The Fall of Night (8 page)

It was odd, she reflected, as she dressed again under the watchful eye of the Polish guard.  The Poles provided most of the security for EUROFOR…and they were utterly paranoid when it came to maintaining security, even to the point of making themselves unpopular with the press by sending back any reporter who gave away something that enemies could use against EUROFOR.  They were desperate to keep their country safe, even if it meant annoying the reporters; Caroline wasn't sure if that was admirable, or just irritating.

“Right this way,” her escort said, and led her though a maze of Soviet-era buildings.  The camp had been built back when the Red Army had occupied the country…and the Poles hadn’t improved it much, even if some enterprising Polish officer had planted some apple trees in the middle of the camp.  Soldiers, some of them in full battle dress, were everywhere, all of them trying to organise EUROFOR into something that could actually put out more than one regional fire at once.  She’d heard enough to know that rapid reaction forces had been flown all over Poland at the drop of a hat, only to get there too late, or be called back before anything could actually happen.  “Major-General McLachlan is in this building here.”

There was a Union Jack in front of the building, marking it out as a British building; it was something that the European Defence Commission hated.  They had an uphill fight to prevent it from happening; she could see a French and Dutch flag just in the camp alone, and there were detachments from nearly a dozen nations in Poland.  The bureaucrats would probably win in the end, she was sure, but it was surprisingly good to see all of the flags.  She wasn't sure why.

“You must be Caroline Morgan,” Major-General McLachlan said.  “Welcome to Camp Three.”

Caroline smiled.  “Camp Three?”

“All the proposals for names were shot down,” McLachlan said.  “Some places have names that they couldn’t get rid of easily - Rheindahlen Military Complex, for example – but this place was soulless even back in the days of the Red Army.  I understand that you wanted to be attached to this unit?”  Caroline nodded.  “Who did you piss off to get that job?”

Caroline laughed.  “My supervisor wanted some background impressions on how EUROFOR was shaping up as a military machine,” she said.  It was truthful, as far as it went; the BBC needed to prepare itself for the coming elections.  The people of Britain were hungry for news and the BBC had to provide or lose even more of its market.  “I got the short straw.”

McLachlan laughed.  He had a surprisingly deep laugh.  She found herself liking him on sight.  “He wasn’t just trying to get into your panties?”

“The first woman who gets him interested will be the first,” Caroline admitted, remembering the resolutely gaysexual activities of Fell Nelson.  There was a moral in that somewhere, perhaps young men and women should be made to cover their faces when they were interviewed.  Many of his staff complained of sexual harassment, something that wasn’t new in the recording business, but mostly it was male on female.  “No, I just drew the short straw.”

“Lucky you,” McLachlan said.  He met her eyes.  She was almost lost within soft brown eyes that seemed to harden, then soften, at will.  “I assume you read the background material?”

Caroline nodded.  “I read everything they gave us,” she said.  She had too; it was long on glossy photographs and elaborate statements of principle, but short on actually useful details.  “Most of it was quite bland and uninformative.”

“Don’t breach security here,” McLachlan advised.  His voice had become very serious.  “The Poles will arrest you, send you to an uncomfortable jail and charge you with malicious accidental espionage.  Don’t rely on the Court of Human Rights getting you out, either; after it was proven that that young reporter fool from Portugal caused the deaths of three soldiers…”

He smiled thinly.  “Apart from that, we will be showing you everything within the camp,” he said.  Caroline gulped.  Was there any way for her to be certain that she was not breaking any security laws?  “Do you have any specific questions?”

“A few,” Caroline said.  She forced her smile up a few watts.  “Do you feel that EUROFOR is a viable military force?”

McLachlan’s smile vanished.  “A truthful answer?”  Caroline nodded.  “The truth is that if we had all the units we were promised, we would be the most powerful force in the region.  We were promised ten divisions; what we have is around two divisions, many of whom have never worked together before, trained together, done anything together…does that answer your question?”

If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a “peace conference,” you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and aeroplanes.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Near Moscow, Russia

“Go!”

Colonel Boris Akhmedovich Aliyev was first out of the aircraft as it stabilised its course for a matter of moments, falling towards the ground in free fall.  The shape of buildings became clearer and clearer as the paratroopers fell towards the ground, the black bursts of ground fire dancing in the air towards the planes as they pulled away, tossing the final paratroopers all over the landing zone.  They had targeted the runways of the airport…and, as the seconds ticked away, Aliyev became very calm.

