Red Metal

CHAPTER 30

Paulina Tobiasz was woken by a hard shake to her shoulder. She opened her eyes and saw Tytus in her tent, looking down on her in the dark. Behind him, through the open flap at the entrance to her tent, she could see that it was still pitch-dark, and a light snow was falling.

Before she could speak he said, “You up, Tobiasz?”

“Dzień dobry,” (“Good morning”) she replied with a surprised smile.

But then she noticed Tytus had a hard look on his face. He was all business.

“We’re leaving. The trucks are coming for us in five minutes.”

“Leaving? Back to Warsaw?”

He shook his head. “Another road. Nowicki said we’ve been ordered west.”

Paulina sat up quickly. “We spent all yesterday filling sandbags and building wooden fortifications here. Why are we just leaving all that and—”

Tytus turned away. “The Russians are in Poland.”

“What?”

The young man exited the tent without another word.

On the cot on the other side of the small tent, Urszula lay in her sleeping bag, rubbing her puffy eyes. “What did he say?”

“Some shit about Russians in Poland, I think.”

Urszula laid her head back down. “He’s screwing with you. He likes you.”

Paulina pulled off her knit cap to organize her dirty-blond hair. She didn’t believe the Russians were in Poland, but she did believe she’d have to go out into the snow, climb onto a truck in five minutes, and go to another area to dig another fortification.

The women took longer than five minutes to get ready, but so did most of the company. Nowicki finally got everyone loaded and the trucks moving, but he hadn’t said a word to anyone about where they were going or why.

Tytus had been wrong about the Russians, Paulina was sure; but if Urszula was right and that had been an attempt by him to flirt, it wasn’t much of one.

The trucks drove west along a two-lane paved road until they climbed an incline, significant because this was a very flat part of the country. They left the paved road suddenly and Paulina’s vehicle bounced over depressions and through ditches, throwing everyone in back around and against one another, sending gear bags flying with each bounce. After five minutes of this, the trucks pulled into a clearing and stopped.

Paulina jumped from the back of the vehicle with the rest of the occupants and found herself on a gentle snow-white hill, a grazing pasture that overlooked a two-lane road two hundred meters to the south. A wet, thick snow fell steadily, meaning she could see no farther than the empty road, and she wondered if this was what they’d been rushed to protect before dawn.

The section sergeants mustered the ninety-three members of the militia company on the hill. The volunteers lined up in six fifteen- or sixteen-person sections, but they were in no way as orderly as actual soldiers. The men and women shuffled their boots in the shin-deep snow and waited to hear what the hell was going on. Nowicki remained in the cab of one of the trucks for several minutes, then leapt out and began stomping through the snow back to his waiting troops.

Instantly, Paulina could detect an expression she’d never seen on the man’s face. It was almost as if the normally confident lieutenant looked… scared.

“Listen up! I don’t have any more information than what I’m about to say, so don’t pester me with questions. PLF comms are completely down, and the TDF net is coming in broken. But before I lost communication, someone there claimed Russian armor crossed into Poland this morning from Brest. Further civilian shortwave reports claim the Russians have engaged military targets inside Poland.”

Everyone stood in bewildered silence until Nowicki spoke again. “If this is true, it means our nation is under attack.”

The lines of young men and women gasped as one, and then everyone began speaking at once.

Nowicki shouted over them. “Intel reports suggest the Russians are moving west. The Land Force is rushing to get in front of them, and we are trying to get NATO to get their shit together and move forces stationed up north over to the border, but something is wrong with the NATO communication network, too. In the meantime we’ve been moved off Expressway 12 and ordered here to watch over that road down there, Route 740. We have received absolutely no intelligence that says any Russian is going to come up that road.” Nowicki looked around — as best he could with the heavy snowfall, anyway — and put his hands on his hips. “I sure wouldn’t come this way. Still, we have to be ready.”

A thirty-year-old woman from Section F asked, “Ready for what? We have six RPGs, two small mortars, a dozen machine guns, and some rifles. We’re going to stop a Russian invasion?”

Nowicki just looked at her. “You have to be ready to fight for your country. Whatever the odds.”

The speaking turned to shouting.

A man in his forties yelled out, “My family is in Warsaw and I’m here? I have two kids. I have to go to them.” He started to break rank and head back over to the trucks.

Nowicki was twenty years younger than the militiaman. “The PLF is in and around Warsaw. They will protect your family.”

“Yeah, right. While I protect that fucking nothing road down there? I’m leaving!”

Nowicki’s voice trembled as he spoke. “As of right now, your service in the militia is no longer voluntary. Anyone who runs will be shot in the back by your section sergeant. If your section sergeant fails to shoot you, I will shoot your section sergeant, and then I will shoot you.”

