The Fall of Night

Chapter Twenty-Three: Prisoner of War

Near Warsaw, Poland

The first thing that Caroline Morgan knew about the war was the explosion.

“Stay here,” Captain Loomis snapped, before Caroline could say anything. She had been interviewing Hannah Loomis, a female infantry captain, as to the role of women in the military. Hannah, a fearsome figure, had been more than willing to talk, although she had dismissed some of the common knowledge about women in the military as feminist or sexist nonsense. The real state of affairs was quite different.

“If you’re in the military — worse, if you’re in the military as a woman — you have to behave as one of the men, within reason,” she had said, much to Caroline’s surprise. “You have to eat with them, sleep — and I don’t mean sex, I mean sleep — with them, crap with them, fight with them, kill with them… and generally act as one of the men. You’re either one of the boys or you’re queen for a year… provided you act like it. Some women go mad for sex because there’s only one woman and fifty-odd men and they can get whatever they want if they reward the men with sex, some women go ice queens… frankly, if you give it up for one guy, it’ll tear the unit and your reputation apart.”

Caroline hadn’t really understood. “You can be one of the guys; eat, sleep, shit, talk about women… or you can be a slut,” Hannah had said. “It’s really a case of not creating tension within the group; as my first Sergeant put it, you don’t want brave stupid young men rescuing brave stupid young women rather than getting out there and kicking the shit out of the enemy. Have one woman with one man and plenty of other men who aren’t getting any… well, that’s a recipe for trouble.” She laughed. “Oh, and being brave helps as well.”

Caroline didn’t feel very brave as a second explosion rocked the camp. She had wanted to call Hannah back as the young Captain fled the room, pistol in hand, but she hadn’t quite dared. It was something far less… congenial than the time she’d spent with the soldiers on distant deployment near Warsaw; they’d been friendly and relaxed, particularly with Marya. Caroline had felt distantly ugly in comparison, even if she had had a string of boyfriends back home. Marya was still sleeping the effects of the alcohol they’d consumed off; Caroline had swallowed a de-tox pill, cleared away the effects of the drinking, and gone back to work. She hadn’t expected to be caught in the middle of a war zone.

The sound of shooting was growing louder. She glanced around, frantically, as the noise grew louder, finding only a small table to hide under. The windows shattered and she dove for cover, crawling under the table and praying aloud to God to help her out of her position. She felt the reassuring shape of the terminal in her pocket — a direct link back to the BBC in London — and activated it. The signal refused to form; there was absolutely no contact with the BBC at all.

A voice was shouting something defiant in French; seconds later, there was another explosion, much louder than any others. Caroline whimpered as the noises grew louder and louder; she could hear shouts in a language she couldn’t understand. Something bad was going on; the thought that it might have been a drill was rapidly dismissed as wishful thinking. No one, as far as she knew, would be crazy enough to fire off live ammunition during a drill, particularly not into a room where a civilian was trying to work. Something thudded against the side of the building and she cringed again before realising that it hadn’t killed her; she could hear the approaching rumble of engines… and then the sound of a tank’s main gun.

She scrabbled at her terminal, trying to use it for one of its more secret functions. The BBC had kept them quiet over the years; it was also capable of scanning nearby radio bands and trying to record and play them back. She didn’t understand why no one knew about that — the technology’s capabilities had been in the public domain for over a year — but it would work in her favour; she scanned the different radio signals nearby, only to hear more static and bursts of Russian words. She didn’t speak Russian; she couldn’t make out at all what was actually happening.

Something new flickered into the radio, on one of the civilian bands. It should have been a Polish radio station, now it was something else, something sinister. “Citizens of Poland, this is an emergency announcement,” it said. “There is a military and civil emergency going on; remain in your homes and stay off the streets. Do not venture outside. Do not attempt to use telephones, radios or other methods of communication; all communications must be reserved for the emergency services. Whatever you see or hear, stay in your homes; do not put yourself and the lives of your friends and families in danger. Electric supplies will be restored as soon as possible. Further information will be relayed to you as soon as possible; continue to listen on this frequency and ignore every other frequency. I repeat; these are very dangerous times. Stay in your homes.”

Caroline felt her blood run cold as yet another burst of shooting echoed out over the camp. She was far from stupid; the message had to mean that something had really gone wrong, and she was in the middle of a camp that was under attack. She felt for her press pass carefully, hoping that she still had it safe; that would get her out of trouble if the Russians caught her. The sound of a helicopter rose in the air; a dark shadow fell over the window for a moment, then the noise of rockets being launched echoed through the window. The helicopter was attacking targets in the camp!

