by Ian Slater
Allied helicopters, roughly equal in number to the Soviets’ were, in general, superior fighting machines, and for the most part, the Allied pilots could literally fly rings about their Russian counterparts, but as in the Thunderbolts’ case, the Allied choppers were short of ammunition and missiles of all types. Compounding NATO’s problems in the first few hours of Marshal Kirov’s attack was the Soviets’ dropping of nonnuclear EMP — electromagnetic pulse — bombs, knocking out all radio communications, every microchip circuit within a twenty-mile radius blown, leaving NATO’s frontline commanders without communications while Kirov’s divisions stayed in close touch with each other via Kirov’s superbly trained motorcycle courier battalions. The DB pocket was becoming an abattoir.
* * *
On Marshal Kirov’s general staff, only the marshal was worried. He held the awesome responsibility if anything went wrong, and he understood better than any of his subordinates that for all the years since World War II, and especially after the defense cuts of the Gorbachev years, the Soviet Union’s victory in the West had to be a quick victory — a victory of quantity over quality — before the Americans and their damnable ability to resupply had a chance to make any difference. Still, as the battle wore on, the fact that the NATO forces were now being split in two raised to a certainty the possibility of driving them into the sea before the Americans could muster the wherewithal for a counterattack.
* * *
Shaking with cold, David Brentwood had quickly dug a shallow grave in the snow. As he dragged the Englishman’s body into the depression and removed the Englishman’s clothes, he felt as unobtrusively as he could for a cigarette lighter. There was none. Maybe it was inside the boots. But here, too, he drew a blank. He was sure he’d seen the Englishman smoking, but perhaps he’d got a light from one of the guards. He looked about for anything that he could make a rude cross from, but there was nothing. The guard was telling him to hurry up again. Quickly putting on the Englishman’s uniform and taking the Englishman’s dog tags, he heaped up the snow and placed a bramble as the only marker he could find for the makeshift grave. He bowed his head for a moment and then trudged slowly back to the ditch, slipping the dog tags over his head, forlornly carrying the snow-sodden blanket with his left hand, jumping the ditch, breaking his fall with the right.
As he got up, he threw the blanket into the guard’s face, shoved the AKM up into the air, and kicked the man in the groin. He heard the explosion of air from the Stasi as the guard fell back into the ditch, cracking the ice, David falling with him, bringing his knee up to the guard’s chin. There was a crunch of bone, and for a second David didn’t know whether it was his knee or the guard’s jaw. Either way, he finished the job with the butt of the AKM. Quickly he took the dead guard’s coat off him, but the man’s torso fell back into the broken ice so that when Brentwood reached for the man’s undershirt, it was sodden, as was the rest of his uniform. “Damn!” said David under his breath, but he did find a lighter. He could do it, he guessed, by cutting out a strip from the truck cabin’s plastic upholstery, but the problem was, he didn’t know how long it would take.
He heard voices as the men started to return from the dump. He wouldn’t have enough time to hot-wire the truck — they’d cut him down before he got behind its steering wheel.
“All right,” he muttered to himself, determined to do a little SPETS number of his own, “it’s time we evened the score.” He tore off the guard’s dog tags, and inside thirty seconds he’d put on the guard’s sodden coat, stuffed the two grenades the guard was carrying into the coat pocket, put on the helmet, and started running to the last truck in the line. He could hear the colonel’s voice and the muffled thud of an oil drum and a guard shouting at the two men who had dropped it. His back to the other prisoners, now, he guessed, about fifty yards off, he lifted the collar of the guard’s coat high around his neck and fired a long burst across the ditch into the field, screaming, “Amerikaner! Hah!”
Behind him he heard prisoners dropping to the ground, the other guards running through the snowstorm to join him at the end of the line of trucks, and the oberst shouting orders. He moved quickly back down alongside the ditch to the first truck, unscrewed the gas tank cover, snapped the AKM’s swing butt hard on the stock, and using its bayonet, cut through the neck of his T-shirt to make a wick for the gas tank.
