The Red Line

by Walt Gragg

  “Are the tanks making any attempt to cross the wire?”

  “Negative. For the moment, they’re just sitting there.”

  For the briefest of instants, Jensen’s mind begged him to believe it was nothing more than another Russian ploy to test their American adversaries. Just that brazen general trying to see how his foe would react this time.

  But the veteran platoon sergeant knew otherwise. Tanks and BMPs at the wire might be a test of wills. Moving dismounted infantry into position to support the armor, however, could mean only one thing. As much as he fought against it, there was just one conclusion he could reach—the Russians were preparing to attack.

  Jensen’s mind was racing. Still, he forced himself to sound completely calm. “Roger, Two-One. Wait one.”

  Jensen turned to the lieutenant. Searching looks passed over their faces, each knowing what they needed to do but wanting the reassurance of the other. When Powers made no move to take charge, Jensen issued the order for the platoon’s fifteen men at the border to prepare for war.

  “Second Platoon, lock and load.”

  In the towers, each soldier chambered a round into the barrel of his M-4, released the safety, and selected a target from the Russian infantry. In the three Bradleys, the vehicle commander reached for his machine-gun controls and went through the identical procedure. Each then did the same with his 25mm armor-piercing Bushmaster. The soldier in the “gunner” position armed his pair of upgraded TOW missiles. They all knew the powerful missile, tested in a dozen nasty little wars, would slice through the thickest Russian armor with ease. The Bradley drivers started their engines and revved them against the cold.

  In all, it took less than ten seconds for the platoon’s border force to be ready for battle.

  “Jewels, let squadron know what’s going on up here,” Jensen said.

  Without waiting for a response, Jensen pushed past the three replacements and into the platoon living area.

  As he stood in the middle of the room and made the fateful pronouncement, the platoon sergeant’s voice was almost casual in its tone and belied the terror welling in his soul. “Let’s go, 2nd Platoon. We’ve got bad guys at the wire. And they appear to mean business.”

  At the tables, cards flew. Confused soldiers in various states of dress scrambled to ready themselves for whatever lay ahead.

  • • •

  With Jensen busy in the living area, Powers decided the moment was ripe for him to exercise his newly acquired leadership skills.

  “Come on, men!” Powers said. He motioned for Winston, Johnson, and Reed to follow.

  Rushing out the door, with the three cavalry soldiers close on his heels, the fresh-faced lieutenant ran to his Humvee. With trembling fingers, he removed the thick canvas tarp covering the Humvee’s machine gun.

  “You drive,” Powers said, pointing to Johnson.

  The soldiers scrambled into the Humvee. Powers climbed into the rear and positioned himself behind the machine gun.

  “All right, men, there’s no time to waste. Let’s get up to the border!” Powers yelled.

  In one motion, Johnson started the engine and slammed the accelerator to the floor. The tires spun wildly, spraying snow in every direction. The small combat vehicle careened its way onto the twisting trail. The border was a mile away. Reaching forty miles per hour as they roared through the blackness of the narrow roadway, the soldiers were in for the ride of their lives. In the rear of the Humvee, the lieutenant held on with all his might.

  • • •

  Satisfied that Cruz and Austin could finish organizing the platoon’s remaining twenty-two men, Jensen returned to the operations room.

  “Where the hell’s the lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Took off in his Hummer,” Jelewski said.

  “When’d he do that?”

  “A couple of minutes ago. Right after you went into the living area, he took Reed’s team and left for the border.”

  A mixture of anger and frustration flashed in the platoon sergeant’s eyes. But before Jensen could utter the endless stream of expletives forming on his lips, Brown was screaming into the radio, “Delta-Two, I’ve got tanks through the wire! Jesus Christ, they’re everywhere! Say again, I’ve got tanks through the wire! Request immediate instructions! Request immediate instructions!”

  The Russians had made their move.

  Jensen lunged toward the radio. He had to get Brown and his men away from the border. It was their only chance. If they were going to inflict maximum damage on the enemy and hope to somehow live to see another sunrise, he had to get his overmatched soldiers into the protective cover of the welcoming tangle of German forest. And he had to do it now.