She clicked the terminal off and pocketed it, then tried to decide what to do. The shooting was dying down, but she didn’t know who had won; she didn’t know anything at all that might tell her which way to run. She thought about trying to sneak out of the camp, but that only worked in movies; the heroic stars always had three things going for them that Caroline didn’t have. They had a sympathetic scriptwriter, perfect grooming and chest sizes that could only be described by resorting to imaginary numbers. They always found a guard who could be seduced, or turned out to be lesbian vampires, or had something else up their sleeves. She had no military training; until recently, she had never seen a gun. What could she do?

The voices were growing closer, shouts and barks in an unfamiliar language. She listened carefully and felt her blood run cold; she was almost sure that that was Russian being spoken. She spoke German and French in addition to English; it was none of those languages, but something very different. It wasn’t Arabic, or another Asian language; it was something else, very different. Her second boyfriend — before he had embraced the Buddhist way of life — had once taken her to see a Russian show; it sounded very much like that. It sounded as if the Russians had won the fight.

The door exploded inwards and two black-clad men entered, their weapons raised and ready for a fight. Caroline cringed backwards, but there was little real cover and they saw her. One of them barked a command at her in Russian as their eyes met, but she didn’t understand him at all. He motioned with his rifle, but she was too terrified to move; fear had turned her legs into jelly. She was bitterly aware that Hannah — what had happened to her in the fighting? — would have handled it better, but she was so scared. She couldn’t even breathe!

The leader soldier grabbed her arm and roughly pulled her out of her hiding place, pushing her against the wall and ignoring her protests and gasps of pain. His hands roughly, but quickly frisked her, removing everything from her pockets, from a pair of pens to the terminal and her notepad, both of which he dumped on the table and left for later. He found her ID card hanging around her neck and inspected it briefly before leaving it; Caroline was too scared even to speak. Her hands were quickly caught and secured behind her back with a plastic tie; she was left leaning against the wall, her eyes blurred with tears she could no longer wipe away, while the Russians searched the room, removing anything that even looked dangerous. Caroline had once attended an inquest into an overzealous police officer who had confiscated a microwave on the grounds that it had computer chips inside; the Russians made him look like an amateur. Their paranoia seemed to have no limits.

She focused on them; knowledge was power, as her boss had once said to her. They were both young and very strong; she could practically see the muscles rippling under their black uniforms. She knew what happened to American servicewomen who were captured by insurgents in the Middle East; was that about to happen to her? The insurgents tended to leave newspaper men and women alone, particularly European journalists, who tended to support them, but who knew what the Russians would do? Her mind kept chasing its own tail; she had thought about rape, every woman did at some point in their lives, but she had never really believed that it could happen to her. Her sexual favours were hers, as far as she was concerned; the choice about whether or not to bestow them was hers… except, perhaps, it was no longer hers. They were both young and strong; they could take her with ease.

One Russian made a comment to the other and they both stood up. Almost before she could react, they were holding her and hustling her out the door, through the corridors and past several bodies lying in the dirt, weapons dropped where they had fallen. The stench was appalling as they passed what had once been — she thought — a man; was it even possible to have that much blood in a human body? Surely the chunks of gore belonged to several people; that couldn’t all be one person, could it? She was panting as she tried to force her legs to work; she was certain that the Russians would hurt her if they had to force her to move, or perhaps just carry her. She was completely at their mercy.

She tried an experiment. “Where are you taking me?” She asked in English, and then in mangled French and German. “Là où êtes vous me prenant? Wo Sie mich nehmend sind?”

There was no answer, not even a hint they understood her. She couldn’t understand them at all; they only spoke quickly, almost as if they suspected that she could understand them and were trying to confuse her. They reached four more armed men, guarding what had once been the entrance to the camp, and she winced; the Russians had definitely won the fight. Leaning against the corner, a massive wound in its chest, lay the body of Major-General John McLachlan. The Russians were collecting ID cards from the bodies and comparing them to a list; one of the guards examined her ID card with interest, and then compared it carefully to her face. Caroline almost laughed; she had been made up perfectly when the photograph had been taken, with a nice dress showing just the right hint of cleavage. Now… she shuddered to think what she looked like; her hands tied, her clothes disorganised, sweat and the smell of fear rising from her body.

The Russian Commander looked up at her. “You are Caroline Morgan, Press Reporter?”

