The Red Line

“Will do, sir.”

The general hung up the phone. He turned back to O’Neill. “They’re already on it. We’ll start letting you know what we’ve absolutely got to have just as soon as I get back to my office.”

“That’ll be fine, sir.”

“Anything else, Sergeant?”

“No, sir. Just tell your staff not to wait. As soon as they know the first few circuits, get back to us. We’ll start working on getting them in immediately.”

“Very good.”

Without another word, the general turned and headed for the door. His aide was right behind him. When the door closed behind them, the two agency colonels turned back to O’Neill with relieved looks on their faces.

“Thanks, Sergeant O’Neill,” Colonel Cossette said. “Are you certain you can do what you just promised the general?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“What are you going to need from us?”

“Sir, the first thing I’m going to need is access to the routing databases for every circuit in Europe. There are over four thousand of them, and we lost about a thousand when Langerkopf went down. So it’s going to take some effort to get the most important ones working again. All I really need at the moment is to get into Lieutenant Templeton’s computer so I can bring up the database files.”

The colonel motioned for Templeton to make room. O’Neill grabbed a nearby chair and slid in next to him.

“What else?”

“As soon as EUCOM calls back, we’ll need someone to work the phones. Lieutenant Templeton will do just fine. Finally, we need anyone not involved in the restoration of communications to go somewhere else. We’re going to need all the room we can get.”

“All right. Is there anything I can do?”

“Lots of things, sir. Mainly we’ll need you to run interference with the brass. We can handle the technical end of it from here, but only if we don’t have every general in Europe trying to give us orders. So I’d like you or Colonel Hoerner to be in here at all times.”

“Don’t worry about that, Sergeant. You concentrate on doing what you promised General Oliver, and we’ll take care of the rest.”

“Sir, it’s really not a problem. It’ll just take a little time.”

It was only a matter of minutes before the phone on Templeton’s desk rang.

“Sergeant O’Neill,” Lieutenant Templeton said, “General Oliver’s on the phone for you.”

O’Neill took the phone from the lieutenant. “Staff Sergeant O’Neill speaking, sir.”

“Sergeant, we’re ready on this end. There are twelve circuits we’ve got to get in as soon as we can. I’m going to turn the phone over to my chief of staff, Colonel Morrison, to work with you guys.”

“That’s fine, sir. We’re all set here. General, this will work better if we keep someone on both ends of the line at all times until we get everything up and running. These first few are going to take awhile until we get the bugs out of the process and everybody’s working together.”

“I understand, Sergeant. We’ll keep someone on this end of the phone until we get the job completed. Here’s Colonel Morrison.” Oliver handed the phone to his deputy.

“Sergeant O’Neill, is it?” the colonel said.

“Yes, sir.”

“General Oliver tells me you’re going to be able to handle this for us.”

“Yes, sir. Just give me the four-digit designator for the first twelve circuits, and we’ll take it from there.”

“Well, let’s see. We must have Kilo-Quebec-Seven-Victor, our primary presidential strike command circuit, back in just as soon as we can. Make that your top priority. I’m sure the President’s nowhere near ready to order any kind of nuclear strike or anything like that against the Russians, but should he at some point decide it’s come to that, without that circuit, he won’t be able to do so.”

O’Neill wrote the circuit designator on the notepad on the senior controller’s desk.

Colonel Morrison continued to talk. “Then we’ve got to have Echo-Charlie-Twenty-Seven from here to Air Force Headquarters at Ramstein and also Alpha-Six-Thirty-One, as soon as we can get it, for the National Security Agency folks in Augsburg to be able to talk to their headquarters in Virginia. The next . . .”

• • •

“All right, sir, I’ve got it,” O’Neill said. “It’ll probably take an hour, possibly a little more, to get these first twelve up. In the meantime, I’m going to turn you over to Lieutenant Templeton. Each time we get a circuit back, we’ll notify you so someone can verify the circuit’s working. Just keep on giving the lieutenant a list of the circuits you want, and we’ll work it throughout the night.”

“Okay, Sergeant, we’ll do that.”

O’Neill handed the phone to the lieutenant. He took his notes and started working through the database. The typically shy O’Neill certainly had no desire to be in the spotlight. But shy or not, he understood the significance of the job he was doing. Without an ability to communicate, the war effort would be fragmented and disjointed. In all likelihood, that would prove fatal. All the fancy American technology would be of little value if they couldn’t fully coordinate its use. And no matter how uneasy he felt when dealing with higher-ups, O’Neill wasn’t going to let the fact that he’d been shoved into the limelight stand in his way.

He found the correct database and located the appropriate pages to begin working on returning the presidential strike command circuit to service. He ran his finger down the screen, checking the crucial communication channel’s routing—the White House to the Pentagon, up through Nova Scotia and across Greenland, from there to Scotland, to Martlesham Heath on the English coastline, through a relay in Holland, to Feldberg on the supergroup the saboteurs had destroyed, then to Donnersberg, and finally arriving in Stuttgart.

&nbs

p; O’Neill visibly relaxed, his confidence growing. He knew they all wouldn’t be this easy. But this one was a piece of cake. Just one leg of the four-thousand-mile journey to worry about, and communications with the White House would be restored. All he had to do to allow the President to talk to his European Headquarters was to move the circuit at Feldberg onto the working supergroup to Martlesham Heath. From there they’d be home free.

He located a lower-priority circuit to preempt and wrote down its position on the Feldberg–Martlesham Heath link. O’Neill picked up the microphone in front of him. By pushing the microphone button, he would be in instant contact with every communication facility in Europe.

“Feldberg, this is DISA.”

“DISA, Feldberg,” came a voice from the battered mountaintop.

“Martlesham, this is DISA.”

“Go ahead, DISA,” said an airman at the Air Force site on the English coast.

“Okay, guys, we’re starting with Kilo-Quebec-Seven-Victor. Feldberg take it from Supergroup One, Group Three, Channel Eight, to Martlesham and move it to . . .”

Five minutes later, a first critical communication circuit was up and working. With the highly skilled George O’Neill taking the lead, more would soon follow.

The Russian plan to eliminate American command and control had so far failed. The Americans had been staggered by the sabotage. But General Yovanovich’s promise to Premier Cheninko to sever the American head hadn’t yet occurred. The Americans had been crippled by the commandos, but they were far from dead.

What the Americans didn’t know, however, was that Valexi Yovanovich still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

The monumental chess match between the gangly American sergeant and the implacable Russian general had many more moves yet to play before the war would reach its end.

At stake were the outnumbered Americans’ chances of controlling the burgeoning conflict.