But the guards were closing faster than he’d thought, and he still wouldn’t have time to get into the truck. He stuffed half the T-shirt strip into the tank, lit the bottom of the taper, and slid down the embankment toward the ditch, running as fast as he could away from the line of trucks. He guessed it would be no more than five seconds before the truck would blow, and instinctively everyone around it would hit the road for a few minutes, afraid to go to any of the other vehicles behind it. He slipped on the ice, crashing headlong into the snow-covered side of the ditch, the blizzard swirling about him, and glanced back the fifty yards or so — the trucks dim blots in the rolling snow.
There was no explosion — maybe the taper had been too long and they’d seen it in time, or maybe it hadn’t been as dry as he thought. He kept running, and although hot from the effort, the sodden clothes turned his perspiration to ice. He paused to catch his breath. The unexpected, the DI had always told Thelma and Stumble-Ass — go for the unexpected.
Gasping, the icy air searing his lungs, he wondered how far he could get before they recaptured him. He heard shouts coming from the direction of the parked convoy and then an ominous silence, except for the howl of the blizzard. Crawling up to the top of the embankment, he looked for the trucks again, but they had vanished in the white-out, and though he knew the dump was opposite him, a hundred yards or so across the road, the loss of depth perception in the white-out created the dangerously comfortable illusion that because he couldn’t see his enemy, he was safe.
Then, beneath the wail of the blizzard, he heard a swishing noise, faint yet distinct — coming closer.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
While, in the port of Brest, the convoy, minus one merchantman and one of its destroyer escorts, was docking, Gen. Douglas Freeman, beside himself with frustration, was raging against his immobility, which prevented him from being at the front during the attack. “Here I am trussed up like a mummy, and my boys are dying like flies.” Increasing his sense of failure, Freeman’s headquarters received a message via a ham operator, using an antiquated radio set that, operational because it used vacuum tubes instead of up-to-date printed microchip circuit boards, picked up a BBC broadcast of the nine-o’clock news reporting that a strike of dockworkers was under way in several of the French Ports, including Brest. Freeman ordered Norton to grab the nearest F-16 pilot at Krefeld to take a message to Brest that the French strikers were to be shot on the spot.
“You threaten that, General,” Major Norton advised him, “and we could have one hell of a problem with France. They’re allowing us to use—”
“Allowing us nothing,” snapped Freeman. “They’re allowing us and the British and Germans and every other poor son of a bitch in that pocket to die. Only dying they’ll do is to protect France. And if the NATO commander in Brest is too cowardly to do it — I’ll order air strikes on French forces and make it look like the Russians hit them. You see how quickly things’ll loosen up then. I want those supplies and I want them now.”
Norton was appalled, staring wide-eyed at the general, convinced that when Freeman had been thrown out of the Humvee, he’d lost some of his marbles as well. “We can’t do that, General. I mean, there’s no way—”
Freeman, his face contorted with pain, eyes smarting, nevertheless managed to fix Norton in his stare. “Watch me! If I’d had my way, I’d bomb the sons of bitches myself to get them into the righting. Now, are you going to transmit that order or do I have to shoot you!”
* * *
As the general’s Apache helicopter rose to ferry Norton to Krefeld, its rotor slap momentarily drowned the noise of battle, but he kne
w it was an illusion and that, like it or not, the general had a point. If they lost Western Europe, it was all over.
* * *
Freeman called for the doctor.
“Yes, General?”
“I want another shot of that painkiller.”
The doctor tried but couldn’t hide a smirk of satisfaction that said, So you’re human after all?
“I may be—” Freeman began, but for a moment he couldn’t go on. “I might be stubborn, Doc, but I’m not stupid.” He turned to his logistics aide. “Charlie — you got a manifest for the convoy that’s due in Brest?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Get one.”
“I know there are twenty-four merchantmen, all over twenty thousand tons. There’s a hell of a lot of stuff — if it got through.”
“Well, if it did get through, I don’t want any screw-ups down there. Ammunition and fuel, Charlie. Ammunition and fuel. Onto the Hercules and up here. At least we’ve still got fighter cover. Bring me a map of North Rhine-Westphalia.”
