She shook her head. “I just don’t know,” she said. She looked around again; the penal soldiers were digging graves and bodies, European bodies, were being dumped in the graves. Helicopters and jet aircraft were flying overhead, heading west; they seemed to be caught in the middle of a full-scale invasion. “I just don’t think that it’s going to be pleasant.”
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Long Way Home
In the Soviet Army, it takes more courage to retreat than advance.
Near Warsaw, Poland
“I think we have to make some decisions,” Captain Stuart Robinson said, as the small force stopped two miles west of the attack site. They had remained as quiet as they could, ignoring the enemy aircraft passing overhead, although Matthews had argued that they should have engaged them with the CADS. “Our position is not good.”
The mysterious and ominous radio message had been repeated every twenty minutes, on the main Polish radio channel, interspersed by jamming. Robinson had tried several times to get in touch with someone higher up the chain of command, but the radio systems seemed to be completely jammed except at short-ranges, and the satellites seemed to be gone. Matthews had sworn blind that the laser communications system should have been working perfectly; the satellite, for whatever reason, was refusing to respond. The implications of that worried Robinson.
They had worried him enough to order Matthews to make a very quick low-powered radar sweep from time to time. Passive sensors had recorded bursts of Russian activity that seemed designed to hunt down European units; the low-powered bursts had revealed flights of heavy Russian transports heading into Europe. The sense of threat, of being watched, had followed them from the scene of the ambush; Robinson was no longer inclined to dismiss the feeling at all. It affected them all; the soldiers spread out, as if they were launching a probing attack rather than just marching to the nearest base. They held their weapons at the ready, eyes scanning the horizon; as far as they were concerned, they were in bandit country.
He gathered Anastazy, Inglehart and Matthews together while they took a short break. “We are more or less out of communication with anyone higher up,” he said, as they smoked cigarettes. He had once smoked as a teenager, in defiance of the ban on smoking; only Hazel had forced him to break the habit. Her threat of no sex if he so much as looked at a cigarette had forced him to quit; now, he found that he needed one just to keep a clear head. “We know that there are Russians roaming the country and plenty of Russians in the air. What do we do?”
It wasn’t normal for any commanding officer to call a council of war, but there was little choice; he had both Matthews, his nominal equal, and Anastazy along as well as his soldiers. Both of them looked worried; Anastazy because it was his country that was under attack, Matthews because he had lost one CADS already and might lose more if the Russians caught them. Without its active sensors, the CADS was much less effective as a system, but using active sensors might have been like calling up the Russians and inviting them to launch a missile at their position. So far, they’d been lucky; Robinson didn’t want to press his luck.
Anastazy spoke first. “We’re not that far from Warsaw,” he said, nodding towards one of the looming pillars of smoke. The soldiers had seen over nine massive pillars of smoke rising up into the sky, several of them near places they had known to hold other soldiers. “We could head towards the city, find out what’s going on…”
The noise of a distant aircraft made them all jump. “I think that that would be the worst possible option,” Matthews said. He was no coward — he had proved that in several encounters before the ambush — but he sounded distinctly worried. “I was studying the Russian aerial manoeuvres and they’re flying heavy military transports to the west… and they wouldn’t be doing that if they thought there was a serious risk of ground-fire. They’re big bastards; we saw them during the Russian flight to Algeria and they’re capable of carrying hundreds of men, or even light tanks. Where are they going?”
He picked up a map and showed it to them. “There are several large airports in the west of Poland,” he said. “If the Russians managed to mount a sneak attack on us, they might have done the same for the airports; it was the type of threat we planned to counter back in the NATO days. With communications shattered, or at the very least badly damaged, they could reinforce quickly before any local defenders could mount a counterattack. Once they do that… they expand their areas of control and cut off any forces that try to retreat out of Poland.”
Anastazy glared at him. “What are you suggesting?”
“We have to fall back,” Matthews said. “We’re too exposed out here, sir; they have the power to trap and destroy each part of EUROFOR before we can build a proper defence line. I know that the 7th Panzer is up there somewhere” — he nodded in the direction of Warsaw — “but they will have been hit as well, and if we move too openly, we’ll be seen and hit from the air.”
Robinson stroked his chin, feeling the impact of tiny pieces of stubble. It had been too long since he had shaved, even though he had had the opportunity; Hazel would have been annoyed with him. She had never liked kissing his stubble. The thought of his wife made his heart ache; she had to be worried out of her mind. The BBC would probably be screaming that the British had lost the war already and had to get back to Britain before it was too late.
“We have your two vehicles to protect us from air attacks,” Anastazy said. “We have a duty to Poland.”
Robinson held up a hand. “Sergeant?”
Inglehart looked wary. “I think that Captain Matthews is right,” he said. His face twisted with the bitterness of retreat. “We’re down to thirty active fighters and two CADS, not enough of a force to make a difference on our own.” He peered at the map. “There was a Polish training facility out here, if I remember correctly” — Anastazy nodded — “and that’s only twenty miles in the direction of Germany. If they’re active and they know something useful, we can decide what to do then; if not, we head back towards Germany and hopefully encounter other European units.”
Robinson nodded. “Jacob, I can’t order you to come with us, but your chances of survival will be much improved if you are with us,” he said. “Please… will you come?”
Anastazy nodded once.
The drive would have taken only half an hour at most in a car. Keeping to the back roads, well away from civilisation, it took over two hours, not least because of the walking soldiers, rather than using the truck. Robinson had considered pausing at a Polish farm long enough to requisition a second lorry, but they would already be targets for Russian high-attitude aircraft or reconnaissance satellites; he expected that the Russians would know that they were still out there somewhere. They heard aircraft from time to time, even saw a few, but most of them seemed to be concentrating their attention on Warsaw. They heard explosions echoing out in the distance…
Robinson looked at Anastazy, walking with his head bowed, almost as if he were a prisoner. The Pole was walking away from his duty, and even if cold logic supported the decision, it didn’t sit well with him to run away. Robinson had read several books where the United Kingdom had been invaded and he had often wondered; what would he do if he was faced with such a choice? Would he abandon Edinburgh — and Hazel — to regroup somewhere outside the city, or would he desert his mates and see to the safety of his wife? How could anyone be asked to make such a choice?