The Fall of Night (20 page)

Fletcher seemed to wilt.  “This is an act of war…”

“This is exactly what you did to us,” Shalenko reminded him.  “If you agree to surrender, we will provide free transport back to Washington as soon as the situation permits it, or we can just send you all to the American Embassy in Moscow.  You will not be harmed or held hostage; we won’t even interrogate you as the CIA interrogated some of our people.  After the war is over, we will even transfer everything from the base back to American soil; we won’t damage it if you hand it over.”

“After you’ve studied everything,” Fletcher snapped.

“Quite,” Shalenko agreed.  “Also…exactly what you did to us.”

There was a long pause.  The sound of aircraft could be heard in the distance.

“Choose,” Shalenko hissed.  “I have no more time.  Your radar feed could mean life or death for hundreds of Russian pilots, and I am not going to allow their lives to be risked by your…insistence on rights that are used to threaten Russia.  You set the precedent; live with it.  What do you want to do; die here futilely, along with all your people, or go back home to Washington?”

He watched Fletcher’s mind turning over.  “I am prepared to surrender on the condition you allow us to wipe the files first,” Fletcher said finally.  The self-hate in his tone was remarkable.  “If not…”

“You refused to allow us to wipe any files,” Shalenko said dryly.  That, too, had happened in Iran, although plenty of files had been burned by the Russians before the base was surrendered.  “You set the precedent…”

“Washington will not allow this to pass unpunished,” Fletcher snapped.  They both knew that it was an empty threat.  Washington had its hands full with Korea and the Middle East, where thousands of little groups had taken the Second Korean War as a chance to hit the Americans and hurt them.  “Very well; I will issue the orders.”

“Thank you,” Shalenko said.  “You have my word that you and your people will remain unharmed.”

He tapped his radio; the men of Unit One moved in.  The Americans came out of the base in small groups, many of them angry and frustrated, even those who had known that the position was completely helpless.  Unit One had been trained carefully; the Americans would not be searched, nor would they be cuffed; they would be interned rather than treated as prisoners of war.  They would be the lucky ones; the Turks would agree to take them out and send them to American bases in the Middle East.  As for the files…

Shalenko knew that the Americans had made great progress in some areas…and the President knew it as well.  The chance to examine the base was beyond price, even though it was possible that the American inventions might be impossible to duplicate, at least for a few years.  Anything that came out of the base wouldn’t be useful for the present war, but as for the future…well, who knew what could happen?  Russia still lagged behind America and Japan in the high-tech areas and anything that could shorten the space was worth having.

He watched as the Americans were taken away on trucks, heading back into Belarus.  “General, I just had a signal from 2
nd
Shock Army,” Anna said.  He heard the note in her voice and smiled; he knew that it was good news.  “They have pocketed and destroyed the main Polish force between us and Warsaw.”

“Good,” Shalenko said.  He glanced at his watch; it was almost exactly on time.  The remains of the Polish army would either be scattered or prisoners of war; in any case, they would be in no position to dispute with the Russians for a while.  It was time to move ahead with the second stage of the plan, before the Poles and EUROFOR gathered themselves into a serious threat.  “Is 2
nd
Shock still operative?”

Anna nodded.  “The Poles were completely disorganised,” she said.  She held up the terminal for him to see; the Poles had been battered enough to shatter them as a coherent force.  “They only lost thirty tanks.”

Shalenko smiled.  “Then give the order,” he said.  He had waited a long time for this moment.  “The advance forces are to continue the offensive…and the secondary forces are to move on Warsaw.”

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.

George S. Patton

There was something in the air.

Captain Stuart Robinson could feel it, somehow; the sense that matters were somehow not quite right.  It reminded him far too much of Sudan, or of patrolling through a hostile town, the sense that everyone was watching you for just a hint of weakness.  The old sweats who had served in Iraq had told him about the feeling from Basra and other godforsaken places in the Middle East; the sense that at any moment the horde of people was going to turn on you and try to kill you.

He shook his head, trying to dismiss the feeling.  They were in Poland, in Europe; they were not in the heart of Afghanistan or darkest Africa.  Sure, they didn’t like the French, or had a long history of fighting the Germans, but they weren't about to carry the feeling onto the battlefield.  The only
bloodshed between England and France these days had been in the last football match, where two players had smashed into one another without looking where they were going, breaking an entire list of bones.  The Poles weren't unhappy to see them, they didn’t feel occupied, so why the feeling?

Sergeant Ronald Inglehart felt it too.  “I doubled the patrols, sir,” he said, without being asked.  Robinson knew that he should feel slighted by the Sergeant refusing to seek his permission, but some Captains wouldn’t have moved because of a ‘feeling.’  It didn’t make him any happier to know that the Sergeant was sharing his thoughts; he would have been able to dismiss them if it had been just him.  “The sensors have been reporting movement all night from wild animals, but nothing else.”

