lighted fuel spewing out into the snow like molten lava. David dragged himself up, stumbled and fell, rose again, not knowing where he was heading so long as it was away from the fire. He heard screams and the futile spinning of truck tires trying to grip on snow that in seconds had become a bubbling sludge. More men somewhere off to his right were running, throwing weapons down, clambering aboard what looked like half-tracks in a desperate exodus as more and more of the drums exploded, adding to the towering flames, leaping hundreds of feet into the air, visible to NATO positions as far south as Bielefeld.
Hauling himself to the wood’s edge, it was not until about a quarter hour later that David realized the back of his head had been singed and the coat covered with the burns of airborne cinders. He knew he could run no more. If they got him — the best he could hope for was that he’d make them pay. He put the AKM across his lap and felt for the other two grenades, making sure no snow had iced up on them. Last thing he needed was the pins to freeze.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The German Army would call it the “Time of Deliverance,” the Americans, the “Bust-Out,” the British, “About Bloody Time.” But whatever name they gave it, the American-driven counterattack was something to behold.
Ironically, the first man to witness its beginning was not a combat soldier at all but a Bundeswehr surgeon. Assigned to the field hospital west of Munster, the surgeon had always admired the Americans for their inventive know-how, especially the revolutionary MUST — Medical Unit, Self-Contained — hospital that had been first designed in the 1980s. Seemingly rising out of nothing, inflated within twenty minutes by sterile compressed air from portable generators, and air-conditioned throughout, the fifty-two-foot-long, twenty-foot-wide, and ten-foot- high ward of six operating tables and inbuilt equipment had greatly reduced the fatality rate. The only fault the German surgeon found with it was that, as in all American installations, the thermostat was set way too high.
Stepping out at around 1600 hours on the day of the convoy’s arrival in Brest for a blast of cold and invigorating air between operations, he heard a thunderous roar overhead in the blizzard that had blanketed the front from lower Saxony as far south as Heidelberg. He hoped it was an American plane, for if not, there was nowhere to go for shelter — the slit trenches dug earlier in the day were now snow-filled, every available man having been sent to the perimeter in the desperate last-ditch attempt to stop the Russian advance. The roar of the aircraft had barely abated when out of the blizzard he saw a dark square the size of a house descending several hundred yards away above the airstrip designated “Minister 1,” but dubbed by the Americans “Monster 1.” As he watched the object, a vinelike mesh dangling from it, and saw the four ghostlike chutes above, he realized the mesh was the cargo net about a resupply palette.
The blizzard, so welcomed by Kirov’s divisions and which Kirov’s staff had predicted would bog down the Americans, was proving no impediment. From the Bielefeld line to the Danube three hundred miles to the south, the American M-1s, German Leopards, and British Challengers were about to be given new life. The airlift from Brest would fly in more supplies than in either the famed Berlin airlift of ‘48 or the resupply of Khe Sanh in the Vietnam War. In the blinding white-out, American ingenuity, German organization, and British doggedness came together like old friends called to the bedside of a critically ill relative. In the snow the Americans’ high-tech instrument flying constantly amazed the Soviet divisions that had broken through, rolling toward what they had thought was certain victory.
With fighter cover provided by RAF Tornados flying out of southern England and American F-111F swing-wing fighter interceptors, dozens of the giant 245-foot-long, 65-foot-high American C-5C Galaxies, flying out of Brest, delivered fuel and ammunition to the hastily prepared prepo sites west of Munster. The giant transport’s normal load of 121 tons was increased to 150 tons, the Galaxies able to cut down on then-own fuel load because of the short sixty-eight-minute, five-hundred-mile flight from Brest to the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket.
Almost none of the Galaxies landed in the pocket; most of their intermodal CONCAR — containerized cargo — having being taken straight from ship to plane, was dropped low by chute-braked palette. The cargo of ammunition and fuel drums from the hundreds of forty-eight-foot-long containers was heading toward the front within twenty minutes of a palette skidding to a stop, the snow helping to brake the palette’s slide in a shorter distance than usual.
