Cauldron

CHAPTER 19 Movement to Contact

Lights were on all across the compound, bright against a pale black, starlit sky. Although it was already past midnight, the officers and men of the 19th Panzergrenadier Brigade were still up, readying their weapons and vehicles for war. Work details crowded around canvas-sided trucks, hurriedly off-loading crates containing ammunition, rations, and spare parts. Company and platoon officers and NCOs circulated through the stacked crates, ready to pounce on supplies their units still lacked. Shortages were the rule rather than the exception.

When the shooting started at sea on June 3, the brigade was strung out across Germany, caught right in the middle of its accelerated redeployment to Cottbus. Some units had already been moving into their new quarters, though “new” was definitely the wrong word to use for ramshackle barracks built in 1945 to house Soviet occupation forces. Other battalions had still been stuck in their old cantonments around Ahlen, waiting for their turn on Germany’s clogged rail lines and autobahns. They’d reached Cottbus the day before, spurred by a preliminary war warning order from II Corps headquarters. Moving the hundreds of tons of stores they would need for sustained combat was proving considerably more difficult.

Lieutenant Colonel Willi von Seelow frowned as he stood looking out a window in the brigade commander’s spartan office. He and the rest of the staff had been working hard for several days to remedy the chaotic supply situation. Now they were out of time. Despite their best efforts, the 19th would go into battle with barely fifty percent of the ammo, food, and fuel stocks he considered essential.

From what he’d heard, few units in the Confederation’s newly integrated army were in better shape. A logistical system already showing the strain of the army’s hasty redeployment to the Polish border and the heavy fighting in Hungary was starting to fall apart.

Von Seelow shook his head angrily. It was one thing for senior officers and government leaders to talk blithely about conducting a “come as you are” war. It was quite another to actually fight one — especially with half your supplies still locked up in warehouses four hundred kilometers behind the likely front line.

He turned away from the window when the phone on Colonel Georg Bremer’s desk rang.

“Bremer here.”

Von Seelow watched his short, dark-haired commander sit up straighter.

“Yes, Herr General.” Bremer listened intently to the voice on the other end for a few moments, jotting down notes all the while. When he put the pencil down, his face was more serious than von Seelow had ever seen it. “Yes, sir. I understand completely. You can count on us. Thank you, Herr General. And good luck to you, too.”

He replaced the receiver and then looked up. “That was Leibnitz.”

Von Seelow nodded. Gen. Karl Leibnitz commanded the 7th Panzer Division, the brigade’s parent formation.

“It’s official.” Bremer stood up from behind his desk and tugged his uniform jacket straight. “We cross into Poland at 0400 hours today. The plan is ‘Summer Lightning.’ “

Von Seelow felt cold. As relations with Poland and the Czech Republic worsened, the army’s general staff had prepared several contingency plans for operations along Germany’s eastern border. Summer Lightning was the most ambitious of them all. Naturally, as the brigade’s operations officer, he’d studied each plan in detail. But he’d never really expected to see any of them put into practice — not even when the crisis began heating up. Somehow, he’d always believed cooler heads and common sense would ultimately prevail.

Under Summer Lightning, two full EurCon corps, the II and III, would attack across the Neisse River south of the city of Frankfurt. Together, the two corps could mass fourteen hundred main battle tanks, nearly a thousand armored personnel carriers, and six hundred artillery pieces — all manned by 120,000 tough, highly trained soldiers. They would be supported by fighter-bombers and more than one hundred attack helicopters.

Three more French and German divisions, EurCon’s I Corps, would feint along the Oder River north of Frankfurt. With luck, they would tie down the Polish troops deployed there. At the same time, the VI Corps and several Austrian units would conduct probing attacks to pin the small but formidable Czech Army in place. EurCon’s V Corps, with two German panzer divisions, would remain in reserve in central Germany.

If all went well, the six divisions in II and III Corps would easily punch a hole through the two Polish mechanized divisions they faced. But to what end?

He put the question into words. “And our strategic objective?”

“To ‘punish’ the Polish armed forces.” Bremer shrugged. “Whatever the devil that means.”

Von Seelow didn’t like the sound of that at all. Without a clear military or political goal, they could easily wind up flailing wildly about inside Poland, wasting precious strength and time pursuing an elusive victory nobody could define.

Bremer saw his uncertainty and nodded. “I don’t like it much, either. But at least our part in all this is clear enough.” He smiled thinly. “So now we try putting this wild-eyed scheme of yours into practice, Willi.”

