The Fall of Night

Chapter Eighteen: A Day That Will Live In Infamy, Take One

Near Warsaw, Poland

“Regarding your response to my request for another infantry regiment, I must say that it is most inconvenient,” General Konrad Trautman dictated to his assistant. “I have the task, it seems, of defending the borders of Poland without either a clear mission statement or sufficient force to deter a cross-border raid. As the Polish President has made clear to Parliament, the Russians can rush a force into the border, complete their mission and withdraw, all the while being fairly safe from our interference. Two heavy armoured units are valuable, but they are not suited to the role of rapid reaction force, while for political reasons Polish units are held back.”

He took a breath. “I must say that this is not improving the reputation of EUROFOR in the Polish military,” he continued. It was one of his less serious problems… the serious problems were potentially disastrous. “The Poles are fast running out of patience with us and only their dependence upon energy supplies from Russia have prevented them from defying us and moving up their own infantry, counting on them to deter any raids. If this happens, Commissioner, I must question the value of both the security guarantee and the Parliament’s commitment to Poland. EUROFOR must be reinforced effectively or heads will roll.”

He smiled tiredly at his assistant. “Sign it and have it sent by courier back to Brussels, marked for the attention of Commissioner Henri Guichy,” he ordered. His opinion of Guichy wasn’t high; odd, given that most of the German Army regarded him as Guichy’s closest German ally. “Have the courier issued with all of the special permits that he will require to gain admittance into the headquarters.”

“Yes, sir,” his assistant said.

She saluted and left the room. Trautman watched her go, wishing that he shared her problems; his problems seemed almost insolvable. The EUROFOR organisation had managed to deploy the rough equivalent of two divisions to Poland, backing up the forces the Poles kept ready for action, but they were hardly prepared for the role of securing the borders. The chaos that broke out, from time to time, in Belarus sent thousands of refugees fleeing across the border, some of them with bad intentions towards Russia. The Russians launched raids to capture them… and the Poles were prevented by the European Parliament from securing their own borders, just to avoid provocation. Instead, they had…

They had General Trautman and EUROFOR. Trautman had spent enough time with each of the major units to know that they were hardly prepared for the task; the two heavy armoured units, one from France, one from Germany, were not suited to the task of sealing the borders. If the Russians ever launched a raid with heavy armour, then they might be useful, but otherwise, Trautman was grimly aware that getting them into position would take far too long. He needed more infantry… and it was infantry that the European Defence Commission was refusing to send him.

He scowled at the map. Poland was a large country and it had a long land border, almost impossible to secure at the best of times, one that was crossed regularly by criminals and terrorists as well as illegal immigrants and freedom fighters from Belarus. The Russians called them terrorists and demanded that the Poles hand them over; the Poles themselves would have been happy to comply. European laws, however, were clear; anyone seeking asylum had to be granted at least provisional asylum unless there were very clear circumstances proving that they should be returned. Trautman had read enough of the media’s left-wing reporting — and the outraged right-wing independent media — to know that there seemed to be no case where someone would actually be sent back to face justice. If Brussels was prepared to give asylum to people wanted for the bombing in Oakland, there was no way that they would send Russians back to Russia.

There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Trautman shouted. One of the EUROFOR communications officers entered. “Report.”

“General, we have a report from the field,” Captain Philippe Laroche said. The French officer was mercifully free of the institutional bias of Guichy and his fellow commissioners; most junior French officers were at least as good as their German or British counterparts. The French just had a habit of promoting officers for their political skills rather than their military skills; General Éclair had had political skills as well as military skills, a rarity in any army. “Several border guards are reporting that they can hear engines on the far side of the border.”

Trautman glanced down at the map; Laroche pointed out the location. “That hardly seems likely,” he said, as he worked through it in his head. “There’s no refugee camp near there, just the border guards and an infantry unit.”

He glanced up. “Is there anything on the radars?”

He would have been delighted to have taken up the American offer of a direct feed from the American bases in Poland. He would have been even more delighted to have had an American armoured division attached to his force; few countries enjoyed the thought of picking a fight with the Americans these days, not after Tehran had paid the price for the nuclear attack on American forces… even though the Jihadist propaganda claimed that it had been in response to the attack on Israel. The European Defence Commission had made its will clear… and Trautman was a loyal servant of Europe.

He was uncomfortably aware that General Éclair would have done it anyway.

“No, sir, just normal traffic,” Laroche said. “The Russians keep rerouting aircraft away from the Ukraine, but after that lunatic was seen with a SAM launcher, there was little else that they could do. The pilots are getting used to it; we can listen in on their chatter sometimes. The Russians have their standard five-ship air patrol up, but no sign of anything that would be supporting a cross-border raid.”

