washed over them. When it was over, only fourteen of the American air defenders would still be alive.
The breakthrough at the rear gate was complete. The parachutists’ vehicles roared through the trees toward their objectives. The time had come to finish the destruction of Rhein-Main and put an end to the uneven struggle. With their victory at the rear gate, the Russian commander was convinced nothing could stop his regiment from the successful completion of its mission. The total destruction of the American air base was minutes away.
The German tanks sped through the main gate. The armored personnel carriers of the German infantry were close behind. The Leopards burst onto the runway.
The Russian column broke free from the woods. Sixteen German main battle tanks were waiting. Undaunted, the parachutists charged straight for their ancient enemy.
Shell after shell ripped into the Russian vehicles. Still, the parachutists continued their maniacal rush from the forest. A meager response with a few Bastion missiles and their 100mm main guns was all they could muster against the German tanks’ overwhelming power. With glee, the Leopards slaughtered hundreds of the cocksure invaders of their homeland.
In their armored personnel carriers, the German infantry started hunting down the remaining parachutists. The surviving Americans soon joined in. A rout was under way. But this time it was the parachutists who’d come up short. The Russians fell
back. Finally willing to accept defeat, two hundred parachutists melted into the deep woods on the southern and western ends of the base. Fifteen hundred of their comrades hadn’t been so lucky.
The cost in American lives had been tremendous. But bloodied and battered, Rhein-Main still stood.
• • •
Thirty yards to Rios’s left, four parachutists rushed the chain link. They knelt at the base of the fence and furiously cut at the wire.
“Get them!” Rios screamed.
Wheatley and Velasquez signaled their understanding. Velasquez provided covering fire. Wheatley rolled onto his side, pulled the pin on a grenade, and leaped to his feet. He hurled the deadly grenade. It sailed over the fence and rolled to a stop a few feet from the Russians. In a blinding flash, the parachutists were torn apart.
Wheatley lay on his back in a pool of scarlet snow. He’d never know of the success of his efforts. The firing of a dozen rifles had cut the exposed airman down moments after he threw the grenade.
Then there were five.
• • •
North of Ramstein, the A-10s ripped into the Russian light armor with all the fury of the deepest pits of hell. With their cannons blazing, they made pass after pass. The Americans cut the attackers down to size. Death-filled plumes reached into the endless heavens.
And one after another, Russian air-defense weapons knocked the determined Warthogs from the sky. Neither side would concede an inch in the life-and-death struggle unfolding a few miles from the critical American air base. Second by second, the unspeakable angst grew.