Army-level plans like Summer Lightning laid out only the broad outlines of a campaign. Operations officers like von Seelow were responsible for crafting the detailed brigade-, division-, and corps-level plans needed to implement their superiors’ grand schemes. II Corps’ current ops plan was largely based on concepts he had evolved during staff exercises earlier in the year.

The knowledge that his bold ideas were about to be tested under fire stirred contradictory emotions. As a soldier, he felt proud that his abilities were finally being recognized by his comrades and by his superiors. At the same time, he couldn’t shake a nagging belief that this war was fundamentally unjust. He’d read and heard enough unfiltered news to know the kinds of pressure the French and many Germans had been applying against Poland and the other small countries in Eastern Europe.

Bremer must have been thinking along somewhat the same lines. “At least we have one consolation. We are soldiers, not politicians. We need only do our duty and let the vote-buyers sort out the rest, eh?”

But Willi von Seelow was not so sure of that. The professional soldiers who had served the Third Reich had also held firm to their duty. They had been wrong. Duty must always be measured against the demands of individual conscience, he thought. Ultimately all soldiers, especially those in command positions, are called on to decide whether or not they are fighting a just or an unjust war.

His superiors, both in the army and in the government, were entitled to the presumption that their decisions met those tests, but he couldn’t help feeling uneasy. The Chancellor’s declaration of martial law had seemed a necessary, though harsh emergency measure at first. As the months passed, though, Willi couldn’t help noticing that laws and methods of governing enacted as temporary seemed increasingly regarded as permanent. That worried him. As a young officer, he’d served one dictatorship, however unwillingly. He did not want to serve another.

Two hours later, the 19th Panzergrenadier Brigade was on the road, a long, blacked-out column of tanks and APCs slowly clanking east toward the border town of Forst. Their route took them through tiny, run-down villages and patches of dead or dying forest. The vast, open-pit brown coal mines that pockmarked the surrounding countryside had wreaked havoc on the local environment.

Other tank and mechanized infantry units filled the roads behind them, funneling into Cottbus in columns that stretched for kilometer after kilometer. Most of EurCon’s II Corps was massing near the city, preparing for the lunge into Poland after a chosen few cleared the way.

It was daybreak.

Although the woods on the Polish side of the Neisse River were still cloaked in shadow, the sun had already climbed above the horizon — a ball of fire rising in a cloudless sky. Red-tinged sunlight touched the rusting steel girders of the Forst railroad bridge and set them aglow. Light winds from the south and southeast promised warm and dry weather later in the day.

Men in camouflage-pattern fatigues, combat engineers, swarmed over the railroad bridge, laying wood planking across its tracks and ties so that armored vehicles could use it safely. Other engineers, attached to the brigade by the 7th Panzer Division and II Corps, were busy deploying two ribbon bridges across the Neisse. They worked as fast as their self-propelled pontoon sections arrived and splashed into the water, bolting them together to form floating roadways reaching across the river.

Clusters of armored vehicles dotted an open park just west of the bridging site. Gepard flakpanzers mounting radar-directed, 35mm guns were on watch in case the Polish Air Force made an unwelcome appearance over Forst. Longer-range Roland SAM batteries stood guard further back, outside the town.

In the narrow streets of Forst itself, the 19th Panzergrenadier’s Marder APCs and Leopard tanks were lined up nose-to-tail, waiting to cross into Poland. Infantrymen wearing helmets and camouflage battle dress lay curled up beside their Marders. They were making use of the delay by trying to catch up on some of the sleep they’d lost during the previous night. Tank crewmen wearing olive-drab fatigues and black berets stood on top of their vehicles, using binoculars to scan the silent, wooded enemy shore.

Several staff officers and NCOs chatted together near an American-made M577 command vehicle parked in a street overlooking the railway bridge. The boxy tracked vehicle served as the brigade’s TOC, its tactical operations center. Bent low to clear the M577’s low roof, von Seelow walked down the rear ramp and joined his subordinates. He stood blinking in sunshine that was painfully bright after a night spent cooped up inside the TOC’s map- and radio-filled compartment.

“Any news, sir?”

Von Seelow nodded. “Major Hauser assures me that his bridges will be completed on schedule, and that we’ll be crossing in half an hour. Since he is a punctual and punctilious man, I think we can count on his assurances.”

