The Red Line

by Walt Gragg

  A smaller group of ill-destined deviants was at the rear of the ambulance. The wide door swung open. Elizabeth Morse had no way of protecting her charges. And each was too seriously injured to be of any help to her. Nevertheless, she boldly stood blocking the entrance to the rear compartment of ambulance number three.

  Two shaved-headed Germans in their early twenties reached in. They snatched the pretty nurse from the rear of the ambulance. She let out a terrifying scream. The pair dragged her away from the vehicle. They threw her onto the bleak asphalt and tore at her clothing. Before they killed her, they’d every intention of raping the appealing, dark-haired American. She fought back with everything she had, struggling to keep the vile creatures from her.

  Her screams attracted the chaotic mob’s attention. The malevolent ones, blood dripping from their hands and feet, turned toward the new drama unfolding a few feet away. For the moment, the injured soldiers inside the doorway were forgotten.

  Morse’s scrubs were gone. The tattered cloth had been ripped from her frame. Even so, while she lay on the freezing roadway clad in only her undergarments, she continued to vigorously resist her antagonists’ efforts. The beautiful nurse was determined to go down fighting. A swift kick to the head from a sturdy German boot silenced her struggle. She lay alive but unmoving on the harsh ground. The final shreds of clothing were savagely torn from her body.

  The first of the grinning attackers pulled his filthy pants down around his knees. He dropped to the ground to mount the fallen figure.

  Without warning, a single shot rang out. The skinhead fell on top of the unconscious lieutenant. The back of his head was gone. In a flash, his partner fell dead next to him, the victim of a second ringing shot.

  The defiling crowd instinctively parted. It was just long enough for the stone-faced American to force his way through. Ramirez kicked the dead rapist’s body from Elizabeth Morse. With the rifle menacingly raised under his left arm, he stood over the unconscious figure. The brown shirts closed in from three sides. The battle-tested Ramirez took his time. Firing a single shot only when necessary, he held the threatening tangle at bay for a full forty-five seconds. One by one, bodies dropped around him. By the time he was finished, ten corpses would lie at Ramirez’s feet.

  The seven MPs were nearly there.

  The fallen lieutenant stirred. Ramirez’s undoing. Her movement distracted him for the briefest of moments.

  “Stay still, don’t move,” he said.

  He glanced at her struggling form. When he did, the clustering attackers saw their chance. From every direction, they pounced upon the wounded soldier. Ramirez tried to respond. He fired two belated rounds. But it was too late. The deadly rifle was ripped from his hands. He vanished beneath the crushing mountain of inhumanity.

  On the side of the roadway one hundred yards away, the MPs knelt on the hard ground. As one, they opened fire on the huge melee of marauding figures near the rear of the third ambulance. From this distance, they wouldn’t miss. At the edges of the horde, the Germans dropped in clumps. Flowing blood was everywhere. The death toll quickly mounted. The mob staggered back. They scattered to the four winds from the concentrated gunfire. The MPs continued to shoot into the fleeing crowd. The soldiers stopped to reload. An irrational force of four hundred seized the opportunity. They re-formed and charged across the pavement directly for the MPs.

  The Americans opened fire again.

  The running Germans fell beneath the persistent gunfire. Even so, their uncontrollable passion for ruinous revenge propelled them forward. Undeterred by the death around them, the neo-Nazis raced screaming across the pavement toward the MPs. Three hundred raging animals closed to within fifty yards of the firing soldiers. One hundred more lay dead, or dying, behind them. The Americans continued to fire. Two people were falling for every yard of ground covered. But still, the mob came on. At the present rate, two hundred Germans would reach the seven Americans in the next ten seconds. The MPs knew they were in serious trouble.

  More chattering rifles suddenly joined in on the slaughter. On the MP’s left, the four medical technicians from the cabs of the fourth and fifth ambulances were shooting into the sprinting crowd. The defenders had the frenetic assembly in a crossfire.

  From the sheer weight of the killing, the attack ground to a halt. Thirty yards from both groups of Americans, the Germans stopped in the middle of the roadway. The sergeant in charge of the MPs signaled for his men to cease firing. The ambulance drivers responded in kind. They waited while the disheveled audience milled about on the cold pavement. With their rifles at the ready, the Americans prepared to fire again if the Germans should charge once more.

  Those in the mob hesitated, unsure of what their next move should be. At its edges, many started slipping away. Still, its central core of crazed killers remained intact.

  It was the Russians who’d end the calamitous circus once and for all. From low in the east, the thirteen surviving Havocs returned. At the rear of the convoy, the Stinger teams were waiting. The Americans fired first, hoping to stop the helicopters before they could loosen their lethal munitions. Five missiles ripped through the cold morning. The targeted helicopters raced away. All five, prepared this time to counter the swift Stingers, released strings of flares. Three helicopters would ultimately be successful in fooling the little killers. A trio of Stingers would uselessly attack falling flares. The other missiles continued straight and steady. A pair of deadly Havocs exploded in midair.

  The Avenger gunner targeted his next victim. The four Stinger teams scrambled to prepare a new missile. The final eight helicopters roared forward, intent on destroying the air-defense teams.

