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“Find them fast and hit them hard.”

  “Roger, but if we do, we’re landing in a field somewhere. I don’t see a way we get back in time.”

  “There is no back, Jesse. Christ, who knows who’s even alive back at Ansbach?”

  Glitter reached out and wiped the windscreen again with her glove. “Work up an attack vector on the last known location of the lead part of that convoy. We’re going to make one more attack run. Two passes, tops. Then we haul ass out of here and find a safe parking lot to put down in.”

  “Roger that.” After a moment Jesse said, “If they keep going the same direction, I’d say they are moving toward EUCOM headquarters. But, hell, they could veer onto a new road and hit Ramstein or . . . Paris.”

  Glitter said, “We can make it to EUCOM HQ, but that’s probably it. Put the plot on the chart and I’ll just fly that line.” She concentrated on controlling her big, muscular bird of prey.

  * * *

  • • •

  For the next fifteen minutes the two Army officers flew low through the morning, south toward Stuttgart. There was nothing on the radio, which gave them the impression they were the only NATO assets in the air in the vicinity. Their fuel tank was in its war reserves, called “bingo” flight status. They were not supposed to fly inside that limit without express permission of the first O-6, a full-bird colonel, in their chain of command. Considering that he was likely dead back at Ansbach, Glitter had given herself the okay.

  Just as she reached to wipe her fogged-over windscreen again, Jesse called over the intercom. “Glitter, you see that smoke in Stuttgart?”

  In the snowy morning, four columns of smoke and the glow of fires were just visible on the horizon.

  “Yeah, I see it,” she said. “Plot us an attack cone onto the largest of those fires.”

  Glitter focused on the glow through the snow. It appeared that several buildings were completely engulfed.

  As they approached she said, “The enemy has to still be in the area. Right in the city. I fly; you gun. I’m going to try for three passes.” The fuel-warning alarm began to sound in the cockpit right as she said this. “Scratch that. Two passes. We’re going to have to go in fast. Make sure of your targets, and make sure you hit them.”

  “I’m ready.”

  The helo’s rotors chopped through the icy air as it raced along at building-top level at over 160 miles per hour. Glitter kept the down angle as steep as she dared. The flames ahead occupied their whole windscreen now.

  In seconds they blasted into the area, Glitter taking them literally through the smoke and flames of the biggest burning building, providing them the best chance for cover from ground fire. The rotor blades parted the flames and smoke and they found themselves above a ruined warscape.

  Jesse immediately went into action. On the other side of the glowing fires, as they had guessed, the Russians rolled along roads in an urban section of southwest Stuttgart. They saw ten Bumerangs and three T-14 Armata tanks. The tanks were silent, but three of the BTRs were pounding cannon fire into adjacent buildings.

  Jesse picked a line of fire and laid on the trigger of the 30mm cannon, barely taking enough time to aim as the Apache raced by. His rounds chopped up dirt and pavement, split trees, and then shredded into a cluster of Russian troops diving for cover from the strafing run. Sparks flew as his gun line intersected with a Bumerang. Then another, then a third. The concentration of fire wasn’t more than four or five rounds per vehicle, but it was all he could do as they roared behind another line of buildings.

  At the end of the first run, when Glitter felt sure she’d passed over the Russian forces, she cranked her Apache in a hard left turn. “Goin’ for one more,” she said, “but we’re flying on fumes.”

  As they turned to again face the neighborhood where the fighting was going on, an incredible amount of tracer fire arced into the air, sweeping back and forth in front of them, as hundreds of Russians realized they were under attack from the air. Flying back into this spray of lead was nearly suicide, but Glitter pressed on.

  They made it halfway to their target zone before Glitter felt the stick slacken and the aircraft begin to slow. The aircraft responded sluggishly to her inputs. She put both hands on the cyclic to try to control it, but she could feel the last of her gas, the helicopter’s lifeblood, slipping away.