His mild jest drew a laugh from those in earshot. A louder and longer laugh than it deserved, he noticed. Beneath their carefully assumed nonchalance, these young men were all nerves, frightened by the very real prospect of killing or being killed. No amount of riot control duty or street patrolling could compare with the sheer frightfulness of modern war.

Von Seelow knew he should be feeling the same grating anxieties. Certainly he’d been scared enough under fire in the Balkans — caught between the warring Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. For some reason, though, this was different. He was still conscious of being afraid of death or failure, but his fears were buried deeper than he remembered them. Maybe it was because he had more control over events now than he’d had as a junior officer obeying other men’s orders. Maybe he was just too busy.

Movement near the far end of the railway bridge caught his eye. With their hands held high in surrender, a steady trickle of disconsolate Polish infantrymen in their distinctive “worm” camouflage-pattern field uniforms came walking across, prodded at riflepoint by German soldiers whose faces and hands were daubed black.

The Poles had been captured during the first and most dangerous phase of this river crossing. Crammed into flimsy rubber rafts, an infantry company from the 7th Panzer’s reconnaissance battalion had paddled silently across the Neisse before dawn. Once ashore, they’d overwhelmed a tiny Polish garrison posted in the little village of Zasieki to keep an eye on the railroad bridge. Together with a light infantry company from one of the division’s Jaeger battalions, the recon troops were now spread in a semicircle through the woods, guarding the bridgehead until the brigade’s heavy tanks and vehicles could relieve them.

Willi had bet that this crossing point would be only weakly garrisoned, and he had won his bet. With just four divisions deployed along a border nearly four hundred kilometers long, the Poles were too thin on the ground to defend everywhere at once. In this sector, they’d concentrated their troops opposite the highway bridge at Olszyna, ten kilometers south. A German assault at Zasieki, with only a rudimentary road net and surrounded by forest, must not have seemed a significant threat.

Von Seelow planned to show them they were wrong. Once across the Neisse, the 19th Panzergrenadier would sweep southeast along the railroad embankment and the woods themselves. The forest wasn’t old-growth. It lacked the dense, tangled undergrowth that would have rendered it impassable to vehicles. Movement would be made even easier by using some of the dirt logging tracks that crisscrossed the area. Most of them fed onto the highway near Olszyna. The brigade’s Leopards and Marders should hit the reinforced Polish battalion guarding the bridge from the flank and rear before its commander knew they were coming.

The 7th Panzer Division’s reconnaissance battalion prowled onward through the woods, advancing in a kilometer-wide wedge. Sunlight streamed down through the trees, splintered by gently swaying green leaves and branches into patches of light and shadow rippling over camouflaged hulls and gun turrets. Eight-wheeled Luchs scout cars roved ahead, probing for the first signs of stiffening Polish resistance. Tanks and six-wheeled Fuchs troop carriers followed a few hundred meters behind.

Major Max Lauer rode proudly erect in the unbuttoned turret hatch of his Leopard 1 headquarters tank. Although they mounted smaller-caliber main guns and had less armor protection than the newer Leopard 2s, the thirty-six tanks under his command still gave his recon battalion a powerful punch. He and his men could fight most enemy forces they encountered on equal terms and outmaneuver most of those who outnumbered them.

Thunder rumbled to the southwest — the sound of heavy shelling muffled by distance and by the trees. Lauer brushed his radio headphones back for a moment to listen and then nodded grimly. The Poles holding the highway bridge were catching hell from at least twelve artillery batteries. He didn’t envy them the experience.

He slipped his headphones back on. The battle for the bridge wasn’t his concern. Not directly anyway. The 19th Panzergrenadier would deal with the enemy troops there. His battalion had its own mission. They were supposed to seize and hold the road junction at Jaglowice, six kilometers further down the highway.

From there, Lauer’s tanks and infantry could block or delay any reaction force speeding toward the battle. They would also tighten the noose around any Polish units that survived the attack at Olszyna and tried to flee east down the road.

Major Marek Malanowski was knocked off his feet as another near miss rocked his command bunker. Dust and smoke from the explosion boiled in through observation and firing slits beneath the bunker’s timber and sandbag roof. One of his sergeants helped him up.

The major bent down and scooped his helmet off the earth floor. Then he clapped it back on over his close-cropped black hair. “I don’t think they like us very much, Jan.”

The sergeant grinned, a quick flash of tobacco-stained teeth across a dirt-smeared face. “No, sir.”