* * *
“Fox 1… Fox 1…” Shirer was calling, the nose of the MiG plainly visible in the flash of an exploding Tomcat, then he was falling. Gradually he became aware of someone holding his hand and a rush of sensations all at once, the stink of a boat’s diesel fumes and a stringent antiseptic smell and perfume, the hand holding his warm and reassuring, the woman’s face indistinct, warping in and out of focus as if through a glass tumbler, swaying to and fro with the motion of the boat. And somewhere in the distance, above the rhythmic throbbing of the marine engine, the chatter of machine-gun fire, and other wounded all around him. The perfume was a memory to him, and he couldn’t quite match the face in his mind, but it awakened a desire in him that transcended everything else around him.
“How’s he doing?” a man’s voice asked.
“He’ll be all right,” she said. “He was in a coma at first and we thought his arm was broken. But he was lucky. The marines who brought him in said his chute was a little twisted, but he came down all right, and the snow helped.”
“Can’t keep a good man down.”
“No,” she answered, smiling. Now Shirer could see her clearly.
“You know him?” the man asked.
She turned to look up at him as she answered, and Shirer knew the profile at once. “Lana?” He was grinning like a schoolboy.
“Well,” said the man, straightening up, arms akimbo, “I guess that cuts me out!” It was a tone of good-natured resignation. “And here I thought I’d hit pay dirt with a pretty navy nurse. If you’ll pardon me, I’m going to try my luck elsewhere — surely there’s one nurse who’d take pity on a lonely sailor.”
Lana laughed easily in reply, and in that moment Shirer knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if he did nothing else in this damned war, he’d take her, hold her, and never let go.
“Captain—” Lana called out, “thank you for all you’ve done. If you and the others on that beach hadn’t got us off-”
“Ah—” he said, waving aside any thanks. “No problem, Lieutenant. Fish weren’t running yesterday anyways — and don’t call me Captain. Makes me feel like I’m in the navy.”
Shirer watched her effortless laugh, as entranced by her beauty as when he’d first met her. Only she was more mature-looking now — more confident than the girl he had known before the war. And if he could, he would have made love to her right then and there. Her hand was still in his and he said, “My God, I never thought I’d be glad to be shot down.”
“Neither did I! You are feeling better, aren’t you?”
“More than you know.”
Soon they were talking as if they had never parted.
“Where are we headed?” he asked her.
“To Atka,” she answered. “It’ll be about five hours. From there they’ll probably fly us back to Dutch Harbor and you’ll—” Her pause conveyed more to him than she realized. Both of them pretended that they would have more time together once they reached the safety of Dutch Harbor, but both of them had seen enough of the war to know that as soon as he was able, he would be flying again, as every effort would be made to gain air superiority over Adak as a prelude to retaking the island in order to protect Shemya, four hundred miles east of Adak, before it was permanently cut off and overrun by the Russians.
The head nurse, coming down the companion ladder from the wheelhouse, where more of the wounded had been crowded in, noticed Lana was still with the same patient. “Lieutenant Brentwood — could I see you a moment please!” Her tone was admonishing. “We need help on deck.”
Lana rose, taking her hand from his. “Uh-oh. I’m in trouble. I’ll see you at Dutch Harbor.”
“Lana?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“Are you still afraid of pirates?” For a second she didn’t know what he meant.
“They wear eye patches.” He grinned.
She was buttoning up her parka before going on deck. Her
voice was subdued, yet quietly joyful. “I love them,” she said.
* * *
“You were very palsy-walsy with that pilot,” the head nurse commented sharply. “Do you hold hands with all your patients?”
“He’s an old friend.”
“So I gathered. But I’d appreciate it if you could spare time to attend to some of the other patients. We have several cases of—”
“Yes, of course,” replied Lana. “I’m sorry. It was selfish of me.”
Surprised and mollified by Lana’s apology, the head nurse put Lana’s lapse of duty down to the battle fatigue they were all feeling. Adopting an equally conciliatory tone, she asked Lana if she would help her secure all the medical supplies they’d had to put on deck to make room below for the wounded. “We’d better hurry,” she told Lana. “Captain Bering says we’ll likely run into some squalls before we reach Atka.”
