The Fall of Night

Chapter Twenty-Two: Strike from the Sky, Take Two

Polish Airspace, Near Szczecin

Hans Cooper loved the airport.

His father had taken him on a visit to see his family in Germany and Poland, a long holiday that was a chance to reconnect with relatives that he hadn’t seen for years; the ten-year-old had been delighted and only wished that his mother had been able to come. Hans had begged his father to take him to each and every one of the airports they passed, and their relatives had been more than happy to provide transport. The airport in western Poland — Szczecin-Goleniów Airport — was no different; he had even been able to stand on the balcony and watch the aircraft come in to land.

The chaos that had broken out had passed unnoticed by Hans; he had little interest in anything, but the aircraft, including the massive jumbo jet that had been taxiing onto the runway before the chaos had begun. There were thousands of people milling about in the airport, but Hans only had eyes for the aircraft… including the fighter that had flown overhead at very low level and disappeared into the distance. A Polish policeman was trying to shout orders, only to be drowned out by the crowd, and Hans barely noticed. The flight of aircraft high overhead held his attention.

His father had bought him a pair of binoculars. Some airports had been reluctant to have him use them on their premises, for reasons that made no sense to him or his father, but the Poles had allowed him to use them… or, at least, they hadn’t tried to stop him. Hans was of the age where limited defiance was the ‘cool’ thing to do, but at the airport, he was wrapped up in the joy of seeing the aircraft. He could see the aircraft… and then the aircraft started to launch paratroopers out into the air.

“Dad,” he shouted, delightedly. “Those are paratroopers!”

Hans had studied military aircraft as well with a child’s fascination. He knew what paratroopers were; it was his dream, if he failed in his first dream to become a fighter pilot, to become a paratrooper and jump out of planes all day. His guidance counsellor had pointed out that it was a hard and dangerous life, and not all of it included jumping, but Hans had been determined. Besides, his dad had said that he was ten years old… and that was really too early for the schools to be trying to fix him with a career path.

He heard the screams and shouts from behind him as the parachutes fell through the air, heading towards the ground, and laughed at them. What possible danger could there be? Weren’t the grown-ups caught in the excitement of the moment? Hans whooped with joy as the parachutes opened, revealing the men below as their fall slowed almost to a standstill, just above the runways. It was exciting, almost like the air show he seen when he was younger; there was nothing to match the sight of aircraft and men doing cool things. His father was tugging at him, trying to get him to move, and Hans refused to budge. He wouldn’t lose the chance to see what was about to happen.

“Move,” his father said. His hand impacted firmly with Hans’ rear. Hans squawked in outrage — his father rarely spanked him and then only when he was very bad — and tried to struggle. His father was much stronger and pulled Hans away mercilessly; he opened his mouth and started to bawl. “Hans, we have to move!”

The parachutists had landed, their parachutes drifting away; Hans could see them as they formed up rapidly into units, a perfect display of formation landing. Alarms were going off everywhere, but to him it was only part of the excitement and he cursed his father for trying to get him away from the sight. It wasn’t fair…

And then the shooting started.

Szczecin-Goleniów Airport was no different to Airport One, at least in general concept; long runways, terminals and two control towers. Aliyev was unimpressed as the long fall towards the ground slowed sharply and his feet touched the ground; it would be almost impossible for the Poles to defend it unless they had an entire regiment dug in around the terminals. There hadn’t even been any shooting; the attacks on Airport One had been far more dangerous than Szczecin-Goleniów, so far.

“Form up,” he snapped, trusting in his subordinates to know what they were doing. Alarms were sounding everywhere, but there was no sign of any real resistance at all; the shock and awe of their sudden arrival should paralyse the defenders long enough for them to lose… if there were any defenders. The intelligence reports had stated that there was a stand-by anti-terrorist unit in the airport, one with military-grade training and equipment, but it wouldn’t be any match for his people. “Advance!”

The parachutists broke into a run as they charged towards their targets. A handful of dark-clad figures lifted weapons and tried to fight, overcoming their shock; the Russians mowed them down and kept coming. Aliyev took a second to check their bodies and realised that they had been security guards, completely outmatched by real military people. The terminal rose up in front of him, frightened eyes peering out through massive glass windows, somehow unaware that his men could come right through the glass. The strike teams moved fast and threw their grenades; the glass shattered, sending fragments flying over the civilians. Many of them screamed as glass cut into their bodies; Aliyev had no time at all to worry about them. It was vital that they took the airport largely intact.

