The Red Line

Her voice was no more than a passing whisper. That was all her battered body would allow. She couldn’t tell if he’d heard her. Despite the abject suffering it caused, she tried again to comfort him.

“It’s okay, baby. Mommy’s right here.”

But it wasn’t okay. Kathy O’Neill was trapped in a nightmare. A nightmare from which, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t awaken.

• • •

Sergeant Major Harold Williams clawed at the huge pile of rubble. A mountain of worthless refuse was all that was left of the place Williams had called home. With six others, the sergeant major worked like a soul possessed. Alongside the giant of a man were a young soldier, three NCOs’ wives, and a boy and girl in their midteens. All seven had been lucky enough to have survived the Russian attack.

While he battled to reach the bottom of the bombed-out building, Williams thanked the good fortune that found him at the time of the air assault in an office a handful of yards from the safety of the woods. He also cursed the fates that placed his wife and children in an apartment near the center of the base. An apartment building that no longer stood.

A frigid full moon in a caustically cold midnight sky was the only light the small group had to aid their frantic efforts. They had no tools to help them lift the weight of the world from those trapped below. They had no idea whether those beneath the ground were living or dead. They knew there was little hope of additional help arriving to assist them in their formidable task. Throughout the base, there were far too many rubble piles and not nearly enough survivors to fight them.

The Russian pilots hadn’t purposely hit nonmilitary targets. In the cramped quarters of the small base, however, such events were bound to happen. The NCO housing area had been much too near a number of strategic buildings. There had been significant losses.

Fourteen of the thirty-one apartment buildings had fallen. In the officers’ housing area nearest the command center, half the apartments were gone. The forfeiture of so many innocent lives was regrettable. Nevertheless, each side knew that in this war, the deaths of millions of noncombatants were inevitable.

Throughout the day and into the fearful night, Williams worked on without rest. There would be no respite until he knew what fate waited for him below. For nearly twelve hours he’d stopped for nothing. He’d relentlessly driven his small band toward a single goal. Find the living—or, if need be, the dead—waiting for them at the bottom of this mountain of debris. With unspoken resolve, Williams and his crew fought every ounce of steel and concrete, every bathtub and bed frame. After more than eleven hours of superhuman effort, the twenty-five-foot pile above the ground had been cut by half.

Inch by painful inch, the sergeant major fought the most important battle of his life.

Twenty feet above her as she lay in absolute darkness, the rescuers provided no hope to Kathy O’Neill. It would be nine endless hours, and the twelve feet closer it would bring them to her, for Kathy to hear the first faint sounds of salvation.

Nine hours of listening to her child cry out for her. Nine excruciating hours of believing the horror would never end.

• • •

George O’Neill’s eyes flew open wide. Lying in a strange bed, without his loving wife’s warmth next to him, his rest was without solace. He hadn’t slept in two days. Even so, he couldn’t force himself to surrender to the sleep for which his body begged. His mind wouldn’t allow it. He glanced at his watch. He’d lain there for forty-five minutes this time. Forty-five minutes in the twilight between consciousness and sleep was all his tortured psyche would permit. It was fifteen minutes more than his mind had granted him the first time he attempted to rest before being dragged back into reality.

His mind raced. Where were his wife and child? What had happened to them? At this moment, they could be on a flight between Philadelphia and Minneapolis, warm, and secure, and almost home. Or they could be dead. Dead at the hands of the Russian air attack that had cut off all communication between the American headquarters and the outside world. Dead. His beautiful wife’s body distorted by the cruel fate the Russian fighters spit from the sky. Dead. His tiny son lying blue and breathless in the frigid snows. Like the sergeant major who’d been his next-door neighbor, George would never find peace until he knew.

He climbed out of bed. He dragged himself back into his uniform. Beneath the haze of an eerie English streetlamp, he wandered through the mist toward the communication building. It would be a temporary distraction at best. But until he knew where his family was, work was the only peace George O’Neill would find.

And there was more than enough of that for him to do.

Before the coming day’s sun would set, he’d be meeting the arriving DISA communication engineers at Mildenhall.

The time was growing near for him to counter yet another of General Yovanovich’s moves.

• • •

As the night wore on, a frightening fog, cold and clammy, enveloped the incongruous landscape. The sergeant major and his meager crew scarcely noticed. They worked throughout the bitter hours without the slightest pause. The possibility of halting, even for the briefest of moments, never entered their thoughts. Their labored breaths hung over them in warm, moist clouds. They were bruised and battered from head to toe. The small groups’ hands were bloody and torn. Their gloves were little more than tattered shreds of soiled cloth. With each new task, with every daunting obstacle, their bodies screamed for mercy. Still, they refused to stop.

“Sergeant Major,” the teenage girl said, “we need your help over here.”

“All right, Laurie. Let us finish moving this slab, and we’ll be right there.”

“Roy, get your back under it,” Williams said. “Ryan, help me pry it out.”

The soldier did as he was told. The sergeant major and teenage boy moved in. They shoved three hundred pounds of concrete off the pile and pushed it into the parking lot.

They stumbled over to where Laurie and her mother were working. Their all-consuming weariness was evident in every stilted movement.

“Okay, Laurie, let’s see what you’ve got.”

• • •

Kathy O’Neill lay throughout the infinite night, drifting in and out of consciousness. At nine in the morning, she awoke with a start. Her tortured mind told her that it had heard a sound. Muffled voices, it begged her to believe. The sounds of people working. She was confused and disoriented.

Untold questions raced thro

ugh her. How long had she been unconscious this time? How long had she been entombed in mortar and cement? Had she imagined the sounds? Wishful thinking? Her mind playing tricks on her? Was it just another dream? Another cruel nightmare?

She had no answers.

Christopher was still. Asleep.

She held her breath and listened. From ground level, there came a faint noise. It was followed shortly thereafter by another. She was certain she’d heard them. She listened again, straining in the darkness with every ounce of strength she could muster for additional confirmation of what her perplexed intellect was pleading with her to believe.

Ten . . . twenty . . . thirty interminable seconds passed. It was a thousand eternities to the trapped young woman as she waited in her man-made crypt for further signs of deliverance to resound from above.

Silence greeted her. Not a single sound reached her ears.

She listened again, hoping against hope. With each tick of the clock, she prayed for confirmation that help was on the way. Yet it was no use. Silence was all that entered her black world. There was nothing there.

Darkness and despair closed in around her, overwhelming her waning hopes. Crushing waves of depression washed over Kathy. Panic possessed her and tore at her constricted throat. Anguish filled every corner of her crippled soul. She was buried alive. Buried alive, with no means of escape and little chance of rescue.

“Please, God, you’ve already taken one child from me. Please, God, save my baby, somehow save my child . . . Please, God, please be merciful and let me die soon.”

The sergeant major hurled a huge slab of cement. It crashed on the growing jumble of debris in the apartment parking area. Kathy clearly heard it. There could be no mistake this time. There was no question that the sound was real. Further comforting noises soon followed.

She could hear them. She could hear them working. She could hear salvation reaching into this bottomless pit to save her and her child.

Now she knew.

They were coming for her.