Malanowski took another look outside. It was like staring into a whirling, roaring maelstrom — only one made up of smoke and fire instead of water and foam. More shells churned the riverbank and nearby woods. Airbursts shredded treetops, sending wood and steel splinters whining earthward. Shock waves from the explosions tore the leaves from those trees left standing and sent them swirling wildly through the air. Plumes of oily black smoke curled into the air from several vehicles smashed and set on fire by direct hits.

Nevertheless, despite the pounding they were taking, his defenses appeared mostly intact. If their nerves held out under the constant, shattering noise, troops in well-prepared positions could usually ride out even the worst artillery bombardment. So far, at least, the men of the 411th Mechanized Battalion were standing firm. If they could just hold on a little longer, he was confident that they would tear to shreds any EurCon attempt to cross the river.

Malanowski’s battalion was organized along American lines, but it was still using Soviet-style equipment. He had three companies of BMP-1s dug into the woods along the riverbanks, sited to cover the bridge and other potential crossing points with their 73mm smoothbore cannon and wire-guided antitank missiles. Their infantry squads were all dismounted and in firing positions with overhead cover to protect them from shell fragments. He even had a T-72 tank company in support.

With that much firepower on tap, any first German tanks that tried storming across the highway bridge wouldn’t get more than a hundred meters. And if they tried sending infantry across in rubber rafts or assault boats? The Polish major shrugged. Mortars and machine guns should deal pretty handily with those poor bastards. Even a smoke screen couldn’t stop converging automatic weapons fire. Put enough bullets into an area fast enough and you were bound to hit someone.

Of course, it would have been a lot easier if they could have just blown the bridge and been done with it. But rigging enough demolitions to bring down a major structure took time. It was also obvious. Even with a strike and counterstrike air war in progress, Warsaw hadn’t wanted to give EurCon any more excuses to escalate the conflict.

He turned to the lieutenant manning the command bunker’s communications gear. “Any word from the Zasieki OP yet?” He had to shout to be heard over the constant, deafening barrage.

“No, sir.”

“What about Lieutenant Lesniak?”

“Nothing, Major.”

Malanowski chewed his lower lip. That worried him. They’d lost contact with the tiny observation post more than an hour ago — shortly after the enemy artillery barrage began. Maybe the shelling had cut the telephone wires his signals troops had laid. And maybe not.

Concerned by the ominous silence on his flank, he’d sent Lesniak and a small patrol north along the river. They were under orders to make contact with the OP and report back. Now they were missing, too. Were they pinned down by the artillery? Silenced by German radio jamming? Or had the lieutenant and his men run into more trouble than they could handle?

After Malanowski’s first reports of increased enemy activity across the river, his regimental commander had promised him the first available reinforcements. But the major knew they would be a long time coming. With so much ground to cover, the 4th Mechanized Division had very few reserves held back.

Essentially the 411th was on its own.

Faced with that reality, he’d deployed his own tactical reserve, D Company, at right angles to the river, covering his northern flank. It wasn’t much, just fourteen BMPs and a hundred infantrymen, but it was all he had.

The shelling changed tempo suddenly, slowing and growing softer.

Malanowski scanned the ground sloping down toward the Neisse again. He could see shells bursting along the shoreline, exploding in puffs of grayish-white smoke. The Germans were building a smoke screen to cover their assault! He showed his teeth in a quick tigerish grin. His battalion had suffered under the enemy’s artillery fire for long enough. Now they would have a chance to pay the Germans back in full.

“Thermal sight!”

His senior sergeant handed him a thermal imaging sight they’d stripped from one of their American-supplied Dragon antitank missile launchers. He cradled the bulky sight in both hands and hoisted it up to the bunker’s observation slit.

The sight “saw” temperature variations among different objects — leaves, the water, men, and vehicles — and turned them into a clear, monochrome view of the world outside. Hotter objects showed up in shades of white and cooler ones in shades of black.

Malanowski panned back and forth between the highway bridge and the opposite shore, looking closely for the first signs of enemy movement. Nothing yet. But they wouldn’t wait much longer. He glanced at the lieutenant manning his commo gear. “Order all companies to stand to!”

“Sir.”

The major checked the river again. Still nothing. What the devil were the EurCon commanders playing at? Every minute they delayed gave his soldiers more time to scramble into their fighting positions and to clear away blast-heaped dirt or shattered tree limbs that blocked their fields of fire.

