The Fall of Night

Chapter Twenty: A Day That Will Live In Infamy, Take Three

Near Warsaw, Poland

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!”

“CADS Three is a complete write-off,” Matthews said, looking grim. He too was coming down from the rush of combat. “The missile punched into the truck and detonated; there’s literally nothing left of the crew.” He paused. “We can’t stay here.”

“I worked that out,” Robinson said. “What do you think is happening?”

Matthews picked up the military-grade laptop and opened it. It might have been slower by several orders of magnitude than most civilian machines, but it was tough; a group of soldiers had once used it for a football and the machine had been undamaged. The radar feed might have been gone, but it still had its memory; it had recorded all that the radar had seen.

“This is what we were seeing, just before the first missile,” Matthews said. “Notice how quickly everything changes and compare that to our position behind the lines. We were not in the path of a cross-border raid, sir; we were deliberately targeted, along with plenty of other targets in Poland. If they attacked us, they attacked more or less half of Poland, perhaps all of Poland.”

Robinson looked east. Columns of smoke were rising in the distance. “This is war,” Matthews said. “They intended to destroy us, both removing your force off the balance sheets and destroying the radar; my CADS is designed to act as a passive radar sensor as well, and it’s reporting that there are very few radars still operating in range. The attack we beat off is going to report that we are still alive and that we still have two CADS… and then they’re going to come searching for us.”

Robinson desperately started to look for a hole. “But… they sent the helicopters here against the CADS,” he protested. “Do they know…?”

“They do now,” Matthews said. “The original version of the CADS had the radar and the missiles mounted on the same truck; the Russians might just have assumed that we had the same kind of vehicles and launched an attack using helicopters. It hardly matters, sir; we cannot stay here.”

Robinson nodded. “Get your vehicles moving at once,” he ordered. “I’ll get the men ready.”

“We lost twenty-one, with seven injured,” Inglehart reported, as the CADS roared to life behind them. Robinson cursed; that meant that half of his strength had been killed. “We also lost three of the lorries; all of them were taken out by enemy mortar fire…”

“Have the wounded moved into the remaining lorry and prepare to move out,” Robinson snapped. “Jacob, anything?”

“There’s nothing on the handful of bodies,” Anastazy reported. “Sir, I don’t know for sure, but those were definitely Russian helicopters and they were…”

“I know,” Robinson said. There was no drill planned for any such incident; the closest they had come to planning for a full-scale Russian attack was a plan to cut off a major cross-border raid. “We have to move out, somewhere west. If we can’t get in contact with higher authority…”

“I got something,” the radioman called. “There’s a signal, in Polish…”

Anastazy listened carefully… and paled. “No,” he said. “It can’t be… its Molobo!”

Robinson wanted to slap him. “Translate it,” he ordered. Anastazy’s country might be under threat, but he cared more for the lives of his soldiers, the men under his command. He needed every possible source of intelligence and Anastazy was the only one he had. Whoever Molobo was, he had to be connected to the Russians somehow. “I need to know what they’re saying!”

Anastazy took a breath. “Citizens of Poland, this is an emergency announcement,” he recited, as the speaker started to repeat himself. “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.”

The message began to repeat. “Jesus,” Inglehart breathed. Robinson shook his head slowly as the sinister import of the message began to sink in. “What the hell does it mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lieutenant Benjamin Matthews snapped. “The Russians are invading Poland… and we’re caught in the middle!”