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Her eyes shimmered. A hint of a smile found the corners of her mouth. She reached up and wrapped her arms around him. Fowler looked into her eyes. His smile matched hers.
The Russian missiles, their noses filled with death, headed for the helpless pair. The missiles rammed into the Engagement Control Station. The strength of the impacting ordnance sent shattered pieces of jagged metal and electronics equipment flying in every direction. Locked in a final embrace, Fowler and Morgan disappeared in a blinding flash of light. The minute fragments of their bodies, and of their souls, were tossed to the four winds.
• • •
Paul was ten yards from the safety of the shadowy trees. A razor-sharp metal slab raced from the decimated van toward the hobbling figure. The white-hot metal cut him down in midstride. His severed body lay on the asphalt. His freely flowing blood ran down the black surface toward the woods. He’d died so quickly that only the edges of his face showed any signs of recognition.
Missile after missile streamed from the heavens upon the crippled battery.
The MiGs and helicopters feasted for a very long time on the dead carcass of the defeated American air defenses.
• • •
The last Patriot battery in southern Germany was no more.
CHAPTER 59
February 1—1:32 p.m.
On the Eastern Fence
Ramstein Air Base
Nearly seven hours after Fowler’s and Morgan’s deaths, Arturo Rios sat behind the powerful machine gun in his deeply bunkered world. He stared at the ruinous remains of the evergreen forest on the eastern edge of Ramstein. He was back in the same anguished bunker he’d been carried from two days earlier. His terrifying memories of those earlier days had returned, too.
The remnants of the monumental blizzard were all around him. Although they probably wouldn’t be for much longer. The afternoon thermometer was reaching into the upper forties. The unmistakable signs of the drab snow’s disappearance were everywhere.
The crimson remains of Wilson and Goodman were still visible on the ground at the rear of the bunker. The dead airmen’s faces were also there, forever alive in Rios’s vivid dreams.
After two full days of good food, clean sheets, and profound sleep, Rios’s broken spirit had been partially restored. As he spent his second hour back on the line, his injured shoulder throbbed in the damp winter weather. But more difficult than the pain in his shoulder was the pain from his bitter remembrances of the tired bunker. Those memories were intensely present. The tortured airman knew that no matter how long he lived, they always would be.
They’d promised him he’d only be out there for a twelve-hour shift. Just long enough for the exhausted men on the line to sleep for a little while and enjoy a couple of robust meals. They didn’t want to release Rios for such duty. He certainly wasn’t in shape for it. Nevertheless, there weren’t enough defenders left to guard the distant miles of chain link alone. They needed the hero of the eastern fence to return once more. All they wanted was for him to protect the wire long enough to provide a little relief to his worn countrymen.
It had been a relatively quiet two days for the air base. Fewer and fewer fighter aircraft returned each hour, and the number of planes had grown critically low. The spirits of the base’s men were nearly as crushed as Ramstein’s air forces. Yet there’d been no further assaults upon them. And for that, everyone was thankful. They’d all seen far too much killing. And, like Rios, each had been permanently scarred by his experiences.
Until midnight, the twenty-year-old airman would be alone with his thoughts and two hundred yards of fence line. His thoughts scared him more than the battered fence ever would.
Just until midnight, they’d promised. No more.
Rios turned to watch two C-17 medevacs taxi to the edge of the runway behind him. One right after the other, the medical aircraft rushed down the runway and headed west. He sat watching them for the longest time as they grew smaller and smaller in the distant sky.
Five minutes behind the C-17s, a commercial airliner rolled to a stop. The Boeing 767 revved its deafening engines, quashing the airman’s solitude once more. Rios stared at the huge plane sitting a few feet away as it waited for clearance to depart. A small face in a window seat a third of the way back stared down at him. The smiling child raised a tiny hand and waved. Rios slowly lifted his good arm to return the gesture. But the plane was already heading down the concrete ribbon. The child never saw the lonely airman’s response.
Rios’s tenuous afternoon droned on.