Gunfire exploded on his right flank and quickly spread down the line — first a single shot, then a crackling, ear-splitting roar as assault rifles, machine guns, and tank cannon opened up.

“Major! D Company is under attack!” Obviously stunned by what he was reporting, the young lieutenant stood shaking, with one hand still pressing the field telephone against his ear. “They’re being hit by enemy tanks and infantry! Battalion strength at least!”

Malanowski dashed to a firing slit looking north. The gray haze was thicker there. More shells burst among the shattered trees, blending with the dense, black smoke pouring out of burning APCs. Flames stabbed out of the murk — marking both his firing line and the wave of German tanks and panzer-grenadiers smashing into his battalion’s flank and rear.

Christ. He spun toward the ashen-faced lieutenant, rattling off new orders as fast as they popped into his head. “Tell A Company to reinforce the right flank! And tell Captain Stachniak to swing his T-72s north!”

If D Company could just hold for a few more minutes, they might buy him enough time to reorient his defenses.

It was too late. Malanowski could see men falling back through the smoke, pausing just long enough to fire a burst or two in the direction they’d come before retreating again. One cartwheeled backward, knocked off his feet by return fire. Another lay bloody and broken, sprawled across a fallen tree trunk. Rounds whipcracked overhead. A T-72 clanked forward through the fleeing infantry, still trailing torn camouflage netting from its turret and rear deck. Its turret whined, slewing from side to side as it looked for targets.

Whanngg.

The T-72 disappeared inside a bright orange flash — hit by a German armor-piercing round. Its rounded turret blew off and fell beside the burning tank. Secondary explosions rocked the hull as stored fuel and ammunition cooked off.

The smoke thinned for an instant, giving Malanowski a brief glimpse of men in “Fritz” Kevlar helmets moving closer — advancing in short rushes through the woods. They were tossing grenades and firing bursts into Polish foxholes and bunkers. His flank was collapsing. The Germans were inside the battalion’s defensive perimeter.

He made an instant decision. His soldiers were being overrun too fast to put up any effective resistance. Staying here meant dying here. But maybe he could save something from the wreckage. He pulled his head away from the firing slit. “Order all companies to withdraw! We’ll fall back south to the alternate rally point and regroup!”

While the lieutenant relayed his instructions to anyone still listening on the battalion net, Malanowski handed the precious thermal sight to his sergeant. Then he grabbed his personal weapon, an AKM assault rifle, and a knapsack from one corner of the bunker. He spun round, checking the rest of his staff. They were ready. Papers, codebooks, and maps they didn’t have time to pack up were heaped in a single pile, ready for destruction.

Machine-gun fire rattled somewhere outside. Stray rounds thwacked into the bunker’s timber roof and shredded sandbags on its sides. The Germans were closing in, and it was high time they were gone.

Malanowski and the sergeant led the way, clearing the bunker door in a rush with their assault rifles at the ready. The rest of the staff followed, crouching low as bullets whined past. The last man out turned, pulled the pin from a grenade, and lobbed it back through the door. It went off with a dull whummp, blowing dirt, sand, and fragments of shredded paper through firing slits and the opening.

Still bent low, they sidled away from the bunker. Their headquarters BMP was parked just a few meters away, surrounded on three sides by raised earth embankments and covered by camouflage netting. Its crew already had the engine running and the rear troop doors open.

A German Leopard came thundering out of the smoke only a hundred meters away. Its turret and long-barreled gun pointed off to the left, aiming at a target somewhere closer to the river.

“Down!” Malanowski threw himself prone.

The BMP’s gun barked once, slamming a 73mm HEAT round into the Leopard at point-blank range. The German tank rocked sideways and shuddered to a stop with smoke pouring out through the jagged hole torn in its armor. The corpse of its commander lay draped over his roof-mounted machine gun.

Before the Polish major could start to smile, another Leopard, invisible through the gray haze, avenged its fallen comrade with a single cannon round.

Whammm.

The BMP exploded, spraying sharp-edged metal in all directions. Malanowski could hear its trapped crew screaming in agony as they burned to death. He scrambled to his feet, hearing shouts in German to the north and east. The panzergrenadiers were practically right on top of them.

“On your feet! Move! Move!” He erupted into action, kicking and hauling stunned soldiers to their feet, then pushing them south — away from the burning BMP. With their commander urging them on, the battalion’s headquarters team faded deeper into the woods.