At precisely the right moment, he pulled his parachute, coming to a far more controlled descent as he steered himself and the remainder of his team towards the runways.  The black bursts of ground fire were coming closer; Aliyev dismissed them as irrelevant.  There was nothing that he could do about them, but endure; if one of those puffs of smoke caught him, he was as good as dead.  His fall was still slowing rapidly, but the ground was coming up, and up and…

His legs bent as he hit the ground, an impact that had knocked the wind from him in his first jump, something that he was used to after practicing combat jumps for most of his career.  He didn’t hesitate; he barked orders and drew his weapon as the defenders moved to defend their airport, bringing up rifles and heavy machine guns.  His team fired back, sending flickers of laser light dancing across the airport; one by one, the defenders fell to the ground and didn’t move as the commandos fanned out and searched the airport quickly and efficiency.  They knew the airport almost as well as they knew their own home bases; it was a matter of minutes to search and snatch every last security guard and enemy soldier defending the terminals and the control tower.  Some fought, killed and were killed; others held up their hands in surrender.  They were searched roughly, cuffed, and dumped in one of the terminals under armed guard.  Resistance would be punished with a bullet to the head.

Aliyev himself led the team that seized the control tower.  Intelligence had been impressive as to the degree of alertness on the part of the tower staff, something that he was used to and had planned for, even to the degree of risking the destruction of part of the tower to secure it before the controllers could raise support from the outside.  Aliyev had every confidence in his men, but they were basically light infantry; a single armoured enemy detachment would make short work of them, or at least shut down the airport and prevent the exploitation of their victory.  The control tower had been sealed; a shaped charge made short work of it and the team charged upwards.

“This is Airport One, we need help,” a female voice was pleading, high above them.  There was no point in being stealthy now; the team advanced as quickly as they could, finding a second locked door, but one light enough to be kicked aside with a single kick.  The paratroopers swarmed into the room, seeing a set of flight controllers, their eyes wide with terror and shock.  One of them was screaming into a radio; Aliyev shot her, just on general principles.  The others raised their hands and were rapidly secured, searched, and placed out of the way.

“Delta-lead, we have secured objective two,” a voice buzzed in his ears.  Aliyev had had years of training to come to grips with the local secured communications network that the Americans had invented and the Russians had copied.  “There are seven aircraft and plenty of fuel; five down and seventeen prisoners.”

“Move them to the terminal,” Aliyev ordered, as the flight controllers were herded out of the room, pushed and shoved by Russian commandos.  The body of the dead flight controller was moved out of the way as Aliyev took the main terminal, shouting for two of his specially trained commandos to come in and take over the flight terminal.  The airport had to be cleared of traffic so that their reinforcements could come into the airport and help them to secure it.  “Have the pilots check the aircraft and let me know if they can be used for our own transport.”

“I have locked the airport out of the general network,” a commando reported.  “We have full control over the terminals and there are no signs that anyone intends to come take it off us.”

Aliyev smiled once; had it really been ten minutes since they had begun the operation?   It felt as if it had been hours.  “Get the radioman to work,” he snapped.  They had been lucky; one of the other random variables would have been a destroyed or damaged civilian airliner on the runway, something that would prevent them from flying in reinforcements until it could be moved out of the way.  “I want them to know that they can send in their reinforcements as quickly as possible.”

He took a breath.  There were hundreds of aircraft holding position well behind the front lines; they would have their chance to move in and reinforce the new position, with thousands of additional commandos, some heavy weapons, and even a few light armoured vehicles.  By the time the enemy got themselves organised, Aliyev would have an entire brigade sitting on the airport and expanding his zone of control as rapidly as he could.  Unless they reacted quickly, the enemy would discover that their rear area was disintegrating under his pressure…and that of the main body of the Russian forces.

“This is Control,” a new voice said.  Aliyev lifted an eyebrow.  He hadn’t expected
that
so quickly.  “Stand down; I repeat, stand down.  This exercise is terminated.”

The ‘shot’ flight controller stood up, rubbing the side of her body.  She had been lucky; it wasn't unknown for participants in Spetsnaz exercises to come away with broken bones, if not worse.  The soldiers were trained to be ruthless, even with the units who were playing the role of the defender; the only concession to humanity had been the use of laser weapons instead of real assault rifles.  It was enough to know that if it had been a real assault, the unit would have taken the airport very quickly, without a real fight.

“I trust I was convincing,” she said, as they headed down the stairs.  “I thought I might actually have managed to raise someone on the outside that time.”

Aliyev shrugged.  They came into the main terminal, where commandos were untying the hands of the defenders, while the ‘dead’ defenders were abandoning the pretence and assisting the commandos in freeing their allies.  Like soldiers everywhere, there was plenty of bullshitting going on, but the lieutenants in command of the smaller detachments were trying to gather the early results.  The referees would tell them just how well they had done, but damn it; Aliyev knew that they had done well!  He was proud of his people; it was the ninth time they had played the exercise and they’d won almost all of them.

He glanced at Captain Alexander Vatutin, his second-in-command.  “Causalities?”

