The Red Line

Thirty minutes of daydreaming was all it took from touchdown to turnaround. The loading of passengers and luggage, fuel and food, was quickly completed. With 289 women and children and a crew of eight, the dark silhouette of the 767 rushed down the runway. The plane struggled into the western sky.

As the passenger aircraft started its steep ascent, a mile west of the base a Russian parachutist waited with his shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile at the ready. The Russian private had been cut off from his unit for two days. He’d remained hidden for all that time, waiting for guidance to somehow find him. It had not. Finally, just after sunset of the second day, he suspected the time had come for him to take some kind of action.

He’d no practice at thinking on his own. With no one to tell him what to do, he decided to use his missile to shoot down the next plane to take off from, or attempt to land at, the American base. A few minutes later, the 767 roared down the icy runway.

The blue beret took his time. In the darkness, he couldn’t make out the eagle on the aircraft’s tail. As the plane strained to reach the heavens, the parachutist fired. He’d no idea what he’d fired at, or what cargo it carried. It really didn’t matter much to him.

Evan Cooper spotted the bright flash of the missile as it streaked across the sky. He knew his fate was forever sealed. He’d no chance of saving his passengers or his aircraft. Yet he wasn’t willing to concede the inevitable. He dove the cumbersome plane for the western horizon. It was a hopeless attempt to evade the death that was growing quite near. In the passenger compartment, the steep dive tore loose everything that wasn’t firmly tied down.

Nevertheless, it was all for naught. Cooper watched helplessly as the missile quickly closed. A fiery explosion filled the western sky as the missile hit the right wing’s engine and destroyed it. The wing was severed, followed moments later by the ignition of the aircraft’s fuel. The vivid explosion momentarily illuminated the ever-darkening evening. Pieces of flaming wreckage tumbled to the ground. Not a soul survived.

The Russian soldier melted back into the deep woods to wait for someone with further orders to find him.

The next day, a German mob found him instead.

• • •

George O’Neill, Kathy and Christopher always in the forefront of his anguished mind, asked Colonel Hoerner the same question he’d asked six times today and seventeen times overall. “Any further word on our families, sir?”

“Not yet, O’Neill. We haven’t heard anything more definite out of Patch Barracks. The damage from the Russian raid was apparently quite extensive. And there were a number of casualties. They told me as of this moment, most of the dependents who survived the attack have been evacuated. But that’s all I know for sure.”

• • •

At two on a European morning, seven in the evening in Delaware, the medevac touched down on American soil. The ambulances were waiting. The first pair of soldiers taken from the plane were placed in a black hearse. They were driven to a makeshift morgue at the air base’s recreation center. The eight-hour plane ride had been too much for the critically wounded soldiers.

Kathy and Christopher were among the last to leave the plane. They were placed in an ambulance and driven to the base gymnasium. In the past three days, the gymnasium had been converted into an overflow center for the base hospital.

Fifteen minutes later, the medevac returned to the runway and headed east for its next load of wounded Americans.

Inside the gymnasium, the scene was beyond tumultuous. The overburdened medical staff was doing its best to deal with the tidal wave of injured patients arriving every few minutes at this first stateside stopover. Kathy lay on a stretcher beneath a basketball hoop at the far end of the cavernous gymnasium. Christopher sat wailing at her feet. Hundreds of others were haphazardly strewn about on the wooden floor. In the confusion, she lay unattended for nearly an hour.

At last, one of the doctors, a balding reservist from Tampa with a thriving surgical practice, approached. He looked down at his clipboard.

“Mrs. O’Neill?”

Christopher continued to scream at the top of his lungs.

“Yes.”

“I’m Dr. Zamora. Sorry for the delay. But as you can see, things are a bit hectic. I’ve looked over your chart. Normally, with injuries as extensive as yours, we’d send you straight to the nearest military medical facility. Unfortunately, with the tremendous number of wounded arriving from Europe, every military hospital in the United States is filled to the brim.”