Exhausted, they stopped moving several kilometers and several hours later. It was nearly noon.

Malanowski took another swallow from his field canteen and swished the water around his mouth, before letting it slide down his parched throat. Then he sloshed what was left onto a handkerchief and used it to wipe away the worst of the sweat, smoke, and dust coating his face. With the sun high overhead, the small copse of trees he and his soldiers were hiding in provided welcome shelter from the sweltering heat.

He laid the canteen aside, slumped back against the tree trunk, and studied what was left of his battalion. Besides the six survivors from his command staff, he’d found another twenty or thirty bedraggled infantrymen and footsore vehicle crewmen at the rally point. From there, they’d headed further south, intent on putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the victorious Germans.

Since they’d stopped to rest in this grove, more weary men had come stumbling in by ones and twos. Right now, he had roughly fifty soldiers under his command — armed only with small arms and a few light antitank weapons. The major grimaced. That was just ten percent of the force he’d taken into battle. The rest of his men were dead, captive, or scattered across the countryside.

Once night fell, he planned to lead this ragged, worn-out remnant of his battalion southward again, sticking close to the woods for as long as possible. With a little luck, they could commandeer enough civilian transport to rejoin their own army.

If not… Malanowski sat up straighter. He and his men would fight on as partisans, raiding EurCon’s exposed supply lines and rear areas.

Poland had been beaten before, but her soldiers had fought on. Malanowski had heard the stories again and again as a cadet. Now they would continue that tradition, fighting the enemy any way they could. They had lost a battle, not the war.

A dull red glow in the west marked the setting sun and cast long black shadows over the highway. It was already dark under the trees lining both sides of the road.

The muted roar of heavy traffic could be heard for kilometers around — a steady rumble of powerful diesel engines and the squeaking, grinding, clanking of tank treads on pavement. Thousands of tanks, APCs, and trucks were wending their way through the gathering darkness. With the 19th Panzer-grenadier Brigade still in the lead, the 7th Panzer was pushing deeper into Poland.

Inside the dimly lit interior of his M577, Willi von Seelow braced himself against the APC’s motion with one hand and marked his map with the other. Led by Bremer in person, the brigade’s advance guard was already thirty-two kilometers beyond the Neisse River. Strong patrols from the division’s own recon battalion were probing even deeper — cutting telephone lines and setting up roadblocks to keep the news of their breakthrough from spreading. Although the 19th’s losses at Olszyna had been heavier than he’d hoped, they were making good progress. Since the morning battle, opposition had been light, almost nonexistent.

So far, at least, Summer Lightning was going according to plan.

Early that morning, III Corps had attacked far to the south, near Gorlitz, where the terrain was more open — better tank country. It was also the sector where the Poles had massed most of their defending forces. Reports indicated that the Polish troops — the 11th Mechanized Division and most of the 4th — were holding their ground in very heavy fighting.

And that was just what the EurCon high command wanted.

While III Corps pinned the enemy in place, the 7th Panzer and the rest of II Corps were pouring across the Neisse, plunging southeast through Poland’s western forests toward Legnica. Once there they would wheel south, trapping and annihilating the better part of two Polish mechanized divisions.

The Confederation’s political leaders were confident that a defeat of that magnitude would be enough to bring Poland to its knees and to the bargaining table. Then, with their larger ally humbled, the Czech and Slovak republics and rebel Hungary would be forced to do the same. All of Europe, from the Russian border west to the Atlantic, would be under the effective control of a single alliance. And once their Eastern European allies switched sides, America and Great Britain would surely see reason. Robbed of any continental foothold, they would face only the prospect of a long, bloody, uncertain war for uncertain aims. Isolationist sentiment was still strong in both countries. Pressure from their own people, weary of war for no conceivable gain, would force Washington and London to sign their own peace with Europe’s new superpower.

Willi von Seelow wasn’t so sure about that. Too much of the EurCon war plan depended on their enemies reacting slowly and predictably to the military moves already under way — dancing to the Franco-German tune. But what if the men in Warsaw and Washington had another melody in mind?

General Wieslaw Staron, Poland’s Minister of Defense, leaned over a map showing western Poland, studying the road net and terrain. Staron knew the map as well as he knew his own face in the mirror. Thirty years in uniform had given him a fine appreciation of the uses of terrain, and he now saw it not just as roads and rivers and forests, but in terms of movement rates, defensive strengths and weaknesses, and communications centers.