Robinson rolled his eyes.  His own guard duty had been spent at a RAF base, where they had been replacing the RAF Regiment for a short period while the members of the regiment, overworked like everyone else, went for training on the newer equipment.  The heights of excitement there had been a chance to watch local wildlife through the night-vision equipment – that, and laying bets on who would be the first to get inside Flying Officer Cindy Baker’s pants.  The memory made him smile; the female fast-jet pilot had gone through men as if they were going out of season, looking for a different man each night.  He’d kept the book; as a married man, he had had no intention of chasing other women.

He frowned.  It had struck him, suddenly, what was missing.  “Jacob, have you had any contact with the Polish command centre?”

Captain Jacob Anastazy looked up at him.  He’d been in a mood since Marya had left…with the telephone numbers and emails of half the Company in her pocket.  Marya, too, could date a different man a night…and Anastazy had been worried about her.  Robinson hadn’t cared; as long as his men were gentlemen, he didn’t worry about it.  Marya was a grown-up girl…

“No,” Anastazy said slowly.  “Normally, they call me, just to check in.”

Robinson exchanged a long glance with Inglehart.  Maybe it was just another manifestation of the overworked computer systems breaking down and taking the communications system with it – Microsoft had done half the work, which explained some of the problems, although the European Consortium that had attempted to finish the work had its own share of bugs – or maybe it was a sign that something was actually wrong.  He almost felt relieved; they would have something real to face, a problem he could solve.  It was bound to be nothing, really.

“Try and raise them,” he said.  A mischievous thought occurred to him.  “Tell them that we want more booze and hookers.”

“I bet you have a habit of putting stink bombs in the General’s quarters as well,” Anastazy commented dryly, as he lifted his radio to his lips and activated it.  A screech of static burst out of it, causing him to almost drop it in shock.  “Sir, I…that was…”

“Jammed,” Inglehart snapped.  “Someone’s jamming us!”

Robinson felt his blood run cold.  Perhaps it was a drill, but that would have been announced, surely.  The Poles wouldn’t have held any drills without telling people who depended on the communications network…and EUROFOR would have told him if they had intended to take down the communications network.

“Sergeant, get the men into defensive positions,” he hissed, removing his rifle from his shoulder and bringing it up into defensive position.  “Jacob, see if you can locate any signals, EUROFOR or Polish or…”

“Captain,” Lieutenant Benjamin Matthews shouted.  The note of alarm in his voice brought Robinson to his side quicker than anything else could have done.  The small laptop that served as one of the hubs for the radar they had mounted on the hilltop was buzzing an alarm at them.  The display was lighting up with red icons.  “We have problems.”

Robinson stared down at the screen.  It was making his eyes hurt; it was so bright.  “What the hell is happening?”

Matthews tapped the laptop.  “One moment, everything is nice and normal, from that bunched up and pissed off group of commercial airliners, to the handful of Russian aircraft in the air and…then all hell broke loose.  We have aircraft and missiles rising everywhere and coming for Poland – coming for us.”

Robinson felt training reassert itself.  “How are you getting the information?”  He demanded.  He pointed one long hand towards the radar unit.  “Is that thing working?”

“Yes,” Matthews said.  “It’s…”

A scream echoed across the sky; a blast of lightning seemed to reach down and touch the radar, which exploded in a burst of fire.  Robinson realised dimly that it had been a missile, fired from somewhere not too far away, targeted perfectly upon the radar.  It had been a HARM-type missile, he saw; it had homed in on the radar transmissions and destroyed the radar.  It was sheer luck that no one had been hurt.

“Get the trucks moving,” he snapped.  If someone, most likely the Russians, had decided to start something, they would try to take out the CADS as soon as possible.  They would want control of the air and the CADS represented one of the latest breakthroughs in air denial systems; even without their radars, they would make prime targets.  “I want them to move and then…”

Shooting broke out, far too close for comfort; mortars and grenades started to explode.  He threw himself to the ground, rolling down towards the position of his guards, as they opened fire on the attackers.  The enemy soldiers wore unmarked uniforms and seemed to be determined to kill all of the British soldiers.  He heard the noise of helicopters in the distance as the enemy pushed closer; whatever else was going on, this was no minor accident.

“Sir, keep your fucking head down,” one of his Corporals shouted at him.  They’d done well on the defensive positions, but it was far from perfect; they seemed to be surrounded and taking fire from all sides.  “Those sons of bitches are out to kill us!”

“I never would have fucking noticed,” Robinson screamed back at him, as he lifted his rifle.  Fire seemed to be coming from everywhere; the enemy was well-versed in using territory for concealment.  He fired at a shape in the woods and had the pleasure of seeing it topple to the ground, screaming as it died.  A thought struck him and he swore.  “They’re in the fucking river bed!”

