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.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: Prisoner of War
The Geneva Conventions are a wonderful idea that are completely impractical and unenforceable.
Near Warsaw, Poland
The first thing that Caroline Morgan knew about the war was the explosion.
“Stay here,” Captain Loomis snapped, before Caroline could say anything. She had been interviewing Hannah Loomis, a female infantry captain, as to the role of women in the military. Hannah, a fearsome figure, had been more than willing to talk, although she had dismissed some of the common knowledge about women in the military as feminist or sexist nonsense. The real state of affairs was quite different.