Red Metal

CHAPTER 15

Dan Connolly was the first man in the bullpen this morning. He fired up his computer just before seven, stuck his ID in the machine, and headed for coffee while he waited. When he returned he was surprised to see the bottom of his computer monitor flashing red. When it flashed green he knew there was a Pentagon alert — usually a snowstorm or a burst water main or the like.

But a red flash meant a classified message.

He clicked it and it opened up.

“Thanks for your intelligence support request. CIA European Desk was able to compile the Vice Chairman’s request. Please open your Intelink-TS account for a link to all files related to the matter you requested.”

Connolly started to sweat. He whispered, “Bob, what have you done?”

Major Griggs strolled in at seven thirty to find Connolly staring at him as he entered.

“Morning, sir.”

“Did you put in an intel request to CIA?”

“I took the initiative.”

“You told them it was for the vice chairman?”

“I may have clicked that box, but it’s only because they didn’t have a box for ‘Vice Chairman’s lackeys.’”

“We’re going to get our asses kicked when the chief finds out.”

“I will. You weren’t involved. I put my name as the point of contact; you were just listed as an alternate contact when I filled out the request. Did you look at the data?”

“Of course I did.”

“Don’t keep me waiting.”

Connolly heaved his chest and let out a long sigh. “General Boris Lazar, the guy who put his dacha up for rent, is in Azerbaijan, and he will soon be departing to Iran.”

“Iran?”

“Yep, a joint exercise between the Russians and the Iranians.”

“He put his dacha up for nine months. Is he on a nine-month exercise?”

“Doesn’t sound right, does it?”

“Not at all. Anything about the general running the exercise in Belarus?”

“Yes. Sabaneyev has two dogs. Russian wolfhounds. And he put them in a kennel.”

Griggs cocked his head. “For nine months?”

“No. He paid for two. Still… the Russians are planning something more than Christmastime war games in Iran and Belarus. I don’t buy it.”

Griggs agreed. “Yeah, but we don’t know what it is, so convincing others around here is going to be impossible. What do we do?”

The lieutenant colonel spun back to his computer. “We keep digging.”

The door to the bullpen opened, and an Air Force major leaned in.

“Chief’s looking for you, Bob, and he does not look happy.”

The twenty-year-old blonde with the ponytail was the only employee working the counter at House Café Warszawa for the eight-hour morning-through-lunch shift. The place had been nearly packed through the first half of her day, but the blonde kept working, blotting sweat from her brow with a washcloth from time to time, simultaneously making drinks and manning the register, pulling cakes from the display case and rushing through the small sitting area whenever she could to keep the tables clean.

The lunch hour was as busy as the morning, but she knew she was lucky: the weather in Warsaw this December day was especially sloppy; every time she stole a glance through the windows, she saw the driving sleet, and this kept the traffic through her door manageable, if only barely.

Around two there was a lull in the action, and Paulina took the opportunity to brew herself a quick double-shot espresso, which she drank down lava-hot. As she put her cup in the sink and leaned against the counter for a breather, a tall, beautiful, and young brunette came through the door, her hair askew as she pulled off her knit cap and unwrapped her scarf from her neck.

Urszula and Paulina had been best friends since grammar school, and it was their custom to kiss on both cheeks before speaking whenever they saw each other, but Paulina had not yet begun stepping around the counter before Urszula called out to her from the doorway.

“Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“Crazy day, girl. It’s just me alone till three. Julia and Leo got called up by the Polish Rifles. Thank God the weather’s shit, or I would have dropped dead before lunch.”

Urszula put her bag down at one of the many empty tables in the little coffee shop, looking wide-eyed at her friend as she did so. “You really don’t have a clue to what’s going on, do you?”

Paulina moved around the counter, wiping her hands. “I don’t know anything but coffee and sore feet today. What’s up?”

“We’re being mobilized, too. Our first deployment ever, and it’s just days till Christmas.”

Paulina put a hand on the counter to steady herself. This was the last thing she’d expected to hear. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

Paulina and Urszula were both in the same section of the same civilian militia unit. Their organization wasn’t nearly as hard-charging as the Polish Rifles, who were a more elite volunteer corps of citizen-soldiers, so when Paulina learned the night before that her coworkers at the coffee shop had been called into immediate service, she didn’t assume she’d be affected other than by the tripling of her duties at work until her boss could find replacements.