He’d moved troops around the Polish landscape for twenty-five of those years, starting with a platoon and working his way up to a full corps. While few in the Polish Army had engaged in combat, no one was better qualified to send it into battle.

Bushy brown eyebrows knitted together. He looked up and shook his head slowly. “I don’t like it, Ignacy.”

“No, sir.” Lieutenant General Ignacy Zdanski, the chief of the general staff, kept his face carefully impassive.

“Not at all.” Staron looked down at the map again. He tapped the river line near Gorlitz. “Two enemy divisions here — with a third in reserve. Yes?”

His younger, leaner subordinate nodded. “The 5th Panzer, 4th Panzergrenadier, and the French 3rd Armored. They’re across the river in several places, but not very far.”

The Defense Minister frowned. “And why not?”

“The force ratio isn’t in their favor.”

True enough, Staron thought, focusing on the map — trying to see the terrain as though he were a young tank commander again, and not a middle-aged military bureaucrat penned in a Warsaw office in the middle of the night. With only three divisions attacking against nearly two defending, the French and Germans couldn’t possibly hope to achieve a breakthrough in the south. According to the latest satellite and signals intelligence provided by the Americans, EurCon still had at least three uncommitted divisions on the border. Possibly more. So what were they playing at? Then he saw it. The EurCon commanders didn’t want to punch a hole in his lines there. They were playing a different game entirely.

He’d once heard inspiration described as “a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain.” This wasn’t like that at all. It was more like watching a curtain rise slowly, revealing a suddenly familiar stage. “The Ardennes!”

“Sir?”

Staron stabbed a thick finger down on the map. “The damned Ardennes! That’s what they’re trying to do to us. Here.” He traced the highway running from Olszyna to Legnica. “They’re coming this way. Through the forests. Cutting behind us.”

He thumped the table for emphasis. “Look at it, Ignacy! It all adds up.”

“Mother of God.” Zdanski turned pale. It did make sense. The communications failures plaguing that region since early yesterday morning weren’t random chance or the work of isolated raiding parties. They were the first warning signs of an oncoming tidal wave.

Staron put both fists on the table. He’d let misguided political considerations sway him into deploying half the Polish Army along the frontier in a show of force. But he’d be damned if he’d repeat all the mistakes of 1939 by allowing his units to be surrounded and rolled up by another German-led blitzkrieg.

The Defense Minister fired out directions. “Order the 4th and 11th Mechanized to withdraw. Immediately. Tell them to break contact and fall back to… here.” He circled a position near Wroclaw itself — seventy-five kilometers back from the Neisse. If his commanders moved fast enough, they should still be able to escape the closing jaws of the EurCon trap.

“But what about the President and Prime Minister? Will they agree to abandon so much of our country to the enemy?”

“They’ll agree,” Staron growled. “Land can always be retaken. Soldiers are harder to come by. And Poland lives so long as she has a fighting army in the field!”

While his subordinate hurried away to issue the necessary orders, the Defense Minister returned to his study of the situation map. Even a successful withdrawal would only delay the inevitable. Matching two Polish divisions against two full enemy corps was a prescription for certain defeat. He needed to put more men on the battle line. But where could he pull them from?

Not from the east. Not yet. Russia’s declared neutrality in this conflict meant nothing. Marshal Kaminov and his cronies had already stabbed Poland in the back once for French gold. Who could say that he wouldn’t make the same kind of bargain again?

Staron’s eyes moved north, tracing the line of the Oder as it flowed toward the Baltic Sea. EurCon forces had made only a few scattered thrusts across the river there — small-scale battalion and company-sized raids that went nowhere. But were they trying to lull him into complacency before launching a bigger offensive later? No, he judged. France and Germany wanted a quick, uncomplicated war and a quick, decisive victory. They were making their main effort in the south.

He nodded to himself. He would gamble in the north.

The tall, rail-thin colonel in charge of the division’s intelligence section finished his briefing without notes, using only a map tacked to an easel and a long thin pointer. “In summary, at least three EurCon divisions have crossed the Neisse River at Forst and Olszyna. Our best current guess is that they’re aiming for Legnica in an attempt to pocket our units withdrawing from Gorlitz.”

Major General Jerzy Novachik watched the officers crammed into the headquarters tent react. All of them were worried by the news of the EurCon breakthrough south of them. Few were very surprised by it. As a show of force during the early stages of the crisis, Warsaw’s decision to deploy half the nation’s army in a thin, dispersed screen along the frontier had made some sense. Once hostilities flared, it had been an open invitation to military catastrophe.