She was so relieved to hear a voice speaking English that she almost wilted. “Yes,” she said, and forced her mouth to speak further. “Sir, I am a non-combatant in a war zone and…”

“At the moment, you are a prisoner of the Russian Army,” the Russian snapped, cutting her off. He barked a series of commands to her captors. “You will be held until we decide what to do with you. Failure to obey promptly any orders given to you, of any nature, will result in sentence being passed against you and you will be shot. Do you understand?”

She nodded fearfully, her face smarting from imaginary blows. “Answer me,” the Russian barked, his voice digging right into her soul. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she stammered. She stood in front of him, helpless, broken; unable to do anything, but obey. “I understand.”

The Russian nodded at her two commanders, who marched her outside into the camp. It was no longer what it had once been; half of the buildings had been destroyed, or were burning merrily away. EUROFOR had been caught by surprise, but the French, German and British defenders of the camp had sold their lives dearly; she could see the dead bodies of Russian soldiers being prepared for return to their homeland. There were other dead bodies being gathered as well; European soldiers and commanding officers, all being checked by the Russians for their identity. She realised, dimly, that the Russians knew everything about the camp; they even had a list of the soldiers, right down to the lowliest infantryman. How had they done that?

A dead body caught her attention; for a moment, she stared at it without being able to understand why it had caught her, and then her eyes traced the curves of her body and the swell of the breasts. Half of her head was missing, but there was no mistaking her; Captain Hannah Loomis had gone down fighting with her men. Her escorts made what sounded like crude comments, directed at the Russians who were gathering the bodies; they made rude gestures back at them. Caroline would have given anything to know what they were saying; were they accusing the gravediggers of necrophilia-type practices, or were they commenting that they had a live woman?

The training field had impressed her when she had seen it for the first time; a large field where games and exercises could be conducted at the same time, larger than two football fields. Now… now armed Russians stood guard around a handful of prisoners, all sitting on the ground and securely tied. Her own hands were aching as the plastic tie dug into her wrists, but she didn’t dare try to draw attention to it. The prisoners all looked downcast; their ID cards prominently displayed around their necks. The Russians had not only caught them, they knew who they had caught.

“Caroline,” a voice shouted. Caroline looked up to see Marya’s face in the small group; her clothes had been torn in a number of places that she was sure weren't accidental. The Russians who were holding her pointed and made more rude comments; Marya’s nipples could be seen poking out of the holes in her blouse. “Oh Caroline, thank God!”

One of the Russian guards inspected her ID again. “You will remain here until ordered to move elsewhere,” he said. “Do not attempt to move, whatever the reason; you will be moved to a proper detention facility soon enough. If you disobey any orders, or attempt to leave, you will be shot. Do you understand?”

Caroline nodded. She had learned her lesson. “I understand,” she said. A worrying thought struck her. “What if we have to go to the toilet?”

“We will arrange toilet facilities as quickly as we can,” the Russian said, with a bored tone. Caroline guessed that he had been asked the same question by each of the prisoners. “Sit down, talk quietly if you must talk, and wait.”

Her escorts pushed her down next to Marya, winked at her, and left. Caroline almost missed them; they, at least, hadn’t taken advantage of her. Closer now, Marya’s face was streaked with tears; the Russians who had caught her had taken advantage of her before she was brought to the makeshift pen. She nodded towards a group of Russians wearing green uniforms and looking very grim; they almost seemed to be prisoners themselves.

“That one there tried to… take me,” Marya whispered, her voice breaking. “Caroline, what are they going to do to us?”

Caroline remembered a vague report about Russian punishment battalions. Instead of court-martialling soldiers who were brought up on charges, the Russians gave them a month in the penal units, where they would do all the dangerous tasks, such as mine-clearing without detection gear or charging into a heavily-defended bunker with explosive satchels. If they survived the experience and the dangers, from both the enemy and their own former friends, they were returned to their units. Most of them would never dare to re-offend.

“I don’t know,” Caroline said. She glanced briefly at their fellow prisoners, mainly injured soldiers, their eyes showing that they were trapped in their own purgatory. They had suffered the shame of being taken prisoner in what might very well be the first battle of World War Three; what would happen to them in the future. The Russians would not mistreat media reporters, she hoped — and tried to ignore the fact that Marya had been abused — but they would be merciless to the soldiers. The Geneva Convention was a joke to everyone these days; everyone, but the European Military Commission and the European Parliament. Had they not charged some soldiers in Sudan with breaching the Conventions?

She shook her head. “I just don’t know,” she said. She looked around again; the penal soldiers were digging graves and bodies, European bodies, were being dumped in the graves. Helicopters and jet aircraft were flying overhead, heading west; they seemed to be caught in the middle of a full-scale invasion. “I just don’t think that it’s going to be pleasant.”