  The engine coughed. She kept racing forward, hoping to give Jesse one more clean shot at the concentration of attacking Russians. There wouldn’t even be enough fuel left for a controlled descent.

  They were crashing at the end of this attack run, if not before.

  “Make this one count, Jess.”

  “Damn right,” he replied.

  Jesse saw a row of Bumerangs moving rapidly down a road alongside a park. He slewed the gun onto the first vehicle and pressed the trigger. He could see the impacts in and around the group, chewing up the dirt and smacking clusters of troops running out of a building.

  Glitter kept her aircraft flying in a straight line, but she was losing both altitude and speed by the second.

  “Jesse,” Sandra said through gritted teeth as she fought the stick with all her strength, “we’re going to crash!”

  “I know,” he said, spraying cannon fire into the Russians as the aircraft angled toward earth. He fired at a rate now that would melt the barrels of the Gatling gun in seconds, but he figured he’d probably be dead soon, so he wouldn’t get in too much trouble about it.

  The Apache received a huge volume of return fire, and a few rounds slammed into the fuselage, but soon they were over a row of buildings that masked their view of the Russians.

  Only then did Jesse let up on the trigger.

  Their descent accelerated. The engine was silent now and the aircraft electronics flickered on and off as they switched over to battery power.

  “Goin’ down, Jess!” Glitter shouted.

  The aircraft’s tail was the first to impact, crumpling as it smacked the top of a two-story building.

  Glitter could feel her big aluminum beast shudder as the fuselage collapsed up and into itself. The force of the impact pitched both of them forward into their harnesses, then back into their seats as the cockpit collided with the building. Glass shattered all around, the sound mingling with the gut-wrenching noise of the twisting, torquing metal of the aircraft pulling itself apart. The top rotors struck the rooftop and disintegrated, sending chunks of prop spraying in all directions.

  Fortunately, there was no fuel left to ignite, so there was no explosion.

  All was quiet in the wrecked cockpit, but only for a moment.

  Then the roof of the building gave way.

  Jesse and Glitter felt themselves falling backward through space as the helicopter dropped down into the top floor, flipping over and then back upright. Two huge holes were ripped open as the cockpit was sheared away by exposed steel girders.

  Jesse, still strapped to his seat and with his section of the helo torn off, fell through the hole in the bottom of the aircraft and plummeted into the building.

  Glitter remained strapped into what was left of the cockpit. She bled from multiple wounds, and her left arm and left leg were twisted at ugly angles, caught in a mass of wires and cables. She faced skyward, lying on her back, held immobile in what was left of the cockpit, which had come to rest, oddly enough, next to a broken window on the second floor of the three-story building.

  The last of the falling glass and metal and other building materials around her settled, and it became deathly quiet.

  Glitter felt numb as her body moved toward shock, but she spoke. “Jess . . . Jesse?” she called out. She didn’t know if her intercom worked. She didn’t even know if the mic was in front of her mouth or even if her helmet was on her head anymore, and she sure as hell didn’t know if Jesse was still behind her or even if he was alive. “Jesse?” she called again, then switched
from his call sign to his real name. “Sean? Sean! Wake up!”

  Nothing.

  Just then she heard a rumbling to her left, and she struggled to turn her head. Through the mass of wires, smashed panels, and unidentifiable objects all around her, she realized she could look right out a shattered window and down on the street below.

  She was one flight above an empty four-lane parkway with a median running down the middle. Snow covered the ground. She looked up the parkway and saw an intersection one hundred meters distant.

  The rumbling intensified for several seconds. She closed her eyes because she knew what it was, and when she opened them again she saw a T-14 tank rolling onto the parkway at the intersection. As soon as it came into view it stopped; then the turret began turning in her direction.

  The hair stood up on the back of her sweating, bleeding neck. She wanted to climb up and run for her life, but not a muscle in her body fired at that moment. She just lay there.

  A scratching sound in her headset startled her, and then she heard an unfamiliar man’s voice. It was calm yet businesslike, and it comforted her somehow.

