The Red Line

Seventeen hundred were going to meet seventeen hundred in a battle that was absolutely critical to America’s fading hopes.

Just outside the depot, the 24th Infantry hid forty Bradleys in the thick trees. They waited for the Russian regiment. Three times that number of 82nd Airborne Humvees were in support.

The parachutists roared toward their objective. Unaware of the overpowering force hidden at the supply depot, the regimental commander implemented his battle plan. He sent six hundred of his parachutists into the deep woods surrounding the target. On foot, the Russians stealthily moved through the heavy mantle of trees, intent on encircling the depot.

Given thirty minutes’ warning of the parachutists’ attack, the American battalion commander had anticipated such a move. The Russian action had already been countered. When the parachutists entered the forest, hundreds of American airborne soldiers lay in the shadows waiting for them.

The Russian regimental commander was a fearless man of legendary exploits in Cheninko’s recent wars for Eastern European liberation. Once his soldiers in the woods engaged the thin defensive force of MPs, he’d make a frontal charge down the main road entering the depot. He was convinced his regiment would annihilate the MP company in a matter of minutes. He’d then set about the task of destroying the American equipment. Two hours from now, there wouldn’t be a single combat vehicle standing in the depot.

Inside the woods, the parachutists edged forward. From all four sides at once, they’d hit the MPs. They’d tighten the noose around the Americans’ necks and wait for the main column to smash through the defenders. It wouldn’t be much longer until the besieged MPs would all be dead.

Deep within the forest, the Russians crept silently through the misty shadows. Their attack would commence as soon as they made contact with the MP company’s scattered sentries.

The 82nd Airborne Division’s soldiers were waiting.

The element of surprise was with the Americans. The burgundy berets hid in the twilight. They watched their opponent moving cautiously through the trees. Step by step, second by second, the Russians drew closer to the trap.

A burst of gunfire chattered in the forest. It was followed by another, and shortly thereafter by a third. With incredible intensity, the battle exploded in every corner of the snowy woods. The Americans caught their counterparts unprepared for the fierce attack that enveloped them. With rifles, grenades, knives, and fists, the two sides fought to the death in the forest’s darkness.

In the woods, it was going to be no contest. The Russians had been taken by surprise, and they’d pay dearly for their mistake.

The regimental commander thought the gunfire in the trees signaled the beginning of his men’s attack on the MPs. He ordered the long column forward. They charged down the winding road toward the depot. The decoys, four MP Humvees, sat on the roadway just ahead of the final curve. Each Humvee carried a single TOW missile. The Russians spotted the MP vehicles. In his command BMD, the regimental commander smiled a broad smile. The force waiting to challenge his regiment was exactly what he’d anticipated. At breakneck speed, they roared toward the MPs. Each American fired his TOW, destroying the leading edge of the onrushing column.

The parachutists barely slowed down. As they’d practiced over and again, the Russian vehicles shoved their burning comrades out of the way and continued on.

The Humvees disappeared into the woods on both sides of the road. The regimental commander smiled a second time. This was going to be even easier than he’d believed. The parachutists raced toward the depot.

It would soon be over. The American armored equipment would be destroyed and Russia’s victory in the war assured. Around the next curve lay their prize. The column rounded the final turn.

Twenty Bradleys were waiting to greet them. Another twenty rushed in behind the parachutists. The 82nd Airborne’s Humvees edged forward on both sides to complete the encirclement.

Ambush.

The trap had been sprung.

Untold numbers of TOW missiles ripped through the air from the Bradleys and Humvees. Bushmaster cannons laid down a deadly curtain of fire so thick that nothing on earth could withstand it. It was a supremely powerful blow. Half the Russian column disappeared in the first thirty seconds. The regimental commander lived just long enough to realize that his miscalculations were going to cost the lives of the brave men under his command.

The Bradleys moved in for the kill. The staggered Russians regrouped and fought back. Given the overwhelming force they faced and their ever-mounting losses, they knew they had little chance, but that was of no importance.