The hill fell silent as that sank in; only the hissing off the snowfall continued, but only for a moment. Then a twenty-eight-year-old natural gas pipeline technician named Jerzy threw his rifle in the snow. “Fuck you, college boy. I’m getting an Uber back to—”

Next to him, his section sergeant racked a round into the chamber of his AK-47 and leveled it at the side of the man’s head.

Now a roofer who’d joined the militia for extra cash shouted, “I’m not a motherfucking soldier!” and others agreed with him. The crowd devolved over the next several seconds; the protests grew louder.

Nowicki pulled his pistol from its holster and fired a round into the snow next to him, and everyone fell still again.

The twenty-three-year-old lieutenant’s voice cracked again as he spoke. “We are going to be fine. Your families are going to be fine. Just everybody calm down and do your jobs.”

The lieutenant cleared his throat. “Let’s get to work. It will be light soon. I want everyone digging trenches by section.”

Paulina was in Section E and, along with the men and women in the five other sections, she dug into the soft snow, then into the hard earth, doing her best to scratch out cover from the road and to the east.

The different sections all tossed dirt in front of the fighting positions, slowly building up loose earthen berms.

As Paulina fought with the frozen ground, an overweight high school soccer coach slammed his pick into the hole next to her and spoke over the sounds of the digging. “Why would the Russians come along this road?”

The young section sergeant was a few meters away. He was a hard charger in everything he did, at least as compared to the rest of Section E, and he dug twice as fast as anyone else in Paulina’s trench. Still, he didn’t slow or look up from his work to respond. He said, “You can ask them their plan if they show up, Jerzy.”

Paulina and Urszula worked next to each other. Within minutes the beautiful brunette complained about blisters on her hands despite her thick gloves. Five minutes after this Paulina’s own hands were blistered and burning.

The six trenches were sprawled out on the snow-covered hillside, each at a different angle to the road at the bottom of the hill, with all trenches more or less angled to the east. The military vehicles that had brought them there had been moved back into the woods to the west, and to the east it was an open view as far as the weather would allow, which was half a kilometer or so. The snow fell even more heavily now, and dense fog covered the road below and floated halfway up the hill.

Paulina and Bruno were set up behind the earthen berm in the second trench from the top of the hill. Their launcher lay on a backpack, already loaded, and Paulina’s rifle was propped next to a bandolier of extra grenades.

Urszula and her RPG crewmate, a fifty-three-year-old with a bald head and thick glasses who’d only recently given up on hitting on her after nearly a year, knelt in the dirt directly next to them, with nearly a dozen riflemen filling out the rest of Section E’s fighting position.

Lieutenant Nowicki squatted just above the southernmost trench with his cell phone. Paulina could see by his occasional frustrated gesticulations that he was still having trouble communicating with his command.

Finally, just after six a.m., the lieutenant began moving from one fighting position to the next, talking to each group of fifteen or sixteen.

Everyone in Paulina’s trench stood in silence as they waited for the uniformed officer to move to them, as if their fate lay in what he would say.

Urszula moved over to Paulina now and hugged her close, seeking comfort in her best friend. They stood there, arm in arm, while Paulina scanned the trenches Nowicki had already addressed. It was hard to get a read on what he’d told them, especially with the fog and snow, but it was obvious none of them were packing up and leaving, so she knew this wasn’t over yet.

Finally he made it to Section E’s emplacement, and now, up close, she could see the fear on his face, in his eyes. Instantly her heart began to pound in her chest.

Nowicki said, “Listen up. No talking. As of twenty minutes ago the Russians were east of Radom, moving west on Twelve with heavy armor and scout cars.”

“Gówno!” the roofer shouted.

Some in the group leaned against the berm or sat down in the ditch. Urszula shuddered in Paulina’s arms, and her knees started to give out before her friend pulled her back up.

Nowicki continued. “There’s a full battalion of PLF on the way, but they are fifty kilometers out. No one that I’ve talked to has been in comms with any NATO forces as far as I can tell.”

Urszula spoke softly, almost to herself. “We’re dead meat.”

Nowicki pointed at her angrily. “No! Their main force is down on Twelve. That’s fifteen kilometers south. If they do send some scouts up on Route 740, we will engage them. We will slow them down, hold them back. When we punch them in the nose, they will be so surprised, they’ll stop and think over their plan, and that will give the battalion time to get here and finish them.”

The heavyset soccer coach named Jerzy spoke up now. “A battalion? You think a battalion — twelve hundred men—will stop a Russian invasion?”

Nowicki was already up and moving to the last trench. “We can’t control the Russians, or the PDF, but we can control our own actions. Listen for my commands on the radio.”

He took off in a jog for Section F’s trench.

