Normally the ops center was a cheerful, busy place. Today everyone’s expression was grim. Tad stopped the first pilot he saw, Lieutenant Stanislaw Gawlik. The thin, hawk-nosed pilot looked worried.
“Stan, what’s wrong? Somebody have an incident?” Nobody used the word “crash,” as if avoiding the word could avoid the actual event.
Gawlik shook his head. “No. Take a look at the intel board. More Confederation units are moving into eastern Germany. Ground forces, aircraft, the works. The French and Germans claim it’s just part of a routine ‘redeployment.’”
Wojcik half grinned. “Yeah, right. That’s so absurd it’s insulting. It’s all pressure to get us to knuckle under.”
The other lieutenant shook his head decisively. “Never. Look at what they’ve done to Hungary and Romania and the others. Economic colonies, with their people working in foreign-owned factories for pitiful wages. Puppet governments, secret police. We were under the Soviet boot too long to want someone else’s foot on our necks.” There was a grim light in his eyes when he spoke about the Russians.
Gawlik’s worried look returned as he continued. “First this damned oil embargo and now these troop movements. It’s like we’re being hemmed in on all sides. The government’s already protested, and the President and Prime Minister are both going to speak on television tonight. But I don’t see what else we can do. Any chance we’re getting more aid from the Americans? Or from Britain? Have you heard anything?”
Everyone assumed that Tad’s American birth somehow gave him an inside track on developments in the West.
He shrugged. “Nothing new. Not that I’ve heard about anyway.”
Tad wasn’t really sure what more Poland’s two faraway allies could do. Protected by USN and Royal Navy warships, their tankers were already pumping oil and gas ashore as fast as they could. Beyond that, several dozen weapons experts and training teams were already busy helping his country’s armed forces make the difficult transition away from old-style Soviet equipment and tactics. Short of actually stationing U.S. troops on Polish soil, there weren’t many other options open.
Gawlik seemed briefly disappointed, but he rallied fast. “Better check the board. You’re flying today. In fact, most of us are.”
The older man glanced at his watch. “I’ll be up in an hour. Good luck.” The lieutenant put real meaning into the trite expression.
The assignments board told the story. Pairs of F-15 Eagles were flying along the border on a twenty-four hour basis. A map showed the new patrol zones. The 11th’s area of responsibility was a two-hundred-kilometer section of the frontier, running from Kostryzn south to the southwest corner of Poland.
Tad noticed with interest that the border patrol track ran right next to the frontier, not back a few dozen kilometers as standard tactics and peacetime procedures might suggest. Any turn west would put them in German territory. The lack of maneuvering room meant this was a “fence” exercise, intended to tell these German and French bastards that the Polish Air Force was ready to block any movement into its territory.
Wojcik smiled at his own eagerness to climb inside the cockpit. With money and aviation fuel so tight, he’d only been able to fly once every two or three days. Now he’d fly at least daily, and with the German border right in his face. In an odd sort of way, things were looking up at the same time they were looking down.
Tad hooked up with his wingman, Lieutenant Sylwester Zawadzki after lunch. After a routine physical check, they both collected their maps and charts and then walked briskly down the hall to the regiment’s ready room.
Pilots and a full complement of staff officers packed the ready room — sitting in battered wooden chairs facing a map-filled wall or standing along the other walls. The regiment’s operations, intelligence, and meteorology officers sat off to one side, each waiting his turn to give a quick briefing. Even the 11th’s short, cherub-faced commander was there, standing with a knot of pilots just back from a mission.
Colonel Kadlubowski spotted them in the doorway and motioned them over. He looked tired, and Zawadzki whispered that the colonel had already flown two missions that morning himself.
“You boys are up next?”
“Yes, sir.”
The colonel clapped Tad on the shoulder and nodded toward Zawadzki. “Be careful up there, gentlemen. There’s a lot of activity on the western side of the border. Don’t start a war, but,” and his voice grew hard, “don’t give them an inch of our airspace.”
“Yes, sir.”
As the colonel turned away, the 11th’s operations officer took his place, flanked by two strangers. The two Eagle pilots introduced themselves to a major and captain who were the pilot and copilot of a “special electronics” An-26. Wojcik noticed that their flight suits did not have name tags, or any unit insignia. The two men were friendly enough, but their monosyllabic answers soon got the message across: “Don’t ask questions, because we won’t answer them.”
The nameless major was their mission commander, and would fly his aircraft as required. The two Eagles were going along to make sure he wasn’t bothered.
The operations officer gave them the correct radio frequencies, call signs, and other routine information. Their CAP station was Yellow Station, and they were Yellow Five and Six. They were set to relieve Yellow Seven and Eight. If they needed to communicate with the Curl, it was “Black flight.”
All the intelligence officer would say was that there had been sightings of German aircraft very close to the border. “Expect them to pay attention to you.”
He also emphasized the correct setting for their IFF equipment. Polish-manned Patriot and Hawk SAM batteries were now deploying along the nation’s frontiers almost as fast as they could be unloaded, and surface-to-air missiles travel too fast to allow time for explanations.
Tad and Zawadzki left the ops building with the major and his copilot and walked to the flight line, just a short distance away. The Curl was parked close by, so the two Eagle drivers stopped for a moment to look over the elderly “bus.”
Painted in drab green and brown colors, the twin-engine, turboprop transport plane had long, straight wings and a tall tail. It normally carried forty paratroops or a six-ton cargo load, but the cargo compartment on this one was filled with electronic equipment and seats for operators. Odd-shaped dielectric patches covered its surface. A long metal “canoe” ran half the length of the plane’s belly, and even its nose looked subtly different. Some of the gray insulation patches looked recent, and Tad suspected that some of America’s latest military aid shipments had included Western electronics upgrades for these “ferret” aircraft.
Their two companions headed for the top-secret plane without saying another word. Tad and his wingman exchanged a quick grin at that. Habits of perpetual silence must be hard to break. The two Eagle drivers trotted over to their F-15s.
They taxied to the end of the thousand-meter concrete strip, the Curl leading.
It was a cold, gusty day, with scattered low clouds a few thousand meters high. Drenched by the remnants of an overnight storm, the runway was still wet in spots. A hexagonal pattern stood out clearly on the damp concrete, showing the joints between the massive blocks making up the Russian-style runway. They were laid so that if the surface was cratered by enemy air attacks, any damaged sections could be quickly lifted out and replaced by spares. Of course, all those joints made for a rough ride on takeoff and landing.