“We lost twelve men in simulation and four serious injuries in reality,” Vatutin said.  He sounded pleased with himself and he had reason to be; the expected loss rate for attacking a defended target with paratroopers was very high.  In some of the more aggressive simulations, where the enemy had an entire armoured unit nearby, the loss rate had been total and the game had been lost.  “Sergeant Ulya Kozlina is the worst; he broke both legs and several ribs.”

“Have a medic see to him and the others,” Aliyev ordered shortly.  “Any news on why the exercise was discontinued so rapidly?”

“That would be me,” a voice said, from behind him.  Aliyev almost jumped; he was a trained Spetsnaz commando, with an almost supernatural awareness of the area around him, and the voice’s owner had slipped up behind him.  He turned sharply, taking in the uniform and the badges that marked a former Spetsnaz officer, and saluted sharply; it wouldn’t do to irritate the President’s most trusted officer.

“General Shalenko,” he said.  The General returned his salute.  Shalenko had been an officer in the Spetsnaz himself for a while, before transferring to the combined arms sections following an injury while taking part in a dangerous antiterrorist mission.  “Welcome to Airport One.”

“Your men did well,” Shalenko said.  “The referees are still counting beans, but I think that you will be declared the undisputed winner of the contest.”

Aliyev laughed at the dry tone in his voice.  The Russians knew, better than the Americans, that it wasn’t body counts that were important, but victory.  If Aliyev had lost half of his force and taken the airport, he would have won; if he had saved his force, but been driven away from the airport, he would have lost.

“Still, there are other matters at hand,” Shalenko continued.  “If you would care to pass over command to your second and come with me…?”

Aliyev followed him outside, into the cold morning air.  Airport One was a giant simulation of an airport, built to allow the interior to be continuously revised and allow the defending force considerable advantages.  Aliyev was certain that
he
could have held the airport with his paratrooper force alone, assuming that he had had a few days to prepare the defences; a handful of mines alone would have made the task of the attack much harder.  The Spetsnaz used it to prepare antiterrorist operations, or at least that was the official explanation; their recent operations suggested something else.

They were going to war.

“This room has been secured,” Shalenko informed him, as they passed a set of guards and entered a secure room.  Paranoia didn’t just run in the FSB, it galloped; there was hardly anything in the room that could conceal an electronic surveillance device.  It was almost like a prison; no television, no computers, no radios…nothing.  The cold hard benches reminded Aliyev of his early days in the Russian Army.  “We can talk freely.”

“I see,” Aliyev said carefully.  If he were in trouble for something, Shalenko wouldn’t bother coming out from Moscow to scream at him in person; one of his minions could do that.  The odds were vastly in favour of this being good news.

Shalenko seemed to read his thoughts.  “How would you rate the performance of your brigade just now?”

Aliyev didn’t hesitate.  “We are ready for anything,” he said, and meant it.  The unit was oversized for a reason; they could soak up training accidents and move on.  It was the sort of attitude that had kept them in business even though the dark years of Yeltsin.  “Do I assume that you have a mission for us?”

Shalenko clasped his arm.  “This is ultra-classified information,” he warned.  “If you breath more than you are permitted to breath, you will be shot in the head; understand?”  Aliyev nodded.  “On the 1
st
of June, we will go to war with Europe.”

Aliyev stared at him.  “Yes,” Shalenko said, understanding his concern.  It wouldn’t be the first time that a Spetsnaz unit had been put through hell, or deliberately misinformed for political reasons, but Shalenko seemed deadly serious.  “All of the training that your unit and almost every other unit stationed in European Russia and Belarus has been angled towards this moment.”

“I see,” Aliyev said finally.  It made a lot of sense; they had attacked Airport One so many times now, so many different scenarios, so much that he had wondered if there was a motive behind it besides simple sadism.  “Our mission, then, is to seize an airport?”

“Szczecin-Goleniów Airport, otherwise known as ‘Solidarność,” Shalenko said.   He pulled a small CD-ROM out of his pocket and passed it over to Aliyev.  “That is
all
the information we can gather about it, reviewed by me personally, and the overall details of the plan that we have spent five years putting together, reviewing, updating, and finally implementing.  We slipped as much as we could of Szczecin-Goleniów into Airport One; taking the airport is important to allow us to establish a presence in western Poland as quickly as possible and deter the Germans from trying anything clever.  There are details in the CD, but one possibility is that the European forces in Poland will attempt to retreat into Germany; it might be a good idea not to let that happen.”

“Of course, sir,” Aliyev said.  He paused.  “What about the other airports in Poland?”

“All of them will be targeted,” Shalenko assured him.  “If everything goes to plan, you should only have to hold out for a couple of days at most before we manage to place an armoured force into the area from the sea, or a little longer from the east.  The enemy should be heavily confused – we have a number of operations going to give the Germans and Poles other problems to worry about – and you may not be attacked for hours or at all.”