Trautman rubbed his head. He was about to start his first headache of the day. If he sent out the alert, the Poles would be on hair-triggers and end up firing on Russians, or even perhaps accidentally firing on European units. If he didn’t send out an alert, the situation might get better, but it might also get worse… and if that happened, his forces would be caught on the hop.

“Tell them to get ready to get ready,” he said, hoping that the young Dutchman in command of the closest European force would know what he meant. “If we need to support them, then…”

The buzzer sounded. “General, you asked to be notified when the Polish supply convoy arrived,” his assistant said. “They’re just pulling up…”

Her voice vanished; moments later, the lights and computers faded and died. Trautman opened his mouth to say something and realised that they had had a power cut; emergency systems were coming online, trying to get everything running again, but the small generator that the Soviets had left them with in the base hadn’t anything like enough capability to power everything. He had wanted to move in a more modern generator, but the idea had been dismissed as ‘unnecessarily provocative.’ There were times when he wondered if the entire European Defence Commission was in the pay of the Russians.

“We’ve had a power cut,” he said, calmly. Laroche had drawn his service weapon and was looking around grimly. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about…”

An explosion shook the camp, followed rapidly by a second explosion and a burst of heavy gunfire. Trautman recognised the sound at once; those were Russian weapons. His mouth fell open… and then the window burst as a third explosion detonated, far too close for comfort. He could hear the sound of mortars being fired and rounds impacting within the camp and realised, dimly, that they were under attack.

“Sir,” Laroche shouted at him. Trautman found himself on the floor, the cold hard Russian floor, without a clear memory of how he’d landed there. “Sir, we have to get out of here!”

The building shook again. Laroche was making sound tactical sense; they couldn’t remain in a building that the Russians — if Russians they were — would know perfectly. Trautman yanked open a drawer and removed his own service weapon, cursing the limited ammunition; if he had to fight, he would only have nine shots before he ran out of bullets. The door burst open and he almost shot the intruder before realising who he was, the commanding officer of the French paratroopers who had somehow been assigned to the base. It had been at that moment that he had realised that the European Defence Commission just didn’t care… but now he was grateful. French paratroopers had a tough reputation.

“Sir, we have to get you out of here,” the leader said. Trautman struggled to remember the Frenchman’s name; Captain Paul Montagne, if he recalled correctly. A service record with details classified beyond even his clearance, but some details of service in Africa and even in an ill-fated attempt to topple the Islamic Government in Algeria had slipped through the cracks. “This base is under attack!”

Another explosion shook the base. “Fine,” Trautman snapped, as the paratrooper hustled them out into the corridor. Four more paratroopers, all heavily armed, were securing the corridor, their eyes flickering left and right as they waited for contact with the enemy. “What’s happening?”

Montagne motioned for two of his people to go ahead and check out the corridor down towards the rear exit of the base. “The Polish Convoy was larger than it was supposed to be, but the guards let the lead truck into the gate anyway, whereupon a truck bomb exploded and killed the guards; two more truck bombs devastated the remainder of the defences. Armed men appeared and launched an attack; I sent the remainder of my people down to the rear entrance to hopefully keep it secure.”

Trautman could barely grasp it. Minutes ago, he had been trying to scrape up another infantry unit for EUROFOR; now, he had been plunged into the middle of a shooting war. It was his shame that the closest he had come to a real war had been a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East, before Europe had washed its hands of the whole matter; now, he would be trying to somehow coordinate a response without any means of escape.

His hand fell to the radio he always carried at his belt. It was jammed. “There’s jamming everywhere,” Montagne reported, as they jogged round a corner into more drab grey soviet-era corridors. Trautman had never liked them; military bases weren’t designed by freethinkers, but the Russians had taken the entire concept to extremes and stamped out any trace of personality. “I think that this is happening everywhere as well.”

Trautman remembered the spread-out deployment of EUROFOR’s forces and shuddered. He had talked the Poles, several times, out of mobilising their army. If every EUROFOR base was under attack, and he couldn’t see this attack as being anything other than the first moves in a war, the Russians were all-too-likely to get quite far into Poland before they bumped into something that could stop them. How far could they go?

He shuddered again; Germany still remembered the Russian hordes looting, raping and burning their way across Germany, in the last war. If some of those tales were exaggerated, and Trautman knew enough to know that folk memory often was nothing of the sort, there had still been enough horror for everyone. Was that what life was going to be like again?

The elevator ahead beckoned him. “Not bloody likely,” Montagne snapped. Trautman remembered, embarrassed, that the power was out. They headed down the stairs and came to a halt as a burst of fire shattered concrete and sent chunks of debris everywhere. Montagne didn’t hesitate; he pulled a grenade off his belt and tossed it down the stairs, the paratroopers crashing down in the wake of the explosion, firing ruthlessly into the smoke. “Move!”

