With the detonation of the two grenades nearby, RSM Stone picked up his SLR, fixed bayonets and moved quickly over to the entrance, ducking under the inner blackout, a trailers tarpaulin, and then moved aside the blanket hanging down beyond it. There was just enough light getting around the corners of the tarpaulin for him to see a figure rushing down the concrete steps. He was holding his rifle by the pistol grip with his right hand; the butt was tucked under his armpit, muzzle and bayonet pointing down. He paused, taken aback on seeing the pretty face of the girl on the stairs, dressed in British uniform.
Still hampered by the lack of full night vision, the team commander did not see the big British soldier until she was almost on top of him. Bringing up the SA-80 she aimed from the hip one handed and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
Barry Stone did not comprehend the danger until she made that threatening move, but then she was thrusting the weapon forwards, stabbing him in the upper body and trying to push him back through the curtain, to make a gap she could throw the grenade through. The RSM was off balance, and she had the advantage of height, but as he went backwards he brought up the SLRs muzzle. It had become so heavy, so suddenly, thought the RSM. There was a fire in his chest and he couldn’t get his breathe, but he gritted his teeth and thrust forward as hard as he could, spearing his attacker in the stomach. She screamed in agony, dropping the jammed rifle and grenade to grasp the blade with both hands, trying to force it out of her body. The grenades spring-arm flew free; allowing the spring-loaded striker to fly down inside the fuse assembly onto the percussion cap and the five-second fuse began to burn.
RSM Stones strength was failing fast, pierced through the heart he no longer had the strength to hold the rifle and his right leg gave way, staggering backwards into the blanket and tarpaulin, which tore away from their securing nails.
Jim Popham spun around when he heard the woman scream, in time to see RSM Stone pull away the blackouts and fall to one knee. The next thing his consciousness registered was a hand grenade bounce down the stairs and into the bunker’s interior. He heard himself shout the warning.
“Grenade!” and launched himself across the room towards it, but the RSM first steadied himself with a hand on the bunkers wall, and then pushed himself forwards, landing on top of the grenade, smothering it with his body.
At 0600, with no coded ‘Success’ message being received by waiting signal's intelligence across the river, the tempo of the artillery barrage increased dramatically. Rocket artillery that had stood down lest its less accurate fire hamper the Special Forces mission now re-joined the effort. Six batteries of tube artillery which had so far played no part in softening up the targets in this sector, opened up on the Guards, 82nd Airborne, Light Infantry and the Argyll’s with specialised munitions carrying Nerve Agents, Blister Agents and hallucinogenic LSD compounds, began to burst on the western bank.
Less well known than the larger USAF airbase in Germany, Geilenkirchen AFB, thirteen miles north of Aachen was the home of NAEWF, NATO airborne early warning force in Europe. 93rd Air Control Wing had six of its converted Boeing 707, JSTARS airframes there, flown in from Robins AFB in Georgia when war looked imminent. They and the multi-national E-3 AWAC force, including aircraft and crews from 552nd Air Control Wing out of Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, were running around the clock missions, controlling strike and air superiority missions. Eavesdropping on enemy radio traffic, snooping on enemy movements in the air and on the ground, plus electronic warfare were their tasks.
Three E-3 Sentry’s were up, two up and one back in reserve, should anything happen to either of the two other valuable AWAC aircraft. An equal number of JSTARS E-8s were aloft, and that meant the ground crews had their work cut out keeping the on-board systems and the aircraft themselves, serviceable.
The technicians working on the aircraft systems at the individual dispersal’s heard a single shot, coming from over on the perimeter. The shot was answered by another, and another. There had been a number of phantom fire fights on the perimeter since the war had started; nervous sentries killing shadows, usually preceded by noises in the undergrowth as the wildlife went about its nocturnal business. The first time it had happened the technicians had rushed to their stand-to positions, swapping circuit testers and spanners for M-16s, but now they merely glanced toward the sound of gunfire and then got back to their tasks. The firing ended, as usual, and silence returned to the pre-dawn setting.
Ten minutes later the outline of the woods from where the firing had been were illuminated from behind by a bright light, a second or two later the sound of the explosion reached the nearest group of ground crew. They stopped what they were doing and stared off toward the woods, wondering what was going on, the base alarms had not sounded so they conjectured that a stray round may have hit something, their breath fogging in the frosty air as they whispered, and hey, wasn’t there a Patriot site over that way?
The reverberations died away and the sound was replaced by that of engines coming from the flight line and further along the perimeter, the first vehicles to race past were armoured Humvees, disappearing into the wood. The second vehicles could be heard but not seen, a pair of Bradley fighting vehicles outside the perimeter, following the fence toward the wood.
Senior NCOs put an end to the idle gossip, hustling the men and women back to work on the airframes, engines and systems. There was more work to be done than there were warm bodies to do it, and another two aircraft had reported problems which had to be fixed before they saw any sack time.
The NCOs did not get their wish, both Bradleys exploded as they ran over bar mines laid only a half hour before, and shoulder launched anti-tank weapons took care of the Humvees. The ground crews hesitated, they did not need audible alarms to tell them something was now seriously amiss, but they weren’t trained infantry either, they were standing in the open and clearly visible in the night sight of the gun group which had just set up on the woods edge, a moment later the gun opened fire.
Wizard Zero Four had been on-station for seven hours, flying a monotonous racetrack pattern over the Upper Harz mountains. They had little to do in regard to interceptions, few aircraft were up apart from their opposite numbers, A-50s and the older Mainstays, brought back into service to make up for the losses in the A-50 fleet. The JSTARS and AWAC had a close co-operation, feeding one another information, but it had been mainly one way, AWAC vectoring in strike aircraft against positions on the ground identified by JSTARS as viable targets. At 0547hrs however, that all changed.
“Wizard Zero Four, this is Bloodhound One Eight.”
Zero Four’s senior controller answered the JSTARS SC. “This is Wiz, go ahead Bloodhound… got some business for us?”
“’Hound, giving you a heads up on something developing down there. Lots of attacks on unit command elements, they scored big against us in the Haldensleben area and at Bernburg on the Saale River; took out a couple of brigade and battalion CPs.”
“Wiz, roger that… you want to qualify ‘a couple’ ‘Hound?”
“’Hound, one brigade CP for sure, maybe two, and three battalion command posts for certain, could be five but they are still trying to re-establish communications and get a handle on things. Lots a’places got hit by throw-away units but most got beat off… standby Wiz… Wiz we got ground traffic heading in from rear areas toward them two places and three more besides. I’m guessing the other three are diversionary attacks.”