Two miles away from his sandbagged world, ten thousand women and children were crammed together in a pockmarked building. Each was waiting for their turn to head for home. The Americans were halfway through the fourth complete day of the war. One hundred and thirty thousand dependents remained at Rhein-Main, Ramstein, and a dozen smaller airfields. With the Russians relentlessly closing in, everyone understood there was little time left with which to finish moving the women and children out of harm’s way. Rhein-Main, in particular, had grown perilously near the front lines. The base would soon have to be abandoned.
• • •
Colonel Zulin approached the Director of Operations.
“Comrade General, our agents in Germany report that within the past hour, a Patriot air-defense battery has begun setting up in front of Ramstein.”
“That finalizes our decision, then,” Yovanovich said. “I’ve promised Comrade Cheninko that I’ll end this thing as quickly as possible. We cannot allow the enemy to set up their air defenses in front of Ramstein and foil this afternoon’s air attack to destroy it. After last night’s nuclear assault by the Americans, Premier Cheninko has ordered me to use our intermediate range SS-20 nuclear weapons upon the air base and any other target in Germany if we deem it necessary.”
“Comrade General, should I give such an order?”
Yovanovich hesitated. He knew the use of the significantly larger weapon would be escalating the nuclear component of the conflict even further. They were already standing much too close to the edge of a world-devouring whirlwind, and he needed to be exceptionally careful. The planet was staring into an unspeakable abyss from which it would never recover. The launch on Ramstein was something he didn’t want to risk. As he stood weighing his options, it was far too clear, however, that for the moment, he had little choice. His plan for dealing with Cheninko wasn’t nearly ready. And confronting him at this point would foil his plot.
“Looks like we’ve no other choice. Order a fire mission for a nuclear attack on Ramstein.”
“Yes, Comrade General, it will be done at once. Ramstein will be destroyed before the day fully sets over Germany.”
• • •
Behind Rios, the sun dropped into the western horizon. He’d miss the fragile warmth it had provided during his first hours back on the line. The young airman sat on the edge of the runway, alone with his terrifying thoughts. He stared into the splintered trees. The broken pieces of the fearful forest were still red with blood from the grisly battles just days earlier. But after the horror he’d lived through, the trees no longer caused the slightest apprehension for the isolated airman. As the first hints of darkness appeared in the corners of the ravaged forest, Rios laughed out l
oud. How many years had it been since he sat out here in the darkness afraid of every shadow?
Four days. He couldn’t believe it. It had only been four days. Four days, and a thousand lifetimes.
• • •
In the western Ukraine, the three-man crew prepared to fire the nuclear missile across the late-afternoon sky. Perched on the long rocket’s nose sat a trio of 150-kiloton warheads. All three warheads had been programmed to destroy Ramstein. One would land in the middle of the base, exploding above the control tower. Another would strike the aircraft bunkers on Ramstein’s northern tip. The final was targeted to crush the ammunition storage area a half mile from the eastern fence.
The firing sequence began.
“Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .” The rocket’s engine ignited. It lifted the huge missile into the heavens.
• • •
The shadows were growing quite long. Darkness would soon be upon them. Alone on the fence, Rios could hear the eerie echoes in the trees on the other side of the wire. Echoes of the fearsome combat in the gray fog a few days past. The sounds and voices were clearly there.
“Michael, have you got him?” a soldier dead for two days whispered to his ghostly companion deep within the evergreens.
“Watch it, Smitty!” another mortal voice warned his long-departed friend.
A burst of gunfire from the prior battle chattered in the broken forest.
A voice in Russian screamed an urgent directive Rios couldn’t understand.
In the mists of a small glade, a soldier’s dying cry was whispered on the winds to the solitary airman sitting in the brown bunker.
In complete fascination, Rios listened to the warfare between the recently dead as they clashed once more for control of their souls. The unearthly sounds didn’t concern him in the slightest. In some strange way, the sounds of the struggle, which would be carried on for the rest of time, were reassuring to him.
He’d stared death in the face more than once in the past four days. And death no longer scared him. Rios had looked into Satan’s fiery eyes, and the young airman hadn’t flinched.