The massive resupply drop had no noticeable effect for the first six to seven hours, the NATO-sown mine fields Freeman had relied upon to slow the Soviet armor breached by Russian divisions pouring through gaps where the mines had been rendered useless in the heavy fall of snow. Because of this, a British infantry battalion and an American Ranger regiment were overrun southwest of Bochum, over three thousand taken prisoner. Many of them were shot out of hand for no other reason than that the Soviet supply line — already stretched for the final attack on the besieged Allies — had no containment areas or food allocated for prisoners. After U.S. M-16 and M-60, and U.K. SLR 7.62-millimeter ammunition had been stripped from the British and American bodies, they were left to be covered by the snow, Kirov and his staff regarding the fuel necessary for a bulldozer to dig mass graves too vital for their armored and mechanized divisions. The early discovery of this by an American airborne battalion led to some of the most vicious fighting anywhere on the perimeter.
Six hours after the airlift had begun, around 2200 hours, the snow-filled sky over the pocket became brilliantly incandescent, with blossoming patches of ruby-red and ice-cream-white flares shot through with green and orange parabolas of tracer as refueled Apache and Cobra gunships, flying in excess of 150 miles per hour, swarmed across the outer reaches of the chaotically shifting and segmented front, firing thousands of Hellfire — fire and forget — antitank missiles. Though equipped with infrared sensors far superior to those of the Soviets, the initial Hellfire attacks were not as effective as hoped because of the lack of laser-beam-equipped forward air controllers to guide each missile to its target. NATO choppers, with pods of eight TOW-tube-launched, wire-guided missiles, were more effective against the enemy tanks, the TOWs not requiring anyone on the ground to assist. Soviet Hind and Havoc helicopters, having had it their own way for the last forty-eight hours because of NATO’s rapidly dwindling fuel supplies, were now faced with a far different situation, scatter fragments from the exploding warhead of the Sidewinder missiles proving deadly to the Soviet gunships.
Much of the credit for the destruction of the Soviet choppers was due to the contour-imaging guidance radar aboard the American Apaches, which permitted their pilots NOE, or “nap of earth” flying, the choppers able to skim less than fifty feet above ground, tree, or water contour even in the worst snow conditions. NOE flying was especially easy over the flatter southern sector of the DB pocket.
By the time Major Norton had returned from Brest to Freeman’s hospital HQ outside Munster, he found the general, though still rigid in his brace, very much alert, looking up at the maps of Lower Saxony, North Rhine- Westphalia, and the Rhineland Palatinate that were taped to the field hospital’s ceiling. The general’s exhausted yet attentive staff clustered about the bed, the mood of new hope evident from the sheer vitality that radiated out from Freeman, who was holding forth a telescopic pointer, stabbing at the ceiling. “Ah, there you are, Norton. What d’you think of my chapel?”
Before Norton could say anything, Freeman raced on. “If Michelangelo could do it on his back, so can I, eh?”
“I guess so, General. I heard on my way up here that we’ve stopped our withdrawal.”
“Stopped!” It sounded like an obscenity. “By God, Major, we’re moving. We are going on the attack! Their advanced dump — the bastards had it hidden away up here in the goddamned woods — has blown up in their faces.” The general moved the pointer north of Bielefeld. “Outside Stadthagen.” Freeman’s face was so flushed with optimism that at first Norton thought the general had had some kind of adverse reaction to the pain shot. “Now,” Freeman continued, lowering the pointer and looking around at his staff, “the shoe’s on the other foot. Kirov—” the general paused, savoring the moment “—is running out of gas, gentlemen. Here, Norton,” said Freeman, passing him a bulging manila folder. “Feast your eyes on these.”
They were infrared aerial reconnaissance photos. At first Norton thought they had been badly overexposed — everything seemed white — almost no contrast at all to the wooded area around the edge of the photographs. Then he realized what he was seeing. “My God, General, that’s some bonfire. It must be—” Norton glanced down at the scale line.
“Over two thousand yards,” Freeman cut in. “They must have had enough gas —
