They had General Trautman and EUROFOR. Trautman had spent enough time with each of the major units to know that they were hardly prepared for the task; the two heavy armoured units, one from France, one from Germany, were not suited to the task of sealing the borders. If the Russians ever launched a raid with heavy armour, then they might be useful, but otherwise, Trautman was grimly aware that getting them into position would take far too long. He needed more infantry… and it was infantry that the European Defence Commission was refusing to send him.
He scowled at the map. Poland was a large country and it had a long land border, almost impossible to secure at the best of times, one that was crossed regularly by criminals and terrorists as well as illegal immigrants and freedom fighters from Belarus. The Russians called them terrorists and demanded that the Poles hand them over; the Poles themselves would have been happy to comply. European laws, however, were clear; anyone seeking asylum had to be granted at least provisional asylum unless there were very clear circumstances proving that they should be returned. Trautman had read enough of the media’s left-wing reporting — and the outraged right-wing independent media — to know that there seemed to be no case where someone would actually be sent back to face justice. If Brussels was prepared to give asylum to people wanted for the bombing in Oakland, there was no way that they would send Russians back to Russia.
There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” Trautman shouted. One of the EUROFOR communications officers entered. “Report.”
“General, we have a report from the field,” Captain Philippe Laroche said. The French officer was mercifully free of the institutional bias of Guichy and his fellow commissioners; most junior French officers were at least as good as their German or British counterparts. The French just had a habit of promoting officers for their political skills rather than their military skills; General Éclair had had political skills as well as military skills, a rarity in any army. “Several border guards are reporting that they can hear engines on the far side of the border.”
Trautman glanced down at the map; Laroche pointed out the location. “That hardly seems likely,” he said, as he worked through it in his head. “There’s no refugee camp near there, just the border guards and an infantry unit.”
He glanced up. “Is there anything on the radars?”
He would have been delighted to have taken up the American offer of a direct feed from the American bases in Poland. He would have been even more delighted to have had an American armoured division attached to his force; few countries enjoyed the thought of picking a fight with the Americans these days, not after Tehran had paid the price for the nuclear attack on American forces… even though the Jihadist propaganda claimed that it had been in response to the attack on Israel. The European Defence Commission had made its will clear… and Trautman was a loyal servant of Europe.
He was uncomfortably aware that General Éclair would have done it anyway.
“No, sir, just normal traffic,” Laroche said. “The Russians keep rerouting aircraft away from the Ukraine, but after that lunatic was seen with a SAM launcher, there was little else that they could do. The pilots are getting used to it; we can listen in on their chatter sometimes. The Russians have their standard five-ship air patrol up, but no sign of anything that would be supporting a cross-border raid.”
Trautman rubbed his head. He was about to start his first headache of the day. If he sent out the alert, the Poles would be on hair-triggers and end up firing on Russians, or even perhaps accidentally firing on European units. If he didn’t send out an alert, the situation might get better, but it might also get worse… and if that happened, his forces would be caught on the hop.
“Tell them to get ready to get ready,” he said, hoping that the young Dutchman in command of the closest European force would know what he meant. “If we need to support them, then…”
The buzzer sounded. “General, you asked to be notified when the Polish supply convoy arrived,” his assistant said. “They’re just pulling up…”
Her voice vanished; moments later, the lights and computers faded and died. Trautman opened his mouth to say something and realised that they had had a power cut; emergency systems were coming online, trying to get everything running again, but the small generator that the Soviets had left them with in the base hadn’t anything like enough capability to power everything. He had wanted to move in a more modern generator, but the idea had been dismissed as ‘unnecessarily provocative.’ There were times when he wondered if the entire European Defence Commission was in the pay of the Russians.
“We’ve had a power cut,” he said, calmly. Laroche had drawn his service weapon and was looking around grimly. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about…”
An explosion shook the camp, followed rapidly by a second explosion and a burst of heavy gunfire. Trautman recognised the sound at once; those were Russian weapons. His mouth fell open… and then the window burst as a third explosion detonated, far too close for comfort. He could hear the sound of mortars being fired and rounds impacting within the camp and realised, dimly, that they were under attack.
“Sir,” Laroche shouted at him. Trautman found himself on the floor, the cold hard Russian floor, without a clear memory of how he’d landed there. “Sir, we have to get out of here!”
The building shook again. Laroche was making sound tactical sense; they couldn’t remain in a building that the Russians — if Russians they were — would know perfectly. Trautman yanked open a drawer and removed his own service weapon, cursing the limited ammunition; if he had to fight, he would only have nine shots before he ran out of bullets. The door burst open and he almost shot the intruder before realising who he was, the commanding officer of the French paratroopers who had somehow been assigned to the base. It had been at that moment that he had realised that the European Defence Commission just didn’t care… but now he was grateful. French paratroopers had a tough reputation.
“Sir, we have to get you out of here,” the leader said. Trautman struggled to remember the Frenchman’s name; Captain Paul Montagne, if he recalled correctly. A service record with details classified beyond even his clearance, but some details of service in Africa and even in an ill-fated attempt to topple the Islamic Government in Algeria had slipped through the cracks. “This base is under attack!”
Another explosion shook the base. “Fine,” Trautman snapped, as the paratrooper hustled them out into the corridor. Four more paratroopers, all heavily armed, were securing the corridor, their eyes flickering left and right as they waited for contact with the enemy. “What’s happening?”
Montagne motioned for two of his people to go ahead and check out the corridor down towards the rear exit of the base. “The Polish Convoy was larger than it was supposed to be, but the guards let the lead truck into the gate anyway, whereupon a truck bomb exploded and killed the guards; two more truck bombs devastated the remainder of the defences. Armed men appeared and launched an attack; I sent the remainder of my people down to the rear entrance to hopefully keep it secure.”
Trautman could barely grasp it. Minutes ago, he had been trying to scrape up another infantry unit for EUROFOR; now, he had been plunged into the middle of a shooting war. It was his shame that the closest he had come to a real war had been a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East, before Europe had washed its hands of the whole matter; now, he would be trying to somehow coordinate a response without any means of escape.