“It comes back quickly, Sir.”
They looked up as a flight of jets screamed overhead. Griffin winced. He hoped it would come back very quickly; it looked like they wouldn’t have time to wait. The deep woods hid his team from air attack, but he knew there was no hiding the brigade’s armored bulk.
“Get everybody together,” Griffin snapped. “If the old man survives this bashing, I bet he’ll have some orders for us.”
“I thought we had a mission already.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with only one.”
Cooper’s warning trickled down the chain of command, reaching Lawson, Walker, and the individual tanks and Bradleys just as five jets broke through the clouds and screamed over the column. Stern turned from the radio set on 31.65—Griffin would have to wait — and stretched his neck to follow the German fighters as they disappeared back into the haze. He was bellowing orders for Stinger teams to engage and combat vehicles to disperse as the German planes circled for their attack run. While the 195th shook itself awake, the Germans closed in: low, fast, and deadly.
The ground around him was generally flat; except for a few gentle rolls he could see for almost a mile in all directions before a wood line or ridge cut off his view. Alex Stern, then, had a clear view as the Germans had their way with his brigade. A half mile ahead, two Bradleys disappeared in a black-orange flash. The tank next to them careened for maybe fifty meters then stopped, its crew killed by the concussion. Autocannon rounds riddled the thinner armor on top of the tanks, igniting ammunition and setting off secondary explosions. To his rear, a burst transformed an armored ambulance into a lump of molten aluminum. Three vehicles darted into a tree line, the soldiers inside living only a minute longer before napalm canisters burst, broiling them inside. Ahead, a burning tank lay turretless, its armored head literally blown off. A few impotent rifle rounds nipped at the planes, and Stern’s heart leapt as a solitary missile shot up. But the Germans shrugged the missile off with decoy flares. The planes pulled off and circled lazily, like wolves picking the fattest of the flock, setting up for their next run.
“Macintosh, what are you doing? Get your ass down!”
“Those fuckers took out the first sergeant’s track, and they’re gonna pay.” Macintosh had come up with an M60 machine gun from somewhere and extended the bipod legs.
“Here, Baldwin, put these on your shoulders so I can aim high enough.”
“You can’t shoot down five jets with one machine gun.” But even as he said it, Baldwin had hoisted the gun on his back.
“Mebbe not, but I ain’t lettin’ those airplane drivers fly away without knowing they been shot at.”
It started as a hesitant popping, the lone machine gun sounding like the first few kernels as the oil heats. Then it grew louder, stronger, the sky filling with bright red lines of tracers as stunned soldiers took their cue from two angry privates. Although the wild ground fire missed the jets, the reaction surprised the Germans enough to make them break off the attack for a moment.
The brief flurry of ground fire woke the German pilots as much as it did the soldiers on the ground. The planes took up a standard attack formation — not more cautious, thought Stern, but rather more purposeful, more controlled, more intent on the deliberate eradication of his brigade. With Macintosh’s tracers their attack on the column changed suddenly from a bloody drubbing to a lethal contest. The five jets were out of range but closing fast. As Eads pushed the Bradley toward the shelter of a fold in the ground, Stern noticed the firing stop, and stop quickly, as if someone had told it to. With that controlled cessation, he felt company commanders and platoon leaders taking charge, heard their commands, felt the soldiers’ transition from redeyed animals to efficient executioners, felt the pilots’ thrills change to deadly earnestness. Do I let the subordinate commanders fight this? wavered Stern. Or do I try to control it? This is a small-unit fight.
It won’t be small for long. He keyed the radio.
On their first pass the German fighters had bloodied the two battalions that they caught in the open. Despite the burst of ground fire, they fully expected their second run would be just as profitable. The flight leader spread out his aircraft — three to the south side of the road, two on the north — and chose his target.
“They’re coming straight at us.”
“Wait ’till he gets to the reference point, then aim right at the nose, Macintosh. You got enough ammo?”
“Yeah. Hold still, will ya?” .
“Quit bitching and shoot.”
Three seconds to target, the pilot counted. Two, one. As his thumb pressed the red button, the sky turned red around him, the tracers streaming like an inverted waterfall from the ground up. He jerked the aircraft hard right, its ordnance plummeting down and blowing a large hole in an empty field.
“Missile lock-on!” cried the weapons operator.
“Flares!” He pulled a smart three-G turn up and to the left. Below him it seemed like the ground was littered with angry ants, each one spitting thin red lines at the fighters. A half-dozen smoke trails testified to the presence of Stinger missiles.
“Another lock!”
“Dump the last flares.”
“No good, it’s still on us. Second hostile lock-on confirmed.”
The pilot kicked in the afterburners and twisted the plane crazily across the sky, but it was all over in a few seconds. The cockpit disintegrated in a shower of glass as the first missile detonated, the tail end of the aircraft blowing apart in a fiery ball from the second.
The fine red mist seemed to float up from the ground and wash over the flight leader’s aircraft. The fighter shook, and the leader saw the gauges drop to zero as the power went out. The controls were suddenly mushy, unresponsive. On the horizon two wispy smoke trails, the tracks of Stingers, snaked their way toward him. As he hit the eject button, the flight leader’s dream of medals, wide smiles, and handshakes blew away like the canopy above him.
Three down, one going away smoking, one just going away. It will do, thought Stern as he saw a parachute canopy unfold; it will do. The sight of newly burning vehicles told him their victory had not come cheaply. The brigade had begun the march with more than ninety tanks and almost 150 Bradleys. By his guess — from breakdowns, the Cav’s battle, and the air strike — they’d lost 20 percent of that. He began to count the hulks, then multiply by four or nine, depending on whether the burning smudges were tanks or Bradleys. He cut himself off.
Not your job, Colonel, Stern told himself. The chain of command will do the counting, some efficient staff officer will add it up, some efficient someone else will cross-level men and equipment so we can go on. Your job is to get this brigade — and The Griffin — moving.
When the planes were gone, Lieutenant Travers worked up the courage to leave the shallow hole he’d scraped in the ground. He shook his head as he walked to check out his platoon, the training that told him “a leader must do this” taking over from the shock of being on the receiving end of an air strike. He’d never been shot at before, no one had ever even challenged him to a fight, but those pilots had deliberately tried to kill him. He’d never done anything to anyone, he thought as he walked toward 1st Squad, yet only the platoon’s volume of fire and the fusillade of missiles had made the pilots miss. Had they shifted their aim an inch, if one rifle or one missile had chosen that minute to malfunction….. He stopped himself. Can’t think about it. I’m still alive. Who else is? Go be a platoon leader. Check on the men; do the right thing. He kept walking.