  “Any station, any station. This is call sign Shank. We are a flight of two A-10s over Stuttgart to provide support. Uh . . . we are rollin’ into the zone at this time.”

  She was glad the A-10s had arrived, even if she did think they were a little late to this party.

  Glitter couldn’t move her arm to hit her radio button. She just lay there and stared at the tank. The massive gun barrel was slowly trained on what remained of Viper One-Six.

  As she began fading, she was surprised to see two big gray crosses blazing through the sky in tandem as two jet aircraft passed low and slow above her head, with the lead ship firing on the Russian tank.

  There was an incredible sound of 30mm cannon fire ripping from the A-10, and Sandra watched as the road in front of the T-14 exploded. A second later depleted-uranium shells slammed into the Armata itself, exploding the massive tank in the middle of the intersection one hundred meters away.

  And then twenty-eight-year-old Sandra Glisson fell into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  • • •

  Racing over the exploding tank, thirty-four-year-old Captain Raymond “Shank” Vance clicked the transmit button on his radio, calling his wingman. “Zoomer, there’s an AH-64 crashed in a building back there. Did you see that shit?”

  “Roger that. I’m noting the coordinates. I don’t have a fucking clue where we’re gonna find a medevac or pararescue to get to that wreckage, but at least we can mark the site. All of Stuttgart is a mess.”

  Shank thought about it a moment. “We’re almost bingo fuel. Let’s RTB. When we get back, we can try a landline to the nearest hospital. Sure hope the crew of that Apache doesn’t have to wait that long, but it’s the best we can do.”

  CHAPTER 42

  STUTTGART, GERMANY

  26 DECEMBER

  Three hours after stopping in Stuttgart, General Sabaneyev moved himself and his headquarters element from the covert Red Blizzard 1 Strizh train over to Red Blizzard 2, the unmasked, overt attack train that had followed along a few hours behind the assault.

  Red Blizzard 2 was similar to the assault train that led the way into Stuttgart in many regards, but it was bigger and able to pack a more powerful punch. A military train, it offered no pretense of camouflage or stealth. Relying on the strength of its arsenal of defensive and offensive weapons, it wasn’t looking to hide and could destroy most anything thrown at it.

  With a total of fifty-eight railcars of different types, the train was loosely divided into thirds. One-third of the cars was filled with logistic items, like ammunition and fuel to resupply the thirsty tanks, Bumerangs, scout vehicles, and so on. Another third of the train was set up for command and control and troop transportation. Much like the assault train, the C2 had a battle-control detachment with a full communication suite including satellite and radio, antiair missiles, multiple-launch rocket systems, and another set of 120mm mortars.

  The last third contained a fully mechanized armor battalion, bringing more fight to the assault task force should Dryagin need it.

  It had been a gamble to send the overt combat train in just hours behind the trailing edge of the main invasion force, but Borbikov had counted on the Poles and the Germans in the area where the invasion already passed to be shell-shocked and disoriented, and his gamble had paid off. Red Blizzard 2 would serve as the center of the Russian raiding force for the rest of this invasion.

  * * *

  • • •

  An hour after moving to the new train, Eduard Sabaneyev stood in a troop transport car looking over a group of twenty: nineteen men and one woman. They were seated or lying on the floor next to the wall; most were handcuffed behind their backs, but a few were wounded and left unrestrained.

  These were his captives.

  The attack on AFRICOM had taken less than an hour, a fourth of the time Borbikov had allotted for it. The Americans had relied too heavily on their communications systems and satellites giving them real-time pictures. With hoods over their eyes, they were bumbling fools, Sabaneyev had noted to subordinates when the fighting was over. He’d fought foes in the basements and rubble of Chechnya more stalwart and competent than what he’d faced from NATO in the past thirty-six hours.

  He looked over a wide mix of uniforms and ranks on the prisoners: U.S. and German army and air force, over a dozen colonels and four general officers, including the deputy commander of AFRICOM.

