One of the officers looked at the man. “Obviously you fail to grasp what we are telling you. You have been caught in the act. We have the evidence to convict you and send you to a hangman. Does this not bother you?” he asked.
Bugayev simply smiled at the man and said nothing. His training had prepared for this and he had steeled himself for the possibility of being captured. He kept telling himself that escape could come at any time and that his silence was his best option.
The door opened and another man entered. He whispered something to two of the officers and then left the room.
“You are one cool character,” said one of the other officers. “But now things shall change. I’m not sure what you know about Poland, but we have certain laws which, upon court approval, allow us to gather information deemed necessary for state security. I now have a court order allowing us to do just that. Before we are done with you, we will know everything you know, and we shall use that information against both you and your homeland,” he said with a sneer.
Bugayev glanced up at the clock on the wall. Noting it was five a.m., he smiled at the men in the room and said, “I’m afraid you are too late.”
Medyka was a small community near the Polish border with the Ukraine. It had grown from the border crossing for both a major highway and trains coming and going from the Ukraine. Over the past year, the army had deployed thousands of tank traps along the border with Ukraine and Russia and had begun stepped up patrols to make sure they were left undisturbed. The patrols had become routine, with a truck dropping off patrols every 200 yards to make sure there were no activities left undetected on the Russian side.
The sky was becoming a little lighter as the morning crept in. Within an hour, most of the guards would be changed out and a fresh set of eyes and ears would come in. Everyone was looking forward to getting out of the cold of the evening and getting a hot shower and good meal. Each patrol of two men joked and talked as they patrolled their sector.
The air was torn apart by the sounds of incoming artillery. The shells began plastering the high fences of the border and the tank traps just beyond. The patrols along a twenty mile front began calling frantically into their radios to let everyone know that the border was under attack.
***
The radars at the Deblin and Minsk Mazowiecki air bases began showing large numbers of incoming aircraft approaching from the Ukraine. Controllers sounded the alert and within seconds, pilots throughout Poland raced for their planes to counter the assault. The first in the air were the American made F-16s and older Soviet Mig-29s. In all, over 80 Polish fighters scrambled to meet the invaders. Unfortunately, the controllers were counting over 300 aircraft rapidly approaching the Polish border.
***
Almost immediately, all army units were alerted. General Pol, initiated the defense plan that the NATO leaders had agreed upon. Across Poland, men and women manned their tanks, guns, and missile batteries. Troops began taking up the defensive positions planned and waited for the troops to cross the border.
***
The Russian SU-24s and SU-34s cleared the borders and began engaging their designated targets — mostly army tank and heavy equipment compounds. They raced in to drop their weapons almost unopposed since the Polish fighters had not had the time to get within range. That was when the first surprise came. Missiles streaked skyward from the mobile anti-aircraft missile launchers that were tracking using infra-red sensors. The Russian pilots suddenly saw several of their comrades fall from the sky in flames. Several in the squadron wheeled back to engage the batteries only to find that the ground was dark and there were no radars to lock onto. Switching to their own thermal sensors, they scanned the ground in the area but found nothing. Frustrated, the attack aircraft turned back to join the others, only to find that, once turned, they came under attack again. Four more aircraft fell.
The remaining attack force dropped their weapons on several tank farms identified by intelligence from just a few days before. The pilots were elated when several sets of flames sprung skyward after their bomb release. By the time they left, the fires were seen all round the target area. They had no time to give their targets a hard look. The Polish air force was almost there and the attack aircraft scurried back across the border to safety.
***
At the border, the artillery continued to pound the tank traps, often flinging the steel structure off the ground, only to come back down almost intact in another position. Just beyond the traps, the mines in a mine field were occasionally detonated during the bombardment. The patrols were now firmly huddled into slit trenches previously set along the borderline beyond the mine field.
The bombardment lasted for nearly an hour before the fire was shifted further across the line. That was when the sound of tanks could be heard nearing the border. The patrols quickly left their trenches and made their way to an extraction area to be taken back to join other units. Within minutes, the Russian tanks rolled up to the high fence and pushed it over. The twenty yard no man’s land passed quickly. That was when the Russian tankers hit the tank traps.
Made from several welded pieces of jagged steel beams, the traps looked somewhat like three dimensional snowflakes on the ground. The tankers had hoped that the artillery would have gotten rid of them, but the traps had simply been moved around the area and deposited again. Some had actually fallen into the craters of the artillery shells and had made things even more difficult.
The first line of tanks tried to push the traps out of the way, only making things worse when one or more of the legs dug deeply into the ground and held fast. In only a few cases, was a tank able to nudge the obstacle out of the way and move ahead, only to come up against more of them. The advance ground to a halt with tankers calling for bulldozers to come up and make passages through the line.
Now it was the turn of the Polish army. Polish artillery, hidden in the surrounding hills and trees, began pounding the tanks which were slowed and stopped by the defenses. Mercilessly the rounds came down on top of the tanks and their crews, penetrating the lightly armored roof of the tanks and killing all inside. Within minutes, scores of tanks were burning along the border.
Now, in the gathering light of dawn, the Polish units came under fire from additional attack aircraft skimming the surface and dashing across the border. They began weeding out the artillery pieces and easing the destruction of their own units. The Polish fighters were on the scene now and dove in on their prey. The low level melee was not how the pilots had anticipated fighting a war. This was emphasized when the Russian fighters screamed in at treetop level to protect the attack aircraft. The results were not pretty. Polish fighters began to fall left and right from the Russian fighters. Although few of the attack aircraft made it home, by concentrating their attacks on the attack planes, the Polish fighters had left themselves open. The Russian fighters had plowed into them. In the end, nearly half of the Polish fighter aircraft had been destroyed.
On the ground, the Polish army pulled out the hand held anti-tank missiles. As the second wave came forward, they saw several crawl over the carcasses of their fallen comrades and drop down on the other side. They too became entangled in the tank traps. More artillery zeroed in on these units. But as more attack aircraft came in, fewer artillery rounds fell along the line. Soldiers carrying the hand held munitions aimed at the latest line to crawl over the hulls of their comrades and pulled the trigger. More tanks fell. That was when the field officers realized what the Russians were doing. They were building a bridge of tanks through the traps. Soon there was an unbroken line where the Russians could cross the borders. The tanks poured across, struck the mine field and kept going. The few tanks damaged made it possible for the others to get through. Within two hours, a division of tanks and infantry were across the border and into Poland.