“Done and done,” Inglehart said, sounding as if he were having the time of his life.  The burly sergeant pulled up an entire belt of grenades, unhooked one, and tossed the others towards the dry bed, sheltered from the fire of his people.  Seconds later, a stream of explosions and screams announced the end of a handful of enemy soldiers; mortar bombs began to fall in the British position.  “Sir, we’re going to have to take that fucker out!”

“Take four men,” Robinson snapped.  He hated positions like this; every infantryman learned to dread them.  They were fighting at almost point-blank range against an enemy who was both well-trained and experienced, something that was more rare than outside observers suspected.  There was little strategy about it; they would fire at whatever targets they saw, until they were all killed.  “We’ll cover you.”

He took a moment to note the path that Inglehart had taken and opened fire, joined by the chattering noise of the SAW as the cook put down the ladle and opened fire with the weapon he was rated to use in combat.  Robinson remembered the jokes about sending the cook to the enemy to poison them all and realised that they were silly; the chattering of the SAW would send many of the enemy to hell with lead poisoning.  Flames and smoke were beginning to rise from their camp where they had emplaced the tents; the enemy fire had started to take a toll of the defenders.  He shuddered to think of what would have happened if they hadn’t suspected that something was wrong.

An aircraft flashed by, high overhead, heading west.  He wondered who was flying it, which side it was on; there seemed to be no way of flagging the pilot down and calling for help.  The aircraft might be Russian, or it might be Polish, or…there were just too many possibilities for him to grasp.  It didn’t matter anyway; his world had shrunk down to fighting and killing, or dying in place.  Surrender just wasn't in his blood.

Hazel’s face flickered once across his mind, and then he devoted himself to returning fire.  An explosion, far too close for comfort, marked Inglehart’s success against the enemy mortar; green-clad figures leapt towards his position and were mown down by the defenders.  Others kept pressing closer with grenades; Robinson shot a man in the chest and was astonished to discover that he had survived; the body armour had been much better than he had thought.  The wounded man staggered away and he shot him neatly through the head.

A voice shouted at them in English as the rain of bullets slowed.  “Surrender or die!”

“Fuck you,” Robinson shouted back, to cheers.  Inglehart jumped back as the enemy resumed firing and this time added a second mortar to the bombardment.  Robinson laughed as a shell struck the ruined radar unit, shattering something that was already impossible to repair into something even more impossible to repair.  One of his men who had a sniper’s badge crawled up a tree and picked off a handful of enemy soldiers before being shot out of the tree himself.  His body crashed to the ground.  “fuck the lot of you!”

“And your mothers,” Inglehart added, firing away like a madman.  “Fuck them and your sisters and your grannies and your…”

“Helicopters,” Matthews shouted, loud enough to be heard over the firing.  Robinson realised that he was using one of the loudspeakers.  “Incoming helicopters!”

Robinson turned his head and saw them; four helicopters, black and hanging in the air like angry angels.  There was no mistaking them; they were Russian assault helicopters, each one armed to the teeth.  He’d seen briefings on them; deployed to Afghanistan and Chechnya, they had been feared by the insurgents and underground fighters alike.  They would make short work of his position and he didn’t have anything that could touch them except…

“Ben, tell me that you can kill those bastards,” he shouted.  The Russian attack seemed to have tailed off as the helicopters drew closer; the British took the opportunity to pick off several Russians who had unwisely exposed themselves.  “Tell me that or we’ll have to make a break for it!”

“Trust me,” Matthews shouted back.  “Have I ever lied to you?”

“How the fuck would I know?”  Robinson demanded.  He thought again of Hazel; what was happening to her in the new world?  What would happen to her?  The black helicopters were racing closer now; it wouldn’t be long before they opened fire.  “just kill those cock-suckers…”

The first CADS opened fire.  The roar was deafeningly loud, much louder than a Stinger missile or a Yank missile; the line of light seemed impossibly fast as it slammed into the lead helicopter and blew it apart.  The second opened fire, then the third; the first finished off the fourth helicopter.  It was the only helicopter to fire a shot; the missile struck one of the CADS and blew it away, sending red-hot shrapnel everywhere.

“Fuck the lot of you,” Matthews shouted; his voice gleeful.  Robinson laughed as Matthews shouted out his victory.  “Who’s your daddy, eh?”

There was a final round of firing and the attack finished, as quickly as it had begun. The enemy soldiers faded away into the woods and vanished, watched warily by their British enemies.  Robinson felt as if he had run a ten-mile race in minutes; his breathing was coming think and heavy, the strange rush of combat fading as the danger ebbed.  He forced himself to think and think hard; what the hell had just happened?

“Status report, right bloody now,” he snapped at Inglehart who saluted and turned to count the cost.  The soldiers had all performed well; some of them had just had their first doze of a real fight.  It had been surprisingly clean, compared to the Sudan; the enemy had been quite honourable, in their way.  “Jacob, find out who they are!”