  The Havocs opened fire on the rear of the column. A barrage of rockets and missiles, smaller than the initial attack but still quite deadly, reached down for the ground below. Two hundred yards of highway erupted in a blazing fireball. Hundreds more, American and German alike, joined the dead on the scorched autobahn.

  In one quick strike, the Stingers were gone. Every last one had been consumed in the all-encompassing flames.

  With the American air defenses eliminated, the eleven surviving attack helicopters would be free to rampage up and down the highway. At the front of the column, the disorganized Germans broke and ran in stark terror.

  The defenseless Americans braced for a fiery death to pour down upon their heads. There was little chance any of them would survive. Yet to their surprise, the pitiless helicopters unexpectedly turned and raced east. Hot on their vapor trails were the Sparrow missiles of three Lakenheath F-16s. The dead MP lieutenant’s pleas had finally been answered.

  The savage hunters were on the run. With a gleam in their eyes, the American pilots chased the slower-flying enemy. The F-16s fired their missiles and cannons again and again.

  One by one, they tracked their overmatched prey. In less than five minutes, all eleven Havocs lay burning on the outskirts of Wurzburg. And the F-16 pilots were on their way back to England.

  • • •

  At the rear of the third ambulance, the naked lieutenant sat on the frigid ground cradling the lifeless private’s crushed body. While she clutched Ramirez to her, huge tears fell upon his unseeing face. He’d given his life to save hers.

  He wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  For the moment, the threat from the Russians was over. The threat from the civilians also appeared to have dissipated. The Americans picked themselves up and re-formed the column as best they could. All around, the doctors and nurses found themselves faced with hundreds upon hundreds of injured and dying Germans. After what had transpired, the Americans chose to turn their backs and walk away. They’d leave the Germans to their fates—and the Russians.

  With the enemy close behind, there was no time to adequately care for their own dead. The Americans took their fallen brothers and sisters and laid their remains in straight rows in a snow-covered field
at the edge of the roadway. Ramirez was among them.

  • • •

  The remainder of the trip would be slow going. It would take the convoy nine hours to cover the remaining 125 miles to the final-standing American Army hospital. In the rear of the now-leading ambulance, for the entire journey, Elizabeth Morse’s tears never stopped.

  Inside his mask of white cloth, the battle-hardened sergeant in the bottom left stretcher cried along with her.

  CHAPTER 51

  January 31—10:00 a.m.

  Defense Information Systems Agency

  Hillingdon

  As the battered medical convoy continued its ill-fated journey, five hundred miles north George O’Neill and Randy Carson were ready to unveil their ingenious plan. When they’d finished explaining their idea, Colonel Hoerner, Major Siebman, and Master Sergeant Doyle looked at the pair in complete disbelief.

  “So, George,” Denny Doyle said, “you’re telling us in the middle of a war you can completely rebuild in a day and a half the Defense Information System it took decades to complete?”

  “Not the whole thing, Denny, just the small part west of the Rhine. I figured there was no point of even looking at anything in Germany east of there. By the time we’d get the system in place on that side of the river, it’ll likely be in Russian hands.”

  The skeptical expressions on the three faces hadn’t changed.

  “I thought George was crazy, too, when he first told me about this idea,” Carson said. “But the more my engineers looked at it, and the more we talked about bringing over additional FEMA vans, the more it began to make sense.”

  “With Donnersberg as our central location,” O’Neill said, “and the large site we have at Pirmasens as our secondary hub, we can completely restore our command and control west of the river. In fact, there’s nothing but our own ingenuity to limit us. We can even keep some vans in reserve to add locations to the system wherever the generals tell us they want a new one. And if our engineering calculations are correct and we can get a functioning microwave system directly from Hillingdon to Donnersberg, we’ll not only be able to tie western Germany together but also connect it directly with England and the States. That will overcome the limits of the smaller-capacity satellites Randy’s team was able to install last night. We’ll have a fully integrated network. Once we get the system in place, as long as we can keep the Russians from blowing up most of the sites, there’s going to be no problem letting the generals maintain precise control of every element of our defense. If this works like we think it will, we’ll almost be to the point where, should he choose to do so, the President could talk to any second lieutenant on the battlefield.”

  “Are you sure you can make this work, Sergeant O’Neill?” Colonel Hoerner asked.

  “Yes, sir. With Randy’s engineers and the FEMA vans, if we can get our hands on them, this will work. His crew already gave us back a fully functioning AWACS system and a couple of very welcome satellite terminals this morning; why not give them a chance to do significantly more? I’m not sure EUCOM’s even interested at this point, but if we decide to make a final stand at the Rhine, this will give us a far greater chance of succeeding.”

  “All right, Sergeant O’Neill,” the obviously reluctant Colonel Hoerner said. “I’ll make the call to EUCOM and see if we can arrange a meeting.”

  • • •

  At Upper Heyford, shortly after noon, Staff Sergeant George O’Neill stood in a spacious conference room with Randy Carson at his side. Twelve colonels, a couple of admirals, and four generals sat at a lengthy table. Other officers, from each of the services, sat along the crowded walls. With the way the war was going, each wore a haggard face.