  Russian soldiers guarded the twenty, but Sabaneyev could see there was no fight in this group of officers. Most of the prisoners looked dazed by the power and shock of the Russian lightning raid. Russian doctors worked over the wounded, administering medicine and bandages and assessing which of the captives would need to have shrapnel removed or bones set. The deputy commander of AFRICOM was the highest prize and he received the most ardent medical attention, although the injuries to his back and shoulder were not grave.

  Still, he would be taken into the train’s surgical suite and sewn up first.

  Eight Russian soldiers also sat in the passenger cars, bandaged and bleeding from their own various wounds. They’d have to wait on treatment, because the prisoners were more valuable than a few kids from the farms around Moscow and Yaroslavl’ and Yekaterinburg.

  Red Blizzard 1 had to be abandoned here in Stuttgart. It was no longer practical, and turning two trains around would require extensive labor and time that didn’t figure into their blitz assault into and back out of Germany. Besides, their attack had been successful and they didn’t need to remain covert any longer.

  Red Blizzard 1 had been taken to a set of tracks east of the Hauptbahnhof along Rosensteinstrasse, carefully loaded with explosives, and destroyed in a ball of fire.

  Sabaneyev hated to see it go, but he knew Red Blizzard 2 held everything he needed to get home, from fuel to ammo to fire support. In fact, the second train had more antiair missiles and mortar systems than the assault train. The Russian flag had been painted on the side just an hour earlier, and its dark camouflage pattern gave it a potent and ominous appearance.

  The general turned away from his prisoners without a word, and headed for the headquarters car. He stepped to a window and looked outside.

  The train was parked near the Hauptbahnhof, and central Stuttgart was quiet in the afternoon gloom. He saw Russian soldiers and armor around the station providing a protective security cordon for him and his train, but he saw no German citizens or soldiers anywhere. They’d cleared the streets quickly when the fighting had begun this morning, and they’d huddled in their homes and apartments throughout the day.

  Smoke hung in the air still, black just below the low gray clouds.

  The general stood with his hands on his hips for several minutes, impatiently waiting for word from Dryagin. The colonel had directed part
of his attack element to Ramstein Air Base and a few smaller airfields in the area. They would crater the runways to prevent landings and destroy any combat aircraft they could find, and then they would return to Stuttgart. The general was happy to degrade NATO further. It would hamper the West in their ability to launch any potential counterattack, and would only serve to provide more proof to NATO that Russia was in the driver’s seat in this conflict, which would help with the negotiations to come.

  Finally, Sabaneyev’s aide stepped up to him. “General, Colonel Dryagin reports all objectives met at Ramstein. He has smaller units still prosecuting the attack at other airfields but will begin his return to Stuttgart within the hour. ETA: twenty-one hundred hours.”

  “Khorosho,” (“Good”) Sabaneyev said. A feeling of pride washed over him. He’d done it. His war was over, other than the return to Russia.

  Now it was up to the politicians and that old goat Boris Lazar.

  He walked on through the train to the command car, which he found to be a hive of activity. Soldiers passed into and out of the operations center car to the command car, and the antiair missile defense battery men were alert at their radar screens, reviewing the status of each of their missiles. The fire support officers had all their firing batteries listed as “green” and ready on the coordination boards posted in the middle of the car.

  General Sabaneyev walked over to the communications officer, who was seated in front of the high-frequency radio. The HF could not reach all the way back to Moscow but could certainly reach as far as the Russian headquarters in Belarus.

  The officer held up the handset and the general took it.

  Sabaneyev yelled out to the room now. “Operations officer? Quiet down the ops center.” The room wasn’t that loud, but he was making a show to get all attention focused on him. The radio transmission he was about to make was important and he wanted everyone listening as he made it.

  The officers in the room instantly hushed to low tones and the general began speaking over the radio. “Attack Headquarters, Attack Headquarters, this is Krasnyi Metal force commander. How do you read me?”