Paulina looked down the trench line toward Tytus now, who lay on the meter-high earthen berm with his eye in the scope of his Dragunov. She hadn’t heard him say a word since first thing this morning, and she wondered if he was as scared as she was. She thought about moving down to his end to talk to him, and had just committed herself to this when someone in the next trench over from Paulina shouted for everyone around him to shut the hell up. Heads turned to the comment, but only for an instant, because it was immediately apparent why the request had been made.

A soft, persistent rumble rolled over the hillside, and it came from the east.

“What the hell is that?” Bruno asked.

Kluk, Urszula’s bald-headed, lecherous RPG gunner, said, “It’s too faint to be armor.”

“What’s over that way?” another man asked.

Tytus scanned through his scope. “Just houses and buildings along Route 740. I don’t see any movement. Maybe some semis or larger trucks are passing. I don’t think there is—”

Tytus stopped talking when a new sound filled everyone’s ears. It was the low, rolling rumble of what was obviously a distant explosion.

Urszula muttered softly, “Oh my God.”

Paulina put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “That’s kilometers away. There are lots of roads they can take.”

Bruno said, “They’ll stay down the main highway.”

Tytus heard this, and he called from the far edge of the trench, “That’s closer than the highway. That’s the 740. Someone is—”

Two distant booms. Then a third. The soft but persistent hum of engines grew louder.

The sounds of explosions continued for the next four minutes, the constant reverberations gaining in volume as each minute passed.

Nowicki stepped out in front of the trenches with his handheld radio at his ear now. He pushed the transmit button and Paulina’s section sergeant’s handheld squawked in Section E’s fighting position.

“I don’t know who’s coming, but heavy equipment is clearly on the way up Route 740.”

While Paulina watched him from the trench, Nowicki started to say something else into his radio but then he stopped and looked around.

The hillside began to vibrate. The snow one hundred meters in every direction was dirty and churned up by footprints and truck tires and now it began to move, vibrating with the approaching engine noise. In Section E’s trench Paulina watched clods of dirt roll off the berms and down into the frozen hole.

Nowicki turned around and faced his militia, a look of near panic on his face, and Tytus called out from behind his Dragunov, “Armor on the road! Armor on the road! Approaching fast!”

The lieutenant in the open turned and stared at Section E’s sharpshooter in disbelief. Paulina could tell Nowicki had no idea what to do, and this brought her to the verge of panic. A man a few positions away from her vomited into the trench. She looked to her right now, past little Bruno, and her eyes met with Urszula. Her friend blinked and tears ran down her rosy cheeks. Her gloved hands shook violently.

Paulina reached behind Bruno’s back and took Urszula’s gloved hand in hers, then let go as both women moved to their weapons.

A flash of light appeared in the east now, a ball of flame that rose and disappeared in the gray morning. The sound of a shock wave came, and then the boom of an explosion. A second flash and a subsequent boom came just after.

Tytus looked through his scope. “It’s tanks! T-90s. No, wait! T-14s, I think.”

Nowicki turned to him. “Dismounts?”

“No, sir! Just the tanks. Multiple tanks.”

Jerzy shouted now. “We’re all gonna fucking die!”

Nowicki remained in the open. He shouted into his radio so all the positions could hear him. “Everyone hold positions! Do not fire unless fired upon!” Clearly he saw the folly of taking on main battle tanks with their impotent force.

The lieutenant ran through the snow and dirt now and leapt into Section D’s trench.

A man on Paulina’s left cried out in fresh alarm. She looked over and saw men in Section F’s fighting position all peering along the hillside but not down to the road. Tracking their gaze to the east, she saw four big armored vehicles with black tires approaching out of the fogbank. They barreled through the snow on the hill, parallel to the road, heading right for the trenches. To Paulina they appeared to be less than three hundred meters away and closing fast.

Paulina was no real soldier, but in her training weekends she’d spent a few hours looking through books of photos of Russian military equipment, and she instantly recognized the Russian-built Bumerang armored personnel carrier. She knew everything relevant about the weapon. It had robust armor in the front; an RPG would be next to useless against it unless Bruno could strike it perfectly from behind. The APC had a 30mm cannon and a PKT machine gun, a crew of three on board, and it could carry up to nine fully laden troops into battle.

She never in her life thought she’d see a Russian APC on Polish soil.

In an instant Nowicki’s plan to sit quietly and let the enemy pass fell apart. They’d been spotted, either through infrared cameras or by a drone overhead, but someone had seen this ragtag force through the snow.

Section sergeants in the trenches called out over their radios, begging Nowicki to surrender to the four approaching armored vehicles, and Paulina waited to hear the lieutenant’s reply to this, but a sudden cacophony of automatic-weapons fire cut over the loud rumble of the passing column. A Bumerang opened up with its PKT machine gun; snow and dirt kicked into the air just forty meters in front of Section E’s trench.

And just like that, surrender was off the table as quickly as it had been suggested.