The Red Line

by Walt Gragg

  By the eighth minute of carnage, the final eleven were chewed to pieces by the powerful Americans. Not a single one was spared. Not a soul survived. A multitude of Russian combat vehicles lay crushed and burning in the melting snows of western Germany. A thousand parachutists were dead or dying.

  Nor were American losses insignificant. The attack had destroyed thirty-four Humvees, eleven Bradleys, and two M-1s. The American death toll neared two hundred. Among them was the trio of smiling soldiers who’d awakened Rios an hour earlier.

  There was no time for either celebration or mourning. The American companies split. They raced after the escaping enemy. The small Russian vehicles were quick and had a significant head start. The point elements of both groups were nearing the southern and eastern woods.

  The Warthogs headed toward the southern column to cut off the enemy. Two miles away, a small band of parachutists waited to protect their escaping brothers. Air-defense weapons nestled on a half dozen shoulders. The A-10s opened fire. Russian missiles leaped into the air to seek and destroy. The awkward little aircraft had no chance of evading such a concentrated attack. The pilots knew their lives were over. Even so, both Americans frantically clawed at their canopy releases in a desperate attempt to escape their fates. Each hoped against hope that he could somehow free himself from his ammunition-laden tomb before it was too late. But it was no use. The ground-to-air missiles were much too near and far too fast.

  Both Warthogs were struck by multiple missiles. Silhouetted by the fading wisps of an orange-tinged sun, burning pieces of the defeated aircraft plummeted toward the earth. The Warthogs’ dead pilots were firmly strapped into their fiery cockpits.

  In the south and east, the Americans reached the initial line of screening vehicles. They released an immense barrage of machine-gun fire against the Russians’ blue-bereted defenders. On each side of the base, the 82nd Airborne blew right through the parachute regiment’s thin defensive line. Forty proud Russians perished in a handful of fluttering heartbeats.

  And in the south, another Bradley went down.

  Rios watched the Russians racing east. The enemy vehicles were almost to their goal. The security of the trees was right in front of the frenetic invaders. Well behind the blue berets, the 82nd Airborne was now in sight as they destroyed the first group of parachutists and hurried forward.

  A dire chase was on. Yet despite their best efforts, the Americans were going to be too late.

  In the south and east, the parachutists’ leading elements raced up to their objective. Two hundred Russians abandoned their vehicles at the edges of the twisted evergreens and ran toward the trees. They vanished into the heavy forest outside Ramstein’s fences.

  Still more were on the way. With each passing minute, another fifty escaped into the timber. Four miles from them, the burgundy berets rushed toward the woods. Two more lines of covering vehicles waited on both sides of the base to slow them down. The Americans would first have to deal with these before they could address the problems created by the strong enemy force immersing itself in the nearly impenetrable woods.

  • • •

  “Lock and Load!” Rios yelled. “Lock and load!” He didn’t know what was happening outside the fences. But he was certain of one thing. A battle that had been taking place miles from his position was reaching out for him.

  With dusk taking a firm hold on the lingering remains of the fading day, the 82nd slammed into the second wave of enemy defenders at both ends of the base. As they did, in the distance, more parachutists ran into the heavy thickets and disappeared.

  • • •

  The second line was effortlessly shoved aside and left to die in the crimson fields outside Ramstein. Forty more Russian lives had ended. Another handful of Americans was also gone, never again to fight on the battlefields of the great war.

  The American battalion pressed on. A last line waited to slow their advance. The parachutists knew they had no chance. In the four minutes it took for the Americans to reach the enduring group of defenders, an additional three hundred of the enemy found their way into the snow-covered branches in the east and south. And countless others were drawing near.

  The Russian’s final line in the east fired first. They hoped to catch the Americans by surprise and slow them just a little more. But their desperate volley had little effect on the unrelenting Humvees coming straight for them. Overmatched and outgunned, eighty Russians braced to die. Lethal curtains of machine-gun fire rained down from the onrushing burgundy berets. Within seconds of each other, the Americans brushed aside the razed resistance and hurried on. Even more unspeakable deaths had been added to the tally.