  It was quite clear to everyone, from the lowest private to the highest levels of command, that unless something dramatic happened in the next few days, the Russians were going to swiftly conquer Germany and prevail in the egregious struggle.

  Even a week earlier, O’Neill could never have imagined his country in such a desperate situation.

  He understood the war wasn’t going well, and he was generally aware of the major events as they occurred. Still, even in the position he held, his conceptual understanding of the overall American plan was, naturally, quite limited.

  He’d no idea if any of those present would be even vaguely interested in his concept or exactly how it would fit into the big picture, if it fit at all. But he’d come this far, and there would be no turning back.

  O’Neill taped the map of the existing European Defense Information System on the wall and began going over the critical elements of where the system presently stood and where it had the potential to be if DISA was given the go-ahead to install the new network.

  For twenty minutes he spoke without a single question being raised, an event exceedingly rare with so many senior officers present. From the moment he’d begun talking, each could see there was a great deal of potential in what was being presented. And each one’s frustration with his inability to control the frightful conflict made him a more-than-willing listener.

  Like nearly everyone in the twenty-first century, the ability to communicate with anyone they wished, whenever they wished, was something they’d all long ago taken for granted. That is until they’d lost the ability to actually do so.

  Twenty minutes was ample time for O’Neill to go over the major elements of the plan. Finally, Colonel Morrison, now EUCOM’s acting head of operations after General Oliver’s death during the Russian raid on Patch Barracks, asked a question. It would be the first of many from those at the table. O’Neill understood that the continual stream of questions, one right after another, was a good sign. Clearly, those present were extremely curious about what they were being told.

  “What you’ve just explained is certainly interesting. Do you really think you can pull this off, Sergeant O’Neill?” Morrison said.

  “Well, sir, nothing this complex is ever one hundred percent certain. There’s always the possibility of something completely unexpected happening, and there are bound to be some glitches along the way. But if you decide to do this, Mr. Carson and I are confident that what we have just gone over with you will succeed.”

  “So, if we ask the President to commit to this plan, what should we tell him is our greatest concern?”

  “That the Russians destroy Donnersberg, sir. I would recommend before we even consider implementing this approach we make sure we can defend the site from both air and ground attacks. It sure would be nice to put at least a company of infantry and a significant number of Stingers on the mountaintop to defend it. And if by some chance you happen to have a Patriot Missile System lying around that you aren’t using, that would make things even better.”

  O’Neill had included the final comment more to break the tension than anything else. He was quite surprised by the answer he received.

  “Actually, Sergeant, it’s funny you mentioned that. Right before you came in, we were talking about what to do with the Patriot Missile System at Rhein-Main we hadn’t been able to use because nearly all of its soldiers had been killed during the Russian airborne attack a couple of days ago. We’ve been gathering surviving soldiers from the Patriots that have been destroyed and were planning on sending them to Rhein-Main to retrieve the system. We just hadn’t figured out where we needed it most. Donnersberg sounds like a perfect place to send it.”

  It was now one of the generals’ turn to inquire. “You’re going to need qualified soldiers to operate the new communication sites you’re proposing. Where do you plan to get them?”

  “In the same way you’re going to man the Patriot system, sir,” O’Neill said. “We’ll be cutting it close, but we’re going to take people from the existing Air Force and Army sites, especially those presently east of the Rhine. We’ll send those we free up to handle the new locations.”

  The general asked a second question. “You sai
d protecting Donnersberg is the most critical part of your plan. What do you consider second most important?”

  “Without a doubt it’s timing, sir,” O’Neill said. “We need to get the sites in place and the command and control system ready for your use at the exact moment you need to use it. If we’re even a few hours late, and we can’t support our forces defending the Rhine in the manner we’ve promised, it could cost thousands of lives and ultimately lead to our failure.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to get the system in place in time, Sergeant?”

  “Again, sir, there are lots of variables. We’ll need a day and a half once we’re told to begin the project. So the sooner we get the go-ahead and can lay our hands on the FEMA vans, the better. And the sooner all the major units identify their command and control needs in defending everything west of the river, the more efficiently all this will go. Our circuit engineers in Virginia will use that time to design each individual circuit to meet the exact demands of every user.”

  It was now an Air Force general’s turn to ask the question he’d been dying to ask.

  “Sergeant, you said you can place elements of the system wherever we need them, even where nothing presently exists. Am I hearing you correctly? Thirty-six hours from now, we could have fully functioning communication centers for an entire air base should we elect to reopen any of those we closed during our phasedown in Europe?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  “At Sembach?”

  “Yes.”

  “At Hahn, Zweibrucken, and Bitburg?”

  “Yes, sir. We can do all that. We have the potential to support as many fighter air bases as you’d like to create. Just be aware that the faster we know what you’re exact needs are, the easier this will be. After we have the central network in place at Donnersberg and Pirmasens, we can begin connecting the smaller vans at the outlying locations. You just tell us where you need them, what you need, and when you need it, and we’ll take it from there.”