Trautman had seen carnage before, but the sight of the Russian bodies was something new; they were torn and broken by the force of the grenade. A single Russian was still alive and Montagne shot him, quickly, through the head; Trautman opened his mouth to protest and decided that it wasn't worth the effort. His very survival, and the only chance of organising a counterattack, depended upon his escape from the horror that the camp had become.

He took a breath; more drab grey corridors, more blank walls, more sense of danger, of imminent threat. Part of him was wondering if it was an endless nightmare, or if he would wake up; the sheer level of detail reminded him constantly that it was no dream. His hand felt sweaty around his pistol; he had to keep reminding himself that it was dangerous and that he couldn’t put it away or drop it. A voice ahead shouted out a challenge in thick French; Montagne shouted back in the same language. Trautman had prided himself on his command of French, but he didn’t recognise the words at all, just the language.

“Come on,” Montagne hissed. There was another explosion; this time, plaster and dust drifted down from the ceiling. The vehicle bay was empty; his jeep, he remembered now, had been outside with the other official vehicles, and was either useless or in enemy hands. He wondered if they should surrender, if a surrender would be accepted, but how could they offer it in the midst of bloody chaos? It wasn’t possible and he knew it; commando raids tended to have very high casualties because of the chaos.

He looked up at Montagne. “What’s the plan?”

Montagne looked around; there were nine paratroopers left. “We’re in the middle of the camp,” he hissed. Trautman hadn’t needed the reminder. “We’re going to have to head to the north side, where the exercise and training facilities are; they have to be at the bottom of the Russian list of priorities. We can’t get to the barracks by now; unless the Russians have forgotten all they knew, they will be targeting the barracks and the armoury and ammunition dump first, along with the vehicles. Once we’re there, we’ll cut our way through the fence and escape into the countryside.”

He nodded briefly at his men. “Jean, check the side,” he ordered. “Come on, sir.”

Trautman followed him into the chaos. The camp seemed to be half on fire, half destroyed; the entire place seemed to be in total chaos. A collection of dead bodies, hit and killed by a mortar round or a grenade, lay in front of him as they moved carefully through the smoke, staying low. The sound of firing was drifting over from the eastern side of the camp, the barracks, but the soldiers there would have little in the way of supplies. The European Defence Commission had drawn up the guidelines and Trautman — he cursed himself for a fool — had implemented them; soldiers would not have their weapons unless they were issued from the armoury. The guards were armed, but how long could they hold out alone?

“Some of the lads will have kept their weapons anyway,” Montagne said, when Trautman broached the subject. He had had a vague idea that they could retake the armoury and issue weapons. “The modern soldier knows that he could be plunged into war instantly and therefore keeps his weapons ready for action, even if it means a week of fatigues if he gets caught at it.”

Trautman realised that the Sergeants and Military Police must have known… and had said nothing about it. As long as the soldiers weren’t causing problems, and European soldiers were very well disciplined, they would have allowed the forbidden practice to continue; their failure to act might have saved some lives. The firing was starting to weaken, however; Trautman knew what that meant. The defenders were running out of ammunition… and, once it was gone, they would be hacked apart by outraged Russians. The sneak attack meant only one thing; the Russians intended to be merciless.

A shout, in Russian, brought them back to reality. Montagne fired once, dropping the Russian, and shouted at them to run. Other Russians fired back as Trautman fell to the ground, firing twice towards the shapes in the smoke and haze; he saw flashes of light as the Russians returned fire. The Russians, at least, seemed as surprised as they were to meet them, but they had the advantage in firepower and determination. Laroche was shot four times by a Russian as he struggled to pick some of them off; Trautman shouted in rage as the Frenchman was blown apart, dead in the prime of his life.

“Sir, get out of here,” Montagne shouted. The tough paratrooper had been hit, badly; blood was trickling from a wound in his arm. Trautman caught up his assault rifle and fired a long burst towards the Russians, knowing that it was his last stand. He didn’t dare be taken alive, not after what the Russians had done to any number of Chechen leaders. They had been forced to broadcast radio messages ordering their people to surrender… and EUROFOR wasn't composed of rogue fanatics. If ordered to surrender, they might just surrender, particularly if he sounded normal. “Sir…”

A bullet shattered Montagne’s head. Trautman kept firing, seeing Russians everywhere… and then a burning pain flared through his head. There was an instant of pain, and then he hit the ground, dead. Half an hour later, every European in the camp was dead, a prisoner, or fled somewhere into the Polish countryside.

No warning had been transmitted.