  The final obstacles in their path surmounted, the Americans raced toward the waiting trees. But now they faced the most difficult task of all: how to eliminate the vast enemy force that had slipped into the sheltering branches.

  With the sacrifices of their dead countrymen, nearly one thousand parachutists had successfully reached the forest’s bosom. On each side of Ramstein, the final fifty to enter the woods ran thirty yards into the evergreens and stopped. With a preciseness born of years of practice, they spread out to protect their compatriots. Machine-gun nests sprang up in a half dozen locations. Antitank missiles were raised onto strong shoulders. Mortar teams hurriedly prepared their emplacements.

  The remainder of the regiment’s forces moved even farther into the shadowy timber. Without hesitation, they headed straight for the fences.

  The Americans charged across the open ground toward the woods. They had to catch the Russians before they reached the deep foliage. Their valiant efforts, however, would be without reward.

  The 82nd Airborne roared up to the trees just as the last of their elusive prey melted into the fearful twilight.

  The Americans hesitated at the forest’s edge, unsure of what their next move should be. From out of the woods on the eastern end, a pair of shoulder-mounted missiles ripped through the heavy branches. Two Humvees burst into flames. Russian machine-gun fire spewed forth. The burgundy berets fell back, dragging their dead and wounded with them. The night’s oppressive blanket was quickly closing in around them. The bloodied Americans, the disjointed battle concluded, were in disarray. They needed to regroup and catch their breath. They needed to organize and plan. One thing was for certain. Digging one thousand immensely skilled parachutists out of the thick woods wasn’t going to be easy.

  Within the dense forest, thirty Russian snipers crept through the gathering darkness. Their brethren moved forward through the fading shadows to protect them. They could see their objective.

  The chain link was just ahead.

  Their single-shot sniper rifles could kill from a mile away. When they reached the trees just outside the fence, their targets were a scant fifty meters from them. There was no way the snipers would miss.

  The long black barrel of a sniper’s rifle peeked out from the tree line in front of Rios’s bunker. The marksman took careful aim at an airman inside the sandbags. The back of the American’s head was dead center in the crosshairs of the sniper’s sights.

  Within the bunker, Wilson was a changed man now that his stomach was full. Despite all that was happening, he continued to regale Goodman and Rios with a steady stream of stupid jokes.

  “He’s the one with the clean bowling shirt,” Wilson said. He started to laugh at his own bad joke. Inside his parka, his sated belly jiggled.

  Goodman had first heard the tired joke when he was nine. And he hadn’t thought it all that funny then.

  “Rios, what do ya think? Do I have to wait for the Russians, or can I shoot him myself?” Goodman asked.

  Only the faintest traces of daylight remained. The dejected Rios knew it was going to be another endless night behind his deadly machine gun. This time, however, he realized he wouldn’t have to endure the long hours alone.

  “Yeah, Goodman,” Rios said, �
��go ahead and shoot. It’s obvious he’s not going to shut up until somebody kills him.”

  The sniper squeezed the trigger on his rifle.

  CHAPTER 40

  January 30—12:17 a.m.

  NCO Housing Area, United States European Command Headquarters

  Patch Barracks, Stuttgart

  In her vivid dream, Kathy was very cold. She could hear Christopher calling for her in the darkness. But she couldn’t move to help him. She couldn’t move at all.

  Suddenly, she realized it wasn’t a dream.

  An icy shiver soared down her spine. Terror gripped her. The surreal nightmare of twelve hours earlier rushed into Kathy’s anguished mind. She began to understand, even as she refused to accept, the helplessness of her situation. She’d no idea how long she’d been there. Buried facedown beneath tons of suffocating rubble, she was unable to move in the slightest. The crushing weight of the shattered building pressed in upon her. It threatened to squeeze the last bits of fleeting air from her tortured lungs.

  Her entire body was wracked with pain. Her right leg was mangled. Twisted and distorted, it screamed out to her. She shivered again, cold and clammy. Beads of sweat formed on her upper lip and fell upon the cold floor.

  She could hear her child whimpering. He was only inches from her. Still, despite everything she tried, she couldn’t reach him.

  “Christopher, Mommy’s here, baby.”

  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.