The other parachutists fanned out as they crashed into the terminal. Civilians scattered in front of them; a policeman lifted a weapon and fired once at a commando, who took the shot on his body armour and only staggered backwards. Aliyev felt for him; the impact felt like being punched in the gut, even if he had been lucky enough to escape real physical harm. He should have escaped such harm; the weapon the Pole had fired hadn’t been a serious pistol at all. Aliyev’s team shot him down anyway.

“Everyone get down on the floor, hands on your heads,” he bellowed, and cracked the skull of a fat aggressive German who started to shout at him. His wife, equally fat, threw herself to her husband’s side and tried to tend to him, until Aliyev ordered her to lie down with the others. There were hundreds of civilians in the airport, he realised as they fanned out through the building, along with employees and workers in the airport. They were sheep in front of his men; only a handful even tried to hide. They were dragged out and placed with the others as the reinforcements rushed into the terminal. The remainder of their supplies would be landing now… and then the aircraft would be heading back to Russia.

Aliyev and his men were on their own.

“Listen,” he bellowed, in Polish. He would repeat himself in German and English in a moment; the sight of a small boy, weeping, reminded him far too much of Groznyy. “This is a military emergency; anyone who refuses to follow our orders will be shot. Follow orders and we promise that you will not be harmed, nor will you be killed, raped, hurt or forced to help us. Remain calm; parents, keep your children calm and everything will be well.”

He repeated himself in two other languages and then led his main unit up the stairs towards the control tower. The airport had two, redundancy was built into the system, and he was certain that the Poles would be screaming for help as loudly as they could. He knew that both of the nearby barracks had been hit by missiles, but there was no telling how much damage had actually been done until it was too late; he was uncomfortably aware that he might find out when the Polish infantry launched an attack. The stairs had been blocked; several shots rang out as they approached.

“That’s the antiterrorist unit,” Captain Alexander Vatutin muttered. Aliyev had given command of the preliminary work to his most trusted subordinate. “They’re dug themselves in there and we can’t get up the steps without using the grenades.”

Aliyev scowled. Grenades meant that they risked damaging vital equipment they needed desperately, but there was no choice. He muttered orders and the team deployed, each one holding a light fragmentation grenade; at his command, they hurled them into the stairwell, and then charged as soon as they exploded. More gunshots rang out, but the firing was no longer perfectly targeted; the commandos shot the Poles before they could recover from the grenades. A handful of Poles tried to escape and were mercilessly shot in the back; Aliyev led the charge towards the second locked door, leading into the control room.

He grinned and knocked. A female voice called out a question in Polish. “Who is it?”

Aliyev forced himself to speak Polish again. “It’s the team,” he said. “You’re safe now and you can open the door.”

“Fuck off, Russian,” the woman shouted back. Aliyev shrugged; it had been a long shot, but it had been worth a try. She probably knew all of the members of the antiterrorist team by heart, perhaps even cock size, the nasty part of his mind whispered. “We’re calling for help and you’d better be gone when it comes!”

Aliyev nodded to two of the commandos, who placed small charges on the door and melted through the metal. There were screams from inside as the metal ran like water and the door was kicked in; he saw seven terrified men and women… and one woman, sitting in the centre of the room, trying to look confident and failing miserably. She would have been a beauty in her youth; the sullen defiance on her face twisted it into the realm of ugliness.

“Everyone, hands in the air, now,” Aliyev barked, as the commandos charged into the room. There was no resistance, but they didn’t dare take chances; they grabbed the operators, secured them and left them tussled up on the floor. Some of the civilians were whimpering; like most civilians in their position, they were used to the idea of emergencies taking place a long way away. “If you attempt to resist, you will be shot!”

He checked the consoles quickly. The civilian wavebands had been jammed, but they were still intact; the emergency power generator in the airport had taken over from the main power supply, which should have been cut off by the missiles or a commando strike team. It hardly mattered; they had radar units, but no easy way of using them to get instructions to the handful of European fighters that had managed to get into the air. Emergencies were things that happened to other people, far, far away. They would have prepared for a terrorist attack, but a full-scale military assault?

Aliyev sighed in relief.

“You won’t get away with this,” the commander said. Her voice spat defiance. “They’ll come and kill all of you.”

“Maybe,” Aliyev replied, unwilling to banter. The team wouldn’t have hesitated to break her if she had been a serious problem, but for all of her defiance, she was nothing, but a nuisance. He lifted his tactical combat radio and smiled. “All units, report in.”

