“Look at them,” he said, detailing his suspicions. “What do you think they’re up to?”
The kid, to give him his due, didn’t hesitate. “Can you investigate them?”
“I’m going to have to,” Mayer said. “Watch as long as you can, then head for Britain unless you can get an airfield in France.”
He rolled the Eurofighter over and launched the bird towards the unknown aircraft, noting in passing that their IFF signals didn’t match with their behaviour. If they were in denial, they should have been preparing to land… but they weren’t. They were going to fly over Szczecin-Goleniów Airport, almost in formation. The implications worried him; Szczecin-Goleniów Airport was in the west of Poland, near Germany and the German border. It was one of the places that had been marked as a possible emergency landing site for the EUROFOR air support squadrons… and should have been outside the realm of targeting possibilities for any attacker. The faint suggestions of aerial combat, further to the east, suggested that the Russians — if Russians they were, but who else could they be? — were winning. “I am going stealthy now.”
“Good luck,” Montebourg said.
The Eurofighter was not a pure stealth fighter, not like the newer fighters that had been produced by the Americans, the Japanese and even the advanced Eurofighter Tempest. It did have a very small radar cross-section and, without any active transponders, should have nothing calling serious attention to itself. If there were ground forces below that were friendly, in other words not Russians, they might try to shoot him down because he wasn’t broadcasting an IFF signal. There wasn’t a choice; he didn’t dare draw enemy attention until he knew what the hell was going on.
Air traffic started to grow far larger as his radars started to look further into Poland. Normally, the skies would be stacked with commercial airliners, but now there were only military transports… and he could see smoke rising from dozens of different places on the ground. Meyer had a sudden sense of what had happened to all of the commercial jets and shuddered; the Russians would have just shot them all down and never worried about the loss of life.
His sensors recorded everything as they grew closer, relaying them back to Montebourg. A Russian Mainstay — a Beriev A-50 AWACS aircraft, one of a hundred the Russians had produced and heavily modified over the years — was operating in the air over Poland, protected by a swarm of Russian fighters. Other heavy Russian transports seemed to be dominating the skies over Poland, while tankers and bombers floated around, picking on targets as they chose. The sheer scale of the effort was daunting… and the lack of any effective opposition was chilling. Had the Russians secured so much control that they could fly so close to Germany without fear?
He cursed softly as another flight of Russians headed into Western Poland, their escorts peeling off and returning to the tankers for refuelling. The entire area was lit up by hundreds of different air-search radar systems, watching out for possible attackers, and he realised that if he went any closer, he would almost certainly be detected. A flight of Russian transports rose into the air from Poland, heading back towards Russia, and he realised that he was looking at the greatest airborne invasion operation in human history. By the time the Poles rallied, they would be defeated; it was neat, elegant, and almost unstoppable.
They’re going to land at Szczecin-Goleniów Airport, he realised. No one in Germany would have the view that he had of the invasion, not until it was too late… and unless Montebourg managed to make contact with someone before the AWACS ran out of fuel, it would never be useful to anyone. He risked a microburst transmission, sending the data back to Montebourg, and then turned to see the unknown aircraft. Right on the border of the Vaterland…
The mystery aircraft were drawing closer and closer to him; he tried to hail them and received no response, not even a nervous pilot wondering what the warplane was doing, so close to a civilian aircraft. They looked civilian, he saw, as he swung the aircraft over the jet liner, except… there was something wrong.
“Shit,” Lapotev hissed. The alarm in his voice was unpleasant. “He has us; he’ll see the false images and then he’ll kill us.”
“Take him out,” Aliyev snapped. There were only five minutes until the jump began. A single Eurofighter could not be allowed to ruin it, not now; he wouldn’t allow it. He would sooner die than fail Russia. “Kill that bastard!”
Lapotev flicked a switch. “Done,” he said. The airliner shook, but if it was from the missile or the passage of the Eurofighter, Aliyev couldn’t tell. “You’d better get back and ready to jump.”
Ping…!
For a long moment, Mayer’s mind refused to grasp what had happened; the airliner, the innocent-looking airliner, had lit off a short-ranged military-grade air search radar, more powerful than the one that the MIG-41 he’d killed had carried. He had never seriously contemplated firing on a civilian airliner, not even if he had to prevent a repeat of September 11th and he hesitated. Fatally. The missile blasted away from its hidden launcher… and struck the Eurofighter before he could react. Mayer’s life came to a sudden end… as the first paratroopers began to fall on the airport far below.
The Battle for Szczecin-Goleniów Airport had begun.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Strike from the Sky, Take Two
I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.
Jack Handey
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.