He strode forward and faced them squarely. “I won’t mince words, gentlemen. The strategic situation is bleak.”

Heads nodded in agreement.

“But it is not irretrievable.” Novachik let that sink in for a moment before continuing. “This division is being committed to battle in the south. Two regiments, the 51st and the 52nd, will leave immediately. The 53rd will stay behind until it can hand off the defense of this sector to the 20th Mechanized.”

Their eyes widened at that. Warsaw was taking an enormous risk. Pulling the 5th off the Oder line would leave only a single division and an odd assortment of poorly armed Home Guard companies behind.

“The division will proceed to Wroclaw by this route.” Novachik picked up the colonel’s pointer and swept it across the map, east to Poznan first and then south to Wroclaw. Their planned line of march swung wide around the EurCon forces pouring down Highway 12. “This will be a forced march, so speed is absolutely vital. Vehicles that break down will be left behind to follow along when they can. If necessary, we will eat and sleep on the move. This is a horse race, gentlemen, and the enemy is on the inside rail. And there are no prizes for second place.”

They nodded again, their faces solemn in the lamplight. The 5th Mechanized Division was about to enter a contest where the stakes were Poland’s continued existence as a free and independent nation.

Erin McKenna smiled happily when Alex Banich leaned in through the open door to her office. They were both so busy these days that she rarely saw him at all — especially not during working hours. The fighting spilling through Eastern Europe added a special urgency to their efforts to monitor Russia’s armed forces and defense industries.

Her smile faded. Behind the poker face most people saw, he looked worried. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid dinner’s off. Duty calls.”

“With a shrill and unpleasant voice?”

Banich nodded. “Very shrill and very unpleasant.” He came in and closed the door behind him. “I just had a chat with Kutner. He’s received a priority signal from Langley.”

Erin grimaced. “What do they want now? The phone number for Kaminov’s newest mistress?”

“Not exactly.” He carefully pushed a pile of printouts to one side and took his usual perch at one end of her desk. She sometimes wondered what he had against sitting in chairs.

“What, then?”

“They need to know whether or not the Russians plan to intervene against Poland.” Banich said it flatly, without evident emotion.

Erin stared at him. “And how are you supposed to find that out? Just waltz right up to the Kremlin and ask?”

Banich shrugged. “When the boys on the top floor want results, they really don’t care what I have to do to get them.”

“Seriously.”

He shrugged again. “Anything I can… up to and including twisting a few greedy little arms inside the Defense Ministry.”

Erin was aghast. “That’s crazy!” She pushed her keyboard away and turned to face him. “You know that whole building will be crawling with FIS agents by now.”

“Probably.”

“Just waiting for the first Western spy stupid enough to come barging in with cash and miniature camera in hand.”

Banich nodded. “Probably.” He grinned suddenly. “Hey, risk comes with the territory. If I’d wanted a safe, boring job, I’d have gone in for circus high-wire work like my grandma wanted me to.”

She forced a smile of her own. She’d worked with him long enough to realize that being flippant was the way he dealt with stress. He knew the risks. Harping on them wouldn’t help.

Banich studied her face intently, almost as though he were memorizing it. Then he checked his watch and stood up. “Gotta run. My alter ego, Ushenko, has a very important appointment at ten.” He looked down at her. “Wish me luck.”

“Always.” Erin kept her voice light. “But if you stand me up one more time, Alex Banich, I’ll sue you for trifling with my affections. Either that or ask my daddy to horsewhip you through the town streets.”

He laughed softly and ghosted out of the room and down the hall.

“Damn it!” Someone she was starting to care a lot about was putting himself in a lot of danger, and she couldn’t do a thing to help him. She swiveled back to her computer and jabbed viciously at the enter key. It beeped in protest.

Her usefulness in Moscow was just about at an end. With the FIS breathing down her neck, she couldn’t risk any personal contacts with potential sources. That left electronic espionage. But Russia’s computer security teams were steadily and methodically finding and sealing the nooks and crannies she’d been using to slip in and out of confidential data bases. Pretty soon, for all the good she’d be able to do here, she might as well be back in D.C. filling out and filing meaningless Commerce Department reports.

Erin McKenna stared emptily into her computer screen. With Europe in flames, she was trapped inside the Moscow embassy compound.