“We leave tomorrow morning.”

Paulina let out a groan. “Tomorrow? But why? What’s so different about the Russians in Belarus this time compared to all the other times?”

“Dunno, girl. All I know is that I have an art history paper due as soon as school starts again in January, and I haven’t even started on it. This really sucks.” She looked up with a smile. “I guess I’ll get more time to study, although I’ll be doing it squatting in some muddy trench.”

Paulina reached back over the counter, struggling to grab her purse, which was tucked onto a shelf with a row of coffee syrups. She retrieved her phone and saw she’d received four calls and thirteen texts. As she began scrolling through them Urszula said, “I’ll save you the trouble. We’re to muster at Centralna at six a.m. We’re being bused south somewhere.”

Paulina looked off into space. “My boss is gonna literally freak out.”

She had studied for a year at Warsaw University, just like her best friend, but she’d dropped out the previous spring because she hadn’t been focused enough to keep her grades up. Since then she’d worked for the coffee chain, both here in the Old Town and at another location, in the Centralna train station.

She thought she might make assistant manager before too long, and while drawing espressos all day wasn’t exactly Paulina’s dream career, she figured she’d stick it out while she decided what to do with her life.

And she had also joined the Territorial Defense Force, the national civilian militia. She had friends in the group, Urszula included. It seemed cool, and she was aware of her patriotic duty, even if she didn’t give a damn about politics, guns, or the scratchy, ill-fitting uniforms.

And joining the TDF meant an extra four hundred zlotys a month. A hundred bucks U.S. a dozen times a year would help Paulina buy a used car before long, and if she were honest with herself, she’d acknowledge that this was the main reason for her service.

But she sure as hell hadn’t joined up to deploy during Christmas.

The Territorial Defense Force was most definitely “military light.” Paulina served two weekends a month, training with her company in camps just outside of Warsaw or in high school gymnasiums around the city. Often the training would amount to little more than exercise, marching, and watching films produced by the Polish Land Forces about how to operate weapons, including some weapons Paulina had yet to even see in person.

An actual mobilization of Paulina’s unit had seemed unreal for the past year, even in the last week, when other Polish paramilitary units had been getting call-ups in different parts of the country in response to Russia’s war games in neighboring Belarus.

No one in her group, least of all Paulina, had any belief they would ever be called on to fight in combat. Even if the Russians did come pouring over the border, the Territorial Defense Force would most likely be utilized to organize trucks of retreating civilians, build tent cities, guard train stations in the west of the country from looters, or ferry equipment to the national army, the Polish Land Forces. And if Russia did take the nation, the TDF would, in theory, serve as an instrument of hybrid war: thirty thousand civilians trained — to one degree or another — in military tactics.

A middle-aged couple entered the coffee shop and shook rain and ice off their coats inside the door, and Paulina gave them some stink eye for it, but she kept talking to Urszula. “Why the hell are we leaving Warsaw? If the Russians invade, they are coming straight here.”

“The army is staying here, ready to put tanks in the streets if it actually happens. We are being sent south somewhere.”

“What do they want us to do?”

“Same as ever, I guess. Stand around in a field.”

Paulina cocked her head now. “Will Tytus be there?”

Tytus was a lanky, good-looking DHL driver who served in a different section of her company. Paulina had a serious crush on him; this Urszula knew well.

The brunette just rolled her eyes. “It’s the whole company, girl. Maybe you’ll get lucky and Russia will attack so you can dive into a foxhole with Tytus.”

It was a joke, but neither laughed.

Paulina made drinks for the middle-aged couple and they left; then the girls sat down at a table in the now-empty café. They looked out the window at the decorations all over the town square. The big tree wouldn’t be put up till the evening of the twenty-fourth, but the holiday feel was impossible to miss.

“It really sucks that it’s at Christmas,” Urszula said.

Paulina’s greatest worry at the moment was telling her employer she was following Leo and Julia out the door during the holiday season. She said, “Didn’t they always say that if the Russians invaded, it would be in the spring or summer? They aren’t going to do anything in the winter; even I know that.”

Urszula just sighed. “I swear to God. They should put us in charge.” Her chest heaved; then she launched back to her feet. “I’ve got a million things to do. Call you tonight.”