Even the sweet-spirited Kathy was at the end of her rope. Through her pain she said, “What then, Doctor, do you suggest we do?”

“Well, most of the civilian hospitals on the East Coast are also jammed beyond their limits with injured military personnel. For the past two days, many corporations have been donating their private jets to take patients to hospitals near their homes. So what we’ve been doing, when the case is not life-threatening, is letting the patient pick what hospital they want to go to. Once we have that information, we’ve been working out a way to get the patient there. Even though your injuries are quite serious, I believe it would be all right to send you on to a civilian hospital immediately. What I’m here to ask you is, where would you like to go?”

It took Kathy a moment to comprehend the full meaning of what the doctor was saying. Suddenly, a wide smile spread across her face.

“Home! I want to go home.”

“Where would that be?”

“McMichael, Minnesota.”

“Do they have a hospital there?”

“Yes, there’s a small one.”

“Okay, let me see if they’re capable of providing you with adequate care. Then, if they’re willing to take you, I’ll get someone to start working on getting you there. But before I do any of that, the first thing I’m going to do is find someone to take care of your child.”

• • •

A few minutes later, a grandmotherly Red Cross worker arrived. She scooped up the screaming Christopher and disappeared. By the time the doctor would return to Kathy, the now-happy Christopher would’ve eaten every sticky bite of two cherry Popsicles and been an active participant in countless rousing choruses of “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Without her child, Kathy lay on the crammed floor in the middle of a sea of suffering. A half hour later, Dr. Zamora walked up with a grin on his face.

“Mrs. O’Neill, I’ve spoken with the doctor in charge of the hospital in McMichael. I relayed your status and condition to him. He says they’re adequately equipped to handle your case, and are more than willing to accept you as a patient. But the really good news is that 3M’s corporate jet will be arriving here in a couple of hours to pick up two neurological cases for the Mayo Clinic. There appears to be room on the 3M jet to send the two of you along with them. As we speak, the doctor in McMichael is arranging to have an ambulance waiting in Rochester, Minnesota, to take

you the rest of the way. You and your child are going home. If all goes well, you should be arriving by sunrise tomorrow.”

Her pain momentarily left her. A smile, so wide that it devoured her, spread across her bandaged features.

Kathy O’Neill was going home. Nevertheless, there were still going to be more long hours to wait, and a final takeoff and landing to make. Aware that she was actually headed home, each passing minute was incredibly slow. But finally, she and Christopher were on their way.

• • •

It was just after sunrise when the Learjet eased up to a private terminal at the Rochester Airport. The plane’s engines stopped, and the door opened. Kathy and Christopher waited while the two critical patients were removed. Then it was their turn.

Kathy’s stretcher was taken from the plane. A huge crowd was waiting. It appeared half the people in her small hometown had made the trip to greet her. From all around, the excitement of the moment fell upon them. Her mother smothered the grandson she’d never seen with hugs and kisses, toys and tears. The bewildered child wailed at the top of his lungs.

They loaded Kathy into a final ambulance for the five-hour drive. The procession headed through the breaking winter morning. Ten miles from the North Dakota border sat her home. The little farming community had been the only place she’d ever known until George O’Neill entered her life. While they drove, ten-foot walls of snow blocked Kathy’s view of the Minnesota countryside she so adored. Many times during this final ride, she looked over at her beaming mother holding her sleeping grandson, and tears filled Kathy’s eyes.

Finally, it was over. The ambulance entered the small town Kathy dearly loved. It eased to a stop in front of the fifteen-bed community hospital. For the next five months, this would be Kathy’s home.

As they wheeled her in, a peace she’d never before known passed over her. Waves of joy swept her away. Uncontrollable tears flowed for hours on a drab Minnesota morning. Three days ago, a Russian MiG had buried her and her child in an unspeakable place. She’d been certain there’d be no reprieve from her man-made tomb. Now, in what seemed to be little more than a heartbeat, she found herself home. Kathy was back in the place she’d loved for all her life. A place full of wonderful memories. A place where she felt safe and secure.