He listened as the reports trickled back. The commando teams had seized the hangers and aircraft inside intact, although one of the aircraft was out of service and had been in the middle of being repaired when the fighting had begun. The fuel dump under the airport had been intact, but it hadn’t been quite as full as they had hoped; Poland had been having a semi-permanent fuel crisis since 2020, when Russia had started to get serious about using the fuel supplies for political leverage. It was ironic; if they had sent the Poles all the fuel they needed, aircraft landing at the airport could have been refuelled for much longer. As it was…

He shook his head. It wasn't something that he could alter now. They had to work with what they had, not with the world as they would like it to be. Other teams had secured the fence surrounding the airport and reported that all of the cars on the road had been turned back; hundreds of additional prisoners had been taken as they tried to escape the airport. That was unfortunate; the news would be likely to spread further before more reinforcements could arrive, but again, there was nothing to be done about it.

“Secure the perimeter and get the prisoners back into the terminal,” he ordered. He turned quickly to the pre-prepared operators. “Get in touch with higher command and inform them that we have secured the airport and are ready to receive transports.”

“Yes, sir,” the lead operator said. They had trained for a week on terminals that had been rigged up to look exactly like the terminals they worked with now; they moved with practiced ease to set up the system and issue orders over the Russian communications network. Far behind the lines, aircraft were waiting for the order to take off and transport their units to the airport, where they would become a dagger aimed at Poland and Germany.

The Polish operators watched in horror; for some of them, it was becoming increasingly obvious what was happening; the nightmare of Russian invasion and occupation had returned to Poland. Aliyev felt no sympathy; he had fought long enough in Central Asia to hate those who held protest marches and wrote long detailed articles — mainly with the facts made up — about what they called genocide. Aliyev had been there; it hadn’t been anything like that.

He swung around to glare at the Sergeant. “Our causalities?”

“Seven down, three injured,” the Sergeant reported promptly. “A handful of men landed outside the airport fence and had to make their way in by foot.”

“How embarrassing,” Aliyev said. The men would be the butts of their comrades jokes for weeks, although he wasn't that annoyed; the operation had had a certain amount of friction built into it, after all. He had expected much more to go wrong than actually had; if the European pilot had fired on the aircraft, he could have lost a third of his force. He looked down at the prisoners. “Bring them.”

Ignoring protests, the soldiers picked up the Poles and carried them carefully back into the main terminal, where they were dumped on the ground. The follow-up units had secured all of the adult civilians, male or female; the children sat next to their handcuffed parents, staring at the armed Russians with wide terrified eyes. The feeling of dread and fear was almost amusing; for the first time, Aliyev understood the rush of power that hostage-takers felt. He had killed many hostage-takers in Moscow; the thought that he might have something in common with them terrified him. He ground his teeth; he was a professional soldier and that was the end of it. Terrorising and population control was the task of the FSB.

“Bastards,” he muttered under his breath.

“We searched the entire terminal thoroughly, sir,” a Captain reported. He didn’t salute; salutes were forbidden in combat zones, not that the commandos were big on such gestures anyway. It wasn't considered insubordination. “There are no more hiding civilians or workers; we had a man injured trying to bring down a Polish policeman.”

Aliyev scowled. The fate of the policemen had already been decided. He glared around at the prisoners and saw how few of them could meet his gaze; they had clearly decided to keep their heads down and hope not to be noticed. Most of them were tourists, not soldiers; there was no real need to terrorise them still further.

Captain Alexander Vatutin appeared. “I have deployed the SAM teams to cover the airport and moved units into combat position for defending the airport terminal if there is a low-level probe,” he reported. “The cars will make excellent barricades once we get them moved into position.”

“Good,” Aliyev said. It was time to see to the long-term fate of the prisoners. “Has the prison detachment found a suitable spot?”

“The rich capitalists’ car park,” Vatutin said. “It’s got a fence with barbed wire. We couldn’t have done it better if we had planned it that way.”

Aliyev nodded and coughed for attention. “Good morning,” he said, mischievously. The prisoners looked up at him, their eyes terrified. “For those of you who haven’t realised, a state of war now exists between Russia and the European Union. Unfortunately for you, you have been caught in the middle; I have to hold this airport and you, I fear, are in the combat zone. I would dearly like to just throw you all out of the gate, but you would tell the Polish authorities what is happening, so that is not an option.”

He repeated himself in German and English, and then continued. “None of you are combatants and I intend to keep you out of the firing line as much as possible,” he said. It was almost true; the security staff, the policemen and the two survivors of the antiterrorist team would never see their homes again. The others would have to wait until the Russians knew who they were, and then they would either be released or sent out to prison camps somewhere in Siberia. “My people will be moving you out to a makeshift prison in the car park; I strongly advise you to cooperate with my people, rather than trying to resist. If you need attention, tell them; we will do our best to look after you…”

He paused. “But understand this, I will not allow you to threaten my success here,” he concluded. “If you cause trouble, you will be shot.”

He nodded to the Sergeant. “Take them away.”