  The lieutenant’s Humvee chose that exact moment to burst from the woods. His hand already positioned to key his headset, he beat Jensen to the punch.

  “Open fire!” Powers screamed. “Open fire!”

  He squeezed the trigger of his machine gun, firing wild bursts toward the border.

  “No-o-o!” Jensen shrieked into the platoon radio. “Fall back! Fall back! Brownie, get everyone into the trees and set up defensive positions!”

  Jensen was, however, too late. None of them heard him over the battle erupting in every direction.

  Targets were everywhere in Brown’s night-vision sights. With his Bushmaster chain gun, the squad leader tore into a BMP2 that had stopped to discharge its seven infantrymen. Under Brown’s relentless assault, smoke poured from the BMP. Flames licked at the enemy armored vehicle’s sides. As Russian infantry emerged from the rear of the crippled personnel carrier, Brown switched to his machine gun. With two quick bursts, he cut down four white-clad figures and watched them crumple to the snow.

  Brown’s gunner had a T-80 in his sights. He fired the first of his TOW missiles. The missile screamed through the night, ramming headlong into its massive target. The ground beneath them trembled. A fearful explosion threw huge pieces of the dying tank high into the winter sky. The resulting fireball was visible for miles around. The blizzard-swept battlefield turned as bright as the brightest day.

  A half mile to Brown’s left, the pair of Americans in the center guard tower opened fire on a squad of Russian infantry caught by the false daylight of the burning tank. Struck repeatedly, the advancing infantry went down. The firing from the tower attracted the attention of the T-80s the infantry squad had been attempting to support. The lead tank methodically raised the elevation on its 125mm cannon, located the M-4 muzzle flashes, and fired from close range. In less than a heartbeat, the massive shell slammed into the frozen tower, obliterating it and the cavalry soldiers within. America had suffered its first losses of the new war.

  Powers’s Humvee headed north across the open ground that separated it from Brown’s position. While the battle intensified, the Humvee ripped through the blizzard with guns blazing. A BMP’s machine gun returned the Humvee’s fire. Lethal streams of tracer fire soared in both directions.

  The deadly duel of men and machines would, however, be short-lived. The Humvee was overmatched. Its armored opponent was far too powerful. The Russian fire homed in, coming ever closer to the speeding Americans. The BMP’s gunner focused on the figure behind the enemy machine gun. The inviting target of the standing Powers was struck by a pair of armor-piercing bullets that found their way through the machine gun’s protective plating and the lieutenant’s body armor. The first found his right arm, tearing a huge gash in a well-developed biceps. The other smashed into the lieutenant’s broad chest and dug for the fragile life hidden within. The impacting bullets forever silenced the Humvee’s machine gun.

  A second burst of machine-gun fire caught Johnson in the shoulder and neck. The shorter Winston, sitting next to him in the front passenger seat, was struck just above his left cheekbone by the withering Russian assault. Winston died instantly, as a substantial portion of his f
ace and head disappeared.

  The searing pain of Johnson’s wounds soared deep into his brain, overwhelming all conscious thought. He instinctively jerked the steering wheel sharply to the left, away from the BMP’s fire. The extreme actions of its driver were too much for the Humvee to overcome. It tumbled over and over in the treacherous snows, finally skidding to a stop beneath a heavy drift. In the rear seat, Sergeant Reed was pinned beneath the twisted wreckage. His neck was broken.

  The crash threw the severely injured Powers from the vehicle. The lieutenant slammed to the bitter ground. His motionless form lay in the snow, barely alive. His broken pipe, torn from his shirt pocket, lay next to him.

  The Humvee’s crash also broke Johnson’s left arm and crushed his rib cage. He tried to scream out, but the enemy bullet that had ripped through his neck had destroyed his larynx. In barely a minute, as his freely flowing blood mixed with the snow, his pain was over.

  The rest of 2nd Platoon’s border force was faring little better. On the far right of the platoon’s position, 3rd Squad’s Bradley never got off a shot. Shortly after the battle began, a duo of T-80s fired their main guns at nearly the same instant, destroying the smaller American armored vehicle and its crew of three.

  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.