The BMDs were one-half the Bradleys’ size. On their sides and tops they had one-seventh the Bradleys’ armor. Even so, the BMDs were certainly not defenseless. Those that survived the initial onslaught quickly responded with Bastion antiarmor missiles and 100mm shells. The Bastions, one of the most powerful tank-killing weapons in the world, took a toll on the Americans, destroying a number of Bradleys and their crews. Their 100mm main cannon shells, however, were less effective in addressing the dire threat that imperiled the entire column. Most of the powerful Russian shells damaged the Bradleys’ heavy frontal armor but failed to penetrate it, allowing the Bradleys to fight on.

Time after time, a BMD would get a clear shot with its cannon only to have the shell explode against the Bradley’s hull without piercing the protection of its laminated, reactive armor plating. The Bradley crew would then quickly dispense with the BMD.

At Spangdahlem, the slaughter was under way. But at Kaiserslautern, it was the Americans who mercilessly butchered their opponent.

It was over in ten minutes.

With untold scores of vehicles burning on the roadway, the deputy regimental commander called for a full retreat. There was nothing else he could do.

The Americans pursued the remnants of the retreating parachute regiment across the German countryside. The burgundy berets would chase them all the way back to Russia, or follow them into hell, if that was what it would take to finish the job. Leaving the MPs behind, the Americans hunted down the scattered survivors.

When it was over, and the losses on each side had been totaled, the American victory was overwhelming. Fifty-three Americans were dead. Another eighty-seven were wounded. Seven Bradleys had been destroyed. Twenty-three Humvees had succumbed. Over sixteen hundred of Russia’s finest soldiers had perished. The final few dozen were deep within enemy territory as they fought to save their lives. In the coming days, nearly all would be tracked down and killed by German territorial units or captured by angry mobs of German civilians.

The parachutists didn’t fare well at the hands of the mob. A few were literally torn apart. Others were shot or hanged in ancient town squares. Their bodies were left to rot or thrown to the vermin. Only a handful lived to tell the tale of what had happened on a sunny morning outside of Kaiserslautern.

Of the hundreds of combat vehicles the Russians had come to destroy, one tank and a self-propelled howitzer were lost. A second M-1, and an Avenger air-defense missile system, had been damaged.

For now, the further arriving American reinforcements of the 82nd Airborne and the 24th Infantry Divisions would find the equipment they needed waiting outside of Kaiserslautern.

Despite their setbacks, even on the first morning of the war, one thing was clear to the American leadership. If they could hold on for fourteen days, enough reinforcements would arrive to turn the tide of battle. In all likelihood, if they were still bleeding and dying in the fields of Germany two weeks from now, America would win this war.

But the generals knew that would only be true if the Americans controlled the skies. And they couldn’t do so unless Ramstein still stood.

CHAPTER 33

January 29—10:25 a.m.

On the Eastern Fence

Ramstein Air Base

A pair of missiles ripped into

the main aircraft maintenance hangar. The six fighter aircraft inside the huge building were engulfed in a roaring inferno. Thirty airmen were trapped by the fierce explosions. The all-encompassing fires soon consumed them. Two more death-tinged clouds reached into the restless skies over Ramstein. Thick trails of virulent smoke masked the battle, frustrating attacker and defender alike.

On the eastern fence, Rios’s machine gun sang out against the advancing Russians. Forty parachutists were inside the wire. They were desperately trying to cover the ground necessary to wipe out the Americans’ last heavy gun. Rios caught them in the open.

Five invaders fell in rapid succession from the mayhem spewing forth from the machine gun’s barrel. In an hour of battle, twenty Russians had died at Rios’s hands.

In front of his bunker, the rifle fire suddenly increased fourfold. Wilson and Goodman were pinned down. The airmen buried themselves in the protective sand. At a trio of locations, four parachutists rushed forward and hacked at the fence. Afraid of hitting their comrades, the parachutists’ gunfire from the woods momentarily slackened. Goodman risked a quick look at the fence line.

“We’re in trouble here, Rios!”

Rios continued to fire his machine gun at the large group of Russians advancing on the right. “We’re in trouble over here, too.”

“They’ve got us pinned down. They’re about to break through the fence. We can’t hold them any longer.”

“Stay down,” Rios said. “But throw every grenade we’ve got at the ones at the fence.”