* * *
On the other side of the world, Major Norton, bearing Freeman’s message to Brest, had just finished a terrifying flight with zero visibility in a storm sweeping in over the Ardennes. He had sat, white-knuckled, in the electronic systems operator’s tandem seat in a Luftwaffe Tornado out of Krefeld, eyes closed throughout the 530-mile flight, which the Tornado made in thirty-eight minutes, often flying less than five hundred feet above the ground, courtesy of its contour-scanning radar.
As Norton deplaned, his legs almost buckling under him, the Luftwaffe pilot apologized effusively, telling him, “I am sorry we took so long. But you see, Major, the STO”—by which the pilot meant the Smiths/Teldix/OMI head-up display—”is a little off, you understand, so it was necessary for us to go a little slow.” Adding insult to injury, when Norton arrived at NATO Brest HQ with Freeman’s threat, he discovered that there had been such an uproar from the French public about the dockside strike that the unions were back at work within the hour and the convoy’s supplies were already en route to NATO’s beleaguered Northern Army.
“You wish to go back now?” asked the tired but eager young Luftwaffe pilot.
“No,” said Norton. “I think I’ll sit a while.”
* * *
As he headed farther away from the trucks, following the line of the ditch parallel to the road, David Brentwood heard the swishing noise increasing, and now there seemed to be more than one source of the noise. Skis? He crawled up the sharp incline of the embankment but slid back, a hump under his foot giving way. Looking down, he saw it was a child’s body. He hesitated, held the child’s frozen hand, a little boy. Though not expecting a pulse, David checked anyway. There was none. Realizing he could do no more but unable to leave the tiny corpse, he turned the body facedown, the savagery of it all overwhelming him. Unmarried, no children of his own, he found it difficult to judge how old the little boy might have been, but he guessed no more than five or six.
The swishing noise was louder now, and he thought he saw a flashlight through the thick curtain of the blizzard. He touched the boy’s head, the hair frozen stiff
, eyes closed, and was about to make his way up to the top of the embankment again when he noticed several more humps in the snow, scattered along the shoulder of the road. One body, a woman’s, was covered by that of a soldier who had obviously fallen on top of her, trying to protect her. The soldier’s uniform was that of the Bundeswehr. Why the advancing Soviet forces had perpetrated such a massacre, he had no idea. Perhaps it was nothing more than that civilians posed inconvenient delays.
Looking back down the road, he saw four figures with flashlights, the black barrel of their slung weapons in contrast to the falling snow. Sliding back down toward the ditch, he ran for another twenty yards or so, and when, glancing back, he could not see them, he quickly crossed the road, ready to slide down the ditch on the other side. There was none, and so he kept running into a snow-covered field. The unexpected, he told himself again. They would not think of looking for him on the dump side of the road.
He saw the dim shapes of trees about a hundred yards ahead of him, a wood, and at the edge he crawled beneath the snow-laden branches. Looking back across the field, he watched as the search party, four of them now, continued down the road. One of them stopped — looking down at what David guessed must be the child’s body. Damn! He shouldn’t have touched the body, disturbed its blanket of snow, because now they knew—
But then they began moving again, stopped, and turned back. Jesus Christ! he admonished himself. You dumb bastard! You stupid, dumb bastard—
They had seen his footprints, and given the heavy fell of snow, they would know he must have crossed the road shortly before. Heaving himself up under the weight of the coat, he began moving through the woods, then paused. Calm down, he told himself. So they were better-equipped, better-armed— and they were already starting to cross the field, following his footprints toward the wood. But he realized it would be much easier for them to pick up his footprints inside the wood where the snowfall was not nearly so windblown. He turned back toward the edge of the wood, unslung the AKM, thought about himself and Thelman on the range at Parris Island, and eased himself into the prone position, seeing the DI, not shouting for once but calmly telling them, “You’ve got time. Relax. Get your breathing under control. You’re going nowhere — and the enemy’s advancing. Don’t panic and start spraying everything in sight. Waste your ammo. Deep breaths! Stumble-Ass, I said deep breath. Exhale, not all of it. Hold — that’s it. Now squeeze the trigger — not your cock, Thelma. Fire, and don’t keep looking at the target. You’re not at the county fair. No dollies or box of chocolates. Move your aim straight to the next one or he’ll move you. You got that, Stumble-Ass?”
