The Red Line

In Nuremberg, the column waited for two hours while other Americans arrived from the north, south, and east. At midday, the expanded convoy headed west into the teeth of the blizzard.

On the road, the struggling Americans encountered the same problems as before. The severe weather and frightened Germans were taking their toll.

The column trekked on to Wurzburg, an hour’s drive west of Nuremberg. And again, it was a journey that took much, much longer to complete. At 3:30, hungry and tired, they arrived. The onrushing darkness of a long winter’s night was quickly approaching.

In Wurzburg, there was another extended stop while more dependents gathered. The convoy, now nearing seven miles in length, headed into the black night toward Frankfurt. On this stretch of autobahn alone, thirty-seven cars had to be abandoned. The overwhelmed MPs could no longer take the time to deal with those that became jammed in the unyielding snows or suffered mechanical problems.

Seventeen hours after leaving Regensburg, Linda Jensen drove through the front gate at Rhein-Main. She was exhausted, she was filthy, and she was ready for the nightmare to end.

With no relief driver, Linda had driven the long, dark hours through the blizzard. She had struggled with the weather, the MPs, agitated Germans, and her increasingly restless daughters. Waved through the air base’s main gate by an air policeman’s strong right arm, Linda entered Rhein-Main in utter relief. Another air policeman directed her to a sprawling parking lot, where hundreds of automobiles sat on the frigid pavement.

Linda located a distant spot and parked the family’s modest car. She and the girls dragged their bags across the wide parking lot toward the beckoning warmth of the passenger terminal. They were soon within the small terminal with its broad expanses of plate-glass windows. There, a stunned Linda found thousands of earlier-arrived men, women, and children crammed into every inch of space within the two-story building.

It took ninety minutes in a line that refused to budge for Linda to check in. There was an hour wait for the restrooms. The Jensen women found themselves a tiny spot on the cold floor. There they sat throughout the endless night and all the next day amid screaming babies, tired children, and people who’d long ago run out of patience.

With over two hundred thousand American dependents to evacuate, the logistics of the monumental operation were already showing the first telltale signs of failure.

Linda watched one commercial airliner after another arrive and unload its cargo of soldiers. Eight hours earlier, the soldiers had kissed their loved ones good-bye and departed from their stateside bases. With every seat crammed with women and children, the planes would quickly turn around and head back across the Atlantic. During the painful twenty-four hours Linda huddled on the terminal floor, she watched as a continuous stream of dependents arrived to take the place of those who’d found their way onto one of the departing aircraft.

Finally, their turn had come. Their names had been called. The wives and children of the men of 2nd Platoon had gratefully stepped out into the blizzard and hobbled on board the old 767.

The nightmare was nearing its end. In another few minutes, they’d leap into the darkness and head for home.

• • •

Sitting in the captain’s chair, Evan Cooper waited while the final passengers boarded. The past two days had been a nightmare for Cooper as well. A nightmare for which he’d been praying.

Cooper, a former Air Force fighter pilot and combat veteran, had followed his time in the military with ten years of flying for America West Airlines. Next had come a stint with United. Frustrated by all the hassles that went along with doing the only thing he truly loved, he rolled the dice.

Selling everything he owned, and a couple of things he didn’t, he’d gone out a few years earlier and purchased the well-worn 767. He was mortgaged to the hilt, but he understood that every dream had its price. With this one plane, he started Early Eagle Airlines.

Cooper eked out a meager living and found ways to make the payments on the plane during the first couple of years by flying military and tourist charters. But as America continued to withdraw most of its forces from overseas and a lingering recession hit the tourist industry, his dream began to sour.

Thirteen months ago, he’d been forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy to keep his creditors from shutting down his single-plane airline. He’d given up the luxury of his sparse one-bedroom apartment and moved into a tiny space above a noisy, foul-smelling hangar. He survived on the occasional bologna sandwich. Each month, Cooper somehow scraped together the money to continue making the payments on the plane. And so far he’d found just enough ready cash to keep his ex-wife from having him thrown into jail for failing to pay his child support. How much longer he could continue to do so was anybody’s guess.

Two days ago, the phone had rung unexpectedly, with salvation on the other end of the line.

“Could you rearrange your commitments and take on ferrying troops to Europe?” the voice at Military Airlift Command said. “We’ll give you as many flights as you can handle and guarantee you at least a week.”

At the moment, Cooper’s flights for the next seven days consisted of picking up a planeload of little old ladies in Pittsburgh on Thursday and flying them to Elko, Nevada, to play bingo.

“Yeah. I think I can handle that,” Cooper said, suppressing the excitement he felt.

It would be stretching his plane to its limits, but a week of MAC flights would give him enough money to satisfy his creditors and his ex-wife for at least the next three months.

Cooper located a backup crew. He found some out-of-work flight attendants and notified his copilot there would be a paycheck after all. Forty-eight hours ago, he’d started flying troops to Germany. In two days, the 767 had completed three trips to Europe.

Their next stop would be Charleston to discharge their passengers. The backup crew would then make the short jaunt to Savannah. There, they’d collect a load of soldiers from the 24th Infantry Division and return to Rhein-Main. At Rhein-Main, another group of dependents would be eagerly awaiting their turn to board the plane.

Cooper was determined to continue the process for as long as MAC wanted.

• • •

As the tired plane taxied onto the runway, Linda Jensen looked at her watch in the dim light of the passenger compartment. It was nearly midnight. The girls were already asleep. Linda glanced around the cabin at the wives and children of the men of her husband’s platoon. In eight hours, they would touch down in Charleston.

None of them had any way of knowing that at this very moment, their husbands were fighting for their lives in the blustery snows of the bloodstained border.

• • •

The plane with the Eagle on its tail roared down the runway. The 767 fought its way into the stormy January night and headed for home.

CHAPTER 6

January 28—11:49 p.m.

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

The German-Czech Border

Feeling its way as it went, the Russian armored column moved single file down the narrow, twisting trail. The division commander would have preferred to proceed cautiously. The proper procedure would have be

en to first send his foot soldiers to clear the woods of the elusive enemy before moving forward. His orders, however, were to seize the north–south highway without delay. By morning, he had to control the critical highway the entire fifteen kilometers north to where the British and American lines met. If he waited while his infantry secured the woods, most of his division would still be on the border when morning came. He was risking his armor by not supporting it with infantry, but orders were to be obeyed.

The leading components of the armored advance were nearly halfway to the north–south highway. In less than a kilometer, the forward elements would reach the roadway and turn north. So far, they’d encountered no further opposition after defeating the token American resistance at the border. Maybe Dmetri had been correct in his assessment of their opponent. Possibly after such a humiliating defeat, the enemy had abandoned its positions and was in full retreat.

At the front of the long column, the lead tank’s massive hull scraped against the low-hanging branches. The tank warily eased around a sharp bend to the left. Two other T-80s and a BMP2 were close behind. All four disappeared from view around the curve.

Jensen waited until just the right moment. With his heart pounding in his ears and bile rising to his lips, he screamed into his headset, “Open fire!”

Renoir’s and Richmond’s gunners instantly launched TOWs. Using their periscopes’ optical sights, they made minor adjustments during their missiles’ brief flight. In the twinkling of an eye, the American missiles turned the first T-80 into a flaming mass of twisted metal. Ravenous fires reached back to eagerly lick at the steel treads of those behind it in the endless column. The lead elements frantically searched for the source of the attack. With a forty-seven-ton fireball preventing their movement forward and the massive column blocking their retreat, they were trapped. If they failed to locate the source of the ambush